How do you generate passive income? - <AUTHOR> Online? Real estate? Investing? <comment><USER2> I'm a little late to the party, but here's the formula:

Scalable revenue-generating assets.

Let's work backwards on that:

Asset: We're going to call an asset as something that can generate value or appreciate in value. So your 2005 Honda Civic is not an asset, but a 1969 Corvette Stingray might be. Websites can be assets, so can intellectual property, contracts, royalties, real estate, stocks, etc. So step 1 - you need asset. Things that can go up in value, or generate value.

Revenue-generating: You can buy for appreciation, but that takes a lot more money and skill. So you want revenue-generating assets to get passive income: That means things that kick out money regularly. That would be real estate where the rents are higher than the PITI (principle, interest, taxes, and insurance) + maintenance. That could be a website that you can make money from - ad revenues, product sales, etc. It could be something you've written that you get royalties from.

Scalable: And here's the magic that puts it all together - scalable means you can build it bigger without it demanding more of your time/resources (like a job does). Real estate with positive cashflow tends to be scalable, because if the property appreciates even 10%, traditionally you can mortgage a new property. If you don't mind doing repairs/adding value, you can mortgage a new place, repair/upgrade it to get higher rents, do so, have it appreciate, use the new equity to get a new place with cashflow, etc. Some high percentage of self-made millionaires in the USA are from real estate due to this fact.

There's other ways to get scalability. Obviously a useful website, or something with automated fulfillment or marketing. But scalability is key: All the time, if you want passive income, you need to spend money out of your profits to remove time and automate more. So pay a fulfillment company $2.50 per package (on top of the postage) to mail your thingy for you. Get into automated marketing with Adwords or Adsense. Look to ink deals that'll keep paying you without you putting in more effort.

The formula's Scalable Revenue-generating Assets. That's how to build gradual increasing passive income. It's harder than it sounds (like everything worthwhile is), but completely doable if that's what your goals are. Just don't forget that active income is pretty cool if you love what you do.

<comment><USER3> Sounds very _Rich Dad, Poor Dad_ (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Dad,_Poor_Dad>, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki>) et al.

Also, once you have substantial passive income, or have people believing you have substantial passive income, don't forget to write the motivational book, follow-up video/DVD, and talks etc., and milk that passive cash cow.

Infact, mass market brand awareness and brand appeal should be the ultimate aim - if achieved, seems to be an excellent form of substantial passive income these days? Seems to work for celebs, popstars, sports stars, authors, and super-brands alike?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the 4 Hour Work Week: * Create a product worth $50-150 * Advertise online and in niche magazines * Sell product online * Outsource order fulfillment (delivery) * Outsource customer support

Really, you want to read the 4 Hour Work Week. It goes through how to do this step by step.

<comment><USER5> Have you accomplished anything reading this book?

<comment><USER4> It's cemented a lot of ideas that I had about time management, focusing on generating income and outsourcing as much non-essential stuff as possible. I've started to use eLance a bit more for non-programming tasks, and I'm hoping to hire a part time virtual assistant this next year.

I tested a selling a database via adwords as suggested in the book, and I got a decent enough response that I'm outsourcing the the database development in the next few weeks. It's not going to make tons of money, but it might make $300-1000 a month in passive income. That's worth the effort for me.

His sections on time management don't translate extremely well to developers, but focusing your time very narrowly on what's essential and most productive makes a lot of sense.

Yes, there's a tone of self aggrandizement throughout the book that can get annoying. But there's a lot of really helpful ideas which are worth the read.

<comment><USER6> What do you mean selling a database? Do you means the contents of a database (list of data)? Curious.

<comment><USER4> Yes, it's an address list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Five years ago I opened a retail clothing franchise with my father and wife. It took a long time to get here, but now we have two stores and I spend little time on them (10 hours a month maybe?).

It is hard to have true passive income, but this is pretty close. Owner involvement is definitely key to the success of a small business, but we have a managing partner which reduces the time I spend on that business.

The great thing about passive income is that it affords me the opportunity to try and create additional revenue streams. Right now I am launching <http://statzen.com>. I assume that will also take several years of hard work, but it is enjoyable work.

<comment><USER8> What made you want to go into retail?

<comment><USER7> Someone we knew had a few of these stores. It looked easy from the outside ;)

It was much harder than it looked and at times it felt like we were going bankrupt. But now it is great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Selling Vitamins! Here's the thing: you get 3 people under you selling vitamins, and you make money off of their sales! Then each of them gets 3 people, and now you're making money off of 9 people! And so on and so forth.

Our program pays you for 3 levels below you in our sales matrix, so if you have 5 people per level you can be receiving profits from 125 people selling vitamins!

<comment><USER10> Sounds awesome. Sign me up!

<comment><USER11> ...and with only an $800 up front investment I'm sure.

All Ponzi schemes are the same.

<comment><USER12> You are not doing it justice. MLM is a much better, evolved variant of ponzi scheme compared to the garden variety.

<comment><USER9> Also, some MLMs sell decent products (I like Pampered Chef) which makes it far from a scam.

<comment><USER12> MLM is not scamming the customers, it's scamming the "sales agents" by promising them riches most of them won't get due to ponzi nature of the scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure there is such a thing as completely passive income. Wealthy investors (think China, Saudi Arabia, and Japan) have a lot of money (say 70 trillion) and thousands of people trying to allocate it efficiently. They don't do so well. Why would you?

Also, my understanding is that real interests rates are currently negative. On top of it all, the combination of a nominal capital gains tax and inflation means you lose ((inflation * .15) * your net worth) every year in this manner, at least if you are a US citizen. In light of all this, perhaps you should consider spending money on your intellect; it's not taxed, and it has some degree of liquidity. Alternatively, buy a cheap foreclosed house and rent it out; that may be profitable right now.

<comment><USER11> While people's portfolio's are hurting right now, for the most part you can make a positive real return on investing in dividend paying stocks or long- term bonds. The only catch is that the rate is really low, so you need to already be very wealthy to make it work.

China, Saudi Arabia, and Japan have political considerations, as well as financial, so they are more likely than an impartial investor to take unnecessary risk or allocate funds poorly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://ampmnotebook.com>. I resell the Chronotebook from Muji. I basically order in bulk from Muji to resell individually. Set up the site, strap adwords on it and get emails from PayPal saying "You've got cash!" Then I have to order the books, package them, and run them to the post office. Not exactly passive income but most of the hard work is automated.

<comment><USER15> This is a great idea for a niche site/business. I'm curious about your price. Jack Cheng's review (<http://www.jackcheng.com/stuff-i-love-muji- chronotebook>) mentions that the notebook retails for $4.95.

Have you gotten any pushback on your $19.95 price?

<comment><USER14> The price if you order over the phone (and I think the price in stores as of now) is actually $5.50, which is still a lot less than what it costs through the site. Here is a list of other charges/fees that you'll get if you order over the phone:

Handling: $5

Shipping: $4.xx for <4, $9.xx >5+

Basically if you order over the phone it costs you $15 or so, plus the inconvenience of having to wait on the phone, and verbally submit your credit card information and shipping address.

In the end, it really costs my customers $5 for the convenience of ordering online, through PayPal. Economies of scale let me process each order for less than what it would cost to order 1 at a time, so I can cover the final shipping cost on my end because of the savings.

I haven't had any complaints about price, but I did see a comment on Jackcheng.com comparing me to GM or Ford because of the price.

 _edit_ Here's the actual comment if you don't want to go hunting for it: "That's awesome that you take a $4.95 product and mark it up to $19.99. Do you work for Ford or GM or something?"

I don't think he ordered one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google Adsense used to be a really big deal for me. It's dropped in the last month or two though.

