We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m - <AUTHOR> http://ryanleecarson.tumblr.com/post/21708810513/4-day-week <comment><USER4> Nice post. Proactive work. Thinking outside the box. Getting things done. Very encouraging. Sounds like a place where I would want to work.

Just one major nit...

(This is directed not only to OP, but to _everyone_ in our industry.)

Raising funding != success.

As inspiring as this post was, it would have been so much better with a title like:

"We work a 4-day week and just satisfied 10,000 new customers."

or

"We work a 4-day week and just realized $10m new profit."

Great work, guys. But please don't allow this "success" to let you take your focus away from the real metrics. I assume you already know this, but every once in a while, it still nice to say that which should go without saying.

<comment><USER5> Getting to profitability isn't as noteworthy (from a startup POV) as raising an A-round from working 4 days a week.

<comment><USER6> Humm... no

Profitability is more important.

There are examples to the contrary (Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, etc) but if you're profitable this means you are providing a worthy service (unless you're in the 'Nigerian Prince' business), and people are willing to pay you!

Never underestimate the power of people actually paying you.

<comment><USER7> Well, for one, he isn't saying that fundraising is more important. Just that in Startup Land, the culture seems to find it more "noteworthy". For better or for worse, that seems to be the case.

As for the age-old debate of profitability vs fundraising, it's not a black and white issue. And I don't know why people so often feel the need to try and turn it into one.

Profitability is great. You're right -- it's a signal that you're providing a valuable service. But as you pointed out, there are many examples to the contrary, and rightly-so: because achieving profitability is not the _only_ way to build a valuable business. And even for companies who do focus on charging customers rather than, say, getting tons of users, raising money is often an important step on the path to eventual success.

<comment><USER8> I disagree.

It is not possible to build a valuable business without achieving profitability. Over a long-enough time period, the value of a non-profitable business will revert to zero.

If a business is valuable, it is because the market (or investors) believe either

a.) It is going to make profits at some point in the future. b.) It is going to be an attractive acquisition for another company (who are presumably only going to buy it if they believe it will enhance their long term profitability).

Of course there is c.) , which is when investors buy into something because they believe someone else will come and buy it off them in the future for a greater amount of money. If we've reached this point, it is a sure sign of a bubble (cf Tulip fever in the Netherlands).

<comment><USER7> I agree with (A). In situation (B), the company being acquired was not profitable and may not have been on a path toward profitability, and yet was of value to another company, which seems to go against your thesis. And situation (C) is literally the prime motivation of every investment ever made for reasons other than charity.

<comment><USER9> _And situation (C) is literally the prime motivation of every investment ever made for reasons other than charity._

It really isn't.

Some of us invest in things because we expect that in the long run the pay-off will be greater than the investment. In business terms, that means that the cost of buying into a company is less than the profit you are expecting to realise through dividends over the long run.

The idea (modern trend?) of having companies that pay no dividends, whose shares are valuable only because someone else might buy them for more money later, seems to me to be exactly what tomgallard said: a sure sign of a bubble.

I've often wondered why we allow companies, particularly publicly traded ones, to sit on an ever-growing war chest rather than paying out their profits to investors as dividends. I don't know enough grown-up economics to appreciate the realistic consequences of regulating that kind of behaviour, but the zero- dividend, war-chest approach seems to promote all the wrong behaviours in terms of markets and investors, assuming your goal is to have a healthy economy that promotes making useful products and providing useful services.

<comment><USER10> > I've often wondered why we allow companies, particularly publicly traded > ones, to sit on an ever-growing war chest rather than paying out their > profits to investors as dividends.

Because we believe that a large, successful company has investment options available to it that are not available to Joe Average, and can achieve a better return on that capital for its investors than they would be able to achieve themselves if it were returned immediately as a dividend. If you disagree with that analysis, you can easily vote with your investment dollars.

<comment><USER9> I appreciate that large companies do have other options today, for better or worse.

What I'm asking is whether we should allow them to exercise those options. Doing so, as you hinted in your own comment, means that large companies have to become skilled investors, and this will inevitably become a significant or even the dominant part of their existence instead of actually making useful things or providing useful services.

As we've observed all too recently, not all of those extra investment options are quite as effective as they were supposed to be. Moreover, any investment option that _is_ legitimate could probably offered to (now richer) individual investors if large companies were not allowed to use it. So I'm not sure where the big downside is of restoring the natural links between companies that do socially useful things like make good products, companies that make profits, and companies that are attractive to outside investors when they need extra funding to grow faster.

Alternatively, if these companies are going to be allowed to invest their profits on behalf of their own shareholders, perhaps it's about time they were regulated as financial institutions. If nothing else, shareholders should be protected from senior management who are erroneously convinced that they can do a better job gambling^Winvesting their shareholders' profits than the shareholders themselves can do of choosing where to spend a legitimate return on their investment.

<comment><USER10> I was thinking more in terms of investments related to the company's business (e.g.: Apple pre-paying billions of dollars to lock up massive amounts of flash storage or to fund new factories for suppliers) that often have a much higher ROI than any investment you or I might reasonably make in any investment available to us.

Large companies carrying trading/gambling departments not related to the rest of their business is, as you say, probably not a good thing.

<comment><USER9> Sure, if the money is being spent on things like stock and operating expenses that are a normal part of the business, I have no problem with that. If it's being done on an industrial scale and there are economies that go with that, it makes perfect sense. I'm just not convinced that (for example) certain large tech companies -- particularly those that are in the software or services businesses rather than in manufacturing -- need reserves on the scale they are holding for the kinds of purposes we're talking about here, which leads me to ask why the rest isn't being paid out in dividends to shareholders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is something deeply broken about equating hours to productivity.

It's been my experience that folk are _very_ good at deceiving themselves about their productivity (myself included :-)

One team I worked with had a serious problem with overtime. They were putting in stupid hours and it was showing in the quality of work going out. So I ran an experiment where we all agreed to work "normal" hours for six weeks.

I was "only" working about 45 hours a week at this point, when other people on the team were regularly working 50-60. I was relatively young, didn't have any family pressure, enjoyed my work and felt very productive doing those hours. I wasn't one of the people with a "problem" as I saw it. We were running the experiment for the other folk on the team.

In the experiment we dropped to a 40 hours week (6 hours coding per day, 2 hours for breaks, meetings & lunch). After a couple of weeks adjustment my productivity went _way_ up. I also felt a lot better in myself - <USER2> sharper and more on the ball.

People seem to have quite a wide bad of "this feels okay" that subsumes the much narrower "I'm performing at my best".

Also people don't jump from a 35 hour week to 60 hours a week. It creeps up a few minutes at a time as pressure increases on the team. People have enough time to adjust to it being "normal" and don't notice the drop in productivity that goes with it.

Currently I work roughly 25-30 hours a week and am just as productive by all metrics that I have available to me as when I worked 40-50.

I would _strongly_ urge people to experiment. Pick some metrics, try working shorter hours for a month, see what happens.

(The only caveat I would add is that with folks doing silly hours - <USER3> over 50 I would say - there is often a couple of weeks where things go to hell as the body adjusts. On the team from the story practically everybody caught a bug and felt crap for the first week or so before productivity rose again).

<comment><USER12> It's funny how the body adjusts. At my last company (I was a director. 1 of 4) we had a MASSIVE problem with working long ours. At the end I was working 100 hour weeks (I only ever had time to eat sleep and work). I pulled the plug after a few years of these self imposed insane hours. You would assume all would be well then but what happened next was completely unexpected.

I fell ill 3 times in the following 3 months, and I was on holidays! Previously I hadn't been sick for years. After a bit of researching I discovered after a period of intense stress, it's pretty common to get sick once you remove that stress.

<comment><USER13> That true. My bro, a doctor, actually said that mortality rates dramatically increase during a short time (3yr) after retirement. Rapidly removing stress can be as bad for your health as prolonged exposure to it.

<comment><USER14> Meh.. wouldn't you expect mortality rates to increase dramatically as one approaches the end of their life? Correlation ≠ causation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Thanks for trolling, Ryan.

It's easy to think this is impressive, but the reader forgets about the number of years Ryan has worked on creating businesses. He has made awesome stuff, but all that time can't be ignored. The suggestion that others can easily do it too if only they were less "messed up/caught up in old manufacturing ways", is some smug shit.

These crazy hard-working Americans are trying to figure out their first startup, with very limited resources. It's a different game, and they are in a different place in the food chain.

I am sure if they too have sold multiple companies and worked in the industry for 10+ (?) years, they too would adopt all kinds of relaxed ways of working and running firms. I agree that if they still work long hours after that, it is misguided as you point out.

But lets not get carried away with how the 1% works. How many days a week did you work on your first company?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been working the 4-day week since 2006, when I hired my very first employee. I distinctly remember us hitting £10,000 in our bank account. It was huge.

This proves it's possible, even when you're young, stressed and unprofitable.

<comment><USER16> So you were around 28. I completely agree with your post and it hits home for me. But to a hustling 21 year old, who is super passionate and has nothing else going on and really, doesnt quite know what he/she is doing -- I think that 5th day would just be spent playing video games or being hungover.

<comment><USER11> _I think that 5th day would just be spent playing video games or being hungover_

You say that as if it was a bad thing.

People need fun. It makes them feel better. People who feel better work better and are more productive. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that an extra day of fun makes the four days more productive than the five days of work.

Hours worked is a lousy way to measure the contribution a person makes to the organisation.

<comment><USER17> I believe the proper metric should be "profitability delivered per # of hours". If I can be more profitable, in less time, that should be more valuable than how many hours as a whole I've worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The first startup I worked for was cash poor and I agreed to lower wages in return for a 4 day week. Bear in mind that this was in Ireland in the late 1990's and there was never any mention of shares etc. There was however a very competitive market for anyone who could turn on a computer.

