New tricks for XFS: support for subvolumes - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/Articles/747633/ <comment><USER2> I think the biggest missing feature for home/casual use in XFS right now is shrinking. Currently, it's impossible to reduce an XFS filesystem (partition) in size, so you have to commit to your disk layout once you've set it up. Whether it's to install another OS side-by-side, grow a swap partition, experiment with or gradually migrate to another filesystem, none are currently possible without adding additional physical storage or using loop devices.

The same applies to ZFS (it's not possible to shrink a ZFS pool), which is why I'm currently using btrfs (with all its pain points) on my machines.

<comment><USER3> From operations experience, the risks of data loss with btrfs far outweigh volume shrinking capabilities on either XFS or ZFS.

<comment><USER2> Fortunately, btrfs is really good at backups.

Well, so is ZFS, but in some situations, like choosing what filesystem to use on a rented dedicated server, any choice that could lead to a situation requiring physical hardware configuration changes is a non-starter.

ZFS licensing is an issue too, as it means that you can't just boot into any ol' Linux live CD (or remotely boot into a rescue environment) to fix the system or salvage the data on it.

<comment><USER4> > ZFS licensing is an issue too, as it means that you can't just boot into any > ol' Linux live CD (or remotely boot into a rescue environment) to fix the > system or salvage the data on it.

Sure you can. I've done just this with 3 different live CDs: ArchLinux, FreeBSD and OpenSolaris. I'm fairly sure I've also used ZFS on the Ubuntu Desktop live CD as well but that was just for playing rather than rescusing a degraded system.

<comment><USER5> FreeBSD and OpenSolaris probably aren't very useful, when trying to rescue a Linux system. Especially if you need to chroot and run things from there. (My need so far was to rescue non-booting system, because the zfs package upgrade went wrong and didn't update spl too. Re-running dracut would be a somewhat problematic from these two systems).

Ubuntu desktop live CD doesn't contain zfs, you have to install it from apt.

However, if you have a ZFS system, I see no problem with having an USB stick with minimal installation of your distro of choice, together with ZFS support. I'm glad I did have it since the ZFS install.

<comment><USER4> I think you're nitpicking a little to be honest. None of those problems are hard to workaround:

 _> FreeBSD and OpenSolaris probably aren't very useful, when trying to rescue a Linux system. Especially if you need to chroot and run things from there. (My need so far was to rescue non-booting system, because the zfs package upgrade went wrong and didn't update spl too. Re-running dracut would be a somewhat problematic from these two systems)._

I do see your point but it really depends on the problem as not all recoveries require chroot / package management access. I've rescued Solaris (not OpenSolaris) with an OpenSuse live CD back when a cavalier opp chmodded /etc. I've rescued OpenSolaris with a FreeBSD CD back when a faulty RAID controller borked the file system. As for ArchLinux ISOs, I've used them to rescue more systems than I can count. But as you said, some problems do just require booting an instances of the host OS via some means.

 _> Ubuntu desktop live CD doesn't contain zfs, you have to install it from apt._

It took me all of about 10 minutes to bake the ZFS driver into the ISO. It's not hard compared to the other technical challenges you've discussed. Though if that's too much effort then I think you can also just apt it from the Live CD and manually modprobe it into the running kernel.

 _> However, if you have a ZFS system, I see no problem with having an USB stick with minimal installation of your distro of choice, together with ZFS support. I'm glad I did have it since the ZFS install._

Indeed. My preferred method is having rescue disks available over PXE booting. Before then I was forever hunting down my recovery disks or spare USB keys / CD-Rs. Not to mention the pain involved if the system I was trying to recover was my main workstation (ie the hardware I'd normally use to download and burn CDs on).

<comment><USER5> > None of those problems are hard to workaround:

Sure, there are very few problems that cannot be solved by throwing some time and sweat on them. However, when I do need to solve something, I prefer to not be sidetracked by sub-problems. Smooth sailing and all that.

It's much simpler to pull an usb key from the drawer or PXE boot, as you mentioned, and go on on solving the damaged system, than to start downloading and preparing a live distro somewhere.

<comment><USER4> Again, you're overstating things. If it genuinely takes you more than a couple of minutes to run apt and modprobe then I really think you shouldn't be allowed anywere near a degraded system to begin with. These aren't "sub- problems" \- they're the absolute basics of system administration.

<comment><USER5> It a bit more than couple of minutes to download installer, install it somewhere (livecd doesn't have persistent /), install zfs there and only then go on doing whatever you were doing.

Compared to grabbing standard media you have somewhere, it will take at least 15 minutes extra.

Basics of system administration does not mean, that you are wasting your time, especially on something you can be without.

<comment><USER4> _> It a bit more than couple of minutes to download installer, install it somewhere (livecd doesn't have persistent /), install zfs there and only then go on doing whatever you were doing._

You don't need a persistent root. I'd already addressed that point. Just run modprobe and you're done.

 _> Compared to grabbing standard media you have somewhere, it will take at least 15 minutes extra._

Bullshit. I've done exactly what I described and it did not take me 15 minutes. Furthermore all you're doing is pre-emptively pushing the work to before your outage which you could do the same with the ISO (if you really wanted to compare apples with apples).

 _> Basics of system administration does not mean, that you are wasting your time, especially on something you can be without._

The whole point of this tangent was about when one needs an Live CD. Not about whether creating a live CD is worthwhile when you already have a USB key. That new argument you've invented is stupid because the answer is quite clearly "use the USB key if that's already in your draw." But what happens if you have a ZFS volume on a system and you don't already have a recovery media? (ie the original question) Well in that case you can use any of the methods I described. Or, of course, you can create a USB key too. But that will take just as long as the methods I described anyway (you still have to download the OS image, ZFS drivers and write them all to your storage medium. Thus all you're really doing is swapping out one chunk of plastic with another chunk of plastic).

<comment><USER5> > You don't need a persistent root. I'd already addressed that point. Just run > modprobe and you're done.

That assumes too much. For example, that you have a network connection while booted from the live media. You may not have one; then you cannot run apt/yum and you need persistent media that you prepared somewhere else. (Happened to me).

> Bullshit.

Surely. Or you have extra speedy USB keys. Just installing minimal distro on USB takes a better chunk of that time.

> The whole point of this tangent was about when one needs an Live CD.

When you are doing something non-standard - and installing ZFS on Linux is pretty nonstandard - you know in advance that the normal live media won't work. It's prudent to have something prepared, if/when SHTF event occurs.

Specifically with regards to filesystem, when you are installing with non- distro-provided-fs root, you need to make it anyway, just to install it in the first place. So instead of throwing it away, just label it and put in into the drawer. (When you are not installing on non-distro-fs root, you don't need support for that fs in live media at all, the standard one will do for making the system boot).

<comment><USER4> _> That assumes too much_

You've been assuming a crap load of stuff as well when it suits your argument. Like having a pre-prepared USB key to begin with.

 _> For example, that you have a network connection while booted from the live media. You may not have one; then you cannot run apt/yum and you need persistent media that you prepared somewhere else. (Happened to me)._

Indeed. You might also not have a CD drive on the host (happened to me), or any blank CD-Rs, or a CD burner on your workstation. Or the internet connection might not work on your workstation either. But then most of those arguments can be made for creating a USB key as well so your point is moot. In fact my latest workstation (Macbook Pro) only has USB-C so I couldn't use my USB keys when I went to install Linux on that.

My point is, if you're looking for ways to nitpick, there are plenty for your examples as well. In fact there will be a thousand different exceptions for any solution you could dream up. Thus is the nature of working in IT.

 _> Just installing minimal distro on USB takes a better chunk of that time._

Arguably yes but that also takes longer and your original point was about getting stuff done as quickly as possible. So you're now contradicting yourself.

 _> When you are doing something non-standard - and installing ZFS on Linux is pretty nonstandard - you know in advance that the normal live media won't work._

Except the whole point of this tangent is me demonstrating where it does work.

 _> It's prudent to have something prepared, if/when SHTF event occurs._

Now you're arguing a different point to the point I was discussing. I'm not going to disagree with you there (since I've already discussed I run a PXE server for situations like these) but that wasn't the topic we were discussing.

I seriously just think you're now just arguing for the sake of winning an internet argument. I'm not going to argue with you that a CD is better than USB because it's pretty obvious that isn't the case. But that wasn't the point I was discussing. So for the benefit of my own sanity can we please get back onto topic: you _can_ use live CDs to repair a degraded system running ZFS. Sure there will be occasions when you cannot; but that's the case when doing anything in IT (and thus why use sysadmins get to command such a good wage). But generally you can. And I literally have. Many times in fact. So enough with the dumb "death by a thousand paper cuts" and goal post moving arguments please.

<comment><USER5> > You've been assuming a crap load of stuff as well when it suits your > argument. Like having a pre-prepared USB key to begin with.

You are still conveniently ignoring what I said: if you want to install system with ZFS root, you have to make it. That's also the reason why I have it. I just didn't throw it away after the installation.

> Except the whole point of this tangent is me demonstrating where it does > work.

Yes, if everything is aligned right, it can work.

> I seriously just think you're now just arguing for the sake of winning an > internet argument.

You are free to think whatever you want.

> you can use live CDs to repair a degraded system running ZFS.

