Ask HN: Do you have a backup career? - <AUTHOR>

Recently started thinking about learning a trade skill or something similar as a backup career plan. Having a family and bigger financial obligations can really change a person's mindset towards life! If you have one or any thoughts please share <comment><USER2> I have changed career fields (industry and skills required) every 10 years, most of them grew out of my side hobbies. From my experience, always have a side hobby that can grow up to become a new career if you want. Also, having a side hobby, that is not connected to your current career, will make you think and act differently even in your current career job.

The demand for trade skills (plumbing, carpentry, electrician, construction, mechanical assembly etc.) is growing as more and more people gravitating toward white collar jobs. These are also a nice skill to have in your daily life. You don't need to think of these skills as "backup" career plan but more of something that takes you away from the work you do for 8-10 hours a day.

Though HN is not fond of him, you might want to check out Mr. Money Mustache [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com). He was a software engineer and "retired" at early age and enjoys his carpentry and construction work. The forum on his site also offers wealth of information on alternative methods of keeping busy that also pays.

<comment><USER3> Out of curiosity, why is the HN Folklore not fond of MMM? I mean, you don't have to take it religiously, but pouring over his blog made me think a lot my career plans.

<comment> J-dawg +1 for this, I'm a huge fan of MMM and this is the first time I've heard he's not popular here. I'm also curious to know why.

<comment><USER2> It might be just my perception based on past discussions on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a controversial one but it's only a backup anyway. If shit really hits the fan and you're in decent physical shape you can join the military. They pay you enough to support a family, through allowances, and provide a house.

I'm in now or I wouldn't recommend it otherwise. Pick 35P or 35Q in the Army. For 35P, you are basically a student for 2 years and if you're good they'll send you on an all expense paid vacation to Africa, the Middle East or China (for a language immersion). You can learn an entire foreign language from native speakers while you collect a paycheck and support a family. As 35Q you would get to do network security stuff.

Do not join if you can't get a good MOS. Joining as say, a truck driver, will not be a good time for someone who frequents HN, I can promise you that. Not because of the job, but because of the people you'd be around all the time.

Now, just try to keep your current job and you'll be golden.

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe your "backup career" should be the side project of learning how to invest the money you make now to become independently wealthy, or close to it, as soon as practical.

<comment><USER6> Seasoned professional investors, such as those who managed hedgefunds or buy real estate, are rarely able to beat inflation by much. I doubt that someone investing a small amount (under $500k) part-time is going to become "independently wealthy".

Adjusting one's lifestyle to decrease expenses is a much better way to "create" wealth.

<comment><USER4> Where'd you get that information?

I thought the average return just from the stock market was 7%.

<comment><USER7> From the research I have been doing over the past year or two, the UK stock market has shown about 5% real return (after inflation) over the long term. I think the USA stock market is slightly better.

I am a total novice, and have fairly little invested, but those are the sort of numbers that pension projects are based on.

If you can keep you personal burn rate low, and over time invest a significant amount of money at 5% return for 10 years, the interest really starts to snowball.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is something I'm worried about too, but it'd be hard to maintain the progress on "backup career", and if I were to make the switch I'd be starting from bottom again..

</comment><comment><USER9> I've started studying for LSAT myself (for Law School). I figure that I probably won't want to be coding my whole life, so I might as well get something else lined up.</comment>


Request to HN staff - <AUTHOR> Can you add the "web" link that's on the individual item page (between "past" and "{n} comments") to the list page (it could live between "flag" and "{n} comments")?
Background of request: To view certain articles, I end up clicking the comments link and the URL link in new tabs. Then I have to close the URL link because the article is behind a paywall. Then I go back to the comments link, click the "web" link in a new tab, and can access the article via Google. It would be nice to just link to the web link from the list view first.
EDIT:
It appears that the "web" link is on "/newest" but isn't on the main page. Any particular reason? <comment><USER2> A more reliable way of getting the attention of HN staff is to send e-mail to firstname.lastname@example.com.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best Git host? - <AUTHOR> I like GitHub's community, GitLab's UI and Gogs' for my server. What do you all think of them? <comment><USER2> You didn't ask about BitBucket, but it's worth a mention.

Unlimited free repositories, and it plays nicely with JIRA (and Confluence), if you use them. Even if you don't use those tools, it's a notable private alternative to GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your own server + command line

<comment><USER4> Haha, yes!

Wait a second, lets just use rsync!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a user, I loved the GitLab UI and features. I've now partnered with them and offer training on GitLab CI (and on Git), and resell GitLab Enterprise. GitLab's been great to work with as an organization, they are fast, work hard, and get things done.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a gitlab fanboy but I honestly can't come up with a complaint about them. The recent incident was handled well I thought in that they were completely open about what happened and how they plan to prevent it in the future

</comment><comment><USER7> You could have a look at pagure. Fedora is using it and developing it but you can deploy your own server. It is worth a look ([https://pagure.io](https://pagure.io))

Just to mention that I am contributing to the project

</comment><comment><USER8> Assembla is good. I've used more of their SVN than Git, but still good.

</comment><comment><USER9> I like Github UI, community and the snowflakes that comes with it</comment>


Accounting for Taste: How packaging can make food more flavorful - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/02/accounting-for-taste <comment><USER2> "Why not mitigate that increased salt consumption, and its attendant health hazards, by presenting the soup in a blue container, a color that Spence has shown can make food seem significantly saltier"

Maybe Campbell's should rethink their iconic design.</comment>


Perma.cc helps scholars and courts create permalinks of the web sites they cite - <AUTHOR> https://perma.cc <comment><USER2> Hi! I work on Perma.cc at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab.

For what it's worth, the way I think about permanence as a lawyer and programmer is that nothing is really permanent. We have court decisions from hundreds of years ago, for example, but we might easily lose them in the next apocalypse. We've lost lots of records of equal value already. (For a great example, check out the fire-damaged Jefferson collection at the Library of Congress -- there are many published books from Thomas Jefferson's personal library that, once they were lost, could never be replaced.)

The reason we've kept court decisions as long as we have is that we make lots of copies, and keep them in lots of libraries, and libraries care about hanging on to things.

But court decisions now cite to random web pages all the time, and the halflife of a URL is like 18 months. So with Perma we're opening up law library shelves to web pages as well as court decisions -- allowing law review, courts, and others to say, "this web page is culturally important enough for me to cite to, so please hang onto it." To me this is the magical weirdness of the internet -- no one has ever quite had this level of write access to library shelves.

