People have spent over $1M buying virtual cats on the Ethereum blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/03/people-have-spent-over-1m-buying-virtual-cats-on-the-ethereum-blockchain/ <comment><USER2> Whenever I hear about people spending outrageous amounts of money for something that should be really cheap, the first explanation that springs to mind is money laundering.

<comment><USER3> I understand this position, but when the money involved is crypto -- which is inherently highly "launderable" \-- I'm not so sure. Why run your money through a cat when you could run it through a mixer?

<comment><USER4> If you use the proceeds of your online drug business to buy virtual cats from yourself, you can tell anybody who asks how you made your money that you made it selling virtual cats on the internet. And back it up with documentary evidence. That's better than simple avoidance of direct ties between your money and illegal activity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I met a couple guys from their team a couple months ago at the ETHWaterloo hackathon (post from then [1]). They presented a contract analytics tool to graph the number and type of function calls, like an etherscan.io but for custom queries/reports. The queries they showed had function names like SireKitten(), it was all quite funny and I assumed the analytics tool was the main product and that the kitty contracts were a joke example. Never would've guessed that it would take off, but I didn't see all the cute avatars then either.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15479945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15479945)

</comment><comment><USER6> > First off, it's important to understand that since it's played on the > Ethereum blockchain there's no central entity managing the game. This means > users literally own their kittens. Unlike playing Neopets where everything > was stored on a central database and your pet was deleted when the company > shut down, CryptoKitties is decentralized and will live forever on the > Ethereum blockchain.

If people just stop playing, and the community dies, isn't that the same thing (in effect)?

<comment><USER7> The devs have made the rendering algorithm secret. So even if you have the cat token, you can't know what it looks like unless you go through their front- end.

<comment><USER6> So... not much different from a centralized service, eh?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was recently struck by the thought that the blockchain might be ideally suited for the creation of some kind of "digital stamp". As with real stamps, different artists could publish and sell stamp designs of varying quantities. For uniqueness, perhaps aberrations could be algorithmically introduced based on each stamp's unique blockchain hash. The stamps could then be used to creatively sign communications and transactions, with inbound stamps showing up in the recipient's digital stamp collection. (Or maybe they could somehow be tied in to miner fees, to make them function more like the real thing.)

With the blockchain, it seems we finally have a way of assigning scarcity to digital assets. The only problem would be the social value of such goods, but things like CryptoKitties make it clear that this would hardly be a problem. People seem to love collecting rare things, even if the rareness is strictly algorithmic.

I think it would feel great to receive a communication signed by a particularly rare or interesting e-stamp!

<comment><USER9> What's to stop someone from creating a marketplace for identical stamps at 1/10 the cost?

<comment><USER10> What's to stop someone from making a painting that's practically identical to Mona Lisa and selling it for 1/10th the cost?

<comment><USER9> The Mona Lisa isn't yet a digital good. But in time it will be possible to make perfect copies, and that raises all sorts of interesting questions.

<comment><USER11> If by "perfect copy" you mean a physical copy that cannot be distinguished in a blind testfrom the original in any way, then of course we don't yet have that capability. Perhaps with advanced scanning and 3D printing that would be possible, but I suspect the true original would still maintain higher value as long as a trustworthy chain of custody was maintained. As soon as a thief removes the original long enough to potentially swap it with a perfect copy, the market value of any alleged original would likely vanish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are the auctions for cats actually executing on the blockchain via smart contracts, instead of the website?

If so, this might be the first time I've seen something actually kind-of- useful implemented via smart contracts.

(Well, to the extent that virtual cats are useful...)

<comment><USER13> the auctions are handled by a smartcontract[1], breeding and storage too[2]. Smartcontract are used for a lot of other things, tokens are basically mappings in a smartcontract between accounts and balances. Multisig wallet are also based on Smartcontracts. Ethereum has spend a lot of effort on integrating the blockchain into web applications. You can use metamask to log into websites with your ethereum address and websites like etherdelta, that exchange tokens, can lock your tokens in a smartcontract.

[1][https://etherscan.io/address/0xb1690c08e213a35ed9bab7b318de1...](https://etherscan.io/address/0xb1690c08e213a35ed9bab7b318de14420fb57d8c#code)

[2][https://etherscan.io/address/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f95...](https://etherscan.io/address/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d#readContract)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cats are fine and everything, but how about something more traditional, like flowers or something. i don't know, tulips maybe?

<comment><USER15> Not cute enough. Cats have long reigned supreme in internet meme culture, it's the perfect choice.

<comment><USER16> whoosh

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is so obviously the creators of that game making fake transactions to establish fake value in their product. It's not hard to send 100k to yourself for something that has no value to make people believe that it does.

<comment><USER3> There's no way to prove it, but all the members of our team have pledged not to trade in cats in any way. We are definitely not manipulating the price.

I can assure you that we're as surprised as anyone at the speed that this thing has grown!

<comment><USER17> Well if you can't trust a Director of Blockchain, who can you trust?

<comment><USER18> So all 1500 users (500 online now) and all the comments on this subreddit are just faked by axiom zen? [https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoKitties/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoKitties/)

Okay...

<comment><USER19> Only a small number actually have to be faked to build momentum and FOMO. Greed is very powerful and seems to bear a lot of influence on those participating in crypto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _> Right now about 15% of all Ethereum network traffic is dedicated to the game, making it the most popular smart contract on the network._

If I still had ether, this would be a pretty strong sell signal.

<comment><USER21> On the contrary, I think virtual worlds will (eventually) be one of the killer applications of blockchains.

People will be more likely to invest real time and money into virtual goods/currency/reputation if they can't be confiscated by a corporation for arbitrary reasons. The idea will really take off once virtual goods are "portable" between games. At that point you don't really have disparate "games" but rather a... Metaverse ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse))

(I don't imagine all virtual goods will be universally portable. You might be able to bring your CryptoKitties into Second Life but not World of Warcraft, for example...)

<comment><USER22> Could it be used for vendor neutral always on drm?

<comment><USER21> Not sure I follow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And that guy was in my startup school class.. lol well, if you're reading this - congratulations! I'm impressed

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a list of other dapps coming [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7gltfs/the_dappen...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7gltfs/the_dappening_is_almost_upon_us_2018_will_be_a/)

<comment><USER15> > the dAppening

Brilliant :D Thanks for sharing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are the founders hoping for additional kitten games? It seems that the game art is protected by copyright and trademark. And the breeding game itself is possibly covered by a patent. But what about representing this kitten data as cats elsewhere? I can't tell from the Terms of Use if this is encouraged or discouraged.

