The Developer Coefficient: a $300B opportunity for businesses - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/reports/developer-coefficient-2018 <comment><USER2> The real question is (and I think this is why they commissioned the study) "how much code should they have not written in the first place?" Stripes answer is "well, definitely not the payment processing portion"

The report is basically leads one to conclude that with well developed API, the world would be more productive if we can outsource common business logic (like payment processing) to we'll encapsulated and designed services. Why? So you can spend more time building new stuff instead of fixing stuff that many other people are also fixing in their own implementations.

Basically, I see this as a "code is a liability, so use a SASS; we aren't biased in our framing of it"

<comment><USER3> It's correct though.

90% of code is just reinventing the wheel, over and over again. And not just specialised modules like payments. Its insane that even small companies have "data experts", "UI/UX designers". Best practice is actually quite narrow and less important than we think, better to have 30 great designers working on the best way to allow users to interact with devices than 30.000 wasting time. Likewise, its better to have a bunch of smart people working on abstracting away data storage then everyone digging through AWS docs.

The truth is, _WE_ have not been able to agree on standards of software development that would see the complexity abstracted so we can write applications faster. And because of this, cloud platforms and SAAS providers are filling the gap and increasing in power.

Every time I watch the mother of all demos [1] I feel depressed. Its as if builders were given the power to create new construction materials from scratch, for free. And then spent the next 50 years arguing over whose material is better than actually building cool stuff.

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

<comment><USER4> Maybe somewhat off-topic: How much cool stuff is there even left to build in the software world?

<comment><USER5> The more you build, the more you realize how many more things haven't been built yet and you might want to build after the current one(s)... ad infinitum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >"Access to developers is a bigger constraint than access to capital"

As software continues to eat the world, I am reminded of Uncle Bob's blog on a Hippocratic Oath for software developers and the gravity behind the consequences of what we produce.

[http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle- bob/2015/11/27/OathDiscussi...](http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle- bob/2015/11/27/OathDiscussion.html)

It's only a matter of time before the discussion changes from "Developer Coefficient" to much more dire tone. To quote Bob Martin,

"With that great power ought to come great responsibility. And, indeed, society will hold us responsible when our actions result in disaster. And yet nothing binds us together as a profession. We share no ethics. We share no discipline. We share no standards. We are viewed, by our employers, as laborers. We are tools for others to command and use. We have no profession."

<comment><USER7> There is the ACM Code of Ethics that some of us subscribe to. Though I understand if many people have never heard of such a thing.

I've personally found it very difficult to discuss ethics and professionalism. Many SWEs either don't care or see it as an opportunity to try to inject their personal ethics. Neither is helpful in formulating a professional ethical system.

<comment><USER8> Do many understand what a professional ethical system. I'd say I'd only have a fuzzy idea, having not worked in a real profession.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b Well, on top of everything that's being said here, one thing that strikes me is that this "calculation" omits that technical debt has value.

I consider myself a pretty ok developer, in the sense that most of my time is employed at re-writing systems that have been written poorly by employees. So instead of writing new a shiny software, my valuable time is spent replacing something existing with something else. Zero value? Not quite!

The first-written system has 2 objectives: 1. getting something out to validate the business model quickly - 2. Refine requirements following business needs.

Point 1 implies that for the original system: the sooner the better. Definitely at the expense of quality.

Point 2 implies that the system will experience incremental engineering, often leading to messy code.

But, the market will be validated and the requirements refined. That definitely has a cost, happily paid by technological debt.

That's actually why it's called technological debt!

<comment><USER9> _Point 2 implies that the system will experience incremental engineering, often leading to messy code._

Yes, often. But not necessarily. The worst problems I've found were caused by bad abstractions. Naive code is seldom the source of troubles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This report is looking at interesting issues, in a mostly pointless way (ask people what they think). The only part of it that was of any real use is the part where you can compare C-level answers to developer answers to the same question, not because either one is likely to be accurate, but because the delta between the two is of interest.

Otherwise, I would say most of what they're looking at (what is bad code, how productive are developers, etc.) is so hard to measure, that the opinions of people on them are nearly useless. There may be a company or two out there that has a good handle on the productivity of their developers, the level of technical debt in their current codebase, etc. But surely most of them do not, and thus an average of the opinions of many people about something they have no clear handle on how to measure, is worse than useless.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm glad they did the study, but be careful about confusing these numbers with the truth. There's obviously an incentive for C-level executives to exaggerate (when asked) how much of a labour shortage there is compared to reality. (If they say there's a bigger shortage than there is, people might flood the market and wages will go down.)

<comment><USER12> True! It also allows C-levels to imply that the problems are someone else's fault (lack of resource) rather than poor management. I struggle as a C-level to recruit good people but ultimately, it is my job to make things work regardless of the constraints I have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Page 8 of the report:

> Which of the following technology trends, if any, are having the greatest > impact on your company in 10 years?

> Blockchain: 0% developers, 20% C-Level

little C-level execs answering this positively understand what blockchain is, and if they said blockchain will impact them in the next 10 years, a lot of that comes from the BTC hype. This also is shown by 0% of developers thinking it will have an impact.

<comment><USER14> Here's what was in the report:

Blockchain: - developers, 20% C-Level

I didn't interpret "-" as "0%". To me it seems more like they didn't get data for this particular trend. The same thing appears in the next line for ML.

ML: 20% developers, - C-Level

Does it say anywhere that "-" means "0%"? Surely some C-Level execs think ML will have a big impact on their company.

<comment><USER15> The C-level executives in the company I work for are big on both ML and Blockchain, to provide at least one anecdote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a valuable lens to look at the engineering talent market through. But did they really characterize 'time spent refactoring' as 'lost productivity'?

<comment><USER17> That would mean they believe if you "wrote it correctly the first time" you wouldn't need to refactor. Therefore you would have productivity to produce new features.

This is obviously shortsighted for reasons most developers already understand.

<comment><USER18> > That would mean they believe if you "wrote it correctly the first time" you > wouldn't need to refactor.

Great, then we can save the money spent on version control as well!

I actually had someone suggest this to me as I was installing a VCS. ("Why don't you just write it correctly the first time?")

<comment><USER19> I tell business people they wouldn't need MS Word but could get by with a typewriter if they wrote it correctly the first time.

<comment><USER20> I version control and unit test in my mind palace before chiseling my code onto marble slabs. Lasts forever, encourages parsimony, and gives me an excuse to stare at the wall pretending to work 39 hours per week. I call it Bruno coding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> LOL @ that pie-chart. It seems to be lifted directly out of the mythical man- month.

Can we please find a way to automate these C-level executives next?

<comment><USER22> Impossible. These are special people. The most important people in a company. They are so important that when they fail they get rich. They can't lose.

Us mere mortals could never understand them, let alone code them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So the USD 3 000 000 000 figure is summed up on page 3 as so:

                18 000 000      Devs worldwide
        *           51 000      USD Global Domestic Product per dev
           </comment><comment></comment><comment>---
           918 000 000 000      Global Domestic Product of all devs
        *                 .316  Percent efficiency loss per survey
           </comment><comment></comment><comment>---
           290 088 000 000      USD loss for all devs globally

So the report suggests (I _think_ ) that while companies lament about a lack of devs, they're wasting a significant proportion of their existing devs' efforts. (Other commenters here question whether that's "too much" waste.)

I'll wager that we're seeing the result of management practices that don't properly leverage the ability of computers to bring competitive advantage to organizations. Instead, we see organizations struggle with the need to totally rethink their approach given the powerful tool that computing brings. Furthermore, my bet is that most organizations won't successfully transition, and that a new breed will take over.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd be really interested to see the correlation of project management practices to tech debt.

<comment><USER25> I read that and thought of all the other folks that do work to help put software in production and how they were all ignored in favor of developers.

<comment><USER24> I didn't get the impression they were ignored. Just that developers were harder to hire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Developers spend over 17 hours every week dealing with maintenance issues > like debugging and refactoring, and about a quarter of that time is spent > fixing bad code. That's nearly $300B in lost productivity every year.

Wow, there's a $300B untapped market for developers who write perfectly maintainable code on the first try and produce no tech debt?

<comment><USER27> This is why code analysis tooling exists and is a profitable market.

Sarcasm aside, there is a difference made between bad code and (regular) refactoring and tech debt in the report. I read bad code as the mistakes a junior might make but any reasonable experienced engineer shouldn't anymore.

<comment><USER10> Truth, but even that is something that you need to let happen, then fix in code reviews, etc. You can't turn a junior developer into an experienced one without letting them code and make mistakes, which then must be fixed (hopefully before getting pushed to production).

<comment><USER28> Certainly that's true today. I wonder how feasible it would be in the future to leverage deep learning and pattern recognition AI technologies to build a code editor plug-in that would act something like an experienced developer always watching over the junior developer's shoulder and pointing out common mistakes. We have a very limited form of that already in static analysis tools but I feel like it ought to be possible to take the concept much further?

<comment><USER29> There's deep learning based program synthesis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Haha the report includes the rhetorical question:

> How much of a priority is it for upper management to increase the > productivity of its developers?

> High / medium priority 96%

</comment><comment><USER31> This study doesn't show a $300B opportunity, it shows a $300B optics issue. What it highlights is that there's roughly a $300B gap between the recognized costs of technical projects and the fully burdened cost of technical projects.

Every single business function suffers from process inefficiency, rework needs, upkeep/maintenance needs, incremental changes/adaptations over time, and quality differences between deliverables/execution from senior vs. junior staff. The only difference between those functions and IT is that:

1\. IT (and developers in particular) are incredibly expensive resources. Even junior employees here can cost more than seasoned professionals in other departments. This amplifies the scrutiny it receives.

2\. IT work tends to get "projectized" more than other business units. This puts a higher level of visibility into time usage, allowing more granular accounting of where people are spending time.