Site / blog sponsorships. I'm not talking text link ads but actual sponsorships from key companies in my sector. It's not big money but enough for me to spend my time working on what I want rather than what I have to.

In the past, I had revenue generating webapps, but I sold those in order to build some capital for future projects, savings, etc. I should probably get on to building another to be fair..

Oh, some low-maintenance Web hosting and domain registrations too for ultra old Web design clients (when I did that sort of thing). Keeps the servers paid up for me to use for my own stuff :)

<comment><USER17> > Site / blog sponsorships.

How does that work, exactly? Do you mean, you put links on your page to those other key companies and then get paid per click?

<comment><USER18> If Gary Vaynerchuk doesn't answer this question perfectly, and in video form, I don't know who does. Check it.

<http://tinyurl.com/6lpckv>

<comment><USER19> Vaynerchuck ROCKS. Love this guy.

<comment><USER20> You don't think he resembles a frantic sleazeball marketoid at all?

Compare: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk>

<comment><USER21> Not at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> online with <http://uploadthingy.com> \- not totally passive - new users sometimes need some help - but once they're subscribed - well, they're subscribed.

<comment><USER23> I like how you brand yourself; reminds me of something like <http://wufoo.com/>.

<comment><USER22> ha, yeah. gotta love a 'thingy'. Already working on new thingys - too bad the building part isn't passive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I built a job listing site <http://job2you.cn> (in Chinese) days ago, I plan to charge RMB 1000 per job post in the future when possible.

<comment><USER24> I wonder why people upmod me, there seems to be nothing special about my little plain job listing site.

<comment><USER25> Because we find your project interesting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Songwriting. Royalties. It wears off after a while, though. I'm not John Lennon. And it's not stable income. But still. It feels great when the check arrives.

<comment><USER27> Where do you write for? Your own work, as a solo artist/band? Or for a soundtrack or something? This is something I've been wanting to get into and would love more information about.

<comment><USER26> I wrote a lot for my own band and that was probably the best way to get into the business and get to know the right people. Our first album was released in 2004 and people still buy it (word of mouth) so I'm still getting royalties. Lately, I've been writing for other artists as well but you never know if they pick your song and when they do, whether it picks up or not. So luck is a huge factor.

It's not something you pick up just like that. I've been making music as long as I've been programming (about 27 years). So take this "passive income" and divide it by all those hours spent. You'll get something close to zero.

There are books on the topic. I recommend "Tunesmith" by Jimmy Webb. It's about the art _and_ the industry.

On another note, it's really hard for me to bring the two things together. I could program audio software but that's programming, hardly any "art" involved. Lately, I've been making music for computer games but that's just the art, no technical knowledge required. As long as I can think, it's been either/or.

I'm actually that "rockstar programmer". ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm hoping that tarsnap (<http://www.tarsnap.com/>, online backups for the truly paranoid) will end up providing a passive income stream at some point in the future. I'm trying to take myself out of the day-to-day running of the service by automating as much as possible; of course, right now I'm still writing new code to improve tarsnap.

That said, tarsnap isn't profitable yet, so the fact that it can keep itself running without help from me doesn't make it a passive _income_ stream yet. :-/

</comment><comment><USER29> sleeping at work

</comment><comment><USER30> I write Mac & iPhone software: <http://www.wonderwarp.com>

<comment><USER31> Hey, what are some good iPhone development resources, I really want to get into this sort of thing for shits 'n giggles. Oh and make some bucks on the side

<comment><USER32> What I found useful when messing around with iPhone stuff was the pragprog iPhone SDK book, Erica Saudin's iPhone developers cookbook and just reading Apple's documentation on the subject I was working on.

If you want more mac side of things then iPhone, then i can't say enough good things about Aaron Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X book.

<comment><USER33> I second the Hillegass recommendation. Between that and example code and a lot of head scratching i think i finally understand the iPhone dev framework. I just put out my first app (iGo) and things are promising. We'll see but my hope its enough to cover rent (in SF mind you) and tacos.

<comment><USER30> Hey, what's the best place for tacos in SF?

I'm moving there from Cambridge, and I'll miss Ana's.

<comment><USER33> pancho villa at 16th & valencia is pretty good and la cumbre around the corner is also pretty good.

i also like the tonayense taco truck on harrison and the al pastor at san jose at 24th & mission is delicious.

if you want something a little less authentic but healthier seeming, try papalotes at 24th and valencia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Referrals - <http://djangohosting.org>, it's very passive =]

I also make desktop software, but I think that's very active - <http://gearsquare.com/actiongear/>

<comment><USER35> How are you making money on referrals for djangohosting.org? Most of the links are "straight-up" without any referral id..

edit: oh, I see, just on webfaction

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hopefully my little site I just launched, <http://allblogjobs.com> , will earn me a few bucks (at least enough to cover my diet dr. pepper addiction)

<comment><USER35> I hope it does earn you a few bucks, but one piece of small advice--there's not enough contrast and that makes it hard to read. I like the design though other than that. Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's no such thing as lazy money.

<comment><USER37> ...unless it's inherited

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I made a website that helps you get free shipping on amazon.com(have not worked on it for years and it shows) <http://www.filleritem.com>

</comment><comment><USER39> Developing niche sites about topics that I find interesting. The residual income is derived from AdSense, affiliate sales, link sales, banner sales, etc. I focus 80% of my time on new/large projects, the remaining 20% on maintaining older sites. Here's an example site: <http://www.applemacbook.com>

<comment><USER40> What kinds of things actually pay well?

<comment><USER39> Any niche where you can generate affiliate sales or leads is better than one where you have to resort to Adsense or banner/link sales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wrote a few (new editions of existing) books:

[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle- url/103-3188...](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle- url/103-3188513-3470248?field-keywords=chris%20fehily&url=index%3Dblended)

<comment><USER42> I found writing to pay too little for too much effort. But, then, I only have the one book published. And, to be fair, I do still get a few hundred dollars in royalties every quarter five years later. So, I guess if I were to write a stable of books over the span of a few years, it could probably turn out to be a reasonable income. But then, it wouldn't be very passive, would it?

New editions of existing books is an interesting twist, though. Did you write the originals? If not, how did you end up doing the updates for later editions? (I'd be kinda ticked if my publisher didn't come to me first for a new edition of my book, for example...and it's one reason I didn't write a second book...the apress contract actually had a weird provision about not needing any permission from the original author to release new editions, and granted them the ability to do odd things to the royalty structure for subsequent editions.)

<comment><USER41> If you want to make an actual _living_ , then write 15-20 midlist books (or 5 bestsellers) and revise them regularly (the real money is in the revisions, not the first editions). You can drop a note to an acquisitions editor to see if any authors have refused their right to revise.

Even if you lose money writing a book (you probably will--that's why editors rarely quit to become authors), you can still impress at contractor interviews by showing up with your published book. Or use the book to raise your speaking fees, etc.

<comment><USER42> Yes, that's true. One of my best contracts was obtained because of the book. It _is_ surprising how much caché a published book has. And for folks looking to make a living from Open Source software, I'd recommend writing a book about your project, since it gives you a huge amount of credibility within the community.

Though there are some publishers who put out crappy books that I would think would have a negative impact on your credibility. I won't name names, but two folks I know to be very smart and definitely experts in their field (I believe both are users here, though not frequent users), wrote books for Apress and Packt, respectively...and both are pretty sloppy, occasionally repetitive, and sometimes even wrong. The funny thing is that I know they're both capable of writing great documentation, because they've done it for their projects for years.

I had quite a bit of editor input throughout the process of writing my book for No Starch, and I was one of the technical readers for an O'Reilly title, so I know that a lot of effort goes into making sure books from top name publishers (and mid-tiers like No Starch) are readable and reasonably accurate.

