Open Guide to Equity Compensation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation <comment><USER2> This is generally a nice guide for anyone wanting to get an overview of equity compensation issues affecting startup employees.

There is one error I caught, where it says that "restricted" stock is called "restricted" owing to the fact that securities laws restrict one's right to resell such stock.

While it is true that the securities laws do use this terminology to describe the stock of closely-held companies (and in that sense the use of the term of is accurate), all common stock granted in a closely-held company is restricted in this sense, whether or not it is subject to vesting - that is, it must generally be held for a stipulated period as set forth under Rule 144 before it can be resold by the recipient (Rule 144 technically applies only to public company stock but applies by analogy to that of closely-held stock).

In the startup context, "restricted" stock refers to stock that is granted to a recipient but made subject to a repurchase option by which the company may repurchase it at cost on termination of a service relationship. That is, the stock is subject to a substantial risk of forfeiture until it vests. For tax purposes, such stock is not deemed to be owned, and is not subject to tax, until the risk of forfeiture goes away (i.e., it vests). This in turn creates a substantial tax risk to the holder of the stock because there is an immediate tax on the value of the spread (difference between what was paid for the stock and its fair market value at each vesting point), a risk that is eliminated if a timely 83(b) election is filed within 30 days of grant but not otherwise.

If stock is granted without any vesting requirements (i.e., an outright grant) it is referred to in common startup parlance as an "unrestricted" grant. Such stock is "restricted" stock in the securities law sense that it generally can't immediately be resold or transferred without complying with the Rule 144 tests. But this is a technical issue for the lawyers. For every practical purpose relevant to founders and employees, it can be treated, as the street parlance says, as an "unrestricted" grant because there are no vesting requirements.

Sorry if this is too technical for this thread. But this is an important technical point that is mis-stated in this guide.

A brief observation: when stock options first became widely useful in the startup world in the 1980s, ISOs conferred a huge benefit to employees because you could be assured that you could exercise them when they vested without any practical tax risk whatever. Over the years, however, AMT, though first enacted in the 1960s as a "millionaire's tax" to ensure that the wealthy could not easily manipulate tax deductions to avoid paying any tax whatever, evolved into a general catch-all tax that is now used to fill serious deficiencies in the U.S. tax code and that now ensnares many people making pretty average incomes. Once that happened, it effectively killed many of the once-very- special tax advantages of ISOs for employees and turned ISOs into a form of equity compensation that is only slightly more favorable for employees and is often a real disadvantage (for example, the notorious 90-day tail for exercising vested options on termination of employment derives directly from tax-code rules imposed as special restrictions on ISOs alone but today functions to entrap many employees into having to stay in undesirable employment situations far beyond what they intended on pain of losing their vested options altogether if they quit).

A final theoretical observation on best types of grants in order of preference: first, unrestricted grants (here, you own it all and can't theoretically ever lose it and you usually have zero tax risk while trying to hold for long-term capital gains); second, restricted stock at a cheap price with a timely 83(b) election (while it vests, and you can forfeit it, the tax picture is near-ideal in giving you a path to long-term capital gains tax treatment with no landmines along the way); third, ISOs with a low strike price and an early exercise privilege (with these, you exercise early, file an 83(b) election, and in effect get the equivalent of a restricted stock grant); fourth, ISOs or NQOs without a 90-day tail on termination (these give you maximum flexibility to trying to work around or at least postpone potentially detrimental tax events while being able to wait as long as 10 years before being at risk of losing vested options); fifth, and worst of all from a tax standpoint, RSUs (which really are a super-high-value startup's way of granting very nice bonuses to employees in situations where the very high price of its stock makes it tax-prohibitive to use any other more favorable equity compensation vehicle). Of course, this is theoretical only and you get what you get in the real world depending on whether you are a founder, an early-stage employee, or a later-stage employee and depending as well on what is negotiated with investors concerning any restrictions they may insist upon as conditions to their investments.

Just a few thoughts on what is, overall, a nice guide to equity compensation.

<comment><USER3> > This guide applies to companies in the United States.

Can anyone from Germany (or EU) provide some information on how much of this is applicable to Germany?

<comment><USER4> Someone created an issue to add non-US content: [https://github.com/jlevy/og- equity-compensation/issues/26](https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity- compensation/issues/26)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is Josh, of the authors of the Guide. First, thanks to everyone for the comments and feedback.

Also, please remember this is a GitHub project for a reason! This guide has a lot of shortcomings as it's very new, but our goal for this is to be a "living" guide, not yet another read-and-comment blog post. After commenting here, please consider filing an issue or PR with questions or suggested improvements. A community as talented as this one knows vastly more collectively than any individual authors. We can then discuss and work to get suggestions incorporated.

<comment><USER5> > Also, please remember this is a GitHub project for a reason!

Totally understand. I've upvoted your comment, hope everyone else does as well so that people can see this first before expending energy on a comment that should have simply been a PR (or at least a filed issue).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Love HN discussions but also want to see corrections and comments work their way back to the original doc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Kudos for putting this together. The guide is long, but worthwhile if you're going to be in this situation.

The employer-employee relationship is generally relatively straightforward if you're being paid in regular income/on contract: It's easy to put a value on what you're being paid because that is part of the contract. When you're being granted equity, things get complicated because now you have an ownership interest or something that's economically similar to this.

In order to value this, you have to understand the capital structure and corporate structure of your company. This can get complex, as the guide shows.

Of course, even if you fully understand these principles, the value of your equity stake may not be certain because the value of your company is not certain; but it will help you answer the question: _How much will my equity stake be worth if my company is sold for X dollars?_

If you don't fully understand how your equity value ties to the company's value, you could end up like the employees of Good Technology:

[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-23/good- techno...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-23/good-technology- wasn-t-so-good-for-employees)

<comment><USER6> As an addendum: An example of capital structure. (Based on debt capital rather than equity capital, but just an example)

You and Fred have a common friend, Bob. Bob wants to start a new business and needs to borrow money.

First, Bob borrows $10,000 from Fred and later on, Bob borrows $20,000 from you.

Some months go by, and the business isn't doing well; Bob (or rather, his company) eventually files for bankruptcy, listing $6,000 in assets. How should this remaining value be distributed among you and Fred, which both have a claim to it because of the debt owed to you?

One way to divide up the remaining amount would be in a _pro rata_ method: Bob borrowed $30,000 total, 1/3rd of which was from Fred and 2/3rds of which was from you. So, you should get $4,000 and Fred should get $2,000. (This is known as _pari passu_ I believe)

However, this isn't the only way things could be done. One could say that because Fred lent money first, he should get _paid back in full_ before you do. Or perhaps one could argue the opposite.

You could argue back and forth about what the most "fair" way to divide up the assets is, but in reality what matters is what the rules outlined in capital structure specify. They should define who gets paid out first, which debt is subordinate to other debt, etc. (And even then, it's not always entirely clear, as evidenced by lengthy bankruptcy proceedings at large companies)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although I'm from the Netherlands, I read these articles with great interest. Some wisdoms are transferable (e.g., equity being worth only as much as the company is valuated at right now, rather than what it might be in the future), but many also aren't, such as specific ways in which options, equity etc. are taxated. Are there any "guides for humans" out there that are specifically aimed at us Europeans? (Or, even more specific, us Dutchies?)

<comment><USER8> Or even us polite, frozen neighbours! It's in the news more lately because the newly elected government says it wants to change some of the tax rules around stock options.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps splitting the content into universal and US-only advice would allow other (more knowledgeable) individuals to build on the universal advice and give more location-dependent advice separately?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a bit messy to do this, but yes. See comment above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The private company I work for issues stock "promises" on fancy certificates. Each certificate claims to be worth X shares for an estimated value of Y.

Clearly they are not stock options, nor RSUs nor anything fancy or official like that. They are just fancy certificates with unverifiable claims. Is there any legal or financial value to these things? Is there a name for these types of pseudo-stocks? Where in the linked article is this discussed?

<comment><USER10> LOL. I have a coffee mug that says "World's Best Dad" at home (it looks very fancy). Does that mean I am really the best?

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of Will Ferrell in Elf:

> You did it! Congratulations! World's best cup of coffee! Great job, > everybody! It's great to meet you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Stock options are super-complicated, there are many gotchas, and there can be serious tax implications. Like having to pay taxes on "profits" from exercising options before having the revenue from selling them, which may prevent options from being exercised. I think all these drawbacks often make stock options have near zero value in the eyes of employees. Which makes it not that fit for purpose, which is supposedly to motivate your employees and align their interests with those of the company.

Is there a better way? If you run a startup and you want to achieve the same ends of providing a form of compensation that's tied to the future success of the company, but doesn't involve immediate outlay of funds, how would you structure it? It should be as simple and straightforward as possible with a minimum of gotchas, and avoid tax implications as much as possible. I'm kind of surprised YCombinator hasn't innovated anything in this space, like they did with "the Safe"[1].

