Interview with Mr. Money Mustache - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/dont-start-a-blog-start-a-cult-mr-money-mustache/ <comment><USER3> I've been reading his blog for a few years, and he does some have some insightful advice on shedding unnecessary expenses and living on a frugal spending diet. I've been able to get down to one car that is almost paid off, and double my savings and investment portfolio. My favorite article from him is living close enough to work to bike (although working from home is most ideal).

However, his blog comes with a bit of smug (calling himself a "cult", or "Good news, there's a recession coming"). His faithful mantra of "retiring at 30" is a pipe dream unless: (1) you have a big income i.e. $200k per year by the time you are 25, (2) have a software engineer wife that makes as much as you and have no kids, or (3) inherited a large sum to begin with. All of his case studies are about him and his wife who were pulling $100k before they "retired", or the lawyer who was pulling in $160k a year at 26. Kudos to them, but good luck trying to retire as a welder or car mechanic making $50k.

<comment><USER4> MMM is too smug and pushy for a good portion of the general public. His writing can awfully hostile, it could be toned down a bit and his message would get further - some of his advice is very sensible.

The problem with frugal blogs (in general) is they do one or more of the following; push penny pinching 24/7, "if you aren't eating lentils everyday and living in a cardboard box you're fucking up," they are too condescending, or they are only applicable to the already rich/privileged, like Mitt Romney's "just borrow 10s of thousands of dollars from your parents to start a business, easy!," and are out of touch with they "everyday man," or fail to recognize that people are different than them.

I think I could write a blog that is more accessible, I have experience being both very high income and very low income. It's such a saturated market though I doubt I'd get any readers. Maybe I'll do it just for myself some day to formulate some of the thoughts I have on the topic.

<comment><USER5> He has several rentals and lives off other families. We can't all do that. It's not a real, scalable solution. It's not genuine.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I find rent-seeking landlords to be an unethical pursuit. I know that's not a mainstream thought, and is the underpinning of many people's income strategy ... but I can't support the idea of letting a family live in a property for decades, and then something happening, and they're on the street with nothing to show for the tens of thousands of dollars they have given in rent.

<comment><USER7> The reason to rent is for the ability to move on demand.

If a family is renting in the same place for decades, that is their problem. The moment you realize you are going to stay in one place for an extended period of time, there is no reason to continue renting. Sure, not everybody can purchase their dream home. But they can purchase something small, build equity, and upgrade in the future. The government also has programs to help first time buyers, especially those with less income.

Again, the primary reason to rent is so you can relocate. If you are not planning on relocating in the 5-10 years, you should own, or be working on owning.

Furthermore, the landlord is taking on risk (risk of the market moving against him, risk of the tenant not paying him or the place remaining unoccupied after a tenant leaves), is paying property taxes, insurance, is responsible for broken appliances, and is also often taking on a loan with higher interest rates.

Should all of this be provided for free?

<comment><USER4> "You should own," no, everyone is different.

Many people have no interest or ability to take care of a property. I watched my grandparents' house deteriorate and literally fall apart from neglect. [I used to think the roof leaking when it rained was a totally normal thing] They had literally every appliance in the house break over the years but they didn't have the wherewithal to replace anything so they just went without. They lived in total squalor for _years,_ it was depressing (as well as very dangerous) visiting. If code enforcement stopped by they'd be homeless.

For sure, there is many, many benefits to owning, I love being a homeowner (most of the time - though I did get a little sticker shocked at my first 4 figure repair bill), but don't believe for a second "everyone should own."

<comment><USER8> I don't disagree with your broader point. But I would point out that owning doesn't need to mean owning a standalone house. In addition, in general, renting starts to become problematic at some point in life where being forced to move because the landlord sold the property becomes a really unpleasant situation.

<comment><USER4> Condos are another can of worms.

I just very briefly touched on one issue with owning and why it may make sense for someone to rent for years (even if it might not be _financially_ optimal[1]).

Books could be written about the topic.

The main takeaway is "everyone is different." And "one size does not fit all." Remember, many _businesses_ still choose to rent over buying.

[1] plus you only truly know in hindsight what was truly financially optimal

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something that seems to be lost in this thread, which looks to be mostly a debate about whether or not early retirement is feasible for normal people:

For normal people, MMM strategy is about making uncomfortable decisions (plain, reliable used cars, no fine dining, no fancy houses, no downtown-big- city living locations) to avoid the most uncomfortable thing of all: work.

If you would rather have a job your whole life so you never have to eat a bean or drive a 20 year old car, you're not the target audience. People who are driven to early retirement & financial independence are people who DESPISE jobs and are willing to spend their whole life at a much smaller income bracket in exchange for not having one.

They don't want your new devices, cable tv, leased cars, and downtown apartments. They agree those things are nice, but not nice enough to take on an extra 40,000 hours of "servitude" with an employer.

The strategy is simple: if you can live on 20% of your income, and save the rest, then in a few years, you will have the ability to reproduce that same income indefinitely. The amount of the income doesn't matter, and that is being lost here for some reason. If you can't do 20%, you can do 30% and a few extra years. Or whatever.

The MMM strategy is about ditching the job, and balancing the trade-offs to something you can stomach. If you can't stomach it, fine, but that doesn't mean it's not a viable strategy.

<comment><USER10> > People who are driven to early retirement & financial independence are > people who DESPISE jobs and are willing to spend their whole life at a much > smaller income bracket in exchange for not having one.

I was surprised by the negativity in this thread until I read this sentence. Most readers here though have the option of either finding a less terrible job or starting our own companies. When neither of those are an option eating beans sounds pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The MMM way is more about locking in your luck than anything else. Be frugal, when lady luck smiles and you have a lot of income make sure you do not waste the proceeds and avoid living above your means at all costs. Having skills is a plus and in his particular case it helps if you are good at building a personal brand so you can ride the self help bandwagon.

Very useful information compared to most other self help institutions though, far more actionable but a bit preachy and unaware of how complex other peoples lives are but such over simplification can help to make a point.

Also, he seems to pretend as if he is the first person ever to live like this but there are many others that simply never thought of themselves as special in any way. See also: the millionaire next door.

<comment><USER12> Being __frugal __is the biggest baloney to wealth. People like you and I obsess over it because $COST_OF_LIVING is the one variable of the Income Wealth Equation we can control.

You want to become wealthy? Affect millions.

<comment><USER11> Well, change frugal to 'don't be wasteful' then if that makes more sense to you. A friend of mine has _four_ holidays per year, lives in an 800K euro house, has a whole pile of other interesting expenses and wonders out loud to me why he has no money left over. And that's with both him and his wife pulling in six figure salaries...

<comment><USER12> Sounds like your friend sacrificed the future for the today. But far, far too many of us are guilty of sacrificing today for a tomorrow 40 years from now.

Get rich slow when you're 70, or get rich fast by working your ass off and being accountable for your wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something I'm curious about regarding Mr. Money Mustache - is he actually retired, in the sense that he doesn't do anything to bring in income (except through passive index investing)?

It seems like he has a brand that is pretty lucrative, so it's unclear to me if he:

1\. has enough money to be functionally retired at his current lifestyle, but chooses to continue his brand anyway,

2\. has enough money to be functionally retired, but not at his current lifestyle, and so chooses to continue his brand,

3\. cannot functionally retire and simply "transitioned" from professional software development to professional blogging.

I follow the logic of his blog series (reduce spending dramatically, increase savings dramatically, invest optimally), but I can't tell how much of it contributes to his current lifestyle.

<comment><USER14> I don't think you know what retired actual means here. It doesn't mean never working again, it more refers to being financially independent.

If he wanted to stop all those projects and never do anything again, he could. But that would probably be boring, so he pursues things that interest him, some of which net him income.

He's gone over his family's spending before, if you want to read more - [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm- fa...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/01/16/exposed-the-mmm- familys-2014-spending/)

<comment><USER15> Beautiful. Since we get to make up our own definition of what retired means, I guess I am also retired.

re·tired rəˈtī(ə)rd/Submit adjective 1\. having left one's job and ceased to work.

<comment><USER16> You can substitute "financially independent" if it makes you feel better. Many people continue doing things that generate income even though they don't need the money. It's worth noting the difference between someone working because it's what they enjoy doing vs. someone who is compelled to work by financial necessity.

<comment><USER15> if they have enough money that they don't actually need to work and yet do work that generates income why don't they take that income and fully donate it to charity? if MMM doesn't do that, it means he needs that income - <USER2> different from just having a job

<comment><USER16> That's a ridiculous standard. How much money do you make? Do you live on the bare minimum necessary for survival and donate the rest? If you do, then kudos. If you're like most other people, you probably indulge in a luxury once in a while that you wouldn't otherwise buy if you couldn't afford it. That's not unreasonable. If your income unexpectedly declined, I'm sure there's a number of expenses that aren't strictly necessary and could be given up without too much worry.

