Ask YC: How do you avoid wasting too much time online? - <AUTHOR> I spend too much time browsing the web and it's hurting my productivity. There are so many interesting sites online -- hacker news, blogs, friendfeed, facebook, nytimes, etc -- and it's hard for me resist checking them on a daily basis, often multiple times a day. This stuff is really interesting and often useful, especially for an entrepreneurial hacker, and that makes it easy to justify spending so much time to "stay on top of things". However, the opportunity cost of not coding for an hour is huge compared to the benefit of reading yet another "20 things every startup founder should know" article. I need to find a way to break this bad habit. Just being aware of it apparently isn't enough.
I tried 8aweek. It didn't work for me. I've conditioned myself to reflexively press the "10 more minutes" button when the "your break time is up" popup comes up. Plus, at home I use Safari, and 8aweek doesn't work on Safari. (I avoided RescueTime -- the privacy implications are too creepy for me. Maybe I would use it if it had the option for only data collection. Also, I know I have a time wasting problem -- I don't need RescueTime to tell me that.)
The best solution I've found so far is to go somewhere where I don't have an internet connection at all, but it's not always practical.
If you have the same problem, how do you deal with it? I need a working solution. <comment><USER2> My solution? I simply stopped worring about how much time I spent doing or not doing something.

I started focusing on one thing only: the delta between what I planned to have complete at the end of each day vs. what I actually completed that day.

On Thursday, my plan was to have items A, B, and C complete before I knocked off. A & B were done by noon. I overlooked 2 prerequisites for C and had to go back and do them, then do C, which took twice as long as I expected. I didn't finish until 2 a.m. I also spent x hours on line. So what?

Sometimes going online gives me a break. Sometimes it gets the juices flowing again. And of course, sometimes it's just a waste of time. But it doesn't matter.

What's better, spending 6 hours online and getting everything done or spending 2 hours online and not finishing?

We often forget that (time spent) != (work accomplished).

Stop worrying about how much time you spend planting seeds and focus more on finishing each day's harvest.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm one of the founders of 8aweek. It was created because Zack and I deal with the same problem.

The default settings of 8aweek are definitely not strong enough for a major news junky. Mostly because the settings that news junkies need would probably piss of most users :). There are two modes to 8aweek, if you haven't tried already switch your settings to "block mode" and edit your preferences to limit the time and limit on the number of breaks in your day.

Currently we're only on FF and tend to focus more on our incentives and passive alerts than making the blocking more hardcore. If you immediately need something a little stronger I wrote a blog post last summer on the method I used before I had 8aweek (editing your hosts file).

[http://thingsilearned.wordpress.com/2007/05/04/combating- int...](http://thingsilearned.wordpress.com/2007/05/04/combating-internet- addiction/)

Another tip is to read a GTD book and try to only spend time infront of your computer when you have a clearly defined task to code out or read up on. Then walk away as soon as your done and re-define another task.

Also as always, send us some feedback on ways you think we could help you more, especially if you find another method that worked for you.

<comment><USER4> Are there any GTD books you'd recommend? I've heard a lot about GTD and it sounds very interesting, but I've never actually figured out what a good starting point would be.

<comment><USER5> There is literally a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. The system in its entirety is too hard core for most people (myself included) but the principles are good.

<comment><USER4> I'll check it out.

Why is it so hardcore? What do the systems actually entail?

<comment><USER5> It takes a great deal of discipline to manage all your productive output in a system. It requires a significant upfront time commitment to initialize the system. It's complex enough that it fills a book.

It's really best suited someone who needs to manage a large quantity of varied but mostly small tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, with RescueTime you can create whitelists of the sites you DO want to track. Every other site will come through as "non-whitelisted site" (the site info never hits our servers). You can set goals like "spend less than 1h surfing news" and have RescueTime SMS you when you break them.

But there's no solution out there that your lack of discipline won't conquer.

One good hack is to set it up so that you either starve or are publicly shamed when you procrastinate. So, you could quit your job (thus putting starvation on the line!). Or you could embed a RescueTime graph on your blog and invite people to hassle you about how you spend your time. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up about the whitelist feature. I would also like to be able to record all my activity locally and not send anything to the server. It would make RescueTime more useful and eliminate my privacy concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found I'm pretty much unable to do this, so I've done the next-best thing: I concentrate on making justin.tv the site I most like to waste time on.

This has turned out to be quite a useful trick. Each time I find myself wasting time elsewhere, I spend some time thinking about why I'm not wasting time on justin.tv instead, and I get inspired to fix that.

<comment><USER8> Hehe completely agree. It's good to waste your time on your own website.

1\. Waste time on website

2\. Get irritated to death by some bug/lack of feature

3\. Go fix bug/feature

4\. Goto 1

<comment><USER9> This is the only way I can program. Sadly that makes me a terrible programmer for implementing systems at BigCo, since I usually don't use whatever product they have me working on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think you're approaching it from a wrong point of view. You don't have a browsing problem, you have an issue with getting things done or you have a procrastination problem. This is why I have little use for all the apps that tell me how much time I'm spending on diff sites / programs. That data is useful and interesting but it's not good for solving your procrastination issue since you already know you have a problem!

I found this essay interesting: <http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/> It shows you how procrastination has some hidden benefits. Give it a read.

Now, how do I cope with info out there. Well, every morning I give myself a set of tasks that I want to accomplish that day (if you have a boss... he will do a part of that for you I guess). I almost always start with the hardest thing on the list or with something that's time sensitive (like call someone at 11am etc) and I break it up into smaller tasks as I go along. The rule is that I am not available for chat, email etc. until I'm done with the big task. I do not browse the web for anything that's not related to the task. Until that task is done, I do not touch email or the browser. Now, once I'm done with it or I'm stuck, I take a walk for few minutes or I jump into the second task on the list. Funny thing is, as you start doing something else, very quickly you start getting ideas about the old problem. If I get an idea about how to solve my previous task, I go back to it and then go back to the task I was doing before. If most of your tasks involve programming, get git and it will be a godsend to you since it lends itself perfectly to this model of working.

Once I'm done with a big task, I take 30-40 min off and I check my RSS feeds, I check HN, check email etc. I check email only 3 times a day. I find it extremely distracting if I check email more often. Email eats up too much of my time. If you're an email junkie, look into Merlin Mann's Inbox Zero concept:

<http://www.43folders.com/izero> <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=973149761529535925>

Also, take a look at this hack: [http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination- hack-102...](http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/11/procrastination-hack-1025) It's a method to get you in the mode of working on something so you acclimate yourself to work.

In the end, it comes down to strong will. Just force yourself to do something!

<comment><USER11> I'm procrastinating reading this stuff on procrastination. Good stuff. Yet another thing I should try. Now how do I deceive myself that getting this homework done is not near the most important things I should be doing...

<comment><USER12> Who cares about your homework? You should be saving the world instead.

(Hope this helps.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is the problem that you spend to much time online, or that you don't like what you're working on?

<comment><AUTHOR> You nailed it. Lately I've been bored by my work. When I'm excited about what I'm working on, the problem is much less serious.

<comment><USER14> Try to avoid extraneous sites (and email and IM, if possible) until you've gotten something done. I.e. don't start your day off with surfing and email. If you are bored by your work it is too easy to not get started and just continue reading stuff online. The effect of this is that by the time you get around to doing work, your brain is totally scrambled by all the stuff you just piped into it - making it even harder to finish the boring stuff you need to do, and more tempting to just return to the distractions.

At least that is how it is for me. I've found that if I have boring work stuff to do, the ONLY way I can get it done in any sort of reasonable time frame is to just immediately dive into it and barrel through it as soon as I wake up. (actually after I wake up and do a bit of exercise)

Of course any super rich and successful person will tell you the real way to solve the boring work problem is to convince someone else to do it for you, so you can spend more time keeping up on things. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely try it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Stand up desk. My mind seems to act in a much more goal oriented manner when I'm standing than when I'm sitting and relaxing.

