Pyxel: A retro game development environment in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kitao/pyxel <comment><USER2> Since it seems that many people here are unaware, so let me introduce Pico-8, the "Fantasy Video Game console" that is referenced in Pyxel's README as an inspiration: [https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php](https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)

Pico-8 is (AFAIK) the program that kicked off a trend of simple game engines, and it is by far the most popular. A popular game that came out this year, Celeste, was originally a Pico-8 game that proved popular enough to remake in a more modern game engine. Pico-8 supports a Lua API, with a built-in graphics editor for 8x8 sprites, and a 4-channel audio editor. Games can be exported as a PC/Mac/Linux binary, into HTML+JS for embedding into a webpage, and even as a PNG for easy sharing to other users with the Pico-8 program. There's also a very active BBS where 'cartridges' can be shared and played online: [https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7#mode=carts](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7#mode=carts)

I'm a relatively novice programmer, and one of the things that frustrated me was how difficult it was to make a simple game on modern machines. I didn't want to have to set up a whole Unity project or dive into OpenGL just for a little proof of concept. I've been heavily using Pico-8 and really recommend it for simple game programming. There's also a hashtag on Twitter (if you're into that sort of thing), #pico8, where people try to create interesting visual code golf programs that fit into the size of a Tweet, then they post the source code and a gif.

<comment><USER3> Building on your reply, I have found that Processing (Java) and P5 (JavaScript) have a similar easy-to-use design and the documentation is decent. (It's not opinionated on the color palette though.)

I've been using P5 to write retro video games to learn JavaScript, and it's been a lot of fun using that to learn JS. (Vanilla JS sucks, but the learning process is at least fun).

[https://processing.org](https://processing.org)

[https://p5js.org](https://p5js.org)

<comment><USER4> oh man, processing. i did a weeklong video game programming "camp" back when i was in middle school and processing was the language we used. definitely easy to pick up and use.

<comment><USER5> Could you please elaborate on why Processing is easier to use over OpenGL wrapper like LWJGL? You still have to write OpenGL shaders to get the desired visual, right?

<comment><USER6> It's just simple function calls, minimal boilerplate and simple API.

You can write shaders (not mandatory since it supports 3D without them) but loading them is simple as using ShaderToy.

[https://processing.org/tutorials/pshader/](https://processing.org/tutorials/pshader/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool for learning to program games.

Development environments in the 80's and 90's were so simple that you had to program down to every pixel shown on the screen (well, maybe calling some _line_ and _sprite_ primitives for speed), so you only needed to learn a small mental model for programming, and everything above it was designed by you. Also, the primitive hardware and no expectations of portability meant that you only had to care about one or two combinations of platforms (maybe supporting a small range of graphics and sound cards).

This can help teach younger developers to understand the basic principles, and get a glimpse of how things are done below the surface of those modern do-it- all gaming engines.

<comment><USER8> Actually, programming homebrew for the NES and SNES, I was surprised by how similar my experience was to learning OpenGL. You can't plot individual pixels on hardware like that, you have to fill CHR memory (like textures) and create arrays of sprite data (like triangles) to upload to the hardware accelerated unit of the console.

While it's totally true that you had to be very "close to the metal" in everything you do, I feel it's not that dissimilar from coding C and OpenGL today, in terms of the overall flow of your project.

<comment><USER9> NES and SNES were not your general "development system of the 80s"; I'm quite sure GP was referring to the Apple, Oric, Acorn, BBC, Dragon, MSX, Tandy CoCo, Spectrum, Amiga and even PCg/PCjr/XT of the time.

Commodore's C64, PET and VIC20 were exceptional in how hard they made using graphics at the time from the included BASIC; But in general it was quite easy.

The Atari VCS2600 had an even weirder video setup: It had one line of video memory (a 1D canvas!), and it was up to the program to replace the contents of that line while the screen raster was flying back to the next line. And a few sprites to sweeten the deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having had a quick look through, I think I'm going to spend some time playing around with this... I think that simple game engines are really important to getting young people into programming.

I have two step-sons (11 and 17), both of who are into gaming, but the elder one showed a bit of interest in programming when he was 11-12, but the problem (I think) is that the games they are playing are light-years away from anything they can even hope to program - and if they see what's involved in programming a FPS, they are (understandably!) crestfallen and look elsewhere. However, something like this would give them a way in to program something playable (and retro games are cool as far as they're concerned), but do some genuine learning AND see that there may be a path forward for them to produce something worthwhile.

When I was their age, games like Manic Miner seemed possible. I'm not in any way saying I had the skill of Matthew Smith (and still don't, I'm learning myself for a career change), but it didn't seem like impossible future alien technology, whereas today's games are - they take thousands of man years to create, and are made by incredibly skilled people.