FWIW, MMM did blog about giving away $100,000 of his blog windfall last year ([https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/10/26/notes-on- giving-a...](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/10/26/notes-on-giving- away-100000/)) and plans to give away more.

<comment><USER15> that's not really the point. I have expenses that aren't strictly necessary that I could give up - but those are things I like. So, the question is, why should you claim to be retired and then work part time to afford extra things you like, vs just have a job and afford those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Allow me to just throw out that I love the transcript. I know it is a lot of work, but I wish more podcasters would publish them.

I watch/listen to very few podcasts; don't drive regularly, which is where I would normally consume them, and otherwise tend to skip them because so many are a tedious waste of time. Plus, I just prefer text to video.

So, thank you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it! Always helpful to know what's worth the effort :)

<comment><USER18> Can you help me find the RSS feed? I'm trying to subscribe in a popular iOS podcast player (Overcast) and struggling to find the feed.

Never mind found at: backtracks.fm/ycombinator/ycombinator/feed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The easiest way to retire early is to enlist in the military, at least in the US, anyway. After 20 years of service, you are set for life with life-long retirement pension and healthcare. Of course, there's a high risk, since there's always wars and deployments, etc and many don't make it past 10 years, after they get fed up with being in the military.

When I was in the army, I saw a lot of people in their early 40's who retired after their service, and many spent their time either working in another job, because of boredom of retirement, or activities like traveling. These were those who enlisted right after high school, with nothing but a HS degree, but they were doing much better off than my friends who had college and MBA.

<comment><USER20> Military pensions continue to be the top reason why most young people across the world are attracted to join the forces.

But there is a catch though. You really have to serve the minimum time. And like you said most get either fed up, or they are discharged early. The other part is in many parts of the world, there is relative peace, so its a safe bet. Plus most of the times apart from the training days, they actually see good physical exercise everyday to its like a win-win job.

In India armed forces have asked for a kind of roll over pensions, where every year your pensions are revised and you are paid as much as the highest paid servicemen retiring in the rank you retired from. Of course there is a lot of opposition from the civilian side for something like this.

Given the relative peace in the Indian subcontinent, in most cases its possible for many people to make it through without much risk, and if you join early, you can come out by 40, with a neat yearly increasing pension for the rest of your life.

They also have short service commission jobs in the Indian army, which don't carry these benefits. And they often go unfilled for the obvious reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The biggest question I face regarding early retirement in the USA is how to handle health care expenses, because the situation is so messed up. There is huge uncertainty around the future of healthcare, especially regarding coverage and quality.

So far, all the early retired people I have seen have either a working spouse or have retired abroad. It would be great to know if people here, especially those who retired early, have solved the problem of healthcare coverage.

<comment><USER22> At least with the Affordable Care Act (which survived yet another repeal-and- replace attempt this week), it's possible to buy insurance on the open market with a pre-existing condition (which I assume that almost everyone older than their 20s or 30s has at least one). So for now health insurance is an expense you can plausibly budget for and not something that's completely unattainable at any price.

<comment><USER21> Given the political uncertainty around ACA until now, I would say its a rational decision to not rely on it. Sure, it survived this round of repeal efforts, but I am not sure if it is going to survive next 10 years. There is a very good chance that it will be replaced, and only a moderate chance that replacement will be better than what we have today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Thanks to many of you for suggesting Pete as a guest on the podcast.

Let me know if you have ideas for other folks. You can comment here or email me - firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER23> Ben Thompson of Stratechery ([https://www.stratechery.com](https://www.stratechery.com)) - in addition to just talking about tech, would be good to hear about how he's grown his blog into such a great business.

<comment><AUTHOR> :thumbsup:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is such a weird content piece from YC. Is this supposed to help us understand brand marketing? If so, I want to hear from people who have piloted the brands of massively successful startups, not a guy who says he's head of a cult.

Though I don't agree with or support self-help / Tim Ferris types personally, I'm open to the idea that this guy has some key insight into branding for startups, but this content doesn't really have any of that.

I appreciate a hustler as much as anyone, but this guy doesn't stand out from your generic Tim Ferris / Gary Vee snake oil lifestyle sellers.

</comment><comment><USER25> _' Life is a balancing act.'_

I do also use to read his blog but I don't follow 'frugalism' as a cult. I cherrypick what I consider that adds significant value to my life. The same with other "isms" like Agnosticism, Centrism, Minimalism and Intellectualism..

</comment><comment><USER26> I know the vast majority of you are 6-figure types and MMM is still making 6 figures annually from his blog and his wife's 'hobby' business and that he never actually has to touch his retirement investments and can in fact add more money to them annually than most people in the U.S. actually gross.

According to the U.S Census Bureau "The per capita income for the overall population in 2008 was $26,964; for non-Hispanic Whites, it was $31,313; for Blacks, it was $18,406; for Asians, it was $30,292; and for Hispanics, it was $15,674."

It's taken me 11 years to get to 32k, I got super lucky early this summer and got hired for some remote work, full time on top of my current job, for a tech company thanks to someone at YC helping me out. A day after I started I was told I was inelligible for employment because several years ago I had to file bankruptcy.

So while you all sit nice and well with your 6-figure incomes, talking about how horrible your lives are when you earn more in a year than I do in 3-5 years BEFORE your bonuses and 401k match and all the benefits you get that real businesses don't offer their employees... just know a lot of us are busting our asses just to feed ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER27> How much money do you have to have in index funds to live comfortably off dividends? Isn't it an astronomical amount? I have ~$100K in index funds and i'm making about $100 (if even that)/month right now which just gets reinvested. You'd have to have at least half a mil to get any kind of serious money out of this.

<comment><USER28> Are you paying a lot in fees? I would have expected a better return than that.

<comment><USER27> Very possible since this is a managed account. I am terrified of doing anything in the stock market, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone else think it's a bit funny to see an MMM interview on YC? Through their investments, YC seems quite pro-consumerism. Consumerism is the antithesis of being mustachian. It's always kind of bothered me that HN (and YC) seems to encourage conspicuous consumption.

<comment><USER11> Where do HN and YC encourage conspicuous consumption? Does ramen profitable somehow equate conspicuous consumption?

<comment><USER29> A significant number of YC's alumnus look like Juiceros to me. Building products nobody needs because they think there's enough stupid people to create a market. Slap together some glossy marketing materials, and now you've got a premium product ready to change the world.

Frankly, most people don't need to be constantly buying new things. They should be buying less, fixing what they've got, saving more, going outside and getting exercise.

<comment><USER11> YC alumnus != YC. Huge difference there.

Agreed on the 'changing the world' bs, though there are some that genuinely seem to have that goal (Watsi, for instance).

And yes, people usually do not need all that they are buying but then again, it keeps the economy going, I'm having a hard time imagining a world where everybody behaves like MMM does, it would not scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Only to say that there is "nothing new under the sun", Mr. Money Mustache's basic message is (was) essentially "common sense", some time ago I cited an old Italian proverb in a similar enough topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14593794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14593794)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14594858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14594858)

He only uses his own experience to show how it can come out in practice (and of course it needs to be scaled - down or up - depending on personal income, financial situation, family size, etc. and of course expectations).

Results will of course be different, but the basic principle remains valid.

</comment><comment><USER31> Mr. Money Mustache started me down the path of exploring my own personal philosophy. I now worship MMM as a diety (MMM !== Pete Adeney in my religion). Thanks for the teachings Pete.

<comment><USER32> Robert - what would you recommend as a getting started guide to MMM?

And how would you describe your personal philosophy?

<comment><USER33> Not Robert, but I would start here.

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly- sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math- behind-early-retirement/)

Start reading more from there and remember it's your expenses more than your income that matter most. Also remember he turned the dial quite far.

And this page is also quite good. You don't have to go as extreme as MMM, and doing so would burn out a lot of people.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58j8...](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/58j8pc/build_the_life_you_want_then_save_for_it/)

<comment><USER34> Seconding this. That MMM article is what got me started into reading more of that blog.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I find it interesting that both he and his wife were high income earner earners. That makes it easier to save appropriately and get to financial freedom sooner. I think he even notes this in some of his blog posts that the opportunity to become financially free is limited. A lot of people don't have a 3 month or 6 month reserve which I think is the first goal. Get there first.