At the time three other companies wanted me to work for them doing web design & development. And each of them had the 60hr a week, no overtime attitude that they were emulating from American companies. However they were not emulating the benefits of these American companies, at no point was a shareholding or options mentioned.

The money was good but I don't think i would have had the time to spend it.

So the smallest company offered me less money but agreed to four days a week. And I agreed. The 2 years I spent represents one of the most productive periods in my working life.

It also gave me time to develop my own ideas on the side while gaining great start-up experience.

Since then I've worked for other companies and myself sometimes pulling 80-100 hours a week. And after a couple of prolonged periods of this I Burned out.

Twice in the past decade.

No amount of cash, shares or experience was worth being burned out.

Now-a-days I do about 4-4.5 days a week, on a contract basis and once again I'm more productive and creative than I have been in 15 years.

<comment><USER19> Kellogg's went to a 30 hour work week and found productivity vastly improved - [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1093/is_1_42/ai_53697...](http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1093/is_1_42/ai_53697784/)

'After five years of six-hour work days, the company brass concluded that the "burden (or overhead) unit cost was reduced 25% . . . labor unit costs reduced 10% . . . accidents reduced 41% . . . the severity of accidents (days lost per incident) improved 51% . . . [and] 39% more people were working at Kellogg's than in 1929."'

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I spent two 12 month periods working exactly 17 hours a week (German paternity leave is _incredibly_ progressive).

Both times, it worked. When I tried tracking various arbitrary metrics of effectiveness (bugs fixed, commits made, files touched etc.) I found no real difference to working full-time.

I also spent one month working one day a week. During that month my effectiveness also stayed roughly constant, although I sacrificed almost everything that wasn't communication or coding for that month.

My focus during the working times was _much_ higher. I never wasted time writing HN comments when I only had 4 hours to get my work done.

It was _also_ more stressful than working full-time. Everyone else in the company still spent 35 hours a week generating email and commit traffic, which meant I felt I was always playing catch-up with that aspect.

I'd be interested to see what it's like when everyone in the company works a 4 day week.

<comment><USER21> > I never wasted time writing HN comments when I only had 4 hours to get my > work done.

Sounds like you never were doing more than 4 hours work.

<comment><USER22> How many actually do more than 4 hours of work in a day? Installing a monitoring tool like RescueTime can get you some interesting results about how many hours you are actually being productive. RescueTime says I'm currently doing about 56 hours of work a week, of which 60% are productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's cute, but why do I have to be in the office? If you're discarding useless traditions, start with that one. It leads to wonderful things like: flexible hours, goal-based performance rather than time-based performance, and other nifty things like not having to move across the country to change jobs.

Also, why 9-6? Is that a magic number? What about 10 to 5? Is that worse substantially? I doubt it. There's another 22% of your time with your kids back.

I'm pretty sure that we're going to look back at office buildings and the idea of commutes in general as being a huge waste of time.

Unless you're physically manipulating things, there's no reason for it, and it wastes an immense amount of society's resources maintaining millions of square feet of office space. Think of the number of people you could house in the average office building.

<comment><USER9> I think you're understating the potential downside of telecommuting.

I'll be the first to agree that requiring bums on seats, just because, isn't helping anyone. Likewise, holding all-hands meetings where most people have better things to do and only 25% of the room cares about what is being discussed at any given moment is rarely a good investment of time.

On the other hand, having live interactions with colleagues and real face time is _vastly_ more productive in some contexts than having everyone call into a Skype conference/available on IM/screen-sharing. Communication is simply much more efficient face-to-face than over any remote channel. If you have more than two or three people who need to work closely together, then body language really matters, and the ability to do simple things like scribble a diagram on a bit of paper or have a couple of guys step out for a minute to work through some details without holding up the rest of the group is indispensable.

(I have similar views on flexible hours, BTW. If you allow complete flexibility, to the point where you can no longer rely on the "early" guys overlapping with the "late" guys for more than a token amount of time, communication because a significant burden.)

This doesn't mean everyone needs to be in the office full-time, of course, and I'm all in favour of allowing telecommuting and flexible hours when there's no reason not to. But having people who need to work closely together in the same place for a significant chunk of the working week can have a lot of benefits, and IMHO is not a useless tradition at all.

<comment><USER24> I find face-to-face communication is often highly inefficient. Responses are expected at reflex speed, in a fraction of a second, which means those responses necessarily consist of whatever came to mind first, regardless of whether it's correct or useful. Communicating by text, even instant message, means you have time to think about what you're saying. Sure, it may take a little longer per word, but being able to reply more thoughtfully often means better conclusions can be reached in a tiny fraction of the number of words. Big-O speedup beats constant factor slowdown for nontrivial problems.

<comment><USER9> Isn't what you describe more of a cultural problem, or simply a lack of basic communication skills among the participants?

If I'm talking face-to-face with a couple of other guys, or sitting at my desk with a colleague looking over my shoulder to give me a second opinion on something I'm working on, we don't need one of us to be speaking 100% of the time. The advantage is that you _can_ have instant feedback when it's helpful, which I find is quite often.

If there's a larger meeting going on with a whole group of participants, then hopefully those participants were given enough information to prepare properly in advance, and hopefully someone is in the chair to moderate the discussion and ensure that the pace is sensible and everyone is able to contribute. That's another thing that becomes very much harder when phone lines and network connections are involved, IME.

Your point seems to be that smarter people tend to spend more time listening and thinking and less time talking. I completely agree. I just don't think meeting face-to-face necessarily prevents that. Sometimes you want to compare/evolve ideas at high speed or explain/learn something interactively, and being in the same place helps with that IME. Sometimes you want one person to consider an issue deeply and then report their findings, and maybe a formal document that other people can read, at their own pace and wherever they happen to be, is a better choice in that case. But working in the same location doesn't prevent that either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I were an investor and someone said to me "We are only going to work 4 days a week since we can do 5 days work in 4." I'd challenge with "so why don't you do 6 days work in 5 days?"

I am mostly playing devils advocate: I think having a 4 day work week is a fantastic recruitment tool. I do wonder though if a young startup raising it's seed financing said "oh, we only work 4 days a week" an investor may raise eyebrows. Regardless, this is a fantastic example of Ryan Carsons' culture resonating throughout the company.

<comment><USER11> _I'd challenge with "so why don't you do 6 days work in 5 days?"_

I can imagine a few good answers:

* We need to keep the team: A four day week is a major reason they don't get poached. It's a benevolent lock in. Almost nobody else does this. Just reducing team churn to practically zero probably pays for the extra day in of itself (recruiting is time consuming and expensive).

* We need to grow the team: We need to get more people in a very competitive hiring market. Having three days of your own each week is a major USP for the company. It lets us attract and recruit the best.

* In my experience productivity actually drops if a team works longer hours. I've had teams produce _more_ after moved from about 50 hours coding to about 30 hours coding a week. People suck at estimating how productive they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> They have revenue, but at just $3MM in revenue, it still looks like they are operating at a loss.

Doing some quick calcs: $3MM Revenue / 34 employees = $88,235 per employee.

In most major US cities, that wouldn't even cover the base salary of an skilled employee. Not to mention benefits, payroll taxes, etc. Add this to all the equipment costs, office rental space, etc. and they must be operating at a loss.

I've heard that most VCs/Angels consider a company profitable only if they're making an average of $200K/year per employee.

Under these circumstances, it's clear why they took funding because it provides some breathing room for another year or so till they reach true profitability.

Even so, it's still commendable that they're able to hold on to their ideals of a 4-day workweek given their current circumstances.

<comment><USER26> _I've heard that most VCs/Angels consider a company profitable only if they're making an average of $200K/year per employee._

VCs are looking at their ROI, so their view on profitability is based on what they might have in the company - that shouldn't skew the fact that a company might actually be profitable, and with time and growth they will meet those numbers as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've also been working a 4-day week this year and it's done me a lot of good. Gone are the days when I sat in the office and wanted nothing more than to run out and never come back. Now, there's plenty of time to rest and programming is fun again. I would recommend this to anyone.

If you're wondering how to get a job like that, here's what I did. Apply for job adverts intended for a rank lower than you're currently at. If you have senior level experience, apply for mid-level positions and say that you can do the same amount of work in less time. Explain that you bring more value, pound for pound, than a less experienced developer.

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting, I've heard of 4-day weeks at some large companies, but they're usually 4x 10-hr days, so same total amount of work, just a way of reducing time wasted commuting. Perhaps more common is alternating 5/4-day weeks of 9-hour days (every other Friday off). Making it 4-day weeks of regular-length days is more of a real change.

<comment><USER29> Henry Ford was one of the first to change. Instead of a 6 day week, he made his factories have a 5 day week, and was willing to pay the same for less work.

We (as a society) need to start changing to a 4 day week.

<comment><USER30> > Henry Ford was one of the first to change. Instead of a 6 day week, he made > his factories have a 5 day week, and was willing to pay the same for less > work.

Doubling the minimum wage at the same time, apparently. Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#The_five- dollar_work...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#The_five- dollar_workday)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think this article hits the nail on the head regarding 4 day weeks.

I currently work a 4 day week (4x10 hour days) allowing a whole extra day to focus on external activities and interests that i dont get to fully peruse at work due to contraints and/or conflict of interest.

It's such a big change in life style and as Ryan mentioned in the article it fosters such good energy and a totally refreshed feel come a monday morning.

And again just like the employee mentioned in the article it's such a benefit that I wouldn't even consider a move in companies unless it was matched like for like (or better).

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd prefer to take Monday off than Friday. Going to work places me conveniently in the middle of the city, perfectly placed for some post-work socialising.

The problem with taking Friday off is that it would make my social life incompatible with the people who are aren't. I'd be off doing my weekend things whilst everyone else would be hitting the bars and clubs. Having Monday off would let me finally make better use of my Sundays, and losing Monday night isn't a big deal because it's not normally a big night anyway.

