Ask HN: Is now a good time to invest in ETFs? - <AUTHOR> There was a huge drop in all major indices. Is now a good time to invest in exchange traded funds? <comment><USER2> I am careful about giving financial advice to someone asking about timing the market. Things that might be helpful to ask first.

1\. What is it about ETFs that makes you ask the question? Do you know what an ETF is, what it does, and what other financial products are out there that do similar things and how much they cost (fees)?

2\. There are so many resources on the internet. I would say it's good to understand concepts like: Dollar-cost averaging, portfolio diversification, investment horizon, risk aversion. Most introductory investing resources would cover these things.

3\. Think about what your short, medium, and long term cash and liquidity needs are to help determine how much you need/want/can invest. Remember, you can probably sell and get some money back, but it could be at a loss.

In summary, one could argue that it's always a "good" time to invest. The questions I would ask are "in what", "how much", and "how long".

<comment><USER3> This is a perfectly written response, as opposed to an "it's impossible to time the market" canned reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nope, SP 500 is back to what it was in end or 2017 beginning of 2018

1\. Do you really think the economy is as good as it is in 2018?

2\. Do you think we are in the beginning, middle, or end of this outbreak?

3\. Will the virus come back after this summer? This is the big question, and depending on this we either have just a deep but short recession, or an almost depression

Answer those questions and you will know. My take:

1\. I believe we are at the start of a deep recession. The market have been slow to respond/adjust (they haven't yet fully capitulated)

2\. I think NYC is in the middle of the outbreak, while the rest of the country is in the beginning of the outbreak and they are just lagging by 2 weeks and things will get worse

3\. This is unknown, but most scientist believe it will return as soon as the social distancing rules are eased. Best scenario is that when it returns, it is in low enough numbers that it could be contained in a way Taiwan/South Korea did (without shutting down the economy). The worst scenario is that it returns back full force, but mutated and more deadly....

<comment><USER5> If things keep going at the rate they are right now, the market will need to acknowledge that there is a massive pile of bodies by May 1st*

There are two more questions to ask, is this already priced into the current market? And, will our social distancing be enough to change our current trajectory?

*Source: [https://i.imgur.com/YznALHZ.png](https://i.imgur.com/YznALHZ.png)

<comment><USER6> This looks fairly dire, but I do wonder to what extent it may be overfitting? After all the model was created yesterday.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No one can tell you the right answer to this question and anyone who claims they can is just guessing. The market is supposed to reflect the expected future values of the companies, so in theory all the news you know and some you probably don't is reflected in the price. Whether it has overshot or undershot that news is unknown.

</comment><comment><USER8> In the US there are over 2300 ETFs covering major market countries, asset classes, equity exposures, fixed income exposures, factors, thematics like ESG, gaming, MAGA. There are also options-embedded strategies and 2x, 3x and -1x, -2x, and -3x leveraged funds on almost every US sector and major index.

If you have money to invest in for the long run - now is as good a time as any to start building your nest egg.

If you are trying to "time" the markets, it turns out nobody has a crystal ball and nobody can tell you with any degree of certainty that the markets are going to go up or down tomorrow or next month.

If you are considering "betting on America" I would be all in favor. A 130+ year graph of the Dow Jones is generally trending from the bottom-left to the top-right of the chart.

Another thought on timing: many people believed the markets were way- overvalued before this drop. Makes sense... we've been in one of the longest bull runs ever. Now we have a pandemic on our hands - which many people liken to an event like a war where there is complete uncertainty about the future. Jobless claims jumped within a 2 week period to 3+ million - many people thought that would take 4 weeks or more. We're heading to 20 or 30% unemployment in America. We also have one of the largest stimulus packages ($2tr+) about to rain down on us in the form of never before seen monetary stimulus AND helicopter money. We just dont know whats going to happen here. Cheap rates for the last decade has fueled over $7tr in corporate debt. Now companies cash flows have ground to a halt. If we start seeing a growing domino effect of bankruptcies, you can expect this market to drop another 30%. Its a bit of a doomsday scenario - but then again, nobody thought we would be HERE 4 weeks ago - and we are.

Yes, stocks do look cheap - but dont catch a falling knife.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you use Dollar Cost Averaging[1] there is no such thing as a good or bad time to buy ETFs. As long as the market goes up on average, which is has done throughout history, then you will win over a sufficiently long horizon. A popular phrase is "It's not about timing the market, but time in the market".

Make sure you research your ETFs and what they are tracking e.g most of the Vanguard ETFs (e.g. VOO, VTI, BND) are quite reliable but if you are investing (and not day trading) avoid leveraged and inverse/short ETFs such as SPXU and TQQQ. They may seem attractive now but they are based on derivative products so their pricing is subject to a number of factors.

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

<comment><USER10> Dollar cost averaging seems to be more of a psychological strategy than a financial one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging#Criticis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_cost_averaging#Criticism)

<comment><USER11> Putting away a little every month generally gives the best results as the main alternative is 'buying the dip', and good luck with that:

* [https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...](https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whenever you have the money to invest is the best time to invest in ETFs. (assuming passive index funds with a long term horizon and you understand your risk tolerance)

Timing the market for the "best price" is almost impossible.

</comment><comment><USER13> Note: I don't agree to what I'm about to say, I'm just providing an alternative view.

There's a hypothesis that there's a "passive investment" bubble. By some estimates, about 20% of the market is fueled by passive investment strategies and at a certain point, it divorces asset pricing to true fundamentals. I don't know the transmission of this, but it makes sense- just like investors flock to the wrong ZOOM stock to inflate the price of a wrong stock, too many people passively buying ETFs has the downstream effect of people buying too many shares of something that isn't valued properly.

[https://fortune.com/2019/09/14/passive-investing-stock- marke...](https://fortune.com/2019/09/14/passive-investing-stock-market- bubble-etfs/)

</comment><comment><USER14> To keep the market going up, the market needs more buyers than sellers in terms of aggregate dollars. Bogleheads and DCA 'evangelicals' are not going to liquidate their equities; so, they are happy to preach truisms like "you can't time the bottom", "time in the market is better than timing the market", etc.

Market is driven by 30% fundamentals, 70% herd psychology(technicals try to capture some of this). Keep that in mind when you evaluate answers here.

Longs want you to join the market to make their assets safer. Shorts and those who are on the sidelines, want to time the market by half a standard deviation; so, they want you on their side in order to break the price support of any ETFs/indices, etc.

</comment><comment><USER11> Every month is a good time to invest in index funds:

* [https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...](https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/)

Generally if you try to get out to miss the worst days, you generally end up missing the best days as well:

* [https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2019/02/08/miss-the-worst-...](https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2019/02/08/miss-the-worst-days-miss-the-best-days/)

Even if ended up investing at the top of the market, i.e. just before a major crash, you generally still end up in an okay position as long as you do not panic and liquidate your position:

* [https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market...](https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/)

So: each month put in whatever you can afford ($100, $1000, whatever) into an index fund (Russell 3000) and bonds depending on your risk tolerance and forget about it. If you have access to a 'target date fund' that'd be good too.

The above three weblogs are good if you're into personal investing.

Also: for equities, probably best to go with a total market things that track something like the Russell 3000:

* [https://www.pwlcapital.com/should-you-invest-in-the-sp-500-i...](https://www.pwlcapital.com/should-you-invest-in-the-sp-500-index/)

* [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/vanguard-thinks-its-own-em...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/vanguard-thinks-its-own-employees-should-own-this-fund-not-the-sp-500-theyre-right-2018-06-08)

Also, assuming you're American, having some international exposure to avoid _home country bias_ wouldn't be a bad thing:

* [https://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-h...](https://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-home-country-bias-ubiquitous)

* [https://www.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGGEB.pdf](https://www.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGGEB.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> I would say if you're interested in getting into passive investing it also makes sense to get into dollar cost averaging, or in other words invest a fixed amount of money into the stock market at regular intervals.

Passive ETF investing is like saying "I don't have an opinion as to which company will perform the best, so I am going to invest in all of them and be content with getting the average return of some index". Dollar cost averaging is like saying "I don't know if the market is overvalued or undervalued right now, so I am going to spread my investments out over time and be content with getting the average returns of the market over the next X number of years (where X would ideally be something like 20 to 30 years)."

</comment><comment><USER16> And then what? When you invest money, you have to have a purpose. "Making money" is not specific enough. When do you need the money by? For example, if you'd like to invest for retirement, and this assumes you'd make periodic deposits to your account, then it does not matter if you invest today or in a month since you wouldn't sell for (presumably) decades.

</comment><comment><USER17> Which ETF? There are more ETFs than individual stocks [1]. Rather than time the market you are better off, in most cases for most people, just regularly buying broad indexes and periodically rebalancing, see [2]

[1] [https://ssrn.com/abstract=3465888](https://ssrn.com/abstract=3465888) [2] [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads®_investment_philo...](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads®_investment_philosophy)

</comment><comment><USER18> Better than the past ~6mo. I invest a % of my pay no matter the price.