<comment><USER3> I really want to try this. I have a feeling it would be incredibly helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm experimenting with the following: allow myself some web time (say, half an hour), then assign the next period (say, 2 hours) to focused work. So far it seems to work. My main goal is to prevent the two from mixing together - i.e., prevent the web browsing habit from popping up at random intervals and interrupting real work. I think that's the most important thing to tackle first, rather than the absolute totals spent on each.

</comment><comment><USER17> Stop making yourself feel like you have a duty to spend time on any site. In the end, none of it will give you a meaningful experience.

I loathe apps and sites that make you feel like everything is in your face. Email is like this, so is RSS, same with pretty much all news sites. The list goes on and on.

<comment><USER4> I think you actually just nailed the three biggies. The reason is that each of the three works in the same way: it gives you a list of "things to get done," and in two of the three cases that list goes on for a long ways. (Email does too, I suppose, if you really use it extensively.) The only other thing I think fits into this case would be social networking.

It's why I was interested in that new Times application for the Mac, the one that turned RSS reading into a sort of newspaper. When you have that format, then you're expecting to look at something only to have it come to an end. It's a different mindset. At the same time, though, it doesn't solve the problem entirely, problem being: the Internet moves constantly, not only at set intervals.

I wonder: is there a way of limiting that without alienating people? Of setting a precise limit to how much can be done during any given time, then ending things up? It would make it a lot easier to avoid sites. At the same time, though, it would slow things down to a crawl compared to the speed at which things move now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Go offline.

Large parts of even web applications can be developed without connecting to the internet. Have everything you need on a local network, or even just your own computer.

<comment><USER12> You can still play nethack. But you'd better not start that habbit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> <http://www.smacklet.com>

I've plugged this ridiculously simple tool so many times earlier that I am embarrassed to do it again now. I am not sure if you'll find it useful at all - but I find it to be very useful for me. Anyway, it works like this: You type in what you are planning to do and then later you can review it. This improves your consciousness and you stop wasting time online. The change comes from within. You don't need this web app... you can even do it with a legal pad.

</comment><comment><USER20> You could always take a leaf out of Richard Stallman's book...

<http://lwn.net/Articles/262570/>

</comment><comment><USER21> I like to use a timer particularly when I haven't gotten my day started yet. I set it for, say, 15 minutes, and that's my web time. Then I set it for 5 minutes, pick a small task, and try and get it done within that time without losing focus. Repeat that until I'm in the zone.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have a few strategies aimed towards reigning in my drifting focus.

> I focus best in 2.5-3 hour blocks. Each day I lock in 2 of these, each > focusing on an important task/project. I learned of this with an analogy > from my Grandfather - if you have a jar and fill it with sand, nothing else > fits in. If you fill a jar with pebbles, all the sand fills in the gaps. The > strategy in having these two blocks of focus is that all the sand/smaller > tasks fill in the gaps.

> Each week maintain a "top of mind" list containing all the things that are > on the top of your mind

> Have a "possibilities" list - the things you want to do, but may not need to > right now.

Regarding this constant flow of information:

> I prune RSS feeds by looking at the most active and least needed

> I check RSS feeds before and after work

</comment><comment><USER23> I recently took on a new Java consulting job and I was very intent not to surf the internet while surfing. However, the work once again turned out so be so mind-numbing that I quickly gave up on that (for example waiting minutes for maven builds - what's a brain to do with itself??).

I need the news to have at least some interesting input to my mind occasionally. It is like coffee breaks for me (I'd like to wean off coffee, too, but I don't see how I could stand 8 hours at the office without it). Like coffee, I suppose the effects of web surfing are not entirely negative.

The other day an interesting problem came up at work and I was able to concentrate on it without the surfing breaks. So it really depends on what you are doing (at least for me).

</comment><comment><USER24> Any site I find myself spending too much time on gets blocked in my hosts file. I still have them available on my iPod Touch. When it's time to work I put the Touch across the room.

Since the temptation to read news usually only lasts a second or two, this keeps me on task.

<comment><USER25> I do the same. I have a script that will update my hosts file at the start and end of each day. All my bookmarked sites are blocked during the work day.

<comment><USER26> This reminds me of me playing games. When I was playing a game too much, I deleted it right away with all the save games so the hussle of reinstalling was too big and I lost interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> 8aweek.com works for me. Just try switching modes, or fight against the 10 more minutes thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> I find that creating a schedule for myself helps where I force myself to work on something - even if it is menial things that still need to get done for the site.

I also disable all chat/instant messenger clients since you always lose productivity when switching from one to the other.

The other thing that you can do is try working from a different environment - if you find that you are browsing too much at your desk, try moving somewhere else that you can consider a "work only zone."

As a final step, try disabling your router for a bit and only give yourself access when you achieve your self imposed deadlines.

</comment><comment><USER29> I actually turn off my internet connection. It is the only thing I found that really works for me.

Not disruption from IM/email/web/etc and then I just get on with it.

I guess I am lucky I can do this as most of my dev can be done offline.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you are on a mac, use Freedom, it disables networking, and allows you to get work done.

<http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/freedom/>

</comment><comment><USER31> An open office environment, where others should peek on at any time helps a lot! I know, this sounds pretty bad at first, but from my experience this helps to each and every member of the team, seamlessly increasing personal and overall productivity.

I worked remotely for a long time and had the similar problem like you. When switched jobs I've found myself in an open environment and after the first "shock" I soon realized the benefits.

</comment><comment><USER32> Just get into your router config and block sites that you know will suck you in (ex: reddit or digg), on your workstation. I personally block them during "my work hours", that way I have something to look forward to after I've got my work done.

It also helps to have a router config that makes it difficult and time intensive enough to make a change, that wat it's easier to just NOT make the change and get back to work.

</comment><comment><USER33> I use a firefox addon called LeechBlock that lets you list sites that you shouldn't be allowed to go to. I have it redirect me to a to-do list at rememberthemilk.

Sounds like that won't help you too much since you're using Safari, but I urge any firefox users who have this problem to try it out.

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476>

</comment><comment><USER34> Try to get a habit of at least 30 minutes with a good semi-technical book before you go to bed. If the book is right, it will inspire you to fall asleep only to wake up and code something, sometimes I won't go to bed at all - I'd stay up all night hacking. A book like that will make most news sites irrelevant, TV - pathetic and blog posts - either stupid or obvious. (and they are)

</comment><comment><USER35> My solution was simple: add digg, reddit, and slashdot to Safari AdBlock's filters. It has really changed my life!

</comment><comment><USER36> Create a list of 4 tasks to get done for that day. If you get all 4 done, reward yourself by being able to view the sites you love. If you get them done really quickly then of course you would need a longer list. I find 4 to be my magic number. Oh and these tasks have to have the highest priority.

</comment><comment><USER37> I use 2 computers on a KVM. One for work/projects and the other one for "everything else." The work computer has all alerts and feeds off (including email). I find it gives me a psychological separation. If I really need to work or hit a deadline, the non-work computer goes off.

</comment><comment><USER38> When I answer that question I'll be sure to blog about it.

</comment><comment><USER39> use this wallpaper:

<http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/details.php?id=1223>

tested, works perfectly!

</comment><comment><USER40> <http://www.umassmed.edu/Content.aspx?id=41254>

maybe?

</comment><comment><USER41> I get more interesting projects.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have exactly the same problem, I need a solution ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't. Give in to your temptations!