Then again, I don't know that anyone who ever hired me because of my book actually read it. So maybe it doesn't matter if the book is sloppy. Maybe it just matters that it's available at Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Realestate (in the past), interest (boring), dividends (yes some companies still pay !).

booring... I like the iphone answer better ;) Wish that was me !

<comment><USER44> Wasn't it Kawasaki that said getting rich is boring?

<comment><USER43> Could be. Maybe he is right - well I can't say I know what I am doing, its more lazyness, some patience and general tigh-wad-ness on my part, not some grand plan (wish I could say otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I still get allowance

<comment><USER46> Me too... Except I pay my own allowance. ;)

<comment><USER46> I really do pay myself first... I remove a large chunk of my paycheck each month and place it directly into savings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have been working on my passive income streams for a few years now, in all 3 areas mentioned (and some others), I don't know how much value I can add but here is my real-life $0.02.

PROPERTY: Real estate generates good returns principally because the numbers are large to start with so even modest returns on the investment can be very substantial in real terms. It is low risk if you are sensible and crunch some numbers beforehand (to ensure affordability).

If you buy a good house at a good price (mortgage long-term affordable for you even at low occupancy/yield rates) in a good area you will generally be able to rent it easily at a good return. If the property increases in value, that should be treated as a bonus. Get a few houses in same area and options such as hiring agents to find/manage tenants and maintenance companies to look after the properties become cost effective (though even with many houses on rent I still found it was cheap and easy to manage these myself and still work fulltime, the key is to have a list of good trusted tradesmen willing to do jobs for you when you need them and pay them well (above market rate) for doing a good job – it is cheaper in the long run and property is best played as a long-term game).

Buy near places that always have good and constant footfall and preferably long-term renters e.g. near universities (students will rent 1-2years generally) or centers of commerce (office staff typically rent ~6months but will pay more rent and have less wear-and-tear on your house). Favour long- term tenants on cheaper rents less likely to bother you (usually they will appreciate you charge them less and do most minor DIY jobs themselves, plus you will have more candidates to choose from so can be more selective).

WEB: Websites/Online is far more hit-and-miss and frankly unless you are building a mass-market and scalable product/service, ideally something people want, it does not seem worthwhile to me. For better or worse (generally better), you are already competing on a globalised playing field (with more competition, copycats, lower barriers to entry etc.) and without the captivity intrinsic to property. I am sure many aspire to become the next FaceBook or social-network-thingy but that generally seems hard work and risky (er, Pownce.com?). Focus on a disruptive technology product (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology>) making use of new advances as they emerge, ideally combining or converging two or more disciplines, aimed towards a fixed market willing to pay seems a better bet. However, as I gear towards that, I have initially opted for the easy-wins of technically less complex but almost totally automated and revenue generating product-based sites like <http://www.sportingglory.com>. So far this has been working very well. Once setup, they require less than 4 hours per week combined, and provide long-term passive value without further the need for major enhancement [if they were on a the BCG Matrix, <http://www.12manage.com/methods_bcgmatrix.html>, they would be cash-calfs ;)]. I am now at the stage I can start having a go at the more adventurous sites/products. Hence, for websites, I would treat them as businesses initially and go for things you know you can build and create revenue from, and convert them into passive streams later in the lifecycle (but you already know that).

INVESTING: Investing (stocks, shares, bonds, savings accounts etc.) has proved to provide constant but modest returns but that is primarily because I am not a risk taker in areas I know little or nothing about and hence have always invested in safe products/funds and stayed away from the stock market. This has by far been the easiest way to make modest amounts of money (4-8% p.a.) for almost zero effort (on my part) as most products can be bought/setup/created in a few hours/days (trackers, bonds, funds) and managed by a fund manager, or minutes (savings), with little more than needing to know what the rough interest rate will be. It is a good way to park cash for a while, especially if you are lazy.

However, given that many of the people with the largest passive incomes on the planet (as well as some of the richest) belong to the world of Finance, I am sure effort spent learning about how to operate and navigate in the Finance world and invest wisely would provide the best forms of passive income I can achieve, but sadly I have no real interest in it.

TRADITIONAL BUSINESSES: Bricks-and-mortar business in conjunction with a partner, and the understanding that later on they will run the daily business while you remain in a supporting role, has provided both the best experiences and passive income I have achieved so far. This works especially well in simple businesses e.g. restaurants/bars, where once things are up and running, they basically run themselves (and they are fun to set up). Eventually even your partner will basically just oversee staff and could run several outlets. If you apply this to several businesses e.g. an estate agents, a law firm, an accounting practice, and a I.T. services company, you unsurprisingly have a series of businesses that literally grow each other, requiring little or no extra time or effort from you.

(OTHERS: I'll save it for another day/thread. Way past my bedtime and it is showing in the writing...)

</comment><comment><USER47> a friend and I are doing it through <http://www.smbzen.com> it's not exactly passive income - we've been writing blog posts (<http://bizjournal.smbzen.com>) to attract the target audience through long tail searches, but it's been working so for, plus, the blog is nice way to pick up some _business_ material to compliment the tech background.

</comment><comment><USER3> A portfolio of passive income web-properties that can be administered from anywhere ...that _is_ the dream.

</comment><comment><USER48> Prezzle.com still generates payments from Cambrian House. It's a way to send gift-cards without the user just getting an unthoughtful email or to send a message for free that can't be opened until a specific time.

</comment><comment><USER49> www.kallow.com

<comment><USER50> Do you live off of this?

<comment><USER51> No, this is a new project we are starting. We hope it can help people cut through the clutter and annoyances of buying electronics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> SEO consulting. It's actually sort of funny how little work I do relative to how much people will pay for it.

<comment><USER42> There are some things I could never do. I mean, running drugs I'd do if things got tough. Being a pimp, yeah, I could do that. Burglary...sure, everybody's got insurance, so it's really a victimless crime. Even murder for hire if things got really bad (no women, no kids).

But SEO consulting, that's just sick, man.

<comment><USER23> You stole my heart.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, I guess I'd do that, too, for the right price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Rent on custom business software.

</comment><comment><USER54> There's no such thing as a free meal.

</comment><comment><USER55> iPhone app

</comment><comment><USER19> Crack cocaine, my friend. Not passive, but lucrative. I kid. I kid.

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't. With real estate and investing, a decade of growth can get wiped out in 1 week. No stability whatsoever. Sure its fine to play with a disposable amount and hope for a win, but just like Vegas, you have to approach it with willingness to lose everything.

Oh and I don't mean that first house, as an investment....I mean that 2nd and 3rd you buy, hoping to make a few hundred K in a couple of years.

So for passive, you gotta go with something safe. Stuff like gov't bonds etc. Because otherwise you are pretty much guaranteed to lose a ton of money.

<comment><USER57> ?? _With real estate and investing, a decade of growth can get wiped out in 1 week._

Really? My father has been involved in RE for over 20 yrs, has done great and is doing very well currently. There is much more to RE than just homes: Raw land, commercial properties, multi-unit housing, agriculture land (which is actually appreciating right now).

 _I mean that 2nd and 3rd you buy, hoping to make a few hundred K in a couple of years._

This is not investment. This is flipping. Something that has got a lot of ignorant people in a whole lot of financial shit now days.

\-- With my fathers advisement, we are making great passive income with the four-plexes we own (think small apartments).

<comment><USER58> If you didn't mind, I had a couple of questions for you on duplexes vs. four- plexes. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com. Regards -- JP

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm sorry, but this topic is stupid. And I don't know why everyone upvoted it.

Do you honestly think you can get money passively? As in by doing nothing? Downvote me all you want, but I'm actually disappointed to see a thread like this on the home page of hacker news.

