The Resilience of Costco - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qKKR2Qzm1GeOd3wOhYtcs0TS7M3QwkaB/view <comment><USER2> Hey - I wrote this ([http://minesafetydisclosures.com/blog/2018/6/18/costco](http://minesafetydisclosures.com/blog/2018/6/18/costco))</comment>


What I've learned in 30 days since launch (and looking for a cofounder) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hiphopgoblin.com/blog/2009/09/looking-for-a-cofounder-or-what-ive-learned-in-the-28-days-since-launch/

<comment><USER2> Awesome dude! Instead of making hollow claims of doing something in a weekend, you have actually built a site up to 180 uniques/day within a month?

Respect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I built it part-time in a week, and then it immediately went to 180 uniques/day. But without (minimal) hands-on involvement traffic has decreased to ~55 uniques/day. The prospect of throwing out all the code and the redoing v2 myself is just psychologically daunting. In looking for a cofounder, I'm mostly seeking social support and motivation (as well as someone a little more technically experienced to complement me)

<comment><USER3> feel free to also check out hndir.com if you're looking for co-founders. everyone there is a verified undergrad in a particular school.

<comment><AUTHOR> error: our sendmail is fubar. please e-mail email@example.com.

<comment><USER4> Same here. Would you mind adding alumni support & status? I'd like to register but I just graduated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not trying to plug my own stuff, but just wanted to tell you I've been busy doing something like this a while back as well :)

You can check it out here (Dutch) <http://www.denachtdienst.org/> or an artist page <http://www.denachtdienst.org/users/freddie-flinkstoned>

Source is available as well at <http://github.com/bittersweet/denachtdienst.org>

Let me know if you want to talk about it or if you want to borrow/steal something ;-)

</comment><comment><USER6> "There is a built-in business model here: smart advertising. Artists can pay to have their songs cued up to FOO listeners in exchange for BAZ dollars."

Ok, but how do you intend to actually get this advertising money? It's not as simple "if you build it, they will come". You need to be able to sell the site to advertisers. I didn't see anything in your "About me" background that makes you qualified for the "make money" part of this venture. Or you just planning to sell it to someone else to make that happen?

<comment><USER7> "Artists can pay" is a legal minefield.. lots of potential payola/pay-to- play/bribery issues unless it's made very clear that the artists are paying. Otherwise the more popular you get, the more likely you'll get the FCC crawling down your back.

The music industry is one of the most litigious on the planet.. you have to have balls of steel to play in that fishtank.

[http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2008/09/articles/internet- ra...](http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2008/09/articles/internet-radio/payola- on-internet-radio-legal/)

<comment><USER8> Anyone know the last time a website got in FCC trouble for pay to play?

<comment><USER9> My co-worker ran radio stations and shows (independent) you have no idea how fucked up they can be!

Basically they want metrics on what you play, how much of it for national tracking so they can pay the artists/songwriters/record labels according to some fucked up laws. And you have to have special licenses to play the song online vs on a radio, etc. Its all insane. Basically get really familiar with online-radio broadcasting laws.

Also while I'd love to chat about co-founding there is no "about" page were I can at least have an email or number to contact.

<comment><AUTHOR> firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey, since you said you are a big fan of Eric Reis/Blank, I had to ask you if you are doing the customer development survey(<http://survey.io>)?

More here: [http://startup-marketing.com/free-customer-development- help-...](http://startup-marketing.com/free-customer-development-help- surveyio/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I liked this when you launched it here recently. I still don't understand how you're dealing with the PRS issues though. At some point, someone has to pay the artists. Can you give any insights on how you deal with this?

Best of luck with a great app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am making a shift to artist-uploads only. It turns out that most of the popular songs on hiphopgoblin v1 are actually songs by less-known artists. There is a high demand for better upload/management features so that's what I'm building. Conveniently, when they upload the songs the artists themselves can agree to give me rights to play their music. Nice it works out this way.

<comment><USER7> If any of the musicians are ASCAP members, then you're going to need an ASCAP licence and you'll have to pay performance royalties unless you get legal agreements with all the artists to waive their royalties as a part of your fees.

There's also the whole copyright infringement issue and users uploading material they don't have the rights to. You'll need to monitor uploads constantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool. Sounds like a Hype Machine for hiphop. My advice: build in reporting/analytics capture into your code early, and solicit user feedback aggressively. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any tips on best ways to solicit user feedback aggessively?

As for analytics, do you recommend anything more advanced than simply Google Analytics?

<comment><USER11> Analytics: if GA tells you everything that happens on your site, then you're good to go. I'd want to know # of thumbs up, thumbs down, fast forwards, facebook shares, or any other activity, broken down by user, song, artist, label, geography, browser, time of day, day of week, and where you found the initial song. Why? It's going to help you understand your users, and more importantly, it's the info that people who want to advertise on your site might want.

Feedback: This is just me, but I'm too lazy to copy your email address, switch programs/tabs/whatver, paste, type, and send. Give me a form. Click-type- click. Plenty of people might just want to say 'hell yeah' without giving their email address. You can't buy something like that, and it's the kind of thing that will keep you rolling.

I'm listening now. This is great. If you want a quick brain dump on online ads I'll send you my email address.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love a quick brain dump on online ads. My email address is info@hiphopgoblin but if you would prefer I can email you first once you give me your address

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice site, good idea. Fix your design for cheap by asking designers on rent a coder to make you a psd.</comment>


Privacy-focused Brave browser added 1M new users in March – The Block - <AUTHOR> https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/60705/privacy-focused-brave-browser-added-1m-new-users-in-march <comment><USER2> I'm using it now. It blocks ads, but shows you their ads as notification pop ups, which is very annoying. However, there is an option to switch them off, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> This likely has to do with the Basic Attention Token that you can earn by using it, combined with increased cryptocurrency visibility and viability.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brave is just out of this world when it comes to ad-garbage heavy sites, like pretty much most news sites these days. Even when Unicorn stumbles, loading same page in Brave cleans all the garbage out like magic, product is just so freaking good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am still not understanding what Brave offers users that Firefox does not. Would someone care to fill me in? Discarding for the moment the notion of paying people to look at advertising - which strikes me as a step backwards for society, what privacy-related reasons are there to use Brave over Firefox?

</comment><comment><USER5> I like using Brave on my aging "gaming" computer. Takes up less resources. Wonderful stuff.</comment>


Controversies and Challenges in fMRI (2018) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebrainblog.org/2018/12/23/twenty-six-controversies-and-challenges-in-fmri/ <comment><USER2> From my experience, reproducibility is the single biggest challenge with any fMRI study. I was a part of a reproduction study done by a group which did the original study in question, and the results were 100% indicative of "random chance" instead of any meaningful pattern in the data. That seems particularly problematic when the same techniques and data set is used by the same group of people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course, this is looking at the brain's power management system and trying to infer from that what processing is going on. If you did that for a CPU, you could see the FPU or the I/O controllers heating up, get a sense of how many cache misses were going on, and see how many CPU cores were doing anything. You could probably tell a game, spreadsheet, or web browser apart. This would not lead to much insight.

<comment><USER4> Except this is more like studying same where you don't actually know what a cpu is let alone cache miss. It's more like a caveman looking at pictures on the screen and noting that a certain area lights up when there is more red on the screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Using fMRI to study brain functions is akin to studying US road transportation with only CO2 emission map.

<comment><USER6> And why is that a bad analogy? The fmri results show activity at a resolution that would be equivalent to sayign SoCal has more road activity (and to further your analogy) and economic activity than say Wyoming.

<comment><USER2> Especially since most fMRI studies of note tend to be ones studying specific inputs. It makes total sense to see what parts of the brain light up with a given stimuli in a given set of conditions. Of course you wouldn't extrapolate that to the entire brain, as brain research is as much about what does light up as it is what doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm mostly using fMRI visual system data and am repeatedly surprised how fine- grained the patterns we can find inside it are, if it's recorded well (e.g. lots of data in single subjects, no group averaging, very little motion). My field is well aware of this method's shortcomings, many including me would agree with Schmidhuber who said it's like looking at heat distributions in a processor doing ML in their darkest research moments. Shortly after they discover something interesting in these patterns and another cool preprint is out.. Functional MRI is without doubt the best window into patterns of higher brain functions we currently have.

I wonder what it must have been like for neuroscience and the scientifically interested public when the fMRI method came up in the 90s. For human research they had EEG before (and PET which seemed to be quite cumbersome). Would love to read an anecdote.

<comment><USER2> PET with Tractographies has been used in a couple of research papers and the real world to map out the extent of brain material related to clinical observations. This is done with TBI's in particular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is from 2017 and regarding fMRI research conducted at Stanford. Several of these guys actually worked together 48-years ago and also at Stanford. The person talking is a former CIA officer and medical doctor. And yes he's talking about aliens. This is him - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvovZBT54Oo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvovZBT54Oo)

\</comment><comment>

"Now if there was to be point to point, communication attempt, I can tell you three things about that experiment.

Number 1: About one third of that, I'm the only expert on Earth. Because of the functional MRI, connectivity systems of what parts of the brain are related to other parts of the brain for communication and quantum telepathy.

The second thing is the software associated with the calculations and the manner in which the scan sequences would be done at two different locations. So where the technical people doing the scan sequencing with the radio frequencies used for MRI, in both locations, were coordinated. And using the same (Haley Eye?) coordinates for looking at the brain, simultaneously...