<comment><USER11> > I have two step-sons (11 and 17), both of who are into gaming, but the elder > one showed a bit of interest in programming when he was 11-12, but the > problem (I think) is that the games they are playing are light-years away > from anything they can even hope to program

Well, that would be like going to the cinema for Marvel movies and then refusing to do amateur films because you think that you would not be able to make Marvel movies on your own.

<comment><USER12> Sure, that's a good analogy, but what's the point? He's still right.

When you are a kid, it is hard to see the forest from the trees. To people here, understanding the basics of game development in a limited environment as a stepping stone to building larger games is probably obvious. But kids don't really have that insight.

I think the solution is to provide that insight (and this should go for parents and game engine developers): that this is foundational game design and thinking. That everyone who's working in the industry today understands these foundations. And maybe that retro is still pretty cool ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks really nice. It's a shame the name is so similar to an existing app though (Pyxel Edit, [https://pyxeledit.com/](https://pyxeledit.com/))

My favourite 2D framework right now is is LOVE (love2d.org) - I'm using that to build stuff with/for my kids and it's just a joy to use. I'll probably write up some parent/child friendly tutorials at some point. I also like Monkey-2 ([http://monkeycoder.co.nz/](http://monkeycoder.co.nz/)), but I only really use that when I want to do basic 3D stuff, because Love does the 2D stuff so well...

<comment><USER14> Also similar in name to "Pyxl", like React JSX for Python

[https://github.com/gvanrossum/pyxl3](https://github.com/gvanrossum/pyxl3)

<comment><USER15> Those are all unmaintained projects. pyxl4/pyxl4 and Dropbox/pyxl haven't been in a long time and pyxl4 says gvanrossum/pyxl3 is unmaintained and while gvanrossum/pyxl3 was updated a month ago, it was just the README. The code hasn't been updated in over two years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is actually very nice.

I'd just like to point out as well, that unlike many other similar attempts it is _is not_ based on pygame, and does not suffer from either the flakeyness nor installation irritations that comes with.

Instead it implements a very minimal (dependency wise) custom layer on top of glfw.

Many people will be skeptical of a python game engine, but I would recommend this one over many others.

Limited in scope and very good at what it does.

<comment><USER17> Is PyGame flaky these days? I haven't much played with it in quite some time; it used to be pretty solid, although as I recall it wasn't much more than a wrapper for SDL 1.2 at the time.

<comment><USER16> It's never been really solid in my experience; it crashes when it fails and its difficult to build due to the heavy use of cython.

See, for example how kivy has moved away from using it as a backend [https://github.com/kivy/kivy/issues/5590](https://github.com/kivy/kivy/issues/5590)

<comment><USER18> Pygame is mostly C. Cython is not used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome stuff. Just spent 20 minutes with my 4 year old tweaking settings in the platformer example to see what the results would be. He loved it. Way more fun (for him) than the other day when he asked what the modulo operator was.

It bums me out that the economics of indie games are so awful. The kid in me wants, so badly, to make a gigantic, sprawling version of Zelda or a dungeon crawler. But there's no way I can justify the time investment.

Still, seeing an API this simple is inspiring. Props to kitao.

<comment><USER20> > But there's no way I can justify the time investment.

It's fun. People build gigantic, sprawling model train sets in their attics over the course of years, not to sell them or to have many people play with them, but just for the fun of building something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The hardware Pyxel simulates seems closest to the Williams arcade games -- Defender, Robotron, Joust, etc.

These games had a single 256 x 304 pixel frame buffer, 4 bits per pixel (16 color palette). A hardware bit blitter performed fast block copy operations to draw sprites, scrolling, etc.

There was a dedicated 8-bit CPU for sound which could play cool effects, albeit one at a time -- Pyxel's sound generator is closer to the NES, better for music and pure tones.

You can see a sample game written in C for the Williams hardware here: [http://8bitworkshop.com/v2.1.1/?platform=williams-z80&file=g...](http://8bitworkshop.com/v2.1.1/?platform=williams-z80&file=game1.c)

</comment><comment><USER22> This is acutally pretty cool. I'll take a look later and check your Jump + Run example, seems to me like there's not as much code required as I thought. I'm still intrigued by game development, just didn't really have the time to delve deep into it the last few months. Really cool project!

<comment> ryan-allen I thought the same things from the code examples. FYI other readers, to get to the example click on the image in the README!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is the Python packaging story like today? The last time I tried to distribute something that depended on platform specific libraries it was a real pain to get a package that users could just download and run. Would it be difficult to package a game written with this library in some form of installer?

<comment><USER24> FWIW, I've used both PyInstaller (bundles python and deps) and nuitka (actually compiles code to C++) and been super happy with both, though my use cases are generally simple (lots of networking generally but not much GUI work).

I've had much worse experiences with py2exe and cx_freeze.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would love to get my kids using something like this - my next question is they would love to share it - i will go with the "walk upstairs" sharing for now but are there plans for some kind of ... i'm not sure, download and run approach.

what would be needed - any thoughts?