</comment><comment><USER44> sudo apt-get remove firefox

Yes sometimes is necessary. The action of reinstalling it makes me rethink and postpone the decision for later.</comment>


RCN blocking inbound SSH after allowing it for many years - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kamens.us/2014/10/21/dear-rcn-please-stop-blocking-ports-and-lying-to-customers-about-it/

<comment><USER2> From the linked page the list of blocked items was:

Cablemodem Side - blocked Port 80 inbound (unless customer has Static IP) WWW / HTTP Service Prevents customers from running a WWW server Port 25 outbound (unless destination is smtp.rcn.com) SMTP Mail Service Prevents customers from using outbound e-mail servers other than smtp.rcn.com Static IP subscribers are not effected by this restriction and may use any SMTP server they wish. Port 135 RPC DCE endpoint resolution Prevent attacks via this port. Port 137 NETBIOS Name Service Prevents attacks via this port. Port 138 NETBIOS Datagram Service Prevent attacks via this port. Port 139 NETBIOS Session Service Prevent attacks via this port. Port 445 Server Message Block (SMB) over TCP/IP for file sharing Port is a security risk to customers if it is open. Port 1900 uPNP port used mostly in LAN situations Port may be a security risk to customers if it is open. Port 21 FTP Permits customers to use FTP Port 22 SSH Permits customers to use SSH Port 23 Telnet Permits customers to use Telnet Cablemodem Side - not blocked Service on this port Customer impact Port 135 RPC DCE endpoint resolution This port is a security risk to customers if it is open. Port 445 Server Message Block (SMB) over TCP/IP for file sharing This port is a security risk to customers if it is open. Port 4444 Kerberos 5 to 4 ticket xlator | NV Video default This port is a security risk to customers if it is open.

I see no reason for these other than for their own commercial interest: FTP, SSH and HTTP.

The rest, even port 25 I would accept. Email needs to be tied down, nobody should be dealing with the hassle of running their own email server at home.</comment>


The Alameda Weehawken Burrito Tunnel (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm <comment><USER2> New career goal, burrito sommelier.

Previously, Burrito Bomber:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lqMRHwGsRA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lqMRHwGsRA)

</comment><comment><USER3> I honestly would have been convinced if that hyperlink wasn't clickable

</comment><comment><USER4> Still can't get a decent burrito in NYC.

Source: am a Brooklynite</comment>


What Happens When a Founder Is Fully Vested? - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2018/11/what-happens-when-a-founder-is-fully-vested/ <comment> 8f2ab37a-ed6c It's a frustrating and uncertain place to be as a founder.

You're being paid peanuts compared to what you could be making in the industry (generally your comp is garbage until maybe Series C) and your equity is already as good as it's ever going to get, so some reasons to stay behind are:

1\. you're really enjoying the gig

2\. you think that by you staying behind, the overall worth of your equity will be higher than by having someone else take over

3\. you think that quitting at that stage will be a permanent black mark on your record, the captain abandoned the ship

4\. you're totally out of money after years of trying to make ends meet with a startup founder gig, so you can't start a new company without spending a year or two working for someone else first

There's real opportunity cost to sticking around. You could be starting a new business and begin another 4 year vesting countdown there. Maybe you're ok working for someone else, you could be at Google collecting a 1/2M paycheck, feeling like you're on vacation compared to a growth stage CEO job. Maybe you just want to take a breather and actually have time for your spouse and kids for a little bit, before another dive.

Tricky spot.

<comment><USER2> > you could be at Google collecting a 1/2M paycheck

That's director-level compensation. Would somebody whose only experience is 4-5 years of running a startup be hired straight into a director role?

<comment> 8f2ab37a-ed6c If you interview well and have competing offers from large firms that shell out good cash, you can get that as a senior dev. Networking helps a lot, if you have the right friends working there, they'll make sure you interview with the right people.

<comment><USER3> 1-2M is way above market for a "senior dev." Even for the top companies, that tier is reserved for truly outstanding performers who have launched major projects/innovations.

<comment><USER4> Yeah he said 500k. I Initially thought the same as you, 1-2mil.

500k for a senior dev is actually not too far out there. I have an L3 friend at Google (l3 is new hire level) who has been at the company for almost 2 years and who's total comp is almost 300k. So some L5s and L6s could certainly be pulling in 500k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a strange perspective.

This piece seems to assume that founders of a company are just some kind of super-employee of the VC that are only going to be around so long as they are getting regular compensation.

That isn't how it's supposed to work. The founder has to believe they create the value. They don't work to get grants of stock, they work to increase the value of the stock. They created all the stock in the first place!

If they think that they could just hire someone else to do their job and everything would just turn out the same then what the hell did they even found the company for in the first place?

The way VC is set up in the valley has warped peoples understanding of what a business even is.

<comment><USER6> Didn't even realize founder's equity vested. I thought since they created the company, they owned it since day 1.

<comment><USER7> No. All operator equity vests. Any potential partner who demands unvested equity is one you should avoid. Vesting protects cofounders as much as it protects money investors.

<comment><USER8> I've co-founded four companies with seven distinct co-founders, raised angel and venture funding, and had two very successful exits. I've never had vesting for any founder at any stage, and never had cause to wish for it in hindsight.

There are advantages and disadvantages to founder vesting and they are situational. Recommending it as a default may very well be good zeroth order advice for beginners, but your position is way too strong.

A start on thinking about why it might not always be the best way to keep a team together is to look up the "israeli day care study".

<comment><USER9> Here, I'll be the first to provide a perspective from the other "other" side of this argument. I am a founder who once had a vesting schedule with a cliff (one year). I built the first version of a venture backed company as the CTO, we had backing from investors you've heard of.

The product went live and was even used by some people. Eventually I ended up in a place where it was clear to me I disagreed with the direction of the business and the CEO leading it. I for one am glad there was a cliff.

Because I left and when I did my co-founders continued to work on that business. As far as I know they're still at it.

That was over six years ago. The code I wrote is likely of VERY little value in the grand scheme of things.

The value I added in thoughts, ideas, advice etc. is probably about as valuable as people my co-founders have had several dinners with over the years at this point. If I had walked away with 1/3 of the equity that would have put the other two co-founders in a horrible situation and would have been completely unfair of me to do.

The cliff did its job. You vest to protect all parties and because it's just the right thing to do. Take it from someone who walked off the "cliff".

I've started multiple companies since then. Each has had a vesting schedule and a cliff for all founders.

<comment><USER8> Yes, if you want to be able to walk away with a clean conscience, you should definitely have vesting.

That's not what everyone is going for.

<comment><USER7> Can you help me understand why you would want a company structure that was designed _not_ to survive the departure of a founder?

<comment><USER10> Further, lots of people don't seem to understand the job changes.

Take cto. When it's founders and maybe an employee, cto is a full-time dev.

Then you get funded, and four months later the engineering team is 4-6 people. The cto is now a line-level manager who codes a bit. It's a completely different job.

Then you get the next round, and suddenly the cto supervises 2-4 line level eng managers and has to decide if (s)he wants to be cto or dir-eng, because those roles are about or have already split. This, also, is a completely different job.

At each step, it's a completely different job.

Your company needs to be prepared for founders who don't want, can't, or aren't good enough at the next step that is required of them. Because the job literally completely changes every 2 years. Or sooner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Large shareholder-employees stick around because they believe they can grow the value of their company.

A CEO owning double digit share of their company doesn't need more _shares_. What they want and need, most of all, is dry powder to _grow_.

Secondary to a large war chest comprised of equity pool and cash to pay salaries, is a decent salary for themselves to keep the family happy with their living conditions while the CEO is basically unavailable as a partner, off trying to grow their company.

I'm surprised that the blog post seems to miss this? I generally have high regard for AVC posts.

A CEO/Founder is never going to be able to double the size of their slice of the pie. While the CEO/Founder is absolutely crucial in doubling the size of the overall pie. At 4 years in I'd say most VC funded companies are still aiming to be 10x'ing the size of their pie at the least.

An equity grant at 4 years in should be totally irrelevant. Deck chairs on the titanic. A little anti-dillusion is nice but not necessary. It's all about the size of the pie, not the slices, at that point. And growing the pie requires funding on good terms, and massive focus and execution. Generally that means long hours and time away from home, for which a $200k salary helps tremendously to keep the family on board for the voyage.

<comment><USER12> This idea of keeping the family happy suggests a niche market unto itself. I can think of a few services that would make that easier. There are a bunch of high end concierge services out there, but one that focused on founder families is like an extended family office. Gears turning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This in my mind doesn't address two key items (unless I somehow missed it?)