3\. Developers (as opposed to most business users[1]) have more exposure to "the right way"[2] to do things. This allows a level of self-awareness of process debt that leads to dissatisfaction and grumbling whenever they have to do things that wouldn't have been required if the process debt hadn't existed. Which translates into telling management that they could have done more if they had done things "the right way"[2], which management then interprets as lost productivity. But doing things differently would have necessitated a different cost outlay and timeframe to the original project, so in reality it's just shifting costs back to the project itself (or diffusing it into operational support) rather than post-project maintenance costs.

\--

Process debt accumulates everywhere. Everyone knows it's harder to get things done in an enterprise company than a small, scrappy startup. That's not just because the technical systems are newer and unencumbered by legacy systems. It's because _the entire business_ is newer and unencumbered by legacy processes, calcified skillsets and policies, or what "normal" is. You can assimilate best practices and newer approaches to things because there's no internal inertia yet on _anything_ , which includes but is not exclusive to the technical components.

You can shift around those $300B in costs, and it's mostly an optics issue. Mitigating technical debt isn't free, and has no silver bullet. The cost is just shifted to the front end instead of the back end, in the form of operational support resources, process changes, automation, and hiring better skilled employees. It could well have ancillary benefits in the form of more execution agility over time, but from a cost perspective that $300B is just going to shift elsewhere, not go away.

Developers do themselves a disservice by derisively speaking about technical debt to managers, and pointing out that if they could have only done things differently, that technical debt wouldn't exist. It paints the perspective that the technical debt is the result of individual developers decisions/actions, rather than a symptom of operating within the existing operational and organizational processes. If your company runs projects with a high level of rework needs and maintenance afterward, that's the result of organizational issues beyond a single developer and should be viewed as an expected outcome that rolls up into the cost of executing projects in the existing environment. It's a separate conversation about whether to invest in process and operational improvements to reduce those types of project costs.

[1] I've set up entire drip marketing programs for companies for ~$5k before, with minimal ongoing costs for maintaining it and passing through email platform costs. I've also seen instances where companies have paid $40-50k to have an agency create a single "thanks for signing up" email, and pay $40-50k to create and send a single quarterly newsletter email to less than 10k recipients. And they didn't consider that a waste, because after accounting for their accumulated internal process debt, a three month lead time and $40-50k in costs was a competitively bid rate to execute the work for them.

[2] I put it in quotes because "the right way" is usually not, in fact, an objectively correct way to do thing. But rather an ideal best practice or a following-the-bandwagon approach, without any critical thought or evaluation on whether it truly makes sense to apply to their environment.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe "studies" such as this can be used as leverage for more time in the "design" phase of things? Design phase could arguably encapsulate choices related to tooling, appropriate staffing decisions, etc.

Knowing the rough costs of rework and bug hunting, I would hope that "studies", like the above, are taken to add more weight to the activities in software engineering, not just the programming/coding aspects.

</comment><comment><USER33> > How many hours per week do you estimate developers at your company waste on > maintenance (i.e. dealing with bad code / errors, debugging, refactoring, > modifying)? 17.3 hours

How is this tracked? Looks like it's just a survey of opinions. From my data I see the median time spent in IDE at 11 hours so 17 hours spent on refactoring must be a lot of non-coding tasks.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Talented Developers working on the right things"

In my case, I hardly do any software engineering. I spent a lot of time on meetings and doing non-technical work for an army of managers, PMs and other leaders that have 100% of time availability to spend furthering their careers.

</comment><comment><USER35> Studies conducted or sponsored by a business with vested interests really aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Yes, the underlying principle of improved efficiency having benefits may be true - but we knew that without needing this report.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that's quite true. Every conclusion to any question could potentially benefit a business - it doesn't make it untrue. You just have to question the motivation of the report, is it unbiased? Do the conclusions follow? How wide is the scope of the report etc.

It doesn't seem unreasonable that most people should outsource work to a supplier who can specialise in something but it does not, of course, answer the questions about the skills required to manage the outsourcing in some cases. For things like payments, most people outsource anyway and the domain is relatively narrow so there aren't too many gotchas for most people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Which companies participated in the survey? Is it possible to know?

</comment><comment><USER37> What SDS refers to in the answer to "Which of the following technology trends, if any, are having the greatest impact on your company today?"

</comment><comment><USER38> Refactoring is not a waste of time or lost effort, it's a vital part of the process

</comment><comment><USER39> They way this report is framed made me angry.

Stripe, first of all, your report misrepresents software development reality.

You present software maintenance as a massive waste of time and money. But that's just not true. Maintenance is how software stays relevant.

Laws and regulations change, technology platforms change, features rise and fall in importance, the users themselves change over time. There are endless justifications for ongoing software maintenance.

For as long as software serves a useful purpose, it will need maintenance.

Yet you present maintenance as somehow bad, when in reality maintenance is the natural consequence and an essential aspect of software development, and it has always been so.

You're also pandering to an ignorant attitude that believes software can be written free from bugs and perfectly formed from the outset. Thus all it takes, thinks the ignorant executive, is for my coders to be better than they are.

You highlight the cost of "bad code".

You don't provide a definition of bad code, so here's mine:

Bad code is code that is hard to understand and/or hard to modify without breaking things and introducing errors.

If you know software developers, you know we are, on the whole, vocal and assertive about the avoidance and elimination of bad code. Look at what we talk about at conferences, in blog posts, and on twitter.

Writing and learning about good code is a consuming passion for many developers. Search for "clean code" to see countless examples. How do we avoid writing bad code in the first place? That is a billion-dollar question (or $85bn as you say).

Everyone without exception agrees we should not write bad code, yet bad code persists.

Bad code is a function of ambiguous requirements, unreasonable deadlines, lack of training and support, lack of a proper testing regime, lack of appropriate project sponsorship, internal politics, lack of funding, and so on.

Yes, some engineers will at times be lazy, thoughtless, short-sighted. Just like their managers. Just like their manager's manager.

But in the round, bad code exists primarily because of human, social, and political problems we all share.

And then consider how we eliminate bad code. We do that with __maintenance of the code __, Stripe, this is the very thing your report damns as waste.

To maintain software, we refactor, we add tests, we discuss and debate, we tease apart and reconstruct. To the software developer, maintenance is normal and expected. It's part of the job. You build it, then you support and maintain it.

The reason I'm so hot about this is that I know (from watching it happen again and again) how many executive level managers will interpret your report. They will think it's because their programmers are lazy, feckless, indolent, and narcissistic.

It's cognitively and politically much easier to blame bad code on an engineer's attitude than the ecosystem in which they work. And these executive level managers will vent their frustration on those same engineers and look for quick wins like off-shoring.

"If we're going to suffer from bad code, at least let's get it cheaply."

Or the exec might crank up their attitude of command-and-control to bring those apparently miscreant coders to order. Misery for the coder, and never works out well.

Stripe, your report does not help us get better. You're throwing fuel on the fire.

(Originally posted most of this Twitter, wanted it here to increase the chance of someone relevant at Stripe seeing it)

</comment><comment><USER40> The usual manager weasel words:

"leveraging developer talent" : exploit labor without competitive pay

"Access to talent" : noncompetitive pay

"Access to software engineers" : noncompetitive pay

"Access to capital" : noncompetitive pay

"Immigration requirements" : please let us import more labor, but still keep them indentured to us

<comment><USER41> > "Immigration requirements" : please let us import more labor, but still keep > them indentured to us

Not really. A points based system or even something that just means that H-1Bs are instantly given green cards would work for me and I'm not even CEO.

In fact, the current annoyance is this bloody work stoppage going on regarding H-1B premium processing. It's a nightmare.</comment></comment>


C Is Manly, Python Is for "n00bs": False Stereotypes Become Technical "Truths" - <AUTHOR> https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/c-is-manly-python-is-for-n00bs-how-false-stereotypes-turn-into-technical-truths

<comment><USER3> The general points against people trying to establish a rigid hierarchy of languages make a lot of sense - people make a lot of dumb generalizations about programming languages.

I think the article makes a lot of bad claims and arguments though in the service of an overall point that is valid, so it was frustrating to read.

Sometimes the technical differences between languages are actually significant - even though many can be used for multiple purposes, it doesn't mean they can be used for all purposes or have equivalent properties.

I also think there's a bit of a strawman there: "he community and libraries, rather than the technical features, are most important in determining the languages people choose". It's true that the libraries, community and conventions around a language are as important as the language itself, but I think people's statements about the programming language usually mean the whole complex of things around it, rather than just the core language + standard libraries.

I'm also not sure why they resorted to using random internet comments - <USER2> of which seem to be entirely tongue in cheek - to support their argument. It doesn't really detract from the points, but it's distracting.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you pigeonhole yourself as a Python Programmer or a PHP Programmer or a Ruby Programmer you've failed as a programmer.

A programmer programs. You should have the confidence to pick the right tools for the job and, if necessary, learn a new language if that's the right thing to do.

Likewise, you should have the confidence in your team regardless of their gender or language background. A good programmer is a good programmer. Period.

<comment><USER5> I second that as well. Strong programming skills transfer across languages and the more different languages you know, the stronger programmer you will be in all of them. Also, different programming paradigms are emphasized in different languages (functional, OOP, declarative, imperative are the simplest examples...). Knowing these different languages will expose you to these different paradigms and that's very valuable, I think.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is my startup unethical? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alumreview.com/

<comment><USER2> No. I believe it is perfectly fine. Good luck

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. are you an alum of a US university?

<comment><USER2> No, sorry</comment></comment></comment>


Forget Slack. Discord is the best messaging app I've ever used - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/forget-slack-discord-is-the-best-messaging-app-ive-ever-used-9351a035069 <comment><USER2> I use Discord every day, and have for quite a while now. I'm going to be sad the day that years of my conversation history gets sold for several billion dollars when Amazon or Google acquires them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really hope that doesn't happen. They have such a good product, and looks like they are trying to compete with Steam with their games library. I feel like they should consider also making a side product for messaging though. People are ditching Facebook Messenger and even Slack for Discord.</comment></comment>


Reverse Engineering LPC's Device Firmware Upgrade Protocol - <AUTHOR> http://blog.technical.io/post/66686276686/reverse-engineering-lpcs-device-firmware-upgrade

<comment><USER2> Pretty neat, and I'm certainly all _for_ gaining new knowledge, but couldn't the author just have decompiled the .NET binary (using a tool such as JetBrain's dotPeek) to see what it was doing without having to sign the NDA?

