Economists Are Rethinking the Numbers on Inequality - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/28/economists-are-rethinking-the-numbers-on-inequality <comment><USER2> This Economist article points out some of the many small academic works that quibble over details with Piketty and Saez. But that's not anything new. The major points of their work, and especially of Piketty's monumental _Capital for the 21st century_ still stand: that capital is a positive feedback loop in a way that labor is not; that mid-20th-century laws that put brakes on this feedback loop have been removed; that a variety of data sources are confirming growing inequality and market capture particularly in the UK and US; and that the only reasonable solution for this is a tax on owned capital (not on income or cap gains) and the political chances of this happening are slim, etc.

And in the end this article is another one in their house style: not particularly informative in the details, they're not arguing openly or forcefully against Piketty, but instead bring up enough different nitpicky papers that it starts sowing doubt in the mind of a reader who hasn't actually read the book.

But then again The Economist has had it out for Piketty (and Saez) for a long time now, they very clearly hate Piketty's Capital and keep sniping at it, but can't stop themselves from bringing it up all the time. :)

At least they are very open about their biases: they promote a view that the solution to all ills is lower taxes and less regulation. However, Piketty's analysis and proposed solution directly contradicts that.

<comment><USER3> >that mid-20th-century laws that put brakes on this feedback loop have been removed;

I don't believe that the purpose of mid-20th-century laws was to promote equality. Things were more equal then because: a) World Wars I & II destroyed huge amounts of capital, and b) fighting wars requires lots of money which requires raising taxes on people who can pay, since borrowing cannot fully fund general wars.

Economics are cyclical in the sense that in normal times people with power and wealth accumulate more power and wealth. Then a general period of war/revolution/epidemic/famine breaks out which disrupts power relationships and consumes wealth. This is the pattern in Europe since the 1300s and it also applies to dynastic changes in other societies, such as China.

<comment><USER4> It's a bit more than cycles.

The huge reduction in the XXth century was due to many factors.

You start in the XIXth century with the development of Anarchism, which, to oversimplify, spawned various movements such as democratic socialism or communism on the political side, but also syndicalism (anarcho-syndicalism). The appearance of these forces started to change/influence things even before WWI with a few laws regulating working conditions (ex: 6 days week in 1906 in France voted after the Courrières mine disaster, or in Germany with a basic form of social security put in place in the 1880ies).

The two World Wars, and specially the various states (France, UK, Germany Russia) defaulting on their debts (either through inflation or complete un- acknowledgment of the debt) basically killed the rentiers (previously it was really nice for them, 5%, with an economic growth of 1 to 2% and practically not inflation).

The rise of the legitimacy of the State also helped a lot. This is due to the rise of Nationalism, the efforts of various states to build a common identity, and also the technological developments which permitted for a state to reach every corner of its population (transport and communication). This lead to the legitimacy of states to raise taxes which would have caused revolts previously.

WWI and specially WWII also shifted mentalities hugely, it's quite interesting that countries either monetarily or literally in ruins created Social Security systems.

Lastly the degree of technological development and its progressive deployment between 1820 and 1980 (in Europe and North America) hugely improved material condition for most people. The equation is a bit different when you are past 80% of the economy being subsistence farming.

Yes, some past events did change wealth distribution (the Plague for example), but a change on that scale is not something ever seen before in History, the XXth was pretty exceptional in that regard.

<comment><USER3> Between the Plague and WW I&II there was the Reformation and following religious wars until the Peace of Augsburg, The Thirty Years War, and the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars. These were periods of major conflict that leveled European societies. Other wars were limited in geographic scope and/or in their objectives and means used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of this article reminded me of the techniques used by climate change deniers to sow doubt.

Take for example the following: > Another correction concerns the tax reforms passed under Ronald Reagan in 1986. Apparent changes in top incomes around this reform account for about two-fifths of the total increase between 1962 and 2015 in the pre-tax incomes of the top 1% in Messrs Piketty and Saez's estimates. Messrs Auten and Splinter say this is an illusion. Reagan's tax reform created strong incentives for firms to operate as "pass-through" entities, where owners register profits as income on their tax returns, rather than sheltering this income inside corporations. Since these incentives did not exist before then, top-income shares before 1987 are liable to be understated.

In essence this just says that it's possible the rich used to be overwhelmingly rich even before the Reagan era reforms, hence inequality might not have increased that much over the past decades. This is hardly comforting for the average person.

Or take a look at the conclusive paragraph: > While that long and bloody academic battle takes place it would be wise for policymakers to proceed cautiously. Proposals for much heavier taxes on high earners, or a tax on net wealth, or the far more radical plans outlined in Mr Piketty's latest book, are responses to a problem that is only partially understood.

Doesn't it smack of "the science is not in yet" argument used by climate change deniers?

<comment><USER6> Looking at your methodology critically is crucial to all fields of science though, as is changing your conclusions and interpretations as more findings come forward. Dismissing someone outright for challenging something that has become dogma is anti-scientific even if that dogma is based on facts. If it's actually true, then it will stand up to scrutiny.

<comment><USER5> I absolutely agree. However I'm not at all sure Piketty's ideas are dogma. If anything he's the challenger to the neoliberal dogma.

Secondly, the fact that there are diverging sides to an issue doesn't mean those sides have the same likelihood of being true. To take a trivial example, flat-earthers are challenging the dogma that the Earth is round (spherical to be more precise) - should this mean that their position should be taken seriously?

<comment><USER7> Yes, Piketty and co are the challengers. Therefore the burden of proof is on them to convince people their ideas are true, and presenting their ideas without pointing out how the rest of the field thinks of them would be the analogue of your climate deniers in your comment above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Measuring income inequality in the US without looking at outsized wage gains abroad feels remarkably inaccurate.

I'll copy-paste my reply to another thread from earlier this year:

> But, wages haven't improved in the last 40 years for the average person

...in the US.

Growing inequality in the US is driven by the fact that capital gains _domestically_ have improved dramatically alongside wage gains _abroad_ , while wage has been essentially stagnant within the US due to globalization / offshoring / outsourcing

The solution, in my humble immigrant opinion, is to train Americans to take on service jobs that cannot be easily automated / performed by cheap labor overseas. But that requires taking an honest look at the country's education system and neither side of the aisle seems to be able to do that without resorting to anger and vitriol

<comment><USER9> Could you point out the graph that shows that wages haven't improved in the last 40 years?

<comment><USER8> It's an often-touted claim. In this particular instance I was replying to this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384390](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384390)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sign-up wall prevents reading the article. Here is an outline.com link for this article:

[https://outline.com/4MwGTX](https://outline.com/4MwGTX)

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems to me that income is in effect an abstraction of a person's social class. Therefore, I wonder if it might be more effective to look at the factors that actually separate different social classes.

For example:

What percentage of a population is self employed and/or employed in a role with significant autonomy?

What percentage of a population owns their own house? Of those who own a house, how much control over their house do they have (e.g. you cannot add an extension to a multi-unit house even if you own it and you likely cannot put in a workshop due to noise)? How do these measures change based on how desirable the location is (e.g. top tier cities, suburbs, etc.)?

How easy is it for a given population to acquire the means of production? E.g. if someone doesn't like the products that the corporations are making, how difficult would it be for them to try to make an alternative?

What level of political office could a member of a given population realistically run for?

<comment><USER12> > It seems to me that income is in effect an abstraction of a person's social > class.

That's not how class works. There are multimillionaires running their own blue-collar businesses and farms whom a bankrupt real estate developer would look down on.

<comment><USER11> I think that actually supports my core point: income doesn't always map directly to a person's role in society.

Even if the 99% has roughly the same portion of the income that they did in the past they still might have less of the things that actually determine lifestyle such as autonomy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would rather focus on reducing absolute poverty than reducing inequality (gini-coefficient).

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately, you can't have a real democracy with too high income inequality, and it is hard to reduce absolute poverty if the poor don't have a political voice.

<comment><USER14> This is an often used argument, but can you elaborate how exactly that's the case?

