Ask HN: Catching speeders in my neighborhood? - <AUTHOR> I live outside a small town where the speed limit is 35 mph down my long road. Drivers are routinely going 60 mph plus. This is not a priority for local law enforcement or the Sheriff or the State Troopers. They sometimes sit out and catch speeders but this is maybe once or twice a year.
Being a geek, my thought is I can mount a large screen outside by the road and show the drivers a picture of their license plate as they drive by.
Power and network cables are easy to run buried in the ground. Perhaps using a Raspberry Pi and an Xbox connect?
I'd appreciate thoughts about the architecture.
Yes, I do realize that drivers might complain to the local law enforcement, but I won't store any data. Just hoping to get traffic to slow down. <comment><USER2> You might find this useful: [https://gregtinkers.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/car- speed-detec...](https://gregtinkers.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/car-speed- detector/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This will be helpful! Thank you so much.</comment></comment>


Will broadband caps strangle Web growth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/06/26/will-broadband-caps-strangle-web-growth

<comment><USER2> There's no need for an article, it's a one-word answer: Yes.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. People will change providers if they start capping.

<comment><USER4> In general, I would agree but it seems like the broadband provider space is a bit different. Those of us in larger metropolitan areas can freely switch between several providers but customers in more rural areas have very few providers to choose from (if any). Many of the companies that DO serve up broadband in these areas enjoy a kind of local-monopoly. They can do pretty much anything they want because there are no other competitors around. Consumers in these areas are pretty much screwed if their provider decides to cap.

<comment><USER3> I think the market will adjust though. If enough people get bad enough service, someone will come in and give a better service.

Assuming there aren't regulatory or other barriers to entry.

The US does seem pretty bad where these things are concerned though.

In the UK we have literally hundreds of broadband suppliers to choose from. Yes the majority go through BT, but the terms etc are decided by the broadband suppliers, so you have loads of plans to choose from - capped, uncapped, cheap, expensive, etc etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've had capping since the introduction of ADSL in South Africa.

To give you an indication as of today I've used 4362MB of my 5GB cap. For which I pay $30 on top of my 512kbit/s line rental of $25). Yes, Internet sucks in South Africa.

We've got a population of +- 48 million, of which 4 million people use Internet and 1 million are using "broadband."

The high cost, low speeds, and small bandwidth allocations have hurt the growth of Internet here dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER6> Will it strangle Web growth? No. Video and other multimedia? Yes. I think this decision on the part of providers like TWC has more to do with getting in bed with the MPAA and the RIAA than it does about costs or high-bandwidth users.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes, if everyone imposes them.

If one or only a few companies impose caps, look for rising market share of those companies that don't, probably about 1-2 billing cycles after the other companies cap downloads.

</comment><comment><USER8> These arbitrary limits frustrate me and show how big telco networks hinder growth and innovation in favor of propping up their outdated technologies.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think it's the cappers that will get strangled...

</comment><comment><USER10> Broadband caps are a drag, but I would enjoy thinking of ways to deliver cool web-apps that are light on bandwidth usage.

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes. Do people talk less on their mobile that have less minutes.

</comment><comment><USER12> _it was the introduction of a flat rate unlimited mobile data plan by AT &T that caused iPhone usage to soar_

Didn't the same the happen with cell phone calls?

When is the last time you worried about "minutes"?</comment>


Render any dynamic JavaScript webpage to JSON - <AUTHOR> http://phear.io/ <comment><USER2> Repository: [https://github.com/Tomtomgo/phearjs](https://github.com/Tomtomgo/phearjs)</comment>


Brew the best colors for your diagram or map - <AUTHOR> http://colorbrewer2.org/

<comment><USER2> Quite cool, but why does the 'pick a color system' area (which lists the actual values) only have three colors, rather than all five?

<comment><USER3> At the top you're allowed to select the number of data classes. If you select 5, then you get the 5 colors you see in the palettes.

<comment><USER2> Good catch, I missed that. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does this require Flash?</comment>


Kissat SAT Solver - <AUTHOR> http://fmv.jku.at/kissat/ <comment><USER2> If anyone else is wondering how the hell to _use_ this thing... the main API is here:

        https://github.com/arminbiere/kissat/blob/master/src/kissat.h

In particular all you need to add clauses is this single API entry point:

        void kissat_add (kissat * solver, int lit);

The solver consists of the conjunction of disjunctions (I hope I have that correct — maybe the other way around? I can never remember). Variables are assumed to be _any_ non-zero integer:

        kissat_add(s, [N != 0]);

You create a clause by repeatedly calling kissat_add; the clause is terminated by a 0. For instance if {shirt=1, tie=2}, then "!shirt or tie" is:

        kissat_add(s, -1); kissat_add(s, 2); kissat_add(s, 0);

Once the solver is run, if there's a solution, you get the solution using `kissat_val`:

        kissat_val(s, 1);
        kissat_val(s, 2);

I hope.

<comment><USER3> How do you interrupt the computation, e.g. when it takes too long?

<comment><USER4> You could always fork the process and send SIGKILL to the child after a timeout.

<comment><USER5> No need to fork; you could install timer using alarm(), setitimer(), or timer_create() and friends.

<comment><USER3> But how would you clean up the heap and restart the library?

<comment><USER5> I think you can call kissat_terminate() from the signal handler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To save the unwashed masses (myself included) any further internet searches, this relates to the Boolean satisfiability problem, which according to Wikipiedia [0] is:

"the problem of determining if there exists an interpretation that satisfies a given Boolean formula. In other words, it asks whether the variables of a given Boolean formula can be consistently replaced by the values TRUE or FALSE in such a way that the formula evaluates to TRUE. If this is the case, the formula is called satisfiable."

I originally thought it was an AI to solve college placement tests, which would also have been cool but in a different way.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem)

<comment><USER7> SAT solvers are really powerful machines. You can fit many problems in a Boolean formula and then ask the solver to work it out. Now, the solver is not always optimized for your task but sometimes it helps. Also, the exercise of turning a problem into a (usually huge) Boolean formula is interesting. For example, I solved the "find a longest path in a graph" with a SAT solver (TBH, I quickly replaced that with a specialized solver, but, well, that was fun !)

<comment><USER8> SAT is the prototypical NP-complete problem.

<comment><USER9> While it is true, if you follow current research, most people in the field seem to be on a great hunt for hard SAT instances where no known heuristic really helps. As of yet this hunt has not been successful.

<comment><USER10> A hard SAT problem:

Let nonce be 32 boolean inputs, representing numbers from 0..2^32-1.

Let other_bits and difficulty be a collection of constant boolean inputs, in the following expression.

Let f(other_bits, nonce, diff) be the boolean logic circuit used in Bitcoin mining, for a recent candidate block.

Roughly speaking, f combines nonce with other_bits to make a bit string, performs SHA-256 on the bit string, then SHA-256 on that, and then checks if the leading diff number of bits are zero.

Folding in the constants, f reduces to a boolean logic circuit with 32 inputs and 1 output, g(nonce) = result.

The SAT problem: Does there exist a value of nonce for which g(nonce) = 1?

If you can solve this quickly, you just sped up Bitcoin mining by a factor 2^32 iterations, which is a lot. You can take this further as well.

I don't know of any SAT solver heuristic which really helps with this.

<comment><USER11> This SAT instance is huge, which makes it hard. But you haven't shown that it is a harder SAT instance than a random one of its size.

It's all about the difficulty vs the size of the instance.

<comment><USER10> To the best of my knowledge, the example has no known heuristics for finding a solution that are significantly faster than brute force.

That puts it in the hardest class of instances for its size (subject to available knowledge), because all instances can be solved by brute force.

<comment><USER11> A SAT solver might very well have optimizations that make it end up running in 2^200 on average instead of what brute force would give.

The problem is, since the instance is so large, we don't know what happens. No one has ever ran one to completion.

So no, it's not in the hardest class of instances for its size. Its difficulty is unknown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is very exciting! It not only has much improved performance, but it's also clean code, easily extensible for embedding in other applications (I do such a thing myself). Sadly I can't use it yet due to lack of incremental solving.

</comment><comment><USER13> For obscure reasons I know that this is the Finnish word for 'cats', and I wondered if there was any connection there. Apparently the answer is yes

[https://github.com/arminbiere/kissat](https://github.com/arminbiere/kissat)

or at least the developers have already noticed this coincidence for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER14> Are there any software development problems we should be solving with SAT solvers instead of using heuristics?

<comment><USER15> Any problem that works.

IIRC: SAT Solvers regularly solve 30,000+ nodes of traveling salesman problem in just seconds (Or something along that magnitude. I forget exactly...). Yeah, its NP complete, but that doesn't mean its worthless.

It will take some experimentation to figure out if your problem is within the "feasible" category of SAT solving. I don't think there's any method aside from "try it, and if it works, be happy. If not, be sad".

If we knew which problems were easily solved with SAT-solvers, we probably would be well on our way to proving N == NP ?? So just guess and check.

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

Honestly, people may forget that brute-force solvers can be incredibly useful. When I was playing with a hash-algorithm I was inventing (just for fun on the side...) I searched the entire 32-bit space for the best integer that best mixed-up the bits from input to output. The brute-force solver took only seconds to try every 32-bit number.

We can brute-force a surprising number of "intractable" problems from our college years. Yeah, its inefficient, but who cares if its solved in seconds or minutes?

There's also that a^3 + b^3 == c^3 problem that was solved in a few weeks by brute forcing every number (or something like that).