This has made a huge difference for web preservation in the legal field in a short period of time -- we now have over half of American law schools signed on to use Perma, several US government agencies, and nine state supreme courts with more on the way.

On the backend we're building out a private LOCKSS network that will put those records in the hands of lots of libraries. (We're hiring for this, by the way -- drop me a line if you're in Boston.) We can't prove that any of those libraries will still be around in a few decades, but we think it's a good bet.

Happy to answer any questions ...

<comment><USER3> Any special reason for choosing mysql over postgres?

<comment><USER2> Nope -- other than, it's a decision that was made before I got there and there hasn't been a reason to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://perma.cc/contingency-plan](https://perma.cc/contingency-plan) looks nice but how is it enforced? How can we be _guaranteed_ that this will happen. I have heard enough shallow promises torn apart when the grim reaper came to a web service so I have zero trust.

Why not publish the full database continuously all the time? Openly licensed, freely available.

edit: "Perma.cc users will now be able to create up to 10 links per month". That's very very little.

Typos: "preseve phsyical"

<comment><USER2> Thanks -- typo will be fixed on our next push.[1]

There's limits to how open we can be with data, because the service is used for e.g. court opinions that aren't published yet. But for public links we're working on API, Memento endpoints, Internet Archive mirrors, etc. -- it's definitely something we're thinking about.

Re: sustainability (and account limits), as you can tell we're not trying to maximize growth here. Quite the opposite -- we're opening up access only as much as we feel we can support for the long term. It's a free service and there are no promises, but it's run by the Harvard Law School Library and isn't a short term play.

[1] [https://github.com/harvard- lil/perma/commit/ca84be28ccccf0f1...](https://github.com/harvard- lil/perma/commit/ca84be28ccccf0f1873358aec9a42be94b5f96b1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tend to just use Archive.org for this kind of thing. They've been around a long time and probably will be still around for a long time coming. [http://archive.org/web/](http://archive.org/web/)

<comment><USER6> Does Archive.org commit to providing a persistent identifier? It's one thing having a link to the content, another having an identifier which will continue to identify the content into the future.

<comment><USER5> Yes. It uses the date in the URL

<comment><USER6> Persistent URLs can be opaque. Persistence is more about committing that, for example, the URL structures won't ever change in a backward compatible way.

<comment><USER7> To explain a bit better: every capture has a crawl time, that time is embedded in the WARC with that capture in it, and that's how the CDX index can refer to that page. Anyone who got our WARCs could easily present the URL structures the same way we do. That time is an essential part of the capture. We worked with others to make sure that the WARC standard does this.

This is actually a really important aspect of Wayback links. Since the URL and time are always explicit in the Wayback URL, you don't have to depend on some opaque database to learn important things about that link. An archiving service that just has opaque links is like a bit.ly shortened link: you have absolutely no idea what it is if bit.ly dies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this could be improved with IPFS[0] - it would gain the benefits of a distributed infrastructure, content addressing is built in, and it has an http portal for convenience.

[0][http://ipfs.io/](http://ipfs.io/)

</comment><comment><USER9> ... until perma.cc goes down, or runs out of money, that is.

<comment><USER10> >Perma.cc is developed and maintained by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School Library. Perma.cc is administered by a consortium of libraries, with each library assisting its local journals and faculty users.

This is a problem for many people, so hopefully this will survive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> i wonder what happens to tlds like .cc/Cocos Islands when rising sea levels wash away their associated territories

<comment><USER12> they probably become a TLD without country affiliation. like .amazon or .google

<comment><USER13> More like .su

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> great idea, but having an centralized service is risky. if they go away, you will not only have a 404 but a dns error. and while it's nice that they have a contingency plan, abide it can not be possible.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, this is a basic problem with the web as it works now -- Perma's long- term storage can and will be decentralized behind the scenes, but control over DNS routing is inherently centralized.

I don't really know a way around this. When a lawyer is reading a court decision that include a link, and the link is broken, showing them "(archived at perma GUID ABCD-1234)" won't mean a thing to them. Showing them "(archived at [http://perma.cc/ABCD-1234)"](http://perma.cc/ABCD-1234\)") actually solves their problem.

<comment><USER14> Think about how it works with other legal citations. "Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6)." means something to a lawyer and is irrespective of where they would physically find that court rule to read.

An issue with Perma's id format is it doesn't contain anything to differentiate it from any other use of two sets of four uppercase letters or numbers separated by a dash, it's not "LAWCITE:A1C4-5F7H" it's just "A1C4-5F7H." The domain name could serve that purpose so wherever else Perma's content is stored, the route should contain perma.cc. So all of the following would have the same content, e.g.: [http://perma.cc/48VC- ZS62](http://perma.cc/48VC-ZS62) [http://archive.org/perma.cc/48VC- ZS62](http://archive.org/perma.cc/48VC-ZS62) [http://doomsday.preppers/rebuilding-America/perma.cc/48VC- ZS...](http://doomsday.preppers/rebuilding-America/perma.cc/48VC-ZS62)

And in reference to the other comment, if the .cc TLD goes away for some reason, "perma.cc" could still remain a part of the URL even at the project's "home" site, e.g.: [http://perma.law.harvard.edu/perma.cc/48VC- ZS62](http://perma.law.harvard.edu/perma.cc/48VC-ZS62) [http://perma- cc.com/perma.cc/48VC-ZS62](http://perma-cc.com/perma.cc/48VC-ZS62) [http://perma.mars/perma.cc/48VC-ZS62](http://perma.mars/perma.cc/48VC-ZS62)

<comment><USER2> > Think about how it works with other legal citations. "Fed. R. Civ. P. > 12(b)(6)." means something to a lawyer and is irrespective of where they > would physically find that court rule to read.

Yeah! When I first started up with Perma I advocated a really aggressive shift in how we cite websites, using something that looks a lot more like other legal citations. Maybe something like:

      Example Title, perma.cc/T75S-NF5K (<original domain>, <capture date>).

... where "perma.cc/####" can be treated as a URL if you like, but also just as a legal cite like "### U.S. ###". This looks _so much_ nicer in legal citations. There's lots of interesting variations along these lines.

Buuuut that's basically a non-starter for most of the legal profession (including courts and law reviews) that just want their citations to make sense to readers today. For now the Bluebook is recommending a much more verbose vendor-neutral "(archived at <url>)" citation format (with Perma as an example!), and we're happy with that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


EU and US free-trade talks launched - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21439945

<comment><USER2> The new ACTA? I hope the EU is not desperate enough to fall for this (again).

