I Opted Out of Facial Recognition at the Airport – It Wasn't Easy - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/opt-out-of-facial-recognition-at-the-airport/ <comment><USER2> Very click-baity. Below the only part that actually relates to the title:

 _The announcement came as we began to board. Last month, I was at Detroit's Metro Airport for a connecting flight to Southeast Asia. I listened as a Delta Air Lines staff member informed passengers that the boarding process would use facial recognition instead of passport scanners.

As a privacy-conscious person, I was uncomfortable boarding this way. I also knew I could opt out. Presumably, most of my fellow fliers did not: I didn't hear a single announcement alerting passengers how to avoid the face scanners.

To figure out how to do so, I had to leave the boarding line, speak with a Delta representative at their information desk, get back in line, then request a passport scan when it was my turn to board._

The rest of the article is a (not very novel) discussion about the risks and problems of facial recognition.

<comment><USER3> Going against implicit expectations of others and being the only one who does something is maybe the hardest thing humans can do.

Opting out could risk holding up the boarding process, possibly missing the flight, unpleasant treatment by security and being pitted against the other passengers - all of it to opt out of something is clearly a dark pattern.

All of this is very well understood by the people who designed this system.

Articles like that and some of the comments in this thread at least give me an idea what opting out would take.

<comment><USER4> Yes I asked if I could get a pat down instead of the backscatter x-ray at Heathrow. Was made to feel like a criminal, questioned etc and put under pressure. And then to be told I don't have to get scanned but I can't get on my flight unless I do. There wasn't even an opt out.

<comment><USER5> That goes completely counter to my experiences. From 2009 to 2017 I chose to "opt out" every time. Here's what happened for me each time:

1\. They make you wait while they get someone to do the work.

2\. They offer to take you somewhere private (I declined).

3\. They tell you the routine ("I'm gonna go up your leg until I feel resistance").

4\. They wipe their gloves and put them in a chemical detector.

5\. They let you go.

Only once did I have to get an extra exam where they detected some chemical on me and had to do that whole wipe down + chemical test process on my carry-on. It wasn't a big deal.

In 2017 I finally got TSA Precheck. So I've very rarely had to go through this since then (flying w/ non-Precheck friend, flying at non-Precheck airport).

EDIT: My experience is from US only. I missed that the parent's description was from the UK.

<comment><USER6> His experience was in the UK.

<comment><USER7> I was able to opt out in Dublin at the secondary security point (where one clears immigration in Dublin for US-bound flights, so I think that particular scanner was operated at the direction of the US authorities).

I have not tried to opt out of a pure-EU/UK scanner, so your point is still valid. I suspect Toronto may work the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've recently traveled outside Australia and used the facial recognition "smart" system. It was completely non-obvious that we could opt-out - it was only implied by the text.

After going through security, I asked an official if I could've opted out. They said yes, and said I could flag someone down.

When I returned, I tried to do so - but there was no-one around! Its an automated system, and almost impossible to opt out of.

Airport security is full of dark patterns when it comes to privacy.

<comment><USER9> What airport is this? At Adelaide airport arrivals I always choose to go through the manual processing queue, i.e. the one non-Australian citizens have to use. Half the time it's faster than the smart-gate system queue, and even if it's not an extra 10 minutes after 26hrs + of traveling isn't going to kill me.

As for departures, it wasn't obvious to me - like with you - that I could opt- out. I'll give it a shot next time and see what happens. Am expecting some annoyed and suspicious glances! :)

<comment><USER10> I use the 'smart' gates at Melbourne regularly. You insert your passport, stand in front of a camera, and one assumes that your current photograph is compared to that of your passport. If they're the same, you pass.

I fail to see the privacy implications. I'm already giving someone my passport details – I must do that to enter or exit the country. That passport already contains my photograph. What privacy am I losing by having my photograph taken at the airport?

I say this as a very privacy-conscious individual. I block ads, don't use Facebook, etc. I fail to see the further loss of privacy in this case, over and above the mandatory scanning of my passport.

<comment><USER11> This may be true but the end game for governments is to have facial recognition everywhere. They start at the airport because "it doesn't matter, you are already giving your info out" and then we become OK with the idea so they start rolling it out for public transport and "it doesn't matter, you already do this every time you fly"

It seems to me that the only way to resist is to take a very hard rejection of facial recognition entirely in any situation.

<comment><USER12> > It seems to me that the only way to resist is to take a very hard rejection > of facial recognition entirely in any situation.