So what the issue is that the sponsor's interested in, is tying that all together. And the sponsor is interested in one dimension of that experiment. And I'm interested in the second. Hal's interested in the third.

And here the dimensions are. I'm interested in the dimension of showing that quantum connectivity between two proven, competent, telepaths can be measured with simultaneity in terms of the portions of the brain that are activated. That that is now possible to do.

I don't do the math. But I know how to determine what portions of the midbrain connected to the caudate-putamen, connected to the prefrontal cortex and connected to the part of the brain that does imaging...is all related to each other. That's something that right now is a very rich area of my world of MRIs.

Hal is the expert in knowing how to design the experiment. And the sponsor is interested in having an experiment design where the thing that you do and the thing that Uri does, happen to be identical to each other.

Both you and Uri have asserted, and in your case, you have, in my judgment, proven - in Uri's case, I can't say - that the connectivities that you get for the acquisition of information, includes The Others."</comment>


Quora valued around $1.8B in $85M fundraise - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/21/uniquorn/ <comment><USER2> "Best travel hacks" is hardly "intelligent conversation." I used to post about my areas of expertise, but I've found the general level of discussion on Quora has declined steeply over the last few years. So, yes, if "best travel hacks" is the kind of thing you want your platform to be about, by all means go there. There are profits to be made, no doubt. But personally I'm not going to bother with a platform that's filled with bad travel advice, discussions about how to game the interview / college admissions process, stupid questions about what celebrity X thinks about topic Y, and so on.</comment>


Web Starter Kit 0.5.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/web-starter-kit/releases/tag/v0.5.0

<comment><USER2> Nice animation effects on the buttons (material design).

It's not immediatly obvious, but the requirements to use this projects are: Node, Ruby, Gulp, and the Sass gem and it's creator is Google :)</comment>


Interview: Creators of the DEEP Framework (from Serverlesscode.com) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MitocGroup/interview-creators-of-the-deep-framework-8c2d42ecd243 <comment><USER2> Nice one !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :) Please feel free to express your feeling on github as well: [https://github.com/MitocGroup/deep- framework](https://github.com/MitocGroup/deep-framework) ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: User flow done in seconds, not hours - <AUTHOR> http://wwww.pixelic.io/userflow <comment><USER2> site down

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. Re-posting this, I added an additional 'w' to the subdomain! It's www.pixelic.io/userflow</comment></comment>


Building a Startup? Learn from success stories of industry leaders - <AUTHOR> http://www.startlin.es/

<comment><USER2> This is really cool. BUT, I think most HN readers would be most interested in the founding stories, and the hustle / hurdles overcome / pivots that these founders showcased.

For instance, there's no mention that Slack came out of a failed game company or that Uber was originally supposed to just be on-demand limos for a small group of friends! These are the key parts of the stories that are missing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice project but the content doesn't match your headline. This is a collection of 30,000ft facts that would be more suited to a boilerplate "our company history" on a corporate website. There's no insight or learning to be had here about how each company reached these milestones.

Collecting genuine insights in one place could be pretty useful!

</comment><comment><USER4> I clicked on a couple of the stories I know well from first-hand experience and found a lot of mistakes. This is a neat idea but if it's just assembling headlines it will miss the insights that would actually help founders.

<comment><USER5> I love the ui, but I completely discounted the info after reading ebay's story. It went something like ebay hired meg whitman to run the company as it had 4.7m a year in revenue/profit(forgot which).

Next slide, ~6months later company goes public making founders immediate billionaires.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> hm, isn't trying to learn from success stories a mistake called "survivor bias" ? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)</comment>


Targeting designers? Forget 1024 x 768 & IE - <AUTHOR> http://compversions.posterous.com/targeting-designers-forget-1024-x-768-ie <comment><USER2> When giving these numbers about screen resolution, I don't think it takes into account the size of the browser, but only the size of the screen.

For example my screen resolution is 1440x900 but i can't remember the last time that I ever had the Firefox window full screen. Typically mac users do not suffer from the maximized window paradigm that windows users face, I usually keep my browser windows about 1000px wide since most sites are built around 960px and leave room for cascading programs and such. A site that is optimized for much larger than 1024px is probably not a good idea.

<comment><USER3> I agree that the focus should be on viewport sizes [1], not resolutions. A user's resolution is irrelevant if their browser isn't maximized or if they keep a panel open (e.g., bookmarks).

[1] <http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a lot harder to quantify though, isn't it?

Especially if you are a small team, or single founder, building a web app.</comment></comment></comment>


Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry - <AUTHOR> http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=34307 <comment><USER3> I was about 9 years old when I first played Leisure Suit Larry at my friends house in the 80s. We were like ninjas with a lookout and everything, most of the time failing to guess the age test questions.

I recently played all the way through for the first time ever, and I thought it was a great game. I giggled at some of the jokes that my younger self didnt get, and the exploratory nature of the text parser really holds up. I could see how the updated versions would ruin it... Now I want to make a game in this style.

<comment><USER4> I lost a lot of time in the age test too. I was about 8 years old and we just started to learn English in school (am a native Dutch speaker). I remember keeping a list of correct and wrong answers so I could get in more easily.

Great times and awese game back then. I agree with the article though, the remake of the game is nothing like the experience of playing the original.

<comment><USER5> Same for me. At that time, the 'drm' of games often consisted of a physical thing that let you solve some sort of puzzle at startup. For example, for monkey island, there were two discs you had to rotate to a certain position and then enter a certain symbol it would produce.

Anyway, for many years, I just assumed that it was the same for leisure suit larry; and that I was just missing the papers. Many of the questions didn't make sense to my (Belgian/Dutch) parents. At some point, they started questioning why we were asking all these questions, so we had to find another way to figure them out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love Adventure games. I was more of a Lucas Arts fan, I believe both for the richer narrative (as in Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones), but also because for a non-english speaker point and click was easier than writing.

But I was always fascinated by the potential of writing anything in King's Quest. The problem is that I never could play it properly. The frustration from the "find the synonym" game for english speakers is a complete block for non-english speakers. That with the Sierra game choices where you could die or get permanently stuck, made it impossible for me to play it. I remember me taking days of trial to find out how to _" pick up a cup"_ on one of the first scenes because I only knew about _take_ or _get_ things.

But specifically LSL never was more than a curiosity to me. Maybe because I got to know it before puberty. The objective of getting laid did not look as interesting for a full game as facing a dead pirate or finding Atlantis. The nuances the author points out were all lost to me.

In the end it was just a curious game to know about like X-Man, the Atari's porn game

<comment><USER7> I don't want to diminish your experience at all. But here's my story:

I learned to _read and write_ by playing Sierra games. I played them with my dad. And I guess I wanted to be able to play them alone.

So the crappy text parsing forced me to learn written English. "Get knife" -> "What is a knife?", "Get sword" -> "I don't see a sword", "Get dagger" -> "You have the dagger". Over and over with many different circumstances. So I also learned to type.

I entered pre-school already knowing how to read and write, much to the chagrin of some teachers.

I am not saying this style of gaming was overall good. But it hard a weird unique impact on my development.

<comment><USER8> wow, that is amazing

I'm actually surprised that to this day, learning reading, writing and math has not been very incentivized/gamified.

<comment><USER9> There's plenty of gamified learning out there. It's just not something most educators want to use for some reason. Learning has to be boring and dull after all!

Meanwhile, I started learning english (not a native speaker) at age 5 because all the broadcasted cartoons were in english, with subtitles. I remember my dad loading up gamified math puzzle games on the Commodore 64 for me to play. And this was some 32 years ago.

I don't know why it's so underused. Perhaps educator are afraid they'll be seen as lazy or not serious about their teaching if they use such measures?

What I do know is that gamification was one of the best ways of being educated as a kid.

<comment><USER10> Gamification is used a lot in UK education, at least PBL appears everywhere.

The problems with gamification centre mainly around intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Some studies strongly suggest that you're teaching kids to seek the rewards of games rather than helping them to find fulfillment in their education.

Gamification works well if you're looking for mechanical responses; it might work better for deeper thinking if the game element is well designed.

Kids feel that fun education is better, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is/isn't the best method.

Some things in studies - money - turn out to be bad motivators for tasks, with larger sums interfering more in people completing more complex tasks. PBL probably follows a similar model.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/](https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation/) is worth a look.

<comment><USER11> > helping them to find fulfillment in their education

This did not happen to me or my friends until university. I doubt anything would've fooled us into liking school, but learning games at least would have passed the time quicker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Relatedly, I have certainly had the experience of remembering something as being hilarious only now to be turned off by how clearly sexist it is (which I never noticed at the time). This is especially uncomfortable when recommending content to a friend that I haven't watched in a long time.

<comment><USER13> I recently had to turn off Eddie Murphy's stand up special and a series of Norm MacDonald SNL skits because of how homophobic and sexist they were. They were iconic when they were made so I tuned in expecting some laughs.

Comedy keeps pulse of social norms. We've made progress over the past 30 years.

<comment><USER14> As a gay person born in the early 80s, I vividly remember how "normal" gay jokes were in movies all through my childhood and teen years. Although I didn't fully realize I was gay, a subconscious part of me did, because I remember how uncomfortable it made me each and every time. It was such a standard trope:

Gay joke happens in movie

Entire theatre groans, goes "Ewwwwww"

It was just standard formula. It started changing right at the end of the 90s / early 2000's with televisions shows like Queer as Folk, and Will and Grace, that treated gay people like normal human beings.