You guys should know that there is no such thing as "passive income" and anything worth doing is going to be difficult. You are wasting your time trying to find these "do nothing and make money" or "get rich quick" schemes.

<comment><USER60> I think you might have a different idea of "passive income" than the rest of us here.

Passive income is money generated without requiring you to go to work, trading a set amount of hours for steady cash. Instead, it's spending the effort on building something (whether it be a book for royalties, a website for subscription payments, investments for interest / asset worth increase, or real estate for rental money) that generates a cash flow without requiring the 40 hour work week.

Granted, it's not "passive" in that you still need to spend the time and effort to get it up and running, but once your system in place there's usually much less time involved to keep it operating, which is why this type of income is much more attractive - you can scale this system to make much more money than you ever could through salary.

However, the risk is correspondingly higher; if your product doesn't do well, you don't get money, whereas you can get away with a reasonable amount of subpar performance at larger companies without too much problem.

<comment><USER59> Nope, I know exactly what this topic is about. I read 4 Hour Workweek too.

<comment><USER61> Then how can you claim that passive income doesn't exist, when it clearly does?

<comment><USER59> How can you claim that Jesus doesn't exist, when he clearly is in the Bible!?

<comment><USER62> Another try - Do term deposits / Government Bonds / ?? pay a higher rate than the inflation rate?

If so - that is passive income. OBVIOUSLY it requires capital / time / effort / luck / something to start with... But once that part is done - the rest is passive.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Overclocking tools for Nvidia GPUs suck, I made my own - <AUTHOR> https://1vwjbxf1wko0yhnr.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/overclocking-tools-for-nvidia-gpus-suck-i-made-my-own/ <comment><USER2> I've put code in the gist, just in case. Also "added" (just different dll name) 64 bit support. [https://gist.github.com/Randl/a055a45cb6960019e0324130c96123...](https://gist.github.com/Randl/a055a45cb6960019e0324130c96123ff)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really cool. Thanks for writing it up. I have also felt for while that the tools are terribly designed/clunky.

Maybe one day, hardware manufacturers will drop the cliche 'gamer aesthetic'... maybe...

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice, I love reverse engineering posts.

You'd think Nvidia would want people to actually be able to use their hardware.

Why try to hide the API and fight a battle with the only people you should be helping, your customers?

<comment><USER3> Total shot in the dark, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they licensed usage of the API to "Authorized Board Partners" for an extra fee.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you're probably right.

I wonder how much value the bean counters at Nvidia attributed to "having a useful software ecosystem" when weighed up against "shortsighted moneygrab for licensing dollars".

I'm guessing not much.</comment></comment></comment>


The Secrets of Building Realtime Big Data Systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/nathanmarz/the-secrets-of-building-realtime-big-data-systems

<comment><USER2> I love that the slide after "[Data systems must be] 1. Robust to machine failure" is an error "Oops! This slide did not convert properly hence cannot be displayed." Oh the irony.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does Python hook into all this ? Seems very J2EE. Jython or API? Or maybe they just use it instead of SH to set up env ?

BackType looks cool btw, got an API key a while back and started playing with it.

<comment><USER4> We use Python for all our data collecting, general scripting, and some of our stream processing (though stream processing is moving to a more generalized framework that is Java/Clojure based).

Also, our underlying API (that serves results to all our products/API/etc) is a collection of Python servers written with Twisted and Thrift.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Clever. Does the system also support non-aggregate queries? Such as if you wanted to display to a user individual pieces of data for their site for example.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for the great slideshow. I've found another slideshow that is realy great: "The Secrets of Building Realtime Big Data Systems"

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought the stated 200 machine cluster for 300 reqs per sec seemed quite high... Anyone else with RT DM experience care to comment?</comment>


A ballot is on to decide if ICALP proceedings should go open access. - <AUTHOR> http://www.eatcs.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> ... And some of us may have a vote. Read below for more information.

LIPIcs (Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics) [1] is a series of high-quality _open access_ (available online and free of charge) conference proceedings in informatics, published in cooperation with the Schloss Dagstuhl–Leibniz Center for Informatics, Germany [2].

The proceedings of the ICALP conference [3] have traditionally been published by Springer, who make it available online, albeit through a paywall. If you are not browsing from a University/Institution which has subscribed to the proceedings, you have to pay something like Euro 24.95 _per article_.

EATCS, who conducts the ICALP conference, are currently holding a poll [4] to decide whether ICALP proceedings will continue to be published by Springer, or will move to LIPIcs. If you registered for ICALP, ESA, or MFCS in 2011, you have a vote. Please use it :-) .

[1] <http://www.dagstuhl.de/en/publications/lipics> [2] <http://www.dagstuhl.de/> [3] <http://icalp11.inf.ethz.ch/> [4] <http://www.eatcs.org/></comment>


Ask HN: How Stock Options for US Based Company work for Outsiders? - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN, I wanted to know legal intricacies of to own Stock Options in US Based early stage startup for Individual who is not staying in United States?
What paper work it will involve?
Thanks for your answers.
FYI: I am staying in India. <comment><USER2> Have been in the same situation. Get something on paper saying they owe you a certain percentage of stocks in lieu of your services.

Also get something called "Subscription Agreement" from them.</comment>


Working at Facebook vs. Google as a S/W Engineer (The TechLead/Patrick Shyu) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aXbD6ysQG0 <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like this guy is on someone's radar now. But before you flag this, I think what makes his videos hilarious is that like a great comic, while not telling the 100% true story, there is often some deep truth behind the gag.</comment>


Want to back an entrepreneur? Best bet is to go for old - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/economics/want-to-back-an-entrepreneur-best-bet-is-to-go-for-old

<comment><USER2> People like to point out that the early 20s is the best time to take these risks because you have no commitments. The same is also often true for those at or nearing retirement age: your family is gone, your mortgage is paid, and you already have your retirement saved for.

My mother recently decided to retire, but shortly after decided to start her own business instead.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't have to be either-or.

Another option is to not get married or have children in the first place, and open yourself up to an entire lifespan of such opportunity.

<comment><USER4> Yet another option is to get married, have children, and then realize that starting a startup is _still_ possible.

More generally: Never listen to anyone who says your demographic can't start a startup. They're wrong.

<comment><USER5> Something in your remark just startled me.

Some men (I'll speak for myself here) associate marriage/family with risk. Others associate it with security. Could it be that those who perceive the risk are those who (more or less subconsciously) know that they have/will marry a variant of "trophy wife", beautiful but high maintenance, while those who perceive the security or comfort know they will/have chosen someone who will make things less bad for them if they go wrong?

What does it say about me that I only see risks and dangers in marriage/family ("I'll do it when I'm rich enough/have a comfortable cushion") while my friends are all getting married or starting families, money in the bank or not? Hmm...

<comment><USER6> Or you could marry a beautiful,intelligent, low maintance, wife with a career of her own, and then you could have the security to do a startup and take risks. Worked for me.

<comment><USER7> You're either lying, or very lucky :)

Beautiful, intelligent, driven people of either sex are uncommon to say the least, and even if you find one, that doesn't mean you will be compatible; i.e. your goals may not align. For example, one of you may be driven to climb the corporate ladder, whilst the other may be driven to establish their own successful corporation in lieu of obtaining a regular job. If you're not successful quickly, you might be seen as lazy/unrealistic/non-contributing.

So, what are the odds of meeting someone who is beautiful, intelligent, driven, low-maintenance, and understanding of the implications of founding a startup?

Surely, you make it sound easier than it is.