Yes, under certain conditions. How they apply in your environment is up to you to assess.

> Sure there will be occasions when you cannot; but that's the case when doing > anything in IT (and thus why use sysadmins get to command such a good wage). > But generally you can. And I literally have. Many times in fact. So enough > with the dumb "death by a thousand paper cuts" and goal post moving > arguments please.

It's not goal post moving, it's what happens. Having a livecd that supports your configuration is advantageous to not having it. Being able to download a ready-mady one is advantageous to having to make it. Etc.

So when I can choose between freebsd or opensolaris iso and native system that fully support whatever I need (that was the original issue, remember?), of course I will choose the latter, or having the latter available is preferred.

<comment><USER4> _> You are still conveniently ignoring what I said: if you want to install system with ZFS root, you have to make it. That's also the reason why I have it. I just didn't throw it away after the installation._

I'm not ignoring it; I've repeatedly addressed it and pointed out how it's not true (the Ubuntu Desktop example). Want a few more examples? When I installed ArchLinux with a ZFS root I didn't use a custom ISO (read their ZFS wiki if you don't believe me). I also didn't create a custom Ubuntu Server ISO when I installed that with a ZFS root. Both were installed from CD - the vanilla CD available on their respective websites.

Also, even if you did install from a USB key; what's to say you don't then lose said key afterwards? I'm forever am losing them.

The point is whichever argument you're going to make will be full of more exceptions than you can count. So nitpicking one over the other, like you are, is an utterly pointless exercise and a distraction from the original point I was making.

 _> So when I can choose between freebsd or opensolaris iso and native system that fully support whatever I need (that was the original issue, remember?)_

No that wasn't the original issue. The original issue was whether there are an live CDs that can be used to rescue a degraded ZFS system - which I've demonstrated there are.

However I do agree with you that running ZFS on Linux is a little pointless when FreeBSD and the OpenSolaris forks are all solid platforms and have unencumbered native ZFS support. Though installing a ZFS root on FreeBSD was just as painful as doing so on ArchLinux (at least that was the case a few versions ago - things might have improved since but thankfully FreeBSD never really needs rebuilds so I've not had revisit that particular pain point)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been having some fun with a revived SGI Octane running IRIX and it occurred to me, quite out-of-the-blue, that XFS development essentially ceased before SSDs were ever even contemplated. For a few moments, I pondered the apparent profundity of this realisation, and then I moved on, cursing the lack of package management while trying to get something to work.

<comment><USER7> ah, youre right up to a point. around 2014 there was a great flurry of work done, which meant its metadata speed improved >50x turning it from a great streaming file system, to a good all rounder.

<comment><USER8> It was a bit before that, iirc. LWN article summarizing the changes at [1], which are mostly delaylog, if we are referring to the same thing. Was default- enabled in 2011 on Linux 3.3.

... I've happened to spend much of the last three weeks learning about XFS.

[1] [https://lwn.net/Articles/476263/](https://lwn.net/Articles/476263/)

<comment><USER7> Aha, good spot. My boss sent me the video of that presentation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> By the way, I'm using XFS only because it allows for more than 64k hardlinks per file. Strangely, this isn't possible with ext4 out of the box.

<comment><USER10> Just curious, but what use case do you have for such a voluminous quantity of hardlinks?

<comment><USER9> Basically copying files without actually copying them. For example, when making versioned backups, or when copying a large number of files from production to various development environments.

Something I wish there was a better solution for. Perhaps there is a filesystem out there that supports CoW in a way that fits this usecase (XFS perhaps even), but I haven't looked into it.

The disadvantage of using hardlinks is that you can't hardlink between users (user is a property of the file, not of the link to the file), and there's always the danger that a write takes place through one of the links. Imho, that should really be solved at the filesystem level using a CoW scheme.

<comment><USER11> > Basically copying files without actually copying them. For example, when > making versioned backups, or when copying a large number of files from > production to various development environments.

To me it sounds like you want simple snapshots and backups without the redundancy at the storage level.

So why don't use a filesystem which supports that natively, like ZFS or Btrfs?

<comment><USER12> Do they handle 64k snapshots?

<comment><USER13> That's one backup every hour for 7+ years. I'm _really_ curious about the use case.

Anyway, theoretically[0]:

> As you might know btrfs treats subvolumes as filesystems and hence the > number of snapshots is indeed limited: namely by the size of files. > According to the btrfs wiki the maximum filesize that can be reached is 2^64 > byte == 16 EiB

But it seems practically you're hitting the mud at ~100 snapshots[1] but be sure to read the reply to that mail as it will depend on the use case and it might turn out to be fine way beyond that.

[0]: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/140360/practical- li...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/140360/practical-limit-on-the- number-of-btrfs-snapshots#147666)

[1]: [https://www.mail-archive.com/linux- email@example.com/msg...](https://www.mail-archive.com/linux- email@example.com/msg72385.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > When a CoW filesystem writes to a block of data or metadata, it first makes > a copy of it

Is this a really a precise description? I was sure that (for data) the actual copy only happens in case of a block with multiple references. If there was a single use of a block I expected it to be modified in place in most real-world filesystems. Summary from wikipedia seems to confirm that.

Am I missing something, or is that just unfortunate wording?

What they describe with the write of the data followed with write of the indexes as new elements seems more like a log filesystem.

<comment><USER15> CoW stands for "Copy on Write" a system that updates blocks in-place is not is not CoW.

<comment><USER14> There's lots of things which are called copy on write, where CoW means really copy-on-deduplication-otherwise-update-in-place. Like qcow2 filesystem. Or Cow type in Rust.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr XFS will support using filesystem images as if they were directories, kind of like an "internal loop", which will allow (with the help of copy-on- write data, which they support in recent versions) having subvolumes/snapshots.

<comment><USER11> It might just be how you present it, but to me that sounds like using multiple layers of hacks to implement use-cases other filesystems were carefully designed to support in the first place, and that sounds extremely unreliable and brittle.

I'll stick to ZFS :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, these subvolumes are going to have scalability issues compared with cleanly designed subvolumes such as in ZFS. But I wouldn't describe them as a hack - it's a rather interesting feature that not other filesystem has explored before. I would describe it as "loop devices done well". I don't think reliability will be a problem, for the upper layer these embedded filesystems are in fact just files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice can't wait for the next version of XFS from red hat.</comment>


How database replication helps me sleep at night - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.thumbtack.com/2011/04/06/how-database-replication-helps-me-sleep-at-night/

<comment><USER2> Cons lists are massively oversimplified. What about the case reddit had recently, where their masters and slaves got out of sync (presumably because master didn't fully flush a commit to disk, e.g. write buffering was on somewhere)? Hot standby is a hard problem, and has far more cons than just "you can't recover from drop table". When the fortune 500 company I used to work at would try replication with Oracle, it was often responsible for poor write performance, and sometimes we'd end up with two points of failure (a problem with either of 2 dbs could now make a system effectively unavailable) where before there had been only one. Maybe it's gotten better, maybe postgres has a great implementation, maybe our DBAs were just horrible... but five years ago I developed the opinion that the only way to get it right with traditional databases is to teach the application layer to handle failure, and sacrifice some part of ACID - and I haven't seen anything to convince me to change my mind since.

<comment><USER3> I agree this is certainly a simplification, but I don't think one grossly so.

A lot of the points you mention do not apply to our setup:

\- Our standby database is guaranteed to be consistent (barring some massive hardware failure), because we disable write caching on both the drives and the RAID controller, and the only data being exchanged is the write-ahead log. If the standby receives corrupt data, it will not apply it and will break off the replication and maintain its consistent (and stale) state. The underlying file system of the master and standby are completely distinct, thus any failure on either machine has no effect on the other.

\- Streaming replication has no effect on write performance on the master, as the replication is best-effort and asynchronous. Of course this is a redundancy trade-off, but one that is fine for our needs. If you need to commit every transaction to multiple machines, that is a whole different and more complicated problem.

\- Increasing availability was not the main goal for us. If our master database crashes, our website will break. However, our database state should be intact (either on the master or standby), and that was our goal. Having master-master replication or something along those lines is significantly more complicated and invites a host of problems that involve a lot of trade-offs. We accept that in case of master database hardware failure, a human is going to have to fix it. However, we believe with our current system, we can greatly reduce the time it will take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aren't there other ways to do database replication?

<comment><USER3> (post author)

Yes, there are a lot of third-party replication solutions for Postgres ([http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Replication,_Clustering,_and...](http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Replication,_Clustering,_and_Connection_Pooling)), which offer various features (some of which offer even more complex and redundent replication options than the built-in replication). However, since they are all third-party solutions, there are such varying levels of complexity and support I think you would prefer to use the built-in versions of replication.

And as discussed in the post, I believe that streaming replication is a very nice replication solution, and probably good enough for most applications.

<comment><USER5> How do you like Postgres? I'm doing a lot of work with MySQL lately and curious about Postgres.

<comment><USER3> I can't say I have a ton of experience with Mysql, but I am a huge fan of Postgres. I think especially for people who just want their database to work, having to worry about which of the storage engines you should be using for MySQL would be a headache. With Postgres, they focused on one storage engine and making it work as broadly as possible, and I think that is the right way to go about it. In addition, administration + configuration is really nice, the community and mailing lists are active and helpful, and the performance has been great for our usage. We also use it heavily for geospacial stuff (using PostGIS), and I think Postgres is ahead of MySQL for that.