<comment><USER8> I probably laughed at some of those jokes and as a person who (much later) majored in psychology and realized that "appeal to disgust" is a fallacy (also that almost EVERYONE's secret sexual fetish grosses almost everyone else out... that's just the peculiar nature of sexuality), on behalf of all 80's teens, I apologize.

<comment><USER14> Never heard of the "appeal to disgust" fallacy before, looked it up. Interesting. :)

<comment><USER8> now that you know of it, you'll see it everywhere. I'm sorry, in advance. :)

Closely related is the [https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_shame](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Appeal_to_shame) which is part of a general category of fallacies called emotional appeals. You'll also note they're used constantly in debate ("pathos", it's called), because (unfortunately) they are effective, despite being wrong (as far as rational arguments go, at least). The only way to immunize yourself and others against these sorts of tactics is to understand these fallacies so that you can recognize them before you are irrationally swayed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-dub oh man, such memories of trading disks at school and downloading them at 1200 baud all night (once having to go into hiding having rung up an obscene long distance bill).

i think one thing that the author missed is the fact that there was a distinct brand of low-brow humor that permeated all sierra games. in the early days, they weren't professionals, they were a bunch of weirdos hanging out in the foothills of the sierra nevadas making weird stuff with computers. all the jokes were lame in all of their titles, everything was corny, but people loved it because there was a sense of camaraderie in the weirdness of having and playing pc adventure games. you bought that damn soundblaster, it's gonna play that cheesy midi music and you're gonna love it because you're into this weird computer stuff made by other weird computer people and this corny faux- hollywood-wannabe thing validates your weird hobby. (and all that money you spent on video cards and modems and all that other stuff and all that time you spent chatting with weirdo sysops)

so yeah, objectively it's crap... but the same thing could be said of star wars. i never saw it until 2001 and i never understood it, i guess you just had to be there.

<comment><USER15> Re: "bunch of weirdos hanging out in the foothills of the sierra nevadas", part three in Steven Levy's excellent book "Hackers" is about this -- mainly about Ken and Roberta Williams and Sierra in the 80s. Very much recommended.

<comment><USER16> Loved Levy's book on Google, I'll definitely be picking this one up. Thanks for the reco

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1) Video game humor is typically way worse than the humor in non-interactive media (interactivity has a price).

2) Humor evolves/improves over the years

Combine the two, and you would be hard-pressed to find ANY game that old which is still considered funny. Maybe "Day of the tentacle" ? I'd have to load it up again to check. it stuck out for me.

<comment><USER18> Played DoTT when new, hysterical. Played recently, still funny.

That's just me though.

<comment><USER19> And me. I also still laugh about all the silly jokes in Sam'n'Max and You don't know Jack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >The joke isn't the joke itself, the joke is that this joke was told in this context.

Unrelated, but I think this is where a lot of The Onion's appeal comes from.

</comment><comment><USER21> Biggest influence adventure games had on me was teaching me how to type - <USER2> you're stuck in police quest and keep changing locations to find a missing clue and banging "open door" (sometimes with infuriating typos) for the 100th time in the last 5 minutes - that's a skill-forming exercise. I've never learnt the classical touch-typing, but I'm good enough thanks to Sierra.

<comment><USER22> Funnily enough I noticed this playing FPSs online like rogue spear. Teamspeak wasn't really viable on a 56k so text was the only method of comms for me and my friends at the time.

I remember my dad being proud that I could type without looking. He asked me to demonstrate to his friend - I was in a rogue spear lobby at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I worked with a guy who Leisure Suit Larry was based off of, appearance wise. His name was Nick Medici (sp?) and he actually was a really nice, gracious guy, but looked exactly like LSL. He told us stories of the Sierra days and the husband/wife that ran it. He also cooked really tasty food for us!

<comment><USER24> Is there a picture of him to compare?

<comment><USER23> Like this: [https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2007...](https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/photos/uncategorized/2007/11/27/larry328.jpg)

But real ;)

I haven't been able to find a picture of him, and this was about 15 years ago...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> did anyone actually read the article?

This should be the take-away quote:

> So that was the original Leisure Suit Larry. It was a game that provided an > absurdist joke about sexy pixel women that entertained an audience of people > frustrated with text parsers by subverting genre expectations.

The new versions of the game destroyed the essence of the game by moving away from text parsing to mouse-based, and by moving away from pixel graphics to rich graphics.

</comment><comment><USER26> The Apple ][ version of SoftPorn (written in Applesoft BASIC) lets you bet negative amounts of money in the casino and then lose on purpose, to easily make lots of cash!

<comment><USER27> MtGox had the same bug

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was one of the early kickstart backers of the game, yes one those that waited a long time to get my hand on the game on day one (plus a shirt to remember the event) and when i was finally able to play the game, i got frustrated... with the new age verification questionary, it was harder than when i was a kid, got me at least 20 attempts to get in the game (i could probably cheat those question searching them with google but it didn't feel right at the moment) and by that time, i lost interest and just left the game there on my library then the reviews came and totally forgot about it, would probably play the game just to get on the same track as this article.

</comment><comment><USER29> sierra games were definitely the best back then, king's quest, space quest, police quest, quest for glory, and leisure suit larry were the ones i played a lot, interesting and humorous, definitely on the same wavelength back then, i would spend hours exploring these worlds and marveling at the different ways i could have fun. i remember playing these games on my 286 compaq computer, 4 MB ram, would have to spend 5-10 minutes installing from 5-6 3.5 inch floppies, the nostalgia! can't imagine what the remake versions look like, but i can relate to what the author's saying, i'm sure there's some emulator where you can play the 16 bit versions somewhere. the first time i played leisure suit larry 2, the first thing to do is to check out these binoculars, you look in and see some woman undressing with some huge knockers, then the shades go down or a pelican blocks your view. the music was corny as hell, but so fitting, saxophone, electronic keyboard, really bad lounge music from 70's porn. i also vaguely remember shaving some piece of green wood into some phallic like symbol which some babe wanted, but once giving it to her, she goes off somewhere with the toy on her own and larry gets nothing.

this was all before nintendo and the consoles took over, man, i wonder how much money they made, such innovation back then.

</comment><comment><USER30> Here's the real successor to Leisure Suit Larry - "Become a Pick-Up Artist". Available for iPhone.[1]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNpq3l6gxlI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNpq3l6gxlI)

<comment><USER26> And then there's Scott Foe's educational mobile game, "Douche Defender"!

[http://www.develop-online.net/press-releases/big-head- mode-d...](http://www.develop-online.net/press-releases/big-head-mode-debuts- douche-defender-world-rsquo-s-first-game-about-pickup-artists/0180224)

San Francisco, California: From games industry legend Scott Foe, Big Head Mode announces the debut of Douche Defender, a fun game that helps women to identify real-world pickup artists, free-to-play for iPhone and iPad in the Apple App Store.

"I'm always trying to bring something new, something that people have never seen before, something from the way-way out-there machine, and we have definitely achieved that uniqueness with Douche Defender," said Foe."There is a huge subculture of seduction lurking out there on the internet and this is both the first game that I have designed with female players as the targets and the first game that I have designed with real-world implications outside of the game, and so I am very excited to see how Douche Defender is received."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> LSL along with Manhunter 2 and Space Quest 3 have fantastic graphics. Something about them just gets my imagination going.

</comment><comment><USER32> _> 16 colors_

Try 4 colors, on CGA. [http://www.agidev.com/images/shots/cga_larry2.gif](http://www.agidev.com/images/shots/cga_larry2.gif)

<comment><USER33> I wonder what it looked like on a CGA Composite monitor [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc)

<comment><USER32> Holy sh*t, this totally blew my mind! My first x86-based PC was a Sinclair PC200, which had CGA, and I had a RGBI monitor, and while online references of that PC suggest it had a composite output, I never used it. I thus had to endure the crappy output mode, and never knew it could have been so much better (and that a lot of the games I played were optimized for that better output).

I wonder if some emulators have a filter to get something like the composite output...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Six installment was my favorite - everything was perfect form music to graphics (at that time) and there was amazing mood in the game I could play for hours trying to figure it all out by myself instead than from manual. I wish someone would write a contunuance of #6 with new missions in the same theme I would definitely pay monthly to get new mission but I'm sure there is simply not enough of us :(

This and Dune 2 were my favorite games of young days and most memorable moments with my family still all together.

<comment><USER35> Dune 2 was a fantastic game. It's essentially the progenitor for RTS games like the Warcraft and Starcraft series.

<comment><USER36> I tried playing Dune 2 after playing Command and Conquer, and I found it almost impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Threads like this always make me wonder who might be mining it for age hints to associate with usernames.

There are lots of Reddit threads like "what's the crime you got away with" that feel like extremely blatant examples of that type of profile mining.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised no one has mentioned the text adventure documentary "Get Lamp", so I will. [http://www.getlamp.com/](http://www.getlamp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER38> Gave a copy of Leisure Suit Larry to a friend in early high school. Their parent called my dad and gave them an earful, and my dad laughed and didn't understand why. Hahahahaha.