In most western democracies (the US included), the only way to elect a politician is for a human being to go to the polls and check the box next to the candidate's name.

This opportunity is present regardless of whether one is a billionaire, a millionaire, a member of the upper-middle class, or a blue collar worker.

A real world example of this is Sweden, which has the highest per capita population of billionaires. The country doesn't seem to care because the minimum standard of living is high enough. It's not even paid for by taxing the billionaires, it's paid for by high taxes on the middle class and a VAT.

<comment><USER5> Well, in the US, as possibly in other places, elections are usually won by the candidate who receives the most corporate support. On top of this, a bipartite political system can quite easily keep out candidates with views that are unpalatable to the rich and powerful (e.g. see how Bernie Sanders was treated by the Democratic establishment in 2016). Individuals mostly rubber-stamp one of the two mainstream candidates.

<comment><USER14> > Well, in the US, as possibly in other places, elections are usually won by > the candidate who receives the most corporate support

Again, this is orthogonal to the point about inequality. Insofar as corporations or money are involved in politics in America, it's for campaigning — buying TV ads, flyers, etc. While it's true that this makes it _easier_ for richer people to get their message out there, the fact of the matter is that the message still needs to resonate with a broad enough polity capturing working class, college educated, non-college educated, urban, rural voters etc (see: the Electoral College).

Just to give you some numbers, in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump $132M vs $92M.

In the ongoing Democratic Primary for the upcoming 2020 election, the TV ad spending through 12/3/2019 is as follows. The candidate's polling percentage at the same time is included in parenthesis.

Steyer: $63.4 million (1%)

Bloomberg: $37 million (<1%)

Sanders: $6.7 million (15%)

Buttigieg: $5.1 million (13%)

Yang: $2.9 million (4%)

Biden: $1.7 million (25%)

Klobuchar: $1.3 million (3%)

Bennet: $1 million (<1%)

Gabbard: $1 million (1%)

Warren: $926k (18%)

Delaney: $662k (<1%)

> On top of this, a bipartite political system can quite easily keep out > candidates with views that are unpalatable to the rich and powerful (e.g. > see how Bernie Sanders was treated by the Democratic establishment in 2016)

You're right about this, but the Democratic Primaries are not a good example of a democratic institution (ironically) — it's a private club and they can make their own rules, for better or for worse. During the general election, the opposite happened; the rich and powerful overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton, and yet she still lost.

> Individuals mostly rubber-stamp one of the two mainstream candidates.

This is true, but has nothing to do with economic inequality. The two-party system is an artifact of the first-past-the-post voting system. Since ~1860, there have only been two mainstream candidates, and inequality has varied wildly in that time period: i.e. no correlation.

<comment><USER5> In a society there are may levers (official or not, transparent or not) that the powerful can pull to get politics to lean their preferred way. This is true of all places and all times. The more power is concentrated, the easier it is for a very small group of individuals to have a very large impact on decision making.

All the billions poured in campaign funding, lobbying etc. do actually buy a lot of influence albeit not in a direct, transparent way.

The same billions can also sway public opinion through deliberate and persistent propaganda in support of certain view points and against others.

Nowadays (and probably throughout most of modern history) you have to be highly committed and quite fanatical if you want to develop well grounded opinions that are not very much affected by propaganda. Most people don't have the time and resources for this -> most people are easily swayed by corporate propaganda.

<comment><USER14> Unless you provide data or empirical evidence, it's just a vague intuition. There's more than enough evidence to the contrary (as I've provided).

At the end of the day, people act as individuals, and they have their beliefs and biases. For example, a small group of wealthy individuals can pour as much money as they want into pro-abortion propaganda, but it's unlikely that it will sway pro-lifers' opinions (especially evangelical Christians).

Money doesn't influence opinions directly, it just affords you a platform to _try_ and change someone's mind. The only way to change one's mind is if the message is compelling, and because the US requires broad buy-in for any democratic action, the message needs to be compelling to a broad audience, not just a small group of wealthy people.

<comment><USER5> You hardly provided more than enough evidence on the contrary. I can however point you to the work of Thomas Ferguson for example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition)

<comment><USER14> I'm familiar with Ferguson's work. As with most economic work based on theoretical models, the empirical facts are more than enough to disprove them.

The famous IMF rebuttal of Piketty was an exercise in exactly the same. "rich in data, [but] the book provides no formal empirical testing for its theoretical causal chain". The same applies to the Investment Theory of Party Alignment. You can make an argument that poor people will follow rich people ideologically, but you can't 1) draw a causal line between the wealth and the influence, and 2) most importantly, you can't prove that poor people would ideologically follow rich people against their own self-assessed interests.

[1] [https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf](https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2016/wp16160.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is kind of a touchy subject. I feel like a lot of people would balk at the idea of the top 1% not doing better and better, not because they have any extra insight into the topic but because to say this seems like you're defending the ultra-rich (and by extension attacking everyone else). In reality, even if the rich aren't getting even richer at quite the rate we thought, it doesn't mean you really need to have any more sympathy for them, it just means you tweak a few lines of your rhetoric.

<comment><USER15> Conflating the top 1% with the ultra-rich is another big problem.

If we assume that most people achieve peak earning years between 45-50 years old, then about 30% of people end up in the top 1% at some point in their lives.

<comment><USER16> As I replied to someone else in this thread branch, the threshold for entering the 1%, at least in terms of income, is nearly $330K a year annually. The plain reading of your last sentence is that about 30% of people make that at some point in your life, which... doesn't strike me as very plausible.

Are you talking about net worth instead? That's still an argument that 30% of people have over $10M in assets (in 2019 dollars) at some point in their lives, and that... also strikes me as a stretch, honestly.

<comment><USER17> In US terms. What if we look at the same numbers in global terms? Suddenly many of the people complaining about the 1% are the 1% themselves. According to the global rich list website if you earn above $33k a year you're in the top 1% globally by income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whenever I play monopoly I imagine I feel like Jeff Bezos when the other players land on my properties and pay me rent. There's something seductive about that income stream. You don't even have to be prudent about what you buy so long as you buy early enough.

</comment><comment><USER19> I read an article this week that makes a strong argument that inequality really isn't the problem.

[https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/12/03/inequal...](https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/12/03/inequality_is_decidedly_not_the_problem_in_the_us__103991.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://archive.md/OmZMP](https://archive.md/OmZMP)

</comment><comment><USER21> Instead of taxing productive things, taxes should be applied to things that are environmentally destructive.

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't this one of the thesis of Marx's Capital? That there's a loop in the flow of commodities, money, and labor that generally results in capital extracting more capital from the economy. (Typically from wage labor.)

It seems to me that without someone applying the brakes to that loop and changing the way distribution or production is done, we're just going to keep riding this positive feedback loop.

<comment><USER23> Failure to distinguish land from capital is an enormous possible pitfall for those trying to fight poverty.

Land titles, and all other types of access rights to natural opportunities, are means by which "rent-seeking" occurs. Rent=seeking is any type of of zero- sum extractive activity that adds nothing to the economy, and simply serves to make the rich richer.

Examples include: holding a prime piece of real estate idle, while waiting for others to add value to that land. Or acquiring a patent just to sue anyone who unknowingly violates it. Or manipulating the rules to your favor through lobbying.

Productive activity, however, must be rewarded since that is the engine of wealth. We can't have a high standard of living if production isn't rewarded. Solving inequality by making everyone poor is not going to get you very far.

This distinction is essential.

<comment><USER22> For sure. I'm a big advocate for removing the benefits of holding land in this way. Especially in cities, where the land could productively house people rather than be empty or have a surface lot on it.

> Solving inequality by making everyone poor is not going to get you very far.

For sure. I'd like to see more wealth equality, and I'd like to see it done by raising the amount of wealth of the working class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why when we talk about inequality we never talk about the tide of economic progress that capitalism produces.

If the rich get richer but the middle class has a better quality of life than what the rich had 200 years ago, is strict inequality still the only thing that matters?