<comment><USER26> He and his wife are STILL high income earners. From his affiliate links, sponsored posts and going on and on about his wife's etsy business I guarantee you they are still making six figures without ever having to touch their retirement investments. Call him out on that and guess what, he will NOT approve the comment on his posts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> man, what a weird pov. Start at the beginning - "nobody should do the 40 mile pleasanton to sf commute". I guess he means pleasanton to mv, because if you were to go to sf you'd just take the bart door to door. So do you know how many engineers drive from pleasanton, or in general east bay, to mv ? I'd wager its upwards of 100k, considering the backed up traffic on 680 between 8 am to noon. now are all of these engineers fools ? the majority of them have a nice tech gig in mv at the biggest tech firms - the sexiest startups and boring profitable enterprises, a solid 150k+ paycheck, stocks, 401k etc and are paying off their mortgage in the east bay on a large 3k sq ft house in an incredible school district. the tech companies themselves encourage this behavior by plying free wifi-buses on 680 so you've done your git commits en route. so which part of this is objectionable and why ? even if facebook builds a company town in san mateo or wherever, engineers are ultimately humans who have reasonable human desires to buy a house & get hitched & start a family & send the kids to school, so all of that isn't going to happen within the confines of a company town designed for the 20 year old median programmer crowd. in all likelihood, this 40 mile commute, whether to east bay or south bay or wherever will be the norm, because the alternative is what ? all of us moving to colorado and riding our bicycles to work?! i mean i envy your frugal no-waste healthy bicycle lifestyle, but i just don't see all these engineers with giant beer bellies either. they do the 40 mile commute because there really isn't much of a choice, and most companies do offer some form of on-site fitness regimen, so the majority does keep in shape. financially the outcome is positive as well - appreciating equity in a spacious sunny california home, 7 figure retirement accounts, kids in good schools. if the only downside is a 40 mile commute, i'll take that any day of the week.

<comment><USER37> His point of view is that those perks don't justify the commute. I'm personally inclined to agree with him having tried both.

There's a fair amount of research suggesting short commutes are good for mental health and the effects of regular walking/running/cycling are well known.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For a guy who claims to be retired he sure seems to work a lot.

<comment><USER39> Feeds into the universal basic income philosophy: if you don't have to work to survive, you might still work on things you care about.

<comment><USER38> Do you think he is doing this for free? I don't.

<comment><USER39> No, neither of us thinks that.

I think you wanted to point out an inconsistency between the dictionary definition of retirement and the fact that this person is still receiving income in exchange for work. You made your point. Let's move past that.

Not having to work to survive (e.g., this guy, retirement, UBI, lottery, vow of asceticism, whatever) gives you more options. Some people go on permanent vacation. Some people keep chugging away at their jobs because they still enjoy them. Some people change to jobs that they previously weren't willing to stake their survival on, and those new jobs might or might not pay money. I don't know this MMM guy, but it seems like he's in that last group. Doesn't sound so strange to me.

I'd be pretty disappointed if retiring meant you were prohibited from doing things that others happened to be willing to pay for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How disappointing to see this flagged.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does anybody know whether the transcripts are done manually or automatically? Seems to be a lot of work if it's done manually.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://backtracks.fm](https://backtracks.fm) does it for us and they also host the podcast. I think they do a bit of both but don't know for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Oh god. I'm horrified by this.

> People think of a cult as a bad thing [...] really, it's just a social > organization structure which is a basic built-in thing to human beings

This is the naturalistic fallacy, or the is-ought fallacy. Other basic built- in things to human beings include ignorance, rage, greed, abuse, exploitation, and violence.

A core part of civilization is deciding which of our basic built-in things are valuable, amplifying the useful bits, and circumscribing the ones that aren't. Treating something as good because it's natural is a giant error. A very convenient one for him here.

<comment><USER42> Don't read too much into it.

He's only using "cult" as a provocative term to describe a tribe of fans who passionately like a particular brand. Nobody's going to be committing human sacrifices or burning heretics on behalf of Mr Money Mustache any time soon.

<comment><USER43> > Don't read too much into it.

It's hard not to especially when comes to people in power and leadership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> tl;dr privileged white guy tells you you can retire at 30 if you have access to >300k a year for 10 years and ride a bike

</comment><comment><USER45> _retired at 30_

and probably making millions a year, because "he retired". Now that's retirement.

A++++ on marketing.

</comment><comment><USER46> Rich guy tells poor guys, "to get rich, trick poor guys to listen to you".

He's not wrong but you're all fools for caring about what he has to say.

<comment><USER47> His message is basically summarized as "Spend less than you earn, and invest it in index funds."

He's not wrong, but I submit that the people implementing that advice aren't fools, either.

<comment><USER46> I'm referring to his comment about starting a cult. He is right of course that finding gullible people to follow you is easy. Just say some obvious things like "don't spend all your money, save and invest!" and the sheep will flock. Maybe you gave him no money, but you spent your time and attention.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple has not made any significant donations to charity since 1997 - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_jobs#cite_ref-57

<comment><USER3> The headline is completely incorrect - Wikipedia does NOT say that "Apple has not made any significant donations to charity since 1997".

What it actually says is:

"Jobs has not reinstated a philanthropic division at Apple."

So, he hasn't hired a bunch of people to sit in an office, giving someone else's money away and feeling pretty good about themselves. I'd say that is A GOOD THING - you don't need full-time staff in order to give money to good causes, that's just more overhead that stops money getting to the people who really need it. Jobs also got rid of the Apple Museum when he returned to Apple in 1997 .... because it was irrelevant ego bullshit and completely unnecessary.

Wikipedia says absolutely nothing about how much money Apple has donated and I know for a fact that it has aided progressive causes that other corporations would be too nervous to assist for fear of conservative backlash.

I hope that the submitter of this, ck2, realizes that, with one rotten headline, he is now part of what is wrong with media reporting - <USER2> the truth in order to sensationalize.

<comment><USER4> > Wikipedia says absolutely nothing about how much money Apple has donated and > I know for a fact that it has aided progressive causes

For instance, Apple does tie-in promotions such as the Product(RED) iPods that support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS: <http://www.apple.com/ipod/red/>

They also provide grants and recognition to teachers and schools: <http://www.apple.com/education/apple-distinguished-educator/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Charity is morally neutral. I believe that being good means making the most of your own life.

If you want to help someone, or even a lot of people through charity, that's fine, but it should not earn you any moral credit.

Moral credit should only come from what you've truly achieved, and that means creating value somehow (invention, scientific discovery, beautiful art, and honest work of any kind). Anyone can give away fifty million dollars, but not many can actually earn the same sum in their lifetimes.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you live a society that doesn't morally (or physically) oppress you, so you CAN _make the most of your own life_ you've already benefited from it.

You've already taken for granted something you owe back.

<comment><USER6> I totally agree with this. A lot of people don't realize how much they are helped by their society because they've never seen how bad it can truly be. Here's an example of I mean (and a worthwhile read to boot): <http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=50799>

You aren't going to be able to develop your skills if there is no society or infrastructure to support that development, if transit is difficult and dangerous, if all money and energy is being siphoned to a few corrupt people at the top. Of course charity isn't the only solution to breaking this cycle, but it certainly helps more than a $1500 laptop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for "getting it". Sorry to see you were downvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the things I liked about Microsoft was the company's gift matching policy - they'd 100% match your donation to a charity up to <SOME LARGE NUMBER>. I found myself being more generous because of it, what with each of my dollars worth two.

I'm surprised Apple doesn't have a similar policy - sure, it didn't make or break my decision to join MS, but it was an awfully nice compensation bonus.

<comment><USER4> Apple does have a similar policy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As seen on Reddit.

Also:

[http://philanthropy.com/blogs/social-philanthropy/is- apple-a...](http://philanthropy.com/blogs/social-philanthropy/is-apple-anti- charity/24565)

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/nonprofit- develope...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/06/nonprofit-developer- apples-no-donation-policy-is-a-cop-out.ars)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is Steve Jobs an disciple of Ayn Rand? There sure seems to be a number of indicators pointing in that direction.

If he is - then you can't really blame him can you? He could hardly justify charity as moral.

<comment><USER9> That doesn't follow. Objectivism has no problem with charity (Rand: 'it's good and proper'), just with this moral-blackmailing/guilt-tripping schtick. I think many Objectivists believe that (private) charity would be larger overall in the sort of society Rand envisioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> SJ believes that his job is to make shareholders rich and by doing so, gives them the means to be charitable. I would tend to agree with him.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a corporation Apple profits massively from society.

One might say they owe something back.

With the extreme loyalty of it's userbase, they could set some very nice examples.

Why Steve Jobs isn't personally charitable with $5B in the bank is a rather depressing mystery.

<comment><USER11> _"One might say they owe something back"_

One could say that they are giving something back, by using those profits to develop ways to make computing more accessible and useful, something they're better at and more willing to invest in than anyone else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me repeat that back to you as I understood it.

What you are saying is Apple (and their work) is _$deity_ 's gift to the world so they don't owe anything else regardless how many billions of dollars they make from it.

People in parts of the world that need help to survive or thrive more than a meager existence, aren't helped by Apple's pretty software UI and hardware design.