<comment><USER26> TBH I'd just try out Pico-8, which inspired this Python project. Pico-8 games are super easy to share, you can share the png file or embed the game in a webpage. I'm mainly a Python developer but I got started with Pico-8 about a week ago and it's a blast. My 7 year old son loves it too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pretty cool, although most game engines/libraries lack a native gui system. Does this provide some way of building retro guis, like for game menus or settings? If not, will it in the future?

</comment><comment><USER28> This looks like a great project, reminds me a lot of development for GameBoy using GBDK especially with clipping screen buffers for scrolling.

I ended up writing a rough JS implementation of GBDK and used Emscripten so I could debug those kinds of things while making GameBoy roms.

[https://www.gbdkjs.com/docs/example- projects/](https://www.gbdkjs.com/docs/example-projects/)

There's something about working within the limitations of retro systems that's really fun.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is fantastic. I always loved retro arcade gaming, and I'm sad that there are not a lot of games out there that interest me. So these days I came to a conclusion that I have to build my own games.

Where can learn about general game physics? How are the games designed? How do we make the games tough so as to make sure it doesn't bore players? Basically on "how" I should go about building my game.

<comment><USER30> [https://www.gamedev.net](https://www.gamedev.net) or itch.io (for indie stuff)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have been learning Go lately and would be interested in an engine like Pyxel but for Go. Does one exist?

<comment><USER32> I was thinking the same since I have more experience with Go than Python. I guess one could duplicate this in Go using the SDL library.

<comment><USER31> Or with Pixel? It looks interesting: [https://github.com/faiface/pixel](https://github.com/faiface/pixel) . Instead of SDL I would at least use SFML: [https://www.sfml- dev.org/](https://www.sfml-dev.org/) .

Maybe I will try replicating it when I have more free time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It reminds me of the BASIC language shipped with the TI-83 calculator!

</comment><comment><USER34> this just looks like a fun way to learn python and game development. the api resembles very much the basic commands available in the 80s.

<comment><USER35> I wish we had that kind of api in the 80s...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36>
      Run on Windows, Mac, and Linux

:-)

</comment><comment><USER37> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17650590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17650590)

<comment><USER38> Please don't point out "duplicates" on valid reposts. "I posted this before, but nobody cared" doesn't add anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> python-pyxel is now available in AUR, for Arch Linux users.

</comment><comment><USER17> This looks real fun, I'll have to play with it when I get a free minute. The graphics and sound apis remind me a lot of QBasic, where I first learned to program</comment>


Pytest 3.2.0 released - happy-go-lucky https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/changelog.html#pytest-3-2-0-2017-07-30 <comment> happy-go-lucky For those new to Pytest, here's a tutorial to get you started:

Testing Python Applications with Pytest [https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/testing- python-a...](https://semaphoreci.com/community/tutorials/testing-python- applications-with-pytest)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm fairly new to Python and wondering of any reasons to use these as opposed to the standard unittest package that comes with Python?

<comment><USER2> If for no other reason, pytest requires a lot less boilerplate.

Pytest fixtures are also quite a bit more flexible than unittest's setUp and tearDown methods, although they take a little while to really understand (at least they did for me) since they use some magic.

<comment><USER3> Yield fixtures are just awesome for mocking, but the magical global dependency injection definitely makes you feel a bit weird on occasion

<comment><USER4> _especially_ in combination with pytest-mock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been a long time nosetests user, but it's become unmaintained, so I'd like to migrate something else. pytest seems to be an obvious choice, but I really dislike the way it formats test failures. Is there a way to make it use a more traditional format?

<comment><USER6> Yes, you can alter the way tracebacks are printed (or not printed) for test failures:

[https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/usage.html#modifying- pytho...](https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/usage.html#modifying-python- traceback-printing)

<comment><USER5> Thanks! _\--tb=native_ combined with _\--color=no_ makes it almost bearable.

It still annoys me that

      </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment> FAILURES </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=

takes the whole screen width. I can pipe stdout through "cat" to fix it, but it's not very convenient.

<comment><USER7> Try -q

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been pretty disappointed with PyCharm's support for Pytest in a Django project -- seems to be incapable of overriding the `manage.py` test runner consistently.

pytest-django has some docs[1] for how to plug into `manage.py`, but they are broken as of Django 1.10.

Anyone else had this problem?

[1]: [https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest- django/blob/master/docs...](https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest- django/blob/master/docs/faq.rst#how-can-i-use-managepy-test-with-pytest- django)

<comment><USER9> It is actually discouraged by pytest-django[0] to run it using Django's test command. Just run `pytest` itself.

[0]: [https://pytest-django.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#why- would-i-...](https://pytest-django.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#why-would-i-use- this-instead-of-django-s-manage-py-test-command)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, see part one of my comment -- I've found that PyCharm is pretty bad at selecting `pytest` as the test runner. It works for test functions, but not for files/directories.