What about something along the lines of making a pool of X% of the gross revenue of the company each year, and dividing that among all the creative employees fairly, and adjusted by how many months of the year the employee was at the company. Then just paying that out every year as the end of year bonus.

[1] [https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a- replaceme...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-the-safe-a-replacement- for-convertible-notes)

<comment><USER13> It's better for a growth business to use profits to grow, not as compensation. Plans like you describe are what typical profit-sharing bonuses look like in more mature companies (or ones that aren't planning to ever exit).

The easiest fix is to set the expiry after you leave the company to ~10 years rather than 90 days. In that case, you have your entire tenure + 10 years for the company to have some kind of exit.

If that were the case, you could simply exercise at the point when the stock was liquid and you would never have to pay tax before then. There would still be reasons to early-exercise (to get the clock ticking on capital gains), but that's something that incurs risk -- you never need to do it if you don't want to (and you don't lose the options if you don't)

<comment><USER12> Well, one could simply modify it to giving points to the employees and delaying the payouts until the company can afford it, then doing it by points so that those who've been at the company longer get more.

Anyway the details can be anything allowable by law, the question is can we do better than stock options. I feel the answer to that must be yes.

<comment><USER13> Many companies are never profitable before exit. Stock is already this point system where we call the payouts dividends. Growth companies don't pay dividends and they wouldn't want to pay point-payouts either.

If you want this, you can have it by joining a company with a profit-sharing plan. It's fairly common.

<comment><USER12> Typically movie stars negotiate a tiny % of gross revenue in their contract. They used to negotiate for % of profit, but studios got very good at fiddling with the numbers for the film until a successful movie had nearly no profit.

I don't see why that can't be done for software engineers. That is essentially dividends though, and it's obvious why growth companies don't want to do that. But it's also not clear that stock options have the intended motivating effect (it's not even clear that increases in salary or some kind of profit sharing would have the intended effect either[1])

I think it's clear that stock options are sub-optimal for the intended purpose, but it's not obvious to me how to fix that.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In seed stage companies, what is the disadvantage of enabling your employees to early exercise and bonus-ing or loaning them the capital to do so?

The advantage seem clear: employees can get 25-35% more equity at effectively no cost difference to the company.

<comment><USER15> I don't know if there is a way to avoid this issue with some lawyering but loaning money for options was apparently somewhat common in the 90s tech bubble. [1]

Unfortunately what happened was that when the bubble burst, and many companies went under, the board and management resigned, leaving the company in the mercy of creditors. These creditors sometimes when after these employee loans and they had to pay them back while the stock they received was worthless.

[1]: [https://www.fenwick.com/publications/pages/playing-with- fire...](https://www.fenwick.com/publications/pages/playing-with-fire-loans- to-exercise-options.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shameless plug: I'm an engineer at eShares, and we have been making a big push to bring transparency to employee compensation. Last month we published a guide for option grants, which includes information on taxes, vesting, expirations, etc. Another good source to help figure out what you are agreeing to.

[https://blog.esharesinc.com/understand-your-options- equity-1...](https://blog.esharesinc.com/understand-your-options- equity-101-for-startup-employees-part-1-6eaea8cfcb4#.odexoltyr)

</comment><comment><USER17> What's the best way to find a tax professional that can help with one's specific situation? I see references to Teaspiller all over Quora, but it's apparently shut down :(

Any advice here?

<comment><USER8> Check on personal finance sites for references for Financial Planners or Financial Advisors. If you only want tax advice and not investing/budgeting/estate planning, that should be cheaper. (I looked on reddit.com/r/peronsalfinance, but didn't immediately see any listings of advisors.)

EDIT: removed redundant phrasing

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone here had phantom stock options? I would love to see more details on how they tend to work, and if they have actually paid off for people.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity- compensation/issues/31](https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity- compensation/issues/31)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> From the guide:

"RSUs are less attractive than options from a tax point of view because you cannot make an 83(b) election with respect to an RSU."

I'm fairly sure this is incorrect. Every other guide that I've read (just google RSUs 83b) says that you can file an 83B with RSUs and I've personally filed 83Bs with RSUs multiple times.

<comment><USER20> I am fairly sure that you are incorrect. There are no consequences to filing an 83B with RSUs - you can send it to the IRS, and you will get no response back; they will not send you a letter that says "you did wrong".

The question to ask in this case is: later in the life of your employment with the company, when settlement happened and you received stock in exchange for your RSUs, did you owe tax immediately on that stock? If you did, then you filing an 83B was meaningless.

<comment><USER19> I always get responses back saying that the 83B was accepted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thanks for this.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is the first time I've seen a github used for non programming purpose

<comment><USER23> It has happened before. Some examples are:

\- German federal law and regulations: [https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze](https://github.com/bundestag/gesetze)

\- DMCA takedown notices: [https://github.com/github/dmca](https://github.com/github/dmca)

\- Map of US districts: [https://github.com/benbalter/congressional- districts](https://github.com/benbalter/congressional-districts)

\- a novel: [https://github.com/JJ/hoborg](https://github.com/JJ/hoborg)

\- a well-known textbook on some niche (homotopy type theory) in mathematics: [https://github.com/HoTT/book](https://github.com/HoTT/book)

\- fonts: [https://github.com/theleagueof](https://github.com/theleagueof)

\- Gregorian chants: [https://github.com/CMAA/nova-organi- harmonia](https://github.com/CMAA/nova-organi-harmonia)

Main collaboration functions on a 'repository' (or any set of data / documents that somehow belong together) such as forking and branching are not just only relevant to programming.

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER24> Also a couple of my favorites:

\- Remote job information: [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

\- Liberland constitution: [https://github.com/liberland/constitution](https://github.com/liberland/constitution)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice. Thank you.

Now is there anywhere a tool to make this readable after print?

<comment><USER26> A technique I've used in the past that usually works well:

Right-click the page and hit "Inspect Element". Scan through elements, looking for the ones that only refer to the header or footer stuff you don't want. Click them and hit "delete" on your keyboard.

Find the container that defines the width of the content you're viewing. Use the style editor to reset it to 100% (often, it's just disabling whatever width setting they're using, rather than explicitly setting it to 100%).

You should be able to CTRL+P from there and get yourself a PDF out of it. Then you can do whatever you want to the PDF. I think you could also just save the raw HTML, and the browser will preserve your edits.

<comment><USER25> This is a brilliant idea. Thank you.

<comment><USER27> If you are using Firefox, you can also use the Add-on "HackTheWeb" [1] that automates the suggestion by moron4hire.

Right-click on the page, and select "HackTheWeb". Whatever page element you hover your pointer over will be given a red border, and then you use hotkeys to perform actions.

To do the same thing as the example above, it would be: right-click on page, select HackTheWeb, point mouse at the content you want, hit "w" (widen) until you have the whole section you want, and then "i" (isolate) to remove everything else. From there you're ready to print to PDF.

For some reason I had to be viewing the actual README.md file, not looking at GitHub's auto-readme-display.

HackTheWeb also lets you view the element's javascript, show the xpath of element, and convert text to black on white (very useful for content whose text and background colors don't work well together).

I've used it for several years, and wouldn't want to give it up. It's based on the old Aardvark add-on that did the same kind of thing, but Aardvark wasn't updated as Firefox matured and eventually no longer worked.

[1] [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjl3vCB5aLKAhXGtBoKHRBTDrIQFggdMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Faddons.mozilla.org%2Fen- US%2Ffirefox%2Faddon%2Fhack-the- web%2F&usg=AFQjCNGrYsAQqb0NXBIAENCELikb3TP1tg&sig2=VJ31G1EsDqRMIHqathCNXA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I spent $10k to exercise options last year. What are the chance that I at least break even?

<comment><USER29> impossible to answer without knowing any other information.

<comment><USER28> Are there general statistics? Like x% of companies don't pay back their investors.

<comment><USER30> Impossible to know without knowing anything else about the company. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Personalized Product Discovery - <AUTHOR> http://www.photab.com

<comment><USER2> I am going to need more than this to give you my email; there's not enough here to keep me intrigued.

What's so special about photab that I would want to sign up? In the current state I am not feeling enough of a compulsion to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey thanks for replying. i just realized the same. In fact, i don't need email ids, i just wanted to know if people would be interested in a better way of product discovery and comparison in gadgets space. i will be redesigning and adding social plugins on the landing page itself.</comment></comment>


United States should prepare to build a prototype fusion power plant, panel says - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/united-states-should-prepare-build-prototype-fusion-power-plant-panel-says <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683230)

<comment><USER3> Headline should be: "fusion researchers hire PR firm."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I strongly object to the language that's commonly used around fusion research. Much of it unfairly frames the discussion around what would be a world- changing technology if realized.