<comment><USER25> How do you measure quality of life though? People say this kind of thing all the time "the poor are better off now than rich of the past". My guess is that most poor of today would switch places with the rich of the past in a heartbeat.

My point is just that "quality of life" is more complex than just longer expected lifetime, or has access to faster internet, as nice as those things are.

<comment><USER14> Great question.

Check out [1] and scroll down to Table A-7 (it's an Excel file). It's the real earnings data (in 2018 dollars), by gender, from 1960 to 2018 (though it's kind of spotty before 1967). What sticks out:

* For men (looking at Total Workers), real earnings are currently around 10% higher than they were in the 70s (moving from low-$40K's to recently just past mid-$40K's, with some peaks and valleys along the way). Doesn't sound like much, but...

* For women, earnings have roughly doubled in that timespan

* The number of men in the workforce has increased by almost 50%

* The number of women in the workforce has increased by almost 100%

From a certain perspective, it's kind of amazing that real earnings haven't gone down significantly.

In the last 20 years, median earnings, in real terms (adjusted for inflation), are up. Unemployment is at its lowest, and that's at the broadest definition of "unemployment" (U6) [2].

As for poverty, check out [3] from the US Census Bureau and scroll down to Table 6 (it's an Excel file). It's the percentage of people in America that are below 125% of the poverty line (I.e. near poor to absolutely poor) between 1959 and 2018. That percentage has gone down from 31% to 16%.

The median number of years to recoup the cost of a Bachelors degree in America, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the 1980's, from about 22 years to about 10 years. [4]

[1] [https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-26...](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-266.html)

[2] [https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1201903269095698432](https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1201903269095698432)

[3] [https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time- series/demo/income-p...](https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time- series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html)

[4] [https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the- va...](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-value-of-a- college-degree.html)

<comment><USER26> Nice work!

We often forget that things are no actually so bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just don't mention the elephant in the room: the Cantillon effect which is primary reason for the wealth flowing from working classes and savers to the bankers and the managerial class. Entirely courtesy of artificially low interest rates created by central banks and lax controls on monetary emission (i.e. fractional reserve shenanigans) by private banks.

<comment><USER28> > _artificially low interest_

Interest rates are driven by the supply and demand of credit. Supply outstrips demand now.

There are two sides to every transaction; low rates are good for borrowers and bad for lenders. What makes you think the lenders are entitled to a greater return on their savings? Do you think we should force people to borrow at higher rates for this purpose?

> _wealth flowing from working classes and savers to the bankers and the > managerial class._

The working class in America are debtors and have no savings. Outside of low rates contributing to driving housing prices higher in some communities, how are the working class harmed by lower payments on their debt?

<comment><USER29> > Interest rates are driven by the supply and demand of credit. Supply > outstrips demand now.

While that's somewhat true, its also largely dictated / controlled / heavily influenced by government. This means the overnight lending rate, U.S. bond rate, etc.

<comment><USER28> > _This means the overnight lending rate, U.S. bond rate, etc._

The overnight lending rate is set by the Fed, yes.

Treasuries are sold in the market. Although an initial auction price is set, the rates will fluctuate based on demand for the bonds.

I don't deny the Fed are a major influence on rates, as it's a major component of their mandate now. However, the market can "agree" or "disagree" with those rates and set corresponding rates however they choose.

<comment><USER30> But your missing the key part. Sometimes if the Fed sets rates too low and there's not enough demand for the bonds the Fed buys the bonds thus keeping the interest rates artificially low.

<comment><USER28> > _Sometimes if the Fed sets rates too low and there 's not enough demand for > the bonds the Fed buys the bonds thus keeping the interest rates > artificially low._

Yes, it's how the Fed conducts monetary policy. Can you name the last time that US treasuries were under-subscribed? Greek bonds have lower rates to US treasuries; which would you rather own? On a relative basis, how can one claim that US interest rates are "too low"?

<comment><USER31> > Can you name the last time that US treasuries were under-subscribed?

Yes, a couple of months ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I read Piketty's capital. It's very long.

My current best solution to the problem of capitalism is this: once a year the richest n people must divest themselves of all assets minus the median annual salary and start over.

<comment><USER32> Explanations for the down votes are appreciated. I've put a lot of thought into this.

<comment><USER33> For any arbitrary n, those clustered at the top will arrange their affairs to maintain the n-1 wealthiest person in society to avoid the reset. Giving away 100s of millions to keep billions makes rational sense - especially if you can arrange it to flow to your spouse/children/trust/charity you control.

In fact, you could game such a system by spiking a competitors net-worth right before the reset i.e. by suddenly buying a small, but significant chunk of their shares to move the market value on their shares.

What exactly have you thought about?

<comment><USER32> Those are games within with the current system as well. The difference is that once you begin to approach the top your incentive becomes altruistic, because you are thinking about increasing the wealth of other people more than yourself.

That's the key. Capitalism only rewards greed. There is no altruistic component. What I suggest rewards altruism after the game is won. There is currently no end to the increasing gap, except violent revolt, which has always been the solution.

Violent revolt is not a good solution to the wealth gap.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does Shareware still work in 2018? - <AUTHOR> I put a lot of thought into a software which solves a real problem and could be licenced on a per machine basis. (Small company pays less than a bigger one - i.e. pay per use).
To go for a startup selling licenced copies, I would need an investor but I don't really know how much the product will sell. The investors like to see hockey stick graphs which I can't claim.
I know there are companies that created open source projects on github and then have businesses doing custom work around it, but I don't know if this will work for me.
I feel the product itself provides value and I would like to make some revenue off it.
Now I am thinking this is a good fit for shareware - i.e distribute freely - let anyone who feels it is worth pay for it. I can distribute with source so if someone wants to modify sections they can do so.
Please let me know your thoughts. <comment><USER6> I've built a small tool that I distributed as "free for personal use, contact me for a commercial license", without technical enforcement, not even a nag screen.

I made one (1) sale, despite receiving e-mails from several people thanking me that they're happily using it at work, and that sale was to a company who wanted customization, and only ended up actually paying the invoice when they asked for another round of customization and I pointed out that they haven't paid their last invoice.

Donationware does not work for companies, I think - the bureaucracy required to make money move from the company to you will keep people from doing it even if they think you deserve it. If it is labelled as voluntary instead of a legally required license fee, it will also be hard to make it happen.

If you're targeting companies, and want to do a shareware model, you should:

* Make it easy to buy (with credit card etc.), but also provide a contact for volume licensing. If you're lucky, this allows employees to pay you for your software without having to go through approvals.

* Make it hard to use permanently without buying (beyond just a nag screen, e.g. blocking the save feature once an expiration time is reached)

Your goal isn't to convince someone to pay for the software. Your goal is to convince the person sitting in front of the computer that dealing with the bureaucracy to pay you is easier than not dealing with it, and if given the choice between a nag screen and the bureaucracy, the nag screen is easier to deal with.

<comment><USER7> Companies have successfully convinced themselves that anything software is some form of black magic that can only be procured by the IT department and through a small army of Business Development Managers. In my job I have fairly broad discretion to purchase things, generally up to $100,000 I need only write a one-paragraph justification of what I'm doing as long as I'm working within an approved budget.

Except 'IT'.

I can't buy a $5 mouse at Best Buy. Or a Lightning cable to charge my company- provided iPhone. That will trigger long chains of accusatory emails from Accounting and Procurement. Software and 'IT equipment' has to be purchased according to the Policy, which to be quite honest I've never successfully figured out how to do.

It's come to the point that I'd rather buy small things (<$50) out of my own pocket than persecute myself by spending days going through some convoluted process and knowing at the end of it that we paid 3x the market price to get it from our 'Preferred Supplier'.

<comment><USER8> _.. and knowing at the end of it that we paid 3x the market price to get it from our 'Preferred Supplier'_

Very clear what's going on there once you get to the end. Somebody's got themselves a nice cash cow sewn up.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't need to be a conspiracy, where somebody is getting rich at the company's expense.