<comment><USER33> I could see that fitting less well with company processes though. You're more likely to ship something on a Monday than a Friday so that you can be around, so not being there Fridays might not be as big of a deal.

<comment><USER32> True, but I've always found that despite my insistance that we never release on a Friday, it always seems to end up happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone else wonder why if you're profitable on a $3MM a year revenue with 34 staff you're off raising money?

Ryan Carson is a very well seasoned businessman which i assume is more than financially capable of putting money into a business and clearly has what you'd easily define as a successful business, to me it seems like theres some kind of weakness somewhere if based on those very advantageous circumstances you need to go out and raise money.

<comment><USER35> Cashflow. You need a lot of extra profit to be able to hire 10 new people. Clearly they don't want to expand organically over time, but perceive a near- term opportunity, and are using outside investors to allow them to grow the company to the next phase.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How many days per week did you work on your first company, before you were internet famous?

<comment><AUTHOR> When I was an employee (developer at various web shops in London) I worked the normal 5-day week.

When I started my first company, I worked 5-days a week for the first year or so, when it was just me. Then before we hired our first employee, we switched to the 4-day week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Actually, the society as a whole has already passed the point where people have to work 40 hours a week. It's the monetary system that doesn't allow us to enjoy our time here without working ourselves to death.

</comment><comment><USER38> You are profitable, and have a large base of users. So what is the funding for?

</comment><comment><USER39> Ryan, fellow American in the UK here...

I totally agree with this mentality, but unfortunately it doesn't work for everyone's business model. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that a majority of my time beyond the 4-day week I currently is the extra time I spend having to deal with inadequate colleagues (whether they be clients or co-workers).

This model works if you have a group of very smart and talented individuals. Finding this 'zen' is extremely difficult...not because it doesn't take hard work, but rather there is a small dosage of luck around it. It also doesn't scale very well, as communication overhead begins to seep into that additional 'hour' of work.

That being said, work-life balance is much more tolerable in Europe/UK, and people are generally more productive here. The US is a purely service-based model now, where soft skills (which are largely time-unmanageable) are king.

Congrats on the funding. You must be chuffed :)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely harder to work 4-days a week (from a management perspective). More planning and intensity, but I think a lot of businesses could do this if they really wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> "I get to spend 50% more time with my kids"

You've made a good trade. Time is one of the few things we can never get more of once its gone. And the short 10 years or so of prime time with young kids is especially unique. As almost any parent of grown kids will say, its gone before you know it.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think these posts are something like productivity porn for life hackers or 4 hour work week people.

I definitely agree that 4 truly productive focused days of works beats 5 lackluster uncreative and unfocused days and I applaud creative work/life balance ideas. But, I think 5 truly productive focused days of works beats 4. As PG says, if you think of a startup as a chance to compress your whole working life to just a few years, you can probably attain that prolonged productivity at least for a few years. Yes, worry about burnout, give yourself time, etc... But one of the things startups do to beat big companies is outproduce them.

Obviously for lifestyle businesses and probably a variety of industries this may not apply. YMMV

<comment><AUTHOR> I love how whenever you say the words "4-day work week" on HN, people roll out the old "lifestyle business" stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "I get to spend 50% more time with my kids then almost all other dads (three days versus two). Fifty percent. It's insane."

Why not 'work' at home? I've worked at home for the last 5 or 6 years, and get to spend pretty much all my time with my kids. Now _that_ 's insane.

<comment><USER43> If you're working from home and you're spending all your time with your kids, you probably aren't working much.

I have two kids. I work from home about 10% of the time. When I'm working from home, I have more time for the kids first thing in the morning and when I come home, since the commute is just opening the door. But when I'm WFH, it's not kid-time.

<comment><USER42> 90% of this job is "thinking". You can do that while you're playing with your kids.

You can be looking after kids, whilst designing in your mind what you need to do next, planning out what code needs writing and how to solve problems.

Sure, every so often I'll take myself away to a separate room if I need to work on something with my full attention, but that's rare.

I don't feel the need to separate my life into "work" and "not work". I just do things when they need doing and when I feel like I want to do them.

(Just my 2c, YMMV).

<comment><USER44> I wish I had your ability to do multiple conscious tasks at once. I find that when I'm playing with my newborn child I miss certain interaction cues unless I'm fully engaged with him. I've certainly tried to do what you said as I used to think it was easy to think and play, but I often found myself distracted and ending up doing an injustice to both.

Since I work remotely most of the time, I also try not to separate "work" and "personal" time. However, in order to stay productive, more often than not I need to sit in a separate room because being productive (mainly for pushing out deliverables) requires me to be sitting away from my child.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ryan - Thanks for sharing. Wish more people would appreciate the work ethos you write about.

It is about working smarter and more efficiently. Diminishing costs are often forgotten. Working smarter also empowers your staff.

Now, where do I send my CV?

</comment><comment><USER46> Interesting that they point out a 9-6 hour work day the other 4 days. If you believe in being flexible and not forcing employees to work so much then why enforce 9-6 on the other 4 days?

</comment><comment><USER47> I find it interesting that everyone brings up working less / earning more as necessary _because_ they've kids.

As if, when you have no kids, you've _obviously_ to work more and earn less.

In general, you have no kids _because_ you realized that you wouldn't have enough money for them to get everything they need / it's too risky.

And that doesn't mean you don't work as well. In general it means you've taken more morally adequate decisions and less financially adequate decisions in your life.

</comment><comment><USER48> We had a post the other day about how important a name is. Here is another example of the name not being important. I mean what has "team treehouse" got to do with learning or web development?

To the article I am glad to see them get funding. I use the service and think its great.

I think a 4 day work week can definitely work, especially with motivation and guarding against burn out. Main issue is that the rest of the world works 5 days a week which in many sectors can create problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our name is Treehouse but the owners of treehouse.com wanted £1m+. We decided teamtreehouse.com was close enough :) Our name is "Treehouse" though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Thanks for this post. I think it's really great that you pointed out that working 24/7 does not guarantee success but rather how well you use your time. 4-day work weeks can be just as effective as 5-day work weeks. At some point, everyone will suffer from the lack of sleep or because you're pigeon-holed into a particular environment, the lack of diversity in your environment might hamper your ability to think creatively.

</comment><comment><USER50> The 4-day week is a great idea, and can probably work well in most vertically- integrated businesses. Ironically, it's probably _most_ suitable for manufacturing work, especially if you're building to stock and not to order.

But if you have a lot of external dependencies, and need to interface with suppliers and customers on a regular basis, a 4-day workweek can really into the amount of time you have available to do so.

</comment><comment><USER51> We do the same thing at 140Fire. 4 days in the office, 1 day at home. There is just not enough time for people to get things done on Saturday and Sunday, nor should they have to spend their 2 days off trying to accomplish personal tasks. Friday is the perfect day to take for completing personal things. It also makes them work harder and more efficient for the 4 days in the office.

</comment><comment><USER52> The piece doesn't answer the most important question -- how?

Side note: I wish there was a site like "The Setup" focused on the next phase -- "how do I work".

</comment><comment><USER53> Did you consider taking Wednesday off instead of Friday? Breaks the workweek nicely. 2 days of high burst and relax.

<comment><USER54> Something I never thought of. Have you tried this approach yourself?

<comment><USER53> Not yet but do plan to in future when I have more control over my paycheck. In theory it sounds as if it will cure the productivity loss coming from Monday morning blues and early Friday - would be interesting to test it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I think this sounds great for people with families. But being 26 without kids this does not really appeal to me. Without girlfriend I would probably work 6 days pr. week as I think one day relaxing is sufficient, especially if you don't work too many hours pr. day and exercise regularly (like 3 times a week).

<comment><USER56> So why would you want to work more than four days a week? Because you'd feel more productive, because you could (maybe) earn more money, because you'd be bored on your time off, because you'd feel guilty for not working? There's tons of things you can do on a weekend aside from just relaxing and mindlessly watching tv, is there absolutely nothing you'd prefer to do instead of working?

<comment><USER55> Because I love my work and I want more of it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I wonder if Ryan started doing business with this culture in place or if it was something he adopted. I'd be interested to hear how he converted to a 4 day working week if it wasn't something that he started out doing. I think it's that initial changeover that would be the hardest thing to stick to.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been doing the 4-day week since 2006 so I can't speak to doing the switch. Sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why not 5 day weeks with shorter days? I much prefer shorter work days to working fewer days. It gives you a lot more flexibility. You feel less burned out / tired on days you work. You can get more done in the morning or night or sleep in later.

</comment><comment><USER59> First off, this is great. I applaud the fact that you can be profitable working fewer hours, and hopefully paying more than competitive salaries with good benefits.

But, that said, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned here that M-Th, 9-6 isn't a 4-day week, unless you include a required lunch hour, which most don't. So, since you didn't mention that, and I'm fairly sure that you work through lunch as many do including myself, then 9-6 M-Th is 36 hours, which is 4.5 "normal" 8-hour workdays.

I challenge you to be profitable working 32 hours a week (the equivalent of 4 8-hour workdays), preferably using flex time (so people can work those hours whenever they wish) and allowing telecommuting whenever the employee desires, and still be profitable.

<comment><USER60> I'm on the product team at Treehouse and wanted to comment on a few of the things you mention here. Not everyone at Treehouse takes a lunch hour, but most of us do. I usually spend 30-45 minutes on lunch every day. A lot of our team at the office in Orlando goes to lunch together each day. I was at lunch for an hour and half yesterday with a big group of our product team and it's not like Ryan came and yelled at me afterward. In general I don't think anyone on our team cares too much how long you take for lunch or what your exact hours are. We care way more about what we're getting done than hours.

We also don't all work 9-6. It's a guideline that we use to help us know when we should be available for collaborating with others on the team, but I generally start at 8 AM and end at 5 PM each day.