For example, in this article: "the controversial ITER project, a hugely expensive fusion reactor..." There is no doubt this is an expensive project, estimated at ~$20B total cost ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding)) However, in terms of possible upsides or even compared to other projects it's _cheap_. Boston's "Big Dig" was $24B for example: [https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/...](https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/07/10/true- cost-of-big-dig-exceeds-24-billion-with-interest-officials-determine) Which would you rather have? A 1.5m tunnel, or an energy source that would change the future of human civilization?

I am being somewhat unfair here since the Big Dig was a case study of mismanagement and cost overruns, but as a society we should be willing to spend significant resources on world changing research instead of say $22.5B on three new boats: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt- class_destroyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer)

All that being said, the way forward is probably to figure out ways to make fusion related projects smaller in scale and cost. Then multiple attempts can proceed in parallel without all the organizational and governmental overhead. More on that here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4)

<comment><USER5> >Which would you rather have? A 1.5m tunnel, or an energy source that would change the future of human civilization?

oh come on we have more important stuff to spend money on like the 1 trillion annual spent making sure Boomers are comfortable on social security, or 90 billion on food stamps.

/s

It's depressing how we live hand to mouth rather than investing in the future. We could solve the majority of the problems facing humanity permanently by investing a fraction of our budget into these areas.

Health care is a supply and demand problem that can be solved with AI- Berkley already has AI surgical bots that can suture intestines better than a human. Imagine being able to do most routine surgeries with bots that share, learn, and improve from every surgery done on the planet?

Global warming and energy production in general could be solved by fusion

<comment><USER6> > Global warming and energy production in general could be solved by fusion

Yes and no. I think you know the yes. The no is because the damage we've done has delayed effects. To _solve_ it you need to do a ton of sequestration. But I also HIGHLY encourage funding of fusion and I think it is a necessary step forward that we can't ignore.

<comment><USER7> Having lots of cheap energy from fusion would definitely help scale up sequestration efforts.

The last couple decades have clearly shown that the limit on humanity's capabilities is the amount of electricity we can command.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe rather than spending on government projects they could lend to promising startups in the space eg the MIT SPARC one [https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/280265-mit-plans-new- fus...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/280265-mit-plans-new-fusion- reactor-that-could-actually-generate-power)

<comment><USER9> It's not clear that the technology is far enough along to the point where startups could be profitable. Sometimes it takes a big government funded project to lay the groundwork (e.g. the space race).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Didn't Lockheed say they had a working fusion reactor design a couple of years ago? What ever came of that?

<comment><USER11> I think they were supposed to show a prototype by now, but obviously that hasn't happened yet.

<comment><USER12> Strange the SEC didn't get involved. Promise of a working fusion reactor is HUGE. Yet they harassed Musk over some tweets.

<comment><USER6> Lockheed didn't promise an exact stock value and directly manipulate a market. The difference is fine, but it is distinct.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best examples of DIY face shields? - <AUTHOR> I see a lot of homegrown solutions appearing with different people and companies designing and making solutions. Apple is making face shields[1] and some are even making ventilators from scuba masks [2]. What are the best solutions you've seen or perhaps used? Especially open source ones that could be copied by others around the world?
Asking for a friend who'd like to do something and has the tools and materials but limited design skills.
1. https://www.dezeen.com/2020/04/09/apple-coronavirus-face-shield/
2. https://www.designboom.com/design/engineers-hack-scuba-masks-to-use-as-ventilators-03-26-2020/ <comment><USER2> Maybe is too simple, but this approach:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNjpH5lBZ8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNjpH5lBZ8w)

go to around 1:09 in the video seems to me very practical if one wears glasses, otherwise one could use a similar approach with el-cheapo protective glasses or "over glasses" safety glasses.

From experience with wearing "magnifying lenses" for little works with high precision _like_ these:

[https://rukminim1.flixcart.com/image/832/832/magnifier/a/h/n...](https://rukminim1.flixcart.com/image/832/832/magnifier/a/h/n/1-2x-1-8x-2-5x-3-5x-123456-millennium- magnifier-headband-led-original-imae7kynkpy5sxeq.jpeg?q=70)

the front strap is very uncomfortable/sweaty, so the issue, besides the design (and making DIY one similar to Apple's one but with more standard round holes is easy) is with the material that must be anallergic and prevent or absorb sweat.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just gave 35 of these NIH-approved ones to an ER doctor yesterday who was quite happy to receive them: [1]

Note that to make them actually comfortable you'll need button hole elastic as well as foam padding (I used 1/2 inch by 1/4 inch foam window seal). This design is superior to the Prusa and Apple ones because it adds additional protection at the top to keep particles from floating down onto your face. It takes longer to print, though, so the Prusa people don't like it as much.

A few other notes:

The face shield shortage is disappearing pretty quickly in the US. From conversations with a few healthcare workers, it sounds like there won't be much of a shortage for these by the end of the month. What they really need are surgical-grade N95 masks and certified ventilators.

Please don't try to make DIY ventilators. See [2] for an explanation of why a lot of these well-meaning projects do more harm than good.

Another thing that's easy to make are surgical mask strap extenders to go behind your head so your ears aren't constantly strained by the elastic. Example in [3]. I gave these to a few healthcare workers who requested them. Personally, I don't think they actually work that well on the mask I have without using hair pins to hold them in place (they should really have a rubberized coating to keep them from sliding down your head), but they're still better than nothing.

[1] [https://3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013359](https://3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013359)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vLPefHYWpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vLPefHYWpY)

[3] [https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4265066](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4265066)</comment>


It's 2am. Do you know if your SSL certs are throwing warnings? - <AUTHOR>

I am testing my site on BrowserShots (no affiliation) and my success rate is not high:

  http://browsershots.org/https://secure.sproutrobot.com/
 I don't have any warnings on most of the bleeding edge browsers, but some notable browsers (Firefox 4 on Windows XP, Firefox 3.6 on Ubuntu, bleeding edge Konqueror) throw up nasty warnings. I mean, Firefox 4 on Windows is a pretty huge slice of the market.
How are other folks doing on this score? Have you actually tested your site widely? I've tried GoDaddy SSL and the results were even worse. I'm currently using a cert from NameCheap, but I'm considering shelling out the $400/year to get a Versign certificate just to make this headache go away.
I'm getting tired of trying certs and finding out they suck. I've heard GeoTrust is as good as Verisign (at $150/year) but I've heard people say that about GoDaddy too. It's hard to know who to trust. Pun intended.
In addition, I have no fricking clue how to debug what's actually causing these warnings, because a) I don't actually have access to test machines to see what's going on. And b) I don't know the first thing about how SSL chaining actually works. I could spend a week learning about SSL and HTTP requests, debugging and checking various browsers, but if I'm going to spend that time I might as well just buy a fricking VeriSign cert and spend that time coding.
There have been previous threads about this, but it seems like a lot of people's testing only went as far as "works for me!" I'd welcome experience from people who have actually dug deep into the situation with root certificates in various browsers.
And I haven't even started looking at mobile browsers yet..... <comment><USER2> You seem to be having chain issues. Consult back with your SSL provider for documentation on how to install any intermediate certificates.

I use the following to help diagnose SSL problems:

[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssldb/analyze.html?d=secure.sproutro...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssldb/analyze.html?d=secure.sproutrobot.com%2F)

[http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl- checker.html#hostname=secure.s...](http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl- checker.html#hostname=secure.sproutrobot.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I do seem to be having chain issues. But what exactly those issues are, or how to debug them is not clear to me. I cat'd my chained certificates into my .pem file before I sent it to Heroku. So I'm not skipping that step, although I must be doing it wrong.

This is a good example of something that would probably be easier to debug if I was running my own server. Then I could just open up the nginx.conf and make sure things are set right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I think I figured it out. I was cat'ing the chained certificates in before stripping the password from the .pem. Needed to do it at the end, just before sending it to Heroku. Frickin' A.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you have a link from a https page to a http page, including say to twitter, you will get a warning. Once you are on your https page, if you go back to your other pages, they will also show up using https, so it gets that much harder.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://browsershots.org/https://secure.sproutrobot.com/></comment>


GDPR makes most users "more persistently trackable" - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/02/does-gdpr-even-boost-privacy.html <comment><USER2> "Most users" would be those that opt-in to cookies.

It should be mentioned that dark UI-patterns to obfuscate the possibility to opt-out are forbidden by GDPR. As well as not having opt-out selected as default choice. The popups are annoying, but I think it is worthwhile to have a reminder about what websites try to track you and that the ad industry is still encroaching on users.</comment>


US govt announced emergecny as Facebook went down - <AUTHOR> http://www.themukt.com/2014/08/01/us-govt-announced-emergecny-facebook-went/

<comment><USER2> [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/emergency?s=t](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/emergency?s=t)

</comment><comment><USER3> Possibly the worst piece of allegedly humorous writing I've seen this year</comment>


How To Migrate Linux Servers Across Cloud Providers - <AUTHOR> http://www.619cloud.com/blog/migrate-linux-servers-across-cloud-providers/ <comment><USER2> Reading about efforts like this makes me glad we write a half-page spec file and build an RPM for each service we've created. We're finally free of servers whose configuration is a hand-crafted artwork needing this sort of attention. We just "yum install" on a fresh machine (or a xen instance in dev or qa), smoke test, and call it a day.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a horrible idea.