<comment><AUTHOR> No, this is not a just a trade agreement, this is a free-trade agreement. Today, the EU is a free-trade zone (actually it is more than the EU, Norway and others are part of it as well), where countries can exchange goods across borders without tariffs and other similar restrictions known to exports/imports.

Including the US in this zone would be _huge_.

<comment><USER2> No. The EU is not just a free-trade zone. It is an _economic union_ , with both a single market and customs union. There is an enormous difference.

Just like all previous bilateral "free trade" agreements between the US and any sovereign state, the US will not play fairly and the amount of actual trade tariff reductions and trade promotion in it will pale in comparison to US demands on cross-regional rights, privileges for trans-national corporations and the US state, and even internal regulation changes for the other on key issues of enormous importance to the US.

At this time those key issues for the US are:

1\. _Intellectual Property normalization_. Particularly, on software patents, digital sharing, cross-regional copyright and licensing, generic medicines, grey market imports, etc.

2\. _Agricultural Products normalization_ , especially Genetically-Modified crops and artificial hormone meat products.

3\. _Human Rights normalization and deferral removal_ , i.e. reduction of the impact of human rights legislation, particularly European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on any aspect of (bilateral) trade, including "privacy" rights.

So, why now? The problem is while the EU single market is functioning better than ever (otherwise why would the US be interested), the core members who are also part of the broken Eurozone, are still reeling from the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the associated sovereign debt crisis.

This gives significant leverage for the US, who have largely paid down the upfront cost of the financial crises, certainly at least all their banks are fully recapitalized or resolved, unlike the EU.

There may be additional leverage from the European people themselves who are strongly feeling the impact of the economic crises, and more importantly from the European national parliament politicians plus media, since this gives them a type of "deus ex machina" to support, when in reality all real and most difficult change has to start internally.

So, yes, it would be " _huge_ " - for the US...</comment></comment></comment>


The Master JavaScript Course Has Been Released (197 Spots Remaining) - <AUTHOR> http://www.masterjavascript.io/lp/master-javascript-course-1 <comment><USER2> You submitted 7 post of pages of the same site in an hour.

From the guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _Please don 't submit so many links at once that the new page is dominated > by your submissions._</comment>


Windows Phone 8 vs. iOS vs. Android: One giant leap for Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/131487-windows-phone-8-vs-ios-vs-android-one-giant-leap-for-microsoft <comment><USER2> I used a WP7 for several months last year. In many ways I really liked it, the UI was pretty slick, live tiles where great, the whole thing was surprisingly polished.

But I now use an iPhone. The reason is lack of quality 3rd party software. The PDF viewer available for WP7 (there was only one) was absolutely abysmal. Very poor UX. And that was all to often the case. Where Android or iOS would have numerous great apps, WP7 would have significantly less and usually all lower quality. Such a shame as the OS itself is pretty nice.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agreed. The issue now isn't that the major players aren't in WP, but it's that their apps are absolutely terrible, and obviously barely tested. The Rdio app didn't even play music for months, and the Spotify app is glitchy as hell. So the "100,000 apps" boast is a little hollow.

<comment><USER4> Apparently that is what Microsoft is trying to solve with the unified core. If the developers have ability to write code one time and target both the phone and the tablet/desktop, it is quite appealing proposition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Now that Windows Phone has managed to clobber iOS when it comes to customization without losing its aesthetic charm, it's time for Apple to step it up"

This sentence really leapt out at me. Are we looking at the same rainbow disaster screen shots? Windows phone looks like a unicorn puked on a phone.

I don't think it give any compelling reason on it's own for iOS to shift.

<comment><USER6> I guess it's subjective, but you would be in the minority [1] for thinking Metro UI is a "unicorn vomit/rainbow disaster".

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_UI#Response>

<comment><USER7> I hate the Metro UI. I hate the live tiles,I hate the way text seems to drift off the edge of the screen; I hate the way it looks, and navigating through it annoyed me. I've only ever seen it on a phone, though, so maybe a tablet would improve things.

I'm not a UI expert, so maybe I'm missing something awesome. I am, however, a user of consumer electronics, and as far as that qualifies me to comment, I think it looks like crap and would never buy a Metro UI based product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> With the recent WP8 press coverage, it's interesting (from a PR perspective) that many stories complain about WP7 phones not being upgraded. Some tech journalists seem almost angry about it.

I don't know if this will die down or not; that's what eventually happened when Google revealed the Nexus 1 (iirc) wouldn't be upgradable to 4.0. So far, though, this point is significantly distracting from the amazing improvements in '8 - note how the linked article mentions it in the first paragraph, and I've seen at least one mainstream article [0] focused entirely on it.

There must be a lesson about product launches in this. If Microsoft had a good answer for this from the start - by "good", I mean one that satisfied journalists and their readers, and/or made it hard for anyone to stoke outrage - the positive press coverage for WP8 wouldn't have been diluted by this.

[0] <http://mashable.com/2012/06/20/no-upgrade-windows-phone-8/>

<comment><USER3> The issue is the timing of this. The Nexus One was introduced in Jan 2010, ICS was released in, what, March 2012? Over two years difference. I had a Nexus One at the time, and while I was disappointed, I'd got two years of use (key point here: two years is the typical cellphone contract length) out of my phone. Not so for people who bought a Lumia 900 when it was released in April of this year.

The issue from a PR perpsective is that MS don't seem to be controlling the story here. Will WP8 apps work on 7.8? Sources are totally conflicted. Will 7.8 do multitasking? No-one knows. MS should have been all over this out of the gate- explaining exactly what 7.8 users are getting. Instead everyone is resorting to rumour and assuming the worst.

<comment><USER8> Good point about the difference in timing! Who knows what info Microsoft has that we don't; but for brand-trust reasons, it seems important to update at least the Lumias to WP8, if at all technically possible.

<comment><USER9> Or at least offer vouchers (with proof, of course --which carrier would have) toward the purchase of a WP8 system so that people don't feel duped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Those homescreen tiles are a cool new idea in mobile UIs and keep getting better. Kudos to those guys.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. I've been on WP7 for just over a year the the live tiles with update counts have replaced the need for a notification center for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is quite possible, that Microsoft move with releasing Windows Phone 7 was just an expensive way to make Nokia buy in. Nokia would not wait for Windows8, if there was no Windows7 Phone . Now they must. And Microsoft probably never looked at Windows Phone 7 as a long-term OS.

</comment><comment><USER13> Suddenly, Microsoft's purchase of Skype makes a lot more sense.

</comment><comment><USER14> finally, games can be ported to WP.