<comment><USER3> Depends what are you more used to... I usually look at the data transmission for obvious solutions before decompiling stuff. Since he's dealing with hardware, he's probably also likely to be used to making sense of long data streams looking for issues :)

<comment><USER4> (The author is a woman.)</comment></comment></comment>


"mastodon instance set up at https://twìttèr.com/" (not really, but scary funny) - <AUTHOR> https://mastodon.social/@wakest/5042917 <comment><AUTHOR> The funny and oh-so-scary things that can be done with not-just-ascii domain names. If my grand-parents were alive, I'd be frightened that they would fall prey to not-just-ascii domain names...even though (at a glance) there's nothing nefarious about this particular mastodon instance.</comment>


Was the Nuclear Family a Mistake? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuclear-family-was-a-mistake/605536/ <comment><USER2> >In 1970, the family structures of the rich and poor did not differ that greatly. Now there is a chasm between them. As of 2005, 85 percent of children born to upper-middle-class families were living with both biological parents when the mom was 40. Among working-class families, only 30 percent were. According to a 2012 report from the National Center for Health Statistics, college-educated women ages 22 to 44 have a 78 percent chance of having their first marriage last at least 20 years. Women in the same age range with a high-school degree or less have only about a 40 percent chance. Among Americans ages 18 to 55, only 26 percent of the poor and 39 percent of the working class are currently married. In her book Generation Unbound, Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution, cited research indicating that differences in family structure have "increased income inequality by 25 percent." If the U.S. returned to the marriage rates of 1970, child poverty would be 20 percent lower. As Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, once put it, "It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged."

I think this paragraph has a lot to say about how marital cooperation helps wealth creation. I've seen statistics (a long time ago) that a married couple only consumes 1.4 times the living expenses of a single person. The rest can go in the bank or into a higher standard of living. This also has the economic benefit of diversification, where the family can still make ends meet if one income is lost.

"Marriage inequality" does not seem to be a category of inequality that can ever be addressed through government led redistributive efforts.

</comment><comment><USER3> This title is pretty misleading. The article is actually recommending larger extended families which include nuclear families, not recommending that nuclear families be dissolved or otherwise done without.

As retro as that might sound, I agree with it. I wish I'd had access to multiple adults other than my parents growing up, but I didn't. Still feeling the lack of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article pits individual freedom/empowerment against the family unit and argues the latter is vanishing and we need it back. A familiar topic lately.

I'm afraid this is a false dichotomy. If we're actually trading the family unit for free self-empowered individuals, there are positive effects like decreased susceptibility to influence and belief in unlikely things.

But that's not what's actually happening. Signs point to social cohesion being traded for an uprooted, uninformed individualism that is susceptible to targeting and influence on mass scale.

I'd say what we want for social resilience is not the family unit back, but to nurture individuals as highly informed skeptics.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've seen a number of pieces like this that argue that the nuclear family is an aberration in history compared to the extended family. They are of course right, but almost inevitable fail to address the fact that the "nuclear" family is/was generally a part of those extended family structures. The reason it is called the "nuclear" family is the metaphor that the parents + child is the smallest divideable unit of family. The idea that nuclear family should exist in isolation is probably mistaken, but I arguments it shouldn't exist at all completely uncompelling.

The evidence I saw presented was more along the lines that the nuclear family is "necessary but not generally sufficient" rather than something to be completed supplanted by a new paradigm, at least in the case of those that chose/are able to have children.

</comment><comment><USER6> The nuclear family wasn't a choice, it was pushed on us by the economic elites who wanted to refine the old extended families (and, left unsaid, the old ethnic neighborhoods and towns) down into a more homogeneous group of consumers, with less overall political power. Catholic power, in particular, was of deep concern[1].

This has been further refined down to hyper-individualism, ideally childless, to maximize labor supply and flexibility.

The elites want relatively powerless, bickering identity groups composed of random individuals, that will not demonstrate solidarity with one another, and that will fall into line on elite issues (banking, war, etc.). One must say that they are doing a very good job of getting it.

This article is typical, well done elite propaganda, as one would expect from The Atlantic: it points out a real problem and then presents an even worse solution that appeals to our modern sensibilities, but that in fact furthers the elite goals.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> >You have less space to make your own way in life

I'd say that this has to be emphasized, especially if the extended family has a lot of conservative people.

</comment><comment><USER8> I find these sort of articles incredibly short-sighted and little more than a reminiscing of the "good old times". Those times are not coming back. The last sentence is particularly comical in its detachment from reality.

In the age of the network, the notion of family to say nothing about our notion of self, is a cultural relic fast on the road to extinction. Decoherence and disintegration is all around us. We will adapt but we need to look forward, towards a new kind of synthesis, not behind.</comment>


Ask HN: Ubuntu getting slower, what is alternative? - <AUTHOR> Recently my ubuntu linux started getting slower after each update (maybe false perception). X-org eating 50% CPU, firefox, chrome competing for CPU, battery drain and other problems with pre-installed software (snap is one example) and so on.
On same laptop I use dual boot with Windows 10, and not feeling any of above problems, but I am used to be in Linux for development.
Any recommendations for distributions which is fast and non-bloated? <comment><USER2> Where my work machine is Fedora (RH shop) my personal VMs have been Void lately because it so far has been straightforward to use, and runs well on lean resources.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mint is well-liked and often used as an alternative to Ubuntu, and it's known for being reasonably lightweight. I haven't used it myself in several years.

</comment><comment><USER4> I switched to Manjaro 2 years ago after 12 years on Ubuntu (since Edgy Eft) and never looked back.

You can check distrowatch.com for most popular distros.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it me or there aren't many jobsites for freelancers? - <AUTHOR>

After quitting my job I found that being a freelancer is not a easy thing. I got a lot of emails and call phones from employers, but only 1 email from a client that wanted some freelancing work on a project that I wasn't too fond of. I see a lot of good job postings, but for freelancers I don't see so many opportunities if you do not market yourself and do not start looking for projects and sacrifice a lot of time ,that you could be coding, on marketing yourself. Elance from my point of view is really bad for good developers and for developers that want to work on interesting stuff. Also the payment is low on that site and it is a bidding war with developers that work for 10-15$/h. Am I missing something or this is the truth that if you want to be a successful freelancer you need to work hard on your marketing plan? Are there better websites than Elance where good freelancers can find projects? I am really thinking of making a platform for good freelancers where they can be matched with interesting projects and high paying clients. Not sure tho if this hasn't been done or if it is a good idea. <comment><USER2> I think your general reaction is correct. The successful sites for freelancers are engaged in a race to the bottom since they are open to and often overwhelmed with offshore developers.

There is plenty of opportunity for new sites to solve this problem in various ways. Specialized skill sets, the ability to do onsite work, training+coding, all provide angles that I believe could be effective, potentially each as the basis for standalone services.

I've contemplated the idea of a marketing site to promote a very specific service: \- 2 Days Onsite: 1 Day Training, 1 Day Hacking with Your Team \- 3 Topics to choose from: * High Performance Rails, * Customized ElasticSearch, OR * Ember.JS-enable your App

No offshore firm could provide this service, and few freelancers tout their most specialized skills effectively.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your idea is really awesome....also I think a site like this would be bring better quality to the web development or for those clients that look for quality. Really the quality on Elance is so low that someone showed me a project made with an offshore freelancer and the website has no security at all...not 1 database query is sanitized.

<comment><USER3> There's a few sites focusing on offering a "vetted freelance marketplace" of some description. Toptal, Scoutzie, and one or two others that I can't remember the name of right now.

I actually just quit working on a startup that aimed to do exactly that: <http://endorse.io>. Turns out that some of the bigger sites, PeoplePerHour and especially oDesk are already working hard on ways to ensure quality of their workers. Although oDesk has lots of cheap third world coders, too, I've known first world contractors get lots of quality jobs through there.

But yeah, if you're actually looking for work, try tapping your network and hitting up local tech meetups. I found a tech recruiter through my university alumni network who gave me some useful pointers about the London freelance market, so try that as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Although the wording on our landing page (<https://codeable.io>) may be slightly _off_ , this is exactly what we are after. We hand-pick and invite high quality freelancers to work through us, there is no bidding and they all have clear guidelines about pricing ($35 - $70 per hour, depending on complexity).

We are focused on WordPress for now, but long term plans to venture into other CMSs, frameworks and languages also exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm...wordpress...not really inspires quality but meh...how can a developer join codeable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I usally do fixed bid on these sites. I'v been able to find kinect programmers using the point cloud library to tell the difference between the wall and things in front of the wall. This is pretty complex programming and I paid $300 for this. I think it's a myth to assume you can't find good workers on these sites.

</comment><comment><USER6> Best clients for freelancers are actually web development companies. I have worked as a freelancer for It companies, web development firms and graphic design/marketing agencies. Find companies in your area that are over loaded and offer a helping hand.</comment>


Another Record-breaking Donation from Smartisan Technology - <AUTHOR> http://marc.info/?l=openssl-announce&m=142005451906786&w=2

<comment><AUTHOR> I start loving the chinese!</comment>


Ask HN: What are your unused domain names? - <AUTHOR> As mentioned in the "What I'd tell myself about startups..." post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9333330), everyone has a set of unused domain names. What are yours, and what did you plan to do with them?
Here are mine.

  translateteam.com - javascript based copy/translation editor
  forhipsters.com - news site for trendy things
  bootstrapcms.com - drag n drop cms based on bootstrap
  10printhello.com - for my programming blog
  globaldrugwar.com - Stringer Bell simulator
  apinest.com - programmable http proxy a la cloudflare
  questiondash.com / surveydash.com - a surveymokeylike
  dropify.net - a dropbox PAAS
 Interested if you have any better ideas for any of them! <comment><USER3> [http://facestositon.com/](http://facestositon.com/) \- This was a small- business idea to mock the UK porn laws. It was supposed to be floor pillows with caricatures of various politicians.