Realistically the only way to resist is to develop an informed, engaged populace. There's a huge gulf between "facial recognition for crossing international borders" and "facial recognition for getting on the subway" \- the former is obviously beneficial and the latter is obviously a massive overreach.

The idea that one will inevitably follow the other is only really plausible because of the public's apathy, and it leads to situations where we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

<comment><USER13> I would argue against the first being obviously beneficial. The downsides of having such a system in place in my opinion outweighs any current or foreseeable benefit. One step further, I have yet to hear of a scenario where facial recognition would be a positive application. In my opinion the complete rejection is the right approach when it comes to facial recognition. Being able to automatically identify a person without them noticing or being able to prevent the identification in the future is in its very core dystopian. Its an application to end privacy, no different to the old scifi idea of getting a remotely readable identification chip implanted at birth. With the difference of the hypothetical chance to remove your scifi chip surgically. With facial identification the only realistic option is plastic surgery. We were lucky for a while that the technology wasnt ready yet, but it is getting more and more practical to utilize.

Its unfortunate that the idea of privacy is in such a downhill spiral, but the much more daunting question is, if privacy can so easily be abandoned, how will other stuff, like freedom of thought be treated in the future? What happens if technological development of surveillance could catch up some day? We are currently living in a society where no matter how horrific the methods, there are some who will find justifications to utilize them on other people. If the charges are heinous enough, human rights go out of the window. You only have to think of torture and look as far as Guantanamo. Differently put, in a society that preserves samples of eradicated plagues for possible future military uses and has no quarrels of threatening to torture the kids of enemy combatants, the research into and work on offensive capabilities with disastrous capabilities, like I would argue facial recognition is, is morally reprehensible.

<comment><USER12> I believe "facial recognition for crossing an international border" is an obvious benefit because, look, the world is not all sunshine and daisies and it's important that we're able to validate that a person going from one country to another is who they say they are.

You seem to be operating under the core assumption that because we as a society allow facial recognition in that situation it will inevitably expand to others, and that's exactly the point I was trying to make in the first place. If an educated and well-informed populace says "no, we will not allow this technology to be used outside of these specific circumstances" and then enforces that position at the ballot box, there won't be a problem. Unfortunately most people just _don 't care,_ and no amount of technological backtracking will fix that.

In other words, don't worry about the tech; worry about the people that make the tech _matter_.

<comment><USER13> I understand your point about the responsibility of a democracy but I do worry about the tech, I would also be alarmed if someone developed a biological weapon to extinct humanity, even if the usage was controlled by a democratic mechanism. Just dont develop such dangerous technologies with no positive use case. Dangerous being the combination of efficiency and scale-ability.

The argument also assumes that we will continue have democratic systems and the population not voting for such systems to be implemented. The reality is what ever means and information we currently entrust to governments later versions will also have access to. Not to mention the export of these technologies to "friendly" dictatorships. Its the old problem of census data in the Netherlands. They had extremely detailed census data involving peoples religious beliefs before the Nazis invaded and with the data available the persecution of Jews was extremely efficient. The resistance targeted the locations of these datasets but it didnt work good enough.

I also dont see how international borders need anything more then fingerprints. They are also far more accurate and reliable. Facial recognition has the only added benefit of being usable without the effected people noticing. Thats not a positive characteristic.

To come back to the central argument, we do already have other means of identifying people and facial recognition only differs in a few core issues from existing mechanics. The core characteristics of facial recognition are

* No need for a cooperative, consenting subject

* Not alerting the subject being identified and no protection against being identified without noticing

* Unchangeable identification characteristic

We already have reliable easy to use systems for characteristic 1 and 3, fingerprints, and I see how there might be a need for such systems at specific locations. For example at a police station or border checkpoints.

Then we have facial recognition which is a lot less accurate and its only additional benefit is point 2. Point 2 however has no positive use cases, its a purely totalitarian instrument aimed at its scale-ability. For not only being used in specific places but everywhere. You cant even make the argument which makes nuclear weapons a worthwhile technology to have, the possible usage for war against a foreign aggressor. Facial recognition is only beneficial to keep a population suppressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Is saving a few minutes worth handing over your most sensitive biometric > information?_

The problem is that you've _already_ handed this biometric information over; say, when you get a passport. There is no "opt-out" for that context. This is also why RealId was so vehemently opposed[0].

At the end of the day, they're getting your data - one way or another and there is no opt-out for that.

So, to make an appeal on the argument of privacy of data is being woefully ignorant of the fact that this encroachment has been happening for _years_ and it didn't seem to matter very much _then_.