<comment><USER11> You can use the argument that people in third-world countries are starving to bash just about anything that anybody on this site does for a living.

If you truly believed that argument, you wouldn't be wasting your own disposable income on broadband and a cell phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime".

Apple owe's you nothing, they are entitled to do exactly as they please with their profits.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good. Charities usually squander their money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure who downvoted you instead of explaining this:

There are plenty of popular "knee-jerk" charities like the Red Cross that squander their donations. However there are also plenty of smaller, more focused charities that give a huge percentage of their donations directly to their causes and are extremely efficient. The catch is you have to research a charity before donating and most people cannot be bothered.

These days with the internet, there is no excuse for not researching:

<http://www.charitynavigator.org/></comment></comment>


Shut up about PageRank already - <AUTHOR> http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2011/06/pagerank-8-reasons-dont-care.htm

<comment><USER2> While PageRank might not be all that important to your site, it is important how your site is perceived by others. PR used to be _the_ way to measure the value of a site and that kinda stuck.

> I've seen folks spend thousands of dollars per month on links or advertising > on a site simply because 'the site has a great PageRank'.

Me too, so if you are a site that thrives on advertising or link revenue, PageRank remains very important.

Avvo.com said that when their PageRank rises, so do the number of business development calls. Even when PR and business dev calls are not correlated, the perception is still very real.

For larger sites having a higher PageRank also means deeper crawls, longer crawls and faster recrawls (I've heard it influence rich snippets and sitelinks too.). Not something to measure like it is the holy grail of marketing, but it is something to keep an eye out for, even if it just to check if you are not ranked 0 (which could mean a serious problem).

I wouldn't put my money where my mouth is, if PageRank doesn't matter, I still prefer links from higher PageRank domains. PageRank might be dead, it is not buried yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish it'd get buried, though. I spend half my career explaining the difference between 'true' pagerank and 'toolbar' pagerank.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > _Think about that—somewhere in Mountain View, someone's tweaking the little > number you see in the Google toolbar. By hand. How accurate is that gonna > be?_

Certainly more accurate than software failure. Here's the relevant snippet from the source to this claim:

> _We have a few safety checks in place, so we say like `OH! Did we expect the > page rank of MSN.com to be 7 or 8 and then suddenly dropped to 2...'_

> _If those sorts of things happen, then we might get an email and check into > it. But for the most part the process runs with very little human > intervention. People don't really need to oversee things._

The author doesn't show much comprehension of PageRank which is not intended to be a metric solely used for "site ranking" but for crawling rate amongst other things. It's common for lower PR pages to outrank higher PR pages in Google's search results let it be no secret.

Can someone remind me the point of this article because it feels like I completely missed it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know plenty about PageRank, honest. The problem is that Toolbar PageRank has almost zero resemblance to true PageRank. Google isn't using toolbar PR to determine crawling, crawl budget or anything else. And even Google's team says the toolbar data is a bad metric. They only keep it because they know a lot of SEOs would start crying if they got rid of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Page Rank is the great red herring that keeps many SEOs busy with unimportant stuff.

PR doesn't boost your rankings, doesn't give you more traffic, doesn't convert prospects to buyers... and yet so many people obsess over it.

Unless you sell links to people who don't have a clue, PR is useless. And if you are selling these kinds of links, you're probably a spammer, not an SEO.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. It's become nothing more than another line item to point to clients (or to the C-suite if you're in-house) to say how much progress an SEO campaign has supposedly made. But that's important to a lot of folks, particularly clients who're trying to measure the ROI of SEO efforts in the same manner as their paid program(s). Finding out it has little importance for them would be like finding out Santa Claus isn't real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only rank I care about is what our ordinal placement is for a given search term. This can be automated.

<comment><USER2> Too bad that automatic rank checking is not allowed per Google ToS.

<comment><USER6> Good to know, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm confused. He says PageRank is useless but then go on to compare it favorably to toolbar PageRank?

What does 50% useless mean?

</comment><comment><USER8> I agree with everything in this blog post but I won't be sharing it with anyone. I want to educate people, not berate them - can anyone recommend a similar post, but friendlier?

</comment><comment><USER9> >If you never use the phrases people use to find your products, though, you're still not going to get found.

Do people still think like this? Like it's 1997 and you have to find the right keywords to rank high? What exactly is the purpose of SEO anyway? It's not like cat-v.org uses SEO and that information comes up fine. If you're trying to advertise for a business instead of showing content then you can just... buy ads. Is it for bloggers trying to get pageviews?</comment>


Yahoo The Failure: Myth Versus Reality - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/080620-094239.php <comment><USER2> This guy doesn't understand the market. It doesn't matter if Microsoft will do a better job managing Yahoo. It doesn't matter if Microsoft sucks compared to Yahoo. It doesn't matter if Yahoo has "fantastic properties".

The only thing that matters is, was Microsoft's offer, on a per-share basis, better than what Yahoo is likely to do on its own?

The answer, despite "fantastic properties", is "probably no". Yahoo is not getting better compared to Google.</comment>


Astronomers Despair as Starlink Train Ruins Observation of Nearby Galaxies - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/11/18/this-is-not-coolastronomers-despair-as-spacex-starlink-train-ruins-observation-of-nearby-galaxies/#4601f3666538 <comment><USER2> > if we're going to go into a future where you end up losing 30 to 60 minutes, > that would be a significant chunk of our observing time through the night

As this comment implies, the worst case impact to astronomy is only going to be about 30 to 60 minutes lost per night right after dusk and before dawn. There will still be uninterrupted viewing time in the middle of the night because the satellites will be in Earth's shadow and not visible at all.

Personally, I think the benefit of truly global broadband internet from space is worth the cost of an hour of observing time per night. Even in the worst case, ground based astronomy can still happen. "Despair" is not warranted.

On a related note, I made a website to predict when the Starlink satellites will be visible for you. They look pretty cool if you can catch them, but viewing opportunities are limited because of that limited time window before they enter Earth's shadow. [https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink-201...](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink-2019-11)

<comment><USER3> > Personally, I think the benefit of truly global broadband internet from > space is worth the cost of an hour of observing time per night.

SpaceX isn't the going to be the last company or nation state to put up a network of satellites like this.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any reason to believe that additional satellites would alter the geometry of the Earth so that they would be visible for longer after sunset?

<comment><USER5> would larger objects, or ones at a larger orbit be visible longer?

admittedly, i dont know much about space stuffs. :)

<comment><USER6> at a higher orbit their brightness will be less, but they will be illuminated longer and visible from more of the planet. Assuming a constant average reflectivity, larger objects will be more visible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand that the astronomers are disappointed, but isn't that because the period we are in right now is immediately before it becomes 10x cheaper to launch telescopes into space? Won't it be so much better to observe directly from space as opposed to from the earth?

Can anyone comment on this?

<comment><USER8> How much do you think all the sunk infrastructure costs of existing telescopes cost, and how many years did it take to build them?

The bigger telescopes today have primary reflectors that are _vastly_ bigger than the James Webb Space Telescope: for example the Large Binocular Telescope with its 8.4 metre mirrors, or the Extremely Large Telescope (currently under construction: first light due in 2024) with its 39.2 metre segmented priary. Even the segmented designs weigh hundreds of tons; these instruments are too big and heavy to put in orbit even with SpaceX's Superheavy/Starship.

If the light pollution from Starlink can't be mitigated, it'll be necessary to replace dozens of hundred million dollar to billion dollar instruments which took years or decades to build, at a post potentially greater than the entire consat cluster.

<comment><USER9> What's more important? Global internet access for the rest of the world population or a few dozen telescopes? Imo internet access is going to have immediate positive impact for billions of global disconnected poor.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure I could make better use of your home by demolishing it and erecting a homeless hostel. Isn't that more important than your prior claim to live there?

(This is a m-e-t-a-p-h-o-r, not a literal proposal, but what Starlink is doing to astronomy on a global scale is pretty much equivalent. The onus should be on Starlink to (a) not do that, or (b) pay for complete relocation or replacement of the telescopes they've just wrecked. Yes, that's a lot of money. Boo hoo ...)

<comment><USER10> > The onus should be on Starlink to (a) not do that

Why? Astronomers have no more claim to ownership of the sky than Starlink does.

<comment><USER11> Astronomers are not changing anything IN the sky, Starlink does?

<comment><USER10> The sky changes all the time. Astronomers are observers, and it seems the onus should be on the observer to change the way they interpret the observation if the observable changes. We didn't kill radio stations (or microwave ovens) to make sure that radio telescopes can do their jobs [[https://xkcd.com/2226/](https://xkcd.com/2226/)].

<comment><USER11> Isn't there a "security-zone" around the large radio-telescopes where usage of most electronic devices is forbidden?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So I'm confused, because according to [https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink- is-a-...](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-is-a-very- big-deal/)

"Based on the Starlink website, that all satellites will be deployed below 600km. In this case, satellites may be visible during twilight but not after nightfall, greatly reducing the potential impact to astronomy."