<comment><USER11> Yes and this is great for developers. Develop once, run on phone, tablet and laptop/desktop.

<comment><USER15> Have we had that confirmed? I was hearing that compiling a WinRT application for phone and desktop was going to take tweaking and recompilation.

<comment><USER11> I do know that design tools like blend support multiple layout views for different screen shapes and orientations. I can't see how this would be different. Underneath if you write .Net code it'll run on both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The real foundation for cross-platform code -- from mobile platform to mobile platform -- is whether WP 8 will support OpenGL ES 2.0. The explosion of quality Android games came courtesy of the NDK and ES 2.0, allowing for an almost direct migration of apps from iOS with only minimal I/O changes.

Given that the mobile GPUs are targeted to that, I have to think it will. Having portability between the desktop and mobile is less valuable, really, given that even the most impressive mobile GPU pales compares to a miserable desktop GPU. The limitations would render such an exercise much more prohibitive.

<comment><USER17> No OpenGL ES support. DirectX only.

<comment><USER16> I have only heard them talk about DirectX, unsurprisingly, however have you seen an official comment on this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One giant leap for Microsoft that I won't touch with a 5 meter stick because the company has way too much of a treasure chest of influence to ever get my money ever again, and one that I will continuously tell anyone I am related to or friends with never to associate with.

The secure boot nonsense doesn't help. The image of M$ is destroyed, and even if they try to repair it I can never forgive them for ie6.

<comment><USER3> And there I was, thinking that HN is above using "M$".

Do Apple and Google not also have a "treasure chest of influence"?

<comment><USER18> Absolutely, they are all massive corporations. They are beyond the scale anyone can reasonably expect a company to act in the interests of their customers.

I'm not saying Microsoft is evil - they are just a massive company, who like Apple is controlled by shareholders and therefor maximizes profit at the expense of everything around them.

I have no idea what is going on with Google. Android 3.0 and the unified privacy plans being closed source seems like a good example of how their benevolence may only be skin deep, but they have acted "better" than the others at some superficial level. They are still absurdly powerful and I would always be hesitant to give them money, because companies like all three can turn around and use that absurd influence to harm consumers.</comment></comment></comment>


Nvidia Display Driver Service Exploit  - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/QP7eZaJt

<comment><USER2> So theres a somewhat sophisticated message protocol that allows for variable- length fields that they parse in-situ into a _fixed size_ buffer allocated on the _stack_?

Come on, its not the 90s anymore.

(Of course, its useful to note that the many mitigations have made this a difficult exploit for what is at its basis a very old mistake. And the somewhat unique situation that the code can leak information back, which here allowed for the bypass of stack cookies (and the virtual base, I guess?))

<comment><USER3> > And the somewhat unique situation that the code can leak information back, > which here allowed for the bypass of stack cookies

Information leaks are by far the most important class of bugs in modern exploitation. They're really common, and they generally nullify ASLR completely. The Array.reduceRight vulnerability in Firefox is a fantastic example of this: <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664009> That bug can be used to leak info about JS objects, which gives you enough information to circumvent ASLR. The same bug also allows code execution using that info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These graphics driver exploits seem to be fairly common.

Here's an older one for linux, which was posted some months ago: <http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2012/Aug/4></comment>


Show HN: Distilled – An unopinionated, drop-dead simple JS testing framework - <AUTHOR> https://distilledjs.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here.

I wrote Distilled a little over 2 years ago because I was frustrated with the complexity and quality of existing JS testing frameworks. It's primarily targeted at people who want to keep their codebases simple and who want to have highly customized testing setups for each of their projects.

I've been using Distilled on all of my projects for 2 years now for both unit and integration testing. I'm obviously biased, but I think it's pretty good.

The testing API for Distilled is only 1 method, and the full API is only 3 methods. This makes it pretty simple to set up and use -- on most of my new projects I'm able to start writing unit tests less than a minute after running `npm init`. Usually I won't even set up a testing harness until after I'm done prototyping, I'll just run my tests in the same file as my implementation.

On the other hand, because the API is very composable, I've also been able to build a lot of weird, project-specific testing setups. For example, all of the documentation on the main site is generated from Distilled's own unit tests -- that way I always know it's correct. That would have been a pain to do with most testing libraries, but with Distilled I was able to just build a couple of quick wrappers and I was good to go.

Distilled also supports a couple of power-user features that I've found really useful:

\- Tests can be infinitely chained or nested, which allows me to have children test which will get automatically skipped if their parents fail. This helps a lot with organization, and speeds up execution because when one test fails you don't have to wait for all of its dependent tests to also fail.

\- Assertions are recursively resolved, which means you can have a function that returns a function that returns a Promise, and Distilled will just handle it. This is incredibly useful if you're trying to quickly build a high-level framework on top of Distilled, or change a built-in behavior.

\- All tests are async, because the majority of Javscript code is async, and it doesn't make sense for a testing framework to resolve assertions synchronously by default. I've also put a lot of effort into making sure that test resolution follows native Promise resolution rules as closely as possible.

Let me know what you think!</comment>


Apache OFbiz for automation solutions - <AUTHOR> http://etapix.com/?p=341 <comment><USER2> To anybody considering OFBiz... I recommend you run away, screaming in terror, and get as far away from it as you can, and stay there. Seriously, looking at the code for OFBiz is like reading from the Necronomicon... it exposes you to horrors that mortal men were never meant to be exposed to. Read from the OFBizicom and your eyes will start bleeding black oil, your skin will break out with festering sores of malfeasance, and your dreams will be plagued by nightmare visions of death, devastation and destruction for all eternity.

OTOH, if you REALLY like XML and think that XML is a good way to do everything under the sun, including defining the syntax for your own bizarro programming language... then jump right in.</comment>


Raspberry Pi Wall Box SONOS Controller - <AUTHOR> http://wallbox.weebly.com/

<comment><USER2> This is cool! That said I had no idea what a "wall box" was (basically a jukebox), and Google was no help until I added 1960s. A clearer shot of the unit would probably help!

Also, I have no idea if you are the creator so my comments above may be moot.</comment>


Isitchristmas.com uses WebSocket and node.JS to allow user interaction - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/isitchristmas <comment><USER2> I wrote up a post on the whole architecture here: [http://konklone.com/post/the-making-of-isitchristmas-dot- com...](http://konklone.com/post/the-making-of-isitchristmas-dot-com-2012)

<comment><USER3> Very nice writeup. For the GeoIP part, there are actually libraries that will load up the entire Maxmind database into memory. Though it bloats your node app's memory usage as you would expect, it's extremely fast and almost always worth it. We use this library:

<https://github.com/kuno/GeoIP>

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I'll definitely be doing that next time. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> PSA: check out the js console on the main site to send messages to other visitors.