[https://www.cryptokitties.co/terms-of- use](https://www.cryptokitties.co/terms-of-use)

"A. You acknowledge and agree that we (or, as applicable, our licensors) own all legal right, title and interest in and to all elements of the App, and all intellectual property rights therein. The visual interfaces, graphics, design, systems, methods, information, computer code, software, services, "look and feel", organization, compilation of the content, code, data, and all other elements of the App (collectively, the "Axiom Materials") are owned by Axiom Zen, and are protected by copyright, trade dress, patent, and trademark laws, international conventions, other relevant intellectual property and proprietary rights, and applicable laws."

</comment><comment><USER26> I participated in the alpha for this, and it was pretty cool. I'm glad to see that it's been successful, but I'm not sure why anyone would pay to play the game beyond transaction fees.

</comment><comment><USER27> Cryptokitties now accounts for nearly 14% of all Ethereum transactions.

[https://imgur.com/a/XdQ5B](https://imgur.com/a/XdQ5B)

Looks like this caused the pending transaction queue to increase from around 700 yesterday to over 9,000 now.

[https://imgur.com/a/il6UD](https://imgur.com/a/il6UD)

</comment><comment><USER28> Similar to Cryptopunks 6 months ago, although they hit only 250,000 USD in sales.

Total Value of Punks Sold 518.47 ETH ($241,413.99 USD) Average Sale Price 0.46 ETH ($213.83 USD) Estimated Market Cap 2,899.15 ETH ($1,349,933.50 USD)

[https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks](https://www.larvalabs.com/cryptopunks)

</comment><comment><USER29> Totally not beanie babies

</comment><comment><USER30> okay, no more complaining about not being able to afford houses

</comment><comment><USER7> From their FAQ ([https://www.cryptokitties.co/faq](https://www.cryptokitties.co/faq)):

The developers levy a 3.75% fee on every cat purchase. Doesn't really seem like a decentralized app in that regard.

<comment><USER3> We take a cut of all auctions facilitated by our smart contract, but we put no restrictions on owners' ability to transfer or sell their Kitties outside our site. In fact, CryptoKitties is the first smart contract to implement the draft ERC-721 standard, which attempts to make NFTs (non-fungible tokens) as interoperable as ERC-20-compliant fungible tokens. [https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/721](https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/721)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Any thoughts on how apps built on Ethereum will impact the price of its Ether currency?

<comment><USER32> I would say the price should go up, but the price of ETH is anything but predictable. As we've seen with the rise of BTC, there's no rationality in the market. It's all based on hype.

If price was based on tech, ETH would be $10k+ and BTC would be a dying relic.

<comment><USER19> Is there anything like Bitpay for Ethereum? I haven't seen any major retailers that directly accept ETH, which is a pretty significant use case for any currency.

<comment><USER32> While directly accepting ETH is certainly beneficial, it would make more sense for retailers to accept an erc20 based alternative to BTC (see BTH [1]). Ethereum is a platform. Digital currency is but a single application.

1\. [https://medium.com/@bitether/introducing-bitether-bth-the- ne...](https://medium.com/@bitether/introducing-bitether-bth-the-new- erc20-bitcoin-2-0-b6c6e0d14acd)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How long before we see crypto doggies, crypto magic swords and crypto spaceships?

</comment><comment><USER34> Just because the current Ethereum value is $1M, doesn't mean people actually spent that much money. They could have a bunch of Ethereum from when it was dirt-cheap.

<comment><USER35> If you have that amount in gold, but you got the gold when it was cheaper, wouldn't you be losing the same amount of money all alone?

<comment><USER36> It's psychological. Easy to earn, easy to spend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> cats.com?</comment>


Tiles to Curves: Fun with Voronoi Graphs - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamedev.net/articles/programming/general-and-gameplay-programming/tiles-to-curves-fun-with-voronoi-graphs-part-1-r5150/ <comment><USER2> > I like to think we did a pretty good job at hiding the tiles

I agree, this is a good job and cool to see in a game! There are some ShaderToy shaders that employ this technique, but I haven't really seen it in a tiled game before or on authored content, and the effect really works nicely.

> near artificial structures (such as the ruined walls below) you want the > edges to be straighter

The local control is very cool. If the devs are here, did you have to do anything to prevent randomized voronoi bushes from poking through straight walls?

<comment><USER3> For that matter, when tiles have properties like "passable" or "impassable", does this method prevent holes in intended barriers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is very interesting!

Recently, my colleagues used Voronoi graphs to show how each player controls the field during a football (soccer) game [0].

[0]: [https://www.exasol.com/en/blog/controlling-space-in- football...](https://www.exasol.com/en/blog/controlling-space-in-football/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks incredible! Fun mix of hand-designed levels with procedural graphics to reduce the amount of work needed to make something look good.

</comment><comment><USER5> part 2 of the blog article: [https://www.ludomotion.com/blogs/generating- world-maps/index...](https://www.ludomotion.com/blogs/generating-world- maps/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> An idea: In a trail path, it makes little sense to have "corners" along the curves. Constraining the naturally-occuring (as in naked ground vs grass) borders to be differentiable might help them blend in in the environment.

</comment><comment><USER7> Extremely interesting, I hope somebody uses this to up sample or create artificial structures for the NES games!

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, great results with that technique!</comment>


Oracle latest to be sued for wage-fixing - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2014/10/21/oracle-latest-to-be-sued-for-silicon-valley-wage-fixing-following-pandos-reporting-on-their-involvement/ <comment><USER2> The whole aftermath of this wage-fixing scandal was just a slap on the wrist. The amount they paid in fines and settlements was less than the amount of money they saved by suppressing wages.

<comment><USER3> This seems to me to be a problem with the existing justice system.

Businesses which are caught doing something dodgy pay - _at most_ \- the amount they would have had to pay to obey the law. And the chance of being caught is not exactly high.

<comment><USER2> When deciding whether to do the right thing or not, the formula is (amount you save from breaking the law) - (cost of getting caught) * (chance of getting caught)).