</comment><comment><USER39> Oh so true. However, working in software companies my whole life I also see that without being a team leader with a long list of successes you could never convince your colleagues to go a different route with such kind of remake. Easy UI, newer graphics, exactly the same joke by word not by context. That's the only way such a remake can go. I guess if at all one could decide whether to start such a remake or not, if that set of "changes" is not acceptable.

</comment><comment><USER40> Mirror: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XksJ5T...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XksJ5TFkk3cJ:https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/%3Fp%3D34307+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER41> Hopefully we are on the verge of a new series of text games that can use machine learning. It would be really cool to have pretty much any wording be understood, along with an engine that can respond with more intelligence.

<comment><USER42> aah, Tay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I found the original graphics of this game hilarious. Ive never heard of of the game, nor would buy it, but those graphics are timeless. They got me immediately laughing.

"Another thing to kill the laughs for me was the move to better graphics."

There's something to this. Some things don't need updated graphics?

<comment><USER44> >Some things don't need updated graphics?

I think the underlying theme of the article is the game was an organic whole. It wasn't just a good idea they put together in the technology available at the time, it was of the time. The best example is:

"once they started looking like actual pin-up girls, that dimension of the humor was lost. It gradually felt less like a joke about a guy who wants to hook up with sexy ladies and more a vehicle for actually looking at sexy ladies."

the improved graphics and the point-and-click interface completely change what the thing is. It stops being some wink-wink "You're playing video games because you can't find a date but we're such losers we had time to make a game for you" and something commercial and knowing. If you knew about any of the Sierra titles you were almost part of a family. You could write to the people there or at Infocom or wherever and reasonably expect a response. Now video games are an industry and every possible niche is filled to bursting.

Then again, there's always some indie game or single-A title that drags me back.

<comment><USER45> "a vehicle for actually looking at sexy ladies"

So... google?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Brilliant - I haven't really read the article yet but....

I was discussing this last weekend with a mate. Neither of us have actually played the game but it was around when we were about 10. We were trying to imagine how bad this game could possibly have been that it was taboo, and yet it was around in his (and my friends) fathers collections. We speculated that it would probably be pretty horrific sexist geek humour.

I did a bit of Wikipedia research and it seemed like it pretty interesting game. Probably terrible, but ground breaking at least (though the wiki article and related material didn't make it sound terrible). Interestingly, apparently it sold well even though nobody wanted to admit to having it, due to the lewd nature.

<comment><USER47> The game is humor focused, and the humor is about on the same level as Mel Brooks or Steve Martin films from that time period.

<comment><USER48> I think this is the best description.

Steve Martin and Mel Brooks still have their audience today. I think that kind of humor is timeless, just out of fashion; I think it will always have its audience, but it's almost surprising that it was mainstream at some point.

In the same vein, you won't see "dad jokes" going away any time ever.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Fake English-Like Word Generator JavaScript/TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nwtgck/fakelish-npm <comment><USER2> Nice! How you generated the "word_probability.json.gz"? What was your method to calculate the probability of each letter occurring?</comment>


Hiring Challenges Shouldn't be Limited to Developers - <AUTHOR> http://seatgeek.com/blog/hiring/hiring-challenges-shouldnt-be-limited-to-developers

<comment><USER2> The statement, "an applicant must "hack" into our backend to drop their resume. As a result, we don't get distracted by unqualified candidates" is interesting.

In particular, equating those who don't have web site hacking skills with "unqualified candidates" is quixotical given this is a position for a site for purchasing concert and arena tickets, and is not work circumventing site security.

<comment> barry-cotter I imagine that the "security" is pretty toothless, but entirely adequate to keep out cargo cult programmers or others without abstract knowledge of web technologies and a problem solving mindset. It's less a security test than an autmated version of Fizzbuzz that good candidates are less likely to find insulting.

<comment><USER3> just went through the application for shits and giggles (didn't attach anything personal), and yeah it's pretty much what you said, imo a good filter test

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We did something very similar to hire our designer with Fanvibe (now we're with beRecruited.com) - we ran a normal job post, then asked everyone to submit a rough mock-up of a mobile site design for Fanvibe in addition to their resume and portfolio. We quickly got to three top options out of 100, interviewed those 3 and hired a designer who is amazing and still works with us. I'm a big believer in "real-world" challenges before hiring someone

EDIT: We likely would have not even interviewed our top 3 choices based on resume / portfolio alone

<comment><USER5> This is the kind of thing that would screen me out for sure. If you want a mock up for a site design I'm going to get the impression you're trying to "hire" 1000 unpaid designers. Unless you're talking about a 1 hour job, in which case you're getting something pathetic, this is just abuse by the potential employer. Further, you probably hired the 3 worst guys because they probably put in 50 hours on what should be a 1 hour design because they're so desperate for a job (further indicated by the fact that this ridiculous requirement didn't make them look elsewhere). That's also probably why it didn't match up with their resumes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> While most of this is fine, you shouldn't use the work candidates produce as you risk falling into a huge legal quagmire involving IP rights, employment law and exclusivity contracts.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clever hack... you're gaming the job application process to receive free PR for your company from aspiring applicants who are doing pro bono work. All that free advertising essentially done by an army of interns working on spec, who hope to be the one winner who is offered employment. One downside is that if enough people are applying earnestly, Google could think you're a content farm. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> maybe the best candidate would be the one who hacked into their blog and and added a few thousand votes to their own post...

having said that, i'm not sure i would want to do business with a company with a hackable backend at all...

<comment><USER9> It's a fake backend that we wrote specifically for the purpose of being "hacked" by job applicants. It's more of a puzzle than an actual system hack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wasn't able to figure it out. :( Any hints?

<comment><USER11> csrf!</comment></comment>


Simplicity is not a simple concept - <AUTHOR> http://raganwald.posterous.com/simplicity-is-not-a-simple-concept

<comment><USER2> Simplicity (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicity>) is the result of understanding. As our understanding grows, our designs become simpler. It seems that a lot of smart people are aware of this and find it significant.

Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life chasing a simple equation, "perhaps no more than one inch long," that would explain all physical phenomena. One of his famous quotes is, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Rick Hickey recently gave a talk entitled "Simple Made Easy" (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3135185>) where he contrasts simple and easy.

In Steve Jobs' memorial, he was quoted as saying, "Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple" (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPUsuY8JZJI>).

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. That's what I think about when I think about simplicity. It's really about having a deep enough understanding of what you are doing so that you can eliminate all the unnecessary bits. Sometimes the initial version of code can be like a Rube Goldberg machine, and it gets this way because we don't fully understand the problem or solution yet. The code works, but it's complicated. You can make it simpler only by coming to a better understanding.

<comment><USER2> _Sometimes the initial version of code can be like a Rube Goldberg machine_

I like that -- "Rube Goldberg" would be a good moniker for initial releases :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Intressting topic.

Here are some intressting things to look at all about Simplicity and maybe programming.

Stuart Halloway: "Simplicity Ain't Easy" ([https://blip.tv/clojure/stuart- halloway-simplicity-ain-t-eas...](https://blip.tv/clojure/stuart-halloway- simplicity-ain-t-easy-4842694))

Again from Stuard Halloway but thistime more about programming less about what Simplicity is.

Radical Simplicity (<http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/java-jee/radical- simplicity>)

Simple Made Easy by Rich Hickey (<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple- Made-Easy>)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm with this right up to the part where it shows an iPhone and pronounces it magical. Anyone who's ever seen a technophobic grandparent use a smartphone knows this is ridiculous. The iPhone (and smartphones in general) sucks rocks as a "simple telephone".

The "small number of affordances" point in the post seems equally silly: I count 20 (!) icons on that screen and five hardware buttons, only three of which have _anything at all to do with making a phone call_.

Now, it's a great device. And it's far more than a phone. And maybe there's a so-subtle-it-isn't-even-made-in-the-post point to be made about the "scalability" of simplicity. But as it stands I don't follow this at all.

<comment><USER6> I don not think it's that simple. My dad have never been able to figure out any phone before he got the iphone. Now the calls for support have stopped completely.

But of course it's not the iphone only as much as it is the touchscreen. That is the game changer, Apple was just the best company to take advantage of that.

<comment><USER7> I haven't had the same experience with my mom. She tried for a month to get along with her iPhone, until she gave up.

The touchscreen is great because it can expose only the controls relevant for the action you want to perform. However, the UI's organization is not flat anymore. Instead it's a tree. And older people that have problems coping with modern devices usually rote learn the path they have to take for the common use-cases ... and in the case of iPhones or Android phones that complexity has grown exponentially.

The touchscreen is also quite annoying for me at times. On my older Nokia I could dial a number or answer a phone call or hang-up without looking at the screen. Now I have to look at that screen every time, otherwise I need extra help, like voice recognition, which doesn't work so well for me as these things are optimized for people who's native language is English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My main takeaway is to stop using the word "simplicity."

I use it a lot and will cut back on it now because, as the author makes clear, people have pretty different notions of what simplicity means.

This is especially important on cross-functional team.

Anyone who touches product design would benefit from reading this article and being much more careful in their use of the term "simple."

<comment><USER4> I allready posted it in this thread but I just cant help myself.