At work we have something similar, where every few years the IT department tenders the 'preferred supplier' for general IT stuff. The logic is basically that by promising the vendors exclusivity, they will bid lower. So yes, sometimes that means we'll pay 3x for a keyboard compared to the price we'd pay at the local discount computer store; I think in general the prices for the stuff that is in the 'tendering portfolio' is very competitive, otherwise it's list price.

OTOH, we save money since the billing from the preferred supplier is worn-in standard procedure, and also employees don't waste company time searching the web for the cheapest/best/whatever keyboard.

<comment><USER10> What's its own level of horrible is Amazon.

If you have a business account, everything gets bundled into that account. Sure, if your org is 110 people big, keeping track is pretty easy. My last job was with a state university. They see thousands of purchases a day, and Amazon bins them onto 1 credit card, and in 1 account. For all 8 campuses and over 50k people.

So the preferred vendor means also integrating with your financial system. So budgeting is easier. But Amazon makes this so damned hard. Even being able to tag purchases would help. But I'm sure ol Besos figured out that makes him lose a dollar.

<comment><USER11> With Amazon in Europe it's especially bad because if you accidentally buy something from an FBA vendor, you won't get a proper VAT invoice. And this makes accounting a pain in the ass.

Every other online store sends you a proper invoice. But FBA vendors will send you sketchy invoices that make it clear they aren't paying their taxes. Which is bad, because that means as a business customer you're on the hook....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been developing a cross-platform file manager [1] for the past 2.5 years. It is shareware with a nag screen. It currently makes ~$500 per month. Generally, I would say yes, shareware still works. But it is hard a) to write desktop software [2] and b) to convince people to pay for it. I would not give people the sources. It would make them feel even more like "I don't need to pay for this". What works for me is to be very transparent and tell people [3] "I'm one guy working on this, and am making $500 per month. This is not sustainable. If you like the project and want it to continue, buy a license".

Feel free to hit me up on twitter @m_herrmann if you have further questions. :-)

1: [https://fman.io](https://fman.io)

2: [https://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/11/15/python-qt-3000-hours- deve...](https://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/11/15/python-qt-3000-hours-developer- insight/)

3: [https://fman.io/buy](https://fman.io/buy)

<comment><USER13> I don't want to be overly negative, but I have launched quite a few indie 6 figure apps over the last five years, and something generating $500 a month isn't really working (in my book).

Have you even tried to just sell licenses for it? If your software delivers value then that should convert better than a nag screen. Worth giving users a 30 day trial and seeing how that converts.

<comment><USER14> Would be interested to know more about this. I see you posted an article last year, but it's since been deleted.

<comment><USER13> As in, interested in how I did it? I've been considering putting something together in the not so distant future -- throw me an e-mail with your contact details and I'll add you to the (currently very small) mailing list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's called Patreon. You've got to be established, though: can't come out of nowhere with a thing and expect to see much traction.

I literally went from using Kagi for ten years, to using Patreon. At first it's a decimating change because you're going from 'sale of a product' to 'literally giving product away free and telling people they can support you if they like'.

However, if your cashflow isn't too tough, one benefit is that Patreon is a LOT more stable and predictable than shareware ever was. You stop having boom and bust product releases and instead have months where you grow kinda briskly and months where you grow not so briskly.

You're not making revenue off the product, you're making revenue off 'I am the one who makes products such as this'. I've got suggestions for what people should pledge if they would've bought my stuff commercially, but it's entirely voluntary and I'm also MIT-licensing it all. I'm airwindows on github, and as a website.

<comment><USER16> There's one big catch there - once you reach a "fair" income level, many people will think that you are already getting enough and won't bother to sponsor you.

Look at the statistics [0]: unless you are in the top 100 creators, you'll get far less than your regular FAANG pay.

[0]: [https://graphtreon.com/patreon-creators](https://graphtreon.com/patreon- creators)

<comment><USER17> Huh. I didn't know Patreon published info on what creators are earning. Wouldn't that be a design flaw? What's the benefit to anybody? It seems to only deter potential sponsors.

<comment><USER18> Design flaw? No, I think it's called "transparency"

<comment><USER19> The good old battle between privacy and transparency! Nothing better to start a heated conversation: Finland publishes all personal taxes [https://taxjustice.blogspot.com/2011/11/finland-publishes- al...](https://taxjustice.blogspot.com/2011/11/finland-publishes-all-personal- tax.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You need to clearly understand the difference between making money from selling software licenses to your customers vs. having the investors as your primary customers.

In the current market you will hardly find a private player looking for a return on their investment through profits/dividends; they will be more likely trying to cash out when you create enough buzz to get acquired or IPOed. That's a completely different game from the naive "sell licenses - <USER2> profit" option, but that's the game private equity plays in 2018. And no, desktop applications are not buzzwordy enough for that game, sorry.

That said, there's plenty of money to be made selling desktop products to businesses. You just need to approach it differently, get the actual product/market fit, grow your presence organically, listen to your customers, learn from your mistakes and so on. Don't get discouraged by bootstrapping - you don't need a fully functional product to see if there is a market for the problem you are solving. Create a minimal prototype, write a few articles showing it off and tune in on the feedback. Once you start hearing from real people trying to solve real problems with your prototype, it will be very easy to find which next features will make your product more usable and will inevitably bring more revenue.

<comment><USER20> This, so much. The assumption that startup == investors is faulty, and in fact dangerous - investors don't share your priorities.

Build the thing, and sell it (not necessarily for shareware, either). There are new channels for software now (like Setapp[0]) that you can look at, too, depending on who the customer and platform is.

Then you can make decisions based on actual sales, demand, market size, etc, and if investors are needed at that stage, then you have a waaaaay better proposition for them.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want to make any meaningful money, you need to give people a good reason to pay. Asking for donations is not going to result in a lot of money. I've never heard from anyone making more than 500$ a year from donations for an app.

So you will need to add some kind of restriction to make people pay for your app.

The restriction depends on the usage type of your app.

\- If it is something that lots of people use everyday (like a text editor), you might get away with a nag dialog. Annoy a large number of people just a bit every day, and some of them will buy a license.

\- If it is something that people use just once (eg. a file conversion app) you absolutely have to require payment before people can do what they want, or they will never come back.

\- If is something that companies will want to customise, and you want to distribute source code, you probably need to charge a lot of money for it. Only few companies can afford to hire someone to write custom software, so you need to make sure you charge them enough that it is sustainable.

</comment><comment><USER21> You're not really describing Shareware (though in practice it may not have been a whole lot different). Shareware was software distributed under a try- before-you-buy license but the license actually _required_ you to pay if you continued to use the software beyond a certain time period.

Did this make a difference for most users? No. But, when I wrote shareware, I usually got one or two 4 figure site licenses per year from companies for my product. It was just a sideline but the difference between pure donationware and "you're really legally required to pay for this" did make a difference.

That said, today I'd probably just do it as open source donationware though the money wasn't completely trivial for me at the time.

<comment><USER22> > You're not really describing Shareware

These days, yeah, but the term shareware started out as OP described. It later became synonymous with trialware.

[https://asp-software.org/www/history/the-origin-of-shareware...](https://asp- software.org/www/history/the-origin-of-shareware/)

<comment><USER23> Eventually it became a rather derogatory term, I remember endless debates in the ASP about abandoning it, which I think they did in the end.

A lot of it was on the covers of magazines or you could order a set of disks from people like Atlantic Coast:

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/edgecombe/4709059216](https://www.flickr.com/photos/edgecombe/4709059216)

<comment><USER21> The ASP at least for a long time took a hard line against crippling whether by feature or time limiting. After I moved on (and retail software started offering demos, open source became widespread, etc.) shareware evolved into the sort of crippleware, adware, etc. that you still see in some corners of the software world today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Go with a trial model with online license activation. This works really well.