1) If you truly care about the business, and it's not just a numbers game, you might have some emotional attachment to the product, and the people working for the company. This complicates things for everyone.

2) Leaving will likely devalue your stock. Bad for investors, probably worse for you (as it's likely your largest asset). Pulling yourself out unless the company is in a super strong position, with a likely high chance of hiring a good replacement may not be super smart for your own finances.

</comment><comment><USER14> Investors are usually diversified, holding stakes in lots of different companies. Meanwhile, founders are usually all in with all their eggs in one basket (albeit a basket they are guarding intently). An alternative to asking for more equity is to negotiate for a higher salary, and using those funds to diversify your holdings. As you'd expect, this conversation is easy if the business is going well, and isn't if it's not.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have a question - Is founder vesting standard outside the valley/software startups?

If I and my partner set out to build (say) a restaurant franchise in Texas, do 4 year vesting schedules, cliffs, etc make their way into incorporation documents? How do things work in non-silicon-valley-startup businesses?

Either vesting is a part of standard business incorporation (in which case I don't see why it needs special discussion in a software startup context, we don't need to discuss whether a company should have annual or quarterly balance sheets, for example - such 'standard elements' are taken for granted) or it is highly software startup specific (in which case there might be interesting rationales for such provisions existing that are specific to software, software startups, or conventions of SV VCs)

<comment><USER16> Software is somewhat unique in that it takes relatively little capital to start a business, outside of the sweat equity that the founding team puts in.

If you're opening a restaurant in Texas with someone, you're looking at something like $100k to $250k each, depending on local regulations and what kind of scale you want.

<comment><USER17> It's more that software is way riskier and unknown, so you're forced to go with tougher demands from VCs instead of more traditional investors/debt

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a good post and it was pretty comprehensive. Worth noting however, that there are many more hairy solutions Fred didn't raise.

For instance, some founders will negotiate a grant upon IPO or upon sale of a company beyond $x dollars as a way to try and align interests with investors. The problem with those is that it can cause unnatural behavior (eg, Snapchat IPO'd too soon, I'd argue, because Evan's investors gave him a grant that vested upon a qualified IPO exceeding a certain price. Or the tax issues late- breaking grants can create upon a trigger.)

</comment><comment><USER19> > the company would have to go out and hire a new CEO and that new CEO would > get an equity grant that would be between 2.5% and 7.5% of the Company, > depending on the value of the business.

If this is true, it's much better to come in as replacement CEO than to be a founder. After four years and multiple rounds of financing much of the risk has been mitigated. Additionally, no incoming CEO is working in their garage and mortgaging their house.

<comment><USER20> Depends on the situation, if the company is u profitable and near bankcrupty I think not many want to be the replacement ceo...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is, of course, the FYIFV (Fuck You I'm Fully Vested)[1] trope that originated at Microsoft. But I doubt that Gates and Allen were part of that. :)

What I saw at one startup that went public is that the founders didn't start out with a large amount of stock. But after the IPO the board (the founders' buddies) would continue to award them substantial stock grants, even though the company was doing just OK not great. That's not a scenario that's covered by the article.

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

<comment><USER22> The FYIFV story seems pretty much made up: [https://web.archive.org/web/20051228022236/http://www.kuro5h...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051228022236/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/16/13635/2730)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Alternatively don't agree to vesting of founder shares and don't give away more than 49%. Not saying it's easy, but also not impossible.

</comment><comment><USER24> > 2/ But that argument about how a new CEO should be compensated essentially > puts on the table the question of whether the founder CEO is actually the > best person to run the Company right now or if there is someone better > suited to do that who could be recruited for a new market equity grant. It > is often not in everyone's best interests to have that conversation.

Why would it not be in everyone's best interests to have that conversation?

<comment><USER25> Pick at least one:

The CEO might not get to stay in their highly-compensated, prestigious position that they presumably worked very hard for.

The board might have to answer questions about why they didn't start looking for a new CEO sooner.

The company might have to suffer through the trauma of switching CEOs.

All shareholders might lose some equity if a large grant is given to the new CEO. (Nearly equivalently, the company will lose a large chunk of the shares reserved for new hires, reducing its flexibility in hiring.)

<comment><USER26> > Nearly equivalently, the company will lose a large chunk of the shares > reserved for new hires, reducing its flexibility in hiring.

Just create new stock. Problem solved.

<comment><USER27> Think of ownership as percents of a whole, not little pieces of paper. You can't own more than 100% of the company collectively, and the more the CEO owns the less other people will.

<comment><USER26> > Think of ownership as percents of a whole, not little pieces of paper.

Shares don't represent a percentage of anything other than the current number of issued shares. No one should be expected to work for free. New shares should always be created whenever someone contributes labor, capital, or some other asset. If existing shareholders aren't being continuously diluted as people make new contributions to the company then something is going seriously wrong. Just because someone got shares for a previous contribution doesn't mean you don't need to pay them for future contributions.

I mean would you expect your series A investors not to get any shares because you already gave some shares to your seed investors? It makes literally no sense.

Your options pool should be negotiated with your investors to cover your first X (e.g. 100) employees. It makes no sense for it to cover founders, nor does it make any sense for it to cover some indefinite amount of future labor.

<comment><USER28> Um, no... company shares represent a "share" of the company's value.

I think you need to understand what "dilution" means here.

Say your company has 100 shares, and is worth $1000, so each share is worth $10. You create another 100 shares. Your company now has 200 shares. But the company is still exactly the same company. It didn't just double in value, it's still worth $1000, so now each share is worth only $5. Each share got "diluted" in value.

If you, as a loyal employee of many years service, were holding 5 of these shares, then the value of that loyal service just got halved. You would be annoyed at this.

Company valuations need to go up in order to issue new shares without annoying people. Seed investors buy shares when the company is small and not worth much. When the Series A people come in, the company is much bigger and worth much more. So the new shares can be issued without annoying the existing investors because their net value remains the same (or usually goes up).

Randomly issuing new shares without an increase in company value will annoy everyone, which is why companies don't just issue new shares whenever they feel like it.

<comment><USER29> Creating shares, regardless of changes in company value, dilutes percentage ownership of previous investors. I think your definition of "dilution" isn't capturing this aspect of GP's comment.

<comment><USER30> Sure, it dilutes the percentage owned. But unless you have a down round, you have more value.

If someone has five shares at $1000 total valuation and 100 shares, they have an equity position worth $50 and 5%. If the company grows and issues another 100 shares but the price paid by an investor for those shares is $5000, that means that each share (ignoring preferred share premium, which is ok in the abstract but shouldn't be ignored in reality) is worth $50. The five share owner owns less of the company but what he or she owns is worth more ($250 vs $50, but 2.5% vs 5%).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Of the founders I have met that are fully vest, most stick around. I presume because they have a comfortable lifestyle or their shares will be worth more by their direct participation in the company.

I firmly believe that true altruism does not exist and find it insulting when I'm told otherwise. There's always a trade off.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why would a founder have to vest?

<comment><USER33> Many investment term sheets mandate it. If you don't want to vest then don't take money from someone who says you have to vest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> what bugs me about this is I don't know how founders don't feel like employees from the moment they get themselves on vesting schedule...

[edited - removed my ranting]

<comment><USER35> It's not about being babysat, it's about downside protection for VCs. If you're competent and believe in your business (which any founder CEO should be and do), your personal assessment of the risk of you leaving should be effectively zero — meaning this term ("founders must adhere to this vesting schedule") reduces to, "sure, if that makes you happy, let's negotiate on more important things."

Not agreeing to this term (or negotiating heavily) when accepting investment capital can be a huge red flag for this reason. It immediately weeds out people who aren't committed to the business.

<comment><USER36> >It immediately weeds out people who aren't committed to the business.

Wouldn't this be equally valid as "self selects for people willing to take a worse deal" or even less charitably "self selects for suckers"

<comment><USER37> I'm a VC, so let me shed some light on this.