I'm sure there are places online that do a much better job comparing them, but from my experiences with Postgres I would have no reason not to use it for any relational database needs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Short Calendar: A visual framework for emailing short calendars - <AUTHOR> http://shortcal.com/

<comment><USER2> Could this be "shared online" instead of emailed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely a big feature request. Coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hmm... I tried emailing a test calendar 3 times, but no luck.

<comment><USER4> Me either. I think the keyword on that link may be "visual framework", ie not functional. Wish there was an "about" page or blurb.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all. Fully functional as well as visual.</comment></comment></comment>


The Underhanded C Contest: Weak Encryption (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://underhanded.xcott.com/?page_id=16

<comment><USER2> The winner of this contest built his own Linux-compatible system and wrote the kernel "designed to withstand zero-day attacks in userspace" from scratch(!) [1]. Linux binaries work on it without recompilation(!!).

[1] [http://www.manux.info/en/](http://www.manux.info/en/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://underhanded.xcott.com/?page_id=17](http://underhanded.xcott.com/?page_id=17)

I have, for a number of years now, found the 2008 Winning entry by John Meacham to be an important reminder. The trick isn't any preprocessor abuse, pointer-math problem, or any of the usual places in C where the complexity can easily obscure what is really going on. The program uses several idiomatic construct like

        for(c = buf;*c;c++) { ... }

to walk the PPM data. It does exactly what it is supposed to do. (output black (zeros) for pixes in a given region.

To find the problem, you have to understand the entire problem _and the written algorithm_ , as this isn't a "bug" \- it doesn't implement the spec properly. It walks char by char - which looks fine at first - but that means it zeros "1 12 123" into "0 00 000", leaking the contrast of the original data.

I find that this is an important lesson to remember: no tool can catch you using the _wrong algorithm_ , especially when the code "mostly" follows the design requirements that can never cover every possible corner case. Tools can catch interesting problems, but the inherent complexity in software says that you can never _really_ be sure what a program does until you've read an understood the whole program... which isn't possible in the general case (halting problem).

So we can only hope to try and keep everything as simple as possible... as this winning entry shows that even 55 lines of clean code are enough complexity to hide what could be malicious code.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's also a new contest for Underhanded Crypto -- [https://underhandedcrypto.com](https://underhandedcrypto.com) \-- that just finished what I think was its first year, though I know the Underhanded C competition has a longer history.

</comment><comment><USER5> I esp. like the actual competition (2014) [http://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_5.html](http://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_5.html) about surveillance information leakage.

The 2014 Challenge: PiuPiu and the National Security Letter

The PiuPiu oversharing site allows users to create PiuPiu accounts and post 140-character messages. The federal government wants PiuPiu to surveil user activity on the site, by archiving any posts that match certain patterns outlined in a national security letter. Subject to the nondisclosure constraints of the letter, PiuPiu may not inform anyone of the surveillance request.

The underhanded goal is this: write surveil() in such a way that the act of surveillance is subtly leaked to the user or to the outside world. PiuPiu can not reveal the act of surveillance, but your function is technically able to edit the Piu or user structure during scanning. Find a way to alter that data (this alone is a bit of a challenge, since you are not supposed to alter the data, just scan it) in such a way that an informed outsider can tell if someone is being archived. The leakage should be subtle enough that it is not easily noticed.

I would do that with TR39, unicode confusables.

</comment><comment><USER6> There will be a talk on this at HackBU today ([http://2015s.hackbu.org/](http://2015s.hackbu.org/))</comment>


For Dave McClure's New 500 Startups Fund, U.S. Institutions Shy Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-DGB-39825 <comment><USER2> I think they will do well if these companies are still around in 5-10 years time, there will be success stories. The bets are longer term, since the exit opportunities outside the US are still not comparable to the US. But a lot of these regions are high growth so the landscape should evolve over time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect there's a bit of a culture clash thing going on too. Dave's F-bombs and piratical demeanor may not sit well with institutional investors, who _probably_ lie at the more strait-laced end of the spectrum... :-)

<comment> k-mcgrady Are there really still adults who care about cursing? I know there are people who don't like it but I don't think it would result in them not doing business with someone. Likewise I swear like a sailor but try not to in a business setting as I find it unprofessional - but I wouldn't hold it against anyone who thinks differently.

<comment><USER4> Me, for one. I'm 23 and would prefer it if people didn't swear. It doesn't add anything to the conversation and is completely unnecessary.

<comment><USER5> It's completely necessary. Otherwise the words wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be talking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions rates of return of ca. 20%. Are these realized IRR numbers? I would imagine the unrealized IRR (including only priced rounds, not convertible notes [or SAFEs] with a higher cap) are higher than this. Am I mistaken? What is convention here?

<comment><USER7> _> 500 Startups' first fund, a $29 million pool from 2010, had an 18% net investment rate of return as of the third quarter of 2014, according to Mr. McClure. The mean return for all venture funds raised in that year stood at 20.5%_

This, to me, is the real reason. I know it doesn't paint the entire picture, but if I were a portfolio manager at an endowment or pension fund I wouldn't invest in 500 Startups:

1\. The fund is performing below the industry average (caveat, I'd like to see what makes up that "venture funds" average), and

2\. even if we ignore the venture funds average return, 18% net IRR seems extremely low for an investment vehicle that has above average risk. From a portfolio management perspective I'd rather investment in mezzanine funds, where the return is higher than 18% and a risk lower than equity/VC financing.

My feeling is that 500 Startups returns are decoupled from the inherent risk... all I'm saying is that 500S is not picking the right (home run) investments/companies.

Let's remember that these LPs/institutional investors have a fiduciary duty to make sound investments, and 500 Startups doesn't meet the "right" criteria. However, I were fund raising for 500 Startups, I would target wealthy individuals, family offices, et al. who investment on their own behalf[1], and haven't got that third party responsibility.

[1] I'm not saying these investors are not disciplined, but are able to take on unconventional risks.

<comment><USER8> we believe we are performing far above average, actually... both in IRR, exits, black swans, and other areas. that said, we are less than 5 years old and most VC funds don't have much measurable results until 4-8 years in.

our first fund is performing at 18% _Net_ IRR (which includes fees; I think the WSJ #s were actually _Gross_ IRR, which would be higher for our fund as well, and likely considerably above mean).

regardless, our second fund is performing at 27% Net IRR, which is performing considerably higher than median 6% IRR as reported by WSJ / Cambridge.

our third fund is still very early (just over 1 year old), however it seems we are performing over 30-40% IRR (44% currently).

so overall: \- our funds are performing substantially above median \- our performance appears to be increasing over the past 3 funds \- I doubt that most LPs have turned us down because occasionally I use some 4-letter words...

thanks,

DMC

<comment><USER7> Dave, thanks for the clarification and insights. Your comment provides a much better insight into the fund. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sorry but how does 500Startups really differ from all the other VC funds out there? Real question.

<comment><USER10> They do a ton of small investments (hence the name) all over the world, via both an accelerator and a seed fund.

Differences:

* Their site says they've funded over 800 companies, which is absolutely absurd in the few short years they've been around. A lot of venture funds won't do that many deals in their entire lifetime, let alone in a few years.

* They do a _lot_ of International deals (in 40+ countries). Most other VC funds are skeptical of (and often avoid) investments outside of Silicon Valley, let alone outside the United States.

* My own interpretation is that 500 Startups also focuses on things that generate revenue quickly, and not so much trying to find the next Facebook.

* And then there's Dave McClure. If you know who he is, this bullet point needs no explanation.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget: they're "almost always" not the lead investor. They specifically will only look at companies with an existing investor.

When I asked, Khailee Ng told me they used that as a filter (presumably instead of "only warm intros" and/or associates binning thousands of cold pitches). I thought it was a neat idea, especially since the industry does this unofficially anyway ([http://paulgraham.com/fr.html](http://paulgraham.com/fr.html) \- "Avoid investors who don't lead" \- obviously 500 Startups is an exception thanks to their brand and network).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't find any of this surprising. From the point of view of an institutional investor, the arguments they've made in the article totally make sense.

One definition of a startup is that it's a high-growth, high-risk enterprise. While endowments and pension funds sometimes do carry some high-growth, high- risk capital, it's generally not the bulk of it. And I think that's perfectly sensible.

On a side note, the idea of a "index fund of startups" is interesting. I'm not sure I'd consider 500S, or even YC, quite like that, but it's a great line to use.

</comment><comment><USER13> Assuming he can uniformly invest across startups (i.e. invest in quality in addition to lower quality), and adds to winners, such an approach is akin to "ensemble-learning" approach. Works well for portfolios if the measure of prior performance & risks used to determine reweighting is proper and there is a high positive auto-correlation between the performance measure and future performance.

</comment><comment><USER14> My guess is, 500 startups will beat the median VC fund over a long period of time. Perhaps the very best VCs are able to identify winners through their stock picking skills, or through better access. But I doubt this is true for the median VC.

<comment><USER15> The median VC fund doesn't even beat the S&P. It operates under power laws, so the top 5% get basically the money and everyone else goes broke.