[http://30mars.ca](http://30mars.ca) \- This was an old gift from 2 years ago to a special someone who's birthday's on march 30th.

[http://sfew.co](http://sfew.co) \- Was supposed to be a shortlink address for Selective Few. Still not using it.

[http://branlettedenoel.com/](http://branlettedenoel.com/) \- This was a xmas card for a card contest. It's conveniently called "The great xmas jerk off"

</comment><comment><USER4> These are the better ones I have. Mostly acquired for different startup ideas I'm riffing on.

\- read.io

\- tit.io

\- fix.io

\- foodcopter.com (for when drones deliver your dinner of course)

\- burgercopter.com (same reason)

\- pizzacopter.com (same reason)

I've developed a simple tool for parking unused domains. Just set your nameservers and the whole inquiry process is automated. Would love feedback! [http://parktap.com/](http://parktap.com/)

<comment><USER5> What are your plans with tit.io lol?

<comment><USER6> Breastfeeding advice?

<comment><USER7> That's output only ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.thingsclick.com](http://www.thingsclick.com) \- blog/advice guide on how to run a software house plus ebooks on the subject and tools

[http://www.truesta.com](http://www.truesta.com) \- Possibly a replacement for spreadsheets with built in workflow and auditing. Good for companies that are over reliant on spreadsheets and need to share that data and most importantly keep it accurate.

[http://www.expirify.com](http://www.expirify.com) \- domain/ssl cert expiry reminder service

[http://www.inhumanely.com](http://www.inhumanely.com) \- no idea

[http://www.signalizing.com](http://www.signalizing.com) \- a communication platform

[http://www.overawes.com](http://www.overawes.com) \- no idea

[http://www.statesideproperty.com](http://www.statesideproperty.com) \- it was supposed to be a Right Move for the US but never got around to it

[http://www.swishapps.com](http://www.swishapps.com) \- no idea

Mostly rubbish but I quite like things click. I need to stop buying shitty domain names :-/

Edit: Added more info about some of the domains.

<comment><USER9> Expirify... I wonder how you'd fair by crawling, finding SSL certs that are going to expire in X days/months, looking up their email in the WHOIS and emailing them a reminder to renew and include a URL to the same company they originally purchased it from but include an affiliate link when possible. I guess the issues are that a) It's kind of spammy and b) The people purchasing SSL cert's might also by the type of people who don't follow random links in emails.

<comment><USER8> Hey thanks for the feedback.

There are already a great many companies out there who monitor expiry dates of domains and SSLs; their "slant" is that they send you renewal emails based on renewing the service with them at their inflated fee. Or even reasonable fee, but the idea being that they are capturing business. Whilst they might defend that it is clear who they are and you should know who you bought your domains/SSL through, the fact is that by sending someone an official looking email there are plenty of "oh shit don't want to lose that, best renew…"

I'd be nervous about getting a name as a bit of a scammy company. I also think that I'd rather people opted in to a service that they derive value from. We could of course still sell domain name renewal and SSL certs most likely by partnering with a domain registrar.

All food for thought...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm glad I'm not the only one with a domain name hoarding problem. After being burnt in the early days by missing a nice domain name to someone who registered it an hour before, I resolved to always register a domain name as soon as an idea came to me, even if the possibility of me using it was very remote. In the past few years, I've been trying to shed them, although it pains me to see domain squatters snag them as soon as they are available and put up tacky sites.

A few domains that were never used, that are on my to-shed list:

\- indoorcloud.com - tools for self-hosting cloud services on your own hardware at home, back before everyone else was doing that.

\- captainfriday.com - if you like high adventure, come with me.

\- artevar.com, artavar.com, artivar.com - third-party web widget for guiding users in the construction of a cartoon avatar.

\- denvertechscene.com, denvertechscene.org, beavertonwiki.org, beavertonwiki.com, pdxwiki.org - local interest sites.

\- ulati.com, wunni.com, zylli.com, xylli.com, ymile,com, ypoly.com, xorri.com, xorra.com, xonno.com, ycolo.com - short, abstract names that might be useful for arbitrary sites.

Domains I may stubbornly keep for a while longer:

\- cipherpal.com, cypherpal.com - Resources/news/discussion for cryptography and privacy tools. (A play on cypherpunk.)

\- webreadnews.com - explore ideas for next-generation online forum/messaging/discussion.

\- polipal.com, politicrack.com, politacrack.com - Casual MMORPG game; compete against other players guiding your politician's rise to power from dog catcher to president.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://thismeetingcost.us](http://thismeetingcost.us)

[http://gohomecnnyouaredrunk.com](http://gohomecnnyouaredrunk.com) — This one actually does point somewhere but I never got around to doing much. Just screenshots of the news networks being stupid.

[http://kennedycolectivo.com](http://kennedycolectivo.com)

[http://pointabulator.com](http://pointabulator.com) — This was supposed to be a tool to figuring out all the possible uses of your airline/hotel points. At its most extreme this is essentially like trying to solve a sudoku puzzle where the numbers can move out from under you.

<comment><USER12> Hey, if you want some content for thismeetingcost.us, I whipped up a little something: [http://jsbin.com/rubale/](http://jsbin.com/rubale/)

<comment><USER11> Ha! That's great, I think I'll put that up. If you'd like credit, my email is in my profile, happy to include a link to your site/twitter/whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> mylog.com/.net/.org - registered in July 1998. I'd designed (but didn't get around to building) a "personal log" that you could always bring up instantly with a hotkey, type something in right away, and it would never lose it. You wouldn't have to think about filenames, saving your data, or anything. It would just keep your notes in chronological order and let you search for stuff or give it more organization later. The motto was "Always ready. Never forgets."

evernote.com - registered in January 2000. Nope, not mine. But it was funny to see so many of the same ideas (no, they didn't steal them from me), including the elephant "never forgets" logo!

</comment><comment><USER14> I have some free domain coupon codes for gandi.net that I received from their 15th birthday promo:

G15EU-1819-DAC8-7409 - .EU for free

G15PW-0F7F-45F9-74B7 - .PW for free

G15XYZ-120D-87E5-D38F - .XYZ for free

 _used G15ME-8030-B75A-3B3C - .ME for free_

 _used G15ME-BE66-5762-E71E - .ME for free_

<comment><USER15> Here others: A .XYZ for free Promo code: G15XYZ-9FF5-A56A-7B02

A .COM at 50% off Promo code: G15COMH-2AD6-9C17-26DB

A .ME for €1 Promo code: G15ME1-025C-B52A-5BBA

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here are a few from the top of my head:

iruntunes.com - Circa 2002. The idea was music which was tailored to your cadence. I hate(d) running off beat.

introshirts.com -- (2003?) Shirts for introverted people with phrases that were designed to be identified only by OTHER introverted people with similar interests. So... yeah. T-shirts.

wgatv.com -- (2007) when the first writer's strike happened, I thought that writers should band together and use the internet to make and distribute their own internet TV. Even wrote a "manifesto" YOUTH!

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://foobar.xyz](http://foobar.xyz) \- Pretty damn generic, not sure

[http://notme.xyz](http://notme.xyz) -

[http://mailto.xyz](http://mailto.xyz) \- Some sort of email service

[http://linkit.xyz](http://linkit.xyz) \- Short / analytics links

[http://houseinthe.country](http://houseinthe.country) \- Comparison / aggregation of rental / for sale properties

[http://visitthe.country](http://visitthe.country) \- Similar to above

[http://ebro.co](http://ebro.co) \- Could be a linkbait humor site in the vain of bromygod.

[http://gall.co](http://gall.co) \- Not sure, but easy to say and spell and doesnt sound too bad.

I do think that .xyz is going to be one of the few new TLD's that will gain any traction. All of the others are too long and too specific.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have far more domains out of play than otherwise. A few I like:

Coin.St - Coin Street: Buy cryptocurrency nearby

xcrow.co - An escrow service that never was

Transformation.al - My wife thought it was a cool name

AcceptRent.com - An rent payment service

ThePeoplesMedicine.com - Medical cannabis doctor referral service

</comment><comment><USER19> Here we go:

\- webdoses.com (it was for daily doses of Web Tech related stuff)

\- kreator.guru (This was for an alumni network web application that I created while ago)

\- thestartup.guru (wanted to collect info about Startups / startup goodies and put it up here)

\- fomo.technology (Bringing folks who are really busy upto date about Web Frameworks and other Tech).

\- knowfund.com (my ex-x-startup, still owns the domain)

\- ratemy.vc (I created a tool for helping startup fund raising nightmare with tagging VCs / rating them)

</comment><comment><USER20> Most of mine I bought with no idea what I'd use them for.

      bonelesspanda.com -- was reading Pattern Recognition
      envoycorps.com -- was reading Altered Carbon
      mathgrenades.com -- Pattern Recognition again
      nosuchagent.com
      notsoevil.com
      rainingidiots.com -- stupid user stories
      thefirstevil.com -- was watching Buffy
      unconditionalthings.com -- listening to Alanis

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://dafeed.com](http://dafeed.com) \- news?

[http://geoference.com](http://geoference.com) \- geo-based something

[http://currently.fr](http://currently.fr)

[http://weekmate.com](http://weekmate.com) \- health compagnon

</comment><comment><USER22> These are just a few - The first one suggests I have too many domain names :(

Similar to everyone else, I am a developer hoping to build something useful on them - there's just not enough time in the day.