No real answer to this though. You can get ETFs that go against major indices, you can get ones that track it, or many other types.

</comment><comment><USER19> ETFs often have relatively low management fees. If your current fees are high, by all means reallocate!

</comment><comment><USER20> Dollar cost averaging is the right answer.

If you want to attempt to be smart (it rarely pays to try and time the market) I would wait a couple more weeks, end of April is probably when the market will most likely reflect the reality of what our economic outlook is. Trump & the Fed have been doing a good job propping the market up with confident words and cash injections for the last weeks. Again trying to time the market is usually a fools mission.

</comment><comment><USER21> Here's the straight answer, from someone who has made _real_ money investing for the past 15 years: Yes.

</comment><comment><USER22> No! Are you kidding? What is even in there? Also no.</comment>


Ask HN: What is wrong with our startup? - <AUTHOR>

Seriously, what do you see that is wrong with our startup company?
The address is http://www.beepl.com
I highly appreciate any feedback I can get.
Thank you in advance,
Jan Paricka
beepl founder <comment><USER2> If I log in with Twitter then I give you access to post on my behalf. It's not clear to me why you need this and many people will not give access to their Twitter account without a very valid reason.

Second, when I declined to connect via twitter I ended up at an error page "Something wrong! Tokens do not match..."

The "About" link doesn't do anything.

When I go to a question then the footer at the bottom makes me think I'm logged in (given there is a log out link).

Bottom line: good idea but you should clean up some of the bugs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because "it's another fucking twitter site" and it's incomprehensible what you guys actually DO from the home page.

I suppose _"Beepl is a Question and Answer platform powered by the social Web."_ is what you want/need to tell me, but that paragraph is REALLY hard to find on the page. Make it the attention grabber. And rewrite it to tell me how you're different from the 30 other "twitter Q/A" sites on the web. A quick illustrated 3-step guide to how a user interacts on this site would be good too.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's no interesting content. If I were you, I would do a closed beta for a while, with some incentives for the chosen users to populate the site with interesting content, as well as getting lots of feedback and adjusting your site's design and functionality. Then, once you have lots of content, and lots of people beating down the door to participate in the beta, open it up.

<comment><USER5> Whilst you're at it: consider removing all the "test" posts. If you want to post test questions in a public environment, post actual questions, even if you're not at all interested in the answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> * You can write short introduction how it works: Can I post directly from twitter? How can I answer? etc.

* On this Q&A sites: Directly after the question box there should be the answer boxes.

* All links should work (about, press, search(!))

</comment><comment><USER7> I didn't have time to check out much of the actual functionality of the site, but here is some initial feedback:

\- Your website template should be completed correctly. Fix up the information in the footer, i.e. © Copyright 2010 CompanyName

\- On the front page, it looks like the most recent activity is 2 weeks ago, this turns me off right away, consider faking it until you make it.

\- What does the "What's Hot?" link do? It is just a page of random images.

</comment><comment><USER8> I entered a term in the search bar, hit enter, and got an error message...

</comment><comment><USER9> I am not sure what the site is about. Do a quick video explaining the concept of the site. Also make the homepage a landing page that educates me, gives me a preview, but enticed me to join.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, folks! Superb feedback!

</comment><comment><USER10> clickable: <http://www.beepl.com></comment>


Ask HN: What is your Amazon counterfeit story? - <AUTHOR> HN articles about Amazon get  commenters who claim to have recieved counterfeit products from Amazon.
Seeing how rapidly Amazon is growing, I am wondering if there is a business opportunity in fighting these counterfeits.
Would you kindly share your Amazon counterfeit story?
How did you know the product was counterfeit?
Was Amazon itself  the seller or a 3rd party? If a 3rd party, was it fba/prime?
Reference: https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+counterfeit+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com <comment><USER3> I sell an item on Amazon that I make. It's very simple, not wildly popular or profitable, and has my brand on it (trademark is in the works)

Another seller hops on the product page I created, shipping from China. Google around and learn that I'm supposed to do a test buy to see if it's counterfeit.

Do a test buy, wait ~20 days, get a package with a similar item but totally different packaging and branding.

Okay, cool, obviously fake so let's contact seller support and get this straightened out.

Seller support emails the seller(?!) asking them to provide me with a refund, (which surprisingly they do) and take no further action.

I write in to firstname.lastname@example.com, no response.

To this day, he's still selling on Amazon, but seemingly randomly left my product page a few weeks ago.

I'm told once you have a trademark, Amazon actually takes action, but I was also once told that a test buy is all you need. I'm glad I don't depend on Amazon for my income.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not even sure this counts as a scam, but I think it's relevant to what you're looking for.

I found this ([https://www.amazon.com/Conditioner-Evaporative-Circulator- Hu...](https://www.amazon.com/Conditioner-Evaporative-Circulator-Humidifier- Bladeless/dp/B07DB55YHW/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1531371163&sr=8-18&keywords=cooling%20fan%20for%20small%20room)) fan/humidifier and the reviews are all for what looks like a lunchbox.

I assume either the company is listing this new product under a listing that already had good reviews, or that the seller of this product bought this page that already had good reviews. Or it could be a genuine mistake but I think it's suspect.

I didn't actually buy the fan so I can't speak to it's quality.

<comment><USER3> They just hijack pages with good reviews that have been forgotten. Very common tactic and certainly intentional.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Used DVD box set of an early 90s drama series. DVDs were self-burned, unlabeled, cover was a bad inkjet print, and video quality so bad it must have been a VHS rip. Back then the studio hadn't release an official DVD set so any offer must have been fishy.

So a system looking for used offering of things not released yet could work.

Back when ebay was new I bought some signed autographs with certificate of authenticity. Certificates were unsigned and didn't mention what they refer to (thus useless), the photos including signature were copies. Sometimes even the "no permission to reproduce" wasn't removed before copying.

</comment><comment><USER6> I make roughly 150 Amazon purchases a year. The only "counterfeit" (and I use the term loosely) product I've ever gotten was a knock-off electric toothbrush head from a third party seller. It wasn't passed off as being from Oral-B, and it did fit the toothbrush— it just didn't work very well.

I chalked it up to a life lesson. Other than that, never had an issue.

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought a Canon camera battery grip for my Canon 7D DSLR. Normally I buy these kinds of things directly from amazon or other notable sellers to avoid getting scammed, but they were sold out and I had a trip coming up. So I order from what looked like a reputable 3rd-party prime seller. The grip I ordered is the kind that adds, grip, more batteries and additional buttons to your camera, so you can take vertical shots more easily. It was something around $200.

It arrived, and felt like a legit piece of hardware... but after playing with it for a bit. I noticed three things, the blue paint color indicating button functions was slightly different than the ones on my camera, and the patterning on the rubber grips was slightly different than what was on the camera, and the device, although super good quality (that's why I didn't even notice initially) was made of a very tough, heavy plastic, and not the magnesium of the camera body. The box also looked spot on like canon gear. I was faintly suspicious, and started investigating and did a bunch of online searching about things to spot, the proper build materials etc. If I wasn't so picky I think I would have just accepted it. It was indeed a great piece of hardware. It turns out that this was indeed a knock off. A very good one. I ended up informing amazon. They told me they didn't want it back, and sent me a new, legit one. I ended up selling the fake one on ebay, informing the buyers that it wasn't a legit grip, but a very good quality knock off and I made like $100.

When the new legitimate Canon grip arrived, it had the same grip material, same paint, made of magnesium.

So all-in-all I ended up with a legit Canon battery grip for half the price.

</comment><comment><USER8> microsd card, though I should've known better. Thankfully there's plenty of complaints and test programs out there to check. And amazon gave me a refund (something worth noting - generally I've found amazon/ebay great at defending the buyer but the stories usually are with genuine sellers dealing with fakes)

Since then learned to be careful (e.g I don't buy things that seem too cheap to be true, or things I've heard are have high fake chances like cr2032 batteries)

...also Adobe master collection CS6: it was a burned disc and in a printed DVD case and was priced at a point that was hard to tell (several hundred bucks but less than retail, think it had a return policy). Technically the license worked and it did work well for about 4 years. Then one day it didn't - <USER2> my understanding it was some type of educational license laundered into being sold as a regular product. At that point adobe was all SaaS anyway so from that perspective they solved the fake/laundering license problem.

</comment><comment><USER9> I purchased a Nvidia GTX 1080 video card from some 3rd party seller. The price was a bit lower than MSRP but not by much.

It arrived in a high-quality box, and looked good. I was initially suspicious because the video outputs didn't match what was advertised, and I had purchased monitor cables based on the outputs I believed the card would have. But the card itself looked OK to someone who didn't know what to look for.