[0] - [https://iapp.org/news/a/why-some-states-wont-comply-with- rea...](https://iapp.org/news/a/why-some-states-wont-comply-with-real-id- requirements/)

<comment><USER15> And they probably scanned his face one way or another anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Until we have evidence that facial recognition is accurate and reliable—as opposed to simply convenient—travelers should avoid the technology where they can."

No, no, no! The possibility that this technology may occasionally be wrong pales in comparison to the world we're marching toward. By far the biggest risk facing society is that having your every move tracked by governments will soon be next to impossible.

Also just imagine what our world will look like as facial recognition data slowly leaks out into the hands of non governments (or they find ways to collect it.) It isn't hard to imagine a world where everyone knows everyone else's whereabouts at all times. Facial recognition feels like the biggest looming step toward a dystopian world.

The fact that they throw out the possibility of this technology occasionally being wrong sidesteps the real risks in favor of something that's just easier to explain.

<comment><USER17> This is a very confusing comment. You seem to disagree with the premise of the article, but then go on to agree with it, but also make a bizarre statement about the impossibility of governments being able to track you?

<comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure there's a typo in there somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was at London's Gatwick Airport last week, where facial recognition was being trialed at the boarding gate for my flight.

On the way, multiple, large signs announced the trial.

At the gate itself, there was a prominent notice addressing travelers' privacy (and other) concerns - several paragraphs of large text. It was clearly mentioned that, for people who were reluctant to use the new technology, there would be attendants available to process them in the usual way.

I was quite impressed. However, the trial was cancelled, and the machines still retained their plastic wrapping. Oh well.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like GDPR having its desired effect

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand the problem here.

How does the facial recognition system work? I'm thinking that biometric passports contain the necessary data and that the airline has already got then by scanning the passport at some point so that it quick and easy to use facial recognition at boarding time.

If so, it's pointless to request to opt out while boarding, really.

In any case, there is no anonymity in air travel (this is really more about anonymity than privacy). You are identified and tracked from the moment you buy your ticket until you leave the airport.

Facial recognition is a new technology that people need to adapt and be confident with. It will take some time then no-one will pay attention anymore.

<comment><USER22> The point this article misses entirely is that the Facial recognition system is now at the gate which is ostensibly Delta's territory.

It isn't US Boarder Control running the facial control system, its Delta, Southwest, or anyone else, which has implications about the privacy of the biometric data, that up until this point hasn't been collected by Airlines, only Boarder entities.

That said, in order to boot strap this system, Delta et., al. would have had to either; 1\. Build their own database of biometric and facial data that they believe was reliable (unlikely) 2\. Get a full and continually updated copy from CBP (Probably noisy) 3\. Use an API made available by CBP that acts as a Biometric/Facial oracle.

I've heard rumblings that it's 3, but I can't cite anything to back that claim up, so grains of salt.

<comment><USER21> My understanding is that biometric data are contained in your passport, which is already scanned by airlines when you check in and/or board planes.

Here they are using this information to automatically check that it is in fact you instead of having a staff member look at you and check against your passport's photo.

<comment><USER22> I'm not certain of the particular setup here (per airport thing) but I've never had them scan my passport at the gate in a US Airport, only at Immigration checkpoints for international travel and TSA.

This is especially true for domestic travel as well.

<comment><USER23> But were you facially scanned?

<comment><USER22> At Immigration: Scanned, no, Photographed, yes. (So depending on your definition)

At TSA, They scan the first page of passport (or local ID) and usually Full body scan. So in the strict sense of facially scanned no.

At the gate (until now), neither. They would scan the boarding pass and eyeball the passport if international.

Again the point here is that in the first two instances these are Government agencies doing the scanning. At the third, the Government no longer has anything to do with it.

The question with this stuff is how and where are Airlines (private companies) getting a database of biometric data and what are they doing with it?

<comment><USER24> They submit the data to the CBP database and get a result back. It will help to validate exit reporting and ensure that the right people are being reported as leaving the country on their I-94s

<comment><USER22> Yes I suspect this, but the consumer has no way of verifying this. Similarly it also means that the airlines have access to a Face Oracle and can build their own database with confidence based on that result.

Neither of which are good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe we'll get to McLuhan's global electronic village after all.

Having come from a rural area, in a village it is just like in Cheers - "Everybody knows your name". They also know a lot about you, your family, friends and enemies. Much of what they know is true, but some of it is wrong (gossip).

Privacy and anonymity is of recent origin, starting with industrial development and large cities. It's a "security by obscurity" strategy for the more powerless segments of society. Powerful people are in the Social Register.