The biggest reasons we require founders to be on a vesting schedule is not really to protect our investments (as mentioned by another commenter). If the founders were to decide to screw us over somehow, our investment is already toast, and we potentially have other recourse.

It's to protect founders from each other. Most successful startups have multiple founders, but the most common reasons for failure is also disputes between multiple founders. Bad founder breakups are frequent. They can be survived, but only with a vesting schedule for the founders, so that the remainder founders aren't screwed by having to, in essence, work for the founders who left.

If you have two founders, and one leaves after 2 years due to a disagreement — without a vesting schedule, the remaining founder would have no motivation to continue to create value, given all the value he creates goes in an equal amount to the founder who left.

Even with a vesting schedule, in this case, we'll typically negotiate to repurchase the majority of the stock of the departing founder.

<comment><USER36> So what explains the rote implementation of this logic on single founders too?

I expect to be heavily downvoted for even suggesting these things on this board (as my original comment was) but this logic reeks of VC bullshit and I suspect you won't refute that despite your assertion that this is totally only about co-founder protection you wouldn't hesitate to impose such a vesting schedule on a solo founder, likely using some of the other arguments in this thread that you've even discounted in the original post.

<comment><USER37> Perhaps the downvotes are because you call it "VC bullshit" — which is not a very thoughtful or productive way to debate ideas.

Having it for solo founders makes sense in case another founder or executive comes later, in which case a similar issue can arise. If you truly are a single founder, there are very very few situations in case you'd leave involuntarily, given there wouldn't be anyone with the power and voting stock to fire you, and given your departure would likely mean the death of the startup.

There's very little downside to accepting a vesting schedule as a solo founder.

<comment><USER35> Kenneth — to defend the posters in this thread, I would wager that there's a nuance to term sheet / contract negotiation here that's easy to be ignorant of if you've never been in the situation. If you haven't been through the ringer re: fundraising, building a business it's very easy to assume that (A) if a company is successful then (B) I can define the terms, fuck all the rest. The reality of most successfully funded startups is that there's no one reality, and it's easy to understand that an HN reader might think; "vesting for founders? That sounds like bullshit!" Without having gone through the logical leaps of;

\- Is the opportunity real?

\- Can I build a product to start testing the hypothesis?

\- Can I recruit believers (customers, investors) to help test my hypothesis and make it a reality?

\- Finally, do I believe there's a hypergrowth opportunity, what are the risks associated with pursuing that, and how do I minimize them without affecting the size of the opportunity space?

Once you get to the latter step the largest risk early on is lack of access to capital, and there are a _lot_ of ways to negotiate that materially affect hypothetical "hypergrowth" potential (valuation / dilution, liquidation preferences, you name it) which make founder vesting schedules borderline irrelevant beyond aligning cofounder expectations and making sure people are bought in. You see it in a term sheet and go, "okay, what's this?" — forward it to legal and get back, "standard terms, bigger fish to fry, move on."

If you've never put the blood and sweat in to get to this point in negotiation it's probably easy to overemphasize the role a founder's vesting schedule plays early on.

<comment><USER36> Thank you for giving an answer with actual substance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Sounds like a good problem to have.</comment>


Skeleton found under the parking lot really Richard III, DNA analysis confirms - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/genetics/scientists-confirm-remains-king-richard-iii-17487010

<comment><USER2> Today you are a medieval king, 500 years later your body is buried under a spot dedicated for parking personal horseless carriages owned mostly by ex- peasants from around the planet. Another 50 years later you are a synthetic personality in an educational VR sub-universe...</comment>


Ways to screw up as a woman in technology - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@zornitsatomova/5-ways-to-screw-up-as-a-woman-in-technology-7c416aed8db8 <comment><USER2> Another multiple fail-preneur article from Medium? Downvote as you see fit but come on HN you are better than this. This one is especially bad...

"There is this perception that in order to get into IT and do well in it, you need to know programming, which many women like me find unappealing and hard to understand. But the truth is, you don't really need to know programming."

There are so many things wrong with her world views and views about tech (and women) in general it makes me sick. My daughter loves programming in much the same way a young boy would. If that changes it's because she has no examples of women who like and do what she does, mostly because a lot of women to this day retain the above mentality.

<comment><USER3> That part made me cringe. Also the part about complementing the "tech guys" on the team. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The advice about pretending to know about technology when you don't is the very reason why there are so many bad people in managerial positions. Its hard to have respect for the work that your engineers do if you have no idea what they do.

</comment><comment><USER5> > "Who was I, a 23-year-old university student, to be advising those guys with > 25+ years of experience?"

This doesn't seem woman-specific. Anyone would be intimidated in that situation!

</comment><comment><USER6> These don't seem to be specific to women, except maybe the first one, which is frustrating because it comes off like victim-blaming (e.g. don't "allow" yourself to be intimidated ... but often the whole structure of a corporate hierarchy is designed to do exactly that, and to milk any gendered intimidations it can to coerce fealty out of subordinates, both men and women).

I don't think it's good to spend even a tiny bit of our brain cycles worrying about what "mistakes" marginalized employees might make, when executives, HR and corporate governance are virtually predicated on taking full advantage of employees in every way they can.

Let's just focus on rampant corporate bad actors, sweepingly horrible company cultures, agism, racism, sexism, unfair pay, unhealthy working conditions and so on. These things are so up-front, huge, and wide-spread that there is just no valuable returns to be had by twisting it around to focus on what workers might do wrong in terms of navigating workplace dysfunctions.

</comment><comment><USER7> I found this very generic and hard to read

</comment><comment><USER8> I really enjoyed this article.

One thing I don't think most people realize is the concept of "man time." When a work situation is mostly, or completely, men, work turns into "man time."

A workplace should never be "man time." I think that's the biggest obstacle to get over; and the hardest obstacle, too. If we better understood "man time," it'd be easier to set boundaries and keep it out of the workplace.

<comment><USER9> I feel bad because I googled "man time" and then proceeded to read the whole manual of "time" instead.</comment></comment>


China Reveals Its Cyberwar Secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/18/china-reveals-its-cyber-war-secrets.html

<comment><USER2> This changes everything.</comment>


Show HN: Fastprint – Email a file to email@example.com to print it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zachlatta/fastprint <comment><USER2> I would be very much satisfied if I could print _anything_ on Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm with you on that. I made this so you only have to set up your drivers once on a single machine, then you can print from anything that can send an email (including your phone).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Make your own HN in TextChannels / opinions? - <AUTHOR> http://textchannels.com/?mode=page&pg=about

<comment><USER2> First impressions:

* This is just nifty.

* You want people to agree to an empty ToS? WTF? Fill it in or eliminate the checkbox.

* It would be _very_ nice if OpenID could be used to create an account / login.

* This is something I'd actually use.

* Can moderators ban trolls from a channel by nick and/or IP?

* Can moderators choose individual posts to make "featured", (i.e. sticky at the top of the channel) for a limited period (12 or 24 hours maybe?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey sorry i missed your comment earlier, i thought nobody would ever answer. I started it as a side project, so i 'm still fixing things.

\- Will fill up the ToS soon, promise

\- OpenID et al (facebook, twitter etc) is a great idea, but i will wait to see if this can have any traction first

\- Yes, the block list will be added soon

\- Sticky is a nifty idea, i was also thinking of adding a 'newsroom' post to give more exposure to recent posts.

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement, appreciated

<comment><USER2> To be honest, I think that supporting OID/OAUTH would help you get traction -- lowering barriers to entry is especially important when you are just getting started.

Building something like this has been on my "someday, if ever I have free time" list for a while now -- I know plenty of people who would use it, but only about 1/3 that I've shown it to have registered, all citing the need to make yet another new account.

Integrating a multiple auth solution like Janrain Engage[1] should take no time at all, and it might help texchannels get traction.