I posted some pictures to Reddit, and they helped me figure out what was going on:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/5rf36n/simple_que...](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/5rf36n/simple_questions_february_01_2017/dd7qdpm)

I had a really bad time getting Amazon to process the return because it was through a 3rd party.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bought wool pants on Prime from Amazon, a brand I've bought previously on both Amazon and Nordstrom Rack. Got pants where my foot wouldn't fit through the leg like young man's pants. Maybe not counterfeit, just mislabeled?

</comment><comment><USER11> Bought Avent nipples from Amazon. A bit thinner and softer than what we had as slow-flow newborn nipples. Didn't think much about it, but baby would be a lot more fussy when using these nipples. We thought he has just getting used to faster flow.

Finally, gave up and bought same nipples from Target. New nipples feel a lot more like old Slow-Flow nipples. Baby drinks from them just fine.

Amazon has lost me as a customer, will not be renewing Amazon Prime.

</comment><comment><USER12> This happened to my dad. He bought a nice piano and started taking lessons for it. He got really into it and decided to buy a nice piano chair. He ordered one on amazon for around $300. It looked great in the pictures.

But 3 weeks after ordering it, he received a miniature version of it in the mail. It was probably 5 inches tall ... lol. He has stopped buying things online.

</comment><comment><USER13> I probably make 1-2 orders per week for electronics, food, medical supplies. I've never received a counterfeit, ever.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd be interested on a way to rate sellers or detecting red flags of items listed.

<comment><USER15> The problem is commingling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Never had an issue so far, i buy everything for our family on there.

</comment><comment><USER17> Perfume and shampoos for wife.</comment>


Gadgetry v1.3: A functional and fictional device - <AUTHOR> https://gadgetry.wythoff.net/about <comment><USER2> Light grey text on a light green background means this is not readable.</comment>


Thoughts on Man's Purpose in Life (1977) - <AUTHOR> https://govleaders.org/rickover-purpose.htm <comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing this great piece of wisdom! Recently, I read Self- Reliance by Emerson, and its modern "translation" [https://www.youmeworks.com/self_reliance_translated.html](https://www.youmeworks.com/self_reliance_translated.html) and try to base my way of living on that foundation.

As our existence seems ultimately meaningless, and there is no universal compass to drive us through life, it is difficult for people and personally for me to keep deeply motivated about my work and other activities. On the surface, I may be driven by money, work achievements, desire to have a happy family, having fun, but often I find myself facing the deep dark emptiness of lacking a deeply ingrained purpose I would be happy to follow wholeheartedly.

I read an interesting thought from Jordan Peterson that a great purpose is to reduce suffering in the world. It sounds deep and great, but I think it will be hard for many people to connect their day to day activities to this noble meaning.

I sometimes envy of people from previous centuries, when Christianity was strong, and many found their purpose in serving God. God is dead in the Western civilisation now, and it is very hard to fill the void.

<comment><USER3> "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

\- Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125

I too look at the social coercion afforded to religion and envy. The idea of moving almost anywhere and having a weekly community event with like minded people is unparalleled.

<comment><USER4> But Nietzsche probably broke down because of the expectations he imposed on himself. At least that is what I take from how his writing changed over time and the end of his biography.

I like coke and fatty burgers btw... I meant the drink...

<comment><USER3> From my understanding it's hard to know too much about his latter years because while his health was deteriorating his sister took over his estate and started publishing his fragments in an order that supported her antisemitic worldview[0].

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Förster- Nietzsche#Ni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Förster- Nietzsche#Nietzsche_Archive)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _To which he could have added, it takes talent to know that what counts is condemning mediocrity not in others but in ourselves._

This is the money line for me. People who find purpose, who improve themselves to pursue that purpose, are always looking at their failures and asking how they can make themselves better so they can succeed on the next try.

Those who blame others don't get better, they stay where they're at.

This isn't to say that you can't be held back by circumstance or the mistakes of others, just that you yourself won't improve if you focus on the things you can't control.

Finding a trait in yourself that could have allowed you to succeed had it been better developed can be difficult and requires creativity, but there's a lot of purpose to be found in that difficult and creative work.

</comment><comment><USER6> Viktor Frankl[1] was a psychologist who wrote the remarkable book _Man 's Search for Meaning_[2], where he recounted his experience as a prisoner in Auschwitz and noticed that those who survived in such circumstances had a strong sense of meaning.

He explored the question of meaning more fully in his later work, and came to believe that the meaning of your life was a question that life asks of you, and that you answer this question by the choices that you make.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl)

[2] - [https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl- ebo...](https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl- ebook/dp/B009U9S6FI/)

</comment><comment><USER7> " Nothing in the world is the way it oughta be. It's harsh…and cruel…but that's why there's us…champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done, or suffered. Or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be. You're not a part of that yet. I hope you will be. "

\-- Angel, Season 4, Episode 1, "Deep Down"

<comment><USER8> "If nothing we do matters, all that matters is what we do."

</comment></comment><comment> vincent-toups I know its cynical of me, but whenever I see people talking like this, all I can think is how craven and cowardly they are.

The desire for some overarching sense of meaning is motivated by, in my experience, simple fear. Fear and a lack of faith in one's character (which is another kind of fear: what might I do if I didn't have a framework taking control away from me?)

There isn't any final meaning we can pin down, and even if there were such a thing, we pretty clearly are incapable of figuring it out.

There is lots of stuff we'll never understand, both personally and as a species. True wisdom is, in my opinion, transcending the discomfort associated with not knowing.

</comment><comment><USER9> Man's purpose is life's purpose is the universe's purpose which is to increase entropy by extracting free energy from our environment and using it to perform work, and thus generate additional waste heat that radiates into space.

<comment><USER10> That presupposes that this isn't merely a side effect of the existence of the universe, the reason for the existence of which we would be incredibly foolish to believe we can actually ever know, if indeed there is one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "From the physicist's point of view, Man seems to have no function except that of dissipating or degrading energy."

\-- Henry Brooks Adams, _The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma_.

[https://archive.org/details/degradationofdem00adam/page/216](https://archive.org/details/degradationofdem00adam/page/216)

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

Similar thoughts from Aldo Leopold, Howard Odum, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, and many others.

<comment><USER12> That's wrong though. Our function is to reproduce. That is literally the reason life is a thing - and it is opposite of entropy.

<comment><USER13> Reproduction is definitely a net increase in raw entropy. That's what is meant by "dissipating energy", I imagine.

<comment><USER12> Not information entropy

<comment><USER4> It sucks that the intuitive interpretation regarding both applications is completely inverted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are easy to like answers. They sound right. The truth is ugly and not really useful at all in making any decision: there is no purpose. Let me explain my theory as brief and clear as I can.

Humans are not designed to work as individuals but as a whole population. If you judge at the species level it makes the most sense to try and push in every direction available and let natural selection take its course.

Is it better hard working than lazy? You get hungry if you don't go out to hunt but it is better to set up traps than to fight animals hands on, or better yet delegate the work to others. We wouldn't have progress in comfort, security, etc without laziness. Laziness is not bad!

This applies to all qualities in human nature. A balance is better than any extreme of course, but that balance cannot be deduced intellectually, emotionally, morally, legally, etc. You can only try, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", etc. The right balance changes in time and space, it varies from individual to individual.

On top of that there are lessons to be learned from individuals who do take things to extreme.

For me it is clear we are doomed to be drones sacrificed in every direction possible to explore by algorithms deeply embedded in our hardware. Any sense of purpose, any rationalization of why our direction is better - an illusion. An useful illusion ofc. If you don't manage to fool yourself jumping off the bridge is the only option.

</comment><comment> em-bee _man(kind) has been created to carry forward an ever advancing civilization_

this is what i believe, and this is why i am a Free Software advocate, as that is my way of making a (meager) contribution. i believe that humanity is destined to advance as a society and technologically. the technical progress we achieved in the last 150 years is just the beginning. our global society too will progress to the point that we solve all the problems we experience today.

</comment><comment><USER15> My advice is to start from where you are right now.

Are you stressed out? Then try and calm yourself a bit.

What good could you do right now for someone else of for the world? Now go do it.

How did it turn out? Reflect, and make note of what you'd do differently next time.

Repeat.

Fancy philosophical musings can be a huge waste of time if they don't help you perform the steps above. It doesn't matter if we have free will or not, or if we live in a simulation, or if all of life is a dream or any of that bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER16> it seems to me the five principles - responsibility, perseverance, excellence, creativity, courage - are actually surface terms describing deeper motivation, which is our constant drive to improve our "mental model".

in our brain, we have a "mental model" of the world. it is imperfect, yet allows us to make predictions. Our goal is to improve this model (aka simulator, prediction engine) over the time. We seek for indicators which tell us if our mental model is improving or not. One of the indicators is money one our bank account, our praise of some master.

I'd be grateful if anyone of you can point me to some literature which describes the approach I outlined above. I use the expression "improve my mental model", but I guess philosophy is using some other (more established) term.

\---

I am not trying to deal with the question why we actually strive to improve our "mental model" :) though I like the idea that it leads to "less suffering".

