Bitcoin Developer Guide - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide <comment><USER2> Can someone who has a better understanding of BTC than me explain something? How do the escrow-like instruments and other contractual instruments built on top of the block chain work? How are they better than existing contractual instruments? How do you guarantee that something that is contractually agreed upon for money (ie: I will transfer you a file, upon me sending the file your funds will be released to me) actually happens? Or am I fundamentally missing something?

Edit: thanks all for replies, learned a lot.

<comment><USER3> A long time ago I wrote the following wiki page, following a variety of conversations with Satoshi on the topic:

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts)

Quoting from the top:

 _A distributed contract is a method of using Bitcoin to form agreements with people via the block chain. Contracts don 't make anything possible that was previously impossible, but rather, they allow you to solve common problems in a way that minimizes trust. Minimal trust often makes things more convenient by allowing human judgements to be taken out of the loop, thus allowing complete automation._

Let's take one example, 2-of-3 dispute mediation. Elsewhere in this thread, some people are saying things like "if you don't trust your escrow agent with your money, why do you trust them to make a decision". These are very different kinds of trust. Typically online payment networks bundle them together. You trust your bank and credit card company with your money (more accurately, you don't trust them, but you know ultimately the costs of their failures will be socialised), and then because they are always the middleman you end up trusting them to do dispute mediation as well.

The problem is, they often aren't very good at it. Companies like PayPal tend to see dispute mediation as a cost of business rather than their core competency. Innovation in this space is rare. PayPal's policies, for example, make selling something to someone else who is standing in front of you impossible - you _must_ be able to prove you mailed the item and if you can't, you automatically lose the dispute and the payment will be reversed. This policy is so deeply unintuitive that there's a whole industry of scammers out there who steal things from people by exploiting it. There isn't much scope here for doing anything better: payment networks tend to have a small set of one-size-fits-all policies and you can't go to the market to find a new one.

Now consider the Bitcoin approach. For many transfers there is no possibility of dispute mediation and thus none of the overheads associated with it. This often makes sense: either you know there will be no dispute (e.g. a gift from a family member) or you have other ways to resolve disputes (e.g. salary payments). When you want dispute mediation however you can agree on a mutually satisfactory mediator.

This mediator has very limited power. Contrary to what other people here seem to think, this _does_ matter. For example, the mediator cannot steal the money, thus they make a poor target for hackers. If the mediator is a company there is very little temptation for bad insiders. They are not accepting deposits so all the complicated regulations that are triggered by that act don't apply. There is no possibility of them lending the money in escrow out and going fractional reserve.

Really all they can do is resolve a dispute badly, but there's no profit in that. So by preventing the mediator from accessing the money, all kinds of possible failure modes are avoided. In turn this means you can access a far wider set of possible mediators. For example, if you are trying to buy an antique violin over the internet PayPal's mediation policies are less than ideal:

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/04/paypal-buyer- de...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/04/paypal-buyer-destroys- violin)

With Bitcoin you could ask an actual expert in antique violins to act as the mediator. They do not need to be a computer security expert, they don't need to worry about becoming a target for physical theft or extortion, they don't need to worry they might accidentally lose the keys and destroy the money. There's tons of things they don't need to worry about. They could (if it existed) just use a friendly desktop app to pick a winner in case of a dispute. That means they can spend all their time inventing precise and well designed ways to resolve any dispute, fully leveraging their domain knowledge.

That's just one example of how redistributing and carefully controlling trust relationships can result in better outcomes.

<comment><USER4> >Really all they can do is resolve a dispute badly, but there's no profit in that.

Except there is profit in that if one side has paid them to resolve the dispute badly. Which is exactly back to where you are in the current system so you haven't actually solved or improved on anything you've just changed it.

<comment><USER5> Before entering the contract, both sides ideally will agree on a mediator of disputes. There could be a marketplace for mediators. If a seller of an item does not approve the mediator the scammer buyer wants, then the transaction never takes place.

Systems that enforce lock-in of mediators will be pushed out of the market when more open systems come online.

Also, both sides put up some collateral, which both forfeit in the case of an unresolved dispute. A scammer will still pay some value into the multi-party transaction, so operations will not last long if many disputes go unresolved.

<comment><USER4> That system already exists with trusted 3rd parties and escrow systems though. You aren't improving the existing systems at all though because you still require just as much trust all you're doing is changing the currency used.

All the bitcoin escrow solutions are just a variation on "I want to use this 3rd party to ensure trust but I don't trust them enough to actually do so". It doesn't work like that though so you end up with "I want to use this 3rd party to ensure trust but I don't trust them enough to actually do so but I will end up having to".

>Also, both sides put up some collateral, which both forfeit in the case of an unresolved dispute. A scammer will still pay some value into the multi-party transaction, so operations will not last long if many disputes go unresolved.

So if I am scammed I not only lose out on the scam but I am further punished by the protocol to lose this collateral as well?

<comment><USER6> > So if I am scammed I not only lose out on the scam but I am further punished > by the protocol to lose this collateral as well?

Well, that's the Bitcoin philosophy in a nutshell: they solve the problem of being screwed by third-parties by arranging the system so that when you inevitably do get screwed, you will have to sagely acknowledge that it was _your own_ fault the whole time.

The math is perfect after all, which means the system is perfect, so by reductio ad absurdum if you get a crazy result (e.g. being screwed by a mediator) it must be due to a crazy axiom on your part (e.g. your decision to use a shitty mediator).

Now, doesn't that make you feel better? Welcome to the Jungle; you lost your money fair and square, and you have only yourself to blame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "It then sends the 80-byte block header to its mining hardware (an ASIC) along with a target threshold (difficulty setting)."

I've always wondered, would it be possible to make the difficulty setting dynamically determined based on some econometric derived from the bitcoin chain? (such as if you see the economies velocity slowing down, perhaps you lower the threshold) or the opposite.

If it was, that may be one way to stabilize the prices, at least of the currency itself.

<comment><USER8> No one has figured out a way to do this without outside information. Some blockchains include price feeds from the outside world that let algorithms keep prices relatively stable. Others use votes by currency holders to adjust the money supply both directly and indirectly (via interest rates) like a central bank would. Both strategies have led to cryptocurrencies that track the price of the dollar.