<comment><USER14> they don't go broke - they still generate positive returns. I am not sure why they actually need to beat S&P 500. I think this is misunderstanding portfolio theory. As long as they are not perfectly correlated with investors overall portfolios and they have positive returns, it's ok for them not to beat S&P</comment></comment></comment>


Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom - <AUTHOR> http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4022091.ece <comment><USER2> Taleb makes some valid points but it's a little ridiculous to blithely assume that everyone always underestimates the probability of rare events and thus all mathematical finance is useless. There's a whole field of study -- behavioral finance -- dedicated to discovering and understanding the facets of human nature that cause us to over and underestimate probabilities. Financial models often make simplifying assumptions that can make users complacent -- e.g. log-normal distribution of prices -- but they can also lead to a good number of useful facts and methods if you're aware of the dangers of the assumptions.

I think Taleb is taking the easy way out. Rather than doing the hard work of modeling fat-tailed probability distributions, or studying how people mismanage risk, or building new financial models with more realistic assumptions, he throws up his hands and says that the future cannot be modeled. To his credit, he did once run a hedge fund based on his principles (called Empirica), but it was forced to close. Whether this was due to a lack of rare events or to mismanagement, no one can really know.

<comment><USER3> >Rather than doing the hard work of modeling fat-tailed probability distributions.... or building new financial models with more realistic assumptions...

Unfortunately, you are wrong and Taleb is right.

The future of a dynamical system such as market cannot be predicted any better than a weather can be predicted one month from now.

You could try to 'model' the temporal structure of the market (trying to find and describe its 'strange attractor'), but this is pointless because this market system has too many dimensions and your measurements of the system are too noisy and incomplete.

The best you can do is to run some 'local' predictor. Like simply build a black box model based on the system's past and predict tomorrow based on what you've seen in the past. This works quite well but only for the very short term horizon. And it is not the 'model' you are thinking about.

You should dispose of the traditional statistics altogether. It simply does not work in real life and all of the kludges developed to save it (like ARMA models etc) are pointless.

As far as his fund is concerned, I would think he has done right by stopping trading in times when his strategy did not work. His strategy was to buy out of money options. Well, we had almost ten years of falling volatility and he would bleed to death in such an environment. A log of smart traders also went out of the market (Soros etc), some are coming back now.

Taleb is not even such an innovative thinker. All of the stuff he is talking about has been an active field of scientific study, but he is valuable for being a popularizer of these ideas.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying that you should try to predict the future of the market. I would agree with you that in many cases, this is a fool's errand.

Mathematical finance is about a lot more than prediction, however. Risk management is even more important, since there are so many market participants who find themselves exposed to risks that they must hedge. Even your neighborhood mortgage banker is exposed to interest rate risk -- both the level of rates and the volatility of rates. Any multinational corporation is exposed to foreign exchange risk. An option trading desk will often find itself exposed to volatility and correlation risks. It would be foolish to leave these unhedged, and without some sort of a model you're forced to. The right way to approach this isn't to treat markets as some inscrutable thing, but to propose the best method you can and be aware of the risks you remain exposed to.

<comment><USER3> The only true hedging is - you got an asset - you sell it forward. You are hedged.

What passes for hedging and 'risk management' today in the financial industry is something different. You measure how one instrument has correlated with another instrument (or a basket) in the past build an offsetting portfolio based on these correlation matrices -- and voila!

But your assumptions that those correlations between assets will stay the same in the future (including volatility etc) are baseless. As you see, it is also predicting the future. And it is wrong.

<comment><USER2> It's often impossible to sell an asset forward, especially an illiquid one. Suppose you are a trading desk that makes markets in corporate bonds. If a client comes to you and wants to sell a given company's bonds, chances are that you will not be able to immediately find a buyer. You will probably be forced to hold on to the bonds for a bit. Now you're exposed to interest rate and credit risks. What do you do? You can hedge some of the interest rate risk by paying on interest rate swaps, and you can hedge some of the credit risk by buying protection in the credit default swap market. But without some kind of model, it's going to be impossible to determine how to use these tools to hedge your risks. Your only other options are to guess, or to do nothing. If you are a large player in the markets, this is extremely dangerous.

Certainly, it's foolish to assume that you are ever perfectly hedged. In this example, several things could go wrong: e.g. credit default swap traders could have a different view of a company's creditworthiness than corporate bond traders, forcing you to pay exorbitant prices for protection on the bonds. But this is a smaller risk than holding the bonds outright.

In short: models can be helpful in risk management, as long as you are aware of the residual risks you are exposed to. Just don't allow them to make you complacent or overconfident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The tips on the last page of that article are great.

If you've not read The Black Swan already, I would highly recommend it, it's a fascinating book.

<comment><USER5> Is it better than "Fooled By Randomness"? That one was an enjoyable read, but it wasn't really a well structured book. It seemed more like "random" ramblings, all with essential the same theme. Still enjoyable, as I said, but I expect Black Swan to be just the same, so I did pass on it so far.

<comment><USER6> Black Swan is written in the same style and has the same content to rambling ratio. Same points made, too. Not required reading. Makes a good "I have a 2 hour flight" book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I listened to Taleb speak at the Long Now and all he really said was, "The future is hard to predict." He was either underestimating the crowd and pulling his punches, or he had very little to say in the first place. Either way, I'm passing on The Black Swan.

<comment><USER8> He actually has not much to say.

All his point in fact is just "Instead of trying to predict future, how about let's just prepare for worst first?" So instead of computing probability of stock market index rising or falling in june 2009. The strategy is just "if all our current holdings dropped 75% in values? what is our protection against such happening". Instead of trying to bet on probablity, he just tries to hedge when black swan happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A very nice interview. I found the long lost intellectual delight when I read NNT's "fooled by randomness" and "black swan" last year.

Two writers that I admire most lately are PG and Taleb. I feel amused when their writings sometime just create a storm because most readers feel so upset from what they write.

One most interesting part from this interview is about Taleb's fitness program. PG's "You weren't meant to have a boss" just popped out from my mind. It looks like both of them though walking down different paths in life have found the same reality that rest of the world seems unaware of or long forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm reading his book now, and it's excellent. And I rarely enjoy non-fiction 'meme of the day' type books.

His book is like conversation with an older, intelligent person who has the kind of wisdom you get from life experience. It's also _very_ relevant to anyone working in a startup.

</comment><comment><USER10> It doesn't seem like he's saying much more than any other market bear, of which there are many.

</comment><comment><USER11> starts getting interesting on the second page, worth a read for the fantastic quote:

"Scientists don't know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don't believe it has any negative impact on people's lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It's like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it's probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It's an aesthetic thing."</comment>


Tesla teams up with Rdio to bring music streaming to its European cars - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/eu/2014/02/07/tesla-teams-up-with-rdio-to-bring-music-streaming-to-its-european-cars

<comment><USER2> Rdio? Really? I don't know a single person who uses that service, it really feels like this was a bad decision.

Now, this is super good news for Rdio. They need the exposure.</comment>


Guess What Happened To The Guy With The Microsoft Tattoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2009/2/guess-what-happened-to-the-guy-with-the-microsoft-tattoo-msft

<comment><USER2> I feel bad for the guy but I do think there's a lesson here...or at least a sad reality. We aren't in a world where you can be fiercely loyal to a company anymore.

Surely you should still do your job and do it as well as you can. But in today's market you really need to squash that inclination to become attached to one company

Even if you have to replace that inclination with loyalty to something else. I find dedication to the industry and to making the world better through the use of technology acts as a good replacement for me. But even if it's just dedication to your own self interest it's an improvement over company loyalty.

<comment><USER3> > We aren't in a world where you can be fiercely loyal to a company anymore.

I understand where you are going, but surely you mean something else, such as: _We aren't in a world where loyalty to a company is rewarded in kind_ , or perhaps _We aren't in a world where loyalty to a company is an optimum career strategy._

<comment><USER4> Given those two interpretations, it sounds irrational to be loyal to a company. Coupled with a bias towards an employee's best interest, I think saying "can't" is reasonable.

I might personally expand on what is meant by "company" and perhaps more importantly, an employee's position in it. It certainly makes less sense to be fiercely loyal the more expendable you are. A larger company can make more people look expendable (imo).

<comment><USER3> > Coupled with a bias towards an employee's best interest, I think saying > "can't" is reasonable.

I was pointing out your bias, and now I will point out that even your expression "an employee's best interest" is likewise biased. Not that I feel differently, of course, however there are people who are fiercely loyal to companies for a variety of reasons that you or I may not embrace.

The OP, for example, wants to go back to work at Microsoft. Why is this wrong? He obviously identifies strongly with the company and obtains some emotional satisfaction from his association with them.

Let's compare and contrast to relationships. Many people fall into relatinships I would consider asymmetrical: One person is more fiercely loyal than the other. Many people feel this is a bad thing, and indeed some peopel are hurt in these affairs, especially if they secretly wish the other person to reciprocate in kind.

Yet there are people who are perfectly happy to be in these relationships where they are the expendable party. The movie "Adaptation" featured an example of this where one of the two Nicholas Cage characters describes having a High School crush on a girl that despised him. His "twin brother" felt differently, of course.