Can anybody verify this?

<comment><USER10> It's the physics of the arrangement of satellite, sun, and Earth. The satellites are only visible due to reflected sunlight, and they're flying quite low for satellites, i.e. near to Earth. The nearer an orbital object is to Earth, the larger percentage of the arc of its orbit is occluded by the Earth's shadow.

Given their close proximity to Earth, they can reflect sunlight at dawn and dusk (when the sun is shining "along" the surface relative to the observer) but when an observer is in nighttime (i.e. within Earth's shadow), Earth blocks the path of light to reflect off the satellites and they won't shine. Hypothetically, they could still pass in front of distant objects and occlude them, but I'm assuming based on the way the problem is described that flooding a telescope with reflected light is more of a problem than occluding a distant object for a few moments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Laws to protect astronomy? Really? Talk about the strong needs of the few outweighing the weak-moderate needs of the many. If I was an astronomer I would be pissed, but let's have some perspective here: vastly more people are going to be helped by this than hurt.

Moreover, this sky pollution has already happened with light and eventually will become a problem with satellites. There's just no stopping it and we should recognize that things change, sometimes for better or for worse. But mostly, better for some and worse for others.

</comment><comment><USER14> I worry about the precedents being created. There is little in the way of other companies or governments adding more to Earth's orbit. Eventually there could be enough objects there that one single incident could cause a chain reaction and blanket Earth on debris making launches dangerous or impossible.

<comment><USER15> All the SpaceX satellites are in LEO, low enough that even in the absolute worst case scenario (which, FWIW, is not realistic), they will all de-orbit in a couple years.

<comment><USER16> That is technically true for this batch of satellites. However at the next shell out that they're planning on using (1150km) it can take a really long time for an orbit to decay (decades or centuries depending on the size of the thing). There's still radioactive crap in orbit from Soviet satellites that were orbiting at 900km more than 40 years ago.

<comment><USER17> All of these automatically fly themselves to destruction. So we are really only talking about a few defect ones.

Once we are launch 1000s of satellites we are defiantly going to have servicing satellites out there. Refueling, orbital maneuvers and so on.

Even in the worst case, decades is still not that crazy. The locations are known and can be avoid.

This is a problem, but really not any kind of gigantic issue that should stop progress.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Light pollution is probably a bigger problem, except on the tallest mountains, or ironically, in orbit.

These astronomers seem to be obsessed with one guy, when there are way more than just his satellites up there. It makes me think it's more of a lobbying effort than a clear-sky thing.

</comment><comment><USER19> The noise looks very predictable, should be super simple to filter out

<comment><USER20> Super simple == many people-centuries sapped from funding-strapped research.

Furthermore, astronomy is just entering a paradigm where the entire sky can be imaged multiple times per night with great optical depth. Transients are going to be the next frontier, and that is precisely what these constellations will create. A few lost satellites with improperly-documented orbits can fake optical transients.

Furthermore, radio astronomers have moved to the outback of Australia to get away from rare radio transients. A zoo of satellites is precisely something they don't need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Once we have that man things in space we will have the launch capacity to launch gigantic/multi satellite space overvaluation platform for gravitational and 'normal' astronomy. Astronmy will benefit from this overall.

And what the alternative, for the rest of time not using this capability?

I understand that they are sad, but since this doesn't even effect the majority of astronomers, I really think this is kind of a non-issue.

<comment><USER20> It will affect the majority of earth-based astronomers -- science these days comes from the concordance of experiments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm extremely pro-space research, but if I had to weigh the benefits of some astronomers observations being obscured sometimes versus getting hundreds of millions of people onto the internet, I think the choice is pretty clear.

<comment><USER22> there are other ways to deliver internet

<comment><USER10> there are other ways to do astronomy

<comment><USER22> from Earth there's only one way: telescopes

<comment><USER10> Starlink hasn't rendered telescopes inoperative, nor will it. They still work for 99+% of viewing time, and the satellites in question are invisible on most of the radiation band telescopes can operate on.

This is a tempest in a teapot complaint. Ground-based telescopes already need to account for the existence of satellites, airplanes, birds, the ISS, etc. The Starlink constellation is just increasing the number of the things; it's not changing the nature of the challenge.

Or would you recommend we ban microwave ovens because they deliver noise near the radio spectra we use for Internet communication?

<comment><USER20> Banning microwave ovens (and RF transmission in general) is precisely what is done near radio-astronomy sites (see Green Bank, the SKA, etc.)

<comment><USER10> ... but not throughout the whole town housing the telescope.

<comment><USER20> Including the town housing the telescope: [https://greenbankobservatory.org/the-land-where-the- internet...](https://greenbankobservatory.org/the-land-where-the-internet- ends/)

<comment><USER10> Do you propose to pass laws to turn the world into Green Bank, W.Va?

Because I, for one, kinda enjoy being able to have the conversation we're having right now.

<comment><USER20> We are having this conversation now without significantly impeding the work of astronomers.

<comment><USER21> Is there anything that trumps the needs of astronomers in your book? If we could go to 100% carbon free energy, but severely reduce ground based astronomical observations, would you be against that?

<comment><USER20> Astronomers are way behind on this -- it has never been a problem before -- but launching a huge constellation of satellites _before_ considering the potentially irreversible impact on a branch of science seems unwise to me.

Global internet sounds awesome, and has undeniable benefit to humankind. Uncoordinated launches of large constellations will have some detriment to humankind. The thing I'd like to see is a clear-eyed assessment of the impacts and mitigation strategies _before_ there are billions more in sunk costs deployed in launching these constellations. Once they're up, they're up, and large companies will lose huge if the constellations have to come back down.

Motorola's bankruptcy came from insufficient monetization of Iridium. SpaceX will be in the same boat, if they aren't already.

I'm an experimental physicist, not an astronomer. Limiting systematic uncertainty is what I do all day. When I see these constellations, what I see is a zoo of uncontrolled systematics and a shrinking opportunity to address them before they become permanent.

As someone who looks at the stars, I want generations in the future to look at the stars and have their imaginations captured by distant pinpricks of burning hydrogen, not a visual screen of our own construction. Our children's understanding of our place in the universe may depend upon it.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, nothing about the SpaceX constellation is going to make the visible pinpricks of burning hydrogen go away. They orbit too close to the Earth to be visible at night in most of the sky.

How much astronomy relies upon sunrise / sunset observation windows?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Could something like Starship carry a large mirror?

Or could it ever be feasible to manufacture a large mirror on the moon, if a large enough one can't be flown?

</comment><comment><USER24> Starlink is the way SpaceX is funding exploration to Mars. Please stop complaining about your minor inconvenience. Someone in the government might listen and cause needless regulation halting space exploration progress.

</comment><comment><USER22> the view of the night sky is about to be destroyed by companies

<comment><USER10> Not really. The satellites will be too small to see unaided in general, and their proximity to Earth means that outside of twilight hours, they're generally invisible.

(Also, "destroyed" is a matter of perspective. I think it'd look kind of cool if every twilight you could look up and see a web of satellites drifting quietly overhead ;) ).

<comment><USER22> no that would not be cool. Not at all

<comment><USER10> Difference of opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What SpaceX should do is equip every satellite with a camera and lens specialized for astrophotography pointed away from Earth to the sky. Then give every one of them a unique ip address and interface that astronomers and anyone else can connect to and take pictures and videos. Some of them could even get equipped with bigger telescopes.

<comment><USER26> The telescope in the OP whose observations were interrupted has a 4m primary mirror. Hubble has a 2.4m primary mirror.

The optical corrector lens -- just the corrector lens alone -- that is part of the camera instrument of OP has a diameter of 1m, with a mass of about 200kg. ([https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/the-des- project/instrument/](https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/the-des- project/instrument/)). The entire Starlink satellite mass is 227kg.

I don't think SpaceX is going to be putting instruments of this class on its satellites.

<comment><USER25> That is not what I am suggesting either. Smaller telescopes and cameras but on every satellite which can then be combined computationally as well. Tons of possibilities. Of course, like I said, they could also equip some of them with more powerful and larger hardware. But the smaller ones would already provide lots of capabilities for very little extra cost relatively.

<comment><USER26> OK, but that's not addressing the problem raised in the OP.

Dedicated CubeSats have largely filled the smallsat niche. I would expect the Starlink mass has been carefully optimized already.

There _are_ interesting mission concepts (telescope + star shade; NEO detection [1]) that are in the works with dedicated CubeSat constellations, but yoking them to another spacecraft bus with its own constraints doesn't sound likely to succeed.