</comment><comment><USER17> Why are people so against belief in God and even becoming Christian, if, as people see to believe, Christianity provides great benefit? There seem to be plenty of good reasons to believe in God, at least, and Christianity's track record has many positives along with the negatives. Plus, the historical evidence for the New Testament's reliability is pretty good, if my understanding is correct. I'm not sure what is the hold back:

\- big need: existential despair

\- big solution: Christianity

\- no obstacle: Christianity is intellectually viable in our modern world

UPDATE reply to replies since I'm rate limited on new comments:

I'm saying Christianity fits "Believe only that for which there is evidence, and only for the time that there is evidence"

1\. Good scientific evidence God exists

2\. Good historical and archeological evidence the Bible is accurate

3\. Historical evidence of the tremendous benefits of Christianity (see Rodney Stark), which flow logically from the principles of its founder Jesus, and seemingly more successful than can be explained by human inspiration

I'd say at the very least Christianity holds up much better than the modern mythos of materialism and purposeless evolution. Perhaps don't accept Christianity, then, but certainly don't accept the modern secular narrative which is even worse evidentially speaking. It makes little sense to accept a bad explanation as default because you don't have a good explanation.

In general, I do not see a internally consistent reason based on any modern criteria (enlightenment, postmodernism, positivism, etc.) for the widespread dismissal of theism and Christianity, and the clinging to atheism and extreme secularism.

<comment><USER2> I cannot make myself believe in God, particularly, in God who notices and interferes, and dedicate myself to him; and I think it is the problem for many of us.

Philosophically, Western society moved beyond good and evil, desecrated Christianity, questioned the words of God, and Nietzsche nailed it.

Recently, I read the biography of Rockefeller by Chernow. It was stunning how his strong faith drove and motivated him. He thought he was blessed by God to build his business, he must fulfill this mission, and it justified some questionable actions he did.

<comment><USER17> I'm not talking about some particular conception of God, but there seem to be decent philosophical and scientific reasons to believe that there is a creative agency responsible for our universe. Furthermore, this agency seems to have taken particular care for our wellbeing.

We've got to separate the question of existence from the question of nature. That God exists seems very evident from all we know. What God's nature is is more of a question mark, and we should not let this question mark about nature obviate what we know about existence.

And belief in God is not a panacea, people do horrible things in the name of God, and perhaps even more horrible things in the absence. However, people have done very great things, perhaps the greatest things, in the name of God. So there is that, too.

Also, in regards to your specific purpose you mention in the other thread of eliminating physical suffering, it seems Christianity in particular has done the most throughout history of eliminating physical suffering. Thus, insofar as your goal is to eliminate suffering, Christianity seems to be the most effective platform to do so.

UPDATE to reply to this post, b/c I'm rate limited:

It's one of those struggles you mention :)

At least this one is about resolving ultimate meaning instead of ignoring it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author is known as "Father of the Nuclear Navy", it seems he wrote this towards the end of his career.

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

</comment><comment><USER19> Life is not a subject of thoughts and purpose, our imaginary thoughts and imaginary purposes contained in it.

</comment><comment><USER20> So I've been thinking a lot about this question of what I should do with my life.

It seems like an obvious question to ponder, but I never seriously considered it until I quit my job. I know this because after quitting my job, I had the freedom to pursue a lot of my desires (at least for a little while) and found that everything I pursued did not satisfy me. Not even a little bit.

I thought about it for some time and realized most of my desires were the desires of other people. I had become infected with them and over the years never really stopped to reflect what I wanted.

What are the odds I really wanted to become a physicist like so many others? Or a social worker? Or a wealthy man? These were all lies I told myself because I didn't know what to do.

Everything I pursued was because I saw someone else do it.

But when I stopped to reflect what I wanted to do, I found nothing. No voice, no inner calling. I was blank.

I spent weeks and weeks trying to figure an answer and stumbled upon Robert Greene's "Mastery" which would've been better titled "Man's Search For Meaning".

I had hints of how I should conduct myself, of what I should do to find some sense of purpose, but nobody ever set down the framework quite like Robert Greene did.

Don't be fooled by the title.

Your life's mission is to find your life mission. And then, once found, pursue ever specialized lines of work and skill to capture that primal inclination deep within you.

You can imagine in a sense every brain on the planet is born uniquely suited for capturing or expressing some pattern. You'll feel it as a kind of need. It'll direct your life towards particular interests. But early on you lack the skill to express it properly, in a way that deeply engages you.

With discipline and practice, you can bolster that inclination—you can learn to deeply engage it. And as you do so, you'll cultivate a sense of meaning—you'll be one the edge of what you're capable of doing.

That's where a human likes to reside. On the edge of what they know.

But it takes discipline. It takes time.

Humans are mimetic creatures. We forget about ourselves so easily. You have to be aggressively persistent about the things you love.

And as you learn each skill that captures some inclination, you constantly expand. You learn more and more skills. You never stagnate, because therein lies the path of suffering.

And as you continue to add new skills, you not only increase your odds of success, you begin to cultivate a series of skills no other human has in equal measure. Because they're based off what you like—nobody else on the planet can compete with you there. You stand outside all hierarchies.

But the journey is long, tedious, and sometimes painful. It takes discipline to do the work that'll resonate with your deepest interests. Even Einstein got bored sometimes.

But if you don't do this, if you don't take the time to figure out what you enjoy doing, if you stagnate, you will stain your life with a bitter melancholy. And you'll lament over what could've been and you'll spend the rest of your days in an idle torment.

You must avoid this at all costs.

Move towards your highest calling. Move towards the pain.

You'll find peace waiting on the other side.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is the biggest question in Existence. I don't think I have the right answer in 300K years of Homo Sapiens history.

But I would say:

1\. reproduce, have kids 2\. keep what your ancestors gave you and make it better

Be a doer and a thinker. The Admiral was also right.

<comment><USER10> If these are the purpose of existence, then we have already failed.

1) According to most cosmological models the universe will eventually end.

2) Even if it didn't, the problem with infinity is that anything that can possibly happen will happen, including the extinction of everything ever descended from ourselves.

One is forced to consider that the journey must be more meaningful than the destination.

<comment><USER22> > the problem with infinity is that anything that can possibly happen will > happen.

Not necessarily. There are different cardinalities (sizes) of infinity. Your statement can only be true if the cardinality of time is at least as high as the cardinality of all possible events; I don't know enough math (or physics) to pin either of these down, but it's not obviously true.

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

<comment><USER10> That's an interesting point that, sadly, I also lack the requisite understanding to properly consider.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PHP finally gets finally - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/finally?&#changelog <comment><USER2> This is an exciting step forward for being able to prevent repetitious code and handle exceptions more elegantly. More excitement will be had when we actually see this implemented in an upcoming version.

In case you are wondering why this link goes to the bottom of the page, the important bit is:

 _2012/08/13 Xinchen Hui: Close voting, RFC win the voting_

The RFC is a bit dry and does explain some use cases, however, GoogleGuy (who is a really nice and helpful guy in the ##php channel) provided a wonderful explanation[1] that goes into more detail.

Accepting the RFC is just the first step, let's hope we can see this in the next version.

[1] - <http://sheriframadan.com/2012/08/finally-keyword-in-php/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, it will be, laruence is merging into master. Although whether it is 5.5 or 6.0 remains to be seen.

Also, looks like generators may come to vote soon since NikiC has asked on mailing list about it. <http://wiki.php.net/rfc/generators>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This should have been implemented back in PHP 5.0, when exceptions were first introduced. A try-catch block without finally is only half complete!

But it's great to see half-complete features becoming fully complete, even if a few years late.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main argument against it (that keeps coming up on ML) is destructors and resources cleaning up after themselves. Pretty weak argument though.

<comment><USER4> Yes, considering OOP and exceptions are not dependent on each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always loved the first response to the request to implement finally. It was so delightfully arrogant.

<https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=32100>

By the way, if you scroll down in that page there are two workaround solutions to get the finally behavior on any php5 version.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does it now catch system exceptions as well? Something that drove me away from php that i was not able to catch all errors inside an exception block.

<comment><USER7> I think this has been possible more or less since PHP introduced exceptions by using `set_error_handler`:

<http://php.net/manual/en/function.set-error-handler.php>

along with a function that throws exceptions, e.g.:

function exception_on_error($errnum,$errmsg) { throw new ErrorException($errmsg,$errnum); }

You can't catch _all_ errors (sensibly including compile errors and unhandled exception errors), but it can get you pretty far.

Not that there aren't other reasons not to use PHP, but this one is manageable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it possible to see the reasoning behind the 'no' votes?

<comment><USER9> Short of asking the involved parties, the best you can do is to follow some of the PHP discussions on this topic, such as this one [http://www.mail- email@example.com/msg59731...](http://www.mail- firstname.lastname@example.com/msg59731.html)

The first use-case for finally involved locking database tables, and then unlocking them in the finally clause. It would be pretty bad, if you could not guarantee the unlock would happen. So one would hope that has been properly taken care of :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> PHP has no destructors?