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but PyCharm just uses `./manage.py test` even when I've selected Py.test as the project test runner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The `--last-failed` option will change my life! <3

<comment><USER11> FWIW it was added back in 2.8.0 (though only as a short `--lf` options). 3.2.0 makes it smarter by improving the first-failed/last-failed clear behaviour: it now only clears tests which have succeeded.

You can see the use case in the PR: make a change, it breaks a lot of tests, then fix module par module e.g. after an initial `pytest` (failed lots) fix `pytest core --lf`, then fix `pytest controller --lf`, … the problem pre-3.2 is that `pytest core --lf` would reset the cache with only its own failures, so the subsequent `pytest controller —lf` would start with an empty cache and run every single test rather than only those which had previously failed.

This is problematic when you have a large expensive testing base (e.g. so much so that you xdist it, as the original PR did)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really like Pytest but I didn't see a way to easily customize the output format (not just traceback but overall output). If they can add documentation with examples of the hooks available (if present) to customize the output, I won't have anything further to complain about Pytest.

<comment><USER13> This is a big one for me, too. Would make working with CI tools much easier.

<comment><USER14> One thing that might help is that pytest can output test results as JUnit XML files, which many CI services support.

<comment><USER15> That's how we wire it into Jenkins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any pointers on using fixtures with Django database models?

Seems like it would be useful to be able to manage the lifecycle of fixtures more explicitly than Django's TestCase allows you to, but this could get gnarly if the test case transactions were rolling back changes to fixture objects.

<comment><USER16> Are you using [https://pytest- django.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://pytest- django.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)?

<comment><USER8> Yup

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pytest's fixtures have ruined me for other testing frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER18> Oh boy! `PYTEST_CURRENT_TEST` let me take out a lot of hacks from my code. We're doing a lot with logging and parallel tests, so this was always a sore point.</comment>


Show HN: WebGL Voxel Game Demo (Pure JS/ThreeJS) - <AUTHOR> http://qake.se/demo/ <comment><USER2> Will you be open sourcing this like your other voxel projects?</comment>


Show HN: World's 1st Material Design Web App - <AUTHOR> http://app.ziteboard.com

<comment><USER2> This looks interesting. Any plans for spreadsheet support?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, please check [http://riport.ziteboard.com](http://riport.ziteboard.com) which also shows imported charts.</comment></comment>


Membership is the future of journalism - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/de-correspondent/putting-membership-into-practice-2e980c025fc9 <comment><USER2> And independent patronage at that. A lot has changed with my monthly media budget in the past ~2 years. The majority of it is now contributions to creators on Patreon, coming it at about 60 a month. Journalism and independent blogs can be funded on this model as well.

<comment><USER3> I can see it going this way as well. My fear is that it will cause too much focus on personalities rather than quality work.

<comment><USER4> If you want quality work, it's always going to be something you're going to have to look for. Patreon can't fix Sturgeon's Law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Membership is the past of journalism aa well.

I think my parents have been sunscribed to the same newspaper since before I was born, and before there was any sign of computers in daily life.

<comment><USER6> Membership used to be the way almost all worthwhile knowledge was spread.

People would subscribe to newspapers. They'd subscribe to magazines. They's subscribe to books, and even entire libraries. Knowledge was important, and people would pay for that.

Heck, even Microsoft believed that the future was subscribing to Encarta updates mailed on CDROMs, and the internet wasn't going to be a big thing for regular people.

It's only with the advent of electronic communication (radio, then television, then internet) that the concept of getting one's daily knowledge for "free" became widespread. Before that, if you wanted free knowledge you went to the finite resources of the public library.

SV these days wants everyone to subscribe to software, but get their journalism for free. An interesting double standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Eh, I'm not sure about this. And even if it is, I'm not sure it'd be a good thing.

Firstly, as much as some people hate to hear it, journalism is a lot like the app store in that there are huge incentives to offer it for as low a price as possible, and huge risks to anyone who decides to charge a reasonable price afterwards. Indeed, for many average people, price basically is the only thing they care about in these markets, and the only reason they read any news sites or services is because they're free.

If a media outlet charges money, all that usually happens is a small percentage of readers pay, and the rest go to one of the many competitors offering it for nothing. And the more sources that do the former, the bigger the gains are for the ones who don't.

I think people also overstate how large the percentage of readers/viewers/listeners/whatever who pay for quality content is. It's enough to pay for some small publications to keep running, but likely not something that'll scale to the whole industry.

Additionally, if this does become the norm for more 'credible' publications, it may also disadvantage those who can't afford all these subscriptions or what not, driving them to the less credible sites running on ad dollars. What do you think is more likely to go for memberships? Something like the New York Times or Breitbart?