[1] [https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2017/07/aa29809-...](https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2017/07/aa29809-16/aa29809-16.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to fund basic research? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Government funding.</comment>


Data on PyCon 2014 job fair participants and their positions on remote work. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/briandailey/pycon-2014-job-fair

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for making this, it is very interesting.</comment></comment>


Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-48199375 <comment><USER2> I get that is part of bitcoin, not the protocol failing, personal irresponsibility etc etc.

But I'm seeing less and less a justification for the deliberate lack of security in the bitcoin world. So a hack like this happens. Regardless of how it happened or who's to blame, why continue to tolerate bitcoin? What is it giving you that's worth the enormous mountain of precaution that you need to take to secure yourself?

<comment><USER3> Little bit of a preface; I dislike bitcoin because of scaling reasons and reasons due to power consumption per transaction. So don't assume I'm a supporter.

That said, how is this different from having physical cash in a bank, or a digital ledger that pushes money elsewhere and is only caught much later.

The answer is only that it's an immature global system, there's no (current) list of black market coins, which is entirely possible to create- meaning hacked bitcoins would not re-enter circulation and the value diminishes wildly.

The effect you're seeing currently is due to an immature currency market which has never been held to the same standard as our fiat currency market. It also hasn't been battle tested over hundreds of years. Of course it is deficient.

I'm not excusing them, I wish that people with little to no security chops would not be involved in financial matters, but a lot of these companies sprung up out of hobby projects many years ago and one could argue that the industry they're in has changed around them. It's not as big a deal if someone steals 4000 bitcoins if they're worth 20c each.

<comment><USER4> The difference is that I have physical cash in the bank and the bank is robbed, I don't even have to really think about the financial impact of the news: even if the bills I deposited are stolen, I can walk in to another branch of the bank the same day and still access the funds.

Bitcoin in its current form can't have a useful "black market list", because that list has to be generated somehow. Do you make a central authority in charge of list management? Or do you trust some fraction of the population to "vouch" that coins are bad? All the options would either open the door to immediate abuse or require a central authority that doesn't exist.

Regarding the immaturity of the projects: your comment isn't really a response to the parent commenter. I agree that many bitcoin companies today started as hobbits projects. But why should we tolerate that they're operating in an industry which can so easily lose millions of dollars for users, but operating with the security guarantees of hobbyists running a hobby webpage?

<comment><USER5> _The difference is that I have physical cash in the bank and the bank is robbed_

This may seem pedantic, but no! You certainly don't have physical cash at your bank.

Only a miniscule percentage of monetary reserves are in physical form and a bank is not obliged (as a matter of fact it would be rather counter productive) to store physical cash on customer deposits.

<comment><USER6> It goes even further than that: a bank is unable to have such cash, since it lends out money multiple times (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional- reserve_banking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking)).

So even if all central bank money would be printed in bills and coins, and would be distributed to banks, that still would be only a small percentage of the numbers on everyone's bank account.

This means that those numbers on your bank account are not "money you have now", it is "money you will have in some future, when everyone pays back their loans".

So that is what they mean with a "bank run". Everyone wants their money NOW, but that is impossible, since most of the money is lended out.

So to the parent poster, even if there is no robbery, you will have a serious problem when everybody wants their money NOW. See what happened in Greece some years ago, where nobody was able to withdraw more than 50 euro's per day, since the banks had a crisis.

Thinking the money on your bank account is yours NOW is just an illusion.

<comment><USER6> Since people are downvoting, let me explain with an example to make things clear:

Fractional-reserve banking is the common practice by commercial banks of accepting deposits, and making loans or investments, while holding reserves at least equal to a fraction of the bank's deposit liabilities.

Let's say we have a 5% reserve, which is realistic if you look at EU and US. Let's say there is a new bank, and you deposit 100 euro's at that bank.

I go there to lend out $95, which is allowed because the bank keeps $5. You have a nice shop, and I buy something for $95.

You deposit this $95 at the bank, which they can lend out again keeping a 5% fraction. I go there and lend out $90, buy something at your shop, and you again deposit this at the bank. We do the same with $85 and $80.

So you now have an account with 100 + 95 + 90 + 85 + 80 = $450. Nice! Now you go to that bank and request that money in cash.... oops.

Seems weird, but this is actually how it works. Look it up if you don't believe me: fractional reserve banking!!!

<comment><USER7> I suspect you're getting downvotes not out of disbelief but because most educated people in the developed world are already well familiar with the concept of fractional reserve banking. (For myself, it was covered in my 12th grade AP economics class) Your rather long comment doesn't contain any new information for the majority of readers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All questions of its own merits aside, how is Bitcoin still worth anything at all after so many hacks? Isn't a large part of value the security to know that you'll actually be able to realize it?

<comment><USER9> How is the USD still worth anything with the incredible amount that has been printed? The fed chair himself said we can just print more money if we need it. [2] No other country can do that without going into hyperinflation.

"$12 billion in U.S. currency was transported from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad in April 2003 and June 2004, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. A Vanity Fair magazine report concluded that of this sum, "at least $9 billion has gone missing"" [1]

$12 Billion in cash!!

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6vi528gseA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6vi528gseA)

<comment><USER10> It's still worth something because the federal government says it's worth something. That's what a fiat currency is.

<comment><USER11> That's not at all how it works. Zimbabwe and Venezuela's federal governments claimed their currencies were worth something until they were blue in the face.

It's worth something because the _people using it_ feel it's worth something, and that's true for non-fiat currencies as well. Bitcoin and gold are non- fiat, but still heavily depend on demand to determine their value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ah, "hackers", of course.

<comment> village-idiot It doesn't help that the Binance founder was shouting about FUD on twitter before announcing the hack.

<comment><USER13> What does FUD mean?

<comment><USER14> > FUD is an acronym for fear, uncertainty and doubt. It is a marketing term > that is often used to cast a shadow over a competitor's product when your > own is unable to compete. FUD is a technique used by larger companies who > have a large market share. The FUD acronym was first freely defined by Gene > Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp, with this > statement: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people > instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl > products."

[https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/FUD.html](https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/FUD.html)

<comment><USER15> The term became widely known among Internet techies a bit later: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt#M...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt#Microsoft)

(I think this is an important period to understand. History repeats.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They were even thinking about requesting blockchain rollback (that possibly means making fork and paying to miners to follow that fork instead). If that would pass, that would really doom bitcoin as is.

<comment><USER17> Rollbacks can be considered for shitcoins, in Bitcoin it is nearly impossible and very unrealistic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hacks like that could be avoided if people would use decentralized exchanges and other DeFi dApps. The goal of the whole blockchain movement is to have no single point of failure. Luckily there is a whole suite of so-called decentralized blockchain applications coming out and building the next level of infrastructure for finance. This is a great newsletter to stay up to date on the latest decentralized applications: [http://tokenvalley.substack.com](http://tokenvalley.substack.com)

<comment><USER19> The goal of, like, 20% of the blockchain movement is to have no single point of failure.

30% wish to avoid restrictions on the movement of money, 50% see it as money- making operation.

<comment><USER20> Binance is going decentralized imminently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Explain to me as if I was your 50 years old parent: "What is that Bitcoin money and why I should use it if that 'exchange' thingy can loose it and they won't recover it back? I know my current bank will recover all my money if they get robbed."

Take for granted that I (your 50 years old parent) have near zero knowledge about technology and I just won't use my own wallet and what not.

<comment><USER22> Based on my own parents, I wouldn't want you within 100 feet of bitcoin. I would also wouldn't want you being able to use a credit card online. I'm not sure why they are so against learning anything about technology yet so capable of learning new things not related to technology.

<comment><USER23> Mass adoption soon, yeah?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It looks like the market is still able to tolerate such large hack [https://www.coingecko.com/en](https://www.coingecko.com/en) price of all cryptocurrencies appear normal

Who remember how big of a blow it was during mtgox incident. People forget...

<comment><USER25> From wikipedia

>Mt. Gox announced that approximately 850,000 bitcoins belonging to customers and the company were missing and likely stolen, an amount valued at more than $450 million at the time.

This hack pales in comparison to the MT Gox incident. Partly because Bitcoin exchanges are more professional now, have decent security, insurance funds and real commitments. But it's also because this hack is actually relatively small.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > "Cyber-insurance is a common necessity today as identify theft, malware and > cyber-attacks are frequently being performed against high-value blockchain > and crypto-currency companies."

Except they're not banks, and not intended to store your funds long-term.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cue a dozen bitcoin apologists explaining how "bitcoin _the protocol_ is actually extremely secure, it just so happens that every third person involved with implementing bitcoin-the-actual-token is either a crook or incompetent or an incompetent crook."

<comment> rich-tea Name a technology that isn't susceptible to crooks or incompetence. Bitcoin isn't worse than anything else in that respect.

<comment><USER26> It's pretty obviously worse in practice as massive heists like this are vanishingly rare except in blockchain token land.