Please don't misunderstand, I fully agree with you that being an "expendable asset" is not financially advantageous, however I can't ignore the fact that may people out there seem to derive some satisfaction from such employment and I'm not sure they are ignorant of the potential consequences.

I conclude that there are people who are being perfectly realistic and rational about such employment choices, even if they are not the choices I would embrace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Blue Monster is, to me, symbolic not so much of MSFT but of the "change the world or go home" attitude the creator was trying to bring back to the company.

Personally, I agree absolutely with that attitude, and I salute the guy for keeping the tattoo :)

</comment><comment><USER6> That other guy didn't do too badly:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Petzold></comment>


Redis implementation in node.js - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/janl/awesome <comment><USER2> A nice toy.... Shows that node.js and javascript is actually a nice coding environment for server software. However, I am not confident of its stability or performance yet.

A Redius client library for node.js would be interesting.</comment>


JooJoo hits the FCC, reveals NVIDIA Ion, 3G card - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/11/joojoo-hits-the-fcc-reveals-nvidia-ion-3g-card/ <comment><USER2> if they make this easily hackable for me to run different os's.. maybe android, or ubuntu mobile, this would definitely be worth more than ipad.

</comment><comment><USER3> this is actually shaping up to be a good device. nvidia ion? new interface? local vid playback? lightweight OS, so the intel atom chip will do fine.

<comment><USER4> The problem I have is the price. HP has already said they are looking to meet or beat the iPad's price. So you have to compare the Joojoo with a full Windows OS and by that standard I think it comes up lacking. Plus it's all customized (the browser is a custom version of webkit). So if Joojoo the company goes out of business tomorrow than there will be no more updates.

IMHO that makes it not worth the risk

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Operating temp 10-35 degree? uh?

<comment><USER6> "safe operating temp" probably.

iPhone and iPad have the same upper limit, but lower limit is 0C.</comment></comment>


How can I profit by helping to reduce poverty in Africa? - <AUTHOR> I am from Angola, and I would like to build a company that solves the problems in Angola by reducing poverty, unemployment and improving life conditions of the people, without relying that much on the government.
Angola just changed presidents in 2017, after having the same president for 38 straight years. The new president shows willingness to help improve the country's condition, however, he has a military background and most of what he's done is to fire ministers who do not show work, which is a good thing. However, he seems to lack ideas on how to improve the country, which is understandable given his background.
Now, I plan on opening a company that helps to reduce poverty, and accelerate social and economical development in the country, since the president has shown that he wants to help the country but does not know how.
My company would consist in researching and finding the problems the country faces, this would include famine, unemployment, high rates of imports, education, etc. And then open companies that solve these problems, thus, generating jobs and improving life conditions at the same time.
The problem is that I can't find a suitable business model that would help generate profits enough to continue to run the company. For instance, how would a company that helps to clean the streets make profits, or an hospital that cure diseases from the poor profit? Any help would be appreciated…
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You probably want to focus on things that have a multiplier effect on people (e.g. education and health) but where the main benefits go to one person, who would then be willing to pay.

So, the street cleaning example is tough. It's a classic 'public good' that can't easily be solved without tax-funded cleaning.

But there are for-profit healthcare companies in other parts of the world which aim to serve poor people whilst still making a profit. But of course this requires every part of the business to be very efficient, and this isn't easy. Perhaps this example will inspire you: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-26/the- world...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-26/the-world-s- cheapest-hospital-has-to-get-even-cheaper)

</comment><comment><USER3>
        how would a company that helps to clean the streets make profits

Here in the US, the leading model is "win the government contract to clean the streets and then do as little cleaning as possible and outsource _that_ to the cheapest people possible", but I suspect you're looking for a model that actually delivers services well :(

</comment><comment><USER4> One way to "profit from the poor" is to operate a successful business in the region.

This can result in a reduction of poverty from employing people and producing something of value.

The important thing is to oppose exploitation of the people and the environment in those desperate regions...

</comment><comment><USER5> Hello, I'd like to talk about this, please contact me on my E-mail. I have the same challenge for myself for my home country.

I'll share some of my own observations:

It's a better idea to instead of fixing a problem with a top down vision such as Polio or water treatment(like Bill Gates), to enable people to think for themselves and fix their own problems.

The problem with a lack of food, services, unemployment etc, I see it as the lack of a market. If you can create a business of any kind, you will be helping with that. If you want to strike directly at a problem, I recommend that you become a politician instead. If you want to create a business, any business that employs people and doesn't do any kind of abuse will help greatly.

Many of the undeveloped places on my home country without good living conditions are due to a single reason... it is jobs!

For instance, if people like buying Angola soap, you can produce it, that will generate jobs because people will need to produce it, you will need to do accounting for your business etc. Your employees and partners will live around your area and also buy goods and services from it, with a healthy market, that will also bring taxes to governments/politicians that can also give something back to people.

You need to step up as an entrepreneur and look around with the people you know, the country you live in etc, how could you make something that either people in the internal market need, or that people abroad would buy. I'd favor international trade because that brings a lot of positive things to your country, not only money, but makes it more recognisable and make it easier for other businesspeople to create opportunities and invest on it.

About your last comment, a company that cleans the streets or a hospital that cures diseases from the poor can profit by charging money. You can't solve poverty in the long run by providing free services, you should instead strive to have a product people use(could be a cheap hospital, so more poor people could afford), so you create a market for it.

Undeveloped areas usually have many possible markets and a lack of $(or people with time and skills).

</comment><comment><USER6> Profit and good are not always aligned, that's why the government exists in the first place. Many of these examples in education, immigration, etc are typically government problems, or nonprofit.

</comment><comment><USER7> Taxes.

If people want clean streets, they get some benefit from it, say $1 a year per head, but it costs 0.10 cents a year to provision it, so it makes sense to provide but you have to get that 10 cents from everybody.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, governments are often willing to pay consultants for research.</comment></comment>


1001 Things To Hack Before You Die - <AUTHOR> There's already 1001 (places to visit|books to read|movies to see|{insert other activities}) before you die. Why not 1001 to hack/make/develop/design/start/attempt before you die that's more HN friendly: <comment><USER3> Some things I'm glad to have done:

1\. Write a Hello World application from scratch. No C library, compiler, linker, nothing. You get a hex editor.

2\. Write a non-bootstrapped compiler or interpreter using assembler.

3\. Write a program that learns to play a game.

4\. Develop a network protocol.

5\. Write a web server. You can use the language of your choice, but nothing is allowed except a socket library.

6\. Write a platform game that performs at least as well as the original Super Mario Brothers.

7\. Design a circuit that has some sort of non-trivial purpose and build it.

8\. Write Tetris in Javascript.

<comment><USER4> _1\. Write a Hello World application from scratch. No C library, compiler, linker, nothing. You get a hex editor._

Does this involve anything more than loading "Hello, world" into memory, setting up the registers/stack in a certain way, and invoking the syscall interrupt? (All the cool stuff happens in your terminal emulator. That's where 0x41 gets turned into the pixels that look like "A" on your screen, after all.)

<comment><USER5> At least part of the "fun" on a loosely modern operating system is learning the nuts and bolts of the executable format and loading conventions.

I've never spent much time there, but some of the ideas are laid out well in this two part post: <http://blog.ksplice.com/2010/04/libc-free-world-2/>

Doing it with _just_ a hex editor (ie writing out the ELF headers and sections yourself) may not be exactly what the commenter did, though. Cos that sounds really tedious.

I imagine that even writing "Hello, World" in the simpler way that you describe, on a simpler system (Apple IIe or so), would probably teach me something. I remember trying to write 6502 machine code in hex (no assembler) on my IIe when I was about 10 years old. It never worked then, I wonder if it would work now?

<comment><USER3> It's not that difficult or tedious, but it does require that you read the elf specification, or write your own "OS" from scratch.

[http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.htm...](http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.html)

The idea is that you strip away everything that does something for you so that you are sure to completely understand the entire process with no "pushing the green compile button."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> \- Write a video game emulator (any _old_ console or computer platform)

\- Create a programming language

\- Restore an old broken down pinball machine

\- Build a mame arcade cabinet

\- Write some Interactive Fiction

\- Learn to make awesome programmatic artwork with something like Processing or Nodebox

\- Create a roguelike

<comment><USER7> \- Create an editor.

\- Create an os in the language you designed above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the spirit of the topic...

      0001: Learn a functional language well enough to write something of some complexity
      0010: Create a product with 100+ users
      0011: Sell 100+ products (doesn't have to be the same as 0010)
      0100: Get married!
      0101: Learn either vim or emacs
      0110: Learn Mandarin
      0111: Become an expert at something tech *and* something non-tech
      1000: Contribute to an OSS project
      1001: edit: learned binary.  thanks for pointing out my stupidity lol

<comment><USER9> 1000: Learn binary!

<comment><USER10> I'd have made that one 0000, personally...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some of this is hacking in a technical sense, some of this is hacking in terms of modifying your life to get it to be what you want it to be, or to grow yourself.

19 - Harness Zero Point Energy

20 - Publish a paper in a journal

21 - Present at a conference

22 - Hack food, make something new

23 - Modify your body (with something cool like magnets)

24 - Do something legally/morally questionable and get away with it, just enough to make you rethink boundaries but not enough to hurt someone.