More specifically - allow to use the program without a license for X days and the cripple it in some annoying way until the installation is licensed. Activation should pass some machine details to the licensing server, which will then pass back them hashed and signed. The program should have the public part of the licensing key embedded, so on launch it would read the license, verify the sig and check that the license still matches the machine.

Also, for this to work _well_ you will want to have some basic protection against reversing in place. It should not be possible to NOP the IF in the license check, replace the signing pub key or to side-load DLLs. This is a large subject of its own, but there are off-the-shelf solutions for this (called exe protectors)... though the con here is the perpetual hassle with false positive detection from anti-viruses and such.

PS.

I should add that "pay what you want" model doesn't work at all. It absolutely doesn't work for enterprise software and it doesn't even work with home users. It basically makes the software look not valued enough even by its own creator.

Ditto for the donation model unless the active audience size is in 100s of thousands. Donation model is not really a _model_ to begin with, it lacks predictability.

Differntiating pricing tiers _just_ by the user type - personal/home vs. business/commercial - works very poorly as well. People cheat. The only thing that really works as a price differentiator are the features. Pay more - <USER3> more. Also, charging for Windows Server installs 10x the normal price is a perfectly acceptable practice that works well.

If you have any questions - ask, I'd be happy to answer what I can.

</comment><comment><USER25> Donation ware is a thing, but it rarely works well. Besides, hockey stick growth on a product that is free to obtain and use isn't a surefire means of proving future profitability. The easiest way to make money is the old fashioned way: charge for it.

<comment><USER26> Or charge for support

<comment><USER27> Any examples of successful companies that charge for support for their own free product?

<comment><USER28> Well, RedHat, sorta kinda, but not exactly what was meant here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Look at sites/software/etc that is offered for free that you believe offer very high value. There's a recurring trend. In spite of the value offered, the developers invariably end up short of revenue. This tends to result in ever more visible requests for donations or alternatives (such as swag) to try to spur revenue. And even with these appeals, the revenue tends to rarely correspond in any meaningful way to the value of what's offered.

As an example Lichess (www.lichess.org) is an amazing service for playing chess. It supplanted services like ICC (internet chess club) and now competes against services such as chess.com and really stands head and shoulders above the rest of the sites. Now let's consider compensation. ICC had on the order of tens of thousands of users and charged around $50/year for what would have required extremely little overhead. They were undoubtedly making millions. Chess.com today is heavily ad-driven and works hard to push their users into a premium access model. No idea about their revenue, but they happily spend 5 figures a year in contracts just to get various players/streamers to exclusively play/stream on their site, and have an extensive paid staff. In contrast to these two sites, the founder of Lichess is able to gives himself a salary of $22,218, about $2k above the French minimum wage. It's not like he's then getting loads in options each year - that's it, that's what he gets for building software that beats out other sites making countless millions offering arguably inferior services.

It sucks, because I wish this model worked, but I think it simply does not. There are exceptions, but they are definitely the exception.

</comment><comment><USER30> I don't think just distributing it for free will net you revenue. Usually people need a reason to pay. I personally will pay for something if really want it, _and_ I'm incredibly annoyed by the free alternative. Likewise, someone in a small team in a big company will use your software for free, but until they get annoyed enough by it, they won't convince their boss to pay for it to avoid the annoyance (or gain the premium feature, etc). In this sense, the value driving the purchase is the pain factor, not how useful the software is by itself.

You should also tailor your business model to the product's market. If you have a broad market - home users, small business, large businesses, etc - <USER4> can use it for free, but some will still pay. If it's a smaller market - <USER5> small businesses - maybe only a few will pay if it's available for free.

You can also change the business model to be free software that drives paying for something else - like a cool cli tool, but a much more useful premium GUI. Or a free tool that's easier to set up and use as a SaaS.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would look at selling licensed copies yourself or create it as a SaaS. You can do both of those without investors.

Put it out there for sale and test it out.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why would you need investors to distribute a licensed product? I've used a number of programs at work that seem like they're developed by a very small shop or possibly a single person. They perform a small but important function that companies are often willing to pay a reasonable price to figure out.

To be specific, it's importing tables from Excel to AutoCAD and Revit. It seems like this is something that AutoCAD and Revit should be able to do, but they handle it very poorly.

[http://www.cadig.com/products/](http://www.cadig.com/products/)

[http://dotsoft.com/xl2cad.htm](http://dotsoft.com/xl2cad.htm)

Licenses are ~$30-50 each and every company I've worked at has happily paid it rather than let employees waste time fiddling with the terrible native functionality.

I don't know how much the creators are actually making, but it seems to be enough to keep them going for the past 10 years or so.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Still work"? Was there a time that shareware worked? Serious question.. citations appreciated.

Also it sounds like you are doing enterprise software. Shareware was more of a consumer pricing model. With enterprise you want to make it totally free for small scale grassroots adoption by champions and then monetize large scale adoption.

<comment><USER34> Both Carmacks had themselves each a Ferrari _before_ they put out Doom. "Commander Keen" bought those Ferraris.

Though I'm sure it was always a game of chance like everywhere in business.

<comment><USER35> You mean both Johns? (Carmack & Romero)

<comment><USER36> He probably meant John and Adrian... both Carmacks and founders if ID

<comment><USER37> And intriguingly, those two Carmacks are not related!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If it's possible for your application, you might consider offering a 'feature- limited' aka 'crippleware' ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crippleware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crippleware)) product to help you determine its potential usefullness to a wider audience.

There are a number of approaches to doing that. After getting burned a few times paying $(100s) full-price for products just to find out that a feature I expected/needed was missing, I stopped doing that. I've since found some feature-limited stuff that lets me 'create-but-not-output' that I liked.

If it turns out to be a hit, you can change strategy. If the audience is limited, you can move back to shareware.

<comment><USER39> I use QCAD occasionally which falls into this category

      https://www.qcad.org/

The author provides downloadable versions for Windows, Mac and Linux and the source is available on Github if you want to build it yourself or provide bugfixes or extra features. He provides some features as extensions in a trial mode which ends after 15mins or so or you can disable them. Its pretty neat and to be honest the price for the full version does not seem to be that much though the community edition has always been sufficient for my needs and has enabled me to contribute with bugs/fixes/features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been attached to the "shareware" industry since the 90's, providing platforms to software developers to sell their products. It's given me an angle of the industry that few get, namely, I've seem the sales number for literally thousands of different companies in the industry.

The first thing I would say is that shareware (in the classic definition) is not really a thing anymore, but "try before you buy" software (which is really the evolution of shareware) is very much alive and well.

The second thing I would say is that most people would be surprised by how much some of these companies sell. Certainly not everyone does well, but we see small companies selling tens or hundreds of thousands (USD equivalent) per month. Some reach seven figures a month.

I can't think of a single company that I've worked with that had VC-style funding. Most are bootstrapped with a small minority getting small "friends and family" investments.

It is still possible to make a lot of money with try-before-you-buy software. A few tips:

Don't underprice. If you can provide enough value that they'll pay _something_ you've got more room in your price than you might think.

Feature limitations work better than time limitations.

75% of you sales come within one day of the trial download, and of those, 75% come within the first two hours. It's important that the product conveys _why_ and _how_ to buy.

Don't forget about other markets. In the early days most sales came from the US. These days, the US represents about half. When you get traction, consider translating your product and don't forget to offer your product for sale using multiple currencies and payment methods. Third-party e-commerce platforms make this easy. They'll also take care of a lot of the regulatory burden for you (taxes, export controls, fraud & chargebacks, etc.).

If your product is targeted at large companies, offer premium support for a fee. Something as simple as a "response by email within one business day" SLA can be enough.

SEO matters a lot in helping people find your product. High quality content about the problem your product solves helps a lot. In the early days find where people who need your solution are talking about their problem. Be transparent, offer genuine, non-spammy help as a solution expert and people will allow you to talk about your product. This can help a lot as you get established.

If someone will donate, they'll buy. You'll feel more benevolent asking for donations but you'll make _a lot more money_ if you sell the product. We've seen both models. It's not even close.