<comment><USER4> Why, in particular, do you think so?

On a one off basis, it sounds like a good idea.

I do think in the long run you're better off to use a build process/documentation to allow rebuilding of hosts. This is especially true if you're running 100's of instances.

<comment><USER3> Exactly what you're saying.

If you need to maintain multiple hosts then use proper tooling, be it puppet, chef, FAI, git, virtualization, or even a homegrown set of _bootstrap_ scripts.

Rsync'ing random stuff from one host to another will hardly end well, except for truly one-off stuff that gets closely reviewed during the process.

File location and contents vary wildly, even between slightly different [package] versions of the same distribution. Trying to automate that stuff without even looking at what the package manager of the respective hosts has to say is a recipe for disaster.

Sure, your script may work today right after you tested it with two near identical RedHat hosts. I promise it will fail badly when you try to run it again 6 months from now. Or rather, it will probably run nearly fine, but bury some interesting surprises for you to find out about later...</comment></comment></comment>


Unraveling the Mindset of Victimhood - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mindset-of-victimhood/ <comment><USER2> > While splitting the world into those who are "saints" versus those who are > "pure evil" may protect oneself from pain and damage to their self-image, it > ultimately stunts growth and development and ignores the ability to see the > self and the world in all of its complexities.

I have seen this so many times in technical discussions that is not even funny. "I am right and everybody else are idiots" is a disease in many software companies.

Many technical solutions are trade offs. But creating absolute categories "solution A is perfect" and "solution B is bad" many engineers protect their egos and their own technical preferences. And that stalls growth, their own and the growth of the team.

> Those with a greater tendency for interpersonal victimhood also had a > greater negative memory bias, recalling more words representing offensive > behaviors and feelings of hurt

In technical environments, I have seen it related to bugs. The victimhood mindset tends to blame others for any production problems. And any try to bring an open and candid discussion is seen as an aggression. No technical review is possible as criticism of code or design is seen as just personal criticism and violently disregarded.

In the best companies I have worked for, teams are doers open to discuss designs without taking offense. All proposed solutions are understood as a trade-off between different options and that personal preferences may create bias on looking into problems. There is a growth mindset and are great companies were to learn and grow yourself. There is no evils or saints, but colleagues trying their best to solve a problem.

<comment><USER3> The line between good and evil runs straight through the heart of every man. The lack of charity to other people's souls (cancel culture), combined with excessive charity to their incompetence (e.g. declining standards for customer service, managers beating around the bush instead of calling out sloth, etc.), seems to be the modern trend unfortunately.

<comment><USER4> > The lack of charity to other people's souls (cancel culture)

How is "cancel culture" a lack of charity to other people's souls? How is it that largely powerless individuals who choose to embargo, sanction or ignore the powerful is cast as a "lack of charity" or a paucity of mercy? It is a backlash against the largely impersonal powers that hold sway over us; the bland and ubiquitous media, corrupt political powers, and empty-headed celebrity culture that fails to live up to the standards it expects in everyone else.

Merely because Fox News has given it a catchy title, does not mean it is new, unwelcome or a degradation in standards - it just means that the rich and powerful are afraid of it.

<comment><USER3> Destroying someone's life for having the wrong opinions is not charitable to their humanity. It is not how America was until very recently. Sure, people have always been vilified for their views, but they've most times been able to continue making their private living nonetheless. Deviations from that, like the McCarthy Era, are rightly seen as wrongful failures to live up to this ideal.

As for the "rich and powerful", do you mean high school kids making inappropriate jokes that become national news stories, blue collar guys being fired for not being up-to-speed on 2020 cosmopolitan sensibilities, or anyone who says a single negative thing about BLM riots?

<comment><USER4> "Cancel Culture" is the practice of naming and shaming PUBLIC figures and organisations and so your comment is a wee bit off the mark. You can't cancel a subscription to an individual, a high school kid who makes an off-colour remark is not a product.

By linking the public disapprobation of people who make statements (such as that scooter-driving gentleman in Florida who yelled "White Power" or the angry young schoolboy who decided to stare down a native American who would dare to try to defuse his incipient argument with some agitators) with companies who are being boycotted for actively funding anti-LGBTQ lobbying groups (for instance) is an attempt by politicians, companies and media groups to apply a chilling effect to speech. People _should_ be able to boycott those companies who attempt to impact their lives; celebrities are not owed our respect, nor politicians the money they steal from public coffers.

<comment><USER5> It is very much NOT limited to public figures and is pervasive in large companies. Individuals get effectively blackballed because of disagreeing with the mob

<comment><USER4> > It is very much NOT limited to public figures and is pervasive in large > companies.

That is not cancel culture. That is something else. Cancel culture, by definition, requires something that can be cancelled. Equivocating the two issues is an attempt to make public figures, organisations, etc less accountable.

<comment><USER5> Whelp... Go ahead and check your definitions, because it absolutely applies to individuals in a private space

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the article maybe does an ok job with the expectations set by the main title, but then there's this subtitle: "social science points to a better way" and the article totally flops on that end with nothing more than an end paragraph blurb of less-than-insightful opinions from the article's author.

edit:

Also FTA:

"the researchers found that an anxious attachment style was a particularly strong antecedent of the tendency for interpersonal victimhood."

And from another comment I posted below:

"When a child feels safe, seen, and soothed by their parent in a consistent way, they are able to form a secure attachment to that parent. However, when a parent is available and attuned at times and insensitive or intrusive at others, the child is more likely to experience an anxious ambivalent attachment pattern"[1]

This is a valid and important area of inquiry and I wish the article did a better job on this front.

[1][https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/compassion- matters/2...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/compassion- matters/201904/how-anxious-attachment-style-affects-relationships)

<comment><USER7> I think it gives as much hint as you can without causing a massive wave of outrage:

>But there's the thing: If socialization processes can instill in individuals a victimhood mindset, then surely the very same processes can instill in people a personal growth mindset. What if we all learned at a young age that our traumas don't have to define us? That it's possible to have experienced a trauma and for victimhood to not form the core of our identity? That it's even possible to grow from trauma, to become a better person, to use the experiences we've had in our lives toward working to instill hope and possibility to others who were in a similar situation? What if we all learned that it's possible to have healthy pride for an in-group without having out- group hate?

Basically, focus on your strong sides rather than weaknesses. Find people that make you happy and spend time with them doing things that make all of you happy, instead of focusing your attention on those who offend you. Pretty sound advice, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's vindicating to read that Scientific American has finally used science to describe the out-group. Read it and weep, out-group!

Kidding aside, I have been guilty of at least one of these more than once in life, and it's really a question of whether it's a defining characteristic, and to whom. Treat it like any other cognitive bias, and recognize that noticing it in others doesn't protect us from it.

</comment><comment><USER9> For people interested in philosophy, I'd say the concepts of "Ressentiment" and "Slave Morality" from Nietzsche (from the late 1800's no less!) are super relevant today and can be applied to the left or right political camps.

> _The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of > resentment becoming creative and giving birth to values—a resentment > experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the proper outlet of > action, are forced to find their compensation in an imaginary revenge. While > every aristocratic morality springs from a triumphant affirmation of its own > demands, the slave morality says "no" from the very outset to what is > "outside itself," "different from itself," and "not itself": and this "no" > is its creative deed. This volte-face of the valuing standpoint—this > inevitable gravitation to the objective instead of back to the subjective—is > typical of "resentment": the slave-morality requires as the condition of its > existence an external and objective world, to employ physiological > terminology, it requires objective stimuli to be capable of action at > all—its action is fundamentally a reaction._

—Nietzsche in _The Genealogy of Morals_ (source: [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52319/52319-h/52319-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52319/52319-h/52319-h.htm))

Here is a video comparing Nietzsche's "Ressentiment" and Dostoevsky "Underground Man": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgmgI08iIAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgmgI08iIAg)

<comment><USER10> This is really quite interesting and I think speaks to the character of a lot of supposedly political views.

In the war of ideas, I think it helps to classify them simply as 'antagonist' and 'normative' instead of anything else.

When people are young and they don't have power, they may feel aggrieved (possibly legitimately so, or internalise the grievances of other groups), or even simply want to 'rage against the machine' (i.e. what they perceive to be 'a machine'). This aggression may be creative, but I think often it's a visceral intellectualism. It's a 'challenge to power' through a vector of ideas and ideals. But the vector is actually not as important as the motivating impetus ... which is the 'challenge' not the 'ideal'. But this mentality does not at all lend well to the ugly, grinding, material reality of power and real management of systems.

Castro had some legit things to say about Cuba pre-revolution. But what happened when he actually took charge? A few nice things, but then it went pretty quickly into despotism.