<comment><USER5> If you read the page source, you can see how easy it is to write your own chat bot for this app. Just paste the code back in to your JS console (which may not like newlines, FYI).

I won't tell you which chat bot was mine :)

<comment><USER6>
       x = setInterval(function() {rawSend(JSON.stringify({ _event: "chat", country: "KP", name: "Kim Jong-Un", message: "Die US imperialist scum!" }));}, 250);

<comment><USER2> yeah....thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love these kind of limited interaction situations, and what behaviour you see coming out of it. I moved around for a minute in a slow deliberate path, and others started following me; then I stopped completely still, and others lined their flags up next to mine in a square. Amusing, and all with no communication.

<comment><USER8> When I was there, all the American flags were just chasing Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just spent 2 minutes on that site with 6 other people. We're all idiots.

<comment><USER10> haha. ikr, about a dozen of us went over each other and were clicking for abt a min

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it possible to move other flags server side by using the following?

rawSend(JSON.stringify({ _event: "motion", c: "xx", id: "xxxx", x: 0, y: 0}));

</comment><comment><USER12> You can forge messages from others:

rawSend(JSON.stringify({ _event: "chat", country: "US", name: "Any Guy", message: "expletive deleted" }));

<comment><USER5> It's even easier. You can set your name arbitrarily using the public API, e.g. rename('whatever');. Names don't have to be unique.

<comment><USER12> True. Currently occupying myself by hooking on('chat')

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Newline characters make for some interesting spoofing here.

</comment><comment><USER14> isitdown.com ?</comment>


Watching Sergey Wander: A Sliver of Insight Into Google? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/05/watching_sergey.html

<comment><USER2> Summary: Sergey Brin walks around the city all by himself with no posse. He also plays with his cellphone, possibly testing a new technology on his own (no lap technicians.)

The whole article is some Businessweek journalist following Sergey Brin as the later walked a few city blocks with no socks.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't believe you so I read the article. You're right! I'm surprised they thought this was newsworthy.

<comment><USER4> Billionaire Anthropology. I think its interesting to know how influential, powerful technology company individuals are in real life.

Compare to John Chambers of Cisco:

"He managed five hours, waking at 6. He rode his basement treadmill from 6:15 to 6:45 while watching CNBC. At 7, he left for work in his blue Jaguar convertible and listened to 35 voice mails from his car phone on the 30-minute ride. At the office, he made a series of rigidly timed phone calls, hosted a breakfast for Cisco employees with birthdays that month, walked the halls and stoked morale. He returned home by 5:30, ebullient again."

"He betrays no complications, or anything like angst. He stays on-message, carries a thick briefing book for that day's meetings. While many executives do this, Chambers's reliance on his book is striking. At the Davos World Economic Summit in January, the book was five inches thick, and he spent eight hours a night drilling himself for the next day's meetings."

<http://www.marshall.edu/itc/welman/Selby%20Wellman%20par.doc></comment></comment></comment>


A Google Video feature request (or: how having a better API could have gotten them more content) - <AUTHOR> http://usr-share-morlock.blogspot.com/2007/06/google-video-feature-request.html <comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this post to news.yc because, even though it is phrased as a feature request to an established company, there is a lesson to be drawn for startups. If Google had made it easier for me to enter metadata in bulk, they would have gotten some valuable content and attracted more users.</comment>


New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art makes available almost 400,000 images - alok-g http://www.metmuseum.org/research/image-resources/frequently-asked-questions <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a very small API that scrapes the metropolitan museum's collections pages to get info - pull requests / issues / feature requests welcome. I had to rush rewrite it last weekend as they had completely redone the collections pages (and now export a bit via xml - try appending xml=1 to any object page).

[http://github.com/jedahan/collections- api](http://github.com/jedahan/collections-api)

[http://scrapi.org](http://scrapi.org)

This is my first foray into generators, and building an API that hopefully will be used more publicly, so any suggestions are welcome.

Also if you want to chat about what its like working for the Met, more specifically the media lab there, ask away!

Also, if you are looking for a giant dump of those images on a hard drive, get in contact with me as the site is not the easiest to crawl. I only have about 260,000 of the images, and its about 260gb.

<comment><USER2> Upload them to wikipedia commons. See: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Guide_to_batch_up...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Guide_to_batch_uploading)

Better finish getting them all before the museum adds restrictions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _The Museum 's OASC initiative provides license- and cost-free access to images of artwork in the collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions for scholarly use in any media which the Museum has identified as Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC) Icon on the site_

I don't understand this in two ways.

i) How can the Met claim copyright of reproductive scans of works which are in the public domain?

ii) If the Met provides "license-free" access to images to a certain group of academics, even if we accept that the Met holds a copyright over those images surely the academics are then free to redistribute those images license-free such that they can be used by anyone for any purpose?

I don't really understand what "license-free" means in this context.

<comment><AUTHOR> i) They can claim what they want, and even if there is no way it would hold up in court, can still discourage people from using what they do have the right to use.

Does anyone know where we can lookup all the legal cases the Met has been involved in? I am wondering if they have ever actually tried to enforce these policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are overstating the case a little bit, but this is still a big step. These images have actually been available since 2011; back then, until now, it was under a license very similar to the old Creative Commons attribution- noncommercial. But it was not so easily understood as a CC license.

What they have done recently is assert that images of artworks that are public domain are also in the public domain. Other museums and institutions have done this, but for the Met to do it is a big deal.

</comment><comment><USER5> This appears to be a very narrow degree of access, though there are some attempts to make it more liberal:

"The Museum's OASC initiative provides license- and cost-free access to images of artwork in the collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions for scholarly use in any media...

"What is scholarly content?

"Scholarly content encompasses scholarly publication in all media and is defined here as the dissemination of ideas and knowledge derived from study or research for educational/cultural purposes.... Scholarly publication is not limited to academic institutions or university publishers, since commercial publishers/entities may also produce scholarly publications. Scholarly publication is not restricted by print run. _For the purposes of the Museum 's license-free Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC), users are encouraged to make their own assessment._ However, all users must carefully review this website's Terms and Conditions prior to downloading or using images or any materials on this website.

"What are some examples of scholarly content?