<comment><USER11> Destructors aren't a good way to free resources in a garbage collected language.

<comment><USER12> I have yet to see a language that actually cleans up after itself. Many will attempt to free memory, but what about files, db connections, windows, sockets?

<comment><USER13> Have you heard about Racket's _custodians_? [1] [http://docs.racket- lang.org/reference/eval-model.html#(part....](http://docs.racket- lang.org/reference/eval-model.html#\(part._custodian-model\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> sugoi!

</comment><comment><USER15> Finally.</comment>


Generation F*cked - How Britain is Eating Its Young - <AUTHOR> http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/71/generation-fcked.html

<comment><USER2> Even with all the talk recently about how successive governments have failed the children of Britain, I still haven't heard any reasoned arguments about what can be done to change the situation.

The excessive drinking culture we have isn't fixed by controlling the price of alcohol or pub opening hours, and underage sex doesn't disappear with better sex education. These are all part of the culture that people are brought up in and can't be regulated away. Yet I've never heard anyone discuss how we can create a more positive culture.</comment>


Show HN: Castor, a live dashboard for your projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.getcastor.com/ <comment><USER2> One of the things that really hit home at my last job and that I see missing from a lot of these dashboards is comparative context. So I walk in in the morning and we have a dashboard for vists and signups / payments and it shows lots of visits and no payments. Is that normal? Is that expected or concerning? Without showing what it was yesterday at the same time or on the same day last week, or weekly/monthly avg how do I know how to feel about anything I'm looking at.

I know the answer to that can be "you should know your product" but I'm not sure that answer is enough.

<comment><USER3> When I've built dashboards I usually try and show that by having barcharts of averages for different time periods.

Example: MRR+ Today, MRR+/Day over last 7 days, MRR+/Day over last 30 days, etc. It's still not perfect, but it adds at least an element of that "at a glance" context.

<comment><USER4> I like area + line charts for this. The area fill is the comp period and the line is the current.

One of my favorite ways to do this (that most charting packages struggle with) is to use an area full for last year, a solid line for this year, and a dotted line for the future based on current trajectory.

You can compare to multiple periods using stacked areas (particularly when you can assume previous periods had growth).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> New year, new SaaS dashboard company...

It's nice to see transparent pricing though I wonder how realistic it is. $4/month for unlimited everything, regardless of customer size? While it's nice to see pricing thats 1-2 orders of magnitude less that competitors (seriously look it up), forget turning a profit, you could easily get net- negative per customer on bandwidth pricing alone.

The trailer says, " _Castor is a service edited by 10033111 Canada Inc. By using Castor, you agree to our terms and conditions._ " yet it doesn't have a link to the terms of service. Also, not judging too much but " _10033111 Canada Inc_ " sounds like the name of a company created by a computer that makes companies.

<comment><USER6> It's a numbered corporation, an easy way to set up a company in Canada.

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

Named companies cost more, IIRC.

<comment><USER5> Just read a bit more about numbered corporations in Canada. That's a pretty neat solution to ensuring uniqueness of corporate names. It's like the non- tech equivalent of a central service issuing sequential IDs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Was I the only one who found that website really annoying? Everything animated, chat popping up when I didn't want it.

<comment><USER8> No you're not. Personally I find it really annoying. I hope this is a fad, along with the photos showing through "holes" as you scroll down a page.

At least this is a landingpage and not a long form article, but even as a landing page I feel it is distracting.

Why can't people just make really good design like you'd have in print, on a relatively static page. I guess it's the medium that calls for it. Hey, we have Javascript and CSS3 oh my! Let's do something cool!

edit: it's one of those things that looks cool, and is ok in moderation. But when it's used too much it's just distracting. It calls my attention, but not for the right reasons. It stops me from being in my own flow and reading the page the way I want to read it.

<comment><USER9> > it's one of those things that looks cool, and is ok in moderation. But when > it's used too much it's just distracting.

I always likened it to salt: A little on my food enhances the flavor. A block of salt ruins my meal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks exactly like Panic's old StatusBoard [https://panic.com/blog/the- future-of-status-board/](https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/)

<comment><USER11> Yep. Glad to see someone else carry the torch since StatusBoard has halted development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an aside, I noticed the above-the-fold design is very similar to [ElementFE]([http://element.eleme.io/#/en-US](http://element.eleme.io/#/en- US)). What's up with that? Did this particular design with the slanted line originate somewhere else or are they the same people perhaps?

<comment><USER12> It creates a smooth visual flow. Straight horizontal lines chop your website into blocks. This, on the other hand, separates your content without breaking it apart. Your link is a good example because it also has these overlapping graphics that "hang" into the next section. Stripe [1] makes heavy use of this.

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

<comment><USER8> Wow.. that is a much more striking use of the "slanted" layout. Superb.. it has a little bit of "materialize" feel to it but without the cold / harsh aspect of material (imho). Or maybe Material isn't done very well in most sites / apps I've used (often times they tend to have a ton of space that's not really "white space", just badly designed empty space.. Google loves to do this by forcing mobile app layouts into a desktop site).

Also this is a great use of animations. The page is fairly static, and animations are used in interactions (mouseover mostly).

Adding this site to my inspiration bookmarks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey Guys! Congratulations on the launch.

I have a question, if you dont mind. I'm someone, who's been trying to build out simple SAAS business myself and wanted to understand the impact of using price arbitrage as a sales strategy. (which in Castor's case is dramatically underpriced compared to geckoboard and others.)

<comment><USER14> Just my experience with SaaS, usually they start with ridiculously low price to capture the market. After you have established yourself, you can increase your price and grandfather early customers. You can even force your free users to upgrade to a paid plan by stating that ("upgrade now to lock old price! limited time only!").

<comment><USER15> That's a pretty strained definition of "force" if you're still offering the free tier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this pricing sustainable? I just can't see how there is enough demand to keep this afloat at $40/year?

</comment><comment><USER17> What makes this different/better from the million of similar products or is this some kind of YC company ?

</comment><comment><USER18> >If you need more than one dashboard or want to send data directly from you're app or server [...]

s/you're/your

</comment><comment><USER19> That's a bad name for selling it in Germany. It is used as the name of Atomic waste trains [1] here and these were often in the press, because of protests agains further production of atomic waste and the assumed ineptitude of a potential final diposal site.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#Germany)

<comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor)

Besides, having the same name as a nuclear waste container seems like a really trivial issue compared to the usual "your name means something dirty or offensive in my language".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks nice! Can anyone recommend an opensource/self-hosted alternative? Would really like to set something like this up in the office but would prefer to host it on my internal network. Plus I like to tinker with things :)

<comment><USER22> [http://grafana.org/](http://grafana.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The documentation homepage ([https://docs.getcastor.com/](https://docs.getcastor.com/)) has a broken link ("Getting Started with Castor")

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for your encouraging feedback! We've processed (most of) the bugs + typos, and realized a quick video to showcase Castor ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLqvLqeNI9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLqvLqeNI9M)).

We're also working on public dashboards (ie. share your dashboard with anyone/any device without the need to login) and that feature should be shipped in the next few hours.

Thanks again!

</comment><comment><USER24> promising. it even has a clock widget :-)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtuDS0ntaJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtuDS0ntaJY)

</comment><comment><USER25> How Castor different from any of the other data dashboard alternatives that exist? Is there anything that sets it apart from its competitors?

</comment><comment><USER26> Noticed a small typo here [https://app.getcastor.com/#!/login](https://app.getcastor.com/#!/login)

"Sign up an login using an identity provider:"

should be

"Sign up _and_ login using an identity provider:"

Also, uBlock origin is hiding the facebook/google login buttons for me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Congratulations! from a fellow dashboard maker (infocaptor)

You need to add more connections and increase the price. I don't know how many will take you seriously at $4/month.

</comment><comment><USER28> What is the best way to get a web-based dashboard -- Castor, for example -- displaying on a wall-mounted television? Is it possible to do it through an AppleTV?

<comment><USER29> I'd use a raspberry pi set up as a kiosk. If you google 'raspberry pi kiosk mode' there should be a fair handful of simple tutorials.

<comment><USER28> Awesome - thanks for the advice!

<comment><USER30> Hi nrjames, I'm working on a small service that will let you do that using a Raspberry Pi 3 and about 10 minutes of your time. Would you be interested in super early access? It would be awesome to get some feedback as I'm trying to solve that exact problem: Get a dashboard on a HD tv in an easy way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> you should check the readme, I got a 404 error at [https://docs.getcastor.com/getting- started.md](https://docs.getcastor.com/getting-started.md)

<comment><USER15> There is also a typo in the first screenshot on the homepage ("PROJET" heading).

<comment><USER32> Not so much a typo as a forgotten translation of "project" from French.

You'll also notice that "state" and "assigned to" were also left in French.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your biggest gripe with Voxer? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> * Never heard of it.