[1]: <http://www.janrain.com/products/engage>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks again. Twitter sign in has been added for now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Probation Fees Multiply as Companies Profit - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/us/probation-fees-multiply-as-companies-profit.html

<comment><USER2> It's crazy talking to poor or mentally ill people and seeing the huge problems minor things (parking tickets, misaddressed mail, etc.) cause them. Obviously some of it is inaccurate reporting by them, or failing to take advantage of readily available remedies, but the system also seems set up to screw them.

I'm not a big fan of a paternalistic government, but even that would be preferable to an abusive one.</comment>


Project Silica proof-of-concept stores movie on quartz glass - <AUTHOR> https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/ignite-project-silica-superman/ <comment><USER2> One of the startup ideas I've had is to modernize death.

Most humans want to "live forever." Given that we can't do that, we resort to procreation, and leaving behind some pieces of ourselves to be remembered by, with lots of cultures having some type of funeral practice to ensure this occurs (i.e. tombstones).

With the proliferation of our digital lives, many of us have more photos, videos, and other media than we know what to do with. Furthermore, we probably don't have a great way to preserve this information.

Imagine a funeral service that could comb through your digital life, archive it all, and keep it accessible to your family for generations. Bonus points for summarizing it into a beautiful montage to be played to your family at your service.

Financially, it would work a lot like how funeral homes operate with deposits, insurance, and annuities, but the marginal cost should be much lower due to it being a digital vs. physical product.

One of the problems I've been mulling over is the fact that digital storage isn't perpetual, which means that someone has to ensure the data is maintained in some way.

Therefore, something like the quartz glass storage medium in the article would be perfect. Your data would be accessible via traditional means for 10-20 years after your death. Afterwards, it would still be accessible, but it would be on cold storage, so it wouldn't be instantaneous. It would mean you'd "never really die" since any of your descendants would be able to see what your life was like.

I think that would be enough of a "hard problem to solve" to build a startup around. Of course, you could extend it to preserve other forms of data, like your DNA, or your mind like Westworld, where your descendants could communicate with you whenever you wanted.

It could easily become one of the first perpetual corporations.

<comment><USER3> I want a life-sized hologram deep-fake, coded with all of that stuff. People could come and ask questions or chat. It would take what they said and try to either recall or synthesize what my response might be. I would not want it online, insisting instead that people make a special trip to interact with my digital remains.

<comment><USER4> Have you seen the "Black Museum" episode of Black Mirror?

<comment><USER5> The earliest appearance of this idea I can remember is the Dixie Flatline [1] construct in _Neuromancer_ (1984), but I'm sure there are examples preceding that.

[1] [https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Dixie_Flatline](https://williamgibson.fandom.com/wiki/Dixie_Flatline)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the movie Kryptonian interactive holographic media is stored on irregular crystal shards. It's disappointing that this quartz media instead just look like squares of clear glass. I bet they're not even bothering to store them in a super cool Fortress of Solitude somewhere deep in the arctic wilderness.

<comment><USER7> the arctic is melting so not safe to store it there

<comment><USER8> Maybe Superman needs to learn how to chill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They mention in the article that some of the old black-and-white Superman film is stored on glass as well - but what really amuses me is that (if I recall correctly) Superman HIMSELF stores film on glass (or long crystal shards) in the 1978 film that is the subject of this article. My sister and I used to pretend in winter that icicles were our VHS tapes and we'd put them in the snow to "watch" them.

<comment><USER10> I think they said the old glass recordings were radio serials, not movies.

<comment><USER9> Ah ok - thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's been "M-Disc" [1] for a decade or so.[1] It's a form of DVD/Blu-Ray disc that, instead of using a dye that reacts to laser light, uses a drive with a more powerful laser to blast an indentation into the recording material. This is supposed to last a thousand years, and is much more resistant to heat and water than dye-based discs.

The blanks cost about twice as much and you need a drive with the M-Disc feature, which is not expensive.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC)

</comment><comment> d--b > The hard silica glass can withstand being boiled in hot water, baked in an > oven, microwaved, flooded, scoured, demagnetized and other environmental > threats that can destroy priceless historic archives or cultural treasures > if things go wrong

How about dropping it on the floor?

<comment> 52-6F-62 That was my first question, too.

I linked another company doing the same thing and they claimed it could withstand 0.5 tons of force before breaking. I'm not sure how that applies to dropping it, necessarily if there are other parameters that would cause a weakness that way.

<comment><USER12> The key there is what type of force. Glass is very strong against compression, but not strong against tension.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Microsoft senior optical scientist James Clegg loads a piece of glass into a > system that uses optics and artificial intelligence to retrieve and read > data stored on glass.

How are they using "artificial intelligence" for this?

<comment><USER14> "machine learning algorithms decode the patterns created when polarized light shines through the glass"

Unclear why ML is required versus old-school methods.

<comment><USER15> "As fans of The Mote in God's Eye already know, one remaining question must be answered for any data storage method expected to last for millennia—what happens when the technological and cultural context surrounding a storage medium collapses? Silica addresses this problem also, by using initial "ground truth" tracks. The team is using machine learning algorithms to re-read Silica's data, and in the event of the loss of those trained algorithms, fresh algorithms can train very rapidly on the "ground truth" tracks, which teach them how to interpret the rest of the data." [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/microsofts- project-s...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/microsofts-project- silica-offers-robust-thousand-year-storage/)

<comment><USER16> You just need to get your civilisation back the point where you can write ML algorithms first.

<comment><USER17> Are our brains so inferior? Wouldn't someone who studies those ground-truth records long enough learn to see the data?

<comment><USER16> Yes, they would - and it actually says that in the article. But you'd then need some non-ml way to read & play it back, which would still require readily available computers & lasers, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> _The hard silica glass can withstand being boiled in hot water, baked in an oven, microwaved, flooded, scoured, demagnetized and other environmental threats that can destroy priceless historic archives or cultural treasures if things go wrong._

The worst environmental threat is when your media is a proprietary format with secret specifications or even worse, DRM... even if the media could last 1000000 years, that's a moot point if the specifications have disappeared before then, or the encryption keys lost. Given the tie-ins with the entertainment industry mentioned in this article, the possibility of DRM causing the death of a format is too big to ignore.

</comment><comment> w-m One of the figure captions says they are storing 75.6 GB on one of these sheets. But I couldn't find any data on how long it takes to read and write, other than it's slow. Does it take minutes, hours, days, weeks?

And I guess at least the reading can be somewhat parallelized to speed up?

<comment><USER19> One week to write, 3 days to read: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/microsofts- project-s...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/microsofts-project- silica-offers-robust-thousand-year-storage/)

<comment><USER20> So why are they so happy when there's already 100 GB M-DISC which is much faster?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC)

<comment><USER21> Can't find much info on M-DISC, but [https://www.verbatim.com/subcat/optical- media/m-disc/](https://www.verbatim.com/subcat/optical-media/m-disc/) has it as hundreds of years. Silca is claiming a thousand years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hopefully someone at Universal Music Group reads this story and reaches out. I'm not being sarcastic either.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Agreed. That was a tragedy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The article seems to talk about the same concept as a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegram) .

I like write-once optical storage media because it protects me from accidentally modifying or deleting files. Also I don't have to worry about HDD reliability issues like head crashes, circuit board failures, etc., and it's easier to keep optical discs in cold storage with zero maintenance effort.

While hard drives have been getting bigger and cheaper every year, is anyone else disappointed that write-once media technology has stagnated?

A rough timeline of when writable optical discs became popular and affordable: CD-R 700MiB (~2000); DVD+/-R (+DL) 4.7GB/8.5GB (~2005); BD-R 25GB (~2010); BD-R XL 100GB (~2015). Various holographic discs have been proposed but are vaporware. The problem today is that all these disc formats are tiny compared to the 10TB HDDs you can pick up easily.

<comment><USER24> My big issue is that optical media reliability isn't where it needs to be for me to want to trust it for long term archival storage. Yes, some brands and media types are better than others, but it's still enough a concern that I feel I can't trust it in general.