<comment><USER5> > There's also that a^3 + b^3 == c^3 problem that was solved in a few weeks by > brute forcing every number (or something like that).

Huh?

<comment><USER16> Yeah no idea, where they got that from. Fermat argued in the 1630s that this was impossible, Euler then proved it in the 18th century.

[Actually, Fermat claimed that a^n+b^n=c^n is impossible for n>2, but the proof for that wasn't discovered until the 1990s. It's Andrew Wiles's famous proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been looking to get my feet wet with SAT and/or SMT solvers; can anyone recommend any short courses that I could start with to get a practical feel where where & how to use them? Python would be preferred.

Maybe this [https://www.coursera.org/learn/automated-reasoning- sat](https://www.coursera.org/learn/automated-reasoning-sat) would be a good start?

Ideally I would like to be able to take predicted outputs from ML plus business requirements to solve allocation problems; and more pie in the sky I would like to know enough to get inspiration for how to link a neural network with a sat solver, such as perhaps replacing or augmenting beam search in sequence decoding tasks.

</comment><comment><USER18> Question: in college, I was lead to believe that a polynomial time SAT solver would be a huge breakthrough in many fields. Why is that the case? I know 3SAT is a reduction to NP problems, but besides that I feel like it wouldn't be particularly useful on its own.

<comment><USER19> If 3SAT is solvable in polynomial time, then P=NP. Which means that _any_ problem that can be solved by brute-forcing an exponential number of possibilities (and doing a polynomial amount of checking for each) can also be solved with an asymptotically much smaller (polynomial) amount of work.

This includes anything from complicated optimization problems, to theorem proving, to inverting cryptographic hash functions, to any other NP algorithm that hasn't been thought up yet.

Whether this would have any practical use would depend on the polynomial exponents and constant factors, of course. But even in a theoretical sense it would be very, very surprising to a lot of people if it were true.

<comment><USER13> Donald Knuth apparently believes, in a very unusual view for a computer scientist, that P=NP but that the best algorithm has such bad exponents and factors that it won't have relevance for our computational practices -- if we're even able to discover it.

[https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2213858&ran...](https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2213858&ranMID=24808)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how big of an economic impact such improved algorithms have. Must be in the billions of dollars in the long run...

</comment><comment><USER21> SAT Solvers are used in software that is used in creating the very complex Silicon Chips. Known as Formal in the semiconductor design industry.

</comment><comment><USER22> Computational logic seems to be a more popular research subject in Europe than in the United States.</comment>


Apple Says the Government Bungled Its Chance to Get That iPhone's Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/02/apple-says-the-government-bungled-its-chance-to-hack-that-iphone/? <comment><USER2> This is off topic and is about wired.com's serving of this page and the user experience.

I read about two paragraphs or so of this article, scrolled down to read further and then was shown a glaring "Here's the thing about Ad Blockers...We get it: Ads aren't what you're here for. But ads help us keep the lights on. So, add us to your ad blocker's whitelist or pay $1 per week for an ad-free version of WIRED. Either way, you are supporting our journalism. We'd really appreciate it." message.

I immediately closed the tab and remembered that there were other sites reporting the same piece of news. I could've looked at the internals and found a way to read the rest of the article, but it didn't seem worth it.

With the ad blocker on, this page was _just_ about 54 HTTP requests and about 3.5MB in size (including all assets loaded). Not as bad as the homepage which is about 126 HTTP requests and more than 5MB in size with the ad blocker on.

I do whitelist some sites that I visit often and if they don't seem to have many trackers (sometimes temporarily), but wired.com is something I visit only occasionally. I really am not interested in being subjected to what another site (forbes.com) did with the appeal to remove ad blocking software and then get served malware.

I wish there would be an aggregator site that could collect some subscription money, provide information from a basket of websites without ads and trackers (like for ad free paid TV). Paying each site separately or disabling ad blockers on several sites - neither of them are optimal solutions for me right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using uBlock Origin and had no problem reading the entire article. But I agree, something like Blendle* seems a great solution.

*Blendle: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9453821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9453821)</comment></comment>


Don't Build a Billion-Dollar Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/dont-build-a-billion-dollar-business-really/ <comment><USER3> I say build a company. Go where it takes you. If it takes you to a billion dollars, fine. If it takes you to a million, fine. If you aim to achieve a given number, I suggest you question why your ego, as opposed to your business, needs you to achieve that number. Are you aiming to become number one or two in your business because you have substantive reasons, or is it becaused you once read about Jack Welch saying GE businesses had to be number one or two, and you took that message to heart for no other reason except Jack Welch said it? Are you aiming for the low millions coz you have a substantive reason for it, or are you doing it simply coz you admire Paul Graham who exited at those low millions and you want to be like Paul Graham when you grow up? Life is fluid, people and businesses change, goal posts get shifted all the time, businesses that shunned evil start being evil. These are just the places where businesses take people. Go where yours takes you. And if you don't like where it takes you, then by all means come back, shift your goal posts. Change your sport, even, if that's where your business takes you.

<comment><USER4> No one accidentally builds a Billion dollar business - so it's not the case that it just leads you there by default, you need to choose to be that size.

At the same time though, you are right in the market leading nature of it. That is, while building your business the opportunity might arise that you can shift what you are doing and that shift would open up your market to a larger opportunity. Alternatively you could choose not to shift and go for a smaller win.

Why I take issue with the original post is because it is basically saying, if it looks like there is a market opportunity to make a billion dollar company, don't take it.

<comment><USER5> >> No one accidentally builds a Billion dollar business

Actually some do. The classic example is Google's founders - they tried to exit to Yahoo! for a million or so, but were turned down.

Perhaps "accidentally" is not the word. Of course, it's not accidental - <USER2> of hard work is involved. But many people never _dream_ of building a billion dollar business, and a few of them still get there.

More importantly, focusing on building a billion dollar business might not be productive. It might actually distract you from doing what customers would like you to do.

<comment><USER4> This gets the point backward. Again, it's not that they set out to create a billion dollar business. Certainly at one point they were trying for a smaller exit.

The key point though is that, somewhere between their Yahoo pitch and today Sergei and Larry made the decision to grow to the $B scale. I think it was when Eric came on actually was when that shift happened.

<comment><USER6> The creation of AdWords must have been a key moment in that, surely? If Auletta's book is to be believed, there were long periods where any kind of revenue at all out of Google would have been cause for celebration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Thus, in rough numbers, the chance that a funded company goes on to become > a billion-dollar business is 0.005 percent to 0.016 percent. Rounding to any > significant digits, that's basically zero._

I'm really getting tired of these calculations of "the chance" of a startup doing X. You are not a lottery ticket. It's not random. The 20 year-old version of Mark Zuckerberg beats the 20 year-old version of me every time. Business isn't exactly chess, but it's a lot closer to hold'em than it is to a lottery.

<comment><USER8> It's not _entirely_ random, but most of the forces involved are out of your control. So, thinking in terms of chance is helpful.

The 20 year old Mark Zuckerberg could likely beat both of us combined in say, business. And would probably be successful no matter what. But would probably not be a billion dollar business, were circumstances even slightly different.

Lots of companies and individuals fail all the time, despite their skills.

You are unlikely to be a special snowflake. Even in the case that you are, it might be summer.

<comment><USER9> No.

20 year old Mark Zuckerberg would keep adjusting until he was whatever a unicorn needs to be in this instant. That's his nature.

You would not.

That's the difference.

<comment><USER10> That's mystical BS thinking, from too many self-help books.

Most succeses had been a combination of being born at the right place and time, to the right parents, going to the right school and meeting the right people. Most of those are heavily determined by the past beyond one's control -- and others are semi-random.

Then there's talent for business and determination -- but it's only survivorship bias that doesn't let us see that lots of people who didn't get to have FB also had equal talent for business and determination, or even more than Mark.

Even a "perfect" Mark could have been hit by a bus before the success, or had a dehabilitating illness, etc -- and then your "magical unicorn" admiration would go to whoever else got to be succesful at the time, while Mark still be the same person (only unsuccesful).

<comment><USER9> I'm sure that line of thought makes you feel better, but it's pretty demonstrably not the case.

<comment><USER11> Your thing isn't demonstrably the case either. In fact, a lot of what led him to create facebook was pure coincidental luck.

<comment><USER12> I think the point he's trying to make is that if it wasn't Facebook, Zuckerberg would have been successful with something else. Perhaps not as wildly successful, but he certainly wouldn't have regressed to the average, run of the mill consumer getting by on the 9-5.

<comment><USER10> Why? What special quality does Mark have?

He wasn't some genius programmer. He created a glorified forum (and in PHP).

He wasn't some genius businessman (evident from his early interviews). He created something at the right time, that got momentum because of that, and that attracted the right people to help make it a success business wise.

Would he have gotten somewhere else if it wasn't for that? Maybe, maybe not.

I don't see anything particularly convincing that he wouldn't have regressed to the mean.

<comment><USER13> Some traits shared by Mark, Bill, Steve, Jeff, and even PG apart from being born white, not poor, male, lucky, etc:

1) self driven

2) loves to build

3) doesn't let things get in their way

4) goals based on their version of the future

5) deep thinkers / intellects

6) holds their own values and priorities

7) evidence driven / scientific

8) conqueror's mindset

9) idea person, doer, dreamer, student, teacher all in one

10) never was about the money, and more about passion

I don't claim this list to be 100% accurate or exhaustive, but the point is there is more than just luck and DNA, and many of these traits are acquirable. The demographic to me says that the chances of becoming _that person_ are higher under those circumstances, but the demographic itself does not directly enable or cause any such success. Just as all presidents were white until Obama, maybe we just need someone to shatter the stereotype.