* Looked it up

* Checked out the web page

* Can see no compelling case for it

<comment><AUTHOR> >* Can see no compelling case for it

Why is that? Curious

<comment><USER2> Why would I use it?

        With a push of a button, you can
        instantly talk to individuals or
        entire groups.

So no matter what I'm doing, or how deep inside a problem I might be, one of my group can disturb me at any moment with no warning? Consider:

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25009451/ProgrammerInter...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25009451/ProgrammerInterrupted.pdf)

I just can't see why I would use it - I have existing solutions of email, SMS, phone, what does this do that I can't already accomplish? It looks like I can have conference calls. Is that the only "new" thing?

As I say, I can't see a compelling case for it. It's not up to me to say why not, it's up to you to provide one.</comment></comment></comment>


Pomodoro Technique - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

<comment><USER2> I've made a go with this; I'm trying to combine it with GTD, which seems to be working well enough for me.

I like the physical timer with the ticking, actually; it does seem to help me focus a bit. Can't use that in my office, but most of the time I work from my home and there it works well.

Like any time management technique, one must have the force of will to manage one's time. That's where I fall down sometimes, but this at least provides me a "hook" on which to focus, and is fairly easily understood.</comment>


We need a Flash Genius for a Music Software Startup - <AUTHOR>

Our fully funded music software startup leverages complex actionscript techniques in audio sequencing; and we need a full-time contract-based actionscript all-star with a hardcore programming background. There is very little graphical work in this position. The ideal candidate will have spent time in large web / software projects in team settings and brings experience in a diverse selection of programming languages and models. A computer science degree or equivalent career experience is a plus. The existing application is written in flash 9 and needs to be transitioned to flash 10, taking advantage of new low-level access to the audio buffer. Experience with audio processing, encoding, and mixing is a plus.
Chicago candidates only; no staffing firms.
You may need to relocate to Chicago and buy a lot of music remixes.
Please send your resume and portfolio and optionally, small code samples.
Contact:
firstname.lastname@example.com 312-613-2735 <comment><USER2> The fact that this account was created just now to advertise for this "all- star" position makes it seem like spam to me.</comment>


Training a Support vector Machine in the Primal instead of the Dual - <AUTHOR> http://www.kyb.mpg.de/publications/attachments/primal_%5B0%5D.pdf

<comment><USER2> Is this one of those machine-generated scientific papers? Because I'm not convinced that's actually English.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? ;-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where did you find your startup's accountant/bookkeeper? - <AUTHOR> As your startup grew, how did you find someone to handle accounting/bookkeeping/payroll-type tasks when it became too much for the founder to do alone?<p>Do I need to find and work with multiple companies/individuals? Are there good firms who do it all? How do I find them? How did you find yours? <comment><USER2> Hey Paul,

Gusto is built for people in exactly your situation. We have a lot of first- time CEOs/founders/office managers who use Gusto to take care of all of their Payroll, Benefits, and HR needs. It's specifically built for the non-HR pro.

Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of Gusto :)

<comment><USER3> Hey, I have liked Gusto a lot. You have saved me so much trouble. Thanks for making a great product with really great support team.

I realized how much work Gusto saved me when I had to go file nanny taxes on my own. I actually wrote in and asked if you had a nanny plugin yet (sadly, no, but you pointed me to an overpriced competitor that had it).

I find Gusto is great for the payroll side of things, and Quickbooks online is decent for the bookkeeping side of things. I went through every accounting package out there, I wanted to use a competitor.. but quickbooks was just a bit easier. They do have a payroll piece, but I have not tried it due to liking Gusto. It syncs fine with Gusto.

Taken together the combo is under 100 bucks a month. Not sure the exact scale level, but I think they should work for 2 employees up to maybe 50 employees. I have no idea past that, and at some point I would imagine you need some kind of HR department and a real bookkeeper.. but I can at least vouch for the combo for early employees.

Then for actual tax time, I just found a local CPA that came recommended. He doesn't like gusto, but he likes quickbooks.. so I can just share my quickbooks accounts and he can do his stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Botkeeper ([https://www.botkeeper.com/](https://www.botkeeper.com/)) might be a good fit. Saves you time recruiting an individual, more cost effective, and they never take a vacation.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I display the current time and date on my website? - <AUTHOR> I still see sites displaying the current time and date on the header, footer or as ticker. What's the purpose? Is the current time not ready available for anyone browsing the internet?<p>I think this is something inherited from 90's sites that used to have java applets and other gimmicky animations to make your website look cool. <comment><USER2> I display time on my dashboards because it gives me an idea how long ago they were refreshed. It may make sense on a page that changes with a time, for instance I could use a timestamp here on HN, both in comments and in article list. Note, however, that this is static text determined at page load time, not an ever-changing clock.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree. Doesn't make sense to have the current date or time displayed. (edit: I mean those where it gets updated by Javascript after initial pageload)</comment>


Ask HN: Best place to sell domain names? - <AUTHOR> I have ~200 domain names (.app mostly) that I'm looking to sell. Had anyone had success selling domains online and if so what service did you use and how long did it take? <comment><USER2> I'm using a couple of marketplaces to list my domain names. Some of them are Sedo, DAN.com, Afternic, GoDaddy, Uniregistry...

The good point is when you list your domain name on those marketplaces, your domain will be listed on dofo.com ([https://dofo.com](https://dofo.com)), too. So if someone searches your domain name on dofo.com, he/she will know that it's for sale.

The time it takes to sell depends on the quality of your domain names and your price expectation. I'd say you have a medium portfolio, and you should expect to sell 2-3% of your portfolio each year, but as I said, it totally depends on the quality.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd add to kemlg reply here - auctions.godaddy.com might be the only thing you'd need.

</comment><comment><USER4> I put "for sale" message on domain's first page.

Sold few like that.

Listing currently another one for $10k.

</comment><comment><USER5> Check 1kprojects.com</comment>


In Serving Big Company Interests, Copyright Is in Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/serving-big-company-interests-copyright-crisis <comment><USER2> The slow but steady creep of copyright extension since the founding of the country has completely parted ways with legitimate protection for innovation and creative endeavor. It started out at 14 years with a possible 14 year extension. We're now at what - 70 years after the death of the creator??

<comment><USER3> Mickey Mouse Protection act is a reason Copyright has been extended to 70 years.

"This law, also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act"

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

There currently not public support for more extension so the extensions will most likely end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the EFF but Doctorow but sometimes they're just get things wrong. They want to blame the law for problems that are just economics. He says that creators get a raw deal because they're forced to sell at too low a price.

How will weakening copyright make it easier for creators to negotiate a deal? It won't. They'll get an even weaker deal because they've got less to sell.

The plight of small producers is felt through all industries. At least copyright gives the creator a HUGE amount of power as soon as the work is rendered into fixed form. Doctorow should check out how the small wheat farmers or small fishermen get treated. They're in commodity businesses and they have nothing unique to sell and little legal protection except for the laws of theft.

<comment><USER5> Or how much US terrestrial radio stations pay in performer royalties: a big fat nothing. Stations pay composer/songwriter royalties, but performers get zilch.

Once small producers get locked out, they stay locked out.

<comment><USER4> Again, this is not copyright's fault. This is the decision the artist makes when signing away the rights. If they don't want the airplay, don't sell to a record label that puts things on the air. Believe it or not, the radio stations don't play things without permission. Heck, most artists actually pay for the airtime.

<comment><USER5> > _This is the decision the artist makes when signing away the rights._

 _Nobody_ gets performance royalties out of US terrestrial radio stations — not individual artists nor record labels that artists may have signed their rights to as part of a deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > think of Taylor Swift's battle to perform her own music at an awards show > where she was being named "Artist of the Decade" shortly after rights to her > back catalog were sold to a "tycoon" whom she has a longstanding feud with.

Her dad was a shareholder and sat on the board of said company that sold to the "tycoon". Horrible example.

<comment><USER7> Isn't there a compulsory cover license? What's stopping Taylor Swift from covering her own songs?

<comment><USER8> Apparently there would have been potential restrictions on its use. On the previous point, just because you have someone on a board doesn't mean you get to control what happens.

<comment><USER9> She did have control over what was happening when she signed the rights away. After that, they're not her rights, so why should she have control?

I doubt she'd like the situation where there were no rights to sell, as it would severely hamper her ability to sell music at dear prices to the streaming services. How much do you think Apple paid her for that exclusivity deal she had with them a while back? And would it have paid that much if copyright were weakened in the ways that would be required to prevent the Braun/Borshetta situation?

It just seems like a case of wanting to have one's cake and eat it.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps there should be something in between the current system and no copyright at all.

For example, the law could be changed to give the creator of a work certain rights to use it even if they sell the right to commercialize the work.

<comment><USER11> As far as I know, the studio is happy to let her perform the work non- commercially, but that's not what she wants. She wants to be able to be paid for a performance.

<comment><USER7> Again, why does the compulsory cover license not satisfy this?