</comment><comment><USER26> A bit weak of an article. I absolutely hate how facial rec is going to be the norm in a lot of things outside security.

1\. The infamous they, already have a picture of your face. Your id/passport. It's kind of too late to be anonymous when boarding a plane, for multiple reasons.

2\. One agency has it, thus its easy for them to share it with others. HA! You, have never dealt with fed agencies. You want to meet the grownup versions of those toddlers that never learned to share their toys? Any fed agency. Doesn't matter how important the info is and how timely, "it's our data, our jurisdiction, we'll handle it".

Just two points that stood out to me.

Again, I agree that privacy now seems like a dream we had in the distant past due to tech companies and the results of a post-911 world. But this article is the equivalent to complaining how much sugar is in cake while eating said cake.

<comment><USER27> Wait, are you seriously insinuating that it's okay for the government to do this?

Airline security worked fine before 9/11, and it hasn't measurably improved with all of the bull crap the TSA is now doing. From what I can tell, we haven't been attacked in the same way because:

\- passengers are more vigilant \- terrorist attacks are hard to plan and execute as it is \- airlines installed locking doors for the cockpit

All of the rest of the stuff the TSA does is overreach. It's not equivalent to complaining how much sugar is in cake while eating cake, it's closer to only being offered sugary cake while in prison without being told there's a healthier option available.

<comment><USER26> Did I say it was acceptable? Did I use those words? Did I not say that I do not like where its going? At the same time, can I blame anyone for going security overboard when multiple buildings are destroyed by kamikaze hijacked airplanes? A first responder from that just recently died. So yea, still a bit of a sore wound for people. This isn't like talking about Rome getting sacked. Some of us still remember when the towers stood.

Passengers are vigilant. Ha! The one thing your average civilian is not is vigilant. The internet is rife with bad folks doing bad things in crowds. And most people do nothing.

Plus, look up the millennium plot. The news doesn't make a stink when things go well. Lots of people have been stopped at airports and even before being able to start. You only hear about the failures, because it makes for better news.

Fact is, pandora's box was opened. We are in a new age where people get their fame from doing big, nasty things. The Rolling Stone put the Boston bomber's face on the cover for fuck's sake. Where rock star faces have been. I like that on imgur, some people bucked that trend by periodically showing the faces and sharing the stories of those that fought back. But guess what, someone has to actively protect too. Yea, lots of issues with the TSA. They knee jerked hard towards some super fucked up practices those first few years. You think traveling with a really slavic last name was fun? I was always randomly put in the special search line. Three times I got backroom questioned over my recent travels. I still show up 3 hours early to fly out of habit.

But I also chose to roadtrip more often instead. Which was more fun anyways.

Maybe if the public could actually police themselves and evil was eradicated, then we can do away with security in general. Until then, it's a response to a problem where no one is offering a better one other than hugs and unicorns that fart rainbows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Peripherally related. I needed a new passport, and applied online for one. The online application kept rejecting my photo which I had taken by a pharmacy specifically approved for taking passport photos. It said that my eyes were too shaded or had too much shadow. I tried everything with levels and contrast. I gave up and started messing with the application software. I cut the eyes out a different photo in the Mac Preview.app application. I lined up the eyes and thought they looked pretty good, then uploaded the photo. The application doesn't give a pass/fail, it just submits and its off. I have traveled quite extensively on this passport, including going to some countries that are pretty uptight about security. I'm sure I behave like a drug dealer going through security.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, that probably invalidates your passport.

"Photos must not be digitally enhanced or altered to change your appearance in any way"

[https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa- inf...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information- resources/photos/digital-image-requirements.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Even if you opt out of the boarding pass/passport scanner facial recognition etc. you're still not technically opting out.

There's quite a few CCTV cameras in airports. They've most likely (definitely) got some sort of facial recognition software connected to them.

</comment><comment><USER31> > Will we only wake up once we no longer have the choice to opt out?

yes :/

Many commenters say that your data / picture is in the system already, which is fine, but your passport photo can be 10 - 15 years old and these systems record how you look now. That's the question if you are comfortable providing it.

What you can't do anything about is CCTV and I think it's a safe bet that they are already equipped with facial recognition and other ML tracking technologies. It's just a question of which database you can avoid being registered in.

<comment><USER32> Gatwick airport had a ton of facial recognition cameras last time I was there. They had a ring of leds around the lens that lights up in a rotating pattern, it really is difficult not to look directly into the lens due to that.

<comment><USER33> Wear an eyepatch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> When you scan your passport a picture of your face is in the system anyway

</comment><comment><USER35> Your concerns about privacy at this level are nice and warranted. They are also a day late and a dollar short.