If "cost of getting caught" is always less than "amount you save from breaking the law", then there's no reason to behave honestly. In fact, this causes the "market" to select against corporations run by honest people, because they're at a competitive disadvantage.

<comment><USER4> I wonder if, barbaric as it sounds, introducing more non-monetary punishments for corporate crimes would help with this. If CEOs of price-fixing companies were punished by public flogging or other pain-based punishments, something outside the normal money-based calculus...

Though I suppose the chances of something like that would be even less than such folks seeing jail time, which would also be a non-financial punishment.

<comment><USER5> The fix is to make individuals in the company, e.g. the directors, personally responsible. In many countries the legal framework is already in place for that.

As long as the fines are only coming from the company the only one you're really punishing are the shareholders who really have no control over the company's day to day activities and these decisions. They have no visibility into this either.

The CEO should be held responsible for any illegal activities the company undertakes under his direction as should the directors. Assuming they're aware of it. Otherwise the responsibility is probably at some lower level. This does not contradict the responsibility of the company as a legal entity which is a party to these contract.

EDIT: A decision that may cost the company 100M in fines in 10 years and help the CEO make his bonus this year is a no brainer. This is not unlike deciding to do share buybacks when you hold stock options...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that this doesn't apply to engineers, only product, sales, and g&a. Why is that? I have heard arguments that engineering salaries are likewise kept low through collusion but this wouldn't provide any evidence for that unless there's another such agreement for engineers.

Do product and sales typically make more money than devs? Or are they in shorter supply than engineers hence the desire to keep churn low for those positions?

<comment><USER7> In my experience, Sales folks make sometimes more than double what engineers make. Glassdoor has more information about salaries for different positions, do yourself a favor and check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is from 6 months ago; what happened next?

<comment><USER9> My Google searches aren't showing anything after january 2015. And the WSJ article from that date doesn't add any new information. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-rejects-settlement-in- sili...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-rejects-settlement-in-silicon- valley-wage-case-1407528633)

<comment><USER10> Exactly my thoughts. The near silence in the MSM and tech press is most... curious.

<comment><USER11> Nothing interesting is happening, so there isn't anything for any press to report.

There were motions to seal things, and rulings on those. There have been meetings between the attorneys for both sides and the court to work out issues of case management, and rulings from the court on case management issues.

Oracle filed a motion asking to dismiss on two grounds: (1) if everything the plaintiff alleges is true, it does not amount to the crimes Oracle is accused of committing, and (2) the plaintiff waited too long to file, and has run into a statute of limitations problem. A ruling on this issued 2015-04-22, and is probably the most interesting development since the case was files.

Oracle lost on the first part of their motion. If all plaintiff allegations were proven true, they would constitute the crime plaintiff alleges, according to the court.

Oracle won on the second part of their motion. The alleged acts in their filing were long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies. The court gave the plaintiff 30 days to amend the complaint to fix this. If plaintiff fails to do so, the case will be dismissed with prejudice. (Dismissal with prejudice means it ends. Dismissal without prejudice means you can try again).

I don't know if this signals anything or not, but the court noted that the case management conference scheduled for the day after this ruling was to still go on. Maybe that means that the court thinks the plaintiffs have a good chance of amending the complaint to avoid the statute of limitations issue, and so expects the case will continue?

I'd expect the next newsworthy event to be in late May if plaintiff cannot figure out a way to amend the complaint to avoid the statute of limitations issue. If plaintiff does amend the complaint successfully, that probably won't be newsworthy, and the case will continue. That continuation will still mostly just be motions by the parties maneuvering to try to get favorable evidence in, exclude unfavorable evidence, and get favorable interpretations of the law, and the judge's rulings on those motions. None of this stuff is interesting enough to most people, even most techies, to make the news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personally, I am wishing for admission of wrongdoing with an apology letter, as I said before.

<comment><USER13> Too bad that will never happen.

Remember a successful company must be a psychopath in order to succeed. You only see what they want you to see.

Oh and they are always right; every lawsuit thrown against them is without merit ...

<comment><USER12> Huh?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > "...Silicon Valley wage-fixing _sandal_."

That sounds way more interesting than a scandal. Too bad it's probably a typo. :)</comment>


Tim Cook Is Slimed By The World's Foremost Deliberative Body - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2013/05/22/apple-ceo-tim-cook-is-slimed-by-the-worlds-foremost-deliberative-body/

<comment><USER2> Best article on the issue yet. Listening to McCain deliver his "speech" during the hearing was particularly painful. He is such a failed has-been that he needs to just shut up.

I'm glad Apple is skirting taxes, wherever it can. Tax competition is a good thing.</comment>


Mutate your rack environment - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.thescore.com/2014/12/04/modify-your-racks-env-hash/

<comment><USER2> Hi, I'm the author -- feel free to ask any questions :)</comment>


Ryanair, Hamiltonian Cycles, and using graph theory to find cheap flights (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jldc.me/posts/ryan-air?ref=hnm20 <comment><USER2> This had a big thread just a few months ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22100736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22100736)) so this repost is clearly a dupe. Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).

There was also a big thread at the time (2018): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18526261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18526261). Since the cutoff is about a year, that repost was ok, but the current one was not ok.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gotcha, thanks! Will keep the 1 year rule in mind

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't love Ryanair but the people who criticise them remind me of the Woody Allen joke about the diners complaining about the restaurant, "The food was terrible and the portions! So small!"

</comment><comment><USER4> >Ryanair is a wonderful example of two extremes - it's one of the worst possible airlines that nickel and dimes you for everything, it's not a great employer, and it is rated the worst European airline; however, it's dirt cheap.

This is an interesting conclusion. I would say that being cheap and terrible are not two extremes, but the same one.

<comment><USER5> Am I the only one that loves Ryan air. Great, no-nonsense pricing, no-nonsense service, and they do exactly what you pay them for.

<comment><USER6> Not always. I've spent 36 hours stuck at a gate with no plane in sight with them, before they finally cancelled the flight - mechanical issues with the aircraft, apparently - and they _always_ find a way to worm out of the EC compensation directive, mostly by just flatly refusing to engage. Still waiting for the refund, nearly a year on - they give themselves 250 _working_ days to issue refunds.