P.S. if that sounds snippy at all, I don't intend it to be, I just meant that while you have found a treasure of a wife, everyone here is not going to be able to run right out and acquire one with ease.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not to detract from post-twentysomething entrepreneurs at all, but this article's references on closer look don't quite support this spin; rather, a significant component of the spike in "business startups" peaking in 2009 involved employees who were let go from regular jobs and either switched to doing the same jobs for the same people on outside contractor status, or hung out a shingle to offer their services as a sole proprietorship on the side, at lower earnings than their former job, while they kept looking for a new regular job.

<comment><USER9> and we have a similar situation now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does this mean? If you found your own company at 20, then 20 years later are you are 40 year old founder? If you are a serial entrepreneur, some companies will be started when you are young and others will be started when you are old.

If you can do it earlier, why wait?

</comment><comment><USER11> _It turns out that the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity in every year between 1996 and 2007 belongs to the age group between 55 and 64 years...Meanwhile those aged between 20 and 34, "which we usually identify with swashbuckling and risk-taking youth, has the lowest rate", wrote Dan Stangler, one of Kauffman's researchers in a report..."Perhaps most surprising," Mr Stangler added, "this disparity occurred during the 11 years surrounding the dot-com boom, when the young entrepreneurial upstart became a cultural icon."_

Not so surprising once you realize there are 100 million baby boomers, many of whom would have loved to start a technology based business when they were younger...if only the PC and the internet existed.

Now that the technology has caught up, the pent-up demand can be released.

<comment><USER12> Over the next 20 years, as startup costs drop, there's going to be a enormous number of technical people with real world experience in various markets that retire and would like something to do.

As long as those folks can manage to be hungry (this is the same problem successful founders find on the second startup), they are going to kick some serious booty. Even if only 1 in 100 can be motivated enough, the numbers will dwarf anything we've seen in the startup world to date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The headline and tone of the article encourages blatant ageism. If we said "Best bet is to go for men" or "Best bet is to go for Caucasians" there would be an appropriately strong uproar. People should be judged on their capability, not the inevitable aspects of their identity.

</comment><comment><USER14> Don't stereotype.

</comment><comment><USER15> Breaking news: people with a lifetime of wisdom to draw from make reasonably good decisions a lot of the time. Blog at 11.

<comment><USER16> In addition to the lifetime of wisdom, a strong Rolodex and intimate experience with the problems facing a particular industry can't possibly hurt. Bonus points: none of those problems sound like "I want to get an app to poke friends, but $1.99 is a little steep for it."</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is there nobody talking about hadoop anymore? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I was an early employee at cloudera (first year, first dozen). I also committed to most of the Hadoop projects, including a commit bit.

\- Hadoop was software done wrong. The tests took days to run and never passed. It was documented horribly. \- The open source companies all knee capped other. \- Hadoop destroyed Apache's rep.

cloudera taught me a lot about how not to build a team and a company. Although Mike Olson was the greatest ceo I ever worked for (as opposed to founding a company with) the rest of the company became horribly political. We brought in managers from Oracle. We had crazy personal projects that went out of control like kudu and impalla. It breaks my heart

I ended up talking to one of the original investors afterwords and found out cloudera was a boy band startup. By the time I was in the way out the cto was playing counterstrike every day as I was heading home.

To this day there's some amazing engineers there and I just don't understand why

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the sharing!

> cloudera taught me a lot about how not to build a team and a company. ...

It would be interesting if you are willing to share more about this. Are managers from Oracle play the reason? Did they bring you unnecessary disciplines against engineers? Any examples why you describe cloudera then "horribly political"?

<comment><USER2> "Are managers from Oracle play the reason?" -> I think bringing in a bunch of managers from bigco to shape up your startup is nearly as bad as bringing in "experienced engineers" because you have too many young engineers. Diversity is strength, but so is culture.

"Did they bring you unnecessary disciplines against engineers" -> What's this mean?

Any examples why you describe Cloudera then "horribly political" -> Not off the top of my head actually i just remembered it burning me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's been around long enough to not be a "buzzword" anymore. Now it's faded into the background as just something that everybody is using (even if all they use is HDFS). It's like nearly every other "once trendy, now commonplace" technology that rolls through the IT landscape. It's the "darling of the day" for a while, and then a new shiny comes along and becomes the new darling. Meanwhile the Hadoop clusters still keep chugging along doing their jobs, just like the COBOL code, MVS systems, iSeries boxes, JBoss servers, CORBA brokers, Beowulf clusters, or whatever else used to be trendy and now isn't.

Of course sometimes things fade away just because they are obviated by something clearly superior. For the map/reduce part of Hadoop that may well be Spark. But even now, in my experience, most Spark set ups are running on HDFS and using Yarn. _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://veekaybee.github.io/2017/03/20/hadoop-or- laptop/](http://veekaybee.github.io/2017/03/20/hadoop-or-laptop/)

Maybe we've also gotten over the "big data" hype wave, and there's more understanding that in more cases it might be cheaper & more performant to spend the budget on a single node with lots of ram rather than standing up and maintaining a distributed system.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Ev8GIlbxc&t=28m15s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Ev8GIlbxc&t=28m15s)

Just saw this and might explain why Hadoop is out of the spotlight. In summary, Spark and Kafka seem to be better? I'm not sure as I'm just starting to enter this field.

<comment><USER6> Getting this out of the way first, I've only started exploring non-Hadoop/non- HDFS Spark execution beyond some limited Amazon EMR work, but I'm interested in learning more about it. What follows is a combination of work experience and armchair research in the evenings. But I'm not claiming to be an expert.

Have grown to really appreciate Spark in the Hadoop space. Started with plans to go with Impala, then went to Hive due to stability concerns, and finally to Spark due to speed / flexibility. You can write code against a data frame, or write Spark SQL, so you still have SQL.

HDFS has benefits over other storage approaches, if you are running Spark in the same cluster you get data proximity. But you can go with a different storage back-end. That costs in performance. "Performance of multiple query and enrichment jobs concurrently executed resulted in 90% longer execution times." [https://redhatstorage.redhat.com/2018/06/25/why-spark-on- cep...](https://redhatstorage.redhat.com/2018/06/25/why-spark-on-ceph- part-1-of-3/)

Unless you really have BIG data, you're invoking a lot of maintenance overhead to support a cluster when you may do just fine without.

Haven't had the freedom to explore other possibilities until recently, very interested in how Spark on k8s is working out. (Same comment could be made here as above and elsewhere - do you really need k8s? But I want to play with k8s and learn more about it, so... for that purpose I 'need' it.) [https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/running-on- kubernetes.h...](https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/running-on- kubernetes.html)

And there's always the cloud route. You can run an EMR job that uses files in s3. There is a cost, but you do not need to support a cluster in the same way. Or if you're feeling adventurous, use Lambda. [https://www.qubole.com/blog/spark-on-aws- lambda/](https://www.qubole.com/blog/spark-on-aws-lambda/)

And Spark isn't the only option. Have started learning about Dask, also looks very interesting for performing some of the same tasks. [https://dask.org](https://dask.org)</comment></comment>


The "Taken Username Effect" on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://diegobasch.com/the-taken-username-effect-on-twitter

<comment><USER2> The frustrating thing about so many usernames being taken on Twitter is that while new accounts are having to add numbers and underscores, most of the time the name they want is just a ghost account from 2008 with 0 tweets.

Twitter should really have some kind of policy for releasing the names of completely unused accounts.

<comment><USER3> There is a policy on inactive accounts, but there's nothing about requesting an account be released. [https://support.twitter.com/groups/33-report-abuse- or-policy...](https://support.twitter.com/groups/33-report-abuse-or-policy- violations/topics/148-policy-information/articles/15362-inactive-account- policy)

<comment><USER4> Note that this hasn't changed in a long time. Meaning: they'll never get to release them in bulk.