</comment><comment><USER36> "99% accuracy for male faces, but 35% error rate for women..."

The writer is cognitively biased for switching from accuracy to error rate in a single sentence, to increase the accuracy gap.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am usually opting-out of body scanners (in the EU its still optional). But at some airports the security people seem to not know that it's optional.

By now I always carry a letter from the federal police (responsible for border + airport security) explaining that it's optional.

At Berlins airports they usually ask for a reason why I opt-out of body scanners, which is ridiculous, as one needs no reason to NOT do something that's legally optional to do.

</comment><comment><USER38> Recently traveled internationally. I cannot agree with the claims of this clickbaity article. In the security line there were numerous signs telling passengers they could opt out of having their photo taken.

As I approached the kiosk, I mentioned that I preferred to not have my photo taken, and was nearly cut off by the lady asking for my passport.

I'd argue that getting my passport scanned was quicker than waiting for the machine go take your picture.

</comment><comment><USER39> At Rome's FCO airport there is a facial recognition passport control for flights outside of the EU. Last time I left the EU, my aging passport's chip refused to work and a person made me retry 5 times before letting me go to the human passport control.

It must be said that the non-European, non-biometric passport control can easily take 30 minutes longer.

I have to say that I've never thought about this in terms of databases, I somewhat assumed that they were only matching against the local copy in my passport, but maybe someone can elucidate for me on how this works on EU passports.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is it at all possible to have this feature work in a way that still protects privacy?

Say, only store a non-reversible hash derived from facial features - that can be used to verify identity but not for facial recognition itself.

<comment><USER41> Definitely possible if standards are defined, but that is not the problem. The real one is that we now have a security industry that needs to apply tech to dangers that in reality don't really exist in the first place or are so minuscule that you need sales people to market these. The security hysteria of the last decade is laughable, if it didn't cost us that much...

I seriously avoid flights. They already have my data a thousand times but I am just sick of these perverse boarding processes. Wasn't good for the environment anyway.

<comment><USER14> > _...to dangers that in reality don 't really exist in the first place or are > so minuscule that you need sales people to market these. The security > hysteria of the last decade is laughable, if it didn't cost us that much..._

I don't believe that this is true.

For example, the world wasn't a "safer" place to be in between 7 Dec 1941 and 11 Sep 2001, just as it's not a "safer" place now. The danger was ever- present, as the Munich Massacre (1972) clearly demonstrated (and the entire world witnessed).

Instead, what's happened is the ongoing implication that your safety is paramount and any concessions to privacy are an ultimately necessary byproduct to keep you safe from that "new" danger; however, it wasn't a "necessary evil" for the preceeding six (seven, including the oughts?)decades and the danger - certainly - ins't new, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I see the issue with false positive, but I don't get the privacy argument here. Scanning your face vs your passport is not any different from privacy perspective.

<comment><USER43> Imagine this: "Years from now, the party/person in power goes completely nuts, and starts rounding people up in train cars to ship off to a final solution facility... would you prefer to try to sneak out of the country when: A. only your passport/papers identify you, or B. your face can be recognized from any video camera in the country..."

<comment><USER44> Just a few weeks ago there was a thread on this site discussing how IBM census taking machines made it all possible to identify the undesirables. Now it's trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > I began to wonder: Will we only wake up once we no longer have the choice to > opt out?

No. No ordinary people would care even when there will be no choice to opt out.

</comment><comment><USER46> "I Opted Out of Facial Recognition at the Airport – It Wasn't Easy"

"I had to ... speak with a Delta representative at their information desk ... then request a passport scan when it was my turn to board."

That sounds relatively easy, actually.

</comment><comment><USER24> Airports hve got to be 100% covered with cameras that CBP could easily get access to—why is taking a single still photo—to be matched to the passport photo they already have—such a big deal?

</comment><comment><USER47> >Research shows that it is particularly unreliable for gender and racial minorities: one study, for example, found a 99 percent accuracy rate for white men, while the error rate for women who have darker skin reached up to 35 percent. This suggests that, for women and people of color, facial recognition could actually cause an increase in the likelihood to be unfairly targeted for additional screening measures.

So this should also be a very good reason to reject this tech for this use. Darker skinned people and women get misclassified even more, and subject to further interrogation.

I may be a white guy (works 99/100)... But I can't just defend my own rights, or all of our rights degrade.

</comment><comment><USER48> For me it was easy. My strabismus seems to confuse the system

</comment><comment><USER49> I would like to opt-out as well, but it seems it actually was quite easy. All she had to do was say that she wants the passport to be scanned. Good to know.