Personally, what I respect most is their capacity to generate their own philosophies and to then apply them to their products, to their companies, and to their lives. I find people that can do this are successful at any level.

<comment><USER10> A lot of those features we just ascribe to them post-factum because of their success. And a lot of those features are also shared by people without much success.

I mean is Mark "deep thinkers / intellects" etc in general? Or it's just a (average) smart college boy who wrote a service that hit the right spots and got viral?

I also know many millionaires (and billionaires) for whom it was always "about the money", and that was their passion.

<comment><USER13> That isn't a list of accolades. They are character traits heavily utilized on the way to what was accomplished. When comparing Mark to a kid who wrote a program that went viral, just see how instrumental he was. Facebook is far more than just a viral web site, and it didn't fall into place with Mark sitting back and seeing where all the pieces would land.

Yes, many of the traits are shared with average people, as is the trait of being human. This to me only attests to how similar and ordinary and close we really are to those we love to put on high pedestals. How do ordinary people accomplish extra-ordinary feats? To this I suspect combination is key. You could be perfectly capable but not have a dream. You could be a dreamer but lack self motivation... and so on and so forth. And sure, maybe you had it all except for the money to fund yourself. But either way, if we are admitting there is a combination, we're already past the luck hypothesis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was a similar article submitted last week that resonated with me more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149308)

Focused more on building a small (5ish people) business with $1mil in revenue a year as the path to enlightenment.

Key insight: building a $1mil/yr business ($7/mo * 12 mo/yr * 12,000 subscribers) that focuses on delivering pure awesome is an _excellent_ way to build a $10mil/yr business is an _excellent_ way to....

<comment><USER15> > building a $1mil/yr business ($7/mo * 12 mo/yr * 12,000 subscribers) ...

Much easier to do if you sell to businesses. At $100/mo instead of $7/mo you only need 833 customers. I'm nearly there just by adding 1-2 customers a day, which is eminently doable without a team.

<comment><USER16> you are building a million dollar biz _alone_? what kind of product is it?

Just curious, are there any other examples of one man million dollar software business?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.improvely.com](https://www.improvely.com) \-- marketing tools. "Solopreneur" seems to be a good search term for finding other examples, though I think it sounds silly.

<comment><USER17> Not to derail the original discussion, but I'm curious too - what methods are you using to gain 1-2 users (paying $100/mo) per day? I'm building out a product that I'm marketing to businesses, but am struggling to find ways to actually get the name / brand in front of enough people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The thing is, building a billion dollar business doesn't require 1000x the work or entail 1000x the stress of building a million dollar one...even if it is more than 1000x less likely. It's also the case that only getting 5% of the way to a billion dollar business after six years is probably going to feel better than 20% of a million dollar business after two years...one comes with a reasonable paycheck, the other doesn't. Finally, the investors in your million dollar idea aren't going to be any less assholes, and probably moreso; your credit card and local bank are less ok with failure than angels and VC.

To put it another way, building a lifestyle business already requires a huge amount of luck and time on top of the hard work and stress. There are only so many trips to the plate and swinging for the fence may be the rationale option.

<comment><USER19> _The thing is, building a billion dollar business doesn 't require 1000x the work or entail 1000x the stress of building a million dollar one_

The key thing is, a billion dollars is nothing like 1000x better than a million. In fact, I suspect it's barely 1.1x better (and there's even some weak evidence from subjective wellbeing studies that it could be worse).

The St Petersburg Paradox[1] is a fun application of this fact — the fact that when you already have a LOT of money, even a LOT more money is pretty well useless to you.

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

<comment><USER20> Do you really mean 1 million or, say, 10 million? I think there's a huge difference between these two. I haven't done the math, but I figure with the latter you could retire without thinking (much) about what you spend money on. From that point, yes a billion isn't much different.

<comment><USER19> Hmm. I agree there could be a difference between 1 million and 10 million. To an approximation, 1 million is not having to worry about housing, while 10 million is not having to worry about work.

But I'm not sure not having to worry about work would be good for everybody — me included. It _could_ be good ... but I worry it could also leave one purposeless and adrift (I have some anecdotal evidence on this point).

Apologies for not looking up the literature to corroborate this (or not), but I should get back to the day job.

<comment><USER21> >> "...1 million is not having to worry about housing, while 10 million is not having to worry about work."

These numbers are low by a factor of ~2 unless you want to live in flyover country/a cheap country other than America.

<comment><USER22> I live in Cambridge, MA and I can't see any way that $10MM isn't enough to never worry about work again. At a first approximation, that's $300-350K in income without much risk of principal drawdown. It's surely enough for $250K in income (plus an inflation "raise" each year) forever.

If that's not enough to not worry about work, you might have lifestyle issues.

$1MM won't buy you a "really nice house" here, though, so I agree with you on that point, but it is still enough to not worry about housing if you choose "sufficient, not luxurious" level of housing.

<comment><USER12> As a counterpoint from the "flyover country" viewpoint, I live in rural Minnesota about 40 miles outside Minneapolis.

$1MM will buy you a very nice new construction 6,000+ sq ft house on about 20 or more acres of land with an outdoor pool most likely. And you're within commuting distance of major job markets. $10MM and you're living quite comfortably (probably spending weekends at your cabin on the lake) and certainly not needing to work, so maybe you spend your free time tending to your horses or alpacas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It feels dismissive to write this, but:

Every VC I've ever talked to --- middle double digits over 3 different startups --- has told me this story about how they're not looking for "10-baggers" or "unicorns" or whatever it is they're calling them these days. They want to invest in founders, trust that a good team will come up with ways to make money if they just stay out of the way, &c &c zzz.

The fact is that the economics of venture capital pretty much depend on most/all of a portfolio's investments having some shot at becoming outlandishly successful. The winners have to pay for the losers.

<comment><USER24> The two aren't mutually incompatible.

If you're an early-stage investor you don't look for unicorns not because you don't want them (you obviously do) but because you can't spot them based on business model, traction, etc.

As an early stage investor you focus on team/founders because that's the best early predictor that a company will become a unicorn in the longer term.

<comment><USER9> No no no.

According to people commenting here, it's not the team or founders, it's luck.

So you need a way to identify luck. Then you're golden!

<comment><USER25> Nobody is saying luck is sufficient, just that it's necessary. As is talent, hard work, &c.

The role of luck ("fortune", "fate") in the success of great people is a deep and ancient question, and you should not dismiss it. Machiavelli's Prince is at least 50% about the subject, and Sun Tzu is infatuated with it. Acknowledging luck does not mean dismissing the successful - it's just intellectual honesty.

<comment><USER26> I can understand how a very logic/scientific mind could have difficulty with the concept of luck. Citing literature may not help.

Let's say there's some stochastic mechanics at work, randomness more than 'luck'. Luck is the attribute of someone, when randomness is an attribute of events, which makes a big difference.

Of course I can understand people citing 'luck' as necessary... but it's more superstition than science.

All in all, it means you can't really know for sure...

<comment><USER25> You're right, "luck" is a bad word because some people do have the notion of luck as an attribute.

It's not exactly the same as a stochastic variable though. It's really any forces that you cannot influence, control, or anticipate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Kyle Neath wrote a very similar post last week, which IMHO is more developer- centric and less VC-centric:

[http://warpspire.com/posts/million-dollar- products/](http://warpspire.com/posts/million-dollar-products/)

<comment><USER28> Great link, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is lower goals really more founder-friendly? I'm not so sure.

A bit perplexing, but in my experience, VCs who aim lower will often put far more stress and pressure on founders to meet short-term milestones and ramp up revenues immediately. Since the distant billion dollar goal is gone, it becomes all about the short-term.

Aiming for a billion is a great filter too. At the early stages, you desperately need to be associated at least a few investors / founders / employees who absolutely believe you're on the path to something huge. Low goals allows more people to get involved who have extremely misaligned interests, who are often looking for something medium sized to milk, instead of something huge to help grow.

<comment><USER30> Thats not how business work.

You don't build a business by setting out to be Facebook. You build a business by setting out to create thefacebook for universities.

Whether that will end up with a billion dollar company is a matter of way to many factors.

Edit: I can see you edited your post a little. My response here is to what you wrote originally.

<comment><USER31>
        > You don't build a business by setting out to be Facebook.
        > You build a business by setting out to create thefacebook for universities.

Paul Graham is the only person in the world who can get away with spreading this, please don't repeat after him.

In practice, the difference between building a billion dollar company and building a 10 million dollar company is marginal. You still need to constantly raise money, you will ruin your culture and so on; everything that OP describes as awful downsides of SV mentality is just as present. The author seems to hint towards bootsrapping ("figure out how to earn your first dollar", etc), but examples that he gives, with the exception of 37Signals are just smaller and less successful versions of Facebook with all downsides included.

<comment><USER32> > In practice, the difference between building a billion dollar company and > building a 10 million dollar company is marginal.

As someone who works at a company that was acquired in the 8 figures range...

You don't know what you are talking about.

<comment><USER31> Care to elaborate on the difference between the two that you have observed? I'm genuinely interested.