 _"If a username you would like is being used by an account that seems inactive, you should consider selecting an available variation for your use on Twitter. In general, adding numbers, underscores, or abbreviations can help you come up with a great available username."_

Every time I read this page, (I checked it a few times because @timothee is taken but has never been used) I'm amused by the "if blah blah…, we offer no solution. But here's a 'solution' that we'll tell you is even better even though it's clearly not."

<comment><USER3> If that's your long-time username on the Internet, you could file an impersonation claim. But that will be a harder case to make for a common name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This phenomenon hits me all the time because I'm an early adopter. There are many dgabriels in the world, and all of them think my gmail adress is theirs. I have gotten emails meant for theater directors, therapists (with very confidential info), been signed up for a million services (including adultfriendfinder and some Australian hook-up site). I get chain mail with puppy pictures from other people's grandparents, and yoga lesson confirmations, and invitations to participate in physician studies.

On one hand, it's a fascinating window into the diversity of dgabriels and their lives, but it gets irritating when I repeatedly get stuff after telling the sender I am not the droid they are looking for.

And, yes, I totally grabbed my outlook.com username, even though I don't currently have plans for switching...

<comment><USER6> I can relate to this. Last week I received 2 rather lengthy and intimate love letters, in my inbox from a lady in half Italian/half English. This was made all the more interesting, by the fact that a month ago I received a series of risqué photos from a _different_ lady speaking Italian. Maybe it's just coincidence, but I like to think there's some Italian stud out there who's too busy working his charm to remember his correct email.

Other highlights have been a company requesting a toothbrush design (to which I promptly replied with a ms paint mock-up) and 2 requests for me to provide artwork for graphic novels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sometimes, the fun of a pseudonym is the necessity under which it had to be created.

I still am undecided on how to go about account names - do I want people to infer my online handles from my name or other account names and e-mail addresses?

I still don't know if it's in my interest to have a unified account name across GitHub, Outlook.com, Gmail, Twitter, etc.

Convenience and privacy are often mutually exclusive, unfortunately. With GitHub, it's like a digital resumé, so I don't mind using my full name there.

Then again, if you manage to secure your last or first name, it could just as well be any of your namesakes.

</comment><comment><USER8> This story reminded me about this handle.

I've historically used 'echelon' everywhere since 2001. It's my Gmail address, my Github account, and while I don't tweet much, it's also my Twitter handle.

I was so disappointed when 'echelon' was already allocated on Reddit and HN. It took me years to sign up for either site because I was put off by having to use an alternate username. Ultimately I registered here as 'possibilistic'.

Just under a year ago I randomly tried to register as echelon again; I suppose pg deallocated all of the unused accounts of a certain age--I got my originally desired username. My problem now is that all of my posts are under 'possibilistic'. As much as I'd like to be 'echelon', I like my comment history too. :-/

I wonder if I could bother someone at HN to rename 'possibilistic' to 'echelon' and just delete this account entirely? It's probably not worth their effort, but it would be really nice.

<comment><USER9> Interesting in that I've had the same experience in delaying signing up for services when my name was taken. It's silly I guess but I didn't sign up for twitter for about a year because of this. Maybe that's the only argument a company would care about enough to make a change - the idea that they won't have as many users if squatters take so many names. Of course, if your service is at the point where there are name squatters maybe you're doing well enough already and don't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, it happens to almost every single popular service, starting with Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail, GMail, facebook and so on.

Why is this even a post of discussion? Aren't there better things to discuss about? Isn't this a typical first-world-problem?

<comment><USER11> 1) There's always something "better" to discuss or, even better, something better you could do to better yourself or maybe even make the world a better place. Better, better, better, pointless.

2) The post is useful in that it takes something everyone has experienced and is familiar with and actually quantifies it. As the article suggests, this is particularly relevant on Twitter where longer IDs directly impact one's use of the system.

3) This "first-world-problem" meme or whatever the hell is some silly bullshit. Until HN starts filling up with topics like "Food: How to ensure that your infant doesn't die of starvation tomorrow night" - they're all first world problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> After enough frustration getting my preferred usernames—both my normal pseudonym, and variations on my initials in real-name situations—a few years ago I just settled on adding an underscore to the front of my preferred pseudonym. I sort of like how it looks, and haven't had username problems since... except at sites that don't let you start a username with an underscore.

It'd admittedly be confusing if there were an active 'delirium' and also an active '_delirium', but so far my doppelgangers hve all been inactive accounts (example: <http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=delirium>).

<comment><USER13> Actually, "delirium" sounds boring and pretentious, but "_delirium" (I pronounce it as "subdelirium") sounds whimsical and fun. I'd say your username definitely benefits from the leading underscore. :)

<comment><USER12> Hah, interesting point. I must admit I'm not as fond of 'delirium' as a username anymore either; a legacy of picking a mildly pretentious handle as a teenager and then feeling sort of tied to it. So, glad the '_' improves it. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This happens with every popular service that doesn't release names. AOL used to release names every once in awhile, but it was few and far in between and when they did, they'd be all registered within a few days (because they had a tendency to release good names). I ended up compromising a lot of names in the late 90s on AOL to end up selling them for hundreds of dollars.

My parents always wondered how I ended up making so much money by selling "screen names".

<comment><USER15> Tell them "by being an ethical internet citizen."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone here bought a twitter username?

I imagine it wouldn't be so different from buying a domain name. Probably an escrow service would be a good idea. Other than that it seems like it would just be a matter of reaching a meeting of the minds on price.

</comment><comment><USER17> And that is why I have a fairly unique nick as my preferred username.

<comment><USER18> That's what I thought as well, but "yorhel" has been taken on Twitter for quite a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One solution other sites could adopt is a .com ownership rule.

If the username you want, suffixed with .com, is a registered domain name, you would have to verify the postmaster email address at that domain to prove you own it. (Or upload one of those random HTML files like other domain ownership checks do.)

This way you can just own the .com domain name of your preferred username and guarantee you'll get it on sites that implement this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm usually quick to get 'manfrin', but here I was second and with skype I couldn't even get mmanfrin. I had no idea what to register at that point.

<comment><USER21> mmmanfrin?

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con Thankfully, my handle is pretty unique. I use it pretty much everywhere and not only is it available, but I've only seen two other instances of it used by someone else (both on sites I didn't care about).

Unfortunately, hyphens aren't always allowed so I have to switch to an underscore. And if those aren't allowed I have to switch to a backup username.

</comment><comment><USER22> A while ago I started using my camel cased name: JeanHuguesRobert (some sites don't like jean_hugues_robert)

Long and weird enough. Well, too long sometimes. In those cases I revert to my "unix login name" ie jhrobert.

But, for twitter, where size matters, I got @jhr - I guess it must have been a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER23> It bugs the shit out of me when I don't get "davidw". I know it's sort of silly, but I've been "davidw" since 1993, and I've grown kind of partial to it, as well as having a lot of muscle memory primed to type that at logins.

<comment><USER24> I used to use "slant" in the 80s on BBS's. Once the Internet came around, that name was always already chosen.

Coming from Toronto, I added the local airport code (YYZ) to my nick.

The problem is that what I thought would be pronounced as "slant why why zed/zee" came out to others as "slanty eyes".

Fortunately, I have slanted eyes, so I guess nobody can accuse my nick of being inaccurate.

<comment><USER25> >> Fortunately, I have slanted eyes, so I guess nobody can accuse my nick of being inaccurate.

This made me laugh a lot. I imagine it spoken by a slightly-embarrassed news anchor on the Simpsons.

<comment><USER24> An acquaintance of mine once told me there was heated debate among his Twitter friends after they saw my handle in an @reply tweet.