If your product is not targeted to a highly-technical audience, open source might sound cool but means nothing to them. They won't buy more because it's open source.

I could go on and on. I've said enough but there is still plenty of opportunity here. It takes time - be patient. Most of the successful companies I know started as a side gig.

<comment><USER41> Great comment. Absolutely packed full of gold nuggets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Overall, I think you're putting the cart before the horse. You think you have a valuable product, but it doesn't sound like you've even validated that thought yet. I would do that first before getting caught up in these next steps.

> let anyone who feels it is worth pay for it

You should only do that if you want this to be a side project forever. If you want growth, charge people money. Most people aren't just going to donate money to you if they don't have to. Don't be shy about charging. People who find value in your software will pay you for a license to use it, especially businesses. If they don't find enough value to want to pay, then you don't have a good product yet and should talk to your users to determine value adds.

> To go for a startup selling licenced copies, I would need an investor

I don't see how you came to this conclusion. You can very easily license your software without investors, and charge customers per machine like you mentioned. I even built a business around that fact, which may also be able to help you start licensing your software quickly [0].

[0]: [https://keygen.sh](https://keygen.sh)

</comment><comment><USER43> _Sublime Text 2_ comes to my mind.

</comment><comment> mark-r I worked on an application that transitioned from shareware to licensed way back in 1998. The revenue jumped between 2x and 10x with that transition. I can't imagine it's gotten any better in the intervening years.

</comment><comment><USER44> Talk to ten potential customers who you know would like to use the product. Ask them about various ways of paying for it, how much they'd be wiling to pay, and then turn them into your first customers.

</comment><comment><USER45> In the line of business that AWS, Azure, GCP, etc. are in (IAAS/PAAS/SAAS) there is a related software concept called the "free tier". It's very popular.

</comment><comment><USER46> My color scheme [https://www.monokai.pro](https://www.monokai.pro) is downloadable for free for Sublime and VSCode. It has a nag screen a la Sublime Text that tells you it's free for evaluation, but needs a license for continued usage. A small percentage of people purchases a license, but for sure not all 200K of them.

<comment><USER47> To put it bluntly and I mean no offense whatsoever - you come across as completely nuts trying to charge 10 EUR for a _damn color scheme_. That's basically what 200K people think when dismissing your nag.

<comment><USER13> The fact that 200k people have downloaded it means it has value.

I'm actually more surprised 200k people have downloaded a custom colour scheme. But since they have, I don't think 10 EUR is excessive to charge for something like that.

<comment><USER48> They downloaded it because it was free.

Its value is in the fact that it's free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> At my company, they want to pay for software so that they can ask support or blame someone if something wrong happen. I think, the best license is: expensive commercial license (to be taken seriously), free license for personnal use (to be appreciated by developpes), free time limited commercial license for software evaluation.

</comment><comment><USER50> >let anyone who feels it is worth pay for it.

Don't rely on altruism to be a good indication of real demand. People like to get good deals. When you get for free something that is of good value -- it's a good deal and most people will go for it.

The freemium model would work better to estimate demand.

</comment><comment><USER23> >let anyone who feels it is worth pay for it

Just make a time limited trial, if they feel it is worth paying for then they will buy, if they don't then you don't owe them anything.

</comment><comment><USER51> How about an evaluation period. People still do that.

</comment><comment><USER52> Is SublimeText an example of successful shareware?

</comment><comment><USER53> Can you make this a SaaS? That might be easier.

</comment><comment><USER54> shareware...even better with SALTO (selling digital secured locks): you can "try" their web based control software for 90 days...but you have to pay $150 for it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Define work

</comment><comment><USER56> Honestly- just use UWP and sell on windows store. Hacker news is believe it or not, a very niche space with very few employees of big enterprises except the popular ones. You wont get to hear from the regular it worker here

<comment><USER57> Why UWP? Who buys from Windows Store?

Not my parents. They started computers with buying software in boxes, but in the modern age almost all of their digital purchases are done on smartphones. Neither of them have any idea what Windows Store is. One of them uses Steam for games.

Not most power users I know, most of which bawk at UWP apps and the concept of a walled garden store on their desktop computer. Many power users are more likely to use Steam to buy apps despite it being gaming focused.

Anecdotally I see basically no group that would prefer Windows Store except out of ignorance or necessity. Buying on Windows Store means you don't get the Mac version if one exists. Admittedly, the same caveat applies in reverse to the more successful Mac App Store, but it's still something people have to consider.

Microsoft has been pushing Windows Store pretty hard for a long time. They came to my University back when I was in college, a bit after the Windows 8 launch. They talked numbers but only in terms of the whole Windows install base and not even Windows 8 adoption. Definitely no numbers on Windows Store.

To this day, I don't know if we've seen good stats on how much apps that were built and sold exclusively on Windows Store have fared. No doubt games have sold well - Microsoft can use its Xbox brand to deliver exclusives to Windows Store and not Steam - but I sincerely and absolutely doubt that success will translate to app developers.

<comment><USER58> Windows Store apps are (relatively) sandboxed, and go through an approval process. For the average user, it is generally safe to let them know they can install anything they want off of it. This isn't true of most other places on the Internet, including some more poorly managed walled gardens. I've done a lot of support for senior citizens, and when they're looking for say, a card game, the Windows Store is _fantastic_.

I use probably about a dozen Windows Store apps with some regularity, though being in IT and dev, I obviously use a lot of apps outside of it as well. But while I rarely will install a traditional app from a no-name developer for fear it might do bad things to my system, I am pretty willing to try new UWP apps.

That's the key perk for someone just starting out/trying to make a living off small software offerings. The sandboxing offers a stand-in for trustworthiness. And of course, you don't have to stand up your own licensing servers, pay for bandwidth from downloads, etc.

<comment><USER57> Sandboxing is a useful property, but do Desktop Bridge apps even get sandboxing? If not it calls the whole thing into question. Android has an app store with _mandatory_ sandboxing and you can't always trust it, even Apple with probably the most strict rules and review process have had some incidents.

I would like sandboxing in general, but as a feature of Windows Store it's definitely not enough to win me personally over.

I still remain unconvinced of the prominence of Windows Store and if I were to sell an app today I would guess mobile is the way to go followed by probably Steam or Mac App Store.

Sidenote: it feels like you're more likely to get annoying ad supported software from app stores too. Even the built-in solitaire is ad-ridden!

<comment><USER58> Desktop bridge apps can request "full access" permission, which effectively evades sandboxing, but those apps are heavily scrutinized on review. In comparison, the Play Store has no manual approval process and an automated malware scanner that's industry-worst according to independent review. ;) Apple does a pretty good job though, and would be my general recommendation for mobile security.

Note that while Android and iOS both have numerous examples of malicious apps in their store, AFAIK, Windows Store does not (though there are definitely ad- ridden nightmares in there). I found their reviews annoyingly onerous for a literally 50-line UWP app with a single function when I tried to submit something.

The biggest benefit of their sandboxing though is not actually the security limitations of what they can access, but how it's installed, and more importantly, uninstalled. UWP apps are one-click remove, and do not leave any lingering garbage in the registry, as they have kind of like a "registry diff" inside their own folder.

Apps like iTunes which are notoriously messy for install and removal I prefer over UWP because it's much easier to purge them safely.

<comment><USER59> I still find it a shame that Microsoft didn't get to succeed with Windows Mobile. Now instead of "everyone having one phone" we have "everyone having two types of phones" essentially. I love what Apple does because it makes them profitable, even down to their app store. Any competitor that arises needs to mimic that to remain profitable, I would prefer something where the main things are proprietary but as long as the company's only focus is making a phone OS and not an advertisement platform.

I also find it a shame that Canonical instead of redoing the Desktop Environment for Ubuntu didn't invest that effort into just Ubuntu Mobile (or whatever it was called) and lastly, Mozilla almost had a reasonable thing, they really should of produced a Chromebook competitor first though. I yearn for a sane ChromeOS alternative that's fully open source and runs Firefox by default.