<comment><USER9> Can you give examples of cryptocurrencies that track the price of the dollar?

<comment><USER8> The two I'm familiar with are BitShares and NuBits. BitShares uses contracts- for-difference and price feeds to create stable "BitAssets", like BitUSD, BitCNY, and BitGold. NuBits is a central bank on a blockchain, and it uses its control of the monetary base and interest rates to peg its value to the dollar.

Disclaimer: I own some BitShares. I won't answer more questions here to keep things on topic, so email those to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mastering Bitcoin is another resource that explains the bitcoin protocol in detail.

[http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001802/index.ht...](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001802/index.html)

It is available to read online for free.

<comment><USER11> ... on github.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this a new thing? I haven't seen a comprehensive list like this for bitcoin tech specs before, and I do follow bitcoin waaaaaay too much.

Seems like this will be a very useful thing with more people starting to use bitcoin!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's been around for a while, but has been updated/revamped significantly since the last time I saw it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious how the whole system will scale as the number of transactions increase. Does it take longer and longer for nodes to verify transactions as the blockchain grows?

<comment><USER14> There is one transaction block issued every 10 minutes. It can be no larger than 1 MB in size. Miners typically prioritise transactions with higher transaction fees. When block space becomes scarce, transactions with low or no fee will have to wait in line longer.

The current plan seems to be to start increasing the block size limit by 50% per year in order to allow higher transaction volume. Block size limit has always been a contentious issue.

<comment><USER12> >There is one transaction block issued every 10 minutes.

Just to clarify for anyone new to bitcoin... blocks aren't "issued" every 10 minutes exactly. On average there is a new block found every 10 minutes (or so).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was just reading this. Excellent resource, probably the first time I feel I am starting to grasp how all the different pieces of Bitcoin fit together.

There's also: [https://bitcoin.org/en/developer- reference](https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-reference) \- though I'm not quite sure how the two relate.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone here know how the [http://ai-coin.org](http://ai-coin.org) site ties into this info from bitcoin.org ?

</comment><comment><USER17> Here's another helpful resource:

[http://enetium.com/resources/Bitcoin.pdf](http://enetium.com/resources/Bitcoin.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: VLC Christmas hat icon, good or bad? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I just noticed that the VLC player icon that it has started wearing the Santa hat. While I find this really cute, but this is the first instance (that I know of) when an Open Source project has declared itself of any religion explicitly (I say this because I did not see any change in the icon for jew, hindu or islamic festivals). What would be your take on this? Will this be good or bad for the project. An open source project is supposed to transcend any type of boundaries, be it religious, sex, cast or even the type of hardware that you use.
Disclaimer: I am not the kind of guy which howls and cries over religious issues (I like to see religion as a way to calm and sooth myself, nothing else), but their are people who are very sensitive about it. <comment><USER2> You can't ever please every religion, no matter how you try. Therefore, it is quite pointless to even attempt that.

Furthermore, people who are "very sensitive about it", I have one advice: try to be more tolerant. It'll do good in the long run.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok... while I am not particularly effected by this religious crap, but this "Our way or the high way" bothers me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What a bunch of fuckin scrooges!!! If you don't like it than wait til after Christmas, then use vlc. In the meantime just use quicktime or wmp and shut the fuck up. Merry Christmas, a Santa Hat isn't forcing you to change your views, it's kinda like driving down the street and seeing decorations. If you can't stand wreaths or lights, well damn maybe you need to knock on everyones door and tell them not to express themselves. Or go into every mall with Santa in it and tell them it hurts your feelings, otherwise shut the fuck up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just saw this, [http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc- devel/2009-Decembe...](http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc- devel/2009-December/070016.html)

How is Santa Claus hat not a Christmas reference?

<comment><USER4> The reply says Christian not Christmas... its obviously Christmas

<comment><AUTHOR> Then how is Christmas not Christian reference?</comment></comment></comment>


Joe Rogan interviews relaxed, joint-smoking Elon Musk [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycPr5-27vSI <comment><USER2> People seem to focus on the joint, but I am more worried that he can't piece a few coherent sentences together.

<comment><USER3> There's nothing going wrong with Elon or his companies that can't be fixed - but for the good of mankind we need to hunt him down, kidnap him, and make him get a good night's rest for about two weeks with zero contact on electronic devices or people.

I felt similarly wired to what I see in the video once, I took a 10 day meditation retreat and whether or not it works doing nothing for over a week was exactly what I needed.

The problem is that it is easy to justify not doing this - an endless series of excuses are available.

Afterwards you'll feel the sharpest and most focused you've ever been and the effect lasts for weeks.

<comment><USER4> Maybe what's for the good of mankind is to stop funneling public money to somebody so unstable and unable to deliver on his promises.

<comment><USER5> This is a complete lie.

Tesla payed back the loans to the government.

SpaceX is excellently executing on the ISS Cargo contracts and are the furthest ahead in terms of human spaceflight as well.

SpaceX has performed many flights for government and is universally agree on that they have saved the government an absolute shitton of money.

<comment><USER4> Here's an instance just months ago [https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/14/technology/elon-musk- boring...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/14/technology/elon-musk-boring- company-chicago/index.html)

<comment><USER5> You mean this privately financed project?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While this is a good interview and interesting maybe for Hacker News. Why this sensationalist click bait title?

He does one tiny hit of a weed/tabaco joint in the whole show.

<comment><USER6> No different than the rest of the clickbait bullshit coming from corporate media. The fact that people are making a big deal about this is depressing.

<comment><USER7> Maybe they're alluding to the $420/share going private tweet? Rumored to be weed inspired</comment></comment></comment>


'Super Wi-Fi' Blankets First County in U.S.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27531/?ref=rss <comment><USER2> > and also the potential to connect to Wi-Fi towers that are miles > distant—something that is impossible with conventional Wi-Fi, mostly because > the power of normal Wi-Fi transmitters are limited by the FCC.

And my laptop will need to beam back miles away with omnidirectional antenna? That's exactly what I want to have on my lap...

<comment><USER3> I presume you already hold a cellphone to your head...

Or if you use a handsfree adapter, the phone itself is close to your lap.