<comment><USER11> Because she sold the right to commercialize her work. It's part of the comment I'm responding to.

Adding a compulsory non-commercial license won't help an artist who wants sell commercial licences when they are getting started, then unilaterally renege because they are popular enough to do it all themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is why I grew up ignoring copyright. I just isnt a concept that ever enters my consciousness.

I'm going to continue to pirate what I want. If the friction to legally buying something is low I'll buy. Otherwise I simply don't care. I've been doing that since I was 6 years old and will do it for the rest of my life with no consequences

I simply don't care

<comment><USER13> I find this disgusting. You're trying to justify theft, which isn't what the article is about.

<comment><USER12> I'm not trying to justify theft. I know it's illegal and morally wrong. I just don't give a shit.

The copywriters are going to do that they do. I'm going to do what I do with no guilt felt

<comment> Brave-Steak > morally wrong

Debatable. There are plenty of situations where I feel I'm morally justified in pirating things. When my values tell me that companies shouldn't be able to profit off of something they made 20-30 years ago, then I have no moral qualms in downloading a ROM of a game for a console that isn't made anymore. Regardless of whether "remasters" or "ports" exist or not. Because in an ideal world, that wouldn't result in an eternal extension in copyright.

<comment><USER12> Sure it's debatable. But at the end of the day I really don't care about copyright anymore. The concept can basically die in a dumpster fire as far as I'm concerned

<comment><USER14> Paying to perpetuate a corrupt system is immoral.

These days, I pay a pittance for streaming (lazy), but buy albums directly from artists. (As in I hand over cash at concert venues)

Perhaps it should be illegal for artists to sign away their own copyright/distribution rights. Exclusive licensing would still be fine.

Then, artists could sell albums direct to the public. The distributors would have to keep their cut low enough to account for competition from artists undercutting them via direct sales.

<comment><USER12> We already have laws protecting minors from getting screwed over via their parents. why not a low that prevents you from selling all rights away for your intellectual property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I hear the extent that music has managed to use copyright to claim ownership I wonder what the chances are that the supreme court will make an exception for software. Copyright over the "feel" of music and copyright over samples sounds concerning close to the discussing around copyright of api and copyright of header files.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is not those companies fault that politics instead of protecting users privacy and freedom of decisions are protecting their own access to user data.

People managed to survive for generations living in a tribe, city whatever you call one place yet now politics want to know everything about them to sustain power they gained using technology they know nothing about.

</comment><comment><USER17> Mission creep on the part of the EFF.

</comment><comment><USER18> No one cares. I don't say that with Glee. Throw this grievance on the pile with the rest of them I guess.</comment>


Show HN: haxor, Python Wrapper for Hacker News API - <AUTHOR>

I built a Python wrapper for newly launched official Hacker News API.
Here's github link: https://github.com/avinassh/haxor
pypi link - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/haxor/
To install just use pip:

    pip install haxor
 Example usage: To find all the 'jobs' post from Top Stories:

    for story_id in hn.top_stories(): 	    story = hn.get_item(story_id) 	    if story.item_type == 'job': 	        print story 	# <hackernews.Item: 8437631 - Lever (YC S12) hiring JavaScript experts ...> 	# <hackernews.Item: 8437036 - Product Designer (employee #1) to ...> 	# <hackernews.Item: 8436584 - Django and iOS Hackers Needed – fix ...> 	# ... 	# ...
 Appreciate any suggestions/feedback :) <comment><USER2> clickable - [https://github.com/avinassh/haxor](https://github.com/avinassh/haxor)</comment>


The internet war on sex is here - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/07/the-internet-war-on-sex-is-here/ <comment><USER2> This is entirely uncool. We as a species are evolving sexually as the constraints of pre-marital and no-divorce are being rejected. Over 25% of babies in Denmark are now conceived by using sperm banks. [1] Men and women need new ways to feel whole and complete. At times this is by porn. Other times it is by using erectile augmentation pharmaceuticals. [2] So we need to make this EASIER, not HARDER! We are at a critical juncture in our sexual evolution. This could even increase depression cases.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-45512312](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45512312) [2] [http://vqrn.com/Erectile-Augmentation- Dysfunction.html](http://vqrn.com/Erectile-Augmentation-Dysfunction.html)</comment>


Craft: A simple Minecraft clone written in C using OpenGL shaders - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fogleman/Craft <comment><USER3> Fogleman has some really cool side projects in a variety of areas written in a variety of languages... and I noticed he's got two kids! As a new father, how is this possible? Really boring/easy day job?

Having a daughter is an amazing experience that is rewarding in its own right but something that really scares me about fatherhood is not being able to do any deep work for the rest of my life.

Doing deep work is another part of living I really enjoy and I'm somewhat petrified that I'll never experience it again. Maybe it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER4> Fogleman here. Funny to see an old project in the #1 spot (again?).

I hesitate to comment about this being productive while having kids thing, but some people seem to be implying that I must never spend time with my kids. It's far from the truth. A week ago my son (age 5) and I went camping in the backyard. Coincidentally, he and I have just recently started playing the real Minecraft together on our own private server - every evening lately. (I had never actually really gotten into the real Minecraft before, believe it or not.) We've been playing lots of Thinkfun games like Rush Hour and Shape by Shape. I actually still lay with my son while he falls asleep every night. My daughter (age 7) and I walked to the playground and played for a while there yesterday. We go out and check my vegetable garden daily, and my daughter likes to play "baseball" (plastic bat and ball) in the backyard with me. I work from home currently which is nice because there's no commute and I can see my kids a lot. We have "dance parties" in my home office where there's lots of open floor space. I could go on of course.

I fully understand the sentiment that time is short when it comes to spending time with your kids before they are grown.

There are plenty of folks without kids who aren't super productive too - <USER2> the whole thing seems a false dichotomy to me.

Frankly I don't even feel like I work that hard. Maybe "hard" is the wrong word. A lot of people are constantly busy and have no free time. Yet they don't seem so productive? I'm the opposite of that, somehow.

I know I'm under no obligation to defend myself - but there you go.

<comment><USER5> But from a time management perspective... just how? I have one child (4) and work a day job. It's all I can do to find time to exercise and have an hour or two for myself at night. Do you exclusively program in your free time?

<comment><USER6> My theory is that when you have children the sum of time spent at work, commute, chores, exercise, child minding, sleeping is very close to 24 hours per day. So any decrease in the time requirement for any of those means a big difference in discretionary time. So no commute vs commute could triple your discretionary time. Then, amazingly, you can be three times as "productive" despite being in a very similar situation.

<comment><USER5> That is absolutely true. I just went from remote back to office and have been trimming here and there to fit my workouts in.

<comment><USER7> Similar situation here, and I've done this oscillation from remote to in- office 4-5 times now. It's always a shock to realize how much time is consumed on the processes of being physically present in the office. After a little while, like everything else, you tend to forget. It's good to get scared straight periodically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For folks who want something a bit less pedagogic and more fun to play as a game, I highly recommend Minetest [1] which gives you a programmable layer on top of the base Minetest engine to make Minecraft-like game modes.

[1]: [http://minetest.net/](http://minetest.net/)

<comment><USER9> For those interested in the educational part (as with minecraft) there is an article about using it in schools: [https://wiki.minetest.net/MinetestEDU](https://wiki.minetest.net/MinetestEDU)

<comment><USER10> Thank you for pointing out this article. I am going to be teaching my kids to program and recently installed lord of the test so that we could have an interesting environment to work in.

For other's interested, minetest has a channel [1] on freenode where you can connect with the community in realtime.

[1] #minetest

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually compiled this project to Emscripten a few years back:

[http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ingame- data/emcraft/game.h...](http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ingame- data/emcraft/game.html)

Here's the code: [https://github.com/louisstow/EmCraft](https://github.com/louisstow/EmCraft)

</comment><comment><USER12> My 5 year old kid is addicted to minecraft and there is no way to prevent violence (you can always keep killing animals even in Creative + Peaceful mode). The problem is that 5 year old have little context on consequence and they really get intrigues in exercising new power they have. I'd like a _pre- schooler mode_ which actively discourages any violence. May be if you try to kill something, an alien would descend and take away all your assets. So _only_ thing you can ever do in Minecraft is just build something :). If someone can add this feature, it would be AWESOME!

<comment><USER13> On Zelda you have little incentive to attack the Cuccos (chicken).

<comment><USER12> MineCraft also has incentive: you get meat when you kill animals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fogleman also have awesome Minecraft-clone[0] in Python/pyglet in just 900 lines of code.

[0] [https://github.com/fogleman/Minecraft](https://github.com/fogleman/Minecraft)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is very cool. I got it build/running in < 3 minutes in Linux.

My boy love Minecraft. I like to use this as base to teach him more about programming.

Any suggestion on small projects that can be addon / mod use this code as base.

I am thinking a series of coding exercises that can be hack/add on to this:

Add a command/mod to:

1) Draw line, Square, Triangle. 2) Draw Circle, Ellipse, Cone, Cylinder 3) Build Car, Airplane 4) Build Space Ship 5) Putting picture of his own face on the block.