25 - Modify your brain chemistry in an expansive way

26 - Build a great group of friends

27 - Put your projects down and spend some time with your family

28 - Learn assembly language

29 - Code an old school demo

30 - Write a cool program on an 8-bit computer

31 - Travel to another continent with a completely different culture and immerse yourself in it.

32 - Learn how to crack (i.e. break into) applications

33 - Learn how to crack (i.e. break copyright and write keygens) software

</comment><comment><USER12> 17 - Make it through as much of <http://projecteuler.net/> as you can.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1 - register YourName.com

2 - start a blog

3 - learn *SQL

4 - develop a javascript site, (gmail.com)

5 - write your own planning/todo program (because others just don't work)

6 - read, sign up, make at least one post on HN

7 - start an open source software project

</comment><comment><USER13> 0000\. master the command line

0001\. master a keyboard-only text editor (vim/emacs)

0010\. master your mind

0011\. determine how to help the world the most with the least effort

0100\. learn from your mistakes

0101\. learn as many programming methodologies as you can

0110\. create an awesome sheep for electricsheep

0111\. reverse engineer a program from decompiled machine code

1000\. write a book worth reading in 100 years

<comment><USER14> Shouldn't 0010 be 0000? I would think mastering your mind would come before mastering any external tool...?

Definite up vote for answering a question about what to hack in the spirit of a hacker.

<comment><USER13> 0010 is the true hack. these tasks can be executed in any order--even in parallel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Write a quine (<http://www.nyx.net/~gthompso/quine.htm>)

</comment><comment><USER16> cause an additional security policy to be put in place on your high schools network

<comment><USER10> College, actually. Got them to fix an issue with forgetting to clear the cached AFS credentials when their login program crashed.

Also tried to convince them to get people to use SSH instead of telnet, but they took a few years to get around to deploying that and ignored me. In retrospect, the university president was the wrong person to tell; he had no clue what I was even talking about. Mind you, this was in 1998 and more than a few people had already figured out that it's not too hard to listen in to unencrypted traffic on a LAN. I'm assuming that the people who did bad things with that knowledge are the ones who actually got them to change the policy.

Also made them change the terms of use that forbade "downloading copyrighted material" to "downloading copyrighted material _without permission_ " given that almost everything online is copyrighted.

I also ended up acting as an unofficial helpdesk member just because I was up there chatting to the real people too often. It's always fun to fix problems for people and when they ask how you know so much about the program they're using to point out that, in fact, you've never actually seen or used it before...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 14 - Get a patch accepted to an open source project.

15 - Version your dotfiles and put them up online for others to learn from.

16 - Write and open source a plugin for your favorite text editor.

</comment><comment><USER18> Notable things I'm proud to have achieved/hacked/made, in no particular order of importance:

\- Built a HAM radio-vacuum tubes were involved.

\- Developed a useful library of JavaScript tools

\- Developed my own MVC web framework

\- Collaborated on the design of, developed and launched custom child-still tweaking that one for performance

\- Started a successful business

\- Be a part of a popular Open Source project

\- Wired a house

\- Participated in the saving of a few lives

</comment><comment><USER19> 18 - Learn proper use of a version control system.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good challenge.

Here are some of the things that I have done so far.

1\. Write an editor based for card-image files in XPL (for the Sigma 5 RBM system) 2\. Write a document processor along the lines of nroff for fixed- width character printers (think Courier). There were at least two of these I believe 3\. Write a simulator to estimate the probability of a busy signal for a given call volume and a given number of phone lines. Oddly, when we later compared these results to similar simulations provided by the phone company, the phone company's numbers showed we needed more lines. 4\. Write a code generator for an industrial compiler. 5\. Write the (rough) equivalent of an IRC channel for AX-25 packet radio DX-spotting network. 6\. Write the software necessary for the first real-time QSO-logging system used in a DXpedition. (Used in the YJ8V/YJ8PD trip.) 7\. Contribute a very tiny piece of software that is part of a control-system analysis program used to decide where to locate Argonne National Labs. (And I mean really tiny.) First program I wrote for pay.

These are just a few of the more fun ones.

However, there is one challenge that has captured my imagination over the years. Imagine a final exam of programming skill that has the student in an electronically-locked room with a computer that controls the lock. There are but a few necessities in the room, no internet. The student needs to write a program that will unlock the door.

I haven't done this last one exactly, but sometimes it seems like a metaphor for some near-deathmarch projects I have gotten myself into.

Current homework includes writing an intercepting proxy in a handful of languages.

</comment><comment><USER21> easier to keep count: [https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsoY_yr0BJCVdFhNVi1...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsoY_yr0BJCVdFhNVi1GUVhQNXM0WVpuTDFkOHNjMXc&hl=en&authkey=CIn98vIK)

go ahead and add stuff, let me know if permissions are set incorrectly.

</comment><comment><USER22> -Switch from vim to emacs

<comment><USER23> -Switch from emacs to vim

<comment><AUTHOR> \- start using emacs or vim

<comment><USER24> Then say "ah, screw it!" and code your own editor.

<comment><USER25> And call it the BestOfBothWorlds Editor.

<comment><USER26> I thought adding more features to emacs still made it emacs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 17- Get some sleep

<comment><AUTHOR> lol, good one, or a way to lower the requirement for so much sleep

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> (disclaimer: I'm a bit of an ambitious guy and I probably won't achieve even a "sizeable" portion of this, but I will try)

Make my own versions of these pieces of infrastructure in one or more variants of Lisp, using various novel approaches or combining some "old" approaches that are nevertheless not used as much as they should be today, and comprehensively document it all:

My own web framework (in progress), window manager, UI toolkit and layout system, 3D engine, video editor, image editor, video and sound codec, emacs- style editor, operating system, kernel, Common Lisp implementation, virtual machine, BIOS, OS bootstrapper.

Also, maybe an NES or SNES emulator, for fun and maybe trying to make a full blown modern development environment to make it easy to make whole new games for these consoles instead of just making more or less elaborate hacks to already existing games.

Learn to play the piano, guitar and violin. Learn to compose my own music.

Not that I expect or count on it, but it would be convenient if a treatment to stop aging appeared while it's not too late for me, cuz I'm pretty sure I'll be out of time before I'm doing what I want to do properly...

</comment><comment><USER29> 1 - Develop a typesetting language based on markdown + css which can be so good as LaTeX.

2 - Learn Python, Haskell, Lisp, Lua, Ruby and build you own f*cking good language.

3 - Discover what is a monad.

4 - Play with Arduino.

5 - Write a basic kernel from scratch.

6 - Forget about Vim and Emacs. Learn how to capture brainwaves, plug an usb cable on it and do an text editor based on thougths.

</comment><comment><USER30> Did anyone else read the 1001 in the title as 9 in binary ?

<comment><USER31> yup :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> \- Write a (simple) web server.

\- Implement part of a networking stack.

\- Interface with some piece of hardware in a way it wasn't designed.

\- Create a browser extension.

\- Add an easter egg that nobody ever finds.

\- Code a strategy to a game and compete against other implementations.

\- Discover a subtle bug in a very well used bit of code.

</comment><comment><USER33> \- Repair something that isn't meant to be repaired \- Make a disposable consumer product into something more useful and enduring \- Use something old to create something meaningful for someone you love

</comment><comment><USER34> -Do something that warrants its own Wikipedia article.

<comment><USER35> -Do enough somethings that you warrant your own Wikipedia article

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ship it.

</comment><comment><USER37> 11 - Write a book

12 - Fall in love

13 - <USER2>

<comment><AUTHOR> 13a - Donate to EFF

<comment><USER38> 13b - do something that warrants the eff coming to your rescue

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> 1 - Develop a custom firmware for Playstation 3. 2 - Create a native and fully fuctional distro for Playstation 3. 3 - Achieve 1 and 2 and send a certified post mail to Sony with you happy face on it. 4 - Try to return to the Open source community as much goods as it has given to you.

</comment><comment><USER40> build a motorcycle or other vehicle

invent a device like this guy [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1308907...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130890701&ft=1&f=1053)

<comment><USER41> The Wikipedia page on the Universal Nut Sheller makes up for NPR's lack of technical detail:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Nut_Sheller>

The thought that this machine is sometimes custom made to accommodate different environments and plants intrigues me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> \- Finish "The Art of Computer Programming."

\- Use the fixed point combinator in Javascript for something.

\- Make your own bike lights.

\- Figure out how the monad laws really work.

\- Write something that makes more than $100 on the App Store.

\- Figure out how to get the plants in the garden to not die.

</comment><comment><USER43> Output Mandelbrot. Make it interactive.

Enter a hacker/code competition.

Predict the outcome of a sporting event.

</comment><comment><USER44> Learn 3D graphics and build a small virtual world.

Virtual worlds have always fascinated me, but I've always been a command- line/server guy and never got around to learning the theory/math that goes into doing 3D graphics.

</comment><comment><USER45> A few years ago I came across an old teddy-ruxpin... I thought it would be awesome to build a setup to record custom control tapes... never did it, but I still want to.

</comment><comment><USER46> \- Learn Forth

\- Learn Erlang

\- Learn to play the panflute

<comment><USER47> Of all the things arbitrary, why a pan flute?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 8 - set up twitter account

9 - poke somebody on facebook

10 - comment on techcrunch story

</comment><comment><USER48> Build your own computer using FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays).