Also plenty of laptops already have long range radios built in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whatever happened to that super-high-speed town thing Google was doing?

<comment><USER5> Last I heard it had been delayed because of a dispute over how to hang the cables.

[http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/17/3376648/dispute-over- ho...](http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/17/3376648/dispute-over-how-wires- are-hung.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not Wi-Fi, it's whitespace wireless.

<comment><USER7> Which is precisely why the term "Super Wi-Fi" is in quotes in the title.

(Unless the title has since been changed)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Books, tutorials, videos on beginning online advertising - <AUTHOR> This topic seems to have a massive amount of blog articles, many many books and some video series on how to begin online advertising in the social world and with the biggest search engines.<p>I am wondering if anyone has hands on experience with any of them in 2019 that they found really helped them get the grasp of how things work these days with social media platforms and search engines. <comment><USER2> I usually point folks to HubSpot

[https://www.hubspot.com/instagram- marketing](https://www.hubspot.com/instagram-marketing)

But I think you'll get better advice by drilling down into the nuts and bolts of your startup, what space you are in, and which metrics you wish to grow.

There are loads of differentiated services like Drip that conform to one tool for one job philosophy. Best of luck ;)

[https://www.drip.com/get/holiday-ebook](https://www.drip.com/get/holiday- ebook)

</comment><comment><USER3> For search engines, ahrefs blog is a good place to start for SEO</comment>


Oh God, It's Raining Newsletters - <AUTHOR> http://craigmod.com/essays/newsletters/ <comment><USER2> There's a whole slew of content being created in all forms, from newsletters, blog posts, books, podcasts, music, video games, video on demand and live video. A lot of it is actually really high-quality content. We're being inundated with too much good stuff. I see all these newsletters in my inbox I don't have time to read that I want to. Tv shows, youtube videos I want to watch but don't have time for. I'm listening to a podcast when I cook while I have a game on and a book in my bag.

It's like a really good problem to have tbh, but there's a problem with managing this. This week there was a post about how to pick a good non-fiction book. Figuring out what the best content for me for the time I have is the problem. It's a problem we all have right now.

Also that was a really well written post, a love letter to newsletters. I really enjoyed it.

<comment> B-Con I have so many queues of stuff I want to get to. I feel guilty how little of it I consume. Sometimes just looking at my backlog is somewhat anxiety inducing.

I have 245 videos in my YouTube "Watch Later" queue. (Turns out some parts of the Android YT UI has a max of 199 videos.) And a lot of those are 30min+ lectures. I probably have at least 50hrs of content queued on YT alone. And that's what I haven't watched.

Sometimes I can't choose when I do have the time. I'll have the time to consume 1-3 hours of content and I'll freeze, unable to choose. And half the time I choose something new that's not on my list yet.

<comment><USER3> I'd very much consider speeding up your videos.

I watch things like educational videos, interviews, news videos etc mostly on 2x.

Movies I often watch on 1.5x, not always but typically at least 1.3x.

Sometimes I go up to 2.5x or 3x when needed, e.g. speeding through a Let's Play video during a part which isn't particularly interesting any slower.

<comment><USER4> > Movies I often watch on 1.5x, not always but typically at least 1.3x.

For me, I would ask myself if these movie is worth watching, and if the teaching materials are worth ingesting.

<comment><USER3> Of course, I always do, too.

Funny thing is that some of this stuff wouldn't be worth watching at 1x, but are worth watching on 2.5x. For example I really enjoy watching replays of strategical games, but much of it is frankly quite boring in real time. Take a typical 2+1 hour game of chess, with minutes between moves, condensed into a 45 minute match with commentary, that's an excellent way for me to enjoy relaxing after a day of work while the washing machine is churning and I'm eating dinner. But I'd absolutely have no time (much less interest) to sit there for 3 hours watching people think.

You have to wonder, what are the odds that all of human content is paced at a perfect speed for all of human consumers?

What are the odds that every lecturer for example, speaks at the same pace, all with the same information density of the concepts they are talking about?

The answer obviously is virtually zero. And so if you have different paces of information density, then the norm should be for every individual that for some content, you adjust the speed of the video!

Some videos pack a ton of information in five sentences, others take ten sentences to convey the same idea. (a density of concepts per sentence) And some lecturers pack those say five sentences in one minute, while others do it in two. (speed of speech) If everyone enjoyed the same pace, and all content was at the same pace, then you'd never have to adjust content-speed. But both of those two statements aren't true. So again, the norm should be that any individual may want to speed up at least some of his content.

In the end it really depends on the content. I don't speed up movies as much for example as news though because in the former, moments of quietness and facial expression are much more meaningful than in the latter and it loses its impact when sped up too much.

<comment><USER5> What are the odds that all information worth consuming is best consumed at the same speed?

What are the odds that every human cultural experience can be reduced to "consumption" of N bits of information per minute?

I say you will benefit more from eating your dinner and relaxing into the churning sounds of the washing machine than you will from another day of your hyperoptimized speed run through life, measured in bits of information per minute absorbed (like a sponge) from 'content' (a term invented by industries that profit by the mindless consumption of your time by their 'content').

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't mind newsletters, but I still prefer the anonymity of RSS. For every dedicated author as per the linked article there are ten company backed newsletters that will take your email address and use it as an advertising target on a specific subject. Illegal, but of course it happens.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried to split the difference. All my newslettering is also published on my site, with attendant RSS feeds. The thing about the newsletter I love, as I explained in the essay, is the quality of conversation is so much higher than anything I've found outside of the inbox. (Hacker News excepted; this place deserves its own love letter.)

<comment><USER6> Obviously having both is the best of both worlds! (by the way, thanks for the content, I've subscribed. Walking the mountain paths of Japan is an underrated pastime for sure, had an amazing time at Yoshino and Hakuba last time I was there)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yoshino is a gem. I'm running a retreat there later this year with Jan Chipchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started a meme newsletter for my friends. I publish it occasionally - not on any schedule, and with whatever content and style I feel like. It's like publishing a small, private website from time to time. And it's completely decentralized, and responses come back straight to me, so there's no fighting in the comments. I almost never post on social media anymore.