<comment><USER25> You can try M-DISC that's supposed to store data a thousand years. No idea if it keeps its promises, though.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC)

<comment><USER26> English link [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think storing movie archives is really a nice fit for this technology. Reading/writing data on glass is too slow right now to host applications with interactions. I would imagine read/write movie archive only happens once per month or even years. That said, glass storage should also apply to never- change log data like bank transaction history (or stale blocks in block chains)

<comment><USER27> We should probably store a bunch of video evidence of historical events before we get the ability to do cheap and easy photo-realistic CGI on demand. There's going to be so many alternative video evidence for everything that historians are going to appreciate a known record that is difficult to update.

<comment><USER28> What if some one mischievous records the fake video instead of the real video? What if they get swapped post etching. I think the storage medium itself will not secure stuff for the future!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope to get this someday even at crazy prices. Permanent cold-storage of digital data can 'kinda' be done with M-Disk Blu Rays, but that is estimated good for 1000 years...which probably translates in reality to 100 or less years. DVDs, HDDs etc. have severe bit rot in comparison to that and are all likely to be gone within a decade +- a few years depending on medium and storage.

This glass? Write it and don't physically smash it and it should be good to go for the rest of your life +, if the claims in this article hold up. Then digital data will have a cold-storage equivalent to a piece of paper. Stick it in a box in the attic, get it out in 80 years and as long as its not smashed or burned it should be GTG.

<comment><USER30> I am confused by your comparison of M-Disk Blu Rays (estimated 1000 years, but actually only 100 years) with the glass (rest of your life+).

Are you anticipating living a lot longer than 100 more years?

And even then, isn't the M-Disk a better tech by your math?

<comment><USER29> The M-Disc claim of 1000 years is based on a few estimated tests and while they mostly hold up, we have objective proof that glass left alone over 1000 years does not change to the point that if you wrote something on year x, time-travelled with your reader to year 1000x , the reader would be unable to read it.

I don't expect to crack 90 years myself, but my great-great-grandchildren might want or need whatever data there is on that glassdrive, even if it is only pictures and not something important like legal documents.

The 'rest of your life+' claim is simply my shorthand for saying that while the glass will likely last for thousands of years, how long the readers exist that can read that particular glassdrive and interpret its data (ANSI or Unicode text, PNG or PDF display capability) may or may not last as long as the glassdrive itself can (see Voyneuch manuscript which exists, but we no longer can read and interpret it).

<comment><USER31> I am aware of a company that user to sell a long term DVD like storage disk that they claimed would last for 100+ years, 5-6 years in disks started to lose data, I now take lifetime claims with a big pinch of salt.

<comment><USER32> Indeed, I think of those claims as a mixture of optimism, wishful thinking, and marketing drivel. How can someone claim that it lasts for 100 years, unless you have tested that claim by waiting 100 years and then verifying that the data is still there ?

After many years of experience with CD-R and DVD-R, one can say that those disks are good for at least 3 years. But we can only say that because lots of people have successfully read CD-Rs that were 3 years old.

Also, they can sell those "100-year" disks with these claims, and when customers lose data after 5-6 years, the company just says "oh that's too bad, maybe you stored them where the temperature fluctuated by more than +/\- 0.1 degrees Celsius ?" and you have no recourse other than not giving them more of your money in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 So it's a modification of this process I guess:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage)

[https://www.5dmemorycrystal.com/technology/](https://www.5dmemorycrystal.com/technology/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone else disappointed the quartz glass isn't shaped like the stick-like storage units that appeared in the Superman movies?

</comment><comment><USER34> Mark Russinovich gets to play with some cool tools. I still remember how advanced Winternals software was for sys admins. Microsoft really got some sharp guys in that acquisition.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is this related to what Vint Cerf called "Digital Vellum" [0]

[0]: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0IabXOLdbAQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0IabXOLdbAQ)

*PS not sure if I have done the reference thing twice.

</comment><comment><USER36> > For years, they had searched for a storage technology that could last > hundreds of years...

I'd love to see a project preserve data for tens of thousands of years. The Egyptians did this by creating tombs. Surely we could do better.

<comment><USER23> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Project) ; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-Rosetta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD- Rosetta) ; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Now_Foundation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> > The team has baked, boiled, microwaved, demagnetized and scoured similar > pieces of glass with steel wool — with no loss to the data stored inside.

That's really cool.

</comment><comment><USER38> How do they know that it's going to last 1000 years? What kind of properties do you have to control for to insure that?

<comment><USER38> ensure _

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Neat - lossless archiving of stuff is actually pretty hard. This approach seems to check a lot of critical boxes.

</comment><comment><USER40> First we got Communicators... now Isolinear Chips... I can't wait for Transporters!

<comment><USER40> [https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31876/12-star-trek- gadge...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31876/12-star-trek-gadgets-now- exist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> That looks like a fun job.</comment>


Donate an idea to HN: Checklists - <AUTHOR> Here's an idea that I'm never going to get time to follow up.  Maybe it has merit, maybe not.  If you want it, it's yours.  If it makes billions, remember me.
A colleague who is a hobbyist aerobatics pilot says that aviation has become as safe as it is through the ubiquitous use of checklists.  Everything has a checklist, and said checklist goes into the smallest detail.  I've taken that on-board and we're starting to use explicit checklists when we deploy new systems, run through tests, diagnose problems, etc., and it's starting to make a real difference.
But building the checklists was a pain.
Recently I had a new boiler installed at home.  No problems, great hot water, great heating, everything seemed fine.  Now I find that some of the hot water taps are leaking.  They were installed with the older, lower pressure system in place, and they need upgrading to cope with mains pressure hot water.  Similarly, sometimes the kitchen hot water tap makes loud, ugly noises.
If I'd had a checklist of things to confirm before signing off, the plumbers would never have left the building without dealing with them.  They're being great, but it's costing them time and money, and me hassle, to get these things put straight.
A checklist would save time, money and hassle.
How about a web site where I type in "Hot water" and it gives me a checklist.  Or "New ISP" and it gives me a checklist.  Perhaps the checklist can then be refined further, or perhaps it allows me to mark things as done or pending.
I think I'd pay money to be registered with a site like that.
Comments? <comment><USER3> <http://chcheck.com>

You can create checklists, create and track changes between instances, diff changes between the master and instances, create iterative checklists, embed checklists in other checklists and set dependencies. Also the interface was built with usability and flexibility in mind.

I have also added task, data list, comment, contact and document management since all of those are necessary for a good process management tool.

My inspiration for this was the fact that process and workflow management is a pain point for individuals and small businesses and there have been no easy- to-setup, user focused solutions out there.

I will be putting up a directory of public checklists in the near future, once the rest of the product is stable and usable.

I was waiting to post this but until I was ready to open signups but I have working on it for the last 4 months.

Email me if you want to be a Beta user: daniel at chcheck dot com. There are some bugs but it is definitely usable.

<comment><USER4> _I will be putting up a directory of public checklists in the near future._

Isn't the idea posted above more focused on the crowdsourcing/directory aspect of this, and not so much the "I've created a great checklist creator!" part? It's not "EXACTLY" what s/he's talking about by any means.

<comment><USER3> I apologize if that seemed like an exaggeration. The directory is why I created this product, that feature is just not out-the-door yet. This post was a little earlier than I was planning.

One of the intentions of the product is to handle these large distributed processes with the management of a Master Checklist that can be diffed with other masters and instances. I added that feature to facilitate those sort of crowdsourced checklists/processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the power of checklists, see also Atul Gawande's article in the New Yorker (10 December 2007) ([http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande)).

The article describes how medical checklists, especially when nurses are empowered to force doctors to follow them, can improve patient outcomes.

The article also mentions an interesting example of checklists in aviation history.

<comment><USER6> This article is amazing!

I am also struck when reading Gawande that in many ways, his writing is like Gladwell's: interesting anecdote, statement of principle, seemingly unrelated anecdote, full description of principle.

However, given these same elements, I feel much more convinced by Gawande than by Gladwell. The latter's principles never really seem to follow from the anecdotes quoted; there's a logical gap, or he seems to be misinterpreting the research, or he's found a corner-case, or he's just grasping for straws.