Probably the former. So it's the likes of the latter who would end up being the main source of news and articles for people who can't afford/don't want to pay for journalism. Is that a good thing? Probably not.

Still, maybe they'll prove me wrong there. I just personally doubt there'll ever be a world where a large percentage/all journalism is supported by memberships.

</comment><comment><USER8> as a Dutch national, I have to comment that it panned out really well here. Would highly recommend this start up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Url changed from [https://threader.app/thread/1052194833777840128](https://threader.app/thread/1052194833777840128), which points to this.</comment>


Grabr, the international shopping and delivery platform, picks up $3.5M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/25/grabr-the-international-shopping-and-delivery-platform-picks-up-3-5-million/ <comment><USER2> A better title would be "grabs $3.5M"</comment>


What the Rich Won't Tell You - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/sunday/what-the-rich-wont-tell-you.html <comment><USER3> Recent submissions and discussions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=what%20the%20rich%20won%27t%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=what%20the%20rich%20won%27t%20tell%20you&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER4> _They were thinking about where to buy a second home and whether their young children should go to private school. Then she made a confession: She took the price tags off her clothes so that her nanny would not see them. "I take the label off our six-dollar bread," she said._

 _She did this, she explained, because she was uncomfortable with the inequality between herself and her nanny, a Latina immigrant. She had a household income of $250,000 and inherited wealth of several million dollars. Relative to the nanny, she told me, "The choices that I have are obscene. Six- dollar bread is obscene."_

Then how about paying your nanny enough so that she can _also_ afford six- dollar loaf of bread now and then, also?

The remedies for this kind of "guilt" are ready available and quite simple, actually.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't make sense for individuals to martyr[1] themselves for a cause. The same goes for people who pick on climate change campaigners who fly in planes or still drive cars.

But it does make sense that if you, as a wealthy individual, feel guilty about things like this support moves that improve equality overall in society: Medicare for all, higher minimum wages, good labor laws, good social safety nets, uniform access to education, maybe UBI, etc.

[1] this is probably a bad word choice but it's all I could come up with on the moment.

<comment><USER6> If you feel so guilty about how little your nanny makes, so much so that you're pulling tags off everything you buy, maybe it's not a bad idea to pay your nanny a little above the going rate. Partially for your own sake as well as hers.

I also think _only_ supporting larger movements is the wrong way to go about things. The more local the problem, the more impact you can have on it. Support Medicare for All? That's certainly good to do if you feel that's right, but that's going to be a long, drawn-out battle. Paying your nanny a little bit more? That's very easy to do and can immediately improve someone's life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the waters on questions like these have been significantly muddied by a tax system that really does benefit the wealthy. This and we have around half of congressional lawmakers wanting more tax cuts for the wealthy, as though things weren't already easy enough for them. It's therefore entirely reasonable to imagine that the average person would feel resentment toward the wealthy and that the wealthy, in fact, _should_ feel self-conscious about that.

</comment><comment><USER8> The cleaning staff won't envy your $6 bread if you're also spending twice as much as strictly necessary on your cleaning staff. That is, if you buy $6 bread instead of $3 bread, you should also be paying $21/hour to your cleaners instead of $10.50/hour.

If the judgment you fear is "this person values bread more highly than people", then just make sure you value people more than bread.

Don't peel the price tags off. They know how much they're paid. They can guess how much your bread costs, because poor people are _required by economic necessity_ to know what consumer goods are worth, and often also how much it costs for market substitutes and DIY ersatz copies. If you buy a fancy leather couch for $12000, the maid will know that you could have haggled the salesperson down to $8000, and maybe also that the same factory makes a similar fabric-upholstered couch under a different brand name, and sells it for $2250, or $1500 if you rent a box truck and drive to North Carolina to pick it up yourself. $500 if you ask Shady McLoadingdock about "damaged goods". $350 if you also give him some of the finer varieties of cannabis grown in your state. Poor people build and upholster all the couches. They drive all the trucks that move them around the country. They work retail and sales in the furniture showrooms. They have to hustle for everything just to make ends meet. Don't think you can fool any one of them just by yanking off a price tag.

The only thing rich folks should be embarrassed about is assuming poor people are stupid.

<comment><USER9> They don't sell the $6 bread in the grocery store that the maid shops at and they don't sell $12000 couches where she buys her furniture.

She lives in a different world, so it's very likely that she has no idea how much a couch costs by looking at it.

<comment><USER8> She certainly _works_ in that world for a number of hours every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > His wife, whom I interviewed separately, was so uneasy with the fact that > they lived in a penthouse that she had asked the post office to change their > mailing address so that it would include the floor number instead of "PH," a > term she found "elite and snobby."

Sorry, but fuck outta here with that logic. If you're uncomfortable with living in a penthouse, then you should've not gotten a penthouse. Y'all bought it because y'all wanted it. (Or maybe her husband wanted it and she was more whatever about it?)