Stuart Halloway: "Simplicity Ain't Easy" (<https://blip.tv/clojure/stuart- halloway-simplicity-ain-t-eas...>)

This Talk is all about what simplicity acctually means. He compares what people think it means and he looks at the words origin to find out what it acctully means. Then he shows a quick example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two of my favorite quotes of all time:

         "Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it." – Alan Perlis

        "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." – Charles Mingus

</comment><comment><USER10> I like how confusing it can be to read about simple. Or rather, how complex a subject it is to discuss :) By definition simple is made of a single element (from latin simplex). There are quotes coming to my mind, like 'less is more', 'perfection is when there is noting left to be removed'. It's a lot about mental model: to be able to manage a project one has to be able to keep it all in one's head, thus simplifying is mastering chaos It often is multi-layer though. It's a loss less mental model compression An example that I have in mind is monotheism evolving from other older models, it's simple in a sense, and also more portable across different cultures, but it's deep (no proselytism intended). PS: cannot find where 'simplex' comes from :(

</comment><comment><USER11> Are phones the new cars when it comes to analogies?

Also, I take exception to the idea that old rotary phones were in any way shape form or fashion simpler than a more modern landline phone. In particular, a modern phone is able to take a lot of what you as a person used to have to remember about its state, and instead echo it back to you. (Specifically, what were the last X buttons I pressed? How did you do this in the rotary days, you hung up and started over.)

<comment><USER12> 1\. Metaphors are to mechanisms as transvestites are to my mother

2\. You simply have a different idea of "simple" than other people, which is why I said that the rotary phone AND the modern handset AND the iPhone are all simple, just simple in different ways.

And that's the premise of the OP: There is more than one kind of simple, therefore yes, a handset is simpler than a rotary phone but also yes, a rotary phone is simpler than a handset.

<comment><USER11> I still don't buy that a rotary is really any simpler than any other phone. It is quaint by today's standards, sure, but far from simple. Skipping the difficulties you would have in creating it and the system that had to be built to support it, can you imagine being able to talk to someone in another city for the very first time? That is a concept that goes so far beyond simple that it is magical.

So, I think I can accept "simple is what you are comfortable with, even if you are ignorant of many details." How do you keep stuff cold in your house? Simple, put it in the fridge. How does the fridge work? Well...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another way is to redefine the problem so its solution _can_ have a simple mental model.

This is similar to the subset approach of the first case (Economical Design), but it might not be a subset (i.e. it might overlap with other uses), and it might not serve only one user scenario, perhaps not even the most common case. It requires a wider perspective. For this to actually be useful, it needs to interact with other solutions to other problems. That is, it _refactors_ the set of problems, shifting different aspects to different places, in such a way that it _changes_ the information required from the user, to make a simpler mental model possible.

IMHO the key questions are:

      - What information is needed from the user?
      - How can we arrange things to minimize that?

Surprisingly often, it can be reduced to zero - automation.

BTW: The iPhone doesn't have a "small number of affordances". You can touch the display in 1,000's of distinct places, with many simultaneous touches registered distinctly. What the iPhone has is flexibility and power: instead of a specific grammar of interaction, it enables the specification of many arbitrary grammars of interaction. IOW it's programmable.

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant I think the key thing to remember is that capabilities, ease of use, and simplicity are not the same thing. Heck, we could even separate simplicity of interfaces and simplicity of implementation. For instance, the old phone have a very simple interface. But implementing the circuit switching behind it is no picnic.

From then it is easier to know what you want: capabilities and ease of use are good, at least in the short term. But simplicity (both of interface and implementation) is likely to lead to even _more_ capabilities and ease of use in the long run: a simple system is easier to modify or expand, and a simple interface is potentially easier to use once you get past the initial learning curve.

A final advantage of simplicity is that we can give it a more formal definition than ease: it is the part that doesn't depend on us messy humans.

</comment><comment><USER14> The first version of everything is simple. Then things are piled on. New ideas are experimented with while the old ways are left for legacy's sake. Look at OSX. There are 4 ways to launch an application. The dock, launchpad, Applications, and spotlight.

<comment><USER15> 5 if you count the terminal

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Elegance > Shortcuts (obviously)

If it were the first time I saw an iPhone and a multi-use phone, I'll figure out faster how to use the iPhone for sure. Elegance should be the goal to achieve for every developer.

</comment><comment><USER17> Jack Dorsey made a pretty good statement during his interview on APD. it went the along the context of "trying to take a really complicated idea/process, and making it simple". And that is very hard.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe simplicity is a choice.

Imagine you consult with two colleagues asking for an explanation of a problem.

Colleague 1 begins, "Well, it's complex, ...." Colleague 2 begins, "It's simple, ..."

All else being equal, just based on how they introduced their explanantion, which one seems the more appealing one to listen to?</comment>


Facebook's idea of security - <AUTHOR> http://talktire.blogspot.com/2012/06/facebooks-idea-of-security.html

<comment><AUTHOR> i already lost an account to this kind of crappy security system.

</comment><comment><USER2> lol</comment>


Another chapter on Facebook's privacy woes is being written in Latin America - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/30/another-chapter-on-facebooks-privacy-woes-is-being-written-in-latin-america/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised the chatter about/against FB hasn't died down yet - how long before FB really starts to worry? Are they already there I wonder?

<comment><USER3> The thing is, none of this stuff is new. It's almost like a dam broke and every privacy doomsayer is finally being taken seriously by the media.

About time, IMHO. I think it was really easy for Facebook to brush off accusations of data collection overreach before because the media was not doing a good job of reporting on its consequences.

<comment><USER4> I think that's irrelevant, because people generally don't care. If nobody cares the media won't report on it. The difference this time is that the word "Facebook" now has a causal relationship to the effectual word "Trump".

This isn't panic about privacy. People still don't care and will continue using Facebook like nothing happened. This is about what happens with the data that people donate to Facebook. What Facebook does with it.

Now people are suddenly worried or offended about the use of the data they completely surrendered. Of course this isn't going to stop people from continuing to surrender that data. They are just sad and powerless.

This sort of behavior is called addiction, but people are very far from admitting _they_ have a problem. It is so much more convenient to simply blame something else.

<comment><USER5> How about this is a very concrete example of what happens, when privacy is abused, and people are starting to realize how concerned they should be?

So, if not an event like this, how would more of the general populace begin to be concerned with privacy? If something like this isn't about privacy, is there anything that could ever happen that would change things?

Maybe, just maybe, people who aren't on HN are not all ignorant, stupid, and morally degenerate addicts. Every sentence you wrote is underpinned by those assumptions. It's very HN, but not very perspicacious.

<comment><USER4> That argument works in reverse too. People who avoid Facebook aren't necessarily motivated by privacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm just really happy people are starting to care about this

</comment><comment><USER7> There's nothing really substantive here but I am happy to see that journalists are investigating privacy issues in other countries also.

</comment><comment><USER8> > ... and has an election coming in seven months.

An election that began and is being discussed exactly from the day the last election was over, 4 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER9> _If we add that up with the lack of control from governments and Facebook attempts to solve the issue, we have a ticking time bomb. The only positive, Galup says, is that services like the ones on offer from Cambridge Analytica are prohibitively expensive for most political parties in Latin America.

In this case, the only thing saving elections in the region from outside corrupting influences may be the greed of those same corrupting influences._

Jesus, that's rough. We've been screwing with elections South of our border for generations, and now we've de facto privatized it! We have a talent for cultivating blowback, and I really hope that FB doesn't become the new face of that story. I guess Bosworth would just shrug and point out that this is all good, and if Americans are subject to potentially lethal backlash it's just growing pains for FB.

<comment><USER10> > We've been screwing with elections South of our border for generations now > we've de facto privatized it!

I think it's very interesting to think of Facebook in that context. However, it was privatized long ago. Companies have been buying political influence for a long time, and when that hasn't worked, U.S. security forces sometimes have been deployed. I don't know about private security forces, but I'd be surprised if that didn't play some part.

Facebook effectively plays the role of the private security agency; they provide an election manipulation service that others can utilize. It's different because those private armies exist solely for that purpose, but let's not pretend that Facebook learned about all these things in the last month - they knew what was going on better than anyone.</comment></comment>


Tech bus drivers forced to live in cars to make ends meet - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Tech-bus-drivers-forced-to-live-in-cars-to-make-6517928.php <comment><USER2> [https://fireworksbayarea.com/newswire/tech-bus-drivers- force...](https://fireworksbayarea.com/newswire/tech-bus-drivers-forced-to- live-in-cars-to-make-ends-meet/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Tech worker lives in car and avoids spending money he doesn't want to spend, and gets praised for creative problem solving.

Tech bus driver lives in car and avoids spending money he doesn't have, and gets sympathy for his miserable situation.

<comment><USER4> That is kind of an unfair standard, but when you think of a bus driver, you definitely don't think of someone rolling in money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think HN has an unwritten rule not to post articles behind a paywall.</comment>


Apple acquire web firm Particle - <AUTHOR> http://wallstreetpit.com/97467-apple-aapl-buys-web-app-designing-and-marketing-firm-particle/

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like an acqui-hire. Their site[1] mentions they do (did) a lot of work for Google/Chrome.

<http://particlebrand.com/#/about></comment>


Looking for cofounders? Forget meetups, use Github search queries - <AUTHOR> http://shazow.posterous.com/protip-for-hackers-seeking-hackers-forget-mee

<comment><USER2> Deciding to make someone a co-founder is a huge decision. You are starting a business with this person, and I suggest you really get to know someone before starting a business with them. Its easy to start a business, but its very difficult to see one through to success. The path is not easy, and although you can use something like the Github search to find candidates, I suggest you spend time working with someone before you go and start a business with them.