[http://admityouhaveaproblem.com](http://admityouhaveaproblem.com)

[http://authenticatable.com](http://authenticatable.com)

[http://binarybots.com](http://binarybots.com)

[http://craftyhipsters.com](http://craftyhipsters.com)

[http://failhuman.com](http://failhuman.com)

[http://getanintern.com](http://getanintern.com)

[http://indiehipsters.com](http://indiehipsters.com)

[http://kissvote.com](http://kissvote.com)

[http://kywrd.com](http://kywrd.com) [http://kywrds.com](http://kywrds.com)

[http://meetsme.com](http://meetsme.com)

[http://madstory.com](http://madstory.com)

[http://gear.ly](http://gear.ly)

[http://neighborhood.ly](http://neighborhood.ly)

[http://picksomeone.com](http://picksomeone.com)

[http://populationregulation.com](http://populationregulation.com)

<comment><USER23> I like how you have at least a mailchip subscription form on the domains you aren't using. Do you get much activity on them?

<comment><USER22> thanks. yes, there are several signups on each property per month. nothing major of course, but it's something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 2048x2.com

Back when it was the cool thing to do, I was going to create a multiplayer (2^n player) 2048 using websockets.

<comment><USER25> It's interesting what a short window there is for some of these ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> If a project won't stand on it own it's own legs without a meme, it's probably not worth doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is embarrassing, I've got so many started/abandoned projects. I suppose if anyone were interested in one of these projects I'd be glad to chat about either working together or selling the domain, depending on the project.

warning: this post contains sarcasm

\- [http://subwaytim.es](http://subwaytim.es) \- subway tracking service

\- [http://thankyouforriding.com](http://thankyouforriding.com) \- game for coders to optimize operation of a subway system. Thought of this during Boston's terrible public transit struggles this winter

\- [http://gitforgovernment.org](http://gitforgovernment.org) \- wanted to encourage city/state govts to put their legislation on GitHub and accept pull requests. THAT would have gone well

\- [http://enginomicon.com](http://enginomicon.com) \- planned to put my course notes from my mechanical engineering degree online; make a Wikipedia for all types of engineering

\- [http://everyref.com](http://everyref.com) \- created before I discovered devdocs.io and wanted to make a quick ref for coders. Right now you can search HTTP statuses, but the project is pretty much dead; I'm not sure if I even still have the code for it

\- [http://stupidprogrammertricks.com](http://stupidprogrammertricks.com) \- place to put little projects and small demos. So far the only demo is a properly-installed nginx server :-P

\- [http://uwherever.com](http://uwherever.com) \- wanted to create a place where people applying to college could organize their efforts, see when deadlines fell across colleges, publish their acceptance/rejection for other students to see, etc. As you can see I spent a lot of time picking a name for this

\- [http://spinner.graphics](http://spinner.graphics) \- planned to spend a quick weekend making a few AJAX loading animations and presenting it with ads, because who doesn't have at least one site that they're only doing for the money?

\- [http://beer-n-code.com](http://beer-n-code.com) \- planned to make a public directory of bars with wifi suitable for meetups. So far only has a mesmerizing ASCII beer mug on it

<comment><USER26> dude.. that beer mug is awesome! beerMe();

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was in a coverband and each of our wives were annoyed at how much time we practiced. We joked about naming the band "Men Facing Divorce." I went ahead and scooped these up and never did anything with them:

menfacingdivorce.com

menseekingdivorce.com

womenfacingdivorce.com

womenseekingdivorce.com

I got this one because it is awesome:

[http://armp.it](http://armp.it)

I bought this when I thought I'd become an mobile developer:

[http://androidindie.com](http://androidindie.com)

Heh, I forgot I owned this one (my startup analyzes USPTO data):

[http://isthepatentsystembroken.com/](http://isthepatentsystembroken.com/)

I was likely drunk when I bought this one:

[http://yakbuttertea.com](http://yakbuttertea.com)

</comment><comment><USER27> \- [domain] - [what it supposed to be]:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

\- descr.me - overview of ones opinions about anything one chose,

\- uuk.nu - shortener for polish fantasy fans (GNU Terry Pratchett),

\- prat.tl - yet another chat based on women chatting system,

\- datza.click - tool for creating occurances counters,

\- wai.uno - tool for creating "Y U NO..." memes (y.uno was unavailable... o(╥﹏╥)o) on the fly.

Maybe one day... I'll finally make use of them.

EDIT: BTW - I own domain "uko.ms" which I use for my personal link shortener and e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com. This is my favourite domain I own ୧། ☉ ౪ ☉ །୨

</comment><comment><USER28> I've got plenty of these left over from my hoarding days:

      ajaxapart.com - alistpart for javascript
      alpinefog.com
      bidsoup.com
      boostwire.com
      buildzen.com
      checkalope.com
      cloudboards.com
      express.build
      freshlinux.com
      giftitude.com
      gitnest.com
      gridyard.com
      hugepixel.com
      mindski.com
      mumblemonitor.com
      nearlyneighbors.com
      pifork.com
      pixelpeer.com
      roamsense.com
      threadsfortwo.com / threads42.com - T-shirts for couples

If anyone is interested, I can post them up on the namecheap marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER29> \- Novelo.com/getnovelo.com - my last Startup, social commerce (the name means yarn ball)

\- Zinematic.com - diy magazines for iPad (never launched)

\- Mapservices.org - base domain of myguestmap, a service I ran for 10 years. This one is actually PR 4

\- Myguestmap.org - see above

\- Deckvr.com - something related to VR or holodecks

\- Yellowfishlabs.com - startup name (I have a logo for this one too)

\- PaprikaLabs.com - startup name, never used

\- Investidorvirtual.com - used in the past for a stock market simulator (means "virtual investor" in Portuguese)

Recently expired:

\- iwanttobuygoogle.com - asked for donations to buy google shares :p

\- Donateware.net - flattr before flattr (2004)

\- Braintea.se - a puzzles site

</comment><comment><USER30> I've let them expire since, but my faves were/are:

        * ScrewZombies.com
        * SmellyDogFarts.com
        * Craaack.com

... I should probably stop buying domains while I'm drunk...

</comment><comment><USER31> Something to consider with all these unused domains would be [http://domains4good.org](http://domains4good.org)

I use this with some of mine

</comment><comment><USER32> That stood out from the article for me too. There's a few good startup ideas in that thought.

Mine:

GodsGood.Com

GoMovieTrailers.Com

HowToPlayAGuitar.Org

MakeMoneyOn-Line.Com

MinecraftForum.Org

PostPressRelease.Com

RentOffer.Com - Was building a site where people could make their own offers on what they were willing to pay to rent the place. Applicants would then be reviewed in order of highest bidders. Ran into problems with rent regulations and abandoned.

SEOis.Com

SEOmeta.Com

DNsells.Com

TopTenReview.Com

You can find my contact info on my profile if interested in any.

</comment><comment><USER33> worst investment i made was "riendfeed.com", because back then I believed what I read in TechCrunch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Reindeer food as-a-service

<comment><USER34> Misspelled reindeer FaaS, you mean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a niche vertical

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> These are unsued:

\- bootstraphub.com - free bootstrap themes

\- qrcode.io - probably front page for qrunched.com

\- webrop.com - drag and drop web builder

\- qareeb.pk - location based services

\- 9gag-clonescript.com - front page for mememakerscript.com

\- mahadazad.com - for blogging

\- pincript.com - frontend for pinscriptpro.com

Made many scripts but never focused:

\- killmyboredom.com

\- mememakerscript.com

\- pinscriptpro.com

\- qrunched.com

</comment><comment><USER36> [http://www.happyfatboydog.com/](http://www.happyfatboydog.com/)

just thought it was a funny combination of words. no intended idea here except maybe a trolly site for my close friends.

</comment><comment><USER37> I have:

        openbsd.systems
        twatlonger.com
        unhash.pw

Each one was meant for a project I no longer have time for. (The openbsd one was meant to mirror goatse.cx and/or the defaced OpenBSD flyer.)

</comment><comment><USER38> [http://stratjacking.com](http://stratjacking.com)

[http://precisiongood.com](http://precisiongood.com)

Not sure what I will do with either, if anything.

<comment><USER39> Track page views with an analytics library, obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> readbo.com

newsfeed reader I tried to launch twice, the first time it ran for a year, and then I shut it down a month before google reader was announced to shut down. if I kept it running it might have worked, it was just expensive for me. the second time i worked on it, it was cool but didn't have enough good features compared to newsblur or feedly, didn't even bother launching again.

1kbitcoin.com

random bitcoin idea, I've never bothered launching it.

</comment><comment><USER41> murica.xyz - I dunno, but I thought it was funny dinosaurpark.xyz - board game where you try to cooperatively design a park where no expenses were spared

</comment><comment><USER42> Where's all the holier than thou posts calling you all squatters? Or is there is a difference because maybe, one day you might decide to use it??

</comment><comment><USER43> Lets see...

\- beatin.gs

\- feloni.es

\- comrad.es

\- aftershav.es

I'll probably never find real uses for these, but they're amusing to own

<comment><USER44> Love comrad.es . Nice catch.

<comment><USER43> Thanks :) I was pretty excited about that one as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Paid 5k for fooker.com, never used it. Such is life.