They also have poorly trained pilots, who either aren't qualified for ILS or aren't confident in poor conditions - on numerous occasions I've been on flights which they've diverted (Bristol becomes Birmingham, Bergerac becomes Toulouse, Porto becomes Madrid) because of weather, while other airlines land and take off without issue.

<comment><USER7> > They also have poorly trained pilots, who either aren't qualified for ILS or > aren't confident in poor conditions - on numerous occasions I've been on > flights which they've diverted (Bristol becomes Birmingham, Bergerac becomes > Toulouse, Porto becomes Madrid) because of weather, while other airlines > land and take off without issue.

This is straight-up defamatory. Ryanair have similar entry requirements to the majors, much better training and equipment, and the best safety record of any airline in the world. No one gets an EASA Part FCL without ILS, and every Ryanair pilot will be absolutely confident in ILS approaches - most will have done far more than other airline pilots.

<comment><USER8> Ryanair is simply a young airline that only recently grew in size. Their safety record is practically blank and hardly qualifies them as the best in the business.

Hawaii Airlines for example has not had a single fatal crash since it's founding in 1929.

<comment><USER9> Ryanair is 34 years old and flew more PAX in the last two years than Hawaiian has in its entire history, with significantly fewer accidents and incidents, even if you only consider those that occurred while both airlines were flying. It's hard to find historical PAX numbers for Hawaiian, but it seems that Ryanair overtook them at some point in 2000.

I don't see any basis for your claim that their safety record is "practically blank". They are widely considered the world's safest airline - a spot they shared with Southwest until SWA1380.

<comment><USER8> If you compare crashes per flight by year, the entire industry has become safer over time. The expected number of crashes given their operating history assuming an average airline would likely be zero. In fact over 20 major airlines currently having a clean record. So, on it's own that's really not enough information to say anything.

If we are trying to find 'the best' airline in the industry you need to either consider only current practices/equipment etc, or look for airlines with zero crashes despite higher expected lifetime risks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a discussion here the other day about the Seven Bridges of Königsberg, which is today known as a Eulerian path. [1]

Unlike Eulerian paths, which are detectable in linear time [2], detecting Hamiltonian paths is NP-complete [3]. Does anyone have an intuitive explanation for why this is the case?

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23123754)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulerian_path#Hierholzer's_alg...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulerian_path#Hierholzer's_algorithm)

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

<comment><USER11> > Does anyone have an intuitive explanation for why this is the case?

Imagine building a Eulerian path. You're standing at a node, trying to figure out which edge to go down next. Eventually, because it's a Eulerian path, you'll have to go down all the edges eventually. This means it doesn't matter which edge you go down--even if your path hits a dead end, you can magically go back in time and patch in a cycle to your original path.

Put another way, if you establish that a graph has a Eulerian path, every maximal set of edge-disjoint cycles in the graph constitutes that path. Just by looking and making decisions at a very localized context (every node), you can formulate a correct answer.

By contrast, Hamiltonian paths are rarer. Only some maximal sets of node- disjoint cycles can be combined to construct a Hamiltonian path. You don't have the property that you can trivially patch the cycles together if you make a mistake. Looking at a node and trying to decide which next node to pick, you'd have to understand the structure of the entire graph very well to understand if traversing to A will screw you up, and the ramifications are not local.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ryanair can only possibly be the worst rated European airline because everyone uses it. There are plenty of budget airlines between obscure routes in Europe that are the same caliber.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks to Ryanair a flight that started at 140 pounds in 1986 can be had for less that 20 today.i know someone who had to pay 400 for it when they needed to get to a funeral.

<comment><USER13> That is in no way an apples to apples comparison.

£140 would have probably included things like baggage, more leg room, perhaps less restrictive ticket terms and food on a full service airline with eg better IRROPS handling.

<comment><USER3> Believe it or not it's a half hour flight, (the alternative is a ferry and drive/bus). It was a scandal what inefficient national carriers were able to get away with in those days. Most people had to do the long bus trip, 15 hours because flying was too expensive.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the sarcasm but yes I do believe it. That's a different topic though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had a technical assignment with an online air tickets seller, and the requirement was to build the backend for a service that will find routes between airports. aboy was it a fun assignment. As the nodes increase, the time to search the graph for routes increases exponentially. non stop routes would yield the result in milliseconds, 1 stop about 1 second, 2 stops around 40 seconds, 3 stops about 4 minutes, 4 stops.. well I didn't wait for that :) I had engineered a dataset of flights and airports from a puclic source, for a couple thousands airports, and a couple tens of thousands of flights. graph theory is very interesting subject. Turns out, my solution was overkill, and I got the job, but 2 months later Corona happened, so now I'm back to freelancing :D

* If you're curious about the implementation, see [https://github.com/DragosMocrii/flights-search-app](https://github.com/DragosMocrii/flights-search-app)

</comment><comment><USER15> My experience with Ryanair ist pretty good. If (big if) you know what to expect. I had terrible experiences with Wizz and United and avoid them like the plague.

Ryanair is cheap. Tickets can be 9.99, 12.99 Euros. (One Way). I have often speculatively bought these tickets for a trip that might or might not occur and then let them expire. Obviously this is part of their business strategy.

But Ryanair is great.

By the way, Kiwi.com also searches flights with Ryanair connecting flights (AKA Flight hacks). They once offered me a 50 Euros trip from Duesseldorf to Malta with 5 tickets, including going to Bucharest, Berlin etc. I would have been on the road/in the air for two days.

</comment><comment><USER16> I forget how long we ask for between duplicates, so maybe it's OK, but this also appeared closer to when it was written: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18526261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18526261) .

<comment><USER2> The cutoff is about a year ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). However, there was also a major thread a few months ago, so this is clearly a dupe. More explanation here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23146996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23146996)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ryanair is like McDonald's of air travel. I have taken well over 50 flights with them over the last decade, and never had a bad experience, because I always knew what to expect.

In general, it's not worth paying more than 50-60 EUR for a one-way ticket, and it's not worth expecting any compensations or support if something goes wrong.

Nobody expects a restaurant experience from a fast-food chain.

<comment><USER18> the thing is, thanks to eu you have a support, also legal rights as every airline

<comment><USER17> In theory, yes. In practice, it would often cost more in time to actually obtain anything from a low-cost airline in Europe than the compensation was worth.