</comment><comment><USER50> Of all of the problematic uses of facial recognition, this isn't one. You are already in a context where your identification must be verified. Who cares if they establish that identity with a precanned passport image? It isn't like there is any new data available here.

</comment><comment><USER51> You opted into a list of people who opted out of facial recognition.

</comment><comment><USER52> Airport is about the only places that I have no problem with being Facial Recognition as long as the data is correctly handled because it contributes to the safety of so many parties.

<comment><USER53> What is your limit? What about handing over all your social accounts? fingerprints, DNA , it seems that gradually if a thing can be done it will be done. 2

<comment><USER54> Can you wear a mask while they do the passport scan? They need know how you look like so they can match the picture with the passport... using a computer or a human.

<comment><USER53> That is fine if it would be the same, but your biometric data is stored in a database, I would be fine with scan the passport , scan the person, check if it matches, if all is fine delete the biometric data and not put it in a database.

If there is a good reason to keep this data in a database let me know.

<comment><USER54> How can they compare your appearance to a picture if they don't keep your picture on-file?

<comment><USER53> The passport is in your hand, you place it on the table where it can be scanned and compared with your face. If they have your face in the database can you travel without a physical passport?

<comment><USER54> So you could just use a fake passport? Yeah to tell you the truth, I'm not sure why a passport is required... Just like driver licenses and tag registrations, they have all the information on their computers.

<comment><USER53> >So you could just use a fake passport?

Why do you think so? If a human can detect a fake passport why a computer scanner can't detect it?

It even makes sense to do it like this: 1 the passport includes a picture of you but it could include a hash of your biometric face

2 you go at the checkpoint, put the passport in a scanner and your face is also photographed by a camera, the sash is generated and compared, then the hash is deleted, the airport people just care that the passport is real(they can check serial codes or chips if present in the passport, check the other security areas of the passport) and the person using the passport is the one in the passport.

Airports or air transport companies should not be in bussiness of collecting bio-metric data. If NSA or the government of a country wants to create such a database they should propose a law for it, when you get or renew your ID card,passport then you would be added to the national database because such is the law not because you are forced to chose between getting in the plane faster or some unpleasant alternative way/

There is no</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The 100% electric TRON motorcycle - $55K - <AUTHOR> http://www.evolvemotorcycles.com/m/?page_id=910

<comment><USER2> Wanted: absurdly wealthy individual(s) willing to purchase, and then ride around on, what is in essence a movie prop.

Not that this won't happen. I almost never say never.

<comment><USER3> I haven't done a painstaking trawl of the site, but I can't seem to find a corresponding red bike to race you're absurdly wealthy evil mate on...</comment></comment>


A Crash Course in Comments - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisbrogan.com/a-crash-course-in-comments/ <comment><USER2> I was hoping this would be talking about comments in programming languages. :-/</comment>


GoboLinux: A distro that redefines the entire filesystem hierarchy - <AUTHOR> https://gobolinux.org/ <comment><USER2> Coming from Windows a year or so ago, the Linux filesystem has been probably _the_ most confusing thing about the switch (I've read about the logic behind /var and /bin and /usr several times but it was not intuitive to me and didn't stick). I generally have no idea where my config files are stored and can barely find where programs keep their data. And then I download some software that doesn't install itself and I have to figure out where to put it... The fact that this is all only sorta-kinda standardized between distributions, and that you often have separate config files for the system, for the user, and for the session doesn't help either.

It's not clear that GoboLinux entirely solves this issue but at first glance it looks like it's trying and the /Programs organization is pretty intuitive.

What's not appealing at all though is using a distro that doesn't have custom packages for all the software I'm using (aka is not Ubuntu or RedHat based). I'm not at all comfortable building from source--when I've tried it I've rarely been successful--and the prospect of further winnowing down my choices (from not just Linux-compatible software to software that however many GoboLinux users have uploaded to their Recipes directory) is, well, pretty intimidating.

<comment><USER3> On your last point about installing software: I've used Ubuntu and Fedora, and finally settled on Arch ~4 years ago. Interestingly, although Arch has a reputation of being a "DIY" distribution (in the sense that it targets power users), I've had way more trouble installing software on Ubuntu and Fedora than on Arch.

Arch has what is called the Arch User Repository (AUR). It's a repository of recipes for building all kinds of software, and it's submitted and maintained by the users, not maintainers of the distro itself. Whenever there's a package missing in the official repositories, I almost always find it in the AUR. AUR has no binary builds---instead, you download files and scripts needed to build the software from source. You then run the _makepkg_ utility, and you get a package you can install. (There are also helper programs which automate this whole process for you.) The result is that the package manager tracks the files properly, and you can keep track of which version you have, can remove the software cleanly, and update it whenever you like.