<comment><USER32> * The value/importance of a 1% increase in efficiency can make or break team performance. 1% of an 8 figure company isn't enough to fund a multi discpline, multi-person team looking to improve efficiency for a year. The parent company literally employs a team whose sole purpose is internal efficiency/performance improvements where "single digit percentage" improvements are enough productivity to justify a multi-million dollar budget. Sure it "exists" in theory in a smaller company but it no one is paid to perform the job because the cost/benefit isn't there.

* The mindset change in regards to accounting, legal risks, etc.

* The amount of red tape & interaction with state/federal governments. No one cared what we were doing when we were just an 8 figure company.

* We actually care about PR when it, frankly, didn't matter before.

Sure, you "care" about these things as a smaller business but you don't have dedicated teams of people solely to manage them. Building dedicated teams solely to perform function X vs. having teams that are more general purpose is a huuuuuuuuge practical difference imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What missed here is that if you're operating in a market which you can build a billion dollar business, you can miss badly and still have a hugely successful company.

If you're operating in a market where your turnover is going to max out at a few million then you have a much smaller margin for error, you have to execute close to perfectly to win that market.

Building a large business doesn't have to involve raising huge amounts of money, taking undue risks, etc.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's important to note that the numbers discussed by the New York Times were only of VC-funded tech companies founded this century. There are at least a few thousand private companies in the US worth 1 billion or more. Forbes keeps track of a few hundred here [http://www.forbes.com/largest-private- companies/list/](http://www.forbes.com/largest-private-companies/list/) with the lowest on the list having over 2 billion in revenue.

It's nearly impossible to start a company and have it worth a billion dollars within a decade. But if you drop the get rich quick thinking of Silicon Valley, it's much more possible if you grow slow and steady over a few decades or generations even. My family has a business started 30 years ago that's now worth in the hundreds of millions for example, and we are ecstatic if it grows 15% per year. In the next 20 years, if we don't fail, we should have a billion dollar business. We don't take excessive risk, so there's a fairly good shot. It's a bank in the South FWIW.

</comment><comment><USER34> To be honest I don't even think about making billions. I play the hand I'm dealt to the best of my abilities. And it works just fine.

<comment><USER35> Here is the best and the most honest comment on this thread. Just do it boys n girls. N see where it takes you. Nature, nurture, luck? One can't change these things, so just do it n see where it takes you.

Ps: the most interesting question is if it is the creator who shapes the creation or is it vice versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Let's not forget that most, if not all of these unicorns are not really billion dollar businesses.

Just because a16z buys shares at year two at a $100MM valuation, and more shares at year 3 at $400MM valuation, and even more shares at year 4 at $1B valuation does not make you a billion dollar biz.

In fact, it says more about a16z bubble inflation methods than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER37> "What I do take issue with is the fact that Silicon Valley derides almost any other kind of business."

Why care what 'Silicon Valley' thinks about that? The author is making a mental mistake there. If you want to build a million dollar business, you don't need to care what the big money in SV thinks at all. So, stop. It is that simple.

</comment><comment><USER38> I agree with this. I get both sides, I mean, who wouldn't want to have a billion dollar business? But building one is insanely lucky and there are a ton of super talented businessmen and engineers that haven't done it.

The problem with aiming so high, like the article points out, is that you often fail and are left with almost nothing if it fails. You took a low salary with a lot of equity, but if you work for 3-5 years on a project and then it turns out the company fails (which is highly likely), then you just worked for 3-5 years for a cheap discount.

Sure, you might have learned a lot in that time, but if you worked at a better salary for a more stable opportunity, you would have learned stuff as well (different, but maybe not less important stuff).

I get the allure, but as I get older, I don't really see the value. You don't have forever in your career to make below average wages on the lotteries chance you will make millions.

</comment><comment><USER39> Instead of having a billion dollar plan have an exit plan first, that's more impressive because you acknowledge failure head on. The chances of you failing are much greater than you even surviving 5 years. As a founder, you need to have an exit strategy that will be the least impactful to your team. Statistics Canada shows a huge failure rate folks. Everyone wants billions but everyone needs steady employement. [http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/02807.html](http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/061.nsf/eng/02807.html)

</comment><comment><USER40> The thing is - you can't by any means start building a billion dollar business just by deciding to do so.

Take google - attempted to sell at 100 mln

Take facebook - was in-college network

Take airbnb - struggled along for many years

What this article is trying to convey?

<comment><USER41> I believe it's trying to point out the currently flawed mindset of the valley. The same mindset that would fail to build any of the businesses that you listed above ;)

<comment><USER40> But then it lists the VC who don't think so... Puzzled

<comment><USER42> It's quite clear that there's a general perception that bigger is better. The fact that some VCs are investing in smaller businesses doesn't negate that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you want to change the world significantly, you will need significant numbers of customers, and associated revenue. Nothing wrong with wanting to change the world.

One of the author's arguments is that you will dilute your ownership by taking on the "required" investment needed to have a chance at reaching the magic 1B. Is this true? Of the 40 mentioned private >1B firms, what fraction raised lots of VC money and experienced significant founder dilution? My guess is not that many of them; the author simply assumes it is the case.

</comment><comment><USER44> I agree with Gleb's point that there's no shame in trying to achieve a small, profitable business instead of a shoot-for-the-moon billion dollar business, however, I don't understand the "if your VC-funded startup fails there is only downside for you" attitude.

Some benefits of taking funding:

* you move financial risk off of yourself onto others in exchange for a paycheck * you can get the cash to start the business today * you gain work experience, and probably get more responsibility than you'd get at an "entry level" job

</comment><comment><USER45> I agree with the article when it poses that a product should be built because you enjoy doing so and when it becomes a company you should do it to generate revenue and not an exit.

However, it's incoherent that an article that is against the "Go big or go home" philosophy discusses how much your company valuation needs to multiply given you sell X% of shares in T amount of time.

At least in today's macroeconomic context, a company is the best platform to scale something valuable, and investors are there to help with that scaling process.

</comment><comment><USER46> If you have a product that has a huge potential market then go for it. You will probably only have one chance. The problem I see at YC is that, despite supposedly looking for unicorns, so many of the companies that go through the accelerator only have limited markets. I think it's dangerous to impose unicorn-style thinking on young founders whose products or psychology may actually not be up to it.

</comment><comment><USER47> The United States used to be planted thick with $40M/year companies. These sustained families and made modest opportunities to innovate. They could be anywhere.

I used to work at one. It doesn't exist any more.

At some point this went out of style.

Because of observer bias, _this_ is what I see when people talk about inequality. And I see that it was quite deliberately chosen.

</comment><comment><USER48> but, the 3 comma club...

<comment><USER49> The doors need to open like THIS

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Aiming for orbit and running out of fuel means you will probably fall back and burn up in the atmosphere. Aiming for the moon and running out of fuel means you can still get to orbit (which is still very cool) but you have to plan ahead. Mishandling rocket fuel and blowing up is always possibility.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think people choses to build a business of a certain size. It's more like people try to build a successful business, and it settles into it's natural size. Planning your company size is not what I did as entrepreneur, making sure your company survive is.

</comment><comment><USER52> Buffer has raised a 3.5M Series A. GitHub has a quarter billion dollar in funding. Bootstrapping doesn't have to be an eternal culture, it might just be what makes sense in the early days of a company, and it might no longer make sense further down the line.

</comment><comment><USER53> The underlying message here is that you may be overlooking a very good lifestyle business opportunity (which is totally under your control) while looking at a startup framework that is at best casual and at worst not depending on you at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> > If you sell 80 percent of your shares before an exit, your company needs to > be worth 500 percent more for you and your employees to make the same > amount.

It needs to be worth 400% more for a same founder/employee value share.

</comment><comment><USER54> The text is way too light on this site. Please improve the contrast. See [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

</comment><comment><USER55> My most interesting "great idea" actually wants to be a non-profit. OTOH a friend thinks it's also potentially a billion dollar idea because of the total lack of anything in the space. But that would require finding a way to reap the rewards without driving away the users - they can not be the product in this case.

</comment><comment><USER56> What if I want to build a billion dollar company?

<comment><USER57> glhf

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> ok.

</comment><comment><USER59> Regardless of whether or not I want to build such a business...

Don't tell me what to do. Really.

</comment><comment><USER60> Good read :)

</comment><comment><USER61> P(my business becoming a billion dollar business) (~0.0005%) * (1-P(me saying "no" to letting my business become a billion dollar business) (~0.0005%)) is still 0.00000499997. Nothing to worry about, Budman.

OR

Has Budman just written this article as psychological warfare against any soft targets who might be competing against his future billion dollar business? The plot thickens.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is this constant thread of "Don't shoot for the stars?" Why are people trying to reign in expectations and goals for what are essentially crazy and highly talented people?

I don't want to run a $10M company, I want to run a $10BN company. It's the difference between tee ball and Major League.

The author is basically saying that everyone should just shoot to stay in tee ball, which is equally as arbitrary as choosing to shoot for the majors. What the hell is the point of all of this if we aren't going for the big win?

<comment><USER62> For one, because the chances of shooting for the stars and failing is very high. You have to take on a lot of funding, spend a lot on user acquisition, etc. etc. etc.

Do you want a _highly talented_ person to work on something for two years that ends up being utterly destroyed, or do you want them to work for 20 years on a business that keeps improving?

 _What the hell is the point of all of this if we aren 't going for the big win?_

Life? What you're saying sounds like the result of an absolutely off-whack work/life balance. There is, and will always be, more to life than work.

<comment><USER4> >There is, and will always be, more to life than work.