<comment><USER3> I'm seriously working on the co-founder matching problem (have been for several years now). I believe in a mix of offline (google "co-founders meetup" for a location near you), and online (my startup, <http://foundrs.com> will introduce another really new and innovative feature for co-founder matching hopefully soon - contact me if you want to be a guinea pig).

<comment><USER2> I suggest you use the metaphor of dating for the "looking for a co-founder" phase, and marriage for the "when you start a business with them" phase.

As I am sure you know from working on this, it is an incredibly multi-variate match situation. Not an easy one to figure out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The other day I was thinking it could be fun to mine Github for developer personality traits. It could pull down their info and plot them along various axes, such as

      * how much they follow through with projects
      * how much they contribute to other people's projects and how much other
        people contribute to theirs
      * frequency of swear words in their commits

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER5> > * how much they follow through with projects

Hmm, how would you measure that, though?

Enumerating these attributes is fun:

      * How long they take to fix bugs
      * What ratio of their pull requests are
        actually pulled
      * What's the average size/number of files
        touched by each commit?

You might even be able to guess at development methodology by looking at whether branches are short-lived (feature branches), how often they merge, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> By pure coincidence, my friend @rtlechow had the exact same idea and wrote a webapp for it: <http://monothorpe.com/>

<comment><USER6> You should inform your friend that city names consisting of more than a single word need to be in quotes.

<comment><USER7> Oops/fixed. This was more a "hey @shazow, I was spiking out something similar a while back _dusts off half-baked repo_ " thing than a "humans will actually see this" thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Github has always been a great place to find engineers to work _for_ your project. I'm not sure about finding co-founders.

One of the benefits of meeting co-founders in the community/startup events/etc is that they are already putting themselves out there as entrepreneurial and co-founder material. They've already jumped through many hoops in their mind and (hopefully) have their domestic and personal situation suited to it.

I would hate to have this happen: I discover an amazing developer who is working on an open source project in my problem space, but has a full time job. I convince him to work on the startup with me and he quits his job. It later turns out he's not really cut out for startup life and he hadn't really considered it before until I tempted him with an offer. He went blindly into it and now it's all f'd up.

Now we have to part ways and his old job has already replaced him so he's screwed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eh, it's a good market to take those kinds of risks right now. Everyone is hiring, no one wants to be hired as they're doing their own startup, it's ridiculously easy to get a job—especially at startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good stuff.

Anybody know any other tips/resources for meeting fellow hackers or potential co-founders in your area?

I'm currently in Toronto and hoping to meet people.

Edit: Added last sentence mentioning my location.

<comment><USER10> I'd suggest going to local programmer meetups. This should be pretty obvious, but let me clarify that.

Most meetups are centered around a certain technology or language and this tends to discourage people who are working with different technologies from attending.

My advice : go anyway. Hackers are generally happy to meet other hackers, regardless of whatever they might be hacking on.

For talking with people it helps to do a bit of research into whatever the meetup is centered around and finding some common ground.

For example, say you're a Ruby coder doing web stuff and you can't find any group in your region that's doing Ruby. Find a Python, PHP or Perl group. There's a good chance that these people will be doing some web stuff too. That's a HUGE problem domain that you share. You can start on sharing experiences with session/state storage, databases, ORM performance and restrictions, test suites, logging, auditing, load-balancing, scalability issues, runtime bottlenecks, etc, etc. The list goes on and on.

Not everybody attending a meetup is a code freak. There are plenty of people who show up for, well, who knows why they show up. The beer and an excuse to leave the house maybe? Others might be recruiters scouting for talent. Some people are just there because they got dragged along with someone else. Talk to them, be polite and move on.

What you're looking for is fellow hackers. You'll know them when you find them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What percentage of github users don't list their location? I hadn't, although I do now...

</comment><comment><USER12> I searched for {ruby, javascript, objc, python} in Seattle and I fully agree with the #1 result in all cases, except Python. :-)

That said, I only agree because I know these developers through local meet- ups...

<comment><USER13> Not sure I can agree with PHP...

<comment><USER12> Definitely it's biased... but interesting.

I'm #1 for python only because the true pythonistas in Seattle don't use GitHub.

As for you and PHP -- that I can't comment on, because we haven't yet run into each other at a meet-up. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I dunno about this method. Apparently there are only 6 Haskell wizards in San Francisco. I know Haskell isn't the most popular language, but still...

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a really great idea, but what's missing is private repos and organizations. You could be missing out on a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER16> Brilliant. It's difficult to network with hackers in my city outside of the regular bunch. This just made it easier. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER17> hehe, when I searched for my language & city, only 3 results, and one of them already works in the same company I work at.

EDIT: I actually know at least one more person at my company who uses github but he wasn't included -- guess not everyone set their locations.

<comment><USER18> I got excited when I searched for "Edmonton", and saw a result for Clojure, but it turned out to be myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a way to search for several languages at once? Edit: Or locations?

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried variations of the documented queries, couldn't get anything working. Specifically I was trying to do "in toronto, not ruby". :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great for developers who can understand and write code. Not so great for marketing and ideas people who generally suck.</comment>


AngularJS 1.2 RC3 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#120-rc3-ferocious-twitch-2013-10-14

<comment><USER2> FYI, this release introduces some pretty big regressions, so I'd hold off on upgrading for the next little while</comment>


"Anti-perks": what our startup doesn't want in our office - <AUTHOR> https://blog.even.com/anti-perks-4e2e49e80983 <comment><USER2> > But as we grow in size, we also plan to grow in the diversity of our > perspectives and backgrounds — which is even more reason not to add a bunch > of extraneous or overly specific perks. Especially as our team diversifies, > we can't (and shouldn't) strive to have a one-size-fits-all office or > benefits package.

This is a great point about bringing in diverse hires. If you optimize your perks to appeal to you, then you're likely to bring in people with the same interests as you, and there are often strong correlations between interests and demographics. I would certainly rather work somewhere with neutral-seeming perks than a place where everyone was bonding over a bunch of perks I couldn't care less about.

One of my friends is in an office environment where they play Quake III for an hour a day. This perk is actually a mandatory bonding session. I love Quake III, but he doesn't, and he feels like it's both a waste of time and a reinforcement of a specific type of company culture that he doesn't really relate to. He doesn't really mind it, but he has specifically listed it as one of the reasons he is considering finding another job.

Having a more typically "professional" office setting, combined with some more flexible perks (like flex funds for wellness), strikes me as a good way to avoid filtering people out and inadvertently selecting for an overly specific company culture.

In particular, if you're worried that hackers who fall outside of the white/male/straight/cis gendered hacker stereotype are not coming to your company in sufficient numbers, you want to avoid sending implicit signals that your company is only into things that seem to appeal to this stereotype. Perks are one source of those implicit signals.

<comment><USER3> > One of my friends is in an office environment where they play Quake III for > an hour a day. This perk is actually a mandatory bonding session

I've been a gamer for most of my life, but this would horrify me as a perk as it's completely exclusionary (which backs up your point)

Imagine being the employee that doesn't play games, it's like mandatory doing office sports

<comment><USER4> _" Imagine being the employee that doesn't play games..."_

Even worse, imagine being the employee who is a veteran with PTSD, or the employee who was a refugee from a war zone like Bosnia who associates the sound of gunfire with their parents being killed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The one "perk" I think is uncommon but should be standard is nap rooms.

There are just so many people who are happier, healthier, and do better work with a brief nap during the day. Unless you are walking distance from work, splitting your workday like that is infeasible without an office culture that supports it.

And consequently unlike most perks, it can't be offset by a simple salary increase.

<comment><USER6> Offices (and at least one person with a hammock in their office) would negate that as a perk.

Offices also diminish the impact of bringing a dog/cat/chinchilla to work and the need for TV rooms (if you don't have everyone looking over your shoulder, watching netflix on during break from your computer isn't an issue)

Though offices also run contrary to "Start up" being some hyper growth focused company, if you plan on doubling the head count every year offices are completely unfeasible.

<comment><USER7> Don't want dogs or cats in the office. Especially cats with all this stuff coming out about toxoplasmosis.

<comment><USER8> Toxoplasmosis has been linked to anger Issues with humans- so to keep Sales aggressive- release the tiger.

<comment><USER9> When they say aggresize sales, last thing they mean is angry dude smashing phone in the middle of discussion with potential client.

Just saying, aggressivity is not same as aggressively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thank you for not allowing pets. I both dislike and am allergic to dogs, and it annoys me when people think it's no big deal to bring their dog into the office. This is not your home, this is a professional workspace that we all share.

<comment><USER11> Tangentially unrelated, with all the kids with strong peanut alergies, what's going to happen in 10 years--will offices ban peanuts and peanut based foods?

We informally had a dog policy at our old office, which was an offshoot location. I'd bring my dogs in, until we hired a woman who had grown up in an area of the world where wild dogs were a real problem, and was deathly afraid of them. My co-workers loved having them in the office, but where you work should provide an environment where everyone can do their best, and given dogs weren't germaine to our business, it was best they were left at home from that day forward.