I strongly believe that if one wants the level of customer service of a traditional airline, (s)he should be flying with a traditional airline, – and paying for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me a little bit of Exploring the Complexity of Driving Directions

[https://jsomers.net/blog/directions](https://jsomers.net/blog/directions)

</comment><comment><USER20> Ryanair is like Gmail, the more the price of something tends to zero, the more you're ready to put up with bullshit like (Google reading your mail, or obnoxious ads on your inbox, etc)

</comment><comment><USER21> I always really enjoy reading graph algorithm pieces, and similarly after studying them have never actually used them. A really nice approach to a fun problem.</comment>


Facebook just removed the top bar?  - <AUTHOR>

Is anyone else getting a new facebook design? The top blue bar is now gone on my page. <comment><USER2> "move fast & break things"

was gone here as well but a refresh brought it back

<comment><USER3> ... & move fast fixing things

<comment><USER4> ... & move fastER fixing things. FTFY

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sitting in a packed university library and never in my life have I seen so many students look so worried.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just came here to post the same thing. Someone pressed the wrong button at FB HQ...

</comment><comment><USER7> ... and it's back. The div with id "pagelet_bluebar" was empty during a few minutes. BTW, does anyone know what the div with class "pagesVoiceBar" present in the blue header refers to?

</comment><comment><USER8> Before we continue on with this article, we will need to define clearly what "hacking" really means and what actions do it constitutes or covers.<http://www.faceraw.net>

</comment><comment><USER9> The Facebook Graph search bar replaces the old top bar. I imagine someone prematurely flipped a switch, before everyone is on Graph search.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yeah, I saw this for a bit and thought my cache was busted. It's back now.

<comment><USER11> I thought the same and deleted the cookies in order to log myself out (I always log out when not using it). This underscores the need for them to have a separate Log-off link instead of relying on the toolbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> seeing the same thing here too. Looks like a screw-up. Will probably be back up in 5 mins, but posting this comment to validate OP's sanity :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I figured as much. I was wondering if they were experimenting with a minimalist approach, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> looks like this was an accident to me.

</comment><comment><USER14> does anyone have a screenshot?</comment>


What Constitutes Artificial Intelligence? Is It the Turing Test? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/https-medium-com-salilsethi-what-constitutes-artificial-intelligence-is-it-the-turing-test-8b70bad50c95 <comment><USER2> Exploring the use cases for 'AI' nowadays is more popular than defining it, I would like to see more dialog around discussing what constitutes 'Artificial Intelligence'.

As with most of us in this field, I hate the often-overused term. More aptly, I believe these are 'Decision Making Machines', they really don't do Critical Thinking, or Abstract Thinking, they simply have a set of given inputs, and a function that decides which set of those given inputs matches a given output.

There's no better example of this than Watson, and Medical Diagnosis. That is not AI. We have an enormous database full of years of medical history. From that history, we draw conclusions about symptoms. For a patient's given symptoms, we are often able to crawl back up that ladder to the diagnosis. Yet we still call Watson AI.

Sometimes, these decisions are chained, giving the illusion of Critical Thinking, but at the end of the day, they are goal-driven algorithms.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you listen to podcasts? - <AUTHOR> What are your favorite apps or websites to listen and find new podcasts and why do you like them?<p>What are your biggest problems with them (if any)? <comment><USER2> Downcast for iOS - more configurable than the builtin, unobtrusive, lots of nice features, clean UI.

No problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Spotify</comment>


Matt Maroon: Advice for Would-Be Y Combinator Founders - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=247

<comment><USER2> You mention the necessity to have 2-3 cofounders, as does Paul in his "why to not not start a startup." In a 2-person startup, do you think both people need to be software developers? I'm an interaction designer, and so although I do the HTML and CSS, my real contribution to the team is my focus on the personas, the design, and the user experience, while my partner focuses on the implementation. So far, things have been moving along at a nice clip, but I'd like to hear your take on this issue. (Note I didn't use the term 'hackers' because although I don't code, I would consider myself someone who works to "design beautiful software.")

<comment><USER3> Not all the founders have to be hackers. You just need at least one person who can hack, and at least one person who can deal with people (including investors and customers).

Three kinds of design ability are needed: product design (what does it do?); software design (how does it do it?); and graphic design (what does the site look like?). Somehow between them the founders have to cover the first two. Graphic designers can be hired, though it's better if the founders can do that too.

The ideal configuration would of course be a group where all the founders had all these skills. Haven't seen that yet, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll add one more... Don't get stressed in the interview if they criticize your idea! They may seem a bit negative towards you but its their job to take a critical angle.

In other words, be cool and dont take stabs at your idea personal. Chances are, the comments they're making turn out true anyway so heed the advice.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I was planning on putting that in tips for interviewees since you don't get any feedback until then.

<comment><USER6> It wasn't feedback on the idea, but I got a call from Jessica and an email from Paul trying to estimate if we were truly prepared to do this as undergraduates.

<comment><USER7> i think we were asked 3 or 4 times in a row if we were really going to go with it, as undergrads...

<comment><USER8> I must have asked 3 out of 4 times - I didn't want you to miss getting your degree when you were so close!

<comment><USER7> completely understandable, of course!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "For instance Zenter, which is obviously much more suited for integration with an online office suite like Google's than as a standalone business"

If there's no potential for a business based around presentations, somebody'd better get on the horn with WebEx and let them know. (Then again, they're probably still too busy counting the $3.2bn from their Cisco acquisition to notice.) PowerPoint is huge in medium/large companies, and the tools available for delivering PPT presentations remotely still suck. And aside from providing awesome presentation design functionality, Zenter would've absolutely given WebEx a run for its money on the presentation delivery side.

<comment><USER10> I think Matt was just making a point using Zenter as an example. For zenter to go the webex route they would have had to add a lot more functionality, but it was obviously possible.

<comment><USER9> Of course, but just taking PPT and porting it to the web feature for feature would be pretty silly. The reason I always thought Zenter was a shoo-in was that there were obvious great, monetizable things they could do with presentations that a desktop app could never hope to do -- and during chats with them, it was quite clear they recognized this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Regarding the number of founders, YouOS springs to mind as a 4-person team. I thought I read PG say he funded a few individual founders this last round?