This is where I am in constant disagreement with people. My work based on what I want to be doing with my life. I want my life to be my work - that's what life is about imo, dedicating your efforts to something that grows and sustains a community. A lot of people don't want that for some reason, but if you look at basically every person who has ever done something great and massive no matter what it is, ghandi, gates etc... their life WAS their work.

<comment><USER62> If you're including Ghandi in here then you have a pretty broad definition of "work".

In any case: if you're so intent on building a billion dollar company, what will you do when, as probably states will be the case, that company does not reach a billion dollars and in fact fails entirely?

<comment><USER4> That's right I do have a broad definition. "Work" to me is the thing that you are putting most of your effort to. Maybe you are a stay at home mom, and your work is raising children - you have to be all in for that. Same goes for anything.

If one venture fails completely, then you take what you learned and start again when you can.

If you are in a position that you can start your own company and raise money for it, the worst that can happen is that you have to go find a job. Lets even assume that you lose your house in the process. Ok, well downsize, keep your head down till the next opportunity arises and keep moving forward. I don't see any other way to live.

People have these marginal goals of working 9-5 going to the beach on the weekend, having a couple kids, then retiring at 65/70 and traveling or whatever till they die at 85. That sounds terrible to me - and my guess is that would sound terrible to anyone who worked on something that people gain value from (Salk, Scorsese, Musk etc...).

<comment><USER62> _People have these marginal goals of working 9-5 going to the beach on the weekend, having a couple kids, then retiring at 65 /70 and traveling or whatever till they die at 85._

You're drawing lines where there are none. Why, exactly, is striving for but not necessarily achieving a billion dollar company a more worthwhile pursuit than raising children and traveling the world?

 _If you are in a position that you can start your own company and raise money for it, the worst that can happen is that you have to go find a job._

No, the worst that can happen is that you waste years of your life, and look back as an old man and only see a series of failed ventures to your name.

<comment><USER4> I think we're too hung up on the number. It has nothing to do, really, with the dollar amount of the company - that's just a proxy for impact/scale. I could as easily say "Be President" or any other things that are at that scale.

It's a more worthwhile pursuit because your individual impact can be much wider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is a deeply insightful post on the Dollar-Auction-style tournament nature of the startup ecosystem, with interesting parallels to Sudhir Venkatesh's research on why drug dealers are willing to work for less than minimum wage.

<comment><USER64> This is the same company who came to the conclusion it was cheaper to send people to costco to buy hard drives and manually remove them from enclosures than just negotiate with a vendor[1].

They reckoned they bought 5.5 petabytes of data at retail prices. I've always taken what they say with a grain of salt.

[1] [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/)

<comment><USER65> Yev from Backblaze here -> Unfortunately we aren't large enough to negotiate with hard drive manufacturers. We've tried, believe me, but since we're not putting in order of 10,000 drives at a time, they refuse to speak with us. The closest we get is an introduction to their preferred vendor channels, but we have to go through them like anyone else. At the time we did the "farming" it was because those channels had dried up and risen in price by almost 3x, and we were faced with going out of business or getting creative. I assure you, we would RATHER work with manufacturers directly, but it's not as easy as calling up Seagate and asking for a bunch of drives on the cheap (especially when computer companies like Dell and Apple need those drives to make THEIR product lines works). They can raise prices of their computers by a few dollars and not really feel an impact, we can't!

<comment><USER63> Thanks for the extra details! Very interesting.

<comment><USER65> My pleasure!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Browser Tabs - <AUTHOR> https://abuqader.substack.com/p/on-browser-tabs <comment><USER2> I... have a problem. I recently had ~1600 tabs open in Firefox. With a lot of painstaking effort I cut it down to ~750. Quite some distance to go still.

The default interface sucks once you have more than 50 tabs. I wish there were easy REPL-ish programmatic access to the list/dict of tabs (so I could filter out all GitHub tabs, or close all stackoverflow tabs, etc) and that was a first class citizen in the browser interface. This is one reason I'm really excited about the Nyxt browser.

PS: Part of it might be FOMO, but part of it is also that these links represent certain threads of thought/exploration and are like bookmarks of things to revisit at a later time. Yes, in principle I could export the list of tabs to a text file, and begin anew, but that's not a fully satisfactory solution. I think we need tools & interfaces to better (more holistically) accommodate people's intellectual workflows; what we have today is geared much more towards consumption.

As an example: why can't we easily group tabs into projects and have _bidirectional sync_ between the browser and project related resources (Eg: Some markdown/org file, or sync with Evernote/Notion/Roam, etc) so that whenever I resume working on the project, I get a warm start with the context mapped out (continuing from the previous session). And I want a much tighter relationship between my tabs and my project notes (akin to bibliography of references), including annotations on webpages, etc. If we are to use the web more effectively, the ecosystem surrounding browsers needs to grow up and help us get there.

<comment><USER3> "Yes, in principle I could export the list of tabs to a text file, and begin anew ..."

I came here to complain that, actually, _you can 't_.

Or rather, it's surprisingly complicated to export a simple list of current tab URLs to a plain old text file.

You need to dig several directories deep into /Library (or whatever, depending on your OS) and then use JSON tools to export ... I've already lost most people.

Why can't we just have:

about:tabs

... which is nothing but a one URL per line, text listing of all of our currently open tabs ? How simple and nice and useful would that be ?

Go searching for "how can I export tabs" or "how can I save tab urls" and you'll see thousands of people trying (usually in vain) to achieve this very, very simple thing.

<comment><USER4> For Firefox, there is Export Tabs URLs.

<comment><USER3> No, I don't want an extension for a simple, basic piece of functionality that everyone keeps asking for.

about:tabs would be the easiest thing in the world.

<comment><USER5> > about:tabs would be the easiest thing in the world.

Thanka for volunteering! Can you link me to your patch?

<comment><USER3> rsync.net will pay USD $1000 for this.

Consider this an official, public bounty. Expires 2020-12-31.

I don't have time to write this patch but I _especially don 't have time_ for the lame, tired suggestion that FOSS cannot be critiqued by anyone but the authors.

(The bounty is $1500 if _you_ "jhardy54" write, and have accepted, the patch. Consider the extra $500 compensation for this unexpected loss of smug, righteous indignation.)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the bounty. Is this resolved when the patch is written and available for anyone to include in their source tree, or when it's merged into the Firefox tree?

(I want to clarify because I've had a patch open for 4 months that's received no attention from maintainers.)

<comment><USER3> The bounty will be awarded (paid) when Joe Average user can download plain old Firefox and use about:tabs, without other downloads or add-ons, etc.

<comment><USER5> Since my last patch (bugfix, one line) has been open for at least 4 months without activity I'm not sure how feasible it would be to land a new feature and have it releases in Firefox stable in ~3 months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I built the "first tabbed browser", NetCaptor, back in 1997. [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet- th...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/meet-the-man-who- invented-tabs)

My take - some of us leave tabs open way too long because we fear not being able to get back to those sites again… it's loss aversion. Tabs aren't the core problem per se, it's recall. We need to solve the "I want to get back here again" problem.

I primarily use Brave and effectively start fresh every day. I might get up to 20 open tabs at any given time, and I sometimes use tabs as a sort of Inbox that needs to be cleared. But sometimes, it's best to declare tab bankruptcy and start over.

<comment><USER7> Good point. I've lost track of the number of start-ups that proposed some kind of "Search your browser history" functionality, which, to be honest, I've wished for myself. But I don't know of any that have even made it to released- product stage.

<comment><USER8> Does Memex resemble what you were wishing for? ([https://github.com/WorldBrain/Memex/](https://github.com/WorldBrain/Memex/))

<comment><USER7> Not really -- What I'd like would be something that doesn't require me to annotate, in advance, what I want to find again. I often think, "I know I read something about this a while back!" and then I try to think which website I'd seen it on. The ones I've read about just watch your whole browsing history and let you search that.

I also couldn't get it to work when I tried a while ago (which I imagine they've fixed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I never understood how folks end up with 20+ (100+ !?) tabs just hanging around ALL the time. For me it's so much visual noise.

I can see it happening when you're in the midst of research or troubleshooting. But when I'm done or have solved my issue I'll note in my PR where i found solutions or add the useful pages to my bookmark service (raindrop). Then close all the tabs!

<comment><USER10> I'm one of those "tab-addicts". The problem is that I use Tabs for everything: reading list, history _, bookmarks_. Right now I have 8 pinned tabs for email, calendar, messengers and such things. Then I have a couple of interesting news articles etc. that I left open to read later. I also left open some of my work/research flows (so 3-5 tabs each that belong to the same project topic) that I didn't really finish or was just to lazy to close.

<comment><USER11> About your pinned tabs. You could try making URL shortcuts with rewq.app . [ disclaimer: I made it for personal use ].

It would be nice to have feedback from others on improving it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Tabbed browsing: a lousy band-aid over poor browser document and state management (2014):

...What I want is to maintain a list of current references, preferably with some spatial context (tree-mode browsing is great for this) to what the relationship is between pages in my browser session. I do not need is for every last single page to be open at the same time, sucking down memory, CPU cycles, and worse: playing videos and/or making noise.

That state-management is missing. Bookmarks aren't really it -- they're a permanent quick-reference to stuff you want to go back to, and as with any storage locker or closet, suffer from the clean-out problem: it's a goddamned pain in the ass to go and sort through the stuff you've tossed in there and clean out the junk.