"All school and academic work (including theses, dissertations, etc.), conference proceedings, journal articles, essays in Festschrifts, museum exhibition catalogues, non-commercially produced textbooks and educational materials, books published by university presses or the academic/scholarly imprint of commercial publishers, self-published books, and documentary films. All of these examples apply to scholarly publication in any media format (print, electronic, film, etc.)."

Note that this doesn't specifically include blogs, though "self-published books" tends to suggest they are included. However:

"What is not scholarly content?

"Commercial use, publication, or distribution in any media or format is not scholarly content. Some examples include: commercially published general- interest books in print or electronic media; all products, merchandise, (including posters, calendars, notecards, datebooks, mugs, etc.), advertisements, or promotional materials for any services or products in any media format; feature films or documentaries funded by commercial organizations."

While I can appreciate the desire to prevent untrammeled commercial use, this creates a fairly considerable area of ambiguity. Would a beaker incorporating an image be considered scholarly use? An academic group using an image in a presentation? For conference signage? For a conference shirt? Does the consideration change if the shirts are included in registration or sold separately?

How about images used in a scholarly work which is then cited, referenced, quoted, or included in a "general interest" publication?

In previous licensing developments, attempts have been made to distinguish "commercial" from "noncommercial" use. The boundaries have generally proven less than clear. In particular, they tend to discourage further use of works under such licenses.

One alternative is to distinguish use of images with other marks of the Museum in use. The Debian Project draws this distinction: the entire distribution is available free of charge, and there are a set of logos which are _similarly_ free to be used. There is _also_ a set of restricted logos which may be used _only_ by the Debian Project itself (or others to whom it's specifically licensed).

A converse of this would be to _require_ that an attribution or logo be included in all uses of the images. In effect the images then become additional advertising and publicity for the Museum. Of course, one risk becomes use of images in contexts for which the Museum may not wish to be associated (political content, sexually explicit uses, violent or other uses).

Another approach would be to limit the quality of images available. Even fairly high-quality online images tend not to be applicable to, say, high- quality hardcopy replication.

The fact that many of the works depicted in the images are themselves far outside copyright protection only further muddies the situation.

<comment><AUTHOR> They do limit the quality of images. If you want to see the highest resolution image, take any of the image urls and replace 'web-<WHATEVER>' with 'web- original'.

This is a small step in showing they are trying to understand what it means to 'open up' access. Note that museum policy does not necessarily agree with the law. In fact US law protected the user in cases where museum policy restricted use.

The #1 cited fear within the museum for restricting access to imagery of things like public domain objects? "We don't want people selling shower curtains with our art on it".

The more people make interesting use of the content, the stronger our case can be. Our being the people working for the museum who want to share more data.

<comment><USER6> Your second sentence doesn't mean what you think it means.

"Substitute X for Y" means to replace Y with X. Not the other way around. This is often misused.

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm, I switched to using the word replace, is that better grammar?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this is going to ruin my productivity tomorrow</comment>


Teach in a CS and Design Bootcamp in Palestine - <AUTHOR> https://visitpalestine.tech/bootcamp <comment><USER2> Awesome initiative, would love to help out!</comment>


At What Age Is the Brain Fully Developed? - <AUTHOR> https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/02/18/at-what-age-is-the-brain-fully-developed/ <comment><USER2> We really should have the age of adulthood redefined to be 25.</comment>


Ask YC - Can we have an rss feed for the new queue? - <AUTHOR>

I am not sure if this has been asked before but if there a way that we can get an rss feed for the new queue?<p>anyone else want it? <comment><USER2> There you go: [http://www.feedity.com/?xccH2xIG%252bIhCywXfu149J8ltp3V3aMhk...](http://www.feedity.com/?xccH2xIG%252bIhCywXfu149J8ltp3V3aMhkhttp://news.ycombinator.com/newest%40%40%40CAT%40%40%406)

<comment><AUTHOR> cool thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _"... but if there a way that we can get an rss feed for the new queue? ... Which queue (webpage)?"_

<http://news.ycombinator.com/newest>

</comment><comment><USER2> Which queue (webpage)?</comment>


VR therapist helps patients overcome fear of heights in Oxford study - sahin-boydas https://newatlas.com/vr-therapy-cure-fear-of-heights/55449/ <comment><AUTHOR> I dunno for some reason even if I am not scared of heights in my day to day life VR games sometimes make me scared of it.</comment>


Show HN: Android app that allows you to send a one-time viewable message/image - <AUTHOR>

I just launched a goofy little app called Privy that allows you to send a message to another Android user that is only viewable once. It's free (ad supported) and there is no signup required.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appidio.privy
Basically, you compose a message and/or take a picture. When you send it the message is uploaded to Amazon S3 and a link is texted to the recipient. When the recipient follows that link it downloads the message (never saves it) and then deletes the image from S3.
I would love to hear your feedback and questions. Thanks! <comment> e-dard Is the point of this that the recipient can only temporarily see it, and not keep going back to it?

If so, what's to stop the user doing the equivalent of "menu button and power button" on the iPhone, to take a screen shot?

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct. The very nature of DRM is not airtight. This is more about making it so you can send text/images to someone and not worry that they accidentally leave it laying around.

I don't believe it's possible to securely deliver information to people you don't trust. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appidio.pr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appidio.privy)</comment>


Geometric Constructions Game with Straightedge and Compass - <AUTHOR> https://www.euclidea.xyz/ <comment><USER2> It's great to see all this straightedge and compass stuff turned into a game, and I absolutely applaud the developers for launching it.

The above math, plus some graph theory (biconnected components etc.) is what drove D-Cubed's DCM 2D component dated, which powered the sketcher portion of many parametric MCAD systems after D-Cubed's launch by John Owen in 1989. See his paper "Algebraic Solution for Geometry from Dimensional Constraints" referenced on the Siemens PLM site:

[https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/open/d...](https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/products/open/d-cubed/references.shtml)

The original parametric CAD system, PTC's Pro Engineer (now Creo) predates that (1987) and had it's own numeric (Newton-Raphson) solver. John Owen's innovation of using Galois Theory combined with Graph Theory to solve straightedge and compass configurations was a significant technical advance at the time, and the DCM 2D component ended up powering most sketchers in the industry.

Disclaimer: I worked at D-Cubed 1995-2000.

<comment><USER3> Cool! I've never seen a practical example using Galois theory before. 10 years of computer graphics experience, but very little maths beyond my physics degree...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I enjoy the game a lot, but I disagree that it has that much of educational value. Without pre-existing geometry knowledge (e.g. similar triangles; median, bisector, and altitude in an isosceles triangle) the way to solve puzzles is only to randomly screw around. The game then doesn't give any explanation why that solution works.