<comment> rich-tea Really?

[https://news.google.com/search?q=Theft+stolen+-bitcoin](https://news.google.com/search?q=Theft+stolen+-bitcoin)

<comment><USER26> You can equivocate all you'd like, but the reality is that having your cash stolen from the bank is a non-issue while having your bitcoin lost or stolen is pretty much an inevitability without careful OpSec. Your disingenuous link to a google search for "theft+stolen - bitcoin" reflects poorly on your argumentation skills.

<comment> rich-tea How is it disingenuous? You said that heists were "vanishingly rare" outside of Bitcoin.

As it happens, your cash in the bank is being slowly devalued via inflation as the banks are constantly making new money in the form of loans.

Bitcoin being the way it is is a feature, not a bug. If you don't get it, that's fine, but don't make ridiculous claims like only bitcoin is susceptible to crime and incompetence.

<comment><USER26> > _How is it disingenuous? You said that heists were "vanishingly rare" > outside of Bitcoin._

It's disingenuous because what I actually said was:

" _MASSIVE HEIGHTS LIKE THIS_ are vanishingly rare except in blockchain token land."

Emphasis added to highlight your deliberate misreading of what I wrote.

<comment> rich-tea Oh, so your point is that bitcoin-specific problems aren't a problem outside of Bitcoin. Gotcha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> village-idiot The interesting thing about bitcoin exchanges is that the exchange effectively has a position in the market too, unlike traditional exchanges like the NYSE. They have to buy bitcoin from other exchanges, and if they get hacked they can lose it permanently.

Edit because I'm throttled and can't reply anymore: the "buying from other exchanges" is really not the lynchpin of my argument. The point is that these exchanges hold inventory and are vulnerable to bank runs and theft makes them much less stable than traditional exchanges.

<comment><USER27> That's not accurate. They don't buy bitcoin from other exchanges.

Why would it be any different to traditional exchanges?

They hold funds on behalf of customers, and if they get hacked they can lose it permanently, that's true. But it doesn't mean the exchange itself needs to have a position in the market.

<comment> village-idiot So .... where does an exchange get all the bitcoin they hold?

<comment><USER27> ...from the customers

<comment><USER28> He's kinda right. Many exchanges use other exchanges to provide liquidity on their exchange, either directly or through users who perform arbitrage. That's how bitfinex started for example, they partnered with Bistamp and used their book to fill in theirs. Nowadays, it can happen with DEX'es on the protocol level too - eg, Kyber Network taps into the liquidity provided by Uniswap (hey, keyber is a liquidity network after all. Disclosure: don't own any Kyber tokens)

<comment><USER27> The claim under dispute is:

> the exchange effectively has a position in the market too, unlike > traditional exchanges like the NYSE. They have to buy bitcoin from other > exchanges

Exchanges _don 't_ have to buy bitcoin from other exchanges, and exchanges _don 't_ necessarily have a position in the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Binance did a ICO raising $15 million. Their coins are now worth $3 billion.

I find it surprising is that coin price is down just 4%.</comment>


Office Hours with Daniel Gross [video] - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/office-hours-with-daniel-gross/ <comment><USER2> Show HN: Anyone want to create a transcript of this video with me? I've been working on a crowd-sourced transcription bot that operates on the Facebook Messenger platform. The end result is something like this: [https://presentio.us/t/bbc666](https://presentio.us/t/bbc666)

Edit: Send me an e-mail and I can tell you how to participate: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Enjoyed the conversation, very articulate and thoughtful. I think the reason that start-ups don't like talking to customers can be summed up to the famous line from Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

The same goes for Steve Jobs: "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

One question that I have for Daniel Gross is: Could you have build your start- up in Israel?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone that submitted questions!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13419174)</comment>


SourceForge changes its name to Geeknet - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/SourceForge-Inc-changes-its-name-to-Geeknet-854336.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps this should say "SourceForge _Inc._ changes its name", since the only implication here is that the company is changing its name. The SourceForge web site that it owns, doesn't seem to be changing.

</comment><comment><USER3> well, at least it's not a recursive acronym.</comment>


X^2 is the sum of three periodic functions - <AUTHOR> http://gotmath.com/?p=760 <comment><AUTHOR> I hesitate to say this, but ...

If you think this belongs on the front page of HN then you need to up-vote it. Any moment now it will trigger the flame-war detector, get a penalty in the ranking score, and disappear without trace. Anything with 40 comments and fewer points than comments gets such a penalty, and while it's a good proxy for flame-war detection, is does get quite a lot of false positives.

If you want this to avoid that fate, you need to up-vote it. If you don't really care, then that's fine. I think it's interesting, but not everyone does.

 _Added in edit - something has giving this item a penalty[0] - maybe there are people who 've flagged it as inappropriate. Certainly it doesn't seem to have tripped the "flame-war" detector, but who can tell._

[0] [http://hnrankings.info/7056295/](http://hnrankings.info/7056295/)

<comment><USER2> > Anything with 40 comments and fewer points than comments gets such a > penalty, and while it's a good proxy for flame-war detection

Is this really true? There's a strong implication there that the typical HN account is more likely to upvote an article than to comment on one. I upvote comments all the time, and comment frequently, but I almost never upvote articles (though I did find this one to be a great mix of interestingness with accessibility).

<comment><AUTHOR> See the section "Controversy" in this article:

[http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking- really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really- works.html)

Discussed at length here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854)

One side-effect is that it's starting to stifle genuine discussion, as people decline to comment/reply for fear of an interesting item getting penalized off the front page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > It is clear that a non-constant polynomial cannot be expressed as a finite > sum of continuous periodic functions,

But it _can_ be expressed as an _infinite_ sum of continuous periodic functions, right? I seem to remember that you could use all the sine functions as bases for the vector space of functions and (almost?) any function could be expressed as an infinite sum of sines.

It's been a while since I've thought about these things, is that recollection correct?

<comment><USER4> Yes, but only on a finite open interval, that is (a, b) with a, b real numbers.

In the post the sum of periodic functions is equal to x^2 on the whole real line. This is impossible with sums of continuous periodic functions, such as Fourier series, because continuous periodic functions are bounded, while x^2 is unbounded.

<comment><USER5> > This is impossible with sums of continuous periodic functions, such as > Fourier series, because continuous periodic functions are bounded, while x^2 > is unbounded.

But infinite sums of continuous periodic functions are not necessarily bounded: sin(x) + sin(x/2) + sin(x/4) + ... is an example. So there has to be something else to the proof.

<comment><USER4> You are right, but I was referring to either finite sums or Fourier series, your example is not one because sum of the squares of the coefficients is infinite. I don't know what can be said about arbitrary countable/uncountable sums of continuous periodic functions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the thing which is defeating my intuition here is the continuity issue.

"If a periodic function is continuous and nonconstant, then it has a least period, and all other periods are positive integer multiples of the least period."

I think my naive intuition is modelling "periodic function" as "continuous and periodic". Basically, I'm not exercising the the full freedom of the "it's periodic" concept.

There's a good Feynman anecdote on this (from Surely You're Joking...):

\</comment><comment>

"I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I'm trying to understand: I keep making up examples.

For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and they're all excited. As they're telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball)-- disjoint (two balls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on.

Finally they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn't true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say "False!" [and] point out my counterexample."

\</comment><comment>

So I think it's useful to consider the _most extreme_ thing which meets your criteria, instead of a "representative" example.

To come back to tech I think a similar mindset is also useful for things like system failure mode analysis. "Yes, but what if _that_ switch dies at the same time...?"

<comment><USER7> The Axiom of Choice defeats all intuition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's very interesting but why isn't there any practical example? What are the equations of three periodic functions that would add up to y = x^2 for instance?

How would one even construct those three equations? If I'm not mistaken TFA demonstrates that these functions exist, not how to find them.

I wish I hadn't stopped with maths in high school...

<comment><USER9> Brief answer: the author invokes the Axiom of Choice, so the three equations will be _really_ screwball and there will be no way to write them down explicitly.

This is, in some sense, regarded as cheating. (The Axiom of Choice is generally accepted as a legitimate mathematical axiom, but not universally.)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It was when the article introduced "Lebesgue measurable periodic functions" without any explanation whatsoever that I realized that I was not going to understand this article at all (at least not without spending a day on Wikipedia).

</comment><comment><USER11> Can someone who understands this please make a graph? Pics or it didn't happen.

<comment><USER12> Disclosure: the full article is a joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do you say that?

Disclosure - the article is not a joke, but exploits the fact that when you think you have a definition that captures some intuitive concept, sometimes it allows things you didn't expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Heads up: In section "A polynomial of degree n is the sum of n+1 periodic functions" it says 'cdots' in two formulas. (Probably a backslash missing in the TeX(?) source.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Fun fact about considering R as a vector space over Q: the Hamel basis A mentioned in the post is not only infinite, but even uncountable.