<comment><USER8> It was similar for me, as I want to follow what is 'happening' in the UNIX/BSD/Linux/Hardware world I often sent links to my friends with 'interesting stuff' ... so I created _Valuable News_ to make it available for everyone.

The latest one is available here:

[https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/valuable- news-2019...](https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/valuable- news-2019-02-08/)

<comment><USER9> > "The tailflix is replacement for tail -F that asks you if you are still > watching."

This made me laugh out loud.

<comment><USER8> Me too :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Newsletters feel like a step (or more like a plunge) back from subscribing to websites via RSS feeds. And yet this seems to be the direction that technology is moving in.

I've chosen not to subscribe to certain blogs simply because I don't want to place my email address in more hands who have no incentive to care about my privacy.

<comment><USER11> I don't subscribe to newsletters because I have no trust in how much it's going to send to me, weither or not they'll be worth having, and I value my privacy.

Instead, I use RSS daily. Whether it's for the blogs or it's with podcasts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some feed readers offer a private email address that you can subscribe to newsletters with, and see them alongside your other RSS feeds. My reader of choice (Feedbin) does this. It's one way to at least centralize them all in a place outside your email inbox.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am so glad Craig mentions [https://buttondown.email](https://buttondown.email). It is such a great service, and Justin (the creator of Buttondown) is engaged and friendly with his users.

I use Buttondown for my newsletter and would highly recommend it!

<comment><USER7> Oh, that's super cool. I write my newsletter emails in markdown, change them to HTML, and then publish them on mailchimp (which is a bit overkill for my 45 subscribers). Definitely going to check this out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a newsletter guy myself (see [https://tedium.co/](https://tedium.co/)), one that focuses less on link lists and more on longer-form storytelling, I look at email as a vessel that helps lessen the effect of the platform on the creative outlet. It's one of many, but still a vessel. If you read my content in your inbox, great! If you want it on the web, it's there, too. In your feed ([https://feed.tedium.co/](https://feed.tedium.co/))? You can have it there, too. I'll even syndicate it. My only limitation is that it's something that I can control the distribution of, not Facebook or Twitter or Medium. Maybe I'll share the content on those platforms, but I won't let it be my primary vessel.

I think, ultimately, this is the benefit I see of the newsletter mechanism—it's the ability to control your destiny as a writer and distributor. We simply do not allow for enough of that in this platform-driven era. So let's minimize the platforms.

After an era in which platforms have had so much control, it's great to see writers figure out that there are ways around all that. Kudos to Craig, Tim Carmody, and other writers that have been willing to put this kind of work into their business models.

</comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat related:

Create an email filter that moves any email with the word "unsubscribe" into its own folder out of the inbox.

It's an amazing signal for separating direct and bulk mail.

<comment><USER16> Careful, though. I added this rule to my inbox (automatically marking them read, though) years ago and just a month or two ago figured out why I was _never_ aware I had pull requests or issues on GitHub, among quite a few other things I was constantly missing.

<comment><USER15> Yes, good catch!

I haven't really noticed this since I have a habit of clicking unsubscribe on anything that does actually show up and so my bulk folder is usually empty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why the obnoxious "sign up for my newsletter" popup?

The best reason I can think of is it gets more people to sign up to the newsletter. (Who are these people, that would sign up for a newsletter b/c something interrupted them reading the blogpost, but wouldn't sign up on their own?).

A popup is nice for the people who would sign up for a newsletter anyway, but a PITA for anyone else who cares to read the blogpost's content, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've struggled with this popup (keeping it or nixing it; I'm the owner of the site). Sadly, it's insanely effective at converting folks (thousand of subscriptions over the last few months; high retention as I track those subs separately). It shouldn't trigger while reading unless you leave the window. And also won't trigger until you're at the bottom of the screen. And if you dismiss it once, you should never see it again with that browser on the site.

That said, it is annoying, especially on a page about newsletters. So I just modified my templates to take a variable to turn it off on a page-by-page basis (using Hugo to generate the site). Won't appear for this post anymore.

<comment><USER18> I regularly delete all cookies for sites that don't require login (i.e. most content sites I visit), so for me such popup annoyances keep recurring. And I often leave the window before I come back later to finish the article, which is even more annoying and makes the popup look like a desperate scream for attention. Sometimes I actually do sign up for newsletters, but in those rare situations I first look for the contact details on the page, and then I create a specific new email address for that subscription, so it's nothing I do on a whim. I am amazed that people submit their email address to a random popup.

But thanks for removing it for this page, it's a step in the right direction!

Note: I have no problems with non-popup info about newsletters or other engagement offerings (e.g. end-of-page banners), those are much less intrusive than popups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The rise of Slack has made me love and appreciate email even more. I love that one of the oldest internet technologies is actually decentralized and thriving...makes me bullish that something out of the crypto space will one day work.

<comment><USER20> That's a bit of a leap... Email and crypto are decentralized... Sure.... But in very different ways with very different goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love the python and postgresql weekly newsletters. Concise, very targeted info, no anxiety of privacy issues, etc. I dont directly click on links though, just DDG search of the library or article.

And, I usually can access the email from my office inbox, so there's that.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is handy right now: I've been looking for a good newsletter service for a non-profit I volunteer for. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER23> I've not tried it, but this looks good: [https://buttondown.email/](https://buttondown.email/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anyone know of a service that will summarize a batch of different news letters for you? Say you subscribe to 30 newsletters, but a lot of them contain fluff, legal & disclaimer, ads, etc - but you only want a summary of the good content sent to you on say a Sunday.

I would imagine the interface being a list of newsletters, with a drop down to say how much of the content you would like, an option for what time and what day you wish to recieve the summary and then the actual email to just be the summary with a single link to the full newsletter underneath.

Does something like this exist? My google-fu is returning nothing.

</comment><comment><USER25> I see newsletters as a first level of curation/aggregation that helps managing the daily deluge of content/information.

I've built a database of newsletters, there's 500+ indexed and categorised so far. I'm adding news ones daily, and would love some suggestions so i can grow this database.

I haven't build a standalone website to browse the db yet, but you can check out the newsletters and subscribe as RSS feeds with the rss reader i built ([https://aktu.io/about](https://aktu.io/about))

</comment><comment><USER26> You know what we could use -- bare with me here -- a newsletter that is a collection of the best content from newsletters you might like.