If your identity is caught up in antagonism and you live and breathe lofty, impractical slogans that never actually have to be tested because they're never going to be actually tested, what happens when you _do_ get power, and then have to deal with the bureaucracy, unions, police, very legitimate violent threats (internal and external), geopolitical shenanigans, poverty, yada yada? Any ideologue who actually tried to do a good, responsible job, would be considered a total sellout by his own vanguard.

It's odd because often real change does come from some of the more legitimately aggrieved voices ... at the same time, I'm not sure if waves of revolutionary leaders are able to handle 'the 99% of the rest of the job'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One important point that the article totally misses is the economic part.

Someone with a personal growth mindset very likely spend most of their time minding their own business, whatever that would be.

A person with a victim mentality could be an order of magnitude more socially active. They feel that they are fighting for justice and changing the world to the better, so they would spend countless hours trying to argue their point. And in the world where the views and clicks translate into advertisement dollars, this creates a very unhealthy incentive. Literally, a permanently unhappy person obsessed with pouring their unhappiness on others generates more advertising revenue than a happier person spending their evening cooking or playing video games with their friends.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have meditated quite a bit on victimhood. In many cases I think it is justified. But fundamentally it is a historiographic view of the world, not an operative one. It is dominated by stasis - the way things were - and not the way things ought to be. This is not to malign those who are victims. But I suspect that most therapists dealing with such victims seek to impart an operative view of the world: one with plans, growth, change - not stasis.

<comment><USER12> Individuals benefit greatly from developing personal agency and responsibility, whatever their circumstance.

Society at large must do systemic and holistic analysis (on multiple scales, e.g. neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries), which is where various forms of oppression can be most clearly identified and addressed. Of course, grassroots efforts can and often do lead the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if a part of this mindset can be explained by the inability, i.e., lack of skills, to deal with confrontation. We all have to confront people and life circumstances at various points in our lives in order to grow, and if we don't have the skills to deal with them, fight or flight kicks in. The latter, overtime, result in a gradual buildup of low self-esteem, resentment, and anger.

Dealing with confrontations is a skill that can be learned, like most of the life skills out there.

</comment><comment><USER14> I found the article very enlightening. It is useful to have proper names for the phenomena that I have witnessed in others and partially myself.

The conclusion gives some good ideas how to fix interpersonal victimhood

> What if we all learned at a young age that our traumas don't have to define > us? That it's possible to have experienced a trauma and for victimhood to > not form the core of our identity? That it's even possible to grow from > trauma, to become a better person, to use the experiences we've had in our > lives toward working to instill hope and possibility to others who were in a > similar situation? What if we all learned that it's possible to have healthy > pride for an in-group without having out-group hate? That if you expect > kindness from others, it pays to be kind yourself? That no one is entitled > to anything, but we all are worthy of being treated as human?

</comment><comment><USER15> The need for redress and criminalization is indeed a problematic and distressing mindset for all involved, usually just ending in an evolutionary dead-end and non-constructive waste of time and effort.

However, that doesn't mean operation from unbiased justice and fairness, or that we should focus on solutions rather than chart the problems to be solved first!

</comment><comment><USER16> I think what the article could have talked more about is that claimed victimhood is often used as an excuse to (continue to) victimize others.

</comment><comment><USER17> I dunno - if you eliminate shades of gray and stick to black and white you don't need critical thinking. Critical thinking takes effort - it's far easier to toss a label on someone and then dismiss them.

</comment><comment><USER18> This sounds very politically incorrect.

<comment><USER19> Something can be both politically incorrect and correct at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is mostly crap. It is a thin scientific redressing of the old right wing slogan of "stop whining". "Stop whining about being oppressed, look at me I am not whining about doing the oppressing".

There is a lot of injustice in our society and there is nothing wrong in standing up and demanding justice. And don't let anyone tell you that demanding justice or seeking fairness is some kind of a personality disorder.

But while most of the article is pure bs, there is a kernel of truth in one of the details. And that is that often when you are wronged and you are angry you tend to ignore other people's feelings. Generally when you are angry you tend to stop thinking. And often you tend to lash out at everyone and think everyone is against you when you may have many potential allies. When I try to remember when I was bullied when I was younger, this is my regret. I would get angry and think everyone is against me and lash out at people, even when they leaned on my side. The bullies of course being psychopaths would never get angry, they would be calm and always kept their psycho charming personalities up, and would eventually gain allies and become socially acceptable even after the bad things they did.

So it is ok to be angry. But you have to always keep thinking and consider the feelings of others.

</comment><comment><USER21> The 5 questions seem to ignore peoples backgrounds and circumstances.

If you typically aren't facing injustice often then you aren't going to think you are a victim.

It is a privileged position to assume everyone should "score" the same if they aren't marginalized.

<comment><USER22> It seems like you didn't read the full article.

The research that the article talks about was careful to separate the _mindset_ of victimhood from the actual experience of being a victim of someone else's antisocial or even violent behavior. The two are not the same. One can experience prejudice, social bias, and outright physical violence without developing a permanent self-image as a victim. But we all know that one crazy friend or family member who thinks (and says) the world is against them yet never had a truly traumatic experience in their whole life.

<comment><USER23> But like, I also know people who talked about being wronged and then it eventually turned out they really have been wronged. And it took them quite a lot of effort to get made sorta kinda equal - had they been accepting and silent, none of that would happen.

<comment><USER24> If it can be made right, then yea but if not, then it's probably better to imagine you weren't wronged.

I have a personal experience with this. I suffered an injury that caused a permanent disability, but because I was also knocked out, I don't know what caused it. Maybe I was assaulted or maybe I had an accident. Should I feel wronged just in case it turns out to be an assault? No! I'm kind of lucky not knowing whether to blame someone else or myself! Maybe if I knew, that emotion of being wronged would motivate me to fight for justice and the perpetrator could get convicted but I'm comfortable assuming it was an accident. That's a lot better than fighting and losing.

<comment><USER23> In cases I have in mind, it looked futile until it did not.

In the situation you described, you don't know what happened. So a good guess of your feelings would be confusion, I see no reason to force "feeling lucky" or "blaming yourself" or "feeling wronged" or any other emotion you don't actually feel.

I don't understand this prescribing what people _should feel_ and I think it does more harm then good. People _do feel_ , they also think and the two interacts. It is much more important to understand what your feelings actually are and how they are influencing you, rather then analyse what theoretical person should feel or try to force yourself to feel the things you dont.

<comment><USER24> Though I agree it's not helpful to force your feelings directly. I do think that there are things we "should" feel and those are the things that give better outcomes to us. Sometimes emotions are telling us something true and important but are also harming our wellbeing and we'd be better off without them. If we're lucky enough to lack some harmful knowledge, then all the better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Harvard Mapping My DNA Turns Scary as Threatening Gene Emerges - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-15/harvard-mapping-my-dna-turns-scary-as-threatening-gene-emerges.html

<comment><USER2> I feel like the article ended a little early, like there should've been more. It almost reads like it should've said, "I'd rather you didn't have it, but..."

Beyond that it was a pretty gripping story. As this technology becomes cheaper we'll probably see more startups take advantage of it, but the human side of it can be unsettling.</comment>


Pen.io is now probably the most minimalist blog platform on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/12/20/pen-io-is-now-probably-the-most-minimalist-blog-platform-on-the-web/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=share%2Bbutton&utm_content=Pen.io%20is%20now%20probably%20the%20most%20minimalist%20blog%20platform%20on%20the%20Web&utm_campaign=social%2Bmedia <comment><USER2> There is an XSS on pen.io. I posted this a while ago, but feint didn't fix it.

<http://xssdemo.pen.io>

Suggestion: It is very hard to allow HTML but remove JavaScript. Write a method called something like isJSPresent() and then after you've done your filtering, check if JavaScript is on the page. If it is, return a HTML-encoded version of the page. Then, the security of your page will rely only on the correctness of that single method, and not on the correctness of your rewriter (which is much more complex).

</comment><comment><USER3> The most minimalist blog platform is having your .txt file online and then append to it via bash.

<comment><USER4> You used bash? Luxury.

We used to have to get up at 10 o'clock at night, half an hour before we went to bed, edit our blog entries with "ed", tie them to pigeon's feet, and send them to the Web, where they'd arrive a week later, if you were lucky.

Now you try to tell the young people of today that.

They won't believe you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For better or for worse, I'm a fan of minimalism, but it has to _just work_. That's not the case currently - I'm finding this very frustrating.

-I made a page, then registered, but there's no way to associate a previously made page to an account. (I guess I have to change the original name to a throwaway account and start again)

-No way to delete a page?

-I tried to make a simple list of links. It works once, but when you edit the page a second time, the :link tags are no longer properly parsed.

-Links move around or disappear in different views. In particular, the contacts link is gone when I log in.

The list goes on, but... am I the only one with all of these simple usage problems? Or have people upvoted this submission without actually trying the product?

<comment><USER6> I've always found <http://jottit.com> to be excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's almost the same as something called <http://jottit.com> from a million years ago. I think it's another exercise in futility.