In a parallel universe Microsoft and Canonical team up to make a sane Android competitor that overtakes the market, and build the first Linux distro to be able to run Windows applications in a sane sandboxed environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Pay what you want is the best model.

<comment><USER61> Do you have any examples of this working successfully and sustainably for software?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Have a trial for a period you think is enough for the company to know they'll get value out of using your product and post that ask for a licence fee.

To start with I suggest you give the MVP product for free. The users will be paying you with their feedback.

<comment><USER23> Feedback from people who don't pay anything is useless if you want to build a business.

<comment><USER63> Even if the feedback may result in improvements that would result in a product they _want_ to pay for?

<comment><USER23> I used to believe that but eventually I became worn down by it all. You get so many "opportunities" presented to you that don't turn into anything that you have to take most of it with a pinch of salt.

On the other hand someone who has put their hand in their pocket is going to get a lot of my attention.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How we turned JSON into a full programming language - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/relevant-stories/rel-chapter-1-907ff616bf80 <comment><USER2> I wonder why they didn't use plain JSON arrays and a lisp interpreter, so much structure seems unnecessary.

[https://gist.github.com/aynik/5ffca6ba09ea08b92f71](https://gist.github.com/aynik/5ffca6ba09ea08b92f71)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi everyone. The author here. A couple of answers to much asked questions:

Why JSON? Mainly because it makes it natural to embed JSON objects into code that's otherwise purely functional. Also, as @detaro pointed out, it saved us the time to build our own parser.

Why not use an interpreter/compiler for an existing functional language? Building our own language allows us to control the reach of the code and prevent malicious stuff. Having our own compiler is also useful when threading and networking matters as much as it does to us, since there is simultaneous front end and back end processing.

The result is a very simple syntax for API aggregation where we take care of all the hard part in the background :)

<comment><USER2> So security through obscurity, well done.

<comment><USER3> It's more straightforward than this. Think of it as a more comprehensive Yahoo Pipes or IFTTT, where the nice graphical interface is not yet released publicly. So for now developers can just write the raw JSON. Yes, a LISP interpreter would have done that job (as would a library written in some other programming language). However you are not allowed to download code into an iOS app (precisely for security reasons), and so we're downloading items from a predefined documented list of macros. This simplicity, in turn, makes creating a graphical interface a lot easier, without sacrificing the fact that the structure is as flexible as a functional programming language.

<comment><USER2> So your language is not turing complete?

<comment><USER3> I would say it's not, since it lacks conditional branching, although one could argue that you can simulate a Turing complete system on a Relevant card by having a user indefinitely tap on a button that refreshes it at the next state.

<comment><USER2> Understood, I stand corrected. Anyway, I would have used some kind of non- turing complete stack language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is...ugh, I don't want to use the word but gross seems to be most fitting. I really don't understand why anyone would do this. Worst yet if your iOS app is interpreting and executing this from an external source than it's against the Apple ToS for the App Store.

<comment><USER3> All the logic is executed on the back-end. Front-end is called only for user input and location.

We've been using this syntax for a while and it works well for us internally, but we're soon releasing more appealing tools. Read comments below for more details.

<comment><USER4> > All the logic is executed on the back-end. Front-end is called only for user > input and location.

Fair enough; that wasn't clear to me from reading the article.

I still think this is a solution to a non-existent problem. Essentially interfaces solved this type of problem 30 years ago. Today you can implement a set of interfaces and, depending on your language of choice, hot swap / add/ delete them as needed and those can all do exactly what your fancy JSON does but without the proprietary, new syntax and language being introduced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe I missed it, but what benefit does it have to squeeze that into JSON structures, except making it harder to write for humans? Only to save part of the parser-building?

That said, an easy but powerful tool to digest and display APIs sounds very useful.

<comment><USER6> Also the possibility to use your own code base as data and manipulate it with JSON functions, aka macros :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a bit confused. Assuming that I'm designing an API, should it confirm to your language and return the results as your fancy JSON?

<comment><USER3> No. With REL it is possible to aggregate and manipulate any JSON API. The only thing that has to be written in REL is the card file itself. This JSON file is to be hosted anywhere on the web. For example, this is a Hello World card [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/wircho/c8f4f5b0ce440b8edd...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/wircho/c8f4f5b0ce440b8edd83/raw/8ef09440e96322e75220ff1470fbc4c65d76e6c2/cities_card) hosted on GitHub.

If you are releasing a JSON API, I'd be happy to try it out and make a card for it. Let me know if you have more questions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, you created LISP.

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule)</comment></comment>


Lazy Eight's 404 page is Space Invaders and #drumpf epicness - <AUTHOR> http://lazyeight.design/404 <comment><USER2> blank page?</comment>


Using custom fonts in images is no longer a problem, especially SVG - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/using-custom-fonts-with-svg-in-an-image-tag/ <comment><USER2> Was struggling like forever with fonts in svg. You guys made it seem like a piece of cake.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, didn't know such problem exists in SVGs. Nice read, thanks

</comment><comment> kick-lalala9 Thanks for discovering this. Good read.</comment>


Neural Ordinary Differential Equations - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/01/09/neural-ordinary-differential-equations/ <comment><USER2> Prior discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18676986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18676986)

<comment><USER3> I used a naive forward-differentiate-through-euler-integration scheme to optimize networks of coupled oscillators to perform classification ( [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.08412.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1808.08412.pdf) ), but your approach seems to be miles away in terms of performance. Congratulations to the authors, this is amazing work, I see great potential applications in physics-based computing with nanotechnology, and I may actually use it myself in this context !</comment></comment>


Microsoft is Hiring Go engineers to work on Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/6o2lc3/microsoft_is_hiring_go_engineers_to_work_on/ <comment><USER2> I was introduced to the Kubernetes source code by an Redhat Kubernetes Core Contributor. He showed me the nasty parts how they solved the lack of generics. Actually they use strings to concat valid go source code based on reflections. A little tedious but given the constraints for language choice they had (fast, compiled binary, close to the metal) I think Go is still a decent choice for Kubernetes.

<comment><USER3> Kubernetes is literally the Angular of orchestration systems. SwarmMode is so much cleaner and less complex to use, dive into, and hack on.

I'm unsure why the community rallies behind Kube considering it's insecure, horribly complex, and a PITA to configure. I guess because google lied and said they use it internally, even though they're still using Borg?

<comment><USER4> Well for one Swarm was released a year ago and Kubernetes went 1.0 two years ago, so there has just been more time for people to get familiar with k8s. I myself dug into kube before Swarm arrived and have put off getting into Swarm because constant framework hopping kind of defeats the purpose of getting familiar with a new framework in the first place.

While I agree to some extent re complexity, I'd be interested as to what you're referring to when you say kubernetes is insecure.

<comment><USER5> Framework hopping? With your knowledge in k8s you should be able to learn Docker Swarm and getting a swarm deployed in less than 60 minutes.

<comment><USER4> Sure, I could definitely get a swarm set up quickly and run something trivial on it, but then I'll be back to the docs for secrets, stateful containers, volume mounts, cert management, instrumentation, health checks, load balancing etc.

My point about 'framework hopping' was that I try to get some value out of the time spent digging into a new tool/library/framework, rather than trying to use something new for each new project. Knowing the pitfalls, useful configs, edge cases, best plugins and so forth goes a long way towards being able to focus on what you're actually building. I'm not against early adoption and I am always learning new tools, but I do try to leverage the ones I have deep knowledge of.

<comment><USER5> > I'll be back to the docs for secrets, stateful containers, volume mounts, > cert management, instrumentation, health checks, load balancing etc.

Almost all of your points are on one page in the doc (just google 'docker- compose file') which is read and used in 5 minutes. Btw, load balancing is the default, no real config required (still you can but the defaults are sensible). Anyway, you are usually 5x to 10x faster than with setting up an k8s cluster. This should be a good enough reason to give it a try and to make your own picture of Swarm.