A whole lot of our team works remotely or at least has the option to, but our video production generally requires that we be on site to produce our videos at the quality we want. Even with the people who need to be in the office there's a decent amount time spent away from the office, though. All of our developers and designers who work on the site work remotely.

<comment><USER59> Great to hear that. So you say most of you take a lunch hour, and then say you only take 30-45 mins. So, some work 32 hours, some work 33.5-34 hours a week, and others work 36, so that's 4 to 4.5 days a week, depending on who you talk to on the team. When I'm talking about flex time, I'm not talking about a long lunch, I'm talking missing hours in the morning or afternoon because your wife or kid is sick or is in a play at school and making up those hours on Friday. My point is not that Treehouse isn't a great place to work or that a 4 day work week can't work, but that there are a ton of startups that have flexible 40 hour weeks that allow telecommuting, and that flex time and telecommuting add to the complexity, which makes it just as much if not more of a feat to be profitable- and that is my point: it is laudable, but just isn't that big of a difference. If everyone in the office did 32 hours with no extra time and have flexibility to take care of their family as needed and work from any location they want as much as possible if they desire as long as they get the work done, and still be a profitable startup, then that would be impressive to me personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Ryan,

How did you convince your VCs that it's okay to work 4 day work weeks when the Valley famously continues to call for startups to work non-stop night and day?

</comment><comment><USER62> Ryan, do you have any problems with the business being located in Florida? In terms of attracting talent, even in light of a 4 day work week?

</comment><comment><USER63> No need to brag. Haha. We do something similar at bizodo where we work a little later on Thursday and then half day on Friday.

</comment><comment><USER64> What about the founders, especially at the beginning of the company's life? Do they have the same work week as employees?

<comment><AUTHOR> Each company is different but I think the way you start a company is usually the way it continues. You can't work 100 weeks then suddenly switch to something sane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> So... ummm... do you have any opening for a developer (vs a teaching developer, which you mention on your website)? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Always hiring :) Hit up support at teamtreehouse

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Wow, highly upvoted. And spot on :) Wish there were more companies like this in our field.

</comment><comment><USER67> How do you handle customer support that can arise any time (including weekends)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our Support Team currently works M-Th 9-6 and then three hours a day on Fri- Sun.

We're going to scale this part of the Team soon so they can switch to a real 4-day week.

We're also going to find people to join this Team who are in Austra-lasia so we can cover those hours as well.

<comment><USER67> Great! So, your support team works any three hours on Fri-Sun?

I'm too wondering if we should hire people in US to handle support (to cover those timzeones), but I'm afraid if they will _get_ the company culture, and feel part of the team. Your thoughts on having a remote team?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> "I get to spend 20% more time with my kids then almost all other dads. TWENTY percent. It's insane. For those on the Team without kids, they get to spend this extra 20% on their hobbies or loved ones."

The reason the author SHOUTS the TWENTY percent is that it's actually 50%! (3 days off versus two). The only thing that's 20% is the number of your old days that you now don't work. (You also used to work 25% more days than now).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. Updating now ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Could have done with a less smug profile pic

<comment><AUTHOR> That's just my default pic :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> If the implied correlation works why don't you work 2 days a week?

</comment><comment><USER71> France has been working 4 days a week basically. All the fundamentals in France seem the same as Germany except the working hours, yet Germany is doing economically much better.

Switzerland has school 4 days a week. Its students are doing better in various subjects than schools in the rest of the world, but not better than Northern Europe which has much heavier school schedules.

The point is, the number of days you work just doesn't matter.</comment>


Show HN: Best Programming Language for Me in 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestprogramminglanguagefor.me <comment><USER2> I liked this site, it asks some good questions you should think about before picking a language to start studying, and offers some easy to understand explanations on why you'd want to pick them.

Design and UI was solid. The only thing I'm on the fence about is that each selection takes you to a new page. It would have been nice to have it be a SPA so you wouldn't have to open it in a new tab or click back a bunch of times to get back to Hacker News, though I understand it's easier to build it the way you did : )

<comment><USER3> It is a SPA, seems like it is built using React + Redux + Webpack among other things, the transition between pages has nothing to do with it being a SPA or not. The routing is pretty well done that is keeps the state that you can go back, and the URL is probably being set by the webapp and not fed by a server.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Our team from Codementor ([https://www.codementor.io](https://www.codementor.io)) has built bestprogramminglanguagefor.me for aspiring programmers to answer this question:

What is the best programming language to learn in 2016?

We've analyzed various factors including: \- beginner friendliness \- scalability \- community \- career opportunities \- future

Would love feedback!

<comment><USER4> I wonder where did you get those numbers from. E.g. JS's future is evaluated as 5. But C#'s is only 4. I don't see why JavaScript's future should be brighter than C#'s one.

Is it because JavaScript currently has no alternatives on the client? But how long will it last? E.g. Now there is a "CIL to WebAssembly" compiler prototype [1] so in future C# potentially can be run in browsers (and that's good for C#). On the other hand, if WebAssembly allows other languages (such as C#, Go, Rust, etc.) to be used on the client, won't JS repeat IE's fate (from monopoly to minority)?

[1]: [https://github.com/WebAssembly/ilwasm](https://github.com/WebAssembly/ilwasm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It told me i should learn Java, i will avoid this site in the future for my own safety.

<comment><USER6> > Why would you want to learn? Have another skill.

> What kind of skill?

And only mobile dev, websites, data analysis, and e-mail design (WTF?) are listed. How limited this questionnaire is.

<comment><USER3> Agreed on the WTF on email design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The internet has ruined me.

I was semi-hoping for a white page with a single word: "Javascript". :)</comment>


GitHub Survivor: a bug leaderboard for GitHub issues - <AUTHOR> http://99designs.com/tech-blog/blog/2013/01/05/github-survivor/

<comment><USER2> How do you address that somebody could take on 5 bugs that take 5 minutes to fix versus the guy who takes the 1 bug that takes 5 hours to fix?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question! We currently track that externally. E.g. in the issue description we might say "This is worth 100 whisky-points". It would be cool to build in a notion of value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When designing systems that reward bugfixes, beware the Cobra effect. [1]

[1] = <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect>

<comment><AUTHOR> On the other hand, it's an incentive for devs to log and fix minor issues they might've otherwise ignored.

<comment><USER4> If you start measuring some metric, the team will adapt at improving that metric, but inevitably this will spill out into distorting or lowering performance in some other aspect. So as you point out, such survivor board might make team focus on fixing trivial/easy issues, but the issues requiring big time investment might go unfixed (as it would make 10 trivial issues pile up while you fix 1 old hard ticket - which will make you look bad).

Just make sure this is what you want.

<comment><USER5> This is anecdotal evidence, but this hasn't happened in over 2 years of having this thing[1] at Twisted[2]. People understand it's fun and games, and it is not the true measure of success. Real success, including bringing in old/hard tickets, doing release management... etc is very much celebrated, even if it's not visible on the board.

Another comment that has been made here is that you shouldn't have giant monstro-tickets: they should be split up wherever possible. Clearly that's not possible in every case, but the point is that monstro-tickets aught to be the rare case.

[1]: <https://twistedmatrix.com/highscores/>

[2]: <https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Before reading the article, I hoped this was going to have something to do with the oldest issues (open, fixed recently, commented, etc) across all of GitHub. Does such a thing exist?

</comment><comment><USER7> I love this idea! Makes me wish we could implement something like this where I work. But I always remember that we're a business first, and software development office second. :(

Edit: Meaning, we don't sell software, but we need software to run our day to day.

<comment><USER8> 1\. git clone <https://github.com/99designs/githubsurvivor.git> 2\. profit

:-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Twisted created one of these a good long while ago[1], and then someone adapted it for Github[2]. This one looks very fancy though :)

[1]: <https://twistedmatrix.com/highscores/> [2]: <https://github.com/leereilly/github-high-scores/>, also <https://github.com/kans/highscores>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, very similar style. I don't think we were aware of those!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is really cool. Definitely want to implement someone like this with my teams.

</comment><comment><USER10> How embarrassing, I guess I'd better close some bugs.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't think of a more worthless and demoralizing idea. Not all bugs are created equal, thus the measure is inaccurate.

<comment><USER12> Noones treating this as a definitive source of truth. It's a fun way to gamify our bug squashing efforts.</comment></comment>


A Path to Full-time Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikeperham.com/2014/10/01/the-path-to-full-time-open-source/ <comment><USER2> From TFA:

"Divide the functionality into open source and commercial parts. Use a GNU license and a commercial license for the respective parts."

I really don't want to be That Guy, but this sentence takes us away from full- time open source. At least part time is spent working on source that's not open. "Open core" is the most common term for this hybrid strategy. I'm not going to get into the debate about whether that's a valid strategy, but it does make the headline misleading.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, fully free would be something like selling GPL exceptions for the exact same product.

I really like selling exceptions. The product is available to everyone in its entirety without restriction, but the copyright holders are the only ones who can sell non-copyleft versions of it. Everyone else can still sell it under the terms of the GPL, like selling Debian CDs. It shifts the scarcity in a different direction, treats everyone fairly, and everyone who creates derivative works pays: either by giving back code or by paying for the privilege to not give back code.

Selling exceptions seems to me to be the right way to commercialise the actual product itself instead of support around that product. I know of FFTW and hg4j who do this now, and Qt used to do it. It's a good business model.

<comment><USER4> When the software is typically used for SAAS products and not "distributed" in the same way as something using eg Qt libraries the business case isn't as compelling however.

<comment><USER3> In that case, you sell AGPL exceptions.

<comment><USER5> Is there any really good documentation (book, article, series, etc.) on all the different models for this sort of thing, how they work, and it what situations they are appropriate?