<comment><USER15> I can see now why some mathematicians would like to do without axiom of choice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Consider the product of two sets, A and B:

      A x B = { (a,b): a in A, b in B }

Pretty obviously if A and B are both non-empty, the product is non-empty.

The axiom of choice says that this is still true even when you take the product of infinitely many sets. Without the axiom of choice, the product of infinitely many non-empty sets could be empty.

Is that a better choice?

<comment><USER15> Infinty is unreal. Any formal intuition we build around it is free to choose. If you can imagine base of R then surely you can imagine infinite number of nonempty sets that have empty cartesian product. They might all be not empty but be sort of asymptotically empty, like probably not empty but with that probabiliy going to zero as number of sets goes to infinity.

The question is, does any good physics come from the axiom of choice?

<comment><AUTHOR>
      > If you can imagine base of R then surely you can
      > imagine infinite number of nonempty sets that have
      > empty cartesian product.

So you think it's OK to have infinitely may sets and not be able to choose one from each of them, even though they're all non-empty? That's a choice you're free to make, of course, but to me it seems more perverse than the alternatives.

      > The question is, does any good physics come from
      > the axiom of choice?

Does it matter? Once you're dealing with uncountable infinities you're already outside physics and pursuing things because they're interesting, not because they have immediate practical implications. Of course, bits of pure math has a tendency to crop up and be useful decades later, and you never know which bits that will be.

<comment><USER7> How do you feel about well ordering the reals? Because the Axiom of Choice gives you that too and so much more. I'm not a zealot one way or another, but don't argue for it based on intuition, it plays both ways.

<comment><AUTHOR> As the old joke goes: We all know that the Axiom of Choice is true, Well- Ordering of the Reals is false, and who knows about Zorn's Lemma.

I use AC when I need it, avoid it when I can do without it, and sometimes look at what it allows versus what it implies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "By repeating this, we find that e^x is the sum of 1 periodic function. But this is absurd."

No, it's not absurd.

e^x is periodic with period 2 Pi I.

Maybe the article was limiting itself to real functions and the existence thereof, but this example raised eyebrows.

<comment><USER17> The first sentence: "A real function is said to be periodic if there exists a real number P > 0 so that f(x+P) = f(x) for all x." Complex numbers aren't mentioned at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another fun (and seemingly nonsensical) thing you can prove if you use the Axiom of Choice:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach- Tarski_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach-Tarski_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER18> What is a neat characteristics of N^2 where N is integer is that its value is the sum of the first N odd integers.

1^2 = 1 2^2 = 1 + 3 = 4 3^2 = 1 + 3 + 5 = 9 4^2 = 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 16 ...

I am wondering if there is a relation of this to the article.

<comment><USER19> Not really. First of all, the article is about real-valued functions while your fact is only interesting for integers. Secondly, the article is about polynomials in general, meaning that the proof still works if you multiply everything by a constant factor and add terms of a lower degree. The reason this matters is that sum(i^k for i from 1 to N) will always be a polynomial of degree (k+1) and the only special thing about your sum in this case (not having a constant factor or lower order tems) is not something tha the proof in the article cares about.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: why no search ranked by how recent articles are? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> You can sort by date and the hnsearch api has many filters you can apply.

[https://www.hnsearch.com/](https://www.hnsearch.com/)

[https://www.hnsearch.com/api](https://www.hnsearch.com/api)</comment>


Python – C++ bindings - <AUTHOR> https://www.hardikp.com/2017/12/30/python-cpp/ <comment><USER2> The most popular system is SWIG (which is mature but imho quite painful to use unless you restrict yourself to C+11) and tries to make C++ bindings for a variety of other languages, not just Python.

Someone finally used an actual compiler to do this — clif, which uses LLVM to export Python bindings. It's still immature, but promising.</comment>


Can a SSD be even faster? With SSD Tweaker might be. - <AUTHOR> http://www.searchforsoft.com/reviews/System-Utilities/SSD-Tweaker-1-9-8-----optimize-your-SSD-usage-45.htm SSD Tweaker has some tricky options to increase the SSD performance. Read the article to see how. <comment><USER2> Search For Soft? Have you guys looked into hiring a designer/changing your name? I'd also invest in hosting static content on a CDN, so it doesn't take forever to load.

This reminds me of some web work I saw in the early 2000's.</comment>


DOM Enlightenment - jarek-foksa http://domenlightenment.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary (since it's not obvious from the title): this is a free e-book about "exploring the relationship between JavaScript and the modern HTML DOM".

From the introduction: " _This book is not an exhaustive reference on DOM scripting or JavaScript. It may, however, be the most exhaustive book written about DOM scripting without the use of a library/framework. The lack of authorship around this topic is not without good reason. Most technical authors are not willing to wrangle this topic because of the differences that exist among legacy browsers and their implementations of the DOM specifications (or lack thereof).

For the purpose of this book (i.e. grokking the concepts), I'm going to sidestep the browser API mess and dying browser discrepancies in an effort to expose the modern DOM. That's right, I'm going to sidestep the ugliness in an effort to focus on the here and now. After all, we have solutions like jQuery to deal with all that browser ugliness, and you should definitely be leveraging something like jQuery when dealing with deprecated browsers._"

</comment><comment><USER2> The DOM ain't all that bad, really. The names for some things are a little verbose, sure, but it's not really difficult to deal with. Especially if you're creating elements to build up a page, from JavaScript, instead of querying existing elements.

I've used it recently to build ponyplace (<http://ponyplace.ajf.me/>), a MLP:FiM-themed chatroom. The only thing I did find to be an issue was the fact that DOM lists returned by getElementsByClassName etc. change to reflect the removal of elements they contain - really bites you if you're trying to remove all elements of a given class.

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> very nice and thanks for contributing what looks like a good resource! I'd be interest to know how you went about organizing the research for this? I've read webkits WebCore source and its pretty enlightening did you go that way or was this really dissecting the agggh incredibly intersting spec docs?

Also as a minor note, I know this a rough draft but have you thought about the code syntax styling? Its not that its bad at all, its just I think it could be more readable with some color differntiation :)

<comment><USER3> I read the specs and tried to bring out the modern key parts with a focus on what I thought a developer should know or be aware of. The reason you don't see much written about this topic is the specs are not easy to read in relationship to each other. What do you suggest for syntax styling?

</comment></comment><comment> why-el This is awesome. Tackling the dom in a comprehensive and library-agnostic way is what I need right now.</comment>


NYC Big Apps 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://nycbigapps.com/challenges/81/

<comment><USER2> Are they really expecting to get quality entries with a Grand Prize of $5k? Seems like it would only make sense if you were planning to build the app anyway.

Why not use the YC model? Accept applications, pick the 10 best ideas/teams, and give them each $10k and 3 months to build the app, in exchange for 5% equity. Have a panel vote after 3 months to award a $50k bonus (additional incentive to make a great app).

<comment><USER3> Well, you can win a little more than $5k.

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/12/nyc-big-apps- version-20.html...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/12/nyc-big-apps- version-20.html#comment-117114379)

"One of the winners [of last year challenge] was a team of 6 who quit their jobs on Wall Street, are in dozens of cities, received millions in VC investment (at a multi-million dollar valuation), are profitable, and recently rang the closing bell on NASDAQ."

I think BigApps compares a little bit with the Google summer of code where you get pay to make something cool and if it's cool enough it turns into a job/business.

The YC model idea sounds interesting, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This was news 2 months ago. You're probably out of time this year, but maybe next year.

<comment><USER5> The submission deadline is January 26th - while it might me tough if you were to start now, together with possible holiday obligations - but it's still possible.</comment></comment>


SourceForge Suspends DevShare Program (3 Members), Looking for Feedback - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/blog/advertising-bundling-community-and-criticism/

<comment><AUTHOR> The DevShare program is the offers-based installer that's been pretty controversial in the open source community and has been discussed here previously (FileZilla bundling with their installer, GIMP Windows leaving SourceForge over it). Today, SourceForge has announced that they are re- evaluating and re-working the program and are suspending it with the current 3 members. In other words, it will remain running with those 3 members (FileZilla and 2 others I'm unsure of) but not accept new members until it's relaunched.

SourceForge also put out a call to folks to report misleading ads on the SourceForge site (fake download buttons, etc) with screenshots to email@example.com so they can address them. These types of ads are the other reason GIMP pulled their Windows builds from SourceForge.

I thought the Hacker News community would be interested in this development.

Full disclosure: I run PortableApps.com, one of the largest projects on SourceForge. We do not participate in the DevShare program (PortableApps.com Format forbids add-on offers in our installer) but do participate in the SourceForge Accelerator Program which shares a percentage of ad revenue with hosters who use the SourceForge download buttons.</comment>