It is up to you but I think you have a wrong picture of Swarm. Something huge, conplicated and intimidating like k8s. Something you should spend your weekend and the week after to learn. This is wrong.

Just see is as another CLI tool which you can grasp in the next hour (instead of surfing the web).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not surprising, given that they recently acquired Deis (the company behind [https://github.com/kubernetes/helm](https://github.com/kubernetes/helm)).

<comment><USER7> Hum I was thinking about switching to helm. I think I will steer clear now.

<comment><USER8> I found it has strange defaults (all services publicly exposed) and quite unfriendly to automate. Ended up sticking with native deployments.

<comment><USER7> Yah so the few helm charts I have used, I had not seen a huge value. If I wanted to change something without a hook, I end up using my own dockerfile anyway.. so I guess it is helpful as just a reference on how to get a service to work, but not that useful for prod deploys.

<comment><USER9> We've standardized on helm for prod deploys. Perhaps it's not a huge value, but it is a convenient way to bundle together a set of configs, templatize them and manage them.

<comment><USER6> Seconded. We use Helm to deploy OpenStack (and various supporting services) on Kubernetes: [https://github.com/sapcc/helm- charts](https://github.com/sapcc/helm-charts) and [https://github.com/sapcc/openstack-helm](https://github.com/sapcc/openstack- helm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can't wait for Kubernetes Home Edition, Kubernetes Premium or Kubernetes Server Edition....I know which one we're getting.

<comment><USER11> This is not Reddit!

Please post substantively on Hacker News or not at all.

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

<comment><USER5> It also says: 'Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.'

So calm down.

<comment><USER11> I don't find myself uncivil. I would totally say what I said in a face-to-face conversation to preserve the decorum of a forum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would really love for Microsoft to cooperate on Go with Google. Of course not the C# approach to sink in all the features but maybe releasing an official pkg for win32 api and maybe even the GUI.

<comment><USER13> Maybe Google could learn how to implement generics....

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I also saw today this article Microsoft Prepares SQL Server 2017 for Linux and Containers [0], from this tweet[1] "Microsoft Prepares SQL Server 2017 for Linux and Containers, SQL Server lab runs on kubernetes and docker". If they moved the entire SQL lab (many thousands of machines) to Kubernetes is quite a big deal. They're probably warming up on how to manage it at scale, and I'm pretty sure that moving Azure SQL DB infrastructure to it is the goal. If they can get better isolation and higher density that today (some Azure Fabric derivative, afaik), it would save tonnes of moneys.

[0] [https://thenewstack.io/sql-server-2017-brings-microsofts- dat...](https://thenewstack.io/sql-server-2017-brings-microsofts-database- linux-container-worlds/)

[1] [https://twitter.com/slava_oks/status/887359748047216640](https://twitter.com/slava_oks/status/887359748047216640)

</comment><comment><USER15> You might find it relevant. Build a container from scratch using GO [https://about.sourcegraph.com/go/functional-programming- in-g...](https://about.sourcegraph.com/go/functional-programming-in-go)

<comment><USER16> Given "Linux Namespaces and Go Don't Mix" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470231)) I am not so sure?

<comment><USER15> Sorry. My Bad. I meant to provide this link - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuvDm8IC-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuvDm8IC-4)

I screwed up during copy+paste

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think it's clear now. Microsoft simply _loves Google_!

Sorry, couldn't help myself with all the "Microsoft loves Linux because it's working on some Linux code" arguments around here.

Microsoft only does what suits Microsoft's interests. If they want to use Kubernettes and they _need_ Go engineers for that, or to support Go in any way, then they'll do it, especially if it makes strategic and financial sense for them to do so.

<comment><USER18> They can't let Google eat up another space.

They lost to the search engine.

I think Microsoft have waken up and realize they need to be active in all spaces that open source is at. It seems like this moves will help their cloud business since there are so much money in there.

Supposely their Azure cloud is doing well and I guess they need to keep at it.

I agree that they're not doing it for the pure of their heart but rather it's money driven and fear of being left behind again.

<comment><USER7> So when do they throw their Microsoft wrench in it..

"Oh and these Kubernetes features only work on Azure Cloud(tm) running Windows Server(tm), or Microsoft Linux(tm)."

I don't know.. does anyone that isn't a .net shop use Azure? It seems if you are a .net shop, Azure is the best choice. If you are not a .net shop, why use Azure? If Microsoft is going to reach a compelling chunk of AWS and GCE linux developers, I don't think they are going have that easy of a time...

<comment><USER19> In my very limited experience Azure is much, much nicer than AWS from the admin experience. Its kind of embarrassing for Amazon how bad AWS is in that area. Google CE also has very nice UI.

I understand that Azure is competitive on price, and they do support all of the linuxy things you'd expect from AWS or GCE.

Unfortunately all that comes at the expense of reliability from what I've seen. :/

<comment><USER7> Ya right, so you are selling me a cloud service by the GUI. I don't use the GUI on any of my providers, so it doesn't really matter. (It might matter to the same subset of people that use remote desktop to "administer" their fleet of window servers)

Like I said, I cannot imaginable that many non .net shops would touch azure. It has neither the features of AWS, nor the magic of GCE.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why using a regex to validate emails is a dangerous game - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/201323/127880

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is a fully compliant regex. It is nasty. <http://ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail- RFC822-Address.html></comment>


Protein sources by calories, value and portion size - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/4vSKWik.png

<comment><USER2> Today I learned that I was the last person on the internet to know that you can manipulate i.imgur.com urls so that they point back at the original post with a description, title, author information, etc.

        http://i.imgur.com/<magic code>.png

\--->

        http://imgur.com/gallery/<magic code>

In this case, the gallery page has a link to a google docs spreadsheet which was used to generate the graphic.

I don't see citation of the source of the numeric data (but I didn't check all the links on the gallery page).

<comment><USER3> just to save anyone else the trouble

[http://imgur.com/4vSKWik](http://imgur.com/4vSKWik)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work. One minor quibble, Quorn isn't plant based. It is a fungus grown in egg albumen.

It would also be nice if all of the "complete protein" sources were included.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein)</comment>


Redeye VC: LeaveWallStreetJoinAStartup.com - <AUTHOR> http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/09/leavewallstreet.html <comment><USER2> This was brilliant; I've pimped it to so many of my Wall Street friends.</comment>


Piping Curl to S(hell) - <AUTHOR> https://0x46.net/thoughts/2019/04/27/piping-curl-to-shell/ <comment><USER2> I generally don't know what my installers do. When I install games from steam, applications from the App Store or browser from Mozilla, or Python distributions from continuum I don't know what the installer does. Or really, the software for that matter.

How would I? And even if I did, how would I know what the software does?

If you don't trust GitHub user robbyrussell to serve you a legitimate installer, why would you trust that user to serve you a legitimate program?

The part about partially downloaded scripts causing havoc is however quite relevant.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article raises good points, and I agree.

Seeing how piping curl to shell is a common practice to install something, I wonder what safer (and still simple) alternatives there are? Recently I encountered this situation and I piped curl to a file, read through the script to ensure what it does, then chmod +x the file and ran it. Not sure if that will become a common practice though..

<comment><USER4> If you need to run some unvetted software, do so in a locked down virtual machine, or at least run it only with privileges of a very restricted unix user.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about you, but I haven't "vetted" _any_ of the software on my machine, in the sense of proving to myself in any strong sense that it's not malicious. I just rely on a loose web of trust and a hefty dose of contextual clues. Piping curl to bash _feels_ dangerous, but it at least equivalent (and probably actually strictly safer) than running ./configure; make on some weird tarball.

<comment><USER4> We all rely on the clues like is the distributor well known, is the software very interesting to attackers, etc. Piping curl of random url to shell and running configure and make of tarball from random url is dangerous, because you do not know what gets executed. I don't see a difference, it's the same problem. If you have to run those programs, the safest way is to do so on a dedicated "untrusted" computer that has as little access to your data as possible. On your main work machine, rely on vetted software from well known reliable sources, for example your OS distributor.</comment></comment></comment></comment>