<comment><USER3> We've funded a few startups with 4 founders. I think there's one in the current batch (though only 3 came to Cambridge). Heysan was not one though; they only had 3 people when we funded them.

There's one single-founder startup in the current batch. He just posted an ad for another person:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for the advice Matt. (Better late than never)

</comment><comment><USER7> congrats on the wedding!

<comment><USER5> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Youtube launch beta video rentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/t/youtube_rentals

<comment><USER2> Oh man, and I haven't had a Beta VCR since the early 1980s. Talk about a niche market!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool but... wasn't it launched like three or four months ago?

<comment><USER4> You're right. [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/youtubes-take- from-...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/youtubes-take-from-movie- rentals-1070916/)

Summary: In January they rented out 5 Sundance 2009/2010 movies, available for 10 days, and got a total of 2684 views. Net revenue $10,709.16 (at $3.99 per rental).</comment></comment>


Amazon to donate to drug charity linked to Scientology - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/22/amazon-to-donate-to-drug-charity-linked-to-scientology <comment><USER2> The headline is crafted to imply something false. According to the article, Amazon permits people to select Narcanon among all charities, because it _is_ a legally registered charity in the UK. If there is a story, I don't see it in the article.</comment>


Ask HN: How little work can you get away with and still have the basics? - <AUTHOR> My goal in life is to have maximum freedom: minimal obligations, minimal stress, minimal responsibilities, while maintaining a private room to live in with basic utilities and food. Then I want to spend my life working on my own projects in my own time, on my own terms, at my own pace, in solitude.
This is practically how I've lived for years under my parents' roof until recently when we were displaced. Now I want to regain what I lost.
Maybe I'm greedy, spoiled, and undisciplined, but the idea of having to spend a large amount of my time and energy working in order to have these fundamental needs met is unacceptable to me. The pressure to regularly exhaust myself with financial obligations that I'm fundamentally not interested in makes it too difficult for me to live comfortably enough to comfortably pursue the things I actually care about, thus defeating the purpose of meeting those needs to begin with.
I'm not convinced it is possible for me to combine "work" and "pleasure" in a way that pays the bills without making serious compromises.
Realistically, what are the best options for coming as close to this ideal as possible? <comment><USER2> You don't mention your citizenship or your age, both of which effect the advice I would give somewhat.

You're basically opting in to a life of poverty until you monetize your projects. In the US you can find land in the rural Midwest wired with fiber/electric for $2k/acre. $5k to drill a well, $10k for a used camper. Then your monthly nut is just food, fuel, utilities, and property taxes ($350/mo). Upwork/codementor a few hours per month to cover this. Or full-time remote work for enough time to pay everything off and stash away your runway. Part of the game is balancing time and expenses (will you garden/raise animals to cut food expenses? heat with wood? maintain your yard?).

My fiancé and I did something similar after leaving typical big city jobs, but I think it takes a rare person/relationship to make it work well.

The part where age factors in is you need to know yourself and your partner very well. Skills matter, sometimes they can decide your security/survival. Emotional fortitude. Assume you are well fed in a quiet room. You still won't be building anything amazing or unlocking the secrets of the universe if your mind won't stop thinking about being lonely. If you are disciplined enough to treat it as a stepping stone along your path, if you have a remarkable partner, or if you're ok being alone and mature enough to know that you always will be, then it can be a good strategy.

<comment><USER3> Rural land with fiber data? Do tell.

Any tips on locating/verifying such properties? This is a move I'd like to make (well, probably putting more than a camper on it).

<comment><USER2> I spent a lot of time overlaying provider coverage maps with Zillow listings. Sometimes listings will call out fiber internet or the name of a known provider.

Google queries like rural fiber coop <state> should send you on a good path. There are a surprising amount. In our specific case it was [https://www.co- mo.net/](https://www.co-mo.net/) in Morgan County, Missouri. It's even more niche because the county has no buildings restrictions, so experimental/cheaper building methods are possible.

Email in my profile for more info.

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a couple opinions I have on this.

The first is if you really want to pursue this ideal, you can look for arbitrage opportunities. This means spending a lot of time taking multiple opportunities and selecting the ones that have the least amount of effort to reward, and doing this many times over your lifetime.

The second (and this is an opinion that you may not like) is that optimizing for no responsibilities is something you should reconsider as the goal in life.

From my experience, taking on responsibilities is a key character trait of people who can create strong communities, build organizations, care for others, and develop their environment around them. Taking responsibility is also not an innate talent, but one that you learn... by taking responsibility.

A life of avoiding responsibility closes off some paths that are really interesting to take, especially as you mature and people aren't always getting on your nerves so much. First is that responsible people receive a lot of resources in the form of trust, money, loyalty, etc, because others know they can handle these resources responsibly. Second is that the attitude and drive to positively affect the world around you is developed alongside responsibility, and separating the two, while doable, is much more challenging. Third is that the alternative to escaping responsibility is building up your skill in handling responsibility, which is very doable (in 2 areas, mainly - delivering on the things expected of you, and managing what is expected of you). If you resolve to have such an attitude, 5-6 years down the road you'll be equipped to take on larger than life challenges you never dreamed you could handle.

The essence of building something is taking responsibility, and this applies to your side projects as well if you want your side projects to be used by the rest of the world. Handling pressure is a skill that you have the pay the price to learn but is very much worth it.

Just my 2c. Had a friend whose whole family was introverts and wanted to run away from society. The grandfather was very lonely at the end of his life because of his decision to go hermit, it made my friend realize that he didn't want that to be his end.

My own youth was a life of no pressure/no responsibility just finding ways to make myself feel happy. I consider them my zombie days - not really alive, just trying to fill base needs. Nowadays I have too much responsibility, but the stress and difficulty are offset by the rewards in so many ways beyond just feeling happy - you have real control to make your life the way you want it, and you develop more and more capability over time.

<comment><USER5> "especially as you mature and people aren't always getting on your nerves so much"

I found that as I got older, people got on my nerves _more_! The first few times people did something annoying, it was like, "whatever". After the 100th time, it was like "here we go again", and I was getting ready to explode. The only thing I found that helped was avoiding such people, and when you're forced to rub shoulders with them due to work constraints, it can lead to a lot of stress.

<comment><USER6> I found as I get older people get on my nerves less.