<comment><AUTHOR> After randomly screw around I usually wonder why my solution worked. If I didn't do that it will be much harder to solve the next, more challenging level. Now I'm playing on beta level packs (just one pack after the first one) and it takes time to solve the puzzle if I only randomly screw around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This one works on mobile browsers

[https://sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.N](https://sciencevsmagic.net/geo/#0A1.N)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is the greatest game I've found this year. I've been craving this. The way geometry and trigonometry was explored a long time ago by playing with arcs and lines is just so so cool to me.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is now my favourite mobile game!

It might be helpful to provide some background links on compass/straight-edge construction [1] and the famous problem of squaring the circle [2]

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass-and- straightedge_con...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass-and- straightedge_construction)

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

</comment><comment><USER8> the challenge for this style of app is to balance mathematical content with good UX/UI. It is tempting to sacrifice one for the other.

also from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256222)

<comment><USER9> Definitely agree. From what I can tell so far (I've only just unlocked the Perpendicular Bisector tool), it strikes a great balance. Just-in-time helper prompts, a nice drag 'n' drop style UX that naturally lends itself to mobile, and clear instructions.

I like that it uses the concept of Photoshop-style "tools" for drawing points, segments, circles, etc. A very natural digital extension of the physical pencil, straight edge, and compass, with some nice abstractions built on top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a fantastic game, I bought it a while ago and heavily recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's a little unfortunate that they don't accept my somewhat elaborate but ultimately correct solutions, if I find a way to create a perfect rhombus within a rectangle in Lwaytoomany Ealsowaytoomany, they should accept it at least, and give me 1 star for my effort!

Pretty fun so far though!

edit: So far, I've found two methods to find the center of a circle that they don't like. 5L E7 isn't _that_ bad

>:(

<comment><USER12> As far as I can tell, solutions are recognized as long as they are valid, regardless of length. Can you post an example of a solution you feel is correct but that isn't being accepted?

<comment><USER13> Here[1] is one that's not being accepted. Here I have to draw an equilateral triangle given a straight line.

I am drawing two circles, on the two terminal points, with radius as the length of the given line. The intersection of two circles is the third point of the triangle.

[1] : [http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e179/iamcreasy/Screenshot_...](http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e179/iamcreasy/Screenshot_20161227-011845_zpsesvirsqw.png)

<comment><USER14> In principle, this is the right construction. However, you did not perform a proper construction, as can be seen by the two tiny red circles: Instead of constructing a circle passing through the end points of the given line, you "eyeballed" the circle diameter. Which may look right at this resolution, but if you were to zoom in sufficiently, you would inevitable end up with a circle that oh-so-slightly misses to go through one of the end points of the base line.

In the smartphone app, to do this right you need to select the circle tool, start at one end point of the line, then drag your finger exactly to the other end point -- it'll "snap" to that, and create a circle through the second end point.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I thought at too so I zoomed in to make sure that I am not making that mistake.

I've found a solution though. The second point that indicates the radius of the circle also snaps to other points. I didn't know that.

So now I can start dragging from one end point of the given line and end on the other point(not eye ball it) to make sure the circle is the exactly that radius.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be pretty mean to include a special challenge level for constructing a heptagon... but also funny. (The heptagon is not constructible[1].)

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

<comment><USER12> Follow-up (the app I use on mobile doesn't have an edit button) - it would be interesting to provide a section that gives impossible challenges and declares them as such, such as constructing a heptagon and squaring the circle, along with an explanation of why they are impossible. It might ignite more common interest in Galois theory!

<comment><USER15> OTOH, it might be more useful to show people what can be geometrically constructed. Since Ancient Greeks knew that circles CAN BE squared, regular heptagons CAN BE constructed, and angles CAN BE trisected by neusis methods[1]. I don't think this is widely taught. Why don't we teach what can be done rather than what can't be done when you limit yourself to straight edge and compass?

I wonder how difficult it would be to add neusis to the construction techniques in Euclidea or GeoGebra.

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

<comment><USER16> You mean something like this :) [https://www.geogebra.org/m/cWfHr7pk](https://www.geogebra.org/m/cWfHr7pk)

You could turn it into a custom tool in GeoGebra if you think that would be helpful.

Also worth noting that you can do angle construction in GeoGebra in other ways (for example, just divide the angle by 3 instead of 2!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be nice to be able to move or get rid of the task completed box to review your solution and look for modifications. Then you could reset and replay. The inability to review after completing is annoying.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is beautifully done.

Can anyone shed some light on the technology used to build the game?

<comment><USER19> Straight edge and Compass, circa 2000 years ago.

<comment><USER20> But how do you prove automatically that a given construction, no matter how convoluted, gives the correct answer?

<comment><USER21> There's a formula for the coördinates of where two arcs meet, where a line and a circle meet, etc., in terms of the coördinates of the points which generated the lines and circles — and you only need a few such formulæ (linear and quadratic equations, in fact) to cover all legal straight-edge-and-compass constructions.

So keeping track of exact, algebraic locations of the points is basically equivalent to manipulating exact expressions for roots of polynomials, which is not totally trivial (the tricky bit is simplifying roots of a quadratic equation whose coefficients were given as roots of a previous quadratic equation) but it's the sort of thing Maple and Mathematica have been doing for decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love geometry and this is a relaly excellent learning tool for it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Really well done. I will recommend this to my local school district.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is how geometry was ment to be tought- riddles to be solved, on your own, contemplating, in your own speed, getting harder, step by step.

Great applause to the devs.

<comment><USER25> Add a time dimension and you have the right way to teach physics</comment></comment>


Negative income tax - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been proposed today in Spain by the liberal party, Ciudadanos. Does anyone know if there have been any trials in the US? It seems like a promising alternative to what's been said about Universal Basic Income. [1] It aligns productivity and wealth redistribution in a very efficient way, in my opinion.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)</comment>


Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/12/is-entrepreneurship-just-about-the-exit/

<comment><USER2> Entrepreneurship overall isn't about the exit, but VC-backed technology startups are very likely about the exit. To me, entrepreneurship is the chance to build something that people want, the chance to lead and the chance to have a voice in one's own destiny.

Corporate jobs often don't offer those things. You usually build what others tell you to build, follow orders and have little voice in your own future.