A lot of these newsletters are very good (many are not as well). But the volume is just so high.

Same thing with news outlets. There is a huge supply of good content. But there isn't enough intelligent bundling to make it all work anymore. I recently paid for a Medium account, and the reason I did was that Medium is really good at giving you targeted content from a wide variety of sources.

</comment><comment><USER27> This may sound strange, but I am subscribed to no newsletters. In fact, I had no idea such specific, elegant newsletters even existed. I may add to the rainstorm, whether that's bad or good...I don't actually know.

In any case, I'm working on site that is to hopefully serve as a hub for 2d game developers to share their scripts and thoughts freely, gaining access to "the restricted sections" of the site as they contribute (and yes, this is inspired by Pagemaster.) and as such, the site will become a library over time.

People can take a penny, leave nothing, or give a roll of pennies and never take any pennies. People should have as much or as little access as they wish. The best thing about this idea I think is when users sign up for their "library cards" they will actually receive something that functions like one in digital form. (I may try to look into making physical cards which I have designed already! but I still have to work out the logistics of that..., haha.)

When they have cards, they will instead of "chcking out books", be able to create the books that they want, similar to wikipedia's pdf/book system. (Everything hosted on site will be open source too, to be used for whatever purposes including commercial.)

And here's where the ourobouros comes back to bite, I swear this isn't a tangent.

I think a newsletter would be a better place to start for me to prototype this idea. WEven though the site is under construction already. It will be in that state for a long time too, as this is my first time developing web content, instead of games! But I could do this.

Thanks for sharing! (I don't self promote in posts, but if you are interested, just see my profile.)

Really enjoying the content of this website and am glad to have found it.

<comment><USER28> You might want to edit your post and remove all the newlines, it's got a very weird formatting (at first I thought it was a poem).

<comment><USER27> I'm sorry, again. (I'm doing better than yesterday, yikes, look at that one!) I though doing a line break in between every line would make it better, and it did, but man it definitely looks like a poem.

I will do my best to get this right! Apologies, seriously. So few rules on the formatting is throwing me off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One thing to keep in mind when starting a newsletter: publish it somewhere so that content is also visible to other people who aren't subscribed to your newsletter. Unless of course you explicitly only want it to be visible to subscribers.

One easy way to do is by subscribing firstname.lastname@example.com to your newsletter. (Disclosure: I created [https://publicemails.com](https://publicemails.com), where this service is provided).

</comment><comment><USER30> > Email is definitely not ideal, but it is: decentralized, reliable, and not > going anywhere – and more and more, those feel like quasi-magical > properties.

But wouldn't a website hosted on a platform you control also serve this purpose? Even with the services mentioned in the essay you have a third-party looking over where you data is and have to rely on them if you ever want to retrieve your data back.

I guess you'd also have to add a method for facilitating contact though (uh… email?)

<comment><USER31> It's mostly a distribution problem. Depending on what you write about, your audience may not use rss. How do you get them to come back to something they enjoy reading, amongst a sea of clutter? They no longer get notified through social. As Craig says, email let's you own your audience. The use of the word "own" is slightly problematic but accurate enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Any recommendations for newsletters pertaining to typical Hacker News interests, e.g. programming, start-up business, cybersecurity, technology, gaming, etc.?

<comment><USER33> It's a bit more general-readership, but I find Kevin Kelley's Recomendo [1] newsletter useful. It's lightweight and doesn't require much time to read.

Maria Popova's Brain Pickings [2] newsletter is arts/literature oriented, well produced, and full of insights - but often quite long.

[1] [http://recomendo.com/](http://recomendo.com/)

[2] [https://www.brainpickings.org/](https://www.brainpickings.org/)

<comment><USER34> > Maria Popova's Brain Pickings [2] newsletter is arts/literature oriented, > well produced, and full of insights - but often quite long.

I love Brain Picking, although unfortunately I feel that her articles have a certain sort of "sameness" to them.

I love long-form reading. Personally I feel that encouraging long-form reading is important. I disagree that reducing the attention of time required to read is the answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm some sense, Email is the first social network. And decentralized as the author points out...

It would follow that if you want to leverage this platform you need to make better tools to enhance email writing and reading experience.

That interface hasn't changed much over the decades.

</comment><comment><USER35> Along with raining podcasts. How do we fix this? Go back to Web?

</comment><comment><USER36> "In truth, it's a newsletter about the design of walking."

Oh my God, we don't need this.</comment>


Show HN: SINATRA 2.0.1 IS OUT - <AUTHOR> http://sinatrarb.com/2018/02/19/sinatra-2.0.1.html <comment><USER2> sinatra was my favorite minimalist framework, the dsl is so clean and easy to write, mvc was easy to bolt on, and it worked well for so many of my projects. great to see that it's still being updated. fwiw, i went through a phase of nodejs, and now golang, but i had a lot of productive years with ruby and sinatra.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment! I'm glad to see your comment. I'm a maintainer of Sinatra. Sinatra can continue to grow in the future, and then I'll make it more easy to use and contribute.

Btw, I've also been using Sinatra in production environment and deal with large traffic. And, but is the odd-even, I'm also currently working on the golang team as my main side project :)

<comment><USER2> thank you so much for your contributions, i've been using sinatra since version 1.4 or so back in 2011, that was when i first started using ruby to develop mostly dynamic web apps and rest apis. back then i just felt rails was too heavyweight and liked the simplicity and freedom from choosing what i used in my stack, my favorite stack ended up being sinatra/haml/sequel, it was so easy and fast to get projects up and running, rspec was also pretty nice for testing.

the reason why i eventually went away from ruby was two-fold, the primary reason being performance, i was using event machine for asynchronous work, but it felt like it was an after thought, not really that powerful and a bolt on after the language matured. with golang this was built in from the beginning into the language. the second reason, which is almost as equally important, was the deployment, with golang, all i have to do is copy a binary over to my servers, i don't even need a compiler or runtime interpreter, it simplifies my server deployments. but with ruby, i had to leverage rbenv and deploy this everywhere.

i still recommend that folks use ruby if you need something developed quickly that's quite powerful, the libraries are extensive and great, and sinatra is excellent because it gives you the freedom of choice, unlike rails, which i used a lot also, but felt that rails was too heavyweight, it tried to force everything on me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment! It's the same reason for you that I started sinatra and padrino.