Yet, I can't really figure out why I don't feel the same way about Gawande. Perhaps because he writes mostly about medicine, and as a (former?) doctor, he lends more credibility? Whereas Gladwell writes about more everyday and varied things, in which he is obviously not an expert?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> eHow kind of does that:

[http://www.ehow.com/search.aspx?s=hot+water&Options=0](http://www.ehow.com/search.aspx?s=hot+water&Options=0)

</comment><comment><USER8> Given internet access, one could build such a thing pretty easily atop SpringPad, which has pretty extensive template generation and sharing features built in:

<http://springpadit.com>

I used to work with a number of these guys. Given what I know about how the site works, they could probably get you off and running pretty quickly in the unlikely event that it doesn't already do what you want.

</comment><comment><USER9> I really wanted something like this for going hiking. When you go on a four- day hike it really, really sucks if you forget something important. But there are about 20 important things, so you can't rely on remembering them all. You need to build a checklist. But this process takes a while and discourages casual hikers from going on longer hikes.

So I would love a checklist tool that I could use for this. Right now I am using jottit and just making a list; if your system worked better I would use it.

<comment><USER10> I similarly think of this every year when I go on an annual camping trip with a group of friends. We have a short group list on a website that we use, but it would be helpful if we could edit that and add to it. Each year it is inevitable that something is forgotten or we talk about something in January but fail to remember it in August/September.

I often check my gear against lists that are published by camping supply companies (Coleman, etc). Much further down the line, it might be an interesting business model to allow for "sponsored" lists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> None other than that if you or somebody else builds it let me know, I'll be a user for sure. That's an excellent idea.

Combine it with a todo list service maybe ?

<comment><USER3> <http://chcheck.com> \- daniel at chcheck dot com if you wanna try it out

<comment><USER11> I had a look at this and it is quite promising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I had the same idea !

Hunch.com inspired me for a website like that.

It could be really useful to solve basic car troubles or anything technical.

</comment><comment><USER13> See <http://www.ehow.com/> they have a wiki-enabled process description model: they are a decade old and have a large set of checklists.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would need to dig for the article - but recently some doctors have radically reduced the mistakes made in surgery by utilizing checklist procedures - <USER2> are on to something here.

</comment><comment><USER15> How useful would it be if users make checklists for themselves because the tasks involved are likely to be repeated many times (e.g., going on a trip)?

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Interesting idea.

How would you deal with differences of opinions in what should be on the checklist for a topic? Wiki-style colloboration?

</comment><comment><USER16> there are THOUSANDS of site offering this product. Do you research your ideas before you post them? :) Still, there could be a search site just for all the checklist sites... (!)

</comment><comment><USER17> so basically a site where you can share user-made checklists? a wikipedia of checklists?

<comment><AUTHOR> With tagging and/or search.

Yes.

Think of a household or service disaster, and ask whether it could've been saved/improved by asking the right question at the right time.

<comment><USER18> Crazy, I had this same idea around the beginning of the year and actually fooled around for a couple hours working on a prototype. It'd be great if someone actually made this :)</comment></comment></comment>


Khan Introduction to VC Investing and Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.khanacademy.org/video/raising-money-for-a-startup?playlist=Venture%20Capital%20and%20Capital%20Markets

<comment><USER2> Not necessarily a resolution - but I've made myself a promise to watch at least one Khan video a day and work out the problems in the related categories. What an excellent refresher, particularly in mathematics.

I really wish this site was around when I was in high school and college. I'm glad it will be there for my children and I'm certain it will have even more great content than it already has now when they approach the subject matter on this site in their studies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone buy him a <http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/> to help with the visuals?

The presentation format of "let's draw everything super low quality with a mouse" gets old quickly. I believe we've found a case of intelligence without a designer.

<comment><USER4> The quality has improved dramatically over time. The more recent ones (check out some of the later calc videos) are in HD, and are well-presented, probably scripted beforehand. OTOH in one of the old physics vids his phone goes off part-way through.

<comment><USER5> Yep. Here's his most recent video: <http://youtu.be/17st-s5gg10?hd=1></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best resources to to understand BTC/Blockchain and its implications? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I find these three books entertaining.

[Blockchain Revolution by Don Tapscott, Alex Tapscott]([https://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Revolution-Technology- Chan...](https://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Revolution-Technology-Changing- Business/dp/1101980133)) [The Business Blockchain by William Mougayar]([https://www.amazon.com/Business-Blockchain-Practice- Applicat...](https://www.amazon.com/Business-Blockchain-Practice-Application- Technology/dp/1119300312)) [Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper]([https://www.amazon.co.jp/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin- Millionaires-R...](https://www.amazon.co.jp/Digital-Gold-Bitcoin-Millionaires- Reinvent/dp/0062362496))

If you want to dig deeper, read [Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas M. Antonopoulos]([https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking- Digital-C...](https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital- Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042)).

</comment><comment><USER3> I would start with the simplest _proven_ blockchain use case: Bitcoin. Bill Gates called Bitcoin a technological tour de force - something I don't think he's said about "Blockchain."

Learn about the design choices made in Bitcoin and how its blockchain adds to that integrated whole, and you will see how the stability of the network emerges as a tensegrity of multiple competing forces with opposing incentives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the recommendation, anything you've found online that you've particularly enjoyed?

<comment><USER3> I recommend the talks of Andreas Antonopoulos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check out the readings for Stanford's Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies course ([https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/syllabus.html](https://crypto.stanford.edu/cs251/syllabus.html)). There's a draft of the textbook for the course that's a great place to start imo.</comment>


Both kinds of Cocoa - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.bignerdranch.com/?p=530

<comment><USER2> Speaking of using other tools for testing and prototyping, there are REPLs available for Cocoa.

My personal favorite is Nu[1] with Nutronic[2], though you can do similar things with MacRuby and PyObjC.

[1] <http://programming.nu/>

[2] <http://itfrombit.github.com/nutron/></comment>


Building Resilience with a Therapist - <AUTHOR> https://joebirch.co/2019/04/12/building-resilience-with-a-therapist/ <comment><USER2> This is great advice. I managed to figure these things out over the years and they've really helped in so many situations that would have been, in my mind, impossible for me to handle. It's nice to see this advice written out in such a clear way.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you :) I'm glad to hear that you managed to find ways to help you out! I've been dealing with these small things for years but never quite worked out how to handle them - it's amazing how much just chatting about it to someone can help so much</comment></comment>


Show HN: QRUnity, One QR Code for All App Stores - <AUTHOR> http://qrunity.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We needed a single QR code for our advertising materials. Rather than having two or three QR codes for all stores, we developed QRUnity to have a single one. Links can be updated dynamically, so any link changes will not affect your already deployed QR codes. It's totally free. Hope you enjoy

<comment><USER2> First of all, really cool idea.

But if this goes on any "permanent" material (eg. printed on posters and such), it's nasty that the link would be on a domain controlled by someone else. Someone whose business model could change at any time, who could shut down and the links wouldn't work, or worse, who could start redirecting to malware.

My advice: Decentralize this by offering it not just as a service, but by licensing it to companies that want this on their own servers. I suspect some would pay a decent price for this.

Either that, or open source it. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are really valid concerns, we'll surely take it into consideration. We will pack it for download soon. First lets see if we're the only ones who hate multiple QR codes =)

<comment><USER3> I, and I'm being sincere and not at all snarky here, would be curious to see if people still _use_ QR codes. Is this something used more frequently outside the US? I can't remember ever seeing a QR code and thinking "I'll go download an app and scan that and see where it goes".

I really am curious. Do you have metrics to share?

<comment><AUTHOR> We just launched this so I don't have valuable metrics yet (can publish after a month or so). However, I can tell from experience that QR codes are still "in" for most of Europe. We even had clients asking us for QR codes to be printed in brochures etc, even before we created app store app. One reason that I coded this site is to send away QR codes asap and figure out app store links later. Yes they change name of the app last minute =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about smarturl.it?</comment>