Bonus points: Make it capable of reconfiguring itself based on the program it's executing.

</comment><comment><USER49> Create your own computer from scratch

</comment><comment><USER50> \- Program a microcontroller, interface it to both a packet network and some analog sensors.

</comment><comment><USER51> Create your own genetic algorithm for generate your own society of virtual beings!

</comment><comment><USER52> 1\. learn asterisk 2\. Install Haiku 3\. Make a Firewall with a xBSD 4\. Install linux in Mac/apple 5\. Install cool stuff in device with adroid 6\. With Backtrack hack your Police Department 7\. Help people in a forum 8\. F&%k in second life 9\. Build a LFS 10\. Help someone to be better hacker

</comment><comment><USER22> -initiate new item freeze on your todo list in order to check everything off

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, it looks like the 9 Things To Hack Before You Die are already posted.

</comment><comment><USER25> \- Run your own web server.

<comment><USER54> _Build_ your own web server. :)

Bonus points if you hack the hardware together in the most power-efficient way. Or as small as possible. Or pretty. Or if it makes coffee too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I would have assumed the list would be numbered in binary ;-)

</comment><comment><USER56> \- compile a linux kernel \- overclock/underclock your cpu

</comment><comment><USER57> Build a giant robot.

<comment><USER57> Larger than a city bus.

Oh, and in case someone hasn't seen Jaimie Manzel in all his retro 1990's site glory: <http://jamius.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> \- Build a windmill

</comment><comment><USER16> get posted on hack-a-day

</comment><comment><USER59> Make a 1001 X to Y list

</comment><comment><USER60> 11 - Install LAMP

<comment><USER31> Why LAMP just why? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Upload myself.

<comment><USER62> Cheating!

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> My top ten list (I just thought it up now, so this is not my final list):

1\. Making my own uC architecture and write it in HDL.

2\. Make a lisp machine

3\. Hacking a game for a old game console (not an emulator, you have to actually get it working on the physical machine).

4\. Experiment with different types of OS on uControllers.

5\. Hacking to gather a home automation system.

6\. Implement a whole web server in the uController from scratch (means you have to make your own protocol stack and such things).

7\. Make a widely used C library.

8\. Get my long standing dream of localized electronics kit store to launch.

9\. Get a patent on something new

10\. Make a super computer cluster from home PC's

I know lot of these are very hard but hey I am just 19 and have a whole life ahead.

</comment><comment><USER64> Before you die, you absolutely need to create a child. It will be your greatest creation.

<comment><USER65> Or you can create a child that solves the 1000 hacks before you die. That's the closer you can get of a high order function that solves that for you :)</comment></comment>


The World's Largest Article Marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://www.articlepad.com <comment><AUTHOR> We're building this out and looking for beta testers</comment>


Have We Hit Peak Podcast? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/style/why-are-there-so-many-podcasts.html <comment><USER2> The majority of podcasts I listen to are almost exclusively supported by Patreon and I think they probably need to be considered an entirely different thing than ad-driven podcasts.

The former is likely to persist consistently, albeit as possibly a more niche role than some currently occupy as opposed to a full time job for loads of people. One consistency among the Patreon sponsored ones is that they tend to involve a much looser approach and function almost as a kind of social substitute (very fluid run times, casual vibe even if they've been immaculately researched). In fact, there's a few I listen to where it's pretty clear the main reason they still exist is so the hosts have an excuse to hang out more than anything else.

The latter type seems to be either at or past the point of total saturation where they're just too much work to keep up with and the format is just too sterile to garner the kind of stickiness that the smaller and more casual ones can generate. The kind of quality required to garner a substantial audience for this kind of podcast is nearing the point of major TV shows. The peak was probably about two years ago when any crappy true crime thing could become a bit of a sensation (I'm looking at you, Dirty John)

</comment><comment><USER3> I just started my own, and when I went to the music gear store to pick up a pair of Shure SM7B, they were sold out because everyone is starting a podcast these days... I tried to hide my embarrassment to the salesperson.

We do put a lot of time and effort into our podcast, though. We're avid fans of Radiolab. The first episode was just rambling - but it was the 5th take of rambling, at least. Our 4th episode was a thoroughly researched one where I introduced my co-host to some basic statistics I had to learn as part of the research (null hypothesis, precision/recall, ...) that Microsoft did after Vista to figure out why it went wrong. The 5th episode was about Linus Torvalds' book Just For Fun, where I read the book, annotated it heavily, found an interesting narrative and perspective, and read from the book and tied it into one of my favorite moments of the Breaking Bad insider podcast. Our upcoming 6th episode is going to be about the early Stack Overflow podcast episodes, where Joel and Jeff discuss in detail how they're going to make a successful QA site that at the time absolutely was not guaranteed to be successful. (Yeah, I know, very meta :D)

Maybe podcasts are like tenure at universities... 95% is wasted, but the other 5% is so good that it's worth it anyway? Hopefully we can contribute to the good parts of the podcasting sphere.

(Our podcast is in Norwegian and is named Utviklingslandet, if anyone wants to check it out)

<comment><USER4> > Maybe podcasts are like tenure at universities... 95% is wasted, but the > other 5% is so good that it's worth it anyway?

Why do you think tenure is wasted?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No way. A lot of topics are not yet covered, and a lot of people are not yet listening. With a larger audience comes more $, and with more $ comes better content, over time. I'd guess we are at a time when competition sets in, and (some of) the people who are serious about making money off of their podcasts will outcompete the hobbyists.

I'm guessing there's no coincidence that spotify added podcasts to their apps recently.

Of course, the «I want to talk about the trees outside» podcasts will suffer the same fate as rarely updated, uninteresting blogs.

<comment><USER6> If anything, we may be at peak interview/chatter and true crime, but listenable shows that go in-depth on a topic and tell a story are few and far between. Or at least, I haven't been able to find them as quickly as I can listen to them.

<comment><USER7> In-depth research and storytelling are pretty expensive (lots of time needed for research and editing), and it's not clear if there's enough money in the ecosystem for many of the interested amateurs to make those sorts of shows on a full-time basis. They'll probably continue to exist, but my guess is most shows like that won't be able to maintain a regular release cadence, since the creators will have to keep their "day jobs".

<comment><USER8> I feel like there's a gap in the "tip jar" market. I have a lot of podcasts for which I'd happily pay about 10 to 25 cents per episode, but it's not trivial to do. If it were, it would take a few thousand people to do so -- which isn't a small audience, but not enormous.

Currently there's a voluntary "if you like us, find us on Patreon". Even being able to provide a "connect to Patreon" button on the screen would be a boost. UX and web site designers are well aware of how many people you lose with each step. Such a button could also auto-switch to the ad-free stream; I once paid for the upgrade but managing the different feed was a pain.

I'm still using Pocket Casts, so it's possible that an integrated app like Stitcher is already doing that. If not, I see a niche that would make it easier for amateurs to scratch out a living. I think the money is there if you make it easy for people to give it.

<comment><USER9> This is the whole micropayment conundrum that Clay Shirky wrote about when it first reared its head during the original dot-com era. In principle, if most content were wired into some common payment system, the thought is that people would be willing to pay 5 cents for an article/podcast/etc.

In practice, the wiring of everything together, the establishment of pricing, and (Shirky's argument) the mental transaction costs of having to decide whether to make constant small purchases has made this model very elusive.

<comment><USER8> I think that since podcasts are often subscribed to, we might be able to mitigate the micropayment problem at least a bit. There are a lot of podcasts for which I'd be willing to pay, say, $10 per year -- though not enough to go through the trouble of finding and connecting to them on Patreon.

<comment><USER9> The thing is I dive in and out of podcasts. I don't want to subscribe. Plus I'd actually say that $10 is a fair bit for most podcasts over the course of a year. Maybe if there's one I'm particularly obsessed with. But not in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "They called it "The Advice Podcast" and put about as much energy into the show's production as they did the name. [...]recorded themselves chatting with an iPhone 5. But six episodes in, [..] the friends quit. "

<sarcasm>With all that hard effort I am shocked they didn't become rich and famous.... </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER11> The year was 2011 and I had just moved to DC after finishing undergrad. I couldn't find work in the radio business so instead I got a contract gig through Craigslist with the Internet Archive scanning books in the basement of the Library of Congress. Its dark down there and the work is pretty mechanical. The books themselves are only occasionally interesting.

My iPod Touch could connect to wifi so I started listening to NPR while I scanned. I could do that for two hours or so, but once the segments started repeating I got bored. A friend suggested I listen to Radiolab, so I did. When I'd gone through their catalogue I tried out 99% Invisible. Then academic lectures that had been turned into podcasts. Then audiobooks. Then whatever I could find by searching for "good podcasts." Eventually I got tired of the _sound_ of podcasts (they have a sound) and switched to WFMU and a couple college stations I liked.

I haven't listened to another podcast since. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER2> WFMU and you didn't wind up hooked to the Best Show for at least a short while?

<comment><USER11> Oh sure, I had my Best Show phase. Who hasn't these days?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Both podcasts and blogs are difficult to monetize. But does that have to be the _point_ of a podcast/blog? I'd say no.