... Any other suggestions?

Each small projects take about 1-2 hours build on skill sets that learn before. It should be simple and fun to do with goals of encourage kids to learn programming.

My boy finished all the CS classes in Khan Academy and seems to enjoys them.

If anyone else has strong interested in this, I will see if I (we - group of us) can develop this as a new Khan Academy CS class and contribute it to KA.

<comment><USER4> Try running server.py locally.

Then check out builder.py which will send commands to your server to change blocks. You can rapidly build all sorts of shapes with a few function calls.

[https://github.com/fogleman/Craft/blob/master/builder.py](https://github.com/fogleman/Craft/blob/master/builder.py)

<comment><USER16> I really want something like that for vanilla minecraft. here's the closest I've come: [https://github.com/HalCanary/mc- labyrinth](https://github.com/HalCanary/mc-labyrinth)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very cool. The beauty and draw of Minecraft have always come from the way it emerges from such simple elements. Reimplementing it in any language would be quite fun, I'd think. It's almost the new Doom.

<comment><USER18> As someone who built a Minecraft-like project (but I was careful not to call it a Minecraft clone because it was missing many core features) in JavaScript several years ago and a fan of actual Minecraft, I feel I need to say something.

This is not a Minecraft clone. 99% of the projects out there that claim to be Minecraft clones are not close enough to be called clones either.

The real draw of Minecraft comes from a number of core features, most importantly the crafting and the survival needs that motivate the crafting and building. Minecraft would not have become a hit if it was just a creative sandbox alone. This project has neither of those aspects of the game. Another thing missing is the diversity of biomes. And another thing-- all of the underground features like caves and mines are missing.

So it doesn't have Mine or Craft, don't call it a clone. You wouldn't call something an IBM clone if it was missing core features of that computer.

I think people do the part with just the blocks and rudimentary generation and call it a clone, it's almost like they are giving themselves credit for recreating Minecraft when they haven't even implemented 1/3 of the features, and they didn't even recognize the most important ones.

<comment><USER19> >So it doesn't have Mine or Craft, don't call it a clone

It does both of those things. You can mine blocks for resources and then make new blocks out of those resources.

Your other points may be relatively salient, but a beta/alpha clone of a game does not have to implement every feature for it to be a clone.

It seems like you've taken this too seriously and really did not need to say anything. It's not really a productive point.

Say you've managed to brow beat OP down to calling his clone something like "A Minecraft-esque Resource Building Game." What have you done, at that point? Nothing. Calling something a Minecraft clone might be sensitive for you, and others, but it does not automatically make that sensitivity valid in any sense just because you feel it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A great place to find stuff like this is r/tinycode[0].

[0]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/tinycode/](https://www.reddit.com/r/tinycode/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually found it here

[https://github.com/uhub/awesome-c](https://github.com/uhub/awesome-c)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand how 3d games are written or know what shaders are, so this is complete magic to me, and I'm surprised it's only 5k lines of C code!

<comment><USER21> Shaders are basically transformations performed by the graphics card. Or sometimes not. It gets real vague at times because like a lot of things there are no hard lines.

You take a point and figure out if it needs to be colored differently based on certain criteria. Like if it was in shadow, or if it's being hit by a bright light, or you just want a sepia tone across everything. You can even shift everything. Take the screen and distort it according to some kind of function. Like make it all wavy.

3d games are no more or less conceptually different than 2d games in a lot of regards. There are more things to track and be aware of, but you're effectively doing a lot of the same things.

If you've ever messed around with making 2d games, you can even begin simple experimentation by just making another layer of depth. Like LittleBigPlanet, it's ostensibly a 2D game presented with 3D graphics. But it allows you to shift between 3 layers to give you _some_ depth.

<comment><USER22> > Or sometimes not.

No, shaders are always done by the 3d card =)

<comment><USER21> I wanted to be careful because shaders don't really just shade anymore and I was pretty sure if I limited to just graphics cards, there will be someone that pops up that says the first shaders were actually blah blah blah.

Basically, I knew I was going to be slightly wrong about something somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> It backfired ;)

<comment><USER21> C'est la vie.

I mean, effectively anything you can do with a GPU shader, can be done by the CPU, so it seemed reasonable to me that you could make something functionally equivalent for the CPU and call it a shader.

It started feeling like the difference between "programming language" and "scripting language" in my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting choice of sqlite, what's the story on concurrent updates these days? Last I tried to use it for a project was in 2009 and even at a measly 3 concurrent people, sqlite had trouble with data lock errors.

How does sqlite mesh well with Craft multiplayer?

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm working on a Modded Minecraft series using AWS

If anyone has an interest in playing on my server ping me. We could use a few more players.

[https://medium.com/@andrewbrown_78670/2018-modded- minecraft-...](https://medium.com/@andrewbrown_78670/2018-modded-minecraft- server-on-aws-introduction-considerations-syllabus-e55545265a88)

</comment><comment><USER25> is there a realistic mining/digging simulator? I love minecraft but sometimes I wish I was digging a real mine with buttresses

<comment><USER26> Yeah, it's called Primitive Technology. [https://youtu.be/VVV4xeWBIxE](https://youtu.be/VVV4xeWBIxE)

<comment><USER25> dayum dat RTX ray tracing is real

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This has a much brighter future than Minecraft on Linux or Mac (completely neglected after Microsoft acquisition).

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm assuming this runs about a jillion times faster than actual Minecraft? They should re-write minecraft like this; its performance has always been so awful.

<comment><USER29> They did. These days "Minecraft" officially refers to the new version, while what you are talking about is called "Minecraft: Java Edition". As of now, both are maintained, though people are afraid that Java Edition is being phased out in favor of the new one. Main reasons for people preferring the Java Edition is modability and availability of an official server software for self-hosting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I fondly remember looking through this a few years ago as it was one of the first posts I found at the top of HN

</comment><comment><USER31> The screenshot is an infuriatingly aliased image, wouldn't it be easy to fix?

<comment><USER32> That repo hasn't been updated in years. I doubt Michael is going to be up for correcting an image in a defunct repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am in awe at how the executable is less than 1mb to download.

</comment><comment><USER34> Can microsoft come after him for this?

<comment><USER35> They could sue Github's parent company for hosting it.

<comment><USER34> Lol</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Great books about the moon? - <AUTHOR> I've been captivated by our grey friend in the sky lately. Looking for anything you got related to the moon: historical accounts of the moon missions, science books, heck, even sci-fi that revolves heavily around the moon (e.g. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress). <comment><USER2> I am currently reading Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, by Andrew Smith. Around 2002, he decided to track down all the people who walked on the moon and are still living, and ask the basic question, "What do you do after you've walked on the moon?"

It's a fascinating mix of personal stories, science, and a sense of what it was like for people from all parts of society to experience the moon frenzy of the late 60s/ early 70s.

[https://www.amazon.com/Moondust-Search-Men-Fell- Earth/dp/000...](https://www.amazon.com/Moondust-Search-Men-Fell- Earth/dp/0007155425)

</comment><comment><USER3> Two suggestions:

Arthur C. Clarke's "A Fall of Moondust". [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149059.A_Fall_of_Moondus...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149059.A_Fall_of_Moondust)

\- This might be a bit dated now, but I remember enjoying it years ago.

Buzz Aldrin's "Men From Earth" [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1369808.Men_from_Earth](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1369808.Men_from_Earth)

</comment><comment><USER4> No a book, but here's a thing I wrote, and on which I base a talk and a workshop:

[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/cgi- bin/sews.py?HowHighTheMoon](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/cgi- bin/sews.py?HowHighTheMoon)

It's not all that deep, but I think it's kinda cool.</comment>


Some unpaid internships may be against the law | ScrippsNews - <AUTHOR> http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/23795 <comment><USER2> That takes the Tom Sawyer scam to a whole 'nother level.

I mean, my first computer job, I worked for less than minimum wage (piece work, you know.) but I didn't pay for the privilege. So not only do these people work for free, but they pay some middleman a fairly hefty sum to get you the job? I just can't imagine people falling for that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The main purpose of unpaid internships is to keep out working class people who can't afford not to have an income. I was thirty before I could afford to be out of work for more than a month; and I wouldn't have been able to then if I'd had a family.

</comment><comment><USER4> FWIW, here's an opinion (2004) from the U.S. Dept. of Labor on the subject, setting out the six criteria that the linked article alludes to: [http://www.dol.gov/whd/opinion/FLSANA/2004/2004_05_17_05FLSA...](http://www.dol.gov/whd/opinion/FLSANA/2004/2004_05_17_05FLSA_NA_internship.pdf)

It seems fairly stringent, essentially excluding any unpaid internship where the interns are, at least primarily, doing real work for the benefit of the company. And that opinion was from the Bush DoL, so I can't imagine the interpretation has gotten any more lenient since then.</comment>