Browser history isn't it either: it's too comprehensive, is insufficiently contextualized, doesn't record relationships between pages (other than, maybe, relative time). On mobile devices it's a chore to sort out where in your history a given page was in the highly constrained display available. Site- supplied titles are often absolutely worthless for finding content (though some such as HN do this well).

There's a space between the comprehensive listing of everything you've visited, and the highly organized catalog, that's missing in the browser space. Effectively: the current workspace, with the papers and books with which you're currently working open in front of you. I've been playing with this stuff for decades and it's still a frustration....

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_browsing_a_lousy_bandaid_over_poor_browser/)

My present Firefox tab count is > 1550.

<comment><USER13> want to try amna?? It helps you break things down by task. I'd say it's still super early, but seems like the right balance of random browsing and collecting items as part of a context.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthun...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthunt)

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Is there a demo / walkthrough?

OK, found & am reading [https://getamna.com/blog/post/customer- research/](https://getamna.com/blog/post/customer-research/)

My preference would be CLI / terminal centric.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6bgowu/what_if_the_web_was_filesystemaccessible/)

<comment><USER13> Hey - nice! Yup that was some user research we had done. Working on making the website better as well.

Few more details here: getamna.com/demo

Interesting! Currently the solution is primarily a GUI based system using Chromium for rendering. But the data is stored into a JSON file organized a group of tasks with website urls. I haven't explored too much around a CLI before. I know that org-mode is super popular, but I've never played with it much.

<comment><USER12> Putting the browser (and other tools) inside a workflow box seems long overdue. That alone is genius. It's a key principle I've been leaning toward as well, though with a somewhat different target as to projects and scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I made a browser to deal with this [0]. I've basically abandoned work on it, but I still use it as my daily driver (granted I don't push my fresh builds up as much as I used to and there are a couple of bugs).

It provides me such a huge benefit because I just swipe my hand to destroy dozens of browser tabs. And all the while I can see the name, have them hierarchical, change their groups, etc. I go on deep GitHub or Wikipedia dives and close or collapse that entire line of thought so easily. Tabs are essentially mind maps. I wish a larger vendor with real time/money would invest in a similar many-tab model. The concept is of course directly taken from the tree-style tab extension in FF, but even that extension has suffered since the move off of XUL, and I can't easily close a ton of tabs just by dragging over the close buttons anymore (among other things).

0 - [https://cretz.github.io/doogie/](https://cretz.github.io/doogie/)

</comment><comment><USER15> How do people manage to manage hundreds or even thousands of open tabs? And most importantly, why? Are they using tabs instead of bookmarks?

Usually I have no more than ten. Even when searching/researching something it doesn't get more than twenty - open all the interesting search results on the first search page, usually that's enough to find whatever I'm looking for. If not, tabs are being closed one by one or are being bookmarked with appropriate tags. Repeat for the next page of search results.

<comment><USER16> Because my browser is like my brain and my life: disorganized and full of loose threads.

I imagine there's likely a correlation with ADHD, as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tabs were a mistake. They were a hack to work around window managers that lacked enough features and now we have a "window manager" inside of a window manager. Probably most apps have their own tab interface which works differently from every other app. We should rethink the design, improve the window managers, then remove tabs.

I don't think it will ever happen, but it would be nice.

<comment><USER18> There was a Compiz extension that permitted window tabbing like this. I did not enjoy its use. I attempted to use it to create "environments". It was less effective than using workspaces because workspaces allowed full windowing.

<comment><USER17> KWin does (did?) this as well. I think the biggest problem is that if you open a new "window" it doesn't know that you want it to show as a new tab on the same window. I think that this is largely because X doesn't actually know which window opened the new window.

I used the KWin tabs a fair amount, but they didn't fill the same use case as browser tabs. It would be interesting to see this implemented, of course you would also need to seriously patch the browser.

<comment><USER18> It might have been KWin and I misremembered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm probably in the minority because I never use tabs much ---- I prefer multiple separate (overlapping) windows that I can size and arrange as desired, because I often use the information from multiple sites simultaneously. I've seen a lot of others who flip back and forth between two tabs many times, trying to compare them, and have never thought they could open two windows and put them next to each other. Of course, I've been using browsers before they had tabs, so it could be experience, but I wonder if the current "single content" model has severely degraded users' ability to compare and contrast different sources of information.

<comment><USER20> I found myself using separate windows more during my time with a heavily customized Manjaro install, where I used a tiling window manager and had lots of ways of quickly adjusting my window layout with minimal extra information needed.

I think managing windows in say... Windows is terrible (even if macOS manages to be even worse). There are a few third-party applications to sort of emulate tiling WMs, but they're very clunky and software likes to act "surprised" about it and often have weird behaviours. That, and the requirement of window chrome.

That being said, for your specific example of flipping through two tabs, I still find that very useful as a visual diff: get both tabs on the same scroll position and spam Ctrl+Tab and your brain will quickly generate a diff between both. The ideal solution would be actual universal diffing tools, but that's far-fetched.

<comment><USER21> > I think managing windows in say... Windows is terrible

Have you tried Microsoft's FancyZones? I find it works well enough to be worth installing on all my windows computers.

[https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/wiki/FancyZones- Overv...](https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/wiki/FancyZones-Overview)

<comment><USER20> Yes, though I prefer [http://windowgrid.net/](http://windowgrid.net/) since I always keep relayouting windows around, at least when I tried, FZ had me going out of my way to change layouts a little bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like that the author mentioned "goal-oriented". Perhaps intent is another way to phrase it. There are few websites we visit with intent, and others are for just "browsing".

I've been working on Amna as a way to help with intent driven work. Instead of opening a frenzy of tabs, it makes you write what you're working on first, and then provides you a browser or multiple browsers to help you. It's cool because when you have to get back to something, you just click on a task, and everything comes back. E.g right now I'm working on editing a website and sending out a newsletter, those are two completely separate items, and when looked at individually, they only have like 4 tabs each.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthun...](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23780781&ref=producthunt)

</comment><comment><USER22> For some reason once the tab list reaches the other side of the monitor it makes me feel uneasy, so I close down any tabs that I don't need open.

I've never found the need to have more than 8 or so tabs open really - and if I want to compare things, then I just open another browser window and pop it next to it, or on a different monitor.

I'm sure there are very good reason for people that have 50+ tabs open - everyones brain works differently after all - but it makes my brain itch!

<comment><USER23> My uneasiness comes from a realization that too many tabs means that I am not prioritizing tasks. Sure enough, a quick review of the tabs results in most of them being closed since what felt important at the moment was not important in retrospect.

As for people who have 50+ tabs open, I am left wondering if they are going about things in an effective manner. At least in Firefox, it is easy to select a bunch of tabs and bookmark them for future reference. It is also easy to load up all of those bookmarks at once when needed. It is a lot easier to deal with the eight tabs from Project A and the dozen tabs from Project B independently than it is to deal with all twenty at once. (Granted, this could be made easier. The big drawback with bookmarks is that they are a snapshot in time, rather than the reflection of a dynamic project.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I keep my tabs under control and always set FF to start with a fresh session so I loose all tabs every day. Works for me.

The new FF for android though forces a new tab to get to my favorite websites and does not allow for a clean session after close, so I now have 47 open, mostly the same 4 websites :s

<comment><USER17> Currently there is a "clear private data on quit" which you can use. Just uncheck everything but tabs. You have to manually select "Quit" from the menu to trigger it.

Beta versions have the option to close tabs after a set inactivity time which I can't wait to land.

<comment><USER24> Thanx for the tips but I can't wait until hitting the address bar just gives me an overview of my favorite sites again. I don't need any new tabs, I only used them to store thing for later (as in next) reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Their links are dead now, but Tangram browser (2015)* was an Android browser that tried to break up researching on the web into three distinct UI tabs.

1\. Seek: If you give it a search term it'll display the results as list of links

2\. Sort: Any links or images you click on while in _Web_ goes into a list called the Stack. I think it acts like your working memory in the same way that a traditional window of tabs might, and the act of sending links to the stack may be related to the "seeking circuit".

Links in the stack can be clicked on to navigate to, or swiped right to be sent to the _Store_ section.

3\. Store: Links here are saved from the stack as you use the app, and you can create folders.

* [https://imgur.com/gallery/AwBTxlZ](https://imgur.com/gallery/AwBTxlZ) Here's an imgur post I just made with screenshots of the walk-through and a gif of usage. I don't use it anymore because it's been unsupported for years so I'm assuming that it's not exactly secure, but I loved the idea.

</comment><comment><USER26> I hope Mac Safari Teams gets to read the link and HN's comments, they ignore the power users and try to dump down Mac Safari to iOS.

With Safari 14, Fav icon is now on by default, you would think this is great, except the Tab now shrinks to Icon size once you have a dozen or more. Instead of the old Fav Icon + Text Description in the Tab. i.e How Firefox behaves.

They also got rid of Top Site, and instead it is now an iOS Safari design like Start Page. You can tell by their much narrower design compared to your widescreen Mac.

One way to save memory if you have a few dozens or hundreds of Tabs, is to unload them by quitting Safari and Start again with previous session. This way all the Tabs are unloaded by default, they are there sitting idle. Basically just a list of Tabs. ( This also works on Chrome and Firefox )

But if you somehow finger swipe or accidentally press the Show Tab Overview, Safari will reload _every_ single tab you have in the background just to create a Thumbnails for your Tab. If you have 1600 Tabs like some here, you will quickly run out of memory and start paging hundreds of GBs of data to your SSD. Basically shortening your SSD's life span.