Can you imagine if the team at 37 Signals had corporate jobs? They wouldn't be rock stars, they'd be cube-dwellers with no blog, no chance to make big changes, with vague titles like "Lead Web Designer" or "Enterprise Architect." David Heinemeier Hansson wouldn't be known as the designer of RoR, he'd be that kid who came up with the non-corporate-standard framework that got mothballed after he was laid off. The people left would complain when they got assigned to port his weird "Ruby" apps over to Struts.

Entrepreneurs, from the person who opens a McDonald's franchise to an Ivy Leaguer seeking millions in VC want more or less the same thing, and for them an "exit" is often just icing on the cake.

<comment><USER3> On the flip side, if the team from 37 Signals worked for a great technology company like Facebook, Google or Apple, they could have built products that tens or hundreds of millions of users and hundreds of thousands of developers use every day. They could have worked with some of the best engineers and designers on the planet and have had a huge impact on the products they've built and their company's success. They also could have also created popular open source software that runs on massive infrastructures, written their own blogs, and achieved industry fame.

I'm not trying to argue that entrepreneurship isn't a great path to pursue for many people, but I disagree with the simplistic picture that people sometime paint wherein entrepreneurship is always glamorous and employment is always dreary.

Disclaimer: I work for Facebook.

<comment><USER2> That's a really good point. There definitely are shades of gray. There are companies where one can have a voice and build some great things. One doesn't have to be the founder to be part of an entrepreneurial effort.

It doesn't always always have to be about money. Open source software gives people to build something, break some new ground and make a change. I guess that's the same drive that gets people to found or be part of all kinds of efforts that extend beyond software and startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been having that corporate vs self-funding dilemma for a while now. I am part designer, part entrepreneur, part programmer. I enjoy doing all these activities, and I do them with desire. I have an idea which would improve designers life and I think I might have figured out working business model. More importantly, it's very hard to get me doing something I find either illogical or immoral.

I have been reading HN for a while, follow 10+ blogs from VC-world and read whole bunch of books about successful startup founders and although I find corporate sponsorship great for some sectors (biotech, hi-tech hardware, some IT where founders are born programmers and not entrepreneurs) I've come to a conclusion that if I was to seek founding from either VC or Angel investor, I'd be giving away my freedom to experiment, my freedom to work in a pace and rhythm as I'd like and all the fun that would come with. That's was the whole point about being an entrepreneur, right? Doing the stuff you like / world needs and supporting yourself to a point? And who would guarantee me that investor knows more about my sector than I do?

<comment><USER5> At least for me, the decision to not seek funding sort of answered itself. I didn't know who or how to ask for money, but I did know to program the tool I envisioned. Fast forward 3 years and I've got a moderately profitable business, and no investors. The work is fun, and no one tells me what to do.

I'm just always curious about others who seek the go the investor route. Do most of them actually get funding? If so, when? How? In most cases, I see people _talk_ a lot about investors, but I very rarely see anyone actually get investment money. I'm skeptical that it even exists for the typical first-time entrepreneur.

<comment><USER6> You seem to have found your destiny. Why do you even care what other people think/do? I would say: follow your path perseveringly and you will end up fine. Not having the urgent need to think about the "investor route" is a good thing. Everybody additionally involved is going to meddle one way or another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Basically what this article is talking about are two breeds of entrepreneurs:

1\. Lifestyle business guys like the ones featured in the article

2\. Big exit guys who are after the Forbes cover, the big IPO / acquisition, the VC funding, etc...

There's merit to both styles of entrpreneurship; style #2 obviously brings with it a lot more stakeholders (employees, investors, etc...) and therefore a lot more responsibility and accountability on the part of the entrepreneurs / founders, but the potential rewards reflect that.

Style #1 doesn't have all of the fame and glory, the 8-9 figure exits, but it creates a self-owned source of income which can be really liberating. The trick with a lifestyle business is to make your operation lean enough so you don't have to hire a tremendous number of people to run the business.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you don't have a business model, it's _definitely_ just about the exit. Or maybe the funding rounds.

<comment><USER9> I suspect that having a business model makes it much easier to also have real value to users.

<comment><USER10> Possibly, but I don't think it's necessary. Sometimes money-losing companies are offering their users real value, which in effect the VCs are subsidizing. That's pretty good for the users so long as the VCs are willing to keep subsidizing the services! There was a good deal of that in the first dot-com bubble, where basically everything was free due to huge piles of neverending investor dollars paying for it all.

<comment><USER9> _there were plenty of companies that offered users great value that they massively under-charged for._

Out of curiosity, which were the ones that offered great value?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a different model of exit that is my goal. To create companiesnthatncan run without my daily involvement. Then repeat.

I currently am a partner in an LLC that owns two retail stores. We will do a third of this franchise and then move on to something else. I essentially live off the profits currently and spend 10-30 hours a month on them.

<comment><USER12> And that, my friend, is a totally sustainable residual-income-based business model too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's probably the best written TC article I've ever seen.

<comment><USER12> I would definitely have to agree on this. As much as I am open to the possible "lifestyle business" examples given, I would still think about scaling the business to a level similar to SAS if given the opportunity (I applaud them for recently being the #1 company to work for). And by the time the exit is done, I should hopefully have the experience and fiduciary resources to start another company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great context for the article is a book I'm currently reading: Small Giants. Its about companies that could be large choose to stay small and intimate.

I'm not really a fan of the build a company that needs investment in large quantities to grow and eventually be sold. I'd much rather build something that is useful, makes good money, and lets me work with a great+small team. I'm currently fighting this battle with Cloudomatic. I don't really want to build a large vc backed business, but it looks like we have to in order to really achieve our long term goals.

</comment><comment><USER14> Start-ups have so much uncertainty in what the final business will look like that it's difficult to tell at the outset whether the start-up will result in a lifestyle business (a.k.a. a "small business"), or something that is best suited a larger enterprise.

It's somewhat of a lifestyle decision for the founders, but sometimes the realities of the business make the decision.

</comment><comment><USER15> An enjoyable description of tech companies, small & medium, that make money for the founders but don't exit big.

<comment><USER9> If a large sector of the populace became tech entrepreneurs, would life be better? I suspect this is the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It is not about the exit, it's about making the exit pay more than Sarbanes- Oxley and other laws cost. The sad fact is that, with present regulations, a $1M/year American company has a net present value of zero. In a sane economy, the VC could flip that in a heartbeat, but instead they are forced to blow up profitable companies so as to realize a tax deduction.

In fact, I suspect that VCs would _prefer_ to take sub-Sarbox exits and ignore the 20x exits if they had the choice: 10 exits of $2M each has vastly lower risk than a single $20M exit.</comment>