Plenty of people write blogs for themselves and for learning/teaching. Why not do the same thing for podcasts? Those who are truly invested in the medium and want to provide value to others (and themselves) will do it long enough to make it successful. I mean if you try a podcast for 6 episodes and quit...sorry, you probably were never going to be successful as a podcast owner.

<comment><USER9> A lot of people are probably conflating the monetization angle with the content of the podcasts themselves. It's true that you're probably not going to see a lot of NPR or NPR-style highly produced podcasts from people just doing it for fun. On the other hand, quite a few actually prefer the more conversational and casual angle that comes from people just talking on mic or over the Internet. And those are very doable for pretty much anyone who has the interest and motivation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> thanks to podcasts I have 50 business logos, a year supply of dollar shave club, 8 wordpress hosting accounts, and 5 mattresses

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it feels like less than 10 companies are funding everything podcast right now. Seems pretty fragile.

<comment><USER15> Gimlet media's startup talks about the narrow field of pod advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The good podcasts take a decent amount of prep work. Hardcore history, probably one of the best has months between episodes because Dan puts an incredible amount of research into each episode.

On a side note, my dream podcast would be one analyzing the "time between". History podcasts love to talk about war, and war is interesting, but I find the political details before and after the war more interesting. One of my favorite books is "Paris 1919", a book all about the peace conference after the war. As great as Dan's podcast on WW1 was, he barely talked about the most important part of the war. What happened after it. When the leaders got together, the world was "shaped". It's a facinating read that gives a bit of insight into how the sausage we live in was made.

</comment><comment><USER17> The story mentions a few stories and it might be a lead indicator but I tend to "follow the money" ;-) and this is what the money tells me[1]:

"Last year, VCs invested just over $200 million in various podcast platforms and related businesses, per the PitchBook Platform. That includes a $50 million funding for the online radio app TuneIn, about $20 million for Gimlet Media and another $20 million for HowStuffWorks, the company behind the popular show "Stuff You Should Know" as well as other original podcast content.

So far this year, VCs have shelled out $64 million on companies in the space, including a $40 million NEA-led round for Luminary Media, the operator of a subscription-based podcast platform, and a $13.5 million Series B for podcast startup Castbox"

[1] [https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/vcs-love-fundingand- host...](https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/vcs-love-fundingand- hostingpodcasts)

The implication to me at-least is that the tools to launch podcasts will continue to proliferate (how else will all those platforms for podcasts make money?) and we can expect a lot more podcasts in the future. Would love to hear differing views.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think so. My wife and I have started a podcast that's pretty much about our personal lives. Two of our recent guests went off and started a podcast of their own. Two more are talking about it, but haven't started, yet.

That said, IMO, the amount of podcasts that exist is just starting to ramp up. There are so many people who have yet to start listening/making one. The tools, like anchor, are miles ahead of where they used to be, but still have a long way to go.

<comment><USER19> What do you feel is missing in anchor?

And do you think more podcasts will be done with remote guests? Any good tools you recommend for getting good audio or video in that case?

<comment><USER9> >And do you think more podcasts will be done with remote guests?

If there were a magic bullet, take my money. But I doubt if there is, given the state of corporate video conferencing--which doesn't optimize for sound quality.

The "best" quality solution I've found is to have the other person make a separate audio recording and email it to me. But that certainly introduces friction and not everyone has mics laying around. However, in a lot of cases, consistently getting in the same room as people is tough.

One thing I've done is to try to take advantage of in-person opportunities as much as possible and just accept that there's going to be a lot of background noise at conferences, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think we are near peak corporate podcast. I listen to radio in the morning and I hear a lot of commercials for "advertorial" podcasts by lyft (or is it uber? I don't pay attention) and something hosted by Ariana Huffington with some mattress sponsor. And I can't imagine that a lot of these celebrity podcasts will last more than a year or two.

However, I think the non-corporate podcasts will be around for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does it matter at all that people start and end low quality podcasts? Nobody listens to them, nobody spends money on them, and the producers lose little by trying something and stopping.

What I care about is the availability of high quality talk and news available on Podcasts. There seems to be plenty, and even if the ecosystem contracts by 50-75% there will still be far more good content than I have time to listen.

Also, considering "podcast" just means "digitally delivered serial mostly- spoken audio," it's hard to imagine it going away permanently. We have five senses, only two of which are typically used for informal communication. We have a few communication modalities for vision: video, graphics, text. And we have two that I'm aware of for listening: music and speaking (podcasts).

</comment><comment><USER21> Peak podcast? Not sure that oversimplification makes sense. The number of podcasts may decline as a we get fewer, but higher value podcasts. I see this happening with YouTube. Higher production value shows with good content are winning.

<comment><USER9> It wouldn't surprise me if you end up with something of a bifurcation. Relatively simple podcasts by people doing it for fun or supporting them professionally on the one hand and professionally-produced podcasts that make money on the other. Of course, that's an oversimplification and at least some number of people will devote lots of time to podcasts even though they're just making a few dollars from fans through Patreon or whatever.

<comment><USER21> Right, the business model is getting nuanced with revenue from YouTube / Patreon etc... Some will continue to do it as a form of marketing. Also, there's a non-monetary social status benefit that will cause people to continue even if it's not a money maker (that you are alluding to). Like most other human activities it will follow something of a uneven distribution where 20% of the podcasts get 80% of the views (or something like that).

<comment><USER9> Teasing apart motivations is hard.

There's definitely the "egoboo"factor, a term from the early days of user- generated content that has sadly passed out of use

For many, they're definitely a way to increase professional recognition, promote a consulting business, improve customer engagement/awareness, etc. i.e. brand building/content marketing

For some, it's a hope that they are going to hit it big though this probably applies more to YouTube and Instagram. (And, if there is a bubble, this is probably the main reason.)

The fact that even just a few thousand dollars is worth putting a fair bit of effort into for many.

Or a complicated mix of all of the above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Hosts aren't starting shows "because it's a fun, niche hobby," he said. > "They do it to make money or because it will make them an influencer."

lol I'm pretty sure there are heaps, the NYT just decided not to interview any.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd say so; when I travel I load up a bunch of software related podcasts to consume the time since I don't really listen to radio. To me it seems many people say 'lets start a podcast!!!' then their first episode they realize they need content to talk about. More power to them for doing a podcast, but I will say many times I'm just listening to people ramble about personal stuff or whatever.

Good content tends to take some serious prep, I guess is my takeaway

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure it necessarily needs _serious_ prep but it does need some amount of prep/planning and discipline not to go off the rails. Interview shows can be good even when they at least come across as casual conversation about some specific topic. However, I'd agree that a lot of podcasts have way too much random chit-chat for my taste.

<comment><USER23> I guess I did exaggerate the serious prep a bit, but I guess I used that term because with my current schedule it would be tough to fit in.

Every time I do a developer workshop at work I want to do my best, but dang it takes me a good month of my spare time to get something I feel is worthy of consuming someone else's time.

I just have a difficult time thinking how I'd do a weekly podcast and keep it interesting on topic! But I'm sure there are plenty of people better at this than I am hehe.. At the end of the day though I'm probably happier people keep producing even if I don't consume it all, just nice to know its there

<comment><USER9> Weekly is pretty frequent. I aim for about every 2 weeks and am happy with 3. I find that, by finding interesting guests who can improvise and speak off the cuff, doing some prep, and keeping things to about 20 minutes it's doable. Then, it's also sort of part of my day job so spending an hour or so per week on it isn't a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I recorded 41 episodes of a podcast with some friends of mine. It was a lot of fun, and because we had a "format" it wasn't just "a couple of friends talkin' about whatever, especially dick jokes!!!"

We went into it not looking for sponsors or to make money, and we were not surprised :) It was a _lot_ of work to get all 3 of us together every week to record, and then to get the episode edited and released on time. We'd typically record an hour and a half of raw audio, then edit it down to something closer to an hour, a process which took at least three hours-- basically, whoever was editing the episode that week had to spend a full evening editing, which was hard for the two hosts with kids.

</comment><comment><USER25> I've listened to podcasts for more than 10 years now and every year it's been either "peaking" or "declining". Meanwhile I just continue to listen.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've told myself just that recently after trying a couple of recent _Wondery_ podcasts... Too much produced, too much narrated, denaturing the initial idea and value of podcasts by over-complexifying everything and by emphasizing form over content.

</comment><comment><USER27> And to think I haven't heard one podcast till date. I must be living under a rock.

<comment><USER28> I listened to one! It's basically someone reading out a blog post slowly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I keep enjoying every other non MMA Joe Rogan podcast.

</comment><comment><USER15> The article does not seem to mention Alex Inc., a main stream network TV show about starting a podcast with a pretty high caliber star.

And of course, gimlets acquisition by Spotify is probably the nadir.

You know once do you have reliable text to speech for websites and newspapers, podcast will be decimated. Or if audible goes a Netflix r you know once you have reliable text to speech for websites and newspapers, podcasts will be decimated. Or if audible goes a Netflix route.

<comment><USER9> >You know once do you have reliable text to speech for websites and newspapers, podcast will be decimated.

Why? It's a different format. There's no shortage of text being read today in the form of audiobooks by people with a lot better voices than computers are likely to be able to imitate for a while. Also NPR stories, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> No, but I think we've hit peak news media outlet ...</comment>