<comment><USER12> I think that usually, peanut/other allergies are only dangerous if the person is eating peanuts, which that person can avoid (or other food provided for him/her if the office provides food).

If you're talking about a dog though, it is usually impossible for the person to avoid the dog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure I've ever had whiplash as extreme as the point of this article where I thought to myself, "Well finally, someone pushing back against the excesses of VC-funded culture" and the line "we will compensate our employees for a dog-sitter (via a flexible health and wellness stipend)."

<comment><USER14> Actually, it could address an interesting issue depending on how it is implemented. If you gave team members a 'perks' stipend you could tax it appropriately, and you could have your employee spend it on the things that were important to them. Then create a way to scan your badge to access a perk and voila, custom perks.

No, I don't actually think it is workable, the two arguments that will pop up immediately are :

1) Just give me more money.

2) I don't want you to know which perks I use

<comment><USER15> The nice thing about perks is that they come out as company expenses--- so they don't get hit by payroll taxes or personal income taxes. Which potentially means that you get to double money spent on perks.

You're right that it would be cool if we could customize it. Give people "perks cards", which come out of company expenses (takes advantage of the above avoiding-income-tax multiplier) and let them spend it on whatever.

<comment><USER14> There is history here that you may not be aware of, it is a constant battle between the IRS and companies. The IRS insists that companies 'break out' any such company provided services on a per employee basis and include the value of those services in the employee's W2 taxable income field.

Once a company reaches a size where the amount of tax revenue crosses some threshold, the IRS starts bugging you. Apple, Google, SGI, Sun, IBM, and Microsoft are all companies that I know of that have negotiated settlements of one form or another.

<comment><USER15> Oh huh, I wasn't actually aware of that, but it makes sense! So I guess the loopholes aren't really there to begin with...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately, sounds like they fail at the minimum criteria for a sane workweek. In particular: "our team tends to work long days".

Who cares about anti-perks or perks if you're expected to work crazy hours?

<comment><USER17> Sadly, there's no way around this for a new company. It's how the market works today, and competition is fierce.

I think the idea is to add another opportunity to stretch, go out, socialize, and talk about something other than work, which is probably beneficial when working hard problems.

<comment><USER18> No way around lost productivity, the possibly catastrophic cost of increased bad decisions and mistakes resulting from fatigue and sleep deprivation, and loss of key employees due to burnout?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Most in-office catered lunches are a lot more healthy than a burger or pizza.

<comment><USER20> I think the point was that just getting up and going somewhere is healthier than sitting in one place all day, regardless of what type of food you're eating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Our team tends to work long days, and if we don't walk to lunch, we'll > likely be sitting in a chair for a minimum of eight hours a day.

Nice perk of working 8h+ per day! Love perks like these!

</comment><comment><USER12> I like a lot of these. I especially connected with "going out for lunch" vs. "catered lunches". I totally get why companies prefer catered lunches, and am surprised more companies don't realize the benefits, but I really enjoy leaving the office for a bit and getting some sun.

That said, one thing I have an issue with is this: ""Mandatory fun" office events".

If we're talking a once-a-week thing, then yes, that's way over the top.

But if we're talking a company day out or something similar every half year or so, I think it's incredibly important. I think the bonding effect is good, but more importantly, if it's not coordinated, then there are people who will miss it. For one thing, for people married with children, going to a random "people in the office decided to go out today" is usually much harder than going to a "scheduled 2 months in advance mandatory event". For another thing, it is easy for this to devolve into some people bonding and everyone else not being part of it. So I think it is beneficial to have a once-in-a-few-months bonding experience.

(I also think lighter forms of this, like an in-office "happy hour" once a week, is a pretty good idea too).

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm assuming blackout curtains are also an anti-perk? My eyes hurt from looking at the picture, I could never work there.

</comment><comment><USER23> Aren't perks that are offered to everyone tax deductible and perks for individuals not tax deductible?

and isn't it cheaper for us to provide dog walking services/chef services/kegs etc to everyone, than each person access to their own individual dog walker, paid lunch and paid for bar tab?

</comment><comment><USER24> Something that stuck out for me:

> "Don't get me wrong — Even has plenty of perks. Our team is offered paid > vacation time (with a _minimum_ number of days off)"

Is paid vacation time really a perk? Is vacation time usually unpaid in the US or something? Or maybe the perk is the minimum number of days off?

<comment><USER25> It's a major perk in the US. Vacation time is basically reserved for management or C-Suite folks, especially if it's paid.

<comment><USER21> Wow unbelievable, I never knew that. For someone who works in EU this sounds ridiculous.

<comment><USER26> It's not true for white collar work. For the most part, salaried and even non salaried full time workers get at least 20 days of paid time off a year.

<comment><USER27> Nope, average is 10. And this is gross: "A remarkable 23 percent of Americans have no paid vacations and no paid holidays."

[https://gusto.com/framework/health-benefits/paid-vacation- ti...](https://gusto.com/framework/health-benefits/paid-vacation-time-how-do- you-stack-up/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like the attitude on alcohol.

<comment><USER29> At least not during work hours, at a minimum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if they allow employees to expense lunch on the town, as opposed to paying for catering. I believe Snap Inc. works with local eateries to provide free food for employees, e.g.

<comment><USER31> Why can't they just pay more? I feel like one of the primary things I want a salary for is meals.

<comment><USER32> Perks have the advantage of being pre-tax.

So if you get $10 worth of perk (assuming it's something you'd buy anyway), it only actually costs you somewhere between $5-8 depending on your tax bracket.

<comment><USER31> Why? That is, is there some specific social good that the authors of the tax code were intending to accomplish by allowing companies to pay for lunch for their employees pre-tax, or is this an unintended consequence ("loophole") of some other coherent goal?

It seems to me like there isn't any reason for a tax code to allow not paying taxes if the company is calling a transfer of money to the employee for the purpose of buying food as a "perk", and yet tax the same money if it's called a "salary".

<comment><USER32> Nothing that high minded. You are simply taxed on income. Money the company spends isn't personal income.

<comment><USER31> But that interpretation has ridiculously easy loopholes - why not just reduce my salary by $10K and give me a $10K company-managed Amazon budget for personal expenses? Why not just let the company book my personal vacation travel via payroll deduction? Why not have the company rent my apartment and sublet it to me? etc.

I'm coming at this from the position that the law _must_ say, if you're giving a person access to a cash spending account that lets them buy things for themselves but not giving them the cash directly, that still counts as income. Is that true? If it's not true, why isn't everyone taking advantage of the loophole? If it is, why is lunch a special case?

<comment><USER33> Only some of the benefits are excluded from income, food and health insurance being the most popular. The rest have their value added to income and taxed accordingly.

<comment><USER31> So why doesn't every employer give me a food FSA or something? Pretty much everyone spends some of their salary on food....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Extremely surprised not to see "open-office" on the list. I guess they consider it a perk!

<comment><USER35> They say that they have moved away from a pure open office plan (thank goodness!):

> Based on learning that people needed room for more styles of work and levels > of collaboration, we added private rooms, shared offices, and flex spaces to > our existing open layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think the pet thing is more balanced than a straight up anti-perk, because in situations where everyone is happy with it, it can be very nice to have. But it's certainly not for everyone, and you don't want to make someone feel like they're the "spoiler" if everyone else is ok with it.

<comment><USER5> If I were runnning a similar company I would try to find out if a balance could be struck with structured "pet days" and "no pet days" ... I wonder if even that would be too uncomfortable though, for people who really fear/despise pets.

<comment><USER31> It's not just "fear" or "despise" \- if you're _allergic_ to pets, you're mandating that some of your employees work from home on those days.

If you're okay with that, might as well let the pet owners work from home, no?

<comment><USER32> Just "those days" may well not be good enough. I have fairly bad cat allergies. I can feel it after just a few minutes in a room where a cat _was_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's a good list with a lot of sense. My one minor nit is that they don't stock soda because it's not healthy. Let people be themselves and make their own decisions: you should provide something to drink and it should be what the employees want, not necessarily what you want.

<comment><USER38> Given how unhealthy soda is for an average human being when consumed regularly, stocking soda is similar to stocking cigarettes. Not stocking this shows a greater level of awareness around wellness, and also doesn't exclude employees who choose to not consume it.

I think it's a great policy to not provide free poison to your employees, let them pay for that themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm someone who has mostly worked for startups, but I just came off a stint working for IBM (Canada), and the difference in the "office culture" at IBM from the startups I had worked at kind of blew me away.

IBM's office culture was basically built around two ideas: 1. that everyone working on a team would be spread around the globe (not necessarily at first, but certainly as IBM had to send them around to do sales engineering.) And 2. that workflows should be designed to accommodate people with disabilities.

This led to a number of "features" that I will miss in any future startup:

• The offices have some "open-office"-like areas... but also cubicles, and individual closed offices, and meeting rooms. All of these—except for some of the cubicles—are flex-allocated. You just sit down at an empty one, and clean up after yourself when you go. IBM even has "work centres"—offices just for people (and entire teams) travelling, with no permanent staff other than ops+janitorial. This office design style resembles EC2 (far moreso than your average co-working space): you can "allocate" part of a floor to be a team's office on any given day, and that space will be some _other_ team's office on some other day. This is just as much about the culture (you don't "stake your claim" to the space, any more than you would a library desk) as it is about the amenities.