Own your purchasing decisions.

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem with the rich is how much wealth they extract, not how much their couch cost.

<comment><USER12> And how that wealth is used.

The article begins with a dubious premise, namely, that how much wealth a person has is of moral consequence per se AND a matter of public concern. It isn't. (Side note: many people regard any discussion about income and assets with people other than a few select individuals in poor taste regardless of income.) As Harry Frankfurt has written, inequality is not interesting or relevant per se. What is relevant are things like poverty or the buying of influence.

An obsession with inequality per se stems from either confusion about what is relevant, moral confusion, jealousy or fondness for ham-handed and even immoral solutions to problems of public concern that the misuse or pursuit wealth can create.

<comment><USER11> No, no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was already posted earlier this week, wasn't it?

<comment><USER14> Yup. The highest voted comment is even nearly verbatim.

What I will say is that it has become trivially easy to increase my wealth since selling my company. I've been retired for ten years and make more than I ever did, largely by doing nothing. I don't even manage most of my own finances.

It's kind of rigged. On a whim, I bought $20k worth of Tesla at $24 - <USER2> I could afford to risk the money. It was an impulse buy with my only research being reading a bunch of forum posts.

Most people can't risk that, even if they could technically spend that. The list goes on.

It's not 'fair' and very different than what I was used to.

<comment><USER15> Why is it not "fair"? You earned that money, its yours to spend or invest how you see fit. If your company would have failed, you would have lost not only money, but also time, and the opportunity cost of doing something else (aka being an employee).

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that's why I put it in quotes. From an effort point of view, both mental and physical, I don't really do a whole lot but I make significantly more than people who do much more.

From a sort-of-physics view, I get more work out of less energy than most. It's not equal. It's okay, it's just not well balanced from an objective viewpoint. I am not sure if 'fair' is the right word.

<comment><USER16> you are confusing "work" with "value"

it is possible to do hard "work" and produce zero value. Example: digging a large hole in the middle of the desert.

Conversely it is easy to do little "work" and produce tremendous value Example: writing a script in 15 mins that automates hours of tedious CSV combinations and data grooming (I used this example bc I once did this and saved about 15 weekly hours of a highly paid financial analyst's time)

So now we are clear on work != value in the real world

I'll quickly tackle your investment income -- that was a risk buying 20k worth of Telsa. That easily could have gone to zero as an early stage tech growth stock. When buying a stock you are putting your money on a bet that the company will provide more value to the economy. When your bet pays off it is because the company is doing better and presumably, if following all relevant laws, providing enhanced value to the economy.

There is no law of physics in economics. In fact this thinking is practically dangerous and at the least fosters the wrong attitude towards success. Your success is not someone else's loss. In fact in a market economy, your success will ALWAYS be another's gain since they voluntarily gave you money for a good/service they couldnt do as efficiently as you could.

Economics is NOT a zero sum game. You can quite literally create value from nothing and grow the proverbial pie of value in the world. If you work in programming you realize this quickly.

The downside to a market economy is that work and value will never be a fair ratio. While in some ways unfortunate the more unfortunate alternative is everyone produces equal value from doing equal work. But take a minute to think critically about how that would be possible. I'll give you a hint -- innovation and ingenuity would plummet to zero.

<comment><USER14> See, it wasn't really a risk for me to spend 20k. Comparatively speaking, that's probably something like a minimum wage employee risking a dime.

That's the inherent unfairness in the system. I can just give 20k to my favorite charity and not even be mildly impacted. Chances are, I won't even save the receipt to give to my accountant for tax purposes. That'd buy someone a nice new car.

It's not fair. I am definitely at an advantage. Now, I earned that advantage. I worked for that advantage. That doesn't make it any more fair.

I'm not happy with the word fair, as it implies morality. I'm also far more able to help those who need it, and I do. So, from a moral viewpoint, I'm very much okay with it. That doesn't really make it fair, however.

What's Joe Sixpack going to do by investing a dime in a single go? Not much. I made enough on just Tesla to buy Joe's house, spending the equivalent of a dime.

It is what it is, but it's a huge advantage. I'm not suggesting it's morally unacceptable, just a reality. I'm not even suggesting we can change the system, just expressing the reality.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: People who gave up on the YC/startup dream, what happened? - <AUTHOR> Without linking comments, I saw comments from more than 6 years ago where regular HNers applied to YC unsuccessfully. There was a lot of the youthful optimism and hustle in those comments that I see in myself now but many of those people are now either employed or contracting/consulting. This is in no way meant to look down on them or imply that a regular 9-5 is inferior to being a startup founder. It's just that it sucks when something that you really hoped would work out, didn't come to pass. I'm starting to realise that I may be another person who goes the same way. YC and startups may not work out for me. So how did you come to terms with the fact that the YC dream will never come to pass? How has your mentality regarding YC/startups changed over the years? What advice do you have for people who are in the position that you were in, a few years ago? <comment><USER2> I've been reading HN for a long time. I never attempted a startup, moved to the Bay Area or applied to YC, so I've always been on the outside looking in, but over the years software developer salaries continue to skyrocket and I've realized that financial independence is quite possible with a normal "boring" software development career. So I'm focused on maximizing compensation and savings while ensuring that I'm enjoying my day to day life.