I find the "penio" name and the phallus-like logo fascinating and intringuing, though.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Should add rel="nofollow" to the anchor tags it creates to help minimise value of the service to SEO abusers.

</comment><comment><USER8> I suppose Iceland's domain registrar was busy that day.

</comment><comment><USER9> calepin.co is effectively a hosted version of pelican, a minimalist python SSG, integrated with dropbox. Pretty nice and very minimal.

<comment><USER10> This is lovely, I'm going to give it a shot. Thanks for the link :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You have to be kidding me: "penio"? It sounds like a foreign name for penis. Even the logo looks phallic. Come on.

Companies spend a fortune checking names. This site is in English and has a single letter difference.

<comment><USER12> Sometimes, a pen is just a pen. :)

<comment><USER11> Here it's more like a sword.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was looking for some demo pages, but the link at the bottom <http://pen.io/showlast.php> (latest pages) is actually showing only the latest, which are unfortunately frequently left empty or unmodified.

it would be nice to have some "pick random" link, choosing across some well visited pages.

</comment><comment><USER14> After seeing this, I decided to attempt my own minimalist (dropbox) blog. Just need to automate the post list somehow...

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26639308/miniblog/index.html>

Not a real blog replacement, but it was fun to play with.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wait, how is there no backend on pen.io? IT's got to be hosted somewhere, and the pages have to be stored somewhere, right?

Or is it simply using something like github or dropbox, and serving it publicly from there and pen.io is just a conduit?

<comment><USER16> The article's author seems to be using the term "back end" to refer to an administrative area of the site where you log in to make changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Error pages would be nice if handled correctly, I type <http://pen.io/show> ?

You are running apache, I believe this should be a snap :)

Cheers, Jose

</comment><comment><USER18> It might be the simplest for the average user to use, but there's no way it's the most minimalistic. That has to go to SSGs, for example Jekyll.

<comment><USER19> Regarding output? Any sufficently advanced SSG is indistinguishable from a dynamic site (cf. Movable Type). Regarding the software itself? Even default jekyll has quite a few dependencies, compared to something like blosxom or even simple dynamic blog engines (bet there are a few that aren't more than one page of PHP).

"Minimalist" gets thrown about a lot, too much, probably. Especially for software, but even for presentation/design, where "simple" would often fit better.

Never mind it's all bigger than just using "cat" for blogging and exposing your .plan over HTTP…

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Didn't the whole "minimalism" fad die a while ago?

Tumblr is pretty minimalistic in its own way.

<comment><USER21> Erroneously calling random things that lack functionality and polish "minimalist" is a fad, but the minimalism itself is an well established form of design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nobody has bothered to mention the horrible name/logo combination?

<comment><USER23> It looks _nothing like_ what you're thinking of. Maybe the Iceland domain name taken?

<comment><USER22> I admit it's a stretch, but the combination really pushed me into blue territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The old pastehtml.com seems easier to use to me.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think it even won some award at Launch, 2011.

</comment><comment><USER26> Drag and drop photos don't work

for me/on Safari

</comment><comment><USER27> vi index.html</comment>


SideProjectors – Marketplace to buy and sell side projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.sideprojectors.com/project/home

<comment><USER2> Haha, I made the a comment about something related to this the other day.

Funny how things just spring to life.

"Here's an even cooler idea: instead of listing emerging ideas, ,and beta projects, what about creating a website service for finishing almost done apps (alpha projects if you like). That would be a more interesting list. People could upload their started, but not finished projects and outline what's left. There must be millions of good ideas that has been started, but never finished due to the fact that the developer didn't find the problem interesting anymore. Specialize in one thing, like iphone-apps."

<comment><USER3> I really like the idea of selling/giving away incomplete projects. Seems like this site could easily facilitate that(don't think I saw it mentioned).

<comment><USER4> Good idea! We can easily accommodate that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> or talk to us at Velocis ([http://velocis.us](http://velocis.us)). We like to consider ourselves a sort of plug-n-play co-founder to help new ideas succeed. In many cases, we take equity rather than charging like a normal dev shop or consultants.

<comment><USER6> Huh, this is an extremely interesting concept. I will be reaching out!

Edit: So you already have to have a startup profile? [https://angel.co/velocis-winter-2013/apply](https://angel.co/velocis- winter-2013/apply)

Edit edit: Nope, you can contact them straight from their online form!

<comment><USER7> Agreed that it is an interesting concept. I wish I had the time and knowledge (hopefully with time) to do something like that myself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thought this may be related. If you think your side projects never got enough traffic to be validated, try this out: [http://www.kickoffboost.com](http://www.kickoffboost.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> I like it. Is there a screening process for posting projects? What's to stop people from spamming lame Wordpress sites for $10 each like on Flippa?

<comment><USER10> True, I've always been curious about Flippa but leery of jumping on what seems like good deals, because I feel like a lot of the postings are pretty sketch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whoa. I read this as "SlideProjectors – Marketplace to buy and sell slide projectors"

Side Projects is a MUCH better idea ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised to see Forking Recipes listed for sale on there. It seems like it was only a few months ago when it launched.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, due to a new job I don't have time to work on it and would like to see it have a good home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems overloaded. What's the site about?

<comment><USER14> I got it to load at some point. Looks like a flippa.com for side projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would anyone actually buy unfinished projects? I'd rather build my own dream than someone else's.

</comment><comment><USER16> How do you differentiate yourself from flippa?

<comment><USER17> Isn't flippa just about the website name.

<comment><USER18> No, you can sell your site too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow, website looks down from here. Hackernews DOS attack i guess.

<comment><USER20> up again, but the projects listed there are not that awesome... does anybody know another marketplace, beside flippa and all those forums?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What/How should you talk when you meet co founders? - <AUTHOR>

Probably this is a pretty naive question, but it is genuine.
I am myself an aspiring startupper(23, to start in a month or two). I have worked at startups and learnt the tech stuff well working hard. But I am an introvert and suck at negotiating with people and building contacts. Resultingly, I barely know people and vice versa.
I have scheduled an appointment with three budding and almost successful entrepreneurs nearby. What should the meeting be about? What should I talk to them? I wanted to ask them about their own story, (and see how I can build upon those) but not in a dumb way?
Can people lend out some general advice? Its a big meeting, I have worked hard to get it scheduled.
Please help, thanks! <comment><USER2> Hi - I would advise that you be genuine, show enthusiasm when listening to their story and be enthusiastic when telling yours. Look for ways you can add value or help them. Don't be afraid to ask them for specific help - though be mindful this is your first meeting, so anything you ask should be relative to the small amount of trust and respect you can build in one meeting. Make sure you follow up, relationships aren't built in a single meeting. Finally, try to relax and don't put too much pressure on it. A meeting like this should not be a binary one, where you could 'win' or 'lose' something, it is an exploration to see if you have common interests and may like working together in the future, either as co-founders or simply friends and acquaintances. If it's not to be, don't worry or compromise yourself to try and be liked, as this won't help you in the long-term and the business relationship won't last anyway. Better to find out quickly and move onto the next meeting, where you might genuinely click with that person and have a great business relationship. Hope that helps at all!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it is helping!

When you talk about maintaining relationships further from the first meeting, how would you generally advice?

I mean people are genuinely busy, so to keep in touch sending random mails is not the key, nor will anyone meet you every time you ask for it.

So how do you look at taking things further after the first meeting?

<comment><USER2> When your listening to them, take on board what interests them or where they are facing challenges, then: \- Send them links to articles they may find useful/interesting \- Just drop them a friendly/polite note in a week or two's time, giving them a super quick update on what you've been up to and seeing how they're getting along (try to reference something specific they previously mentioned e.g. how did that important meeting with investor A go? \- If you're starting to move in the same circles, you may bump into them at events, or you can specifically tell them you're going to one if you think it would be of interest \- Hopefully they'll also be in the social media circle too, so they will see content you produce on LinkedIn, Twitter, FB, HN, Quora, your blog etc. \- Finally, ask them if they want another meeting 4-6 weeks later...you'll have to gauge this on your first meeting. If you got on like a house on fire, then you can casually invite them for a drink and not worry too much about; if it was a little more formal, but you still think the relationship could be worthwhile for you both, be sure you have some interesting progress to talk about and have thought about value you can bring to them in the f/u meeting. Networking and meetings a very much art over science I find, and you have to use a lot of personal judgement (and you won't always get it right) but if you can be yourself, add value and like the other person then these 3 ingredients should be just right for development some meaningful and lasting relationships. Good luck with your meetings, let me know how they go!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good blogs or books about growth hacking with Twitter? - <AUTHOR> For the next few months I need to focus on product development & fundraising. Twitter is the only social channel we rely on for growth, and I'm thinking about outsourcing it to a summer intern who spontaneously landed in our path. He has zero experience with Twitter, so I'd love some good reading materials to get him started thinking about growth & metrics focused social media marketing. Not my specialty at all, so would appreciate any general feedback on this plan. <comment><USER2> Ryan Hoover of Product Hunt really leveraged Twitter for early days of PH.