Today, when I'm at a Ubuntu box, it's a pain in the ass to install some less- known software. I can download the sources and then try to build, and I usually succeed, but not before I've figured out the right flags, prefixes, build-time and run-time dependencies, etc. I also get questions pertaining to this from my friends that have recently switched to Linux, and I don't really have a solution to offer. Yes, there are PPAs, but more often than not, PPAs are outdated and are binary-only, meaning you can't really review how the binary packages came about.

AUR really solves the problem nicely. I'd like to see such a concept in another, more beginner-friendly distribution, that I can then recommend to people around me who are considering making the switch.

<comment><USER4> I tried arch a couple of years ago (in a VM), and while I liked it and the reasoning behind it, I had certain misgivings that led me away from it being considered for any future use.

The main one being that whole AUR thing: What happens if there isn't a recipe in there? For example - you want to install something which only has a binary, no source, and can't be (legally) redistributed; what then?

Well - to "install" the software, you basically have to go thru all of the steps to build your own recipe, noting down what you do manually, and eventually getting to the point where you have a script (or whatever) to install the software. Then, you undo all of your manual work, and run your arch package to do the real install. Tada - you now have a working package for that piece of software, and have spent potentially hours to get to that point.

As a bonus, you can't redistribute that recipe, because it is based around a binary blob that was purchased and you don't have the rights to redistribute it.

At least, that's how I interpreted it. I honestly don't recall what piece of software I wanted to use, but I think it may have been EagleCAD - which has a Linux port, but is binary only. I think it only has RPM and DEB packages, so to get it on arch, you'd have to build your own package.

It wasn't so much the fact that you had to do this, just that it wasn't an easy and straightforward process (from what I recall), and if you only need to do it once or twice, it would be pretty arduous. Maybe by now (haven't looked) they have some kind of package conversion tool, which would be a great addition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks somewhat interesting. Essentially, it just switches the primary index from "type of file" (e.g. binary, config file etc.) to "program this belongs to". That has some advantages, as humans are more likely to want to search by program. I do have some issues with the distro's execution of this idea, though - the path names are far too verbose, and I'd rather not have to use the shift key twice in every path. I'd take '/etc/foo.conf' over '/Programs/Foo/Config/Foo.conf' any day.

<comment><USER6> How does this compare to nixos/guix?

<comment><USER7> AFAIK, gobo "just" redefines the directory hierarchy along with a small kernel patch that lets you see an equivalent standard hierarchy. It has none of of the architecture for build reproducibility that nixos and guix boast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Okay so correct me if I am wrong: the original root structure is still there just hidden with this Gobohide thing. (I do not like this - turn off immediately).

You download tarballs into Programs and unpack and configure make install there, it 'just works'TM somehow, (I like this - sort of). I think 'Couldn't you create a script which creates a load of symlinks (for any distro), put it in a folder on your desktop?'

Okay,.. help me here - what problem are we trying to solve again? I like the nice view of the applications we have, but just thinking quite often packages have their own symlinks for like lib.so.2-->lib.so.3 will this have symlinks to symlinks to... so now thinking is it really worth the effort for a nice view of the applications? What else do I get?

<comment><USER9> That thing about the bunch of symlinks actually reflects how Gobolinux was first created :). Onde of the devs didnt havê root access in their university lab computer so they came up with this alternate organization that let them install everything they needed inside a directory in their home folder. He grew fond of that folder organization and later on grouped up with some friends to find out what would happen if they made a custom distro where everything used the alternate organization.

As for what benefit this brings... One big one is that it makes it very easy to mix together programs installed via the package manager and programs you compiled from source by hand. There is no need for an alternate /use/local hierarchy. Similarly it it better at handling those situations where you might want to install multiple versions of some software. It can create different versions of that virtual root filesystem but with symlinks that point to different versions in each one. The end result is similar to what you would get with chroot and other "container" tech but in a quite elegant way.

<comment><USER4> There's also the fact - if I understand it correctly - that the filesystem in Gobo -is- the "package database"; if it is in the filesystem, it's installed and can be looked up easily by the system. Or browsed manually. It's also friendly to manual installs; once you install things manually, it's now a part of the package database!

That's the one thing I hate about package managers - if you need to install from source, the manager has no clue about it; in fact, you can have multiple versions installed - a new version "from source" and an old version from a real package via the manager! It's also possible for the manager to uninstall stuff it knows about - along with part of the stuff of the new version, depending on various things.