They (none of whom were Asians) thought that I should change my nick because it was racist and/or offensive to Asians, despite the fact that I'm Asian myself.

<comment><USER26> Duh, everyone on the internet is a white straight man /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> i "invented" my username n0mad around the year 2000, now this username is used everywhere i get too late to register.

i don't know if this has to do with usernames being copied or because so many people are around the net nowadays and they all have the same idea now.

<comment><USER24> Probably the latter.

<comment><USER27> yeah, i now and then try out m0nad, nobody uses that one -> lets see for how long.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thoughts on my new local ad program? - <AUTHOR> http://thecitizenspeaks.windycitizen.com/2009/05/12/announcement-introducing-windycitizencom-24-hour-sponsorships-a-splashy

<comment><USER2> its not a new concept. the thing i've always hated about the concept is that it tends to come with multimedia interaction, popups and the like. if you can do it without it being as intrusive/annoying, i wouldn't mind it as a user.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's certainly the goal. Big, beautiful, splashy advertising that readers look forward to.

And what's new is taking it local. I've not seen any local news startups doing this just yet. If it works for College Humor, why not Chicago news?

<comment><USER3> You missed his point. He was saying that readers do NOT look forward to "big, beautiful, splashy advertising".

<comment><AUTHOR> Wrong. He said people don't look forward to "intrusive/annoying" advertising.

No one complains about great-looking, relevant, useful, interesting advertising that catches their attention and makes their life a bit better.

<comment><USER4> I think the Super Bowl makes your point - great looking, expensive, interesting, and usually brand new advertising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.

I talk with media people about online advertising a lot.

One thing I've noticed is that no one ever asks "Did you see my 250x300 banner ad on site X today?" You never hear that.

But when a business takes out a full-page ad in the paper, they send their customers to check it out. They're proud of it. It makes them feel good, established, on point and tells their customers that they're buying from a legit business that knows what's up.

Where's the equivalent in online advertising? I think of that vimeo clip from a little while ago that went viral. That's good advertising. It was interesting as an object in and of itself. That's the goal of these takeovers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Holy Grail' for employee hiring? - <AUTHOR> http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Holy+grail+hiring+puts+right+person+right/3687892/story.html

<comment><USER2> This brings to mind a future like Futurama where each person gets implanted with a career chip.</comment>


This new battery charges to 70% in two minutes, and lasts for 20 years - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20141410-26327.html <comment><USER2> A fun game to play with any new battery charging press release is to figure out how hot the thing will be after charging.

An iPhone 5 has a 5.45 Wh battery, which is approximately 20kJ. 70% of that is 14kJ. Charging a lithium-ion battery is typically 80-90% efficient, so getting 14kJ of energy into the battery will also put approximately 2500J of heat into the handset. It takes just shy of 4J to raise 1g of water by 1°C, but that iPhone has a density (112g / 55ml) about twice that of water, so it will be about 2.7°C (5°F) hotter than before you started charging.

I think.

<comment><USER3> You were right up until density. The amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature by one degree Celcius, per gram of the material is the specific heat capacity. Theoretically, it could have a lower specific heat capacity than water despite being twice as dense (I doubt it though).

In addition, using that analysis assumes that the phone is in a vacuum, or is somewhere were it is not getting rid of heat through convection, conduction, or radiation.

In steady state temperature analysis, you have the rate of heat going into the phone, and the rate of heat being conducted away from the phone over the surface area. Say, 10W in (5V at 2A) is the rate of charge, and 1W will be converted to heat. The phone gets rid of heat at a rate that is proportional to its temperature. A phone 10 degrees warmer than the surrounding air will release more heat into the air than a phone 3 degrees warmer.

In a steady state analysis for our example(which 2 minutes may not be appropriate for!), let's say the phone gets rid of 0.5W of heat at 1 degree above room temp, 1W at 2 degrees above room temp, and 2W at 4 degrees above room temp. If the rate of heat going into the phone is 1W, then the phone will eventually become 2 degrees warmer than the surrounding air to reject that heat.

I made up these numbers as an example of how you would discover how hot the phone would get. You'd need a calorimeter to submerge the phone in to measure a lot of this stuff.</comment></comment>


Antifuse, the opposite of a fuse - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifuse

<comment><USER2> I don't get why this is on the front page. It's just a normal fuse, except it works in the opposite manner. Now a standard fuse made of anti-matter...

<comment><USER3> I never understand how bare wikipedia articles with no commentary or news worthiness make it to the front page...

<comment><USER4> I suspect a number of people will go "hey, cool. I didn't know about that", click the +1 button, then go about their day.

I certainly didn't know antifuses existed.

<comment><USER3> That's fine and all, but if this continues to be a pattern then everything else will be crapfloaded off the front page. There is little end to the slightly geeky stuff on wikipedia that most people probably don't know of.

<comment><USER5> People have done this for years, and the front page is not flooded with them.

<comment><USER6> Somehow, the comment threads get flooded instead.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Food solved. Weekly meals delivered. YC Fellow applicant. Beyourmax.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.beyourmax.com

<comment><USER2> Feedback:

1\. Green buttons convert far better than other colors. Make the call-to- action button ("Start Today") green.

2\. "Start Today" isn't what I wanted to click. Not sure what I would prefer. I'd strongly suggest doing some A/B testing with other words on the button, like "Order Now", "Sign Up Today", etc. "Get Started" would also be better because "Start Today" sounds like it means I'll get food today.

3\. You need a "Pricing" page and link in your navigation.

4\. You need to have your company's phone number above the fold. It makes you look more trustworthy. It can be an answering service or automated voicemail thing, but it should be there.

5\. "How" is not a very clear abbreviation for "How It Works" (to me anyway)

6\. It is not at all clear if this is a local or national service. Do I have to be in a certain city to get the meals?

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback, thanks for taking the time. Will A/B test your suggestion. Can we email you sometime after your suggestions have been put into action?

<comment><USER2> Of course, although I'm a full-stack developer rather than a true HCI/UX expert. I'll send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com with my contact info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 6 comments, 3 of which are first posts of users exclaiming how great it is?

EDIT: To add something about the site: seems interesting and like something I might use occasionally. The fact that you are bay area only is to be expected, but should be more prominent to see (if you just look at the front page and then click "Start today" you get to the page for entering billing information, delivery address etc without getting that info)

<comment><AUTHOR> We were so excited about the fellow ship application that we asked our customers to join in. A lot of them are in tech but they didn't have a hn account.

<comment><USER4> FYI getting everyone you know to post comments and votes gets submissions flagged into oblivion where nobody else sees them, unless it happens automatically via spam prevention filters:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

        Can I ask people to upvote my submission?

        No. Users should vote for a story because it's
        intellectually interesting, not because someone is
        promoting it.

        When the software detects a voting ring, it penalizes the
        post. Accounts that vote like this eventually get their
        votes ignored.

Also worth nothing is the votes-to-comments ratio, if you reply to everything you will trigger a penalty designed to minimize contentious issues which occurs when more comments than votes happen.

You might like to try resubmitting without orchestrating any activity as this submission's been penalized and is no longer well positioned in 'show' or anywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Prices look pretty good reasonable what you get, if the food is as good as it looks in the pictures.

Does the menu change weekly? What do I need to do to prepare the food? Just toss it in a microwave or do I need a kitchen?

<comment><AUTHOR> Menu changes weekly. No need to prepare. We're all busy so you heat in microwave, pan or oven. Yep.

Meals are same as photos. Because our ops are so lean we can invest almost 1.5X to 2X in ingredients compared to a restaurant for the same price. Which is why we can offer organic ingredients as well.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We are giving $20 to all HN users -- use coupon code: HNFGOFF

Thanks for the fellowship program for allowing us to apply.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey, just a heads up, I just looked at the site on my phone. Unfortunately, I only have one bar in my office. The load time is painful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, how does it load on your work laptop?