What you are thinking is very sharp and you will not be able to deny it at least from a fair standpoint. However, while I write golang, I also love ruby. Will it be the right place for the right person?

Last, I love the attitude to respect diversity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find Sinatra to be the quickest and simplest way to get a simple Ruby web app online. It was a godsend when I was starting out with Ruby development – the learning curve for Rails is so steep and sometimes you want something that just works, without all the Rails magic. Great to see it being kept up to date.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'm very pleased to see your comment. As you wish, I also want Sinatra to be there so I'll continue to maintain Sinatra until the time comes.</comment></comment>


Decimal Time - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2016/12/14/set-your-clocks-to-decimal-time/ <comment><USER2> _yawn_ Maybe we should get rid of time-zones while we're at it?</comment>


What's going on here? Google Search for Tarsnap. - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=tarsnap

<comment><USER2> I don't know. Patrick (patio11) said he thought it was due to my (mis)use of rel="canonical", but I'm not 100% sure that explains it.

All I can say for certain is that somehow the Tarsnap index page disappeared from the Google index. (Googlebotbait: Please follow this link and re-index it: <http://www.tarsnap.com/>)

EDIT: It looks like the page is now back in the index, just not ranking highly for "tarsnap" -- a search for "tarsnap site:tarsnap.com" now finds it, which didn't happen yesterday.</comment>


Air Force One Needs 2 New Refrigerators. Together, They Cost $24M - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/us/politics/air-force-one-refrigerators.html <comment><USER2> that sounds about right for a presidential class, ultra-customized air fortress. Note the previous ones lasted a couple decades; they're buying a system that has a long-term support contract associated with it.

<comment><USER3> My parents' 1975 refrigerator also lasted two decades.

I get that an airborne refrigerator has different parameters for things like weight and form factor than a standard kitchen one does, but it's not like these should have to be custom made. Maybe a standard commercial jet refrigerator won't do, but surely the ones used on other private airplanes would?

And FFS, it's a refrigerator. What are the security implications?

<comment><USER2> Air Force 1 (really, a VC25A) is a completely customized airplane designed to carry the commander in chief of the most powerful country in the world, _indefinitely_ in the case of war (the airplane refuels in midair). Comparing it to your parents refrigerator is outright disingenous.</comment></comment></comment>


Making email drip campaigns, but for SMS - <AUTHOR> https://respondflow.com <comment><USER2> Very cool concept. High open rates?</comment>


Are alpha males worse investors? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2018/02/daily-chart-13?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/ <comment><USER2> Oh my goodness "Wide faces as a proxy for testosterone levels" Nice! I'm sure sock colors would work as a predictor of investment success just as well. What trash. The Economist is a thinly veiled pseudoscience brochure these past few years. Maybe it's always been that way and I'm just now noticing, but I used to find value in their articles and not just pseudoscientific trash.

<comment><USER3> Except that there are real studies showing an association between wide faces and testosterone levels: [http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(13)00027-5/abstr...](http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138\(13\)00027-5/abstract) and [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114283/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5114283/). It's not a great proxy though.

<comment><USER4> Can the results of these studies be replicated by a completely different research team?

If yes, then good. It is believable.

Anything else, then it is to be taken with a generous helping of salt.

I consider it a clickbait headline playing on gender biases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Alpha male" as a concept does not exist: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life- style/the-myth-of-the-alph...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the- myth-of-the-alpha-male-a7724971.html)

<comment><USER6> > "Alpha male" as a concept does not exist

This statement is factually incorrect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(ethology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_\(ethology\))

<comment><USER7> I think parent commenter meant among humans.

From the very Wikipedia article you linked we also find:

> In humans, the concept of an alpha male was challenged as being largely > nonexistent per an article by Dean Burnett, who found that human leadership > roles vary wildly based on the current social context, and traits attributed > to an "Alpha" might be exhibited in one scenario, and traits attributed to a > "Beta" might be exhibited in a different scenario by the same individual.

Also from the same article, since wolves are often used as an example when talking about alphas:

> Researcher L. David Mech, one of the primary creators of the Alpha male > hypothesis for wolves, later found additional evidence that the concept of > an Alpha male may have been an erroneous interpretation of incomplete data > and formally disavowed this terminology in 1999. He explained that it was > heavily based on the behavior of captive packs consisting of unrelated > individuals, an error reflecting the once prevailing view that wild pack > formation occurred in winter among independent gray wolves. Later research > on wild gray wolves revealed that the pack is usually a family consisting of > a breeding pair and its offspring of the previous 1–3 years.

Whereas among chimps and gorillas for example we _do_ find alpha males like the article says, but I don't think anyone was contesting that.

<comment><USER8> But charismatic, self-confident, and maybe good-looking men exist?

<comment><USER9> Many guys like to think of themselves in this way, I'm sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The concept of "alpha", "beta" and other greek letter males is based on a flawed study of the social dynamics of wolf packs. Not only is it inaccurate in the context of human behaviour, it has also been since found out that it doesn't model the behaviour of wolves accurately, and these categories do not exist in reality.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the whole tribe or pack of wolves operates together. True alphas don't actually assert their dominance, and you are correct that our naive interpretations of these letters and their cardinality are quite faulty. Not sure why people voted you down.

<comment><USER9> Problem is; people really really really seem to like to believe in this meme. They want to believe in the myth of the alpha male. They find it comforting. I think it's probably similar to supreme-being myths, and racial-superiority myths. (who doesn't like to be told they're "a member of the master-race" or "naturally inclined to dominate and lead, be entitled to privilege"?)

Getting this mythology beat-down is going to be a very difficult steep uphill climb, I'm afraid. Hell, we're literally still trying to convince people the world is round.

<comment><USER2> I think of the Flat Earth "movement" as a nod and prod for people to use critical reasoning, and I don't see it as something nefarious. We don't have to convince everyone to hold the same views but we should urge people to hold beneficial views for themselves and others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think they'd have more accuracy in results if they mapped-out the contours and bumps of the subject's skulls.