<comment><USER6> Not that I've seen, but there should be. Maybe we can motivate some lawyers to put something together? :D

<comment><USER5> Yeah a "from the trenches" collaboration between some people who have taken different approaches and the lawyers who worked with them would be really valuable to me. (Hint: if anybody fits that description, I'm saying I'd pay good money for it!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Making money from open source software is a magic trick: it looks hand-wavey, but literally anyone can do it. The trick is that companies need support for products. Convince a company to use your product and then get them to pay for support and/or hosted service. They won't care if you open source it because they're paying you for support, not the product.

You don't _have_ to go the Free/Pro model, but it makes companies feel better. Most people feel like they're getting a better product when they have a choice to pay more. Even if it's the exact same product.

I like to use Tibco Rendezvous as an example. There are very decent open source alternatives to Rendezvous, but people still pay boatloads of cash to use a proprietary, incompatible system. Why? Support. It just works, and if it doesn't work, i'm paying these jokers enough that they will make sure it works. I will not have to hire developers to make modifications or bug fixes, I will not have to figure out the upgrade path or maintenance myself, I will not have to even figure out the damn documentation. I pay money, somebody fixes my problems. Nobody gives a crap if the source code is available because the customer doesn't want source code, they want a working product.

(It also helps that business managers usually decide to pay for these things and not the developers using them)

</comment><comment><USER8> I can report I'm earning a living (in San Francisco, no less) by working on an open source project, RailsApps [1], which is starter applications and a tool (Rails Composer) that generates starter applications. The business model is different from Mike's. Developers support the project by purchasing a monthly subscription at $19/mo. As an incentive to support the project, I write in- depth tutorials about Rails, which only the subscribers get. Some people subscribe because they want to keep the project going, and others subscribe just to get the tutorials. Either way, it's over 500 subscribers right now. I'm not sure how many other open source projects could use this business model (maybe you need to be a writer as well as a developer) but it's a route to consider if you want to make a living doing open source. And I'd say we definitely need more ways to sustain open source projects.

Babies, burnout, and budget cuts are lurking assassins for almost any open source project. Most developers do diddly-squat to ensure their projects can survive and grow, even for key bits of infrastructure we use every day. Mike Perham's built a piece of infrastructure for us Rails developers, and he's built a business to sustain it. I wish more developers would take on that responsibility.

[1] RailsApps: [http://railsapps.github.io/](http://railsapps.github.io/)

<comment><USER9> I think your success so far is awesome to see. Congrats!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am surprised that crowdfunding isn't a big deal in the open source world. It seems ideal: people pay to get software created or improved; nobody pays just to use it. No restrictive license is required. It seems possible that a developer doing stuff that is both difficult and very useful could raise substantial amounts of money.

Certainly there have been a few crowdfunded open source projects we have heard of, but the model hasn't taken off to nearly the extent I thought it would by now. Anyone care to speculate on why not?

<comment><USER11> Successful crowdfunding campaigns need to be sexy to reach that critical mass, and "pay me 20000 dollars to make systemd less shitty" is not sexy.

<comment><USER12> Also, many (most?) people use open source software because of being free as in beer. Don't really care about freedom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always thought that there should be a "Patreon" [1] for open source. Companies would commit to paying monthly to an author in exchange for some sort of reward system like getting the bugs they prioritize fixed.

I once worked for a large Fortune 500 that had several well-known programmers who's entire job was to be core-contributors to a popular ruby web framework. They were well paid and had very little oversight.

But given the popularity of this framework, it always seemed a little weird to me to have a single company funding the development. It's also a little risky for the community at large because corporate strategy shifts and an open- source project that was important yesterday may not be important today.

(cf. Evan Phoenix / Rubinius / EY - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubinius](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubinius), Charles Nutter / JRuby / Sun - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JRuby](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JRuby) and countless others.)

It seems to me that, in theory, we ought to have a platform for monthly payments to open source developers that maintain projects we use in production.

[1] [https://www.patreon.com/](https://www.patreon.com/)

<comment><USER14> Isn't that what GitTip^W Gratipay is? The reward/prioritization mechanism could easily be added on top of that (or be entirely informal).

[https://gratipay.com/](https://gratipay.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Author here. Thanks for the comments, all.

Yep, Pro is not open source. That said, 90% of my time is spent supporting Sidekiq OSS users, dealing with questions and issues so the OSS work _is_ the majority of my time.

My next product coming out tomorrow is the same way: 90% of the functionality is in the free, OSS version and I would expect the same split in time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hold on. So the money are made from a Pro version, which is not open source.

This is not "the path to full-time open source", that's how to use open source to bootstap sales of a separate commercial offering. Good to know, I'm happy for the guy and his 175K, but the title is misleading at best.

<comment><USER16> We make around 150k with our open source project too and there is no commercial license. Our revenue is from cloud and developer support. Maybe we should write a blog around that ([https://erpnext.com](https://erpnext.com))

<comment><USER17> Please do; as noted above, lots of us would be interested in hearing the various stories of how groups have monetized open source successfully (and even unsuccessfully).

<comment><USER16> Sure will write it up sometime. We could do with some HN love :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I tried to do the same thing with Hydra/Mjolnir[1], but failed miserably and burnt out completely. Hopefully I can work up the energy to finish my Mjolnir successor and sell it, but Bogdan[2] tells me it won't make any money.

[1]: [http://mjolnir.io/](http://mjolnir.io/)

[2]: [http://kapeli.com/dash](http://kapeli.com/dash)

<comment><USER19> It's a different market: individuals vs businesses. If it takes a developer 10s longer to find documentation, zero shits are given. If the website can't accept orders because the queue keeps crashing, the company credit card is going for a walk to get the problem solved. A direct and measurable impact on the bottom line, and a visible effect to decision makers are two very nice properties of a good business.

Your product does look really nice, btw.

<comment><USER20> I think the license here is important as well. I know of a few companies that just paid the $500 - $750 (it's changed over time) to Mike just to avoid even having to think about Sidekiq being some sort of GPL license. If it were MIT or BSD like many other Ruby gems, I'd imagine his revenue would have dropped precipitously. Given he called the license out specifically, he likely agrees.

It'll be interesting to see what his next project is and if it's a repeatable model. Asynchronous job queueing & processing is something a lot of Rubyists need and many on resque were frustrated. Sidekiq was a very attractive carrot, not the least of which because it was interoperable with resque, leading to a simple migration path. The stick was an unattractive license that was easily removed with a small fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As far as I know, there is only 1 person in the Ruby world who is succeeding with this model, and this is Mike Perham.

While I admire his work and find his business model amazing, I think his advice is actually very, very shallow and is based on him being lucky, not on a proven business idea.

I'd love getting me proven wrong, though.

<comment><USER22> Passenger is open source and has an enterprise tier. Though written in C++ they very much serve the Ruby world.

Nonetheless, I agree with your point that this model may not be suitable for every business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> In terms of business, this is freemium. People try out the free (GPL) version, and like it, want premium features, want support, want you to add features etc.

There's a subtle competitive benefit of free: by providing something valuable for free that meets people's needs, there's less demand for an open-source free competitor. In a way, this is a nice reward for helping people; but if it's too effective, it can stifle innovation (by avoiding the pressure on you from competitors to improve).

Now of course, GPL has other benefits apart from free-as-in-beer: you have the code. You can audit it; add your own features; fix bugs. And if the developer gets hit by a bus, you can carry on without any escrow nonsense, incompleteness, unmaintainable code. It's also a business benefit to the developer, as they can get bug-fixes and features and improvements from the community. But because it's only part of the code that is GPL, they only get part of this benefit.

However, typically, the biggest benefit of GPL is bug- _reports_ \--- but you still get them from free users who don't have the code. (They won't be as good, but usually the hard thing about a bug is that it exists). You typically won't get much code you can actually use especially if you want to retain sole copyright (though it can be useful to have as a first draft; and have some good ideas). Plus... some people might be reluctant to contribute their effort to someone who's making money (even though they got the code for free).

tl;dr: unsurprisingly, free-as-in-beer is far more significant for a business, than free-as-in-freedom.

</comment><comment><USER24> How exactly does the dual-licensing work in practice?

Can you remain the sole seller of exceptions? That is what is to prevent someone else from forking your project and then selling the exceptions?

I've always suspected that in order to make it in Open Source you have to be highly socially active. (seems like a requirement for everything these days)

Otherwise, someone who has more social capital(active forum(s) presence, blog(s), SEO etc) can sell/support your GPLed product perfectly legally and make a good living from it while you starve.

Let's imagine a ridiculous scenario: someone takes Firefox, slaps their own logo/branding, maybe makes some minor code changes, maybe not and sells this product (source code is still freely available to this derivative product). This actually has happened before(citation needed).

The main difference between your tiny OS product and Mozilla one is that Mozilla has tons of social capital and anyone trying to charge something ridiculous for a Firefox clone would be laughed out of Internet.

For example, there were people selling various GPLed products on eBay and as long as source was included there was nothing illegal about it.

</comment><comment><USER25> All the best to Mr Perham for his new project (which I guess won't be Ruby software), Sidekiq is a fantastic piece of software that addresses the needs of Actual People™ and does it in an efficient and streamlined way. That being said, it is true that the model is not as clear cut as the "Full-time Open Source" in the title would have you believe.

Which doesn't change the fact that there is an open source version of Sidekiq that works perfectly well, the Pro add-ons are most likely the only non-free parts and you don't necessarily need that to use Sidekiq.

</comment><comment><USER26> So the Sidekiq is a product that allows to implement service/daemon in Ruby? I am not a Rubyist, and couldn't figure out what this does ...

<comment><USER27> It's a product for handling background jobs, typically generated from web applications. It's similar in function to resque, delayed job, etc. Rails is bringing native background job support to Rails 4.2 in the form of Active Job[1], so these background job runners will become even more popular I imagine. Sidekiq itself provides a service/daemon (well, the processing part of it), it does not provide the ability to implement your own service/daemon.