<comment><USER6> its fine on a desktop/laptop but I do most of my browsing while commuting to work. I even order my lunch on seamless on the phone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> looks fantastic - if I didn't have a big family to feed and live thousands of miles away. One thing though; having your prices front and centre would be a lot better. The prices are really good, but I was getting nervous that it would be twice that amount before I eventually got to the menu page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> we really want hn users to try our food. since we deliver 3-5 days worth of meals our operations are super lean and streamlined. If you email us and mention hn we can set you up with a $50 off discount code for your first order. We are also one of the few all organic providers in the bay area.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you deliver hot foods, too?

<comment><AUTHOR> no, we focus on sending all your meals for 3-5 days at once. if its cold you pay no sales tax, so its cheaper for consumers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have ordered from here several times and loved all my meals. The deliveries always arrive on time. Their prices are incredibly reasonable for the quality of food you get.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tried it. Food is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm excited to try this. have been looking for prepared food that focuses on my dietary goals (and tastes great) for a long time</comment>


Dallas - Fort Worth Area Startups Are Hiring - <AUTHOR> http://launchdfw.com/news/dfw-startups-are-hiring/ <comment><USER2> As someone who grew up in DFW, this is a great resource. The area was a tech hotbed for a while and seems to have cooled off lately.

I worked at the Infomart throughout highschool for a small ISP (Psybernet? I think?) and it was a great experience.

Dallas needs more startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> DFW has _lots_ of startups, but they don't get a ton of exposure for a variety of reasons. Hopefully launchDFW can continue to grow to be a great outlet to show how active the startup community in the metroplex is.

<comment><USER2> Are there user groups or meetups in the area? My brother is working on a startup in the area and could definitely use some peers to bounce ideas off of and network with.

I live in NYC so I'm lucky to have all of the Startup/Tech groups up here, would be great if there was something like that in Dallas!

<comment><AUTHOR> there are a number of things going on. The best place to get connected is the monthly Dallas Startup Happy Hour. Currently being hosted at CoHabitat, a co- working space home to a bunch of startups. Next one is this coming monday.

[http://launchdfw.com/news/dallas-startup-happy-hour- monday-j...](http://launchdfw.com/news/dallas-startup-happy-hour-monday- june-7th/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This would've been really awesome when I lived in DFW.

</comment><comment><USER4> But then you have to live in Dallas/Fort worth....

<comment><AUTHOR> There tons of advantages to living in DFW:

\- low cost of living \- low taxes (both business and personal) \- access to tons of large corporations as potential customers (lots of corporate HQs in town) \- a new incubator, Tech Wildcatters, that is hungry for great startups \- great BBQ, beers \- if you're into sports we have all the pro teams \- Two great cities to choose from. Dallas if you want the faster pace, more hipster crowd... Fort Worth if you want something a bit cleaner and laid back.

The list could go on... I'll give you naysayers the fact that the climate here is not as favorable as many other places in the country.</comment></comment>


Strandead Card Game (play tests available) - <AUTHOR> https://boardgamegeek.com/article/25453707 <comment><AUTHOR> STRANDEAD

Strandead is a trick-taking card game in which players must survive the longest by discarding cards that their opponents can't match or raise.

The players must choose their plays carefully, in order to survive the next attack and sabotage other players in turn. An ever-growing number of zombies continue to make the attacks more vicious as the game progresses, leading to a fast paced, hectic and unique experience.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Facebook: [https://www.facebook.com/strandeadgame](https://www.facebook.com/strandeadgame) Website: [http://strandeadgame.com/](http://strandeadgame.com/)

Feedback welcome and appreciated</comment>


This Senator hasn't sent an email. Why is he on a subcommittee focused on tech? - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2015/03/09/this-member-of-congress-has-never-sent-an-email-even-though-hes-on-a-tech-and-privacy-focused-subcommittee/?utm_content=bufferdf03c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

<comment><USER2> Ok that's extreme. But Senators sit on subcommittees on war, medicine, poverty, criminal justice and on and on. And they aren't any of those things either (well not most of them).

</comment><comment><USER3> Because committees are handed out on seniority especially the ones with lots of pork and not by the executive (which has its own problems)

do tech journalist have no idea how politics works</comment>


Ask HN: Serverless Functions Without the AWS/Azure/GOOG Complexity? - <AUTHOR> Is there a serverless offering that's focused on simplicity?
The mind numbing complexity of serverless from the big vendors isn't worth the effort for building simple database driven websites.
Anyone know of anything? <comment><USER2> There are services like Netlify [1] and Zeit.co [2] but both are more expensive.

Simplicity comes at a price.

[1] [https://www.netlify.com/products/functions/](https://www.netlify.com/products/functions/)

[2] [https://zeit.co/docs/v2/serverless- functions/introduction](https://zeit.co/docs/v2/serverless- functions/introduction)

</comment><comment><USER3> What makes something like AWS lambda complex? I feel lambda is one of the easiest and fastest way to get something out the door.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm involved with OPS/Nanos which deploy applications as unikernels to AWS && Google Cloud. The deploy and management of them have a very serverless like feel as you can't ssh into them nor can you install random crap on them once they are deployed:

I even called them "Stateful Serverless" in a recent article:

[https://dev.to/eyberg/stateful-serverless-with- unikernels-4m...](https://dev.to/eyberg/stateful-serverless-with- unikernels-4ma7)

A few cool things versus something like lambda are that they are very much cloud agnostic and they are stateful by default (although very easy to run them as transient workloads as well).

If you want to check it out - open source/free at:

[https://ops.city](https://ops.city)

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface)

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://serverless.com/](https://serverless.com/) is a layer of abstraction on top of the big providers

<comment><USER7> This is the way to go. Follow the guide at [https://serverless- stack.com/](https://serverless-stack.com/) and you should be golden.

I'm an awful programmer and even I found serverless stack to be surprisingly easy to follow and understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cloud Run? Pretty simple. Just a Dockerfile and you are good to go.

<comment><USER9> You mean Knative ([https://github.com/knative](https://github.com/knative)) ? ;-)</comment></comment>


New York City is poised for a tech revival - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdixon.org/?p=281

<comment><USER3> While finance firms in NYC did indeed snatch up many bright technical folks, the same could be said for large software shops with NY offices like Yahoo and Google. The startup world here looks about the same as always - <USER2> there's less of a particular sort of risk tolerance among technology investors on this side of the country.

I'm thrilled by the idea of a "tech revival" though. Bring it on!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not convinced. The article mentions a handful of promising ventures. It's a mere fraction of the activity in CA and will be for some time. NY tech has certainly warmed up over the past decade but finance still dominates tech in NY in a way that is unparalleled elsewhere in the country.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just in time for Zed to leave for greener pastures...</comment>


Web development as a hack of hacks (in reply to a HN thread) - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2016/09/web_development.html <comment><USER2> How many people here are actually using web apps day to day?

I've spent most of my career building web apps for other people but when I look at the programs I use daily, the only web app amongst them is gmail, even then I mostly use it through the android app. Possibly netflix and other online video if you count that as a web app (though I'd prefer a native version).

For work email it's outlook. For document editing it's word and vim. For developing it's Visual studio and vim. Listening to music is done via native apps. For work messaging it's lync. Earlier today I wanted to do a workflow diagram and it was easier to download and install dia than it was to use one of the millions of online versions.

Did widespread usage of web apps every actually happen?

<comment><USER3> Seriously, you only ever have one tab open in your browser?

<comment><USER2> Many, not a lot of apps in those tabs though. I did forget the work issue tracker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is in response to: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12477190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12477190)</comment>