And to those questioning why the large number of Tabs. I mean on one hand HN keeps pushing everything should be SaaS and Web _Apps_. Project Planning, Email, Social Media.. etc. On the other you have Research Notes, subject I need to research that instantly open a dozen tabs or Amazon / Online Shopping. Or simple daily RSS where I just Command Click all the news item I want to read. You also have sessions you want to read but you dont have the time right now.

All we really need is a Show All Tab Page as a list instead of Thumbnails once Tab number goes over certain number, with a Search Field at the top that hopefully search the Title and some Meta Data. I dont want to kill my 2015 MacBook Pro. It may be the last MacBook Pro with a decent keyboard judging by the way things are going.

</comment><comment><USER27> Interesting that nobody mentioned not using tabs at all. I adapted the chrome.css of my firefox to hide tabs altogether, so I can get more screen real state. That paired with Vimium allows me to hit T to get a list of all open tabs, which I can then incrementally search. If I want to open a link from history, I hit O instead.

<comment><USER28> How do you deal with websites that hijack your vimium shortcuts (gmail.. or event where it does not work - new tab blank page..)

<comment><USER27> You can deactivate it for sites where it interferes with your workflow. I've become used to switching tabs when it doesn't work, or hitting Cmd+L and searching from the address bar.

To be precise, I use a combination of Ctrl+tab, Cmd+L, T and O, in that order of frequency. I don't mind repeated tabs, so sometimes I'll just do a web search for whatever item I wanted again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Firefox containers, paired with Simple Tab Groups helped me to fix this.

I work on multiple projects and it's common to have multiple Github and alike issues, and other pages open. With Simple Tab Groups, you can select to group and only show tabs that belong to just one group.

It's easy to move tabs between groups. When the tab group is switched, tabs from the other group are offloaded from memory, effectively making them bookmarks.

Pinned tabs (webmail client, a note taking app, and music player in my case) are shown in all tab groups.

I know it helped a lot, because I use Chrome on my Android, and I always have ":D" in my tab button because I have more than 100 tabs open.

</comment><comment><USER30> For anyone else who considered Panorama to be their favorite feature of Firefox before they killed it, the closest replacement for it I've found so far is [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab- gro...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab-groups/). It's not at all perfect from a UI standpoint, but it hasn't lost my tabs or crashed the browser yet.

</comment><comment><USER31> Briefly I was looking for an addon that completely disabled tabs, and removed the tab bar. Every action that would normally open a new tab would instead open a new window.

Since I use a tiling WM, the idea was that this would make it easier to navigate through my tabs, and also keep my attention from branching so often. If I had something that I found useful enough to keep around, I can move it to another virtual desktop.

Unfortunately, I never found such an addon, and I'm still not set on that workflow in general.

<comment><USER32> I use a Chrome extension called "New Tab, New Window".

It doesn't reclaim the screen real estate occupied by the tab bar, but it has the behavior you want.

<comment><USER31> oh, cool. thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> When I am working on a project, e.g. researching a laptop purchase, I will open a new window to act as a container for all those research-related tabs, then when I am done the entire window can be closed.

Vivaldi has a notion of tab-within-tabs, but the UI is very subtle and the tabs^2 very small and fiddly to reach with a mouse, thereby violating Fitt's Law.

<comment><USER34> Firefox used to let you have multiple sets of tabs within one window and cycle between them, completely hiding the inactive ones. Effectively it felt like you had several browser windows within the one window, and picked which window was active.

Looks like this started way back in Firefox 4, and the UI was a bit all over the place, but I liked using it (mainly by keyboard shortcut):

[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2514927/firefox-4-beta...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2514927/firefox-4-beta-4-opens- a-new-panorama.html)

<comment><USER30> Panorama was a firefox killer feature for me. So slick, so useful.

I _really_ enjoyed the ability to switch between different sets of tabs depending on which project I was focusing on at the moment. The Panorama UI made it quick, simple, and painless to do. It seems like most users simply use multiple browser windows, but I've honestly never been able to figure out how that works effectively when you're juggling multiple projects at once: when I'm not working on a particular project, I want it completely gone and (safely) hidden away so that it doesn't distract from my current project.

And then of course Firefox killed the Panorama feature. With the rationalization that no one used the feature and that it would be better implemented as an extension. Except that the extension went unmaintained after a few months. And then later, Firefox broke the APIs that made Panorama possible. The net result being that in the past few years, my productivity in the browser plummeted.

There are various tab management addons for Firefox but almost all of them have the following downsides:

* geared towards manually saving and restoring tabs (I don't want manual anything, I just want to switch between groups of tabs with a couple of clicks) * not actively maintained * buggy (as in, loses tabs for useful content that in some cases took a long time to find)

So far the one I've had the most luck with recently is Tiled Tab Groups ([https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab- gro...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiled-tab-groups/)). I don't use the UI for it, though, unless I'm creating a new group. I just click on the icon in the toolbar and select the group I want. It's still on probation as far as I'm concerned but it hasn't crashed or lost tabs on me yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> +1 for Cluster. I settled for OneTab like many, until it deleted all my tabs. Happened to many people, and is fatal. Then I used Session Buddy. Only wished it had drag and drop, which is when I found Cluster. Drag and drop is important for when you branch out from the group and for weeding and consolidating tabs. Cluster works great with a big screen too which is what I have.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cluster-window- tab...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cluster-window-tab- manage/aadahadfdmiibmdhfmpbeeebejmjnkef?hl=en)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session- buddy/edac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session- buddy/edacconmaakjimmfgnblocblbcdcpbko?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER36> It baffles me to hear how many people use tabs - some vast amount open at once. I open and close pages as I read them, and only have what's relevant to me open at any time. To me this is what Reading List and bookmarks are for.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've also been known to have an absurd amount of tabs across multiple browser windows. Upgrading to a new machine with quite a bit more RAM didn't help either. About once a day, I'll go through, and without looking, close all my browser windows. If I try to go through and choose which tabs to close individually, I get a hoarder mentality where I can find the use in everything. "Actually, maybe I do want to read that article about raising your own livestock", I'd think to myself knowing full well I live in a city.

Worse case scenario, I close something that will take 15 seconds to get back to when I realize I need it.

</comment><comment><USER38> A solution that seems to work for me is keep notes instead. If I am interested in something I stick a link and some brief notes in a markdown document and make sure to include as many descriptive words as possible. That way I can grep my notes folder later to look for the note I made.

For home I keep a separate file per day. For work I have a monolithic "general_notes.md" which I add stuff to sequentially. Generally work notes need to be found quickly, so one file makes sense. For home I am not so time pressured, so grepping through multiple files is an acceptable solution.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've settled on vertical tabs, and use an extension that limits it to the number that fit on my screen without scrolling, which is around 30.

I also no longer use bookmarks. I use the browser's autocomplete of sites I've been to before, and failing that either remember the complete url or give up.

I used to do a lot of bookmarking and a lot of tabs but I found neither really added value for me. If I don't remember the site, I probably don't need to be there.

That said, I don't try to really convince others to do the same (except vertical tabs) cuz I recognize not everyone will find the same value I do in it.

</comment><comment><USER40> I always close my tabs as quickly as possible. "Tabs Zero" so to speak.

I would value a better reopen closed tab feature. Going further back and allowing me specify which closed tab I want back.

<comment><USER17> Isn't this just browser history? I close tabs very aggressively (usually hovering around Tabs Zero if you exclude the always open (like calendar and messaging apps) and regularly fish things out of my history.

<comment><USER18> Browser history currently does not preserve local history. All modern browsers, on the other hand, will preserve history for the tab when you "undo close".

To observe difference, do the following:

\- Go to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24518507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24518507) , click 'parent', close tab, undo close tab, hit back. Where are you?

\- Load the page that was the 'parent', hit back. Where are you?

Each tab is a history tree. The history page, on the other hand, is a linearized chronological list. They are non-equivalent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wouldn't be great to save all the open tabs, and not only restore them (there are tons of browser extensions that do that), but also treat them as a collection to share, restore in a different computer etc? I built that feature into Histre : [https://histre.com/features/save-restore- tabs/](https://histre.com/features/save-restore-tabs/) if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really appreciate the author's take on the issue.

Internet is such an integral part of our lives, and so many people's computer usage is all about just using a browser. Which is why it's interesting that even after about 25 years of the first browser, we have almost the same interface to accessing the INTERNET. And it definitely can be made better!

We should think about solving this problem

</comment><comment><USER43> How about "history as a service"? Your history is encrypted and synced remotely. Every page/tab you've got open, you can add tags and notes. So even if you close everything, you should be able to find what you visited before based on your custom annotations, even if it was years ago. Then, no fear of closing all the tabs.

</comment><comment><USER44> I've noticed that as I've gotten older my tab behaviour has changed. When I was younger, I used to operate an extension that'd kill tabs I hadn't accessed in the last hour. Chrome doesn't really give you the same control over tabs. I've tried firefox but it's noticeably slower in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER45> The many open tabs are related to states between:

1\. bookmarking,

2\. will look at it any minute/day now.

3\. need to read/watch further when I got time.

4\. page no longer available on site.

5\. music to play in the background.

So what a browser mainly needs a a way of bookmarking that also stores some of the state of the page. Like position on page, selection, video/audio-position, saved to local cache.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is why I set my browser to vertical tabs, which makes much more sense, IMO, especially given today's widescreen trend.