[1] [http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_job_basics.html](http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_job_basics.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best emacs / git integration? - <AUTHOR>

The git wiki lists no less than 6 different ways to integrate git with emacs: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Git . Fortunately, I haven't picked one yet so I hope to benefit from your collective experience.
Here's the current list:
* Magit * Egg * egit * Gitsum * git-emacs * GitDwim
Which is better maintained, easier to use, feature complete, makes common things easy, etc.?
Which plugin do you use for git integration for emacs? <comment><USER2> I'm using Magit, it's perfectly fine for my uses (commit, merge, rebase, stash, and branching - usually very little deep plumbing).

It has good documentation, I can only recommend it.

Sadly, I can't compare it to the others you listed, as Magit was the first one I tried, and never felt any need to try another.

<comment><USER3> Magit for everyday use because buffers are split into expandable/collapsible sections which makes navigation a breeze (e.g. for adding hunks)

vc-annotate is a great interface for git-blame (Magit doesn't have this). vc- annotate-next/prev-revision are seriously handy.

Magit's interface for interactive rebase (bound to E in magit-status window - this is not in the latest docs) is not so handy. I tend to drop down into shell.

Make sure you have git core editor set to emacsclient -c of course.

<comment><USER4> Perfect; I was just looking for vc-annotate-next today.

Magit user here. I love it for its ability to let me do line-level control over what I place in the index. I use the prompt for deep surgery but for general coding/logging/commit-bundling, I haven't found anything better.

The documentation for it is great. I wanted something a little more breezy for quick task-centric scanning and made this...

<http://daemianmack.com/2009/09/24/magit-cheatsheet/#>

Maybe it'll be useful to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I starting using magit recently, but I am still to get used to it.

Here is a link discussing about git support in Emacs that I found useful:

<http://alexott.net/en/writings/emacs-vcs/EmacsGit.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd like something that plugs into dvc-mode, but after my last foray with that I've pretty much given up on doing my git stuff from any interface that isn't the CLI.

Do any of these do decent integration with git-svn?

<comment><USER7> Magit apparently has git-svn support, though I've never used it.

<comment><USER8> Magit's git-svn support is very solid. I use it daily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I most commonly use gitsum which is fast and easy and, in combination with Emacs' diff-mode, lets me edit my pending commits all to hell. (In my experience few other people like doing this.)

gitsum is really only good for committing, of course. When I want to do other Git operations I most commonly just go to the command line. If I have to do them from inside Emacs I've found Magit to be usable, DVC as well (though I haven't needed it in my latest Emacs install; I only have Magit currently).

</comment><comment><USER7> gitsum is an add-on, not a full-featured git mode; so is git-dwim, I believe, although I don't use it personally.

Recent Emacs have git support in VC; I tend to just use that since I tend to do anything other than committing (rebasing, switching branches, merging, pushing, etc.) in a terminal.

</comment><comment><USER10> What about running a command prompt from within emacs? I spawn one in my .emacs file with: (shell).

<comment><USER11> Do you mean in order to run git from the command line within emacs?

(Within each emacs instance that I have open, i have at least one shell window open, if not two.)

<comment><USER10> Admittedly, there seem to be better solutions out there, but I suppress the "start" page in my .emacs file and start with an empty scratch buffer, or a shell prompt instead. I can just switch the buffer to use the prompt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Egg is awesome, it's a fork of magit, so if you're already using that you'll feel right at home

<comment><USER13> +1 this. I've switched from magit to egg and couldn't be happier. Makes working with git a breeze

<comment><USER14> you two have almost motivated me to try switching. do you have an example of what you like better about it?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Solution for moving infrequently accessed large folders off HD to cloud? - <AUTHOR> Glacier pricing rates would be ideal.
I'd like to be able to drag things I don't care to access frequently off my computer, and pay glacier rates to access them if/when needed.
Does this exist? <comment><USER2> Look for clients (Transmit works, but there are others) that speak S3; Glacier support is hard to come by here. Then apply a lifecycle policy to that bucket that automatically ages things over X days old into Glacier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you</comment></comment>


ArchiveTeam wants YOU to help archive Friendster - <AUTHOR> http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3095

<comment><USER2> Maybe it is time for a standardized process or a dedicated NGO (or GO) that can handle the rights issues surrounding archival, a place to send & process harddrives, etc. ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the US Library of Congress would be a good GO to start with. And the Internet Archive is a good international NGO. Both organizations are already working on this kind of thing, e.g. the LoC is archiving all of Twitter in real-time. Trouble is, even the IA respects robots.txt, so when the ArchiveTeam starts archiving a website, they start by downloading the files listed in robots.txt because they are probably not backed up anywhere else.</comment></comment>


Drupal project imploding, core developers ejected for S&M hobbies - <AUTHOR> https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/03/27/2115233/prominent-drupal-php-developer-kicked-from-the-drupal-project-over-unconventional-sex-life <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but how is this different than discriminating based on sexual preference (being gay)? This sort of stuff has no place in a business setting. Unfortunately this is the world we live in; everybody is outraged over something and claiming to be open and inclusive, as long as it prescribes to their own beliefs.

Where are the TechCrunch social justice warriors (Megan Rose Dickey) about this?

<comment><USER3> It's no different, except that people who claim to be open and tolerant never really are. They are just tolerant of one or the other outgroup to the degree that that outgroup is socially acceptable.

I think the reason this happens is that people have no principles reason for tolerating other people. It just "feels right" for certain groups and wrong for others. So who gets tolerated trails changes in social acceptability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From what I've read they were offended at his views on women. Views that never seemed to be expressed in his professional life.

Seems very wrong to me. We don't need thought police. He should be judged on his professional actions not private beliefs.

He has beliefs from gorean philosophy, that are something along the lines of women submitting to men. While many wouldn't agree with him, those same views are present in many religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and many others. If he managed to work with women without any problems why was he kicked off the project?

The responses allude to something they refuse to disclose, but it all seems very wrong to me. People should be free to believe what they want.

</comment><comment><USER5> If a gay guy was ejected for being into S&M, people would be screaming.

It's surprising that anybody cares at this point. "50 Shades Darker" just finished its run. SF has had Bondage a Go Go for over 20 years now.

The Gor thing is a joke at this late date. It's mostly something people do in Second Life now. It was cool in maybe 1975, when Norman's first books were out. He's still writing those books, and they sell to women as romances.

(An amusing note on political correctness: the State Department has some documents on line for their staff returning to the US and re-integrating into American society. One of the items covered is how political correctness has changed in the last few years. If you've been working in Ankara or Kuala Lumpur for the last few years, you may have missed the whole gay marriage thing.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't agree with the decision. But, he was not ejected for S&M hobbies. He was ejected because he was perceived to believe that women are subservient to men (evidently this was part of some of his online writing).

Here's a timeline of blog posts:

1\. Larry's (the ejectee) initial blog post: [https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi- outing](https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing)

2\. Dries' (founder of Drupal) following blog post: [http://buytaert.net/living-our-values](http://buytaert.net/living-our-values)

3\. Statement from the Drupal Association's Exec Director: [https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/a-statement-from- the...](https://www.drupal.org/association/blog/a-statement-from-the- executive-director)

4\. Another blog post from Larry where he clears up misconceptions and answers questions: [https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi- part-2](https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-2)

More Info:

* Drupal community discussion on /r/Drupal: [https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/60y9mq/larry_garfie...](https://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/60y9mq/larry_garfield_on_harassment_in_the_drupal_project/)

* A great non-partial tldr; blogpost from Drupal developer Mike Ryan: [http://virtuoso-performance.com/blog/mikeryan/thoughts-drupa...](http://virtuoso-performance.com/blog/mikeryan/thoughts-drupal-community)

<comment><USER7> Gor is a fiction community, as others had said before the Bible and other fiction books have similar views on women. Gor as all bdsm is a game, it is a play, an act between consenting adults.

Garfield has never (to our current knowledge) acted in real life upon the things said in the context of Gor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ugh, the Drupal community strikes again. I have been working with Drupal for roughly 10 years, and outside of an initial flurry of commits rarely engage with that cesspit of a "community". I have the misfortune to have to do a significant amount of work with Drupal, which was badly designed and written, then badly redesigned and re-written, with the same pattern repeating twice more. There are many nice and helpful people in the community, but the majority of those in a leadership position are nasty little fascists hell bent on preserving their position of power.

I once got a salescall from Aqcuia, they tried to enroll me in some partner program or something. The salesguy got chatting with me, I explain in rough outlines how we train up our developers to become Drupal devs, this being the reason I wasn't really interested in their training program. Shortly thereafter, they launched a "Drupal Academy" or some ame, which was pretty much word for word what I told the lousy slimeball I was talking with on the phone.

I have no respect for these people, and this is just another unsurprising demonstration of what they are like.

</comment><comment><USER9> Editorialized headline? The actual one is "Prominent Drupal, PHP Developer Kicked From the Drupal Project Over Unconventional Sex Life"

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm confused. What was the issue for his firing? Was it because his sex life went public and thus gave the project a bad view?

Kind of if someone abuses legal some legal substance that is frowned upon (I couldn't think of such a substance, let's pretend it exists) and gets ejected when it gets out to the public because they now associate a frowned-on behavior with the project.

OR

Was the issue just that he enjoyed sexual dominance?

Or even a mix of both? I feel like I'm missing something because I don't even understand the situation.

<comment><USER9> The Techcrunch story posted is better. It's linked in another comment here.

Edit: Sorry I meant the Inc. story.

"Garfield's accusers ... insist that Gor enthusiasts sincerely believe in the misogynistic philosophy of gender presented in the books. They point to Garfield's history of professing less-than-PC opinions about race and gender."

<comment><USER11> > They point to Garfield's history of professing less-than-PC opinions about > race and gender.

What I don't understand is that if this is the case, why did it go unnoticed until someone specifically went to dig into Garfield's history?