</comment><comment><USER11> At first i took the article into consideration- but then i found a photo of the author and measured the chin to brow distance- and it turns out he is a chronicle liar.

</comment><comment><USER12> So physiognomy is a real thing now?

Are writers at the Economist worse statisticians?</comment>


Is science stagnant? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/575665/ <comment><USER2> The missing point here is that as the same time as electricity was being worked on in one small lab, there were people (even in the same lab) who would publish things we would not even consider to be research today.

This is a silly article by someone who has no concept of the scope and breadth of science through the ages.

Time suppresses weaker discoveries, but there is no way to know what will last beforehand.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think though that just proves the point that there was so much low hanging fruit back then- and not so much now. You're not going to discover something as fundamental as electricity again, for instance.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where can one find examples of live webapps/products built without code? - <AUTHOR> Asking for a research project.. I'm looking for a website that has a collection of products built without code. (or very minimal code!) <comment><USER2> I don't have specific products but [https://indiehackers.com](https://indiehackers.com) should have a couple of these projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you -- will try that. I was wondering there's GOTTO be a way to figure out which of the products on Product Hunt were built without code.</comment></comment>


Richard Russell's XL Recordings Empire - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/richard-russells-xl-recordings-empire <comment><USER2> XL's name is stamped on a lot of the most influential electronic music that's come out over the last 20 years. Some of my favorite vinyl...

<comment><USER3> Pretty incredible how well they've done on both the rock (and pop, indie-rock) front and electronic. I can't think of another "pop" label who's also putting out great (often underground) electronic records as consistently as XL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Prodigy : ></comment>


Insult to Injury: His Warnings About the Dangers Were Largely Ignored - <AUTHOR> http://www.scrolib.com/2016/12/insult-injury-warnings-dangers-largely/ <comment><USER2> The substance of the text has merit, but it was difficult to get through a whole article written in ALL CAPS. It also makes it look less professional.</comment>


Saving the heartland: Place-based policies in 21st Century America - <AUTHOR> https://www.brookings.edu/bpea-articles/saving-the-heartland-place-based-policies-in-21st-century-america/ <comment><USER2> > The enormous social costs of non-employment suggests that fighting long-term > joblessness is more important than fighting income inequality.

Isn't joblessness a second order problem? What is the root cause? One's ability to survive (basic necessities-wise) is limited by their ability to get and keep a job. Uncouple these two, via Basic Incone or something like it, and joblessness in and of itself is no longer a problem. Tough to do politically, since the prevailing Puritanical world view sees a living as something that must be earned.

<comment><USER3> >Uncouple these two, via Basic Income or something like it, and joblessness in and of itself is no longer a problem.

I don't think that's entirely true and I think equating contrary views with Puritanism is a cheap way to make it seem so.

Lots of people do take pride in their work, when we look at people who have lost their jobs in industries which aren't going to return there's not just the loss of income there's the loss of usefulness. There is a value to people in having a skill which you're good at, having a community (the workplace) which places some level of authority or trust in you to execute that task and then the ability to actually go and do that skill to recertify that trust/authority. Steel workers in Pennsylvania aren't just looking at a smaller paycheck for the rest of their lives, they're faced with potentially never being good enough at a useful task to ever get that sort of trust again and that itself can be corrosive to the human spirit.

<comment><USER4> If a UBI was big enough, steel workers could go back to work. They could run a factory and make steel, at a loss, but it wouldn't matter because doing something useful (making steel) is decoupled from their livelihood.

And for the people who want to get that sense of usefulness another way (raising kids, teaching others how to make steel, playing video games, building houses) they would have the financial freedom to do so.

<comment><USER5> This is what Walmart does and all they get is people complaining about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/3_austi...](https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2018/03/3_austinetal.pdf) for the actual paper

<comment><USER7> Fair warning: its 98 pages (!) long. It looks interesting though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Compare the romantic concepts attached to rural poor, "heartland" we should "save", compared to the urban poor (I won't bother to list the terms). And note that for the urban poor, the solution is to erase them or get them out of sight, via gentrification, zoning, and other means.

I know that's not universally true and there are programs to help the urban poor, but it's hard to think of anyone romanticizing them.

<comment><USER9> At the extreme ends, anti-gentrification activism romanticizes concentrated poverty and class segregation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't personally think that Brookings is a non-partisan actor. Maybe they were at some point. I'm really distrustful of their research and the people involved.

If it weren't presented as non-partisan, then I wouldn't feel the need to comment. I would just ignore it, like I ignore most center or right wing economics. (I know! What happened to the free exchange of ideas, right?)

As to the point of the article, I think my critique is just a general critique of marginal technocratic adjustments to taxes and means tested programs. I support universal programs and redistribution.

<comment><USER8> > I don't personally think that Brookings is a non-partisan actor.

"I don't think youdontknowtho is a non-partisan actor." What makes that more meaningful than just a string of UTF-8 encodings? What is the partisan bias that's being asserted? Much more interestingly and importantly, what basis is there for it?

<comment><USER10> You are correct. I'm not non-partisan.

Brookings is a think tank that provides intellectual cover for the capital- owning class. Just because it isn't paleo-conservative doesn't mean that it isn't a right wing group.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bitcoin M-of-N Multisig P2SH Transaction Builder in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/soroushjp/go-bitcoin-multisig

<comment><USER2> How does this compare with [https://github.com/conformal/btcwallet](https://github.com/conformal/btcwallet) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> @wslh go-bitcoin-multisig is not a full wallet -- it's only a multisig transanction builder, so given the requirements of a multisig transaction (m required keys, n public keys, destination etc.), you can construct a raw multisig transaction. An example where this is useful is for example, in implementing a Bitcoin micropayment channel ([https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#micropayment- channel](https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#micropayment-channel)) between a payer and payee -- for example as a server-client solution for micropayments buying content. This is what I'm working on next.

<comment><USER3> This would be good for api's like chain.com that let you publish a raw transaction. Using this you can generate a transaction and push it to an API to avoid having to keep a whole bitcoin node there.

<comment><USER4> That is incredibly dangerous behavior. You must be validating your own information before you sign any transactions, preferably with a full node or at a bare minimum SPV proofs. If you believe what information a random API gives you (incorrect or malicious, doesn't matter) you can instantly and irreparably lose all of your money.