My advice to people starting out: if you can save 50% of your take-home income in a month, you have a month of "runway" to do whatever you want, whether that's a startup on your own terms or something completely unprofitable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bootstrapping is gaining traction. It's just not mainstream yet. And it doesn't sound sexy.

[https://indiehackers.com](https://indiehackers.com) is literally HN of bootstrapping.

<comment><USER4> There is a heck of a lot of low quality content there lately. And a lot more drive by url dropping comments and posts, with no/little context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's like colleges. You get the hype, everyone is talking about it and you feel like you have to be in one of the top schools in the world in order to make a difference. The truth is, it's over rated. Like MBA's, like top colleges, etc. There is a true value to YC, I do understand that, but it's business at the end of the day. The more money comes in, the happier the partners and investors. That value I'm referring to is the access to the network. Very similar to top MBA programs like I said right? It's like surrounding yourself with "yes" people. Eating your own dog food.

At the end of the day, if you decide to do something on your own, you'll do it no matter what. A ticket to Harvard is not what's gonna lead you to success. It's you and only you. YC comes as a distraction to a lot of people. They don't want to find a real solution to a real problem, they want to get into YC. That's their main motivation... not everyone of course, but in 2018 it feels like majority of the candidates are attracted by the hype. Unfortunately, if you keep squeezing the orange there won't be any juice left.

To answer your question, it takes time to get all the stars in line and to jump on a problem in a meaningful way. YC is a way to skip the line hopping you'll end up getting a ticket at the VIP party. I think some people got sick of it and became a little more patient. Waiting for a new way to make it and to become early adopters of that thing. Be a black sheep.

</comment><comment><USER6> On my part, after 6 years of applying, I have 3x the salary and responsibility as an employee that I used to. Being more financially secure and feeling more professionally relevant are strong forces for complacency. But for me, the most important thing was realizing what it takes to be successful as a founder (and in getting into YC), and that I lacked those things: excellent co- founders, an MVP, and traction. While it is true that YC still accepts startups that have solo-founders, no product, or no traction, I don't think it accepts many that lack all three traits. The furthest along I got at YC was when I had a real co-founder (not someone I roped into it) and a prototype. I'll apply again when I have something useful to accelerate.

So I gave up on the dream of YC being dumb enough to look at me and say, "well, there are no signs of success here, but hell, let's roll the dice and see what happens!"

Tangentially, in terms of seeing less passion for startups at HN, there has been a very distinct shift in HN's content and focus that occurred when PG stopped participating in comments and stopped writing as many essays. It reached a tipping point sometime over the last year, where I now often ask, "Where have all the hackers gone?" My suspicion is that there is a private forum of YC alumni and friends, and friends of friends, that has replaced HN as the go-to destination for fascinating, insightful, and provocative discourse. Perhaps it isn't private, and perhaps it isn't YC alumni-based, but if you could have such conversations (again), would you want to reveal its existence to the masses? Not unless you wanted to see it become what HN has become: a fun but flimsy off-site subreddit.

Since I think this thread is going to be overlooked by most people, I'd like to make the case for clueing me in here and sending me an invite. ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> Forgive me for sounding harsh, but it sounds like your real startup idea is "to get into YC". If you believe in your thing, then do it. Life is short, and being poor is not great, but better than being rich and unhappy.

Why is YC a "dream"? YC and other forms of capital are tools to speed you up. If you can't speed up, trudge along with the rest of us mere mortals, get more paying customers, and grow organically. If you cannot execute your business without capital, revise your business model and see what you can do to kickstart sales process.</comment>


Ask HN: How Do I Stick with GNU/Linux If Important Apps Crash Frequently? - <AUTHOR> I've never owned a Mac. I haven't used Windows except transiently for about 4 years.
I'm currently on a Dell XPS 13 9360 (Late 2016) Developer Edition with the stock Ubuntu 16.04--in other words, about as orthodox a GNU/Linux setup as one can have.
For work and studying, I use some non-free apps like Slack, TeamViewer, and Zoom. All of them have crashed or behaved weirdly at critical times when I needed smooth, stable operation.
So I've been thinking about getting a Mac. I would rather stick with a (mostly) free OS, even if I have to use some non-free programs at the application layer.
The problems I experience do not tend to surface with software like Chromium, VSCode, etc. so maybe I shouldn't be blaming GNU/Linux. But I also have things to do and a family to feed, and don't want to dig in my heels and waste time and energy diagnosing problems--I'm a developer, not a sysadmin!
Is my experience with proprietary apps on Ubuntu typical? Is the situation on Macs truly better? What can I do to improve my GNU/Linux experience (again, without becoming a full-time sysadmin)? <comment><USER2> I don't have experience with those particular programs however things I would consider are duel booting windows when you need to use them. Or run them in a VM so you won't have to reboot your system.