</comment><comment><USER46> Strategic (write me if interested in cooperation), e.g.:

donate.money

dnatesting.ch

voting.systems

notary.services

rights.watch

contract.solutions

accesscontrol.systems

onlinepayment.solutions

canvas.pictures

tshirt.company

restaurant.management

naming.company

custom.email

rome.holiday

rome.photos

tuscan.villas

night.gallery

artists.gallery

roachspotting.com

Financial, e.g.:

wire.money

slow.computer

ecommerce.website

records.management

inventory.systems

cheapest.domains

small.computer

hipaa.training

etc.: [http://startup.associates/investments/](http://startup.associates/investments/)

</comment><comment><USER47> fundamentals.io - An API/website for company financial data

fundament.co - Was going to use for the above until I found out fundament means "butt".

fio.link - The url shortener for fundamentals.io

hearlist.co - Email-first startup for finding new music

giglist.co - Email-first startup for job hunters

harbor.works - Multi-channel ecommerce SaaS

kapsl.com - Website builder for musicians (still one of my favorites)

quesh.co - Local Messaging Q&A App

</comment><comment><USER48> Just wondering, has anyone made significant/good money by selling the domain names for real? I tried but no luck.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm not quite a hoarder of domains, but I definitely have a few:

\- beltway.wtf

\- startups.wtf

\- recy.(link|co|in|info|io) as I had grand plans to do a link curation app

\- saltmaster.net

\- hostedsalt.com

</comment><comment><USER50> I have quite a few unused or underused ones like:

erronthesideofawesome.com

fileexit.com

nightlifenyc.com

noveldesign.com

uniqueventures.com

voteright.us

I have a few more that a dark due to a product launching later this year as well.

</comment><comment><USER51> These were intended to cover my line of work to newcomers in the industry: devopsme.com sysadminme.com

</comment><comment><USER52> adaptance.com — some sort of platform for something

articlefeedback.com — wanted to build a system for getting feedback about your writing, sort of crowdsourced editing

cureta.com — no idea

logicist.com — logic, or something

townless.com — for nomads, or some such

Used to have way more, but I've been culling them down the past few years.

</comment><comment><USER53> I have webdeveloper.io with a an idea to start some service offering yourname.webdeveloper.io.

</comment><comment><USER54> hotdeals.io - coupon and deals ios apps. designer.co.com - for designers goodwpthemes.com - for WordPress themes website minimalist.website - <USER2> of nice minimalistic sites clouding.xyz - cloud based business sites

</comment><comment><USER55> transitla.com - I had intended to build a better bus route finder, but I left LA 5 years ago (and I assume Google Maps covers it now)

chatsnippet.com - I wanted to create a bash.org style way of saving funny conversations among friends

</comment><comment><USER56> Just a few of mine: cointracker.io ecm.consulting dms.consulting rimpire.co

</comment><comment><USER6> flab.by - planned to do some weightloss/affiliate marketing on it.

</comment><comment><USER57> BigSmallCo.Com BigSmall.Co BigSmallCo.net BigSmall.Co.Uk

Anyone interest Big or Small ?

</comment><comment><USER58> piracyiseasier.com - was going to be a side by side comparison of the effort needed to watch Game of Thrones legally vs illegally on various devices.

</comment><comment><USER59> \- ty.lc \- tnybit.com \- bilt.io \- adc.io \- shipstat.us

</comment><comment><USER60> pickupfor.me planned instacart like service in India

</comment><comment><USER61> GameDevelopers.com

</comment><comment><USER62> trafacs.com - wanted to build a Transaction Facilitation System (TraFacS)

zendatalabs.com - want to do something in analytics domain

 __edited to add a line break

</comment><comment><USER63> cerberusoft.com It was when I wanted to quit my dead end job. I hope to use it one day to go freelance or have a project.

</comment><comment><USER64> modulejs.com

I was trying to build webpack before webpack was webpack. Then webpack became webpack and I still have the domain.

</comment><comment><USER65> sooo many over the years Off the top of my head: * manburger.com * ninjafactory.com * applecartproject.com

</comment><comment><USER66> I have: lingcloud.com shihuofei.com

</comment><comment><USER67> watchead.com toeaware.com minimalreality.com mainetain.org dollarsignquestionmark.com ($?.com)

</comment><comment><USER68> bigvalleyjam.com - musician/entertainment social network for California central valley.

</comment><comment><USER69> mailcastr.com - email app

getque.com - something like pocket but with a focus on organizing/sharing

</comment><comment><USER70> moon.ie after my surname (Mooney) datagrapher.com for data visualisation tools

</comment><comment><USER71> seenbefore.com - no idea, was my last startup idea

sawbefore.com - variant above

seenitbefore.com - variant above

<comment><USER34> > no idea

> was my last startup idea

Those two are totally contradictory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I scooped up a bunch of generic .co in hopes of using them someday.

bacon.co

blur.co

dimsum.co

bookworm.co

breakfast.co

comics.co

valhalla.co

foxy.co

honeybee.co

kingsize.co

manatee.co

mens.co

womens.co

wet.co

spy.co

pinstripe.co

refuel.co

queer.co

stamina.co

spinach.co

superfly.co

superstar.co

sultan.co

I have tons of others but I'm going to let let a bunch go. The renewal rates are too high.

Edited for readability.

<comment><USER73> I like spy.co. If you were planning to let that one lapse or had an interest in letting it go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Here are some of mine:

\- awesauce.com

\- hitth.at

\- hitthatup.com

\- ipologize.com

\- kufuffin.com

\- prettystandard.com

\- selfminded.com

\- sourceofpride.com

</comment><comment><USER75> codewithme.com - for peer programming or mentoring.

</comment><comment><USER76> go0gl3.com -- parody, hacker info, or some service

</comment><comment><USER77> highwayautopilot.com - let an app drive your car.

</comment><comment><USER78> hacker.tattoo and hacker.ink mistakeswerema.de

</comment><comment><USER79> I've got

\- ridiculous.website

\- ideafora.website

</comment><comment><USER80> socialwheel.com -- show user connectedness

</comment><comment> apa-sl Fashioner.com

</comment><comment><USER81> quotes.pub - Collection of Quotes

</comment><comment><USER82> Here are mine. All are .in domains.

\- yourdeals.in

\- costly.in

\- difficult.in

\- disclose.in

\- judicial.in

\- minimize.in

</comment><comment><USER83> \- hirethe.guru

\- file.tn

</comment><comment><USER84> I have:

\- build.center

\- misreads.com

Ping if interested.

</comment><comment><USER85> bro-do-you-even.science

</comment><comment><USER86> cloudreply.com

</comment><comment><USER67> datantra.com

</comment><comment><USER87> banjax.farm

</comment><comment><USER88> acemyass.com

acoustophile.com

acousticme.com

acouz.com

finestla.com

finestny.com

jignote.com

notesplit.com

</comment><comment><USER89> pinjot.com

savejot.com

keepshelf.com

knowba.net

hipnote.com

</comment><comment><USER90> I have a lot of domains that I'm not using. Here are some of the ones that I'd be willing to part with:

        autodevops.com
        dbmgr.com
        dora247.com
        dora365.com
        doradesk.com
        doradev.com
        doradocs.com
        doradrive.com
        favepop.com
        favpop.com
        foobarblog.com
        geldesk.com
        gelpop.com
        gelpops.com
        gelstack.com
        gelstats.com
        geltk.com
        geltk.org
        geltoolkit.com
        gelview.com
        gelviews.com
        kickround.com
        krdoo.com
        leanitpro.com
        llamamail.com
        madraps.com
        powdocs.com
        yagiga.com
        ygiga.com

(Email me at wbstow at Google's email service if interested!)</comment>


Meet the Shaggs (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/09/27/meet-the-shaggs <comment><USER2> Nice story. I (jazz musician) was introduced to the Shaggs 6-7 years ago by a musician friend. I mentioned them to my best friend - he was into them already. Yes, they had the Shaggs on their phones hehe. I became a fan. It's fun playing them to people (especially musos) who never heard them before. I guess it's a bit Ornette Coleman-ish, the childlike melodies over...uh...superimposed rhythmic pulses. But I like them more than I like him.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best place to self learn statistics? - <AUTHOR> Books, videos, etc... <comment><USER2> Statistics can be a tricky self-learn adventure, as a lot of the field is non- intuitive and sometime counter-intuitive. I would usually advise, for anything beyond rudimentary statistics, to have some sort of mentor (traditional teacher style, online, whoever you can get). Especially since it is easy for a small error to make a large difference in your conclusion.

However, as with _any_ learning there is no ubiquitous "best place". Nor is there a universal "best method". Generally, you need to find what works for you - and I can almost guarantee it is going to be a combination of different mediums. You'll want reference books for the heavy lifting, videos for engaging, interactive content for practice, etc.</comment>


Google Maps Caught in Border Dispute - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2010/11/05/google-maps-caught-in-border-dispute/

<comment><USER2> There was a much longer article about Google Maps role in political disputes earlier this year in Washington Monthly: [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.gravois....](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.gravois.html)

" _Google maintains thirty-two different region-specific versions of its Maps tool for different countries around the world that each abide by the respective local laws._ "

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing how the "deliberate ambiguity" policy that seems to surround most border disputes breaks down when there are online maps that most people tend to accept. Even saying areas are disputed tends to cause outrage.

</comment><comment><USER4> The true solution, which won't work until everyone thinks of the Internet or Earth as their nationality, is to do away with borders altogether.

<comment><USER5> I don't think this is a real solution. Borders occur at all levels, not just at a national level. Your town boundaries determine how much tax you pay and what school district your kids are in. Your county boundaries determine whether you can open a bar on your land. And don't get me started on states' rights.

The issue is largely that the law is different in the two countries which dispute the region. In Northern Ireland for instance, the law was largely biased against Catholics, which is the root cause for the violent independence movement that followed.

While I agree with the notion that we are all one planet, I think that the issue of borders is far more complex than nationality you want to be. Rather, it's allowing people to decide under which rules they wish to be governed, which is a far more important issue than simple tribalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of the changes Microsoft had to make to the timezone map in Windows 95:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER7> Google Maps must diffuse metadatas with their maps : date, origin/source, level of quality, scale of usability, etc.

It's the least they can do to reduce the occurence of such problems. Any honest and serious map data diffusion present metadatas. Cf. the EU "Inspire" directive for public geographical data diffusion.

</comment><comment><USER8> Google should just draw a zigzagging line in the middle of the disputed terrain and be done with it.

<comment><USER9> Some areas have a dotted line for administrative borders.

For example, Kashmir: <http://goo.gl/maps/y58a>

<comment><USER10> In maps.google.co.in it's not marked with dotted line .

<comment><USER6> You're right, very interesting!