• Everything is done online, mostly over text. (Yes, yes, Lotus Notes. But also, increasingly, Slack.) You don't have to come to the office; you can work at a coffee shop, or from home, or from any other IBM office/work centre. You just need to sign into the IBM VPN and you're good. Even weekly meetings are electronic (though often over voice- or video-conference rather than text.) You know who this is great for? People in a wheelchair. People with a sprained ankle. People with social anxiety. New parents, past their leave period, who still want to spend most of their time with their kids. People who don't speak English well but can type and read it just fine. A hundred more types of people, who SV never bothers to hire.

• There's a no-pets policy. There's a no-perfume policy. There's a no-music policy. There's probably a bunch more. The spirit of these isn't "no silliness"; it's "make allowances for people with sensory processing disorders, even if you aren't aware that anyone you know here has one, because it's their right not to tell you."

• IBM offices don't offer amenities like food (other than some meh coffee), and they usually aren't close to anything, rather being in an office park that with low land-values. If you're going to the office, you eat breakfast before you go, and you bring a lunch with you. You eat dinner after going home. Which, of course, means that everyone wants to go home at a reasonable hour, so that they'll still have _time_ —and energy—to make and eat dinner. Going to the office is like taking a day-trip. You pack for it.

To sum up, IBM basically assumes that everyone working there is a responsible adult with a private life that is _important_ to them, that is respected _as_ private by others; and that, while at work, they'd like to get some _freaking work done_ so that they can be done with it and go home.

If anyone has heard of a start-up that follows this philosophy, I'd love to work there. (Otherwise, I'm open to starting a chain of co-working spaces that operate like IBM's work-centres, and give all their member-startups a VPN Intranet and a PBX for voice-conferenced meetings.)

<comment><USER9> I like everything about it except no perfume policy. People during summer smell.

<comment><USER40> Then they should wash. Perfume + odour is even worse than one alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> _Pet-friendly offices: I'm sure having a pet visit the office once would be a treat, but every day quickly can become a burden on the team._

Disagree, given the observation that pets (provided they're well-behaved, are well-groomed etc) reduce stress and promote empathy. It's just a question of measure - somewhere between "once" and "every day" there are these notions of "once in a while" or "from time to time". Which I suspect would be optimal, for this particular indulgence.

<comment><USER42> I have been in environments where dogs are not well-disciplined and will pee on the floor and bark annoyingly while we're trying to focus. No thanks.

<comment><USER41> Hence the "well-behaved, well-groomed" constraint.

If you're in an office where dogs are peeing and barking (and no one knows what to do about it) - then clearly you have a _people_ problem, not a dog problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> "I'm sure having a pet visit the office once would be a treat, but every day quickly can become a burden on the team."

Would people who are burdened by an office dog please share your experiences?

<comment><USER44> We have a dog friendly office and it drives me crazy sometimes. One dog is fine but when you get them in pairs they like to play. And having a dog wrestling 4 feet away from you is distracting.

I like dogs and I will make it a point to befriend the ones in the office but at some point it becomes disruptive.

<comment><USER11> Yes, that's kind of the key. A single dog at the office is great.

A bunch of dogs turns the office into a dog park.

I love dogs, have two of em, wife is a key member of a dog rescue, and I loved bringing my dogs in the office. But no way do I want a bunch of dogs at the office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Are we supposed to know who Even is?

</comment><comment><USER46> I feel this list greatly depends on the culture and employee composition.

</comment><comment><USER47> this place sounds like a nightmare to work at. no drinking, anti dog policies, no thanks.

<comment><USER48> Imagine how normal work places feel like to people who don't drink, are introverts and don't like to be greeted by dogs all the time.

<comment><USER49> How do you mean normal? Outside of startup land, a pet policy and free booze at work is kind of unusual.

<comment><USER48> I mean normal as in normal silicon valley startup.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please write descriptive titles for your HN submissions - workhere-io

Lately there have been several submissions on the HN front page having only the name of a product or company in its title:
- "Exist"
- "WebFlow"
- "TrackR"
- "MoarVM"
- "Atom"
In those cases users have to click the link in order to find out what the product/company does. Although I understand why that would be useful for the company submitting the link, it's a waste of time for the rest of us when we click the links and find out that the product/company is something that doesn't interest us.
So can we please agree to write more descriptive titles that give users an idea of what's on the page being linked to?
Here are some examples of how it should be done:
- "Coalesce – Communication framework for distributed JavaScript"
- "Notepad5 – a simple offline notepad webapp, distraction-free writing zone"
- "Iconic – An Icon System Designed for the Modern Web"
- "Show HN: Softcover – A publishing platform from the author of the Rails Tutorial" <comment><AUTHOR> It will just get reverted by the mods. If the "title" on the page is uninformative, so will be the title on HN.

<comment><USER2> So, let's start asking for more descriptive text on page titles, which will probably help the page owners as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> PG has said why HN will always revert to the original title. I would link the post but hn search on iOS is hopeless.</comment>


Show HN: Terraform AWS Starterkit - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/tvaughan/terraform-aws-starterkit <comment><AUTHOR> There's a mirror on GitHub too, [https://github.com/carrete/terraform-aws- starterkit-mirror](https://github.com/carrete/terraform-aws-starterkit- mirror).

<comment><AUTHOR> You may also be interested in: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13436452](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13436452).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your goals – what matters to you? - <AUTHOR> What is really important to you?
What are you aiming for?
What are your goals, short term through long term? <comment><USER2> Efficiency.

I want to make the universe more efficient. For me, this starts by making humans more efficient. My ideal would be the Borg.

I choose efficiency because it's inherently good. If you're more efficient, then you can reach other goals more efficiently, no matter what these goals are.

Concretely, I'm tackling the problem of inefficient communication and thinking. I believe that natural languages are one of humanity's main bottlenecks and must be replaced with something better by at least an order magnitude. A completely new and computer-aided communication paradigm.

I don't want anyone to ever have to communicate something that's already been communicated before. I don't want people to be able to express inconsistent ideas. I want to get rid of paradoxes and exceptions from language.

I also want to make the world completely transparent, make data free. This means getting rid of privacy, another one of humanity's main bottlenecks. Privacy is irrational and selfish.

My first step is to build a single application that aims to replace 80% of existing applications. To achieve this without bloat, a new interaction paradigm will need to be conceived. As I don't expect most adults to appreciate the value of the system (in my experience, they feel threatened) or have the ability to learn it, my targets are kids.

TL;DR: I'm building a next-generation communication app for kids.

<comment><USER3> Since the Universe is spiraling toward oblivion and expanding I think that you are well on your way. Humans are masters of paradox which is kind of like dark matter appearing and disappearing at the same time in two different places. We are software as a service.

The closest to a reasonable application is meditation where you sit down and do absolutely nothing as close as possible. Reasonably easy to acquire, meditation allows for communication to leap over bottlenecks in spite of language.

Upon reading this sit quietly with your spine straight for 5 minutes while focused on your breathing. This is the amount of time it takes to download the meditation app. Once you have this installed it is only a matter of sitting down again with your spine erect while paying attention to your breathing to utilize it. Any thoughts that come during this time should be recognized as thoughts and ignored. After 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes. Go back to doing whatever it was you were doing. Meditation can never be taken from you once it is installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Only have one long-term goal: maximizing the happyness of my family. Biggest achievement would be not having to worry about finances and being able to work (a lot) less.

Pretty much every short-term goal ought to be a net plus on my longterm goal. Short-term goals: 1\. Get our new SaaS business to 3K euro MRR So my wife can quit job and support the SaaS (It's targeting the niche she works in, once software is done she does over support / sales / marketing / networking etc.). This is #1 because her job is awfull and low-paying, so we need to fix that first. Just landed a great customer so fingers crossed...

2\. Either get SaaS up to 8k euro MRR+ OR start another \- So i can start working alongside her doing the same kind of work. Might even be able to hire someone so we can take some days off!

My job now is great. Pay is not great, but i can easily take days of if i want or work from home etc. No commute to speak of, so maximum time for other company stuff. If #1 or #2 is a bust, i'm pretty confident i will keep trying to get a SaaS off the ground. Either that or get another job half an hour away so i can retire a few years faster. Lets hope for the former.

</comment><comment><USER5> Set up a side business to blossom into paying 3* full time salary so I can be free of commuting, can live a high life and build assets at the same time. Doesn't involve coding as I've had it with coding and hate the complexity nowadays. I have nostalgia for the simplicity of bbcbasic magazine listings.

If I can achieve this in 5 years it would be ideal. First stage is in progress.

<comment><USER6> Something that I am planning to do. But it is incredibly difficult to manage with a full time job.

<comment><USER5> Yes I know, and I have a young family too.

So...

Solution for me is to reduce to 4 day week. Lucky I can do this.

And don't write a line of code. Leverage the umpteen cloud services.</comment></comment></comment>


What does transparency buy you? - <AUTHOR> http://www.crashdev.com/2012/03/what-does-transparency-buy-you.html <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this, Rick.

Chris's advice is predicated on having a good relationship with your investors. That's not always the case. If a CEO is hesitant to invest in transparent communication with investors/advisors/board, it might be worthwhile to ask him or her why not. If it's solely a case of lost opportunity cost, there are plenty of tips here on how to minimize that. But if it's a deeper issue, that deserves to be explored, too.</comment>