Then, since they're proprietary programs, you can't really fix them yourself even if you had the ability to do otherwise. Therefore research if others have had similar experience with those particular programs. Then, if those programs have actual Linux support, contact them and let them know what issues you're encountering. Since they're not open source libre software the community can't fix it so it's those companies programmers jobs to fix those problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Windows VM, seconded. Wife has a high-end macbook. Feels _very_ slow to me. Physical build quality is nice, but nothing to write home about performance- wise.

<comment><USER4> Could not 3rd this harder, forget about the Macbook, you'll have greif on that as well. VM a Windows 10 copy, shouldnt take you more than 10 minutes with VirtualBox. Lmk if you have any questions on setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From that list, I only used TeamViewer on Linux so far, and never had an issue. Apart from the Windows VM another idea might be switching distro if you don't feel that that's already too much hassle. Fedora or Suse would seem a viable alternative.</comment>


Ask HN: iPad2 4.3.5 wifi issues, help find a solution? - <AUTHOR>

Just received my new iPad 2 straight from Apple last night. Came with 4.3.5 preinstalled. Was tearing my hair out over connectivity issues until I found that turning off the WEP or WPA or WPA2 - i.e. turn off all security - "fixes" it.
So tonight I spent some time trying things with the iPad 2 and a monitor on the router.
If ANY type of security is turned on, then the router sees the iPad 2 connect, but shows it as having the IP of "0.0.0.0". If I try to enter a static IP, this makes no change at the router, and there is no obvious change at the iPad 2. If instead I try to use DHCP, then the iPad 2 initially shows nothing. If I renew lease I then show an IP of "169.254.176.38" and a subnet mask of "255.255.255.0", although the router still sees it as 0.0.0.0.
Once I turn off security, then DHCP works. HOWEVER, if I try to setup a Static IP it STILL does DHCP as evidenced by the fact that disconnecting and reconnecting the iPad gets an IP address that is NOT the one I have put in with the Static IP.
Since it works without dropping with security turned off, I doubt this is a hardware issue. I am wondering if "fixing" certificates in 4.3.5 broke something else? <comment><AUTHOR> Just because this came up in another forum where I've also asked for help - this is happening on three different routers (TrendNet, Linksys, and Cradlepoint). All of them are on the latest firmware, and all of them work just fine with my iPad 1, a couple of iPhones, and a couple of desktop computers.</comment>


Google Docs Locks Users Out of Their Files Citing Terms of Service - <AUTHOR> https://officechai.com/stories/google-docs-locks-users-files-citing-terms-service-company-apologizes/#sthash.g6YMqQsR.dpbs <comment><USER2> > Seems like a lot of people (including journalists) got locked out of their > Google Docs accounts today.

How is "journalists" different from any other job? Is it worse blocking a journalist than blocking an accountant, a programmer, a construction worker? If not, why highlighting "journalists"?</comment>


New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde, Chile - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141923#pone-0141923-g001 <comment><USER2> Wow, HUGE news if corroborated:

> MV-I dated ~33,000 BP and initially defined by scattered occurrences of > three clay-lined, possible culturally-produced burned areas and twenty-six > stones, at least six of which suggest modification by humans.

Even at MV-II this provides more evidence against clovis culture being the dominant force defining early America—people went south faster than we had anticipated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding the ~33,000 BP materials, the authors "remain inconclusive and skeptical about their cultural status".

Still, at ~ 18,500 BP there is a lot to change in the widely held assumptions for the early human population of the Americas. Or, as this tweet implies, some are just outright denying any value to the Monte Verde findings:

[https://twitter.com/archaeocore/status/667362478674677760](https://twitter.com/archaeocore/status/667362478674677760)

<comment><USER2> Even the ~15,000 BP - 18,500 BP it's still quite exciting; the evidence they describe is still quite vague, although I'm no archaeologist, so the 33,000 would be out of left field. I'm excited for further developments—corroboration is the ultimate decider, and it seems they've found _something_.

EDIT: The gentleman who posted the tweet you mentioned also wrote this: [https://medium.com/@johnhawks/did-humans-approach-the- southe...](https://medium.com/@johnhawks/did-humans-approach-the-southern-tip- of-south-america-more-than-18-000-years-ago-a97414475718#.cw6ae5w1m). It gives a broader look, and it still has exciting implications for understanding early American travel. I think even more exciting is the potential for other sites with similar ancient sites.</comment></comment></comment>