.com: <http://goo.gl/maps/y58a> .co.in: <http://goo.gl/XP6a3>

And China has its own take on the border as well:

<http://goo.gl/9E4zb>

I couldn't find a Google Maps site for Pakistan, but am wondering if there are any other countries that might take issue with the borders here?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Unity MMORPG Boilerplate – Multiplayer in Unity Made Easy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/valkyrienyanko/Unity-MMORPG-Boilerplate <comment><USER2> I'm a web developer but I tried to understand how to build an MMORPG similar to World of Warcraft sometimes ago.

It turns out to build a solid solution that is largely overwhelming to individuals, and I yet to found an open-source framework that tackles these issues in a straightforward way.

To my shallow understanding, it's less about Unity, the game client, despite there are many protocol related works. Here are something I found really hard for me:

1\. The first step is basically rebuilding all the game logic in the server- side, or you'll be facing endless cheating. The combat, the inventory, especially the map - you're going to model a huge 3D world on the server-side without existing client-side GUI helpers.

2\. The most difficult thing is most of the states need to spread across the whole cluster like a distributed database, and keep sync because there might be interactions between those states (eg. shoot a fireball through the edge of the map to another map then hit someone), this usually done by modeling a quadtree across the cluster.

3\. Players can randomly fight each other in an open world, and those combat needs to be dynamically grouped and disbanded. Players should only receive the state update they care about, instead of receiving every information of the world(area of interest), and everyone's interest might be different.

4\. Of course, there are global clock and synchronization.

5\. Many operations would require transactions, or players can trade and duplicate items when they cross the border of maps or directly disconnect.

<comment><USER3> > rebuilding all the game logic in the server-side

 _Start_ with the server side. This doesn't actually have to be a server application with no gui, but start with the simulation of an entire world. Then 'rebuild' the logic on the client side. This lets you be a little bit sloppy—though not too sloppy, obviously—because it's ok if the server 'cheats', since it has no ulterior motives (except for yours) and there's only one of it.

<comment><USER4> Real client-side verification and prediction is usually more complicated than just replicating game logic, you have to be able to restore the world to a correct condition after a wrong prediction in an elegant and unoffending way.

<comment><USER5> Per the infamous Age of Empires multiplayer write-up (I think?), never use independently random code. Everything should be key-based pseudorandom.

Much easier to sync keys and play forward vs syncing at every Rand call.

<comment><USER6> What keeps the client from peeking at the next few values and scheduling actions to line up with 'good rolls'?

<comment><USER7> It depends on game/implementation but client wouldn't really roll dices on their sides. Someone shooting a bullet that does 5-10 damage would tell server to shoot bullet and server would reply "you did 7 damage"

Especially on an mmo, there is no point telling a player that his next fireball spell will also trigger a "random chance to put a burn status on target". The client would start casting a fireball, which takes a second to cast and in that 1 second duration the server would decide what is the damage and if the spell is going to apply burn and by end of 1 second, you would get that information so you can see the damage values and burn icon on enemy

It is better to keep clients dumb if possible

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since the "Massive" in MMORPG implies large scale, some things worth considering, plus some general thoughts:

* You checked in your .vs folder, my understanding is that it is the .suo equivalent and shouldn't be checked in.

* Pulling updates from the GitHub releases page will probably get your repository rate-limited if not taken down, you need to think carefully about how to scale that up.

* While the readme says it pulls updates from GitHub, I can't find any code that actually does it. As far as I can tell the Launcher folder is completely empty boilerplate.

* Using XAML for the launcher UI seems like it would negatively impact portability unless you're pairing it with something that supports Mac and Linux (I couldn't tell if you are). It would make a lot more sense to implement your launcher in Unity (as a separate executable) since the end-user already is using Unity.

* You appear to have checked in local copies of NuGet packages, which is a bad idea. You should gitignore that folder so developers' msbuild can restore the packages locally.

* It looks like you also checked in third-party Unity asset files? I'm not sure you should do that either.

* You appear to not be making use of indexes for many of your queries, for example:

var user = db.Users.ToList().Find(x => x.Name.Equals(name));

This will stop scaling almost instantly.

<comment><USER9> For unity users, "massive" means something like 64+ concurrent players. Because that's the limit for (custom engine) triple-A productions like Battlefield.

<comment><USER7> That sounds a very unimpressive amount to be called massive.

<comment><USER10> Many modern MMOs are instanced. Thousands in the world, but only a handful in each zone. So that does stretch the definition of massive a bit but it's how they cope.

I think FFXIV has a hard cap of around ~350 per zone, but you get some silly processing outcomes when everyone is in the same area (entities or attacks not being rendered, area of effect attacks randomly only hitting a portion of people within the target zone, etc).

<comment><USER11> Just to add on to this: it doesn't often even make sense to have more people in one area even if your servers and net code could handle it fine. The players themselves will likely run into severe performance issues with too many people on screen. In an MMO you want player character models to be heavily customizable (costs lots of draw calls, but also effects budget), which means that the usual tricks for rendering lots of animated things on the screen don't work as well. As a result, basically every 3D MMO runs poorly if there are too many people in the area, even when the server runs fine. Some games will start just not drawing the models for other players. At that point it doesn't really matter if your game is instanced or not. You're still not going to be playing with thousands of players on the screen.

The funny thing is that the maximum number of people on the screen before performance issues really hasn't improved much in MMOs in 16+ years.

<comment><USER10> > The funny thing is that the maximum number of people on the screen before > performance issues really hasn't improved much in MMOs in 16+ years.

They're probably pumping up the graphical effects and maintaining a stasis there. But there are also hard caps to how much data or how many position updates you want to be sending in packets before perceived latency degrades too.

FFXI in particular had a famous meme "PS2 limitations" where the game was being held back technically due to supporting the older platform, not to mention it was built with dial up internet in mind and a very low update rate. Many MMOs in general want to cast a wide net and will rarely improve to the point where players with older systems can't join in. That's for the sequel!

<comment><USER11> I don't think the network side is the issue in almost any MMO when it comes to the client. The amount of data that is sent and received is tiny. It's most likely the number of draw calls that is the performance bottleneck. A high end machine in 2018 can handle around 2000 draw calls per frame (remember, this has been single threaded until recently!). You could easily have a single draw call per player, sometimes even more. That alone could take a system to its knees in an MMO with lots of players.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The purpose of this boilerplate is to make multiplayer in Unity a piece of cake, specifically for MMORPGs. The boilerplate consists of a launcher, a web server, a game server and a client. The idea is the user loads up the launcher, updates the client, launches the client, logs in to an account through the web server and then connects to the game server.

<comment><USER12> Looks like a Dektop only version. Any plans for mobile?

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I've seen Unity (the client) can be ported to any device.

The launcher uses (Avalonia) which is cross-platform (Windows-Linux-MacOS), not sure about mobile though. Now that I think about it, I suppose there could be different ways to go about mobile and just avoid the launcher entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if there really is that many people using Unity to build MMORPGs. Especially now that Unity has deprecated their only networking stack in favor of a (not yet existing) future replacement. But the Unity asset store is also full with MMORPG related things.

<comment><USER13> Albion Online is build with unity. It's basically Eve Online in a fantasy more newbie friendly setting with league of lengends styles combat, ARPG styles solo PVE, 20 man raids, and, mining that's actually fun.

Works pretty well, even in massive fights with hundreds of people involved. Frankly handles the MMO part of things better than most MMOs.

<comment><USER14> A good video of it from 2016 [https://youtu.be/x_4Y2-B-THo](https://youtu.be/x_4Y2-B-THo)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How do you usually handle game state for online multiplayer games to avoid cheating? My background isn't on making games, but knowing more about this domain is something I'm curious about

I'm guessing you can use timestamp by having PlayerA and PlayerB send udp packets, but wouldn't that cause latency, even if you put the instance region zones close enough to both players? How about direct socket connection between PlayerA and PlayerB and sending some results to the backend, but how do you prevent cheating on the client side then?

<comment><USER16> This is a deep topic, and people write entire thesis papers on this topic. This is/was a major performance issue in Star Citizen for years.

Because cheating tends to be an outlier activity, some companies choose to invest more in identifying cheaters after the fact using pattern recognition and machine learning tools rather than outright prevention. Depends on if your game inherently resets between game loops (i.e. battle royale, deathmatch, MOBA, etc), or if you have a continuous persistent state that has to be kept stable (i.e. MMORPG).

Full security means validating every activity with a fully trusted server before broadcasting to other players. Full performance basically means full client trust, whatever the implementation ends up looking like.

There's a whole spectrum of solutions somewhere in the middle for most games.

<comment><USER17> It also completely depends on what kind of multiplayer game it is. If you're doing a simple turn-based card game, obviously you can run the entire game on the server, and have the clients just do input and display of the game state. If you're doing a fast-paced first-person-shooter, you need to run more logic on each game client and trust them more. Add a real-time physics engine and it gets even trickier, because now you need to make sure it's deterministic regardless of client hardware.

If you can solve the latter problem in a general way, you can easily build a company around it. There's already a bunch that do nothing but this. It's just a fundamentally hard problem because the speed of light is what it is, the distribution of computing hardware is what it is, and the distribution of players is what it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Staying on the "making games" domain, can anyone suggest some other simple way to create a game? I have done coding before, but never got engaged into making a game, I would accept any ideas for nature of games, anything between Shilla.org, flash games, anything that can be made and maintained by one person.

<comment><USER19> The best "easy to learn, hard to master" that I know of is PICO-8. You can get up and running with a simple game incredibly fast. The entire IDE/Engine is a single program. You write all code, draw all sprites/maps, compose all music/SFX, and play in one place. You will be surprised with what people who have mastered it can create.

[https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php](https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)

<comment><USER20> Such a great way to test out some simple game mechanic ideas.