I would check out his old site: [http://ryanhoover.me/archive](http://ryanhoover.me/archive) and go over posts starting 2014.</comment>


Wireless Charging Is a Disaster Waiting to Happen - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-48afdde70ed9 <comment><USER2> I wonder if it's more than the dramatic savings we've gained by moving from desktops to mobile devices?

I'm reminded of JBP quote "The fact that automobiles pollute only becomes a problem of sufficient magnitude to attract public attention when the far worse problems that the internal combustion engine solves vanished from view."

<comment><USER3> The key quote seems to be "In my tests, I found that wireless charging used, on average, around 47% more power than a cable." Which hardly sounds like a disaster in the making.</comment></comment>


Should you really get funding? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I think YCombinator is attempting great things and has a great strategy. However, after StartupSchool I'm mulling over my intention to build my startup without getting any funding. Yet, what I saw yesterday was mostly based on the assumption that a startup has to go thru rounds of funding.

A bit of background: I'm not young, right out of college. I've been working for startups for about 18 years with a couple periodic stints at major tech companies. In all the startups I've worked for, the two leading causes of startup death are 1) Founder friction. 2) Stupid VC tricks.

Founder friction is a risk that I'm sure everyone understands. But the risk of taking money from a VC is one that I think is under appreciated. Generally these risks manifest themselves in the form of the VC meddling in the company to the theoretical benefit of the VC, and the companies detriment. Speaking of instances I have intimate knowledge of, in one case the investment was contingent on 1/3 of it being spent on hardware and software from two companies that the VC had ties to-- overpriced hardware when commodity PCs would have done, and very expensive software that caused us to hire consultants (from the company that sold the software of course) to try and make it work, and ultimately forced us to revert to the original plan and build it ourselves. Significantly delaying our ability to scale up the product.

In another case the VC required that we hire a new CEO, and manuvered us into hiring a friend of the Partners who was non-technical and was fond of changing company direction quarterly whether we needed it or not, to follow the latest business fad... no matter how irrelevant it was to our industry. (EG: one quarter it was "Push" and we were a company that made video game technology... nothing to do with "Push" but we had to have a "push story" and issue press releases.)

And of course, you can find lots of other examples of similar things happening at other companies.

I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush. I recognize that my experience is limited to the half dozen startups I've worked for, and the dozen or so VC partners and associates I've known over the years.

But I have a strong impression that these are not people who understand technology, or the technology business well enough to give good advice. Further, they have shown a propensity to force companies to go in a direction that helps their other investments, but may be detrimental to the company.

And, more importantly, is investment really necessary?

In this day and age, you can get servers provisioned easily-- no need to commit to hardware purchases and long term datacenter leases. The tools are high level and easy to use and there's a lot of open source to leverage so that you can focus on the added value part of your product. Leverage has increased dramatically.

Furthermore, companies are now starting to go without investment, such as MyBlogLog which was acquired only a few months after launch without doing a VC round.

Thus I reach the conclusion that the course for me to take is to not seek investment at all.

This may not be possible for someone who is recently out of college. (And thus the funding from YC is not the kind of investment I'm talking about here-- the presusre to use the money to get three months of solid focus on the product is really positive "interference" especially when backed by the rapid feedback, networking, and weekly seminars.)

But if you start to get some traction with your product, and you're not building something that inherently requires massive investment... probably small angel rounds are the way to go until you can be acquired or reach profitability.

And while being acquired may always be wise-- reaching profitability is a milestone that I think truely marks success. Nobody can ever take that away from you once you've done it-- its victory.

Startupschool was great-- was good inspiration, and much of what was said checked well with my thoughts giving me a boost in confidence that I'm on the right track.

I love lists like "5 dos and 5 don'ts" or the X things that cause startups to fail, or Pauls 16 reasons... love to check those off and go "Yep, Yep, Yep"... and there were a couple that I need to work on.

Hopefully this little rant is not offending anybody... in summary, I'd say winning means making a viable business. Getting VC funding shouldn't be the goal.

<comment><USER2> Get a blog man -- they're free :-)

Funding is great for providing food, housing, servers, bandwidth, etc. If you can arrange all the practical issues yourself and can work full-time on your startup it definitely doesn't seem wise to take investment.

Taking investment is a huge risk and it should only be done in a calculated way. It has to be a net increase in your chances of success and for each company that calculation varies a lot. I don't think there is any right answer to this one.

<comment><AUTHOR> I failed to make a distinction-- I am not opposed to funding, but think that VC funding is overrated.

If you are seeing your business as a 1-3 year affair- if you believe that in that time period you'll either crash or get bought or go big, and you don't have any resources... then taking VC funding to cover basics like food, housing, bandwidth, maybe makes sense. I would still say that angel funding is better. And if you're just out of college then its kind of a no-lose situation. You get funded, then you've won because you have a job until the funding runs out and even if you crash and burn, you'll still be well set up to do another startup.

But if you want to build something that lasts... you have to take into account all the costs of various types of funding. This I may not have illuminated as well.

After so many months, the VC funds turn into, effectively, a high interest rate loan with a lein against your business. If you go to sell, you may find that they get the entire proceeds. Sometimes they even put a 2-3x liquidation preference there... so even a success results in nothing to the founders.

The essense of these terms is that the clock is ticking, and you are put in a position where you have to hit a home run, or die trying. And the VC firm will guide you in this direction, and replace you if you do not make the choices that lead that way. They are only interested in home runs, not viable businesses.

This is also why acquisition is more popular now- the risk reward profile has changed, or at least people learned form the 1990s bubble.

<comment><USER2> Google is probably the best example of making funding work for you. They took angel and VC and built a company to last.

 _"...so even a success results in nothing to the founders."_

No intelligent investor would create a situation in which the founders had no incentive to succeed. They want founder's interests to be aligned with theirs.

 _"...hit a home run, or die trying..."_

That's not necessarily a bad thing. VC money can force you to move at breakneck speed to prove your idea is worthwhile or not. It's up to you to decide if its _possible_ to succeed quickly like that, or find investors willing to build more slowly.

 _"...replace you if you do not make the choices that lead that way."_

Again it comes down to smart investors. Bad ones replace people frequently and good ones are primarily investing in "the team", replacing you doesn't make sense when that is the case.

I think you might be interested in building more of a "lifestyle" business than what most people would define as a startup. I could personally enjoy doing either type of business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google-- they did, and they also seemed to take their time doing it...

 _"No intelligent investor would create a situation in which the founders had no incentive to succeed. They want founder's interests to be aligned with theirs."_

I responded to this, but its been said, and better: _"As things currently work, their attitudes toward risk tend to be diametrically opposed: the founders, who have nothing, would prefer a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, while the VCs can afford to be "rational" and prefer the latter."_ <http://www.paulgraham.com/vcsqueeze.html>

_"VC money can force you to move at breakneck speed"_

You cannot predict the future- you cannot predict the level of success you will have in advance. Thus, signing agreements that put a ticking clock on your business is never a good thing. You can work at "breakneck speed" anyway, without increasing the risk of breaking your neck.

There is a fundamental limit to how fast you can go. Google was able to take their time and was fortunate in that regard. Netscape killed themselves with their speed. In fact, this forced breakneck speed is one of the killers of startups -- all the billions that were burned up in the space of 2 years between 2000-2001... much of that money, if spent more wisely, would have resulted in viable businesses in 2003.

 _"I think you might be interested in building more of a "lifestyle" business than what most people would define as a startup. "_

I'm not sure what you mean by a "lifestyle" business. I consider the word "startup" to apply to any business. But since I am building a high tech startup that is a web based platform, I'm not taking the relaxed approach of someone opening a hair salon, or whatever.

I'm looking to increase leverage, growth rate, and viability.

In looking for a citation, I cam across the Paul Graham essay cited above- which I think makes the same essential point I'm trying to make. (So I'm sure I'm plagerizing him to some extent, mixed with my own experiences and stated less eloquently.)

In summary, many costs are now lower, thus leverage has increased, and so VC funds under traditional terms, are less desirable and less needed.

<comment><USER2> Google didn't take time doing anything. They spent millions on building out datacenters and on bandwidth.

The big thing that separates them from the Netscape story is that they're apparently smarter and managed to create a financially successful company. Its quite conceivable that lesser men would have given us Netscape #2.

 _"You cannot predict the future- you cannot predict the level of success you will have in advance."_

But being forced to try things more quickly than you might otherwise may help you discover problems and their solutions before others do, like a fast forward button. If you have a company that can genuinely absorb capital it seems to work just fine.

 _"...prefer a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, while the VCs can afford to be "rational" and prefer the latter"_

In that scenario there's still great motivation for the founders to work hard. In the scenario you presented (no money left for founders) that is not the case.