I can fit up to about 50 tabs per window before they scroll, which is usually more than enough, and I can still read their text.

And all I had to do to achieve this was type `:set tabs.position right`...

</comment><comment><USER47> Latest safari 14 screwed up tabs. Now when you've got lots and icons enabled the little text snippet disappears so you've got aesthetically looking tab icon. Useless! Must be the worst browser tab experience, especially on iOS.

If there's one company that can unfuck browsers its ironically Microsoft...

</comment><comment> Const-me I close them often, middle-click on the header or Ctrl+W. I also miss opera's hotkey to close all tabs except the active one.

When I'm doing some research where I need lots of them at the same time, I use OneNote or sometimes Word to keep the links, adding a line or 2 of text about that link.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have had around 200 tabs opened in my mobile. This was till I realized that this is just FOMO and is due to lack of focus. I created a strict there should be no more than 5 tabs in the browser at the end of each week. Things have been much better since then.

</comment><comment><USER49> Doesn't Firefox searches through open tabs while you type in the (indeed) awesome bar ? I don't see where the problem is really. Plus the session manager extensions I have tried are not "stiff", they work well.

</comment><comment><USER50> Although not a solution for tab problem, apps like Historyhound may help to some extent getting over that losing all the information fear.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't have a big problem with browser tabs, but I have 60 tabs open in Notepad++ and I feel like I'm losing my goddamn mind.

</comment><comment><USER52> (am taking BASB course) would be great if all my open tabs could be bucketed into the PARA framework somehow...

</comment><comment> onion-soup Chrome exists over a decade yet they still haven't figured out how ctrl+Tab should work.

</comment><comment><USER53> Have been having the same problem but now getting less painful as a quick TL;DR style (many articles start to adopt starting with a TL;DR at the top) read (to get the core ideas) and save useful ones with Diigo (replacing del.icio.us? to achieve read it later) worked well, effectively reduced FOMO.

> NOTE: Session Buddy for Chrome is handy when suffering from power loss (MBP > hang, Linux workstation power cord got kicked off, etc.).</comment>


Ultimate Hacking Keyboard – Introducing Mouse Modules - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsupply.com/ugl/ultimate-hacking-keyboard/updates/addons <comment><AUTHOR> While I've tried to be completely keyboard centric, there are certain functions that can only be done with mouse. This makes this invaluable as I've used laptops / notebooks for such a long time. Using an external mouse seems strange now....

</comment><comment><USER2> cool thing</comment>


Complaining Rewires Your Brain for Negativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/complaining-rewires-your-brain-for-negativity-science-says.html?utm_content=bufferf1901&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> A relatively new revelation for me is that it's practically impossible to "fix" or replace negative thinking. It's like trying to bite your own teeth.

The only way to eradicate chronic negative thinking is by not thinking at all. Shut down the inner monologue completely with regular meditation. It works for me.

EDIT: I use these meditation posters to instill a positive message subconsciously while I clear my conscious mind: [http://zenpusher.com](http://zenpusher.com)

<comment><USER3> you can almost always find a positive aspect in every negative situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work the negativity out by doing physical things which give pleasure, like running and tinkering with electronics.

But by far the most effective is other happy people.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is nothing wrong with negativity, you just have to, like everything- else, take it in moderation. The world both sucks and is awesome at the same time. We are constantly "rewiring" our brain, it isn't rework or wasted effort. There is no one-configuration for your brain. It is. It sits there in your skull and you carry it around and have it experience things.

</comment><comment><USER3> in other words: brain is just like your muscles. If you train your arms you will have strong arms, if you train your legs, you will have strong legs.

If you train to find the downside in every situation, you will get very good at it. But you can also train to find positive aspects in every situation and you will get very good at it too.

<comment><USER6> I grew up when most people totally bought Freudian psychology hook line and sinker. Which tells us we need to let those negative emotions out!!!

My response boiled down somewhat but same as yours, 'What you do. You get good at'</comment></comment>


Show HN: CommentBox.io – a responsible alternative to Disqus - <AUTHOR> https://commentbox.io <comment><USER2> This looks really solid! I will include it in my blog post [0], where I evaluate many different ways and tools to integrate comments on a static site.

I really like that you provide a free plan, but I don't understand, why your pricing depends both on bandwidth _and_ monthly comments published. I would also prefer a flat comments-per-month plan, so I didn't have to pay extra 5$ if I get 51 comments in a single month.

[0] [https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site- comments/](https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Everyone! I'm the maker of CommentBox.io. Many of us who have built blogs in the past have at least considered Disqus or Facebook Comments as their commenting system. Their ubiquity is unquestioned, and the free price can't be beat. But we're giving up trillions of data-points about us in return, strengthening their data-mining, ad-serving machines.

What if providing a great hosted commenting platform was the only goal, and didn't come with strings attached? I built CommentBox.io because I wanted to give users an alternative, and I hope you like it!

<comment><USER3> Finally, something we can use, with a piece of mind that our data is not being sold. I also really enjoy the easy setup this product provides. I was able to create two projects in minutes, which is really good because I have two clients I am building blogs for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm also in the space of "a responsible alternative to Disqus".

My offering is Remarkbox - I've been bootstrapping it for a few years now.

Reference: [https://www.remarkbox.com/](https://www.remarkbox.com/)

<comment><USER5> looks good, but when comparing it to CommentBox.io I have to say that their blurb of "No ads. No Tracking. Just Comments. Hosted commenting that's painless to embed, a pleasure to use, and a breeze to moderate." is _exactly_ what I want. I _think_ you offer the same thing (not sure about the moderation), but they tell me that up front. that being said their $5 per 100 comments is effing scary if anything gets unexpectedly popular.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the feedback. Copy writing is really hard and I will work on getting the proper details upfront.

<comment><USER6> Sorry for the off-topic (and cyberstalking :), but that blog post about Instagram's acquisition by FB? It has not aged well, but would be interesting with an update 6 years later.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the advice. I added an update to the top which reads:

        This post was originally written from a place of jealousy and bitterness.

        Turns out I was wrong about this transaction and for better-or-worse,
        Facebook (and Mark Zuckerburg) solidified their edge as the king of social for the last 6 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent, I was just building a website today which needs a privacy focused version of Disqus. Signed up.

Feedback: Little annoying that it throws you straight to the "Create a project" page, but then disables the "create button" until email is verified. I went and verified my email, but then needed to refresh the page and fill all the details out again to progress. Minor, but annoying (and right in your buy funnel really)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is great, just signed up. A responsible alternative to Disqus has been needed for years. I hadn't been able to find one when I was looking for a hosted comment platform for my static page blog. Consider me a fan!

<comment><USER2> Some Disqus alternatives emerged in the last few years: Muut[0], Remarkbox[1], Hosted Comments[2]. I've also linked my blog post in this thread with some more alternatives for static sites.

[0] [https://muut.com/](https://muut.com/)

[1] [https://www.remarkbox.com/](https://www.remarkbox.com/)

[2] [https://www.hostedcomments.com/](https://www.hostedcomments.com/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for including Remarkbox.

Could you update your blog post to explain that the Free Remarkbox plan does include the ability to moderate comments? This is a change I made a few months back.

<comment><USER2> Done, keep up the good work :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Build a WordPress Plugin and you could get a huge market share with blog writers etc. I know its embeddable using JS but build a WP plugin and could be huge for you. All the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's been the #1 requested feature so far. It's in progress!

<comment><USER9> The plugin itself can be free and it will give you huge marketing exposure with literally millions of people. Use the recommended practice by codex and get it added to wordpress.org. Profit while giving something back to the community. Win-Win. Don't delay it. Get it out there NOW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A very good product, I feel like for a v1 product you are providing us the users with some pretty strong fundamental features needed for a great commenting box system. Keep up the good work, I am excited to see what this product does in the future.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it possible to allow users to add their comments in an annotation format? This would be helpful for lengthy web pages where users can inline their comments within the content itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at the moment, no. But that would be a great addition. Thanks for the suggestion!</comment></comment>


Demystifying Blockchains - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/demystifying-blockchains-8d364872ea4a <comment><USER2> this video is the best explanation for how mining and blockchains work IMO:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC- nXj3Ng4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4)

It's long but very clear and thorough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the share, that's an excellent video. I also found this to be really helpful. [https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core- fi...](https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core- finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-what-is-it)</comment></comment>


Is there any reason to use C++  instead of C,Python,Perl,etc? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29109/is-there-any-reason-to-use-c-instead-of-c-perl-python-etc

<comment><USER2> There are several reasons to use C++: Qt, STL just to name a few.

C++ is much more powerful than C. C is more 'well behaved', surely, but productivity is an important issue.

Especially for desktop applications, and embedded applications, C++ is killer.

And of course your mileage may vary.

But you're welcome trying to run Java in an embedded system (Android hw requirements are way above most embedded systems out there, like set top boxes, network devices, etc)

</comment><comment><USER3> The accepted answer is spot on. The thing is, to write anything of sufficient complexity in C or C++ requires constructing a new language. I mean this in the sense that you see tons of macros in C (look at the Linux source tree for example).

C++ allows you to construct a language (operator overloading, etc.) in a cleaner and safer manner (in my opinion). It also has better performance tools like templates and exceptions.

On the other hand it's not obvious when a C++ construct incurs run-time overhead and if you have a simple application, it can be easier to use C.

</comment><comment><USER4> What a useless discussion. Domain, productivity and environment are the key points on choosing language and not a single feature of a language.</comment>