I'd been "planning on building a game" for probably a decade. Pico-8 got me to finally "finish" a few. The integrated graphics and audio system is super useful for cobbling something together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What about these two? [1] [https://github.com/ketoo/NoahGameFrame](https://github.com/ketoo/NoahGameFrame) [2] [https://github.com/ocornut/imgui](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui) , [https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/3075](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui/issues/3075)

Why almost all links are about years ago? Are not there any new technologies/methodologies for MMOGs that support 90fps, or even more? Something hybrid which supports both server and client sides? And mostly has developed for Unreal Engine or other well-known game engines?

</comment><comment><USER22> Started working on a text-based MMO a couple of weeks ago [https://github.com/johlits/rpg](https://github.com/johlits/rpg)

I do authentication from another service and send encrypted commands to the server which carries them out and encrypts the responses back.

Even for a text based game it is tough but I keep it simple as long as I can!</comment>


The Power of Posterity - The Real Value of What We Build - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/opinion/28brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

<comment><USER2> This guy seems like a psychopath of the most normal variety. The kind of guy who couldn't imagine putting on his pants in the morning if it was only going to benefit the goddamn asians on the other side of the planet. If his ballteam can't win the pennant, then burn down the damn stadiums.</comment>


Interview with Richard Garriott, a.k.a Lord British - <AUTHOR> https://lifehacker.com/im-richard-garriott-aka-lord-british-and-this-is-how-1831177709 <comment><USER2> The Digital Antiquarian has a great article about Richard [1]. It's a bit of a long read but very interesting. The follow up article to this is about "Akalabeth", a game Richard wrote when was a teenager.

[1] [https://www.filfre.net/2011/12/lord- british/](https://www.filfre.net/2011/12/lord-british/) [2] [https://www.filfre.net/2011/12/akalabeth/](https://www.filfre.net/2011/12/akalabeth/)

<comment><USER3> IGN unfiltered did a 3-part interview (IGN Unfiltered #17) with him as well that is worth viewing. Ryan McCafferty is a decent interviewer who shows a genuine love of the products and does his research:

[https://ca.ign.com/videos/2017/03/15/richard-garriott-on- pul...](https://ca.ign.com/videos/2017/03/15/richard-garriott-on-pulling- pranks-and-pooping-in-space-ign-unfiltered-17-part-1)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I'll give it a go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've played a lot of Ultima Online back in the day, which is probably Richard's most relevant creation.

It was a fantastic MMORPG. It was really balanced and it managed to be equally fun to be a "worker" (lumberjacker, farmer, blacksmith) or an adventurer. In the shards that I used to play, there were not a lot of overpowered players, so it was very common to see beggars and poverty in the urban centers of the game's world. And those were PLAYERS, not NPCs.

I don't think any game since then has achieved this kind of feel.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree. One of the things that I loved about UO, was that early on the bugs were as much a feature than the intended game features. They created what felt like an unbounded gameplay.

The world itself was extremely diverse and had some really decent scripted AI, and on top of that GMs/Guides could trigger events (like a massive undead spawn) to engage/mess with players. It was a riot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Richard is one of the most down-to-earth tech-celebrities out there. He is easy to talk to on Twitter, or email, or snail mail. He is, IMHO, among the most important historical figures in the game industry.

<comment><USER7> I wish I could find the hour-long, audio-only interview with him I listened to years ago. They basically talked through his whole career starting from learning to program.

The striking part was the repeated theme for each of his companies: He built a company and a team within. They had success and a subsequent buyout offer. He'd take the money and start a new company. But, his old team at the previous one really liked working with him. So, they'd all migrate over to the new company. He rinse-and-repeated this at least three times.

<comment><USER8> Is it this? [https://www.wired.com/2014/03/geeks-guide-richard- garriott/](https://www.wired.com/2014/03/geeks-guide-richard-garriott/)

<comment><USER7> Nope. That was fun though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm looking forward to reading Andrea Contato's upcoming book titled Through the Moongate – The Story of Richard Garriott, Origin Systems Inc. & Ultima: [http://www.theira.it/through-the-moongate](http://www.theira.it/through-the- moongate), which was Kickstarted recently [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1108065491/through- the-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1108065491/through-the-moongate- richard-garriott-origin-and-u)

</comment><comment><USER10> Garriot's autobiography was one of my favorite reads from 2018: [https://www.amazon.com/Explore-Create-Pursuit-Frontiers- Crea...](https://www.amazon.com/Explore-Create-Pursuit-Frontiers- Creative/dp/006228665X)</comment>


The Criterion Channel Is Launching April 8 - <AUTHOR> https://www.criterion.com <comment><AUTHOR> For those of us who mourned the closing of Filmstruck, this is good news. They've already started a kind of soft launch, with one free movie being offered every week.</comment>


The Pirate Game - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_game <comment><AUTHOR> Via Reddit.

I submitted this because the incentives are very similar to those involved in startup equity, and the resulting proportions are roughly the same. Startups must choose how to divide the pot (i.e. equity) with each new hire. Each employee can then a.) accept the proportion, working hard to make the startup succeed or b.) reject it, slack off, and make them _all_ walk the plank. There's another complication in that a pirate's coworker may catch him at b.) and tattle, forcing him and just him to walk the plank.

Why does this work like the pirate game, where only the senior pirate walks the plank? Well, think about why the senior pirate ends up with all the loot. It's because he's able to play the remaining pirates off each other: he can get away with offering 0 to pirate B, because he knows that B will be outvoted by the pirates that B is about to screw over. Similarly, a shirking employee is "outvoted" by his peers in a startup, who stand to gain handsomely (even if the founders take the lion's share) if the startup succeeds. They have a strong incentive to tattle on any shirker, which forces the shirker to work hard or get nothing. 0.1% of the company is a lot more than 0, even if the founder gets 50%.

This game also explains a lot of other accumulated startup wisdom, such as:

Why founders typically own 10-25% of the company each, while individual employees start at 1.5% of the company and decrease exponentially. Each new employee has decreasingly less ability to make the whole company walk the plank, and so the founders can get away with giving up less equity.

Why your first 10 employees are the most critical hires, and should be self- motivated hackers who want to see the startup succeed for its own sake. At this point, the startup has little peer pressure: if the founders are off negotiating a business deal, there's nobody to tattle on the workers, so if the founders own 80% of the company and each worker owns 1%, there's a strong incentive for them to goof off en masse. If, however, you have 10 people that don't care that the founders are making 10 times as much as them, then they will tattle on the next 10 hires that want to shirk, letting you give those hires very little equity.

Why tolerating a single shirker often kills the whole startup. Employees see that they will not lose their 0.1% if they shirk, and they figure that working hard so that the founders get 90% of the reward isn't worth it.

Why big companies are incapable of getting anything done. As the company grows and equity gets diluted, the options granted to any one employee become minuscule. Thus, employees have more to gain by making friends with their fellow shirkers than turning them in and boosting the stock price, and a culture of mediocrity settles in.

Why certain big companies have managed to avoid this. There are two basic approaches, carrot and stick. The "stick" approach is used by Intel and GE, and consists of firing the bottom 10% every year. Employees figure that $60K salary is better than $0 salary, even if they aren't sharing in the company upside while the CEO makes $100M. Unfortunately, this approach often means the company loses out on promising new hires who don't want to work in this environment. The choice for them isn't $60K or $0, it's $60K and the constant threat of being fired or $55K and decent working conditions.

The "carrot" approach is to give really generous cash bonuses for performance - often 2-3x the normal salary. This is used by Nucor and Goldman Sachs. Employees will not only work hard if it means the difference between $40K and $130K, but they're more likely to tattle on underperforming peers who bring their group productivity down.</comment>


Prehistoric art hints at lost Indian civilisation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45559300 <comment><USER2> One of Norman Davies' (one of my favorite popular history authors) pet peeves is the trend to refer to areas and cultures by their modern equivalents.

Sure, it's convenient and gives a reference point, but Davies' thing is that it's a bit misleading to do so. Back on track, this was NOT an Indian civilization tens of thousands of years ago. This might be a precursor to the Dravidian peoples, but this was a civilization that existed where India WOULD be.

<comment><USER3> The term 'Indian civilization' in the article is more of a placeholder than an outright naming attempt, imo -- I'm sure archeologists would assign a proper name once they dig/discover more stuff up from the site.

This is why we don't call Harappa and Mohenjadaro ancient "Indian" civilization, though they provenly existed in the region that's today the country of India.

<comment><USER4> Mohenhjo-daro and Harappa are just two _sites_ in a much larger Indus valley civilization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, amazing. These are Nazca like, right?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if they saw any "Show bobs"</comment>


Home Built Laser Projector (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://elm-chan.org/works/vlp/report_e.html <comment><USER2> He has a lot more very interesting projects on his website.

<comment><USER3> Agreed; well worth looking through his whole site if you have the time. It's not all electronics either.

Here's one thing that I found particularly cute, a tiny JPEG decompressor: [http://elm-chan.org/fsw/tjpgd/00index.html](http://elm- chan.org/fsw/tjpgd/00index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The most interesting about this project is the feedback of the motors. Knowing the position of the motors is making this very accurate.

</comment><comment><USER5> Would it be possible to use three color lasers, and create full-color images?

On a second thought, that would probably require variable brightness, or being fast enough so you can move slower on regions you want to appear more bright...

<comment><USER6> There are laser projectors, but apparently they're very expensive for not much gain: [http://www.trustedreviews.com/lg-hecto-100in-laser-tv- projec...](http://www.trustedreviews.com/lg-hecto-100in-laser-tv- projector_Projector_review)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting project, but potentially very dangerous. If you get the laser power wrong then you end up blinding everyone in the room.

<comment><USER8> Maybe blinding Somebody in the room. "Don't run with that pencil, you'll put your eye out!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ughh... the language, unreadable.

<comment><USER3> This is the Internet, not everyone speaks perfect English. The article is actually quite good, relatively speaking. You'll get used to it eventually if you read enough. :-)

<comment><USER10> This is the Internet, not everyone speaks English. ;)</comment></comment></comment>