<comment><AUTHOR> 0x83F1, I don't think deftnerd is talking about signing an arbitrary raw transaction. They're talking about constructing your own raw transaction using a tool like this (from any source of information, including your own funding wallets), and then using something like Chain to _push_ the transaction on to the network, without connecting to nodes yourself. Chain couldn't really do anything too malicious -- at worst, change a couple of bytes to change the txid ie. transaction malleability.

Of course you're right, using a bad source of information for UTXO or any other part of the tx would give you an invalid transaction and it wouldn't get confirmed by the network.

<comment><USER4> See, that's the misconception most people have. What if an API tells you that you have an unspent output worth 0.01 BTC. and you spend it based on this information. If the API lied you could have just spent a 500 BTC output straight to fees with no recourse. If you just know the transaction hash and vout index you have no idea if the value is correct, many wallets reply on faulty information like this with potentially disastrous consequences.

<comment><USER2> Do you mean something like this [http://blog.coinspect.co/copay-wallet- emptying-vulnerability](http://blog.coinspect.co/copay-wallet-emptying- vulnerability)

<comment><USER4> No. In a Bitcoin transaction the fees are implies by in minus out. There's no way of knowing without a proof the value of a particular output, so if you accidentally spend one far below it's actual value you can end up paying an insane fee. People have lost hundred of Bitcoin due to bugs like this, like off by one errors. A malicious or misbehaving API could misstate the value and cause you to unknowingly lose money in this way if you blindly trust them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I got laid off, how should I use my time to work on my startup idea? - <AUTHOR> I'm an engineer and I just got laid off. I have enough savings for 2-3 months of funds that aren't my own (severance, etc). How should I use my time to maximize the chances of success (getting funded, etc) to continue working on my startup idea fulltime?<p>I would consider success getting a small angel investment to continue working fulltime. <comment><USER2> To be blunt: forget it, go find another job and then run your start-up alongside your new job, if and when it takes off jump ship otherwise be happy you're not broke.

It's silly to burn up that little bit of $ that you will receive on an outside chance like this.

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Generally speaking, your chance of failure is probably around 99%. Starting a startup is essentially buying a lotto ticket.

Like jacquesm says, finding a new job and running your startup on the side is the safer bet. If that's viable, then I'd suggest you find a new employer that has a contract friendly to side projects.

As an aside, there should really be a list of companies that are friendly in this regard. GitHub was recently in the news for allowing employees to work on personal projects using company resources, which is awesome.[0]

[0] [https://qz.com/937038/github-now-lets-its-workers-keep- the-i...](https://qz.com/937038/github-now-lets-its-workers-keep-the-ip-when- they-use-company-resources-for-personal-projects/?s=1)

</comment><comment><USER5> Just give yourself a month and don't write a single line of code.

Go meet your customers in the first week. Ask lots of whys. Do more structured IN PERSON interviews in the second week. Look at how it has been solved in the past and what competitors do. Draw up a rough solution (e.g. landing page) in week 4 and test it out in person as well as drive some traffic to it from online communities (reddit and FB groups do get you some traffic to have an idea about conversion rates).

GV has some good articles around cust dev interviews on their medium.

You probably have higher chances finding angel money for a well validated idea in the market than a product you built for 3 months full time without knowing exactly what to build.

</comment><comment><USER6> It all depends on your background, where your product is, etc. In your place, I would start reading. Any answer here would parrot what has been written a thousand times before.

You should know that getting even a small angel investment, for many, is quite tough -- and it takes time. If I were you, I would consider instead just focusing that time on getting the product far enough along that people either can use it or get excited about it. Get to know startups in your area and make yourself known in that community. Just chasing investment without an MVP that has clear growth is usually a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Given the chance of success in the startup space, I would take another route. If you currently have skills to get another job right away, do it.

Then look for a problem in the new job for which a solution is needed. One that really consumes a ton of people time. Something that would apply to more than just that company. Build that solution in your free time.

If you already have an idea as it seems you do, try to find a related job in that industry so you can continue to build out the idea in your free time.

</comment><comment><USER8> 2-3 months is not enough to float safely. You'll want a 6 month cache before you even think about taking time off, and even then only the time over that 6 months should you take off. That 6 mo cache is for emergencies.

</comment><comment><USER9> Good ideas below, like meeting your customers and learning their problems before coding, also getting a job first and working on this on the side. If you got severance, or you can afford to not work for a while, take a few weeks off and enjoy life if you can. I sometimes have burning ideas and I like to explore them, but I think working in a real job while you do this new thing on the side is the most practical.

</comment><comment><USER10> Not an answer to your question, but a resource that might interest you:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/business- bootstrap...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/business- bootstrappers)

</comment><comment><USER11> Take a part time job (~20hrs/week) and work on your startup idea on the side.

</comment><comment><USER12> i am in same boat. r u open to some partnership or so..</comment>


Ask HN: How can I switch to remote freelancing? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a full-stack Java/J2EE engineer in France that until now worked on soul-crushing projects for big corps (mainly high-traffic web portals and almost-realtime data analytics). I'm moving from the city to the countryside; to work on bootstraped startup projects (expect an annoncement soon) and to do some remote freelancing. I won't be able to find some Java  remote freelance gigs in France, so I'll guess I'll have to go "international". Do you have some clues on how to make this transition ? I don't really have a network to leverage and cannot get back to previous big-corp customers (they never allow remote working). <comment><USER2> Update your resume, set up a portfolio site, publish anything you can to GitHub, and hit up the monthly WhoIsHiring Freelancers thread[1]. Beyond that, just follow any "how to start freelancing" guides.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I planned to participate in the next WhoIsHiring, but Java is not loved a lot here (I did some Ruby but that's more anecdotal)</comment></comment>


How I Disappointed Tupac's Mom - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/how-i-disappointed-tupacs-mom/

<comment><USER2> It was hard for me to take the article seriously after the jab about rappers dying for marketing. Did companies capitalize off of rappers and their entourages being stupid, yes. But to suggest what happened was strictly based on marketing that's a little insulting to the people who died.</comment>