<comment><USER12> Drupal developer here. I've worked on core, maintain many contrib modules, etc. and have worked with Larry IRL on Drupally stuff. I really don't understand what this quote is talking about if they _aren 't_ specifically pointing at his history. He's never been less than pleasant and considerate of others in my IRL interactions with him. Also, from his post:

> Second: I've been involved in the Gorean community since 2002. I've been > involved in Drupal since 2005. It took until late 2016 for anyone to realize > I was in both. Moreover, from what I understand from the CWG the first > "leak" was someone on that alt-lifestyle private forum who found my account > there, screenshotted it, and started passing it around.

(source: [https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi- part-2](https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-2))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminder that Codes of Conduct are mostly feel-good and not legally binding, and there is a big asterisk on all of them; * Unless we feel differently

</comment><comment><USER14> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13972307](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13972307) which has more neutral reporting

</comment><comment><USER15> The Code of Conduct strikes again.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone here use drupal? I'm only vaguely aware of it. What does this mean for the project? I know my university uses it for their entire website.

<comment><USER17> It means the steady downward trend it's been on for the last 7-8 years is about to accelerate. PHP CMSes fill a niche of bespoke software deployments made irrelevant by more standardized collaboration and publishing tools with better usability.

[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=drupal](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=drupal)

<comment><USER18> >It means the steady downward trend it's been on for the last 7-8 years is about to accelerate.

I don't see this downward spiral trend you're talking about. Drupal 8 is one of the most dynamic and thought out CMS's available. Your statement would fit Wordpress better, and even that would still be wrong because its so widely used.

<comment><USER19> > I don't see this downward spiral trend you're talking about.

He literally posted a graph showing interest over time in Drupal has steadily been declining.

> Drupal 8 is one of the most dynamic and thought out CMS's available.

Now you sound like a press release.

<comment><USER18> >He literally posted a graph showing interest over time in Drupal has steadily been declining.

They posted google trends. If software lived and breathed by how it was googled, there wouldn't be many options.

>Now you sound like a press release.

Making generalizations like 'this entire framework is going down' is a better press release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Link should be to the original source, [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/26/sex- and-gor-and-open-sourc...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/26/sex-and-gor-and- open-source/)

<comment><USER21> The original source would be this link: [https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi- outing](https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-outing)

Followed by this by Dries Buytaert, Drupal BDFL: [http://buytaert.net/living- our-values](http://buytaert.net/living-our-values)

And then there was this other response from Larry: [https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi- part-2](https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/tmi-part-2)

And besides techcrunch, there was this other piece by inc.com: [http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/drupal-larry-garfield- gor.html](http://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/drupal-larry-garfield-gor.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Core developers? Plural?

</comment><comment><USER23> Is it too soon to nickname this scandal Prudal?</comment>


Puff Puff… Pass - <AUTHOR> http://faptrackr.org/blog/?p=70 <comment><USER2> Terrible response by the Puffchat guy: [https://twitter.com/MikeSuppo](https://twitter.com/MikeSuppo) (Google Play's dev listing goes to the Puffchat blogspot site, which links to this Twitter account.)

      "This is a friendly message to advise that you remove all web based content about Puffchat"
      "Please remove within 1 hour."
      "Puffchat will be fixed in due course. Every piece of content with the original author's name attached to it after GMT scheduled will only provide evidence that can be used against him."

Edit: Actually, this could just be a publicity stunt. Do something boneheaded like this, get some exposure. Take flak from users that don't necessarily matter, and hope to score a lot more users. If you're not getting the growth you hoped for, what do you have to lose?

<comment><USER3> Maybe. But a publicity stunt that highlights findings that run counter to what you're trying to sell the platform on seems dubious.

<comment><USER4> No such thing as bad publicity. It gets the brand known "oh, yeah, puffchat, I've heard of that, can't remember why", and if they tell users that it's secure often enough, no amount of evidence that it isn't will make any difference - humans respond more strongly to an authoritative voice than to objective reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://twitter.com/sexysez95_sarah](https://twitter.com/sexysez95_sarah) \- fake account promoting puffchat seems pretty sleazy. [https://twitter.com/Queenselfie96](https://twitter.com/Queenselfie96) also seems suspicious

<comment><USER6> Yeah they are pretty awful, the funny thing is they're the most popular accounts on the app :/

<comment><USER7> This is what reverse google image search says:

[https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZitfuTwYMbUV9Yv- cR...](https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZitfuTwYMbUV9Yv- cRe1NglS6qFuLRc6ikY-JCs6BECRoQmtvQkK05jVpEICnI0Luv3MOP9Q411fSI7JTGJ-- O8iVNEJjDTIzs1Z34QBC5sJdzAZqhItaFpEZJHfAFfZbwnLxOmtVucemBgn2dLJdiX1CU06e6Vsc9G1VL02jSRBvtFlAv7d27ps1ieeKY061xTS0JhETEKEXzNYwPVDmExl9JAZq2fqizPgezq7g6yR4fh- yVpmMUW0zXmFhJU7GW6VQp9DvSoD4NbOHQ- maftsa0LLRXRC4a7dU90Uri5ZSI0J3i8zjP_1lh3sWUIcxmLzaQiYfG6WO8YOPw3Eeeb7LpsD6D9bX- PqkkSzkYUB62AgXMIkVwFJvb20jbpDx-6mys- izzbrtuC7mQqV55qiPbYYX7jKu9pBpsEojqCBmeRruvrWhzf5k-Diusb08a8x-xKX83LXg67sMDs3P9iWW_1dKpFkRAonFMTcax0SG3YbKuubO94wk9daIPvYFNcP7Bac87wSWWTiaiqRq0g1opy0vIavwPa_1P8u5wGkJXQAsNX9zIf8VlFhr1Jidv3aIdbbqUQt2zBp2VTgWdayqkeEz7-AX86ZIwYJOJ0L5C8RMg3L5jlQbvcFuhqR-k9nZX1ZRDd0oRwLS-u5vLJbC0zNOOhrUGS2BBC4S4-g_1cl5R8_1lJ0BK7kJVVWh_1auS5ZAN4Cb3P4UWealrojTPXlkQimE8sqzLda_14lszBiSlSNDjILTuhZTsGLzyCvFo6sT59Eu5xJ6tJfO0o_1R56FcZ9dyg5dsU8KLhuq5GiHWcIolkQijlY2BQnurStpVE6PPtk9j05D8OqRUfaBsoLsPG1_1Zt4KF-L9RtIGMkTeG2Z2unNkTCv9HsdW87jLmpO4P9BB33JlriHOsPjz8uW9DZHz4GP- NXdKr- ItCjkiR_1Tfivz7bUWT_1hWAprIVwjMxNlMv_1fCZBLrbzZQbPkbXhaBrRfp68tgQ-_13E0eaJj5-wTwpUsz82FlsGkOoTGwPC5rj_1lnEuQJsFgfVhkB_1C8Mw3YaTTQAAKroK8PBJveAqIBzHWlsy8mPEQT-_1rlohiCxzgROimXvPvZtWuEBw5NdH6KADF2ZJcEuKNcBmvIqoX7HGoC- BmHKNazkEjY4sY09oFEuJfE3JAeP5nwpqV2YjqoFUvz7kikg2k9ToDDMBG7OtiiRz6jySHLLj3ABxQkMzbGVh85mmMrvqrVgAuqvzZdWk8jlOaRVNIY- zce51qtbixWgyKkGpITkFtjgVSpJBS0fR6dZYSQ59Ur3TlVCKVdRm8g)

Her actual account: [https://twitter.com/rachelburr1](https://twitter.com/rachelburr1)

[https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZivEFJQlM8ezy2mFjo...](https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZivEFJQlM8ezy2mFjoj9r_18Clr57pJRRCg96Gv4UU1utX_1PHmP3Q6VzHYXBrcS0I0fpR- M-w2zlSLv58hVfB47skUroR_1YuFHd_19MXb0ZbYl2Ho4q5F1Ct4Ua2z3DqFmfApJSmXb- Tnjd7r7wBvJIOeJJggayE5Cr1uowNk3bQZn0JhLbwtm- nsJ3nodICMHchuW6OdqhiY28HAmXEyxoRkghoHe3X-pi4UH8dv72kbYg9_1D4DOtX8pS_1elR9lWZ2CyWI9qlliIAnU8z1igRX26RNcr3CJz9A-H0D8Lre9S7VqBrmGTz_1ijTGnZ4G_1pjnjXjTETf_19t3H7SCznwOnnO21Fo0nIVvbTlF0IMc4gwUlbsrLXGTynQfg2d_1IPScUpjl26EG8z1jlqBwJ9MrJaB5IKglMCBepEPQuwo7rslVGvwd83NpPxqu2QWL4TAW3RIqj42aQ- XPh-L6ooyxn5rtQsUtrEiFBUP3r6iXoE0eh_1Q6h2Re0n-MN4FUtoamaUMboHpUV8BcTwWpuZbZOhwqnboddxwI3Bsl0hQmtZEVkfYFvn3t8v3SK8qa_1OYMm53f7iurqvoapZC3bIdeN7I45Gz0CeZFFPuMBA0a012XPf_1f4RoX- dJu3if403mzL9XkFIxfYEEEG8oNwWB7fwT8jROwVsqXQZ6q8ZdUNGbhoXNph_1VenQFyxhFv20Jr-F82UAtdZjMIQ4VULjCI5rZrTQAcSAnlNzgPtCMGMFf9z6rL36DdqvZfK_1zTluTniU7kyQHwRqR_1RPahqmBhChsxnsmx6sVNS7l26LQxz6plpbAUdiKpLBZ6EahUo520ihY-v6cdpKJgXFWMOj3SSXO_1YAW02xRHu2GytlYZ_1KA8oAjCJSoe3ewTQPweifwmdQ-T8v0l0273G77Q-FL8UKF2LZqGSp6KImcstXs-M4hNeyTz4nL0OB_1qwDbjQOg0Y569NbgJIKBQTgzFNLUUi4Gks7EssL_1WxzSFgE_1pEa2IbXylhQghAIqpXiCp5lBfbGnjaB10_1AvLom2lvwR7vbLv0qUbe9YzHeB_1hGyKOFRcShMKQlf90GBz4ZLZssRrnl0LS7x5WXZ9OtoTtT9yvcAh0dyERJM7Rhj6qA9T2RgjE68QW6Y76VtRy6tqpdnn6G1XVGXu5_1yANHnoorTvCZI1Zy7eLvNaCaZ1EeMahz3_1xP7_1m0fj1U6DLYmaMkXYuYWw_1r8_1Xsd9QizvcdmFhjGfovLqs1l3wZxV4Km0E1MKZJrY2LWkqc4QDJRaEXV- JGVGlmm1DsuChf3IxQOPzsVVnqy6p4MZrXfcyTWkCCTKxX7v26E)