Why didn't you just post a link to VC Squeeze essay if that's all you wanted to say? You're saying some different things and saying other things differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> Paul and I are describing the same scenario... and that incentive only exists when it looks like there's a possibility for the one in a million payoff. Otherwise Liquidation Preferences mean that even a successful sell results in no return to the founders.

 _"But being forced to try things more quickly than you might otherwise may help you discover problems and their solutions before others do, like a fast forward button."_

I could write code sitting here with a loaded gun on a timer, pointed at my head. I'm sure I would find problems in that code faster and "get it done" faster so that I could reset the timer.... but the code would not be as high quality, and it certainly wouldn't be more innovative.

And if I reached the point where I knew there was no way to get it done in time, then I'd spend the time looking for an exit. I'd have no motivation to get the code done, and a lot of motivation to get out of there.

<comment><USER2> _"I could write code sitting here with a loaded gun on a timer, pointed at my head."_

In most startups the proposition is metaphorically identical: succeed before money runs out or die. The kind of intense pressure that exists in all of the competitive startups I've seen. It's a marathon race, not a stroll through the park.

The founders motivation is ownership and the potential payout that ownership provides. If you take so much investment that you can't sell your company for enough to profit from it then you may as well close up shop (which happens frequently).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're arguing that reducing your chances for success is the only way to succeed. You presume that if you aren't about to die, then you must be lazy. You presume that the only model is unprofitability until someone either buys you or you get shut down.

You presume that reducing the number of scenarios by which a founder will become wealthy somehow motivates the founders more.

You say business should be shut down if they don't fit in the model you describe.

This is a very narrow view. Its also a very polarized view-- it seems to be the perspective that either you're trying to be the next youtube or you're opening a farm.

There really is quite a spectrum between them... and far more high tech successes are not youtube type situations. That's an extreme rarity.

You're locked into a mentality that causes you to repeat this perspective, and you don't seem to be responding to what I'm saying, and I just don't see things that way.

So, I don't see much point in continuing this thread.

Good luck if you decide to start a company!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some positive things that come from VC funding are:

\-- Greater awareness of your business.

\-- Their investment may validate your business in the eyes of potential partners, customers, etc.

\-- Due Dilligence is a process that is always good. (In the same way that dental work is always good.)

</comment><comment><USER3> it is not only about the funding but also about the network. Todays world information is wealth and information can be collected by network. Hence for network building funding is necessary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure about that? We're on a network, and I suspect most of us are building networking tools. Networking is a lot easier now.

Plus, I think networking is a skill, not a service.

And think about the cost- not just the equity, but the strings. It would be cheaper to pay a highly networked individual a fee for making introductions than getting VC funding.

I understand the perspective of someone who has no entre into what seems like a closed community. But having had to learn the skill of networking (and still not being great at it) I've found that anyone who you should partner with, sell to, or do business with, is open to at least hearing enough to understand what your value is. Once I realized this, I started talking to CEOs of companies that I would meet at various places - conferences, on planes, cold calling, etc. A few have not understood, some were a bit put off, but this is the reaction maybe %5 of the time. Everyone else has at least thought about what I've said, and even when they've said "no", a good number of times they've given me a name of someone I should be talking to instead.

I think by itself, this isn't a good reason to pursue VC funding. Advice and introductions are much less expensive elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> "It would be cheaper to pay a highly networked individual a fee for making introductions "

Do you really think a bootstrapping company could pay someone like PG what his time is worth? Letting him invest _is_ a way of paying him, but it's even better because he doesn't collect unless you'r successful.

I'm not convinced being funded is necessary either, just that you have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages, and do the best with what you have.

<comment><AUTHOR> You answered your own question, and I'm not talking about YC anyway. I'm talking about VCs, and in particular the strings that come with them.

My purpose is to point out the disadvantages, because the assumption seems to be that its always a good thing to get VC funds.

<comment><USER4> I've seen a number of articles here about how to "go it alone" and why it's better, although maybe I notice them more because that's pretty much the only avenue open to me, so I keep an eye out for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Um... yes?

Let me know if you've got any better ideas.</comment>


Ask HN: Open-source hardware business models, what are the options? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am wondering what are the benefits/risks of making hardware products open-source. One question: How to make profit, when hardware is open-source?
a) Arduino is a nice example that open-source hardware can be profitable. Is this an exception (i.e. are there other open-source hardware companies that failed?)
b) What other examples of open-source hardware companies are there, and how do they differ from Arduino?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! <comment><USER2> Sorry for the self promotion, but checkout my TEDx Talk on Open Source hardware and IP: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGhj_lLNtd0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGhj_lLNtd0)

How do you make a profit selling something? It's pretty straight forward: You provide better service, quality, price, availability and innovation than your competition. Open source has nothing to do with profitability, the way you run your business does.

Arduino is a good example but there are many other healthy companies doing open source hardware: SparkFun, lulzbot, dangerousprototypes, seedstudio, TI, STmicro, I'm missing dozens more but the coffee is a little weak this morning. Mouser and element 14 even have OSHW categories that they sell. Tindie is a great place for discovering and selling shorter run, cool little open source widgets. Checkout the [https://pinocc.io/](https://pinocc.io/) and Clyde Lamp kickstarters. My wife got her Clyde reward the other night - it's AMAZING.

How do these projects have sustainable income?

1) They sell the thing for more than it costs. Sounds simple but kickstarter is littered with projects that got this wrong. 2) Innovate to sustain (and increase) your number of customers, products, and income.

This is where the future is: I don't have the want/skills/time to build a good, aesthetically pleasing, desk lamp, so I buy a Clyde. The fact that it is open means I can change the user interface to fit my needs. Open source products will win because users will want customization that closed system simply cannot support.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a fantastic reply! Thanks a lot. That shows a number of pieces in the puzzle, and how they fit together. I am working on my first product, and looking for cheap production in Taiwan right now. How could I contact you/Sparkfun about possible sales when the product is ready for shipment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One known risk is improper component selection and it can ruin your "open" stance in the eyes of potential customers. For example, if you need 802.11 WiFi component in your design, then picking the wrong one can result in being under an NDA, not having the freely available documentation needed by open source hacker to write and maintain drivers, and other "closed" nonsense from component vendors that prevents _your_ openness. This issue is particularly true for most all graphics chips/cores.

As for examples of open-hardware, there are many, but you'll need to search them out and read through the carefully to determine how "open" they really are. Like most buzzwords, "open" gets tossed around too loosely. Both finding and evaluating open-hardware vendors is time consuming.

There are also variations of "open-hardware" in some places like China. Andrew (bunnie) Huang calls the Chinese variation "gongkai" (公开).

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, so, some people should start building open-source gaphic cards or wifi chips? Well, ok, I understand this is not so easy with today's tools and processes, but maybe one day in the future.

What about less complex devices, like simpler PCB boards? I saw tindie.com and a number of people having projects at kickstarter.com - what/how do these projects into sustainable income? Is it services? Is it on-demand production?

Or, Adafruit is maybe interesting to look at, since they offer the community/shop driven approach?

Thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


FlatDB – database designed to persist data using just PHP and flat-files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maxkostinevich/flatdb <comment><USER2> At what point does it stop being a flat file and start being an actual database albeit one implemented in a bit of a round about way?

With that said, PHP has sqlite support built in since 5.0 and sqlite3 since 5.3 so I see no reason to use this over that. Maybe the author can elaborate.

I remember writing code to do stuff like this in C way back when because there were literally no other choices.

Also, why is this on Hacker News?

Edit: I do, however, applaud any effort to contribute to the open source community. However, for anyone to trust this they would need unit tests and a composer package on Packagist.

<comment><USER3> This is useful for some free web hosting sites with some limits (if file creation is not forbidden ;), also useful for simple personal blog system (composer is unnecessary).

Well, not great, but usable. The write method is not reliable for asynchronous operations.

<comment><USER2> You don't need composer on the server you are running it on to still benefit from package management. You just do an install then deploy your vendors director.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is already a super-fast flat-file database system that supports sorting (alphabetically and timestamps), ultra-fast lookup and retrieval, and optimized caching -- it's called a filesystem.

</comment><comment><USER5> So why this and not SQLite? Just to save the dependency? What makes it "secure"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes SQLite is not an option and I created FlatDB for my own needs. This is not a replacement for SQLite or other database engine.

<comment><USER6> When is it not an option?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please correct me if I'm wrong but SQLite database could be downloaded from web-browser. There is a some ways to prevent it by keeping db files above www/ dir or via htaccess, however what you will do if you have only limited access to www/ folder and .htaccess aren't supported?

<comment><USER2> The server you are describing I have never seen... even in the 90s. I have never seen a server where .htaccess was disabled AND you couldn't go one level up from www/public_html/htdocs/etc.

So now curiosity has gotten the best of me... is this a private lan or something? The only thing I can think of it is one of those situations where a University gives you a website but it is really really locked down.

Also, try starting it with a dot (".mytest.html") as a lot of servers prevent hosting up files that start with a dot.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>