When the "here we go again" bit comes, there's a few ways to react:

If you can't really control the output, then predict it. I see how far ahead I can predict (including their questions and answers) and laugh when I'm right.

Predict then outcome and preempt it with a joke or even better a conclusion that was 3 steps ahead. People will think you're a wizard.

If you don't like the people then Troll hard. Bait them to reveal their ignorance in the most embarrassing way possible. Just for the fun of it.

I've found the experience that comes with getting older is an enormous source of entertainment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first answer has already been covered by everyone else: you'll regret this, it's a bit childish, and you probably will stop growing as a person.

That out of the way: this is very doable if you can do the following things:

1\. Earn at least $1,500 per month from a remote source of income. This can be a part-time job, a business, or even just saved-up money. If you somehow have $200,000 or more, you can almost live off the interest / long enough to build whatever business you want. At $1,500 per month, 200k will last you over a decade. See [http://www.reddit.com/r/leanfire](http://www.reddit.com/r/leanfire) for more information.

2\. Are okay with living in a place like Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, eastern Germany, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Serbia, rural Italy, etc. If you're European, this is easy. If you're not, you'll also have to deal with visa issues. In America, there aren't as many places where you can live an okay life on $1,500 a month, but it's doable in smaller towns in the midwest or south.

<comment><USER8> I think there are a great many places in the US where you can live a good life for 1500 a month. In many college towns you can find an apartment for <$500 a month and there will still be a decent amount of culture from what the college brings in.

I lived in one of these towns for a few years and was incredibly happy with my lifestyle and spent around $1500 a month.

<comment><USER7> True but your lifestyle in say, Belgrade or Budapest would be much better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What kind of projects do you like to work on in your spare time? I have always disagreed with the inefficiency of everyone doing their own thing and not working together. If everyone collaborated and shared resources, no one person would need to work more than 3 days a week. Furthermore why not do away with the idea of a week entirely.

<comment><AUTHOR> As for my personal projects, I have a lot of interests that I like to explore: programming, physics, language learning and linguistics, art, literature, game development, etc.. The main reason I don't feel like there is a way to monetize these projects effectively is that I feel I'm extremely picky about what exactly I want to do and how I go about it. I also find the pressure that that would entail to be self-defeating. It's important to me that I reserve the freedom to be picky about my projects and to pursue them in solitude and under no pressure.

That's an interesting idea though. I have been thinking a lot about the benefits of collaboration in order minimize the amount of work necessary to satisfy the individual costs of living. I feel like it's easier to find work that pays for more than you actually need than it is to find lesser work that pays for only what you need (not to mention finding only what you need without extras or extra cost to begin with).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Stay at home spouse would work, if you're flexible about the solitude. Some kind of religious order, if you're flexible about the "own projects" (there will be community service and other people's projects).

In most places you can be a full time artist if you literally only have a room (in a shared apartment) by means of teaching classes, busking, applying to every government program in sight, etc. That's only most places. You may need to move to a larger city.

</comment><comment><USER11> Have you read the 4 hour work-week, by Ferris? His idea is to spend lots of time setting up a business and automating it so that it takes little time to maintain.

<comment><USER12> Which, hypocritically and ironically, Ferris does not live by. He works almost constantly, and his business isn't automated and entirely dependent on self- promotion. I wouldn't call a company with a bus factor of 1 and which requires physical speaking appearances and engagements automated. McDonalds is automated. Amazon is automated. Writing, speaking engagements, podcasts, is the opposite of automation.

The 4 hour work week is a lesson in marketing not automation: Selling desire (not having to work) is very, very effective. Another way to look at it: What made Tim Ferris famous and rich? Selling the 4 hour work week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Your message reads like you are either speaking out of disappointment or you have overly ideal views of work.

Don't live your life in a metaphorical or real box :-)

<comment> UK-Al05 Sounds like he has very negative views of work to me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fuck it if you want to live this way go for it.

Lots of people sayimg you won't grow etc. in this thread, but does that mean we have to be in a rat race, compete and screw up the planet just to be "normal".

So Good luck, hope you find a way to make it work. If it was me I'd start I. thailand where you can have meals take away for $2 and that takes away the cooking and needing a kitchen etc. live somewhere cheap. I'd go for Phuket to avoid the city life.

</comment><comment><USER15> Are you up for working 8 hours a day? My experience is that many jobs (even in the top companies) allow you to stay relatively unmotivated after a certain point which is fairly easy to reach (1 to 2 years). You still have to do something, though, but not nearly as much as one might think.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply!

8 hours seems like quite a bit to me. I feel like I would most likely burnout much too quickly at that rate to last even a couple of months. I was unable to complete my college degree for this reason and dropped out.

That sounds interesting though. When you say you're allowed to be relatively unmotivated, does that correspond to being able to spend a lot of those "work hours" however you like without penalty?

<comment><USER15> Depends on the company. I had a friend who spent most of his time at work not doing any work, but for example browsing catalogs and fixing his new apartment (while financing that with his salary). Although after a year or two he started to hate it and quit, changed to something that actually requires his attention, as I think he was afraid he's losing skill this way.

I'd say anything between ~30% and ~70% "time-weighted attention" required within those 8 hours a day doesn't surprise me. And when I say "required" I mean if you put in less you'll be eventually fired.

Edit: this is not to say that working hard doesn't pay off, it certainly does if the company is set up properly (and many are). I'm taking about bare minimums here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't recommend going down this road. As you grow older you may regret it.

Working can be rewarding. The rat race sucks but getting older you may want a family and reasonable income is really important for a family.

Maybe there is a way you can participate in the economy without being so unhappy about it?

<comment><USER17> While this is a good response in terms of likely outcomes, it's important to respect OP's right to make his own decisions. In this case, he did make a decision and decided to gather advice on how to fill that in on a forum of people he trusts. It would be very aggravating to me to receive replies that essentially say "what you want is just a phase, you should stop wanting that and want something else".

<comment><USER16> I respect the OP is in charge of his own life. I'm simply offering some input that may not be obvious to someone younger. People helped me out in a similar way. I'm so happy they did.

Can you elaborate as to why you are aggravated?

<comment><USER17> I suspect that while we both got similar advice in the past, we respond differently to people telling us not to do things. I don't love just being told "what you want is a bad idea" especially if it's as nebulous as general life advice/direction. For this reason I end up not listening to it, even though there might be good underpinnings. I try to let people make their own mistakes, there is not really a wrong choice to make - it's their life after all.