And her account: [https://twitter.com/ashleeholmes](https://twitter.com/ashleeholmes)

Either they really like puffchat and they made separate account to promote it, or the pictures were stolen and the accounts are fake.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I did an image reverse on a couple of her pictures earlier: [https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZisLJGBQtjlgs7XolU...](https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZisLJGBQtjlgs7XolU- ad- EByemizzBqx8LaVOshozoApL9Oy1tizC2Z5e-BX6B7b5wciUdhIWVpSBIuUhD6k-6cRjLo_1coLWCFIq7aPk5Gp3jr7uewfLdk-A9hyZbivX-2CfDbBvHvc7hKyukn7EXMGpUFjysBUMWGy5aU94SkraevwLXvJrnWboZZ633t8Yf2vlEbPQOhMcUsqCNJGKle- EO9LZeTWHp4bOO_1LyQDmCv78xu418i9-5bZV7y9TLOZ7_1KTRb7VToqTTJZG863h900YFDnguXp6-v5Bj7WY-_1_1ImEG2_1eqZGIv6Oom3_1l-05uFzG6w_1hFZBRmZy_1qaYcqf_1a0iFT8HdM7qtpnZTk- JT5xNX12nzws3V0GlIdyczA7w_1PpEu5PBcbHlKjzrgkBNbu97VAM2qyy2ufjK7Ib4OWD1yJfT10VqiM6T-aV0iEAgXnSGFbC3yLQp2R9RMCGpsZgfLiaVyXfmxBlQr23ggS6EjZ88zEx4dlYG1787vpxKN4kSH8hAgOUAm9_19pn5IIbdLccHBu0t5edbxWMLlJnqPsERkXdoNYo8eAb2XQRnI3AHr69FglEoI1fSffT6F3arncJgouO4RhHvkRP7sP6Qw6PzgGM_1vqskUw-W01HMFQ2htr4PEy3BngD7PUXh1e0Xd50wJBoAtS9Q0mXNbRLBzM9UiHhpswk1v1QRj0d19o-FnIJHJDicBhPlNZuqlmPSot7A_1dwHznAQkYn6MbBOxxF4e5PRS0G0fEA2W_1qRiKTVwAqmcMT0lSSkel837fr6odPdhA9q6stlrLeeTEsI6WfD0aQHEz9SSv8xYLYodeuSuByMc8EI9bgYaX6ABvnTHBzw4ABj0Dj4Y2zcoohziaTWfdxTZ0n9nZq7mtdYf1APNKIe2qsvkjPD- TNi6wG8dezgYFHrV8IdYKUR886UyHW33nVzCGmwOIujgLtFze6yB9X2Md4Mgg_1El0pSmz7q60DrxSK1ePj39BXndXCwv4c-Gyhc3fFzIr4b9_1O_1uiV58xuxw25_1oBhaLbB5SdME1MwEP0hpTB5Np5DyyJhNr2Q8bXvgXdy_1IKGmjGTG1V9rEVjGAWs2EtW6mWl6N7IO2s9ELG2fmGvyIVSrYe62rAhoXhPEuPeS4D_1uM3f2ij- VcMqslNk2TxsFcAVdi3iUjui4Nulc8C-jCIq9bH9qNu0m-sGM-6A0JiRFQ8_1zowgvjTinShTRQIR4-qZ8tMRbdYEDeXSFKhqZwUKu9_1wQ6-jPyOSVgp3u0JMNUELAQnWIwphhuVCfLZcsU9J9PK_1tw)

Most of the stuff she sends you can see the pixels of the computer screen she is taking them on haha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not seeing where the "intimidates security researcher" part mentioned in the title comes in. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER9> Seems the founder thinks he can suppress speech through tweeting: [https://twitter.com/NinjaLikesCheez/status/44064551256879513...](https://twitter.com/NinjaLikesCheez/status/440645512568795136)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link! I thought I was taking crazy pills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> You can read the founder's response to the disclosures on Twitter [https://twitter.com/MikeSuppo](https://twitter.com/MikeSuppo)

<comment><USER10> Reading his responses, the entire app feels like a bad attempt at trolling.

In any case, nice write up. I enjoyed reading it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> And it is all over the internet:

 _Blog's going offline while we bump the specs so we can deal with all the traffic, bear with._

I expect to see some articles tomorrow.

First one: [http://www.tuaw.com/2014/03/03/snapchat-competitor- puffchat-...](http://www.tuaw.com/2014/03/03/snapchat-competitor-puffchat-is- incredibly-insecure-founder-thr/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not too impressed with the blog's author either. He documents breaking into another website in a previous blog post: [http://faptrackr.org/blog/?p=45](http://faptrackr.org/blog/?p=45)

<comment><USER12> That website hosted pirated copies of iOS apps, so it's not as bad as it seems.

<comment><USER7> It seems OP is in similar business.

[https://github.com/KJCracks/Clutch](https://github.com/KJCracks/Clutch)

<comment><USER13> Piracy is not the only reason why you would decrypt an app.

<comment><USER14> Exactly. A lot of people don't know that you can easily crack a .ipa binary and see things like method names and string constants with about 5 minutes of work. You can do the same with Android .apk files. Seriously, if you're doing security intensive software, try to crack your own binary and see what information you can get. You'll probably see way more than you thought you would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Take a look at vaportstream. They have ephemeral messaging that leverages vram to hide the messages from the kernel. Pretty secure.

</comment><comment><USER16> They really need to make a secure version of this app. You'd be saving thousands of burner phones from entering landfills.

<comment><USER2> Aren't burner phones that way because you want to ditch the entire phone to erase any link to you after using it in an incriminating way?

Even if this app was "secure", it wouldn't prevent the need to ditch a phone. LE can subpoena the company, find out which IP:port connected for whatever user/message. Then go to cell company and get records and track the cell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 1\. Create snapchat alternative to try to harvest sensitive content & info. 2\. Profit.

There is no platform or space, in someone else's control, that you can or should trust this way.

</comment><comment><USER18> From Founders twitter:

> provide evidence that can be used against him.

So is the founder trying to mount a legal case against him for hacking?

<comment><USER19> 11 (or is it 12?) months in, Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer is still serving a 3-year conviction (on appeal now) for "hacking" the AT&T iPad signup script to get email addresses out of it ... using a web request and random numbers. In case that's not clear enough, it was published, public data waiting to be requested, no security restrictions except the numbers to be guessed. I'd say that's the same for any such "private" (hah!) service that uses ID numbers to access data over public channels, wouldn't you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> @notacop See what great work you could be doing if you would participate in the year of code?

</comment><comment><USER21> Ultimate Streisand effect - I have literally never heard of this app that seems geared towards drug users; and yet I learn about it from it's incompetance.

How do people release public API's without THE MOST BASIC OF SECURITY CHECKS. Really? You can add a friend without any checks and even send messages as someone else? Christ.

A) Who funds these guys?

B) How can I get a piece of that seemingly-easy-as-hell-to-get pie?

<comment><USER9> I triggered executive-level uproar just yesterday by pointing out what should have been obvious security issues in an API we were about to be asked to integrate with. I was not the first technical person to look at the document we were given, and in fact I was the only one to look at it who couldn't actually read it in detail (it was in Chinese, I only speak English, but the identifiers were in English), but nobody else had spotted the problem.

I'm not a roving security consultant, so my sample size is limited, but I have seen little evidence that even basic security awareness is part of the toolkit any substantial number of developers have.

<comment><USER22> Agreed, and I think that's when a (good) CS education makes the difference, by helping you grasp how t design and code for security, which are fundamental concepts that a lot of "junior" developers have no clue about. And then you see the same basic attack vectors creeping up all the time...

<comment><USER9> I have no CS education. I don't have any degree, or even a high school diploma. Most of those around me have had CS or related degrees, many from quite well-regarded programs, but there has been no apparent correlation to security awareness. To the extent they have an edge, it's in mathematical analyses and algorithm design/implementation[0], which are of limited direct use in most day-to-day things like noticing "this endpoint uses plain HTTP", "this isn't an HMAC, also serial numbers aren't secret keys", or "a 4-digit PIN is not a secure password".

[0] And even then, I've wondered more than once what the hell goes on in CS programs when I've found myself explaining concepts like entropy and the difference between speed and scalability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm, did you just post this "disclosure" on your blog before informing the company? Well, now everyone is at risk if your claims are true. Poor form.

Proper course is to disclose to company first, then disclose after fix is in place in reasonable amount of time. Why risk everyone for your benefit?

<comment><USER24> As you can read in the article, he did try to contact the developer.

That aside, though, when the issues are this egregious I'm honestly not sure what the right approach is. With flaws this bad it's hard to imagine that they're even capable of fixing the problems, let alone responding appropriately to the disclosure.

<comment><USER12> They seem like really easy problems to fix, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This needs to be a part of ThatHigh.com :)

Except, you know, not sketchy.</comment>