This is all assuming that "don't do this thing you're doing" is something that the OP has heard before, of course. It seems pretty obvious that it's not something most people would find a good idea. I assume that's one of the reasons they're asking here.

<comment><USER16> No one enjoys hearing people disagree with their decisions but sometimes it's the best thing for us. There are wrong choices that people make. I've made lots of those choices. I've also had some help avoiding some of those choices.

Please don't miss understand my response. I'm not saying don't do what you're doing. I'm saying the path they're considering may not put them in the place want when they're older. Trying to hint that they may be happier if they shoulder some of the burden they're trying to avoid. That while at the moment it might seem like a good deal there is a hidden cost. As you get older you realize that you only get so much time and you may wake up one day wishing you'd gotten further in life.

There is also a lot of joy that comes from taking on responsibility and mastering it. It would be a shame to miss out on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjfClL6nogo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjfClL6nogo)

I know this isn't what you're asking for. But I think it's closer to what you need.

<comment><USER19> You know what he needs? A stern talk from poppa Peterson?

I think calling him a man-child for realizing that this is a raw deal, deeply condescending and unnecessary.

It is a raw deal. The "normal" approach to work in our society is soul crushing. I'm 28 years old and I have been unhappy about my job since I left college. The thing I spend most of my time on, more than 40 hours a week, is something I hate doing, therefore I hate my life. But hey, I have car, and a bank account and the fridge is full, so it is all worth it?

I'm still exploring other ways. There are some jobs that I think will be able to satisfy me. If not, I want to do exactly OP plans to do, because I'd rather be poor and happy than middle class and miserable.

<comment><USER18> I think when someone's goal is to go back to "life under my parents' roof", calling them a man-child is perfectly appropriate.

> I'd rather be poor and happy than middle class and miserable.

Those aren't your only two options though. You can set up a life that includes responsibility and is incredibly rewarding. In fact, being able to handle the responsibility is often where the sense of doing something meaningful comes from.

edit: To put it simply, the better reaction to realizing that "this is a raw deal" isn't to ask "How can I run away from this?", but instead ask yourself "How can I become a person who can handle this and thrive?"

<comment><USER19> >My goal in life is to have maximum freedom: minimal obligations, minimal stress, minimal responsibilities, while maintaining a private room to live in with basic utilities and food. Then I want to spend my life working on my own projects in my own time, on my own terms, at my own pace, in solitude.

Nowhere there did he say that his goal is to live under his parent's roof. That's something you need to willfully misunderstand in order to disparage OP's lifestyle aspirations.

There was an old man working at a postal office at the age of 50, he decided to say fuck it and he quit his job to become a writer. Everyone else said he was crazy leaving well paying job and a future pension. He didn't care, he said that he would rather starve than spend another day doing that senseless grind. He was prepared to die. His name was Charles Bukowski.

I only have words of encouragement for someone who wants to dedicate his limited time on this earth pursuing his own projects and aspirations.

I think your responses say more about you than about OP.

<comment><USER18> me > I think when someone's goal is to go back to "life under my parents' roof", calling them a man-child is perfectly appropriate.

you > Nowhere there did he say that his goal is to live under his parent's roof.

OP > This is practically how I've lived for years under my parents' roof until recently when we were displaced. Now I want to regain what I lost.

If we are looking at the same text but seeing different words, we can end this discussion.

<comment><USER19> Let me help you understand what OP wrote. It is not that difficult.

OP's goal as clearly stated has nothing to do with living with his parents. He wants time to follow his personal projects. When he was living with his parent he was able to do those projects. But now that that's no longer possible, he wants to regain what he lost in terms of free time and responsibility so he can get back to working on his personal projects.

We can end this discussion right now. I have nothing else to say to you.

<comment><USER18> I don't want to get involved in pointless back-and-forths but I think our disagreement comes from how we see OP.

I think you're reading his original post and seeing a person who wants to go against the typical path that's laid out in front of him, have a unique lifestyle and the freedom to choose his own work.

When I read it, I'm seeing a spoiled child, who doesn't want to grow up or do anything difficult but lock himself alone in a room for the rest of his life. And he's hiding all of this behind aspirations for more freedom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It may be tough for people to give advice, because I think your options are going to vary a lot, depending on where you live.

The first thing I'd recommend, though, is that you keep track of all your expenses, if you aren't doing this already. This gives you the starting point for deciding how much money you really _need_ to make in order to _live the way that you want_. Please keep in mind that expenses can increase as you age: for example, health insurance premiums can skyrocket depending on where you live, and things like hearing aids, expensive dental work, and so on, may not be covered by insurance. You may not want to worry about this stuff now, or maybe you'll get lucky. Anyway, if you track your expenses now, at least you'll have a handle on what you need for the immediate future, barring unforeseen emergencies.

A few years back, my goal was very similar to yours. I started tracking every single expense to figure out how much money I actually needed to survive per year. As someone else mentioned, you can amass a pile of money and live off the income stream from that, provided you trust the "4% rule" or one of its variants. Take a look at these blogs:

[http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/](http://www.retireearlyhomepage.com/) \- guy who worked till about 40 and retired, living off income from his savings

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/blog/) \- guy who worked and made a chunk of money, continues to work on his own fun projects that make an income stream

[http://earlyretirementextreme.com/](http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) \- guy who lived a really lean lifestyle with just a small income stream (iirc 4 h/w doing jobs off craigslist) (but then he went to work for a hedge fund, iirc).

Anyway, seems like you want to check out the last link first.

You may also want to read "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.

Someone else mentioned Timothy Ferriss' "Four Hour Work Week". I agree that it can be helpful, but I think he makes it sound easier than it actually is to set up a small lifestyle business. So I'd suggest reading it for inspiration more than anything else. Also it's a bit outdated.

I think maybe what you're asking is this: you don't want a FT job because you don't really need all the money you'd make from a FT job. You'd rather have much more free time, and screw the FT job. If this is what you're asking, definitely check out the retire early extreme guy.

I'm sure you're aware that you might change over time and may suddenly discover a passion for sports cars, a spouse, travel, or whatever. So, if you can squirrel away any extra money, it won't hurt. Just keep that in mind, it can happen.</comment>