I ran into that earlier when I had to upgrade and munge my Ubuntu system to get TensorFlow to work properly with Python 3 and some other stuff and crap I forget about; long story short, I can no longer perform an upgrade to my system (I'm on 14.04 too!) - the tool b0rks hard when I try, and I honestly don't recall enough to return my system back to working status (I also had to install a major upgrade to gcc - which necessitated upgrades to other things, new manual symlinks, hours of swearing).

This was all needed for the Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree because of their system requirements for code and such (had I been running 16.04, it would have been easier - most likely - but that was also fraught with potential issues, which is why I didn't pursue it). Looking back on things, I probably shoulda used a container or VM, or built a new machine, but I was pressed for time. I was assured in the beginning, before the class started, that what I had would work - like many things in the course, this wasn't true (I'm not saying they lied or misrepresented stuff - my cohort was only the second cohort from November, and so I am a part of the "guinea pig" crowd as they debug the new course - paying beta tester, if you will).

A system like Gobo might have been useful for this...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many readers of HN won't need this explanation of the Unix/Linux/MacOS filesystem hierarchy, but for those that find it confusing here is a very brief summary. See Wikipedia for a more in depth discussion [1].

When Unix was invented, the concept of hierarchical filesystems wasn't new, notably Multics had a hierarchical filesystem, but there were conflicting visions. At the time, most other operating systems divided the filesystems between a number of top-level containers containing files, but no nested containers. IBM's contemporary time-sharing system, VM/370, supplied users with a set of top-level "virtual" drives each containing any number of files. There were no recursively nested directories.

The designers of Unix wanted a simple Operating System suitable for software development so they tended to implement an idea and then use it as much as practical in the OS design. Rather than have top-level containers like drives that contain folders that contain files, Unix just had directories and files (both implemented with the same on device structures called inodes). This combination of simple ideas fully generalized can be seen throughout Unix: multiple pathnames can point (link) to the same inode providing a form of aliasing for filenames, the api for files is generalized to include access to (possibly raw) devices so devices show up in the filesystem hierarchy, etc.

[/]

The top level directory has the name /, unlike other systems all filesystem pathnames start at this single point.

[/etc]

System configuration is found here. Most of these files are simple text files that may be edited by system administrators. In the past administrators might directly edit /etc/passwd to remove a user. Now, things are more complex, but there is still a backwards compatible /etc/passwd file (containing encrypted passwords, etc.).

[/bin and /sbin]

Unix, from the beginning was, like it's inspiration Multics, a multi-user system. Reconfiguring the system, for example to add a printer or drive, normally required running in single user mode at a privileged level. For this reason the programs needed by administrators running single user were segregated and placed in /bin. The rest of the system could be left offline, useful when working on the rest of the system.

As Unix grew, more and more utilities were added to /bin until it made sense to segregate it into those utilities needed when even a normal user might find themselves in single user mode vs a system administrator doing something dangerous. The super-user type programs now go in /sbin while the essential, but far less dangerous utilities go in /bin. Ordinary file copy is /bin/cp while the reboot command is /sbin/reboot. Some of the division look arbitrary to me, like /sbin/ping instead of /bin/ping, but there is probably logic behind it.

[/usr and /var]

Once booted up normally in multi-user mode, /usr contains system read-only content (for example, programs and libraries) and /var contains system content that is variable (like log files).

The /usr directory is large and subsequently divided into a number of second level directories.

[/usr/bin]

This is where the rest of the Unix "binaries" (i.e. programs) reside. So while ls (the list directory command) is /bin/ls the c compiler resides in /usr/bin and is /usr/bin/gcc.

[/usr/sbin]

Like the division between /bin and /sbin more administrative commands not necessary for single user mode (see /sbin) are placed in /usr/sbin. For example, the command /usr/sbin/setquota used to set disk quotas on users is in /usr/sbin and not in /usr/bin.

[/usr/lib]

This is where Unix supplied software development libraries go.

[/usr/include]

This is where Unix supplied (predominantly C and C++) include files are placed.

[/usr/share]

System documentation, the man pages, and spelling dictionaries are examples of the files found in /usr/share. They are read-only files used by the system under normal (multi-user) operation.

By now /usr/share is full of further subdivisions since many programs and systems need a place to put their read-only information. For example there is a /usr/share/cups for the Common Unix Printing System to store information about printers, etc.

[/usr/local]

System administrators may add additional local data and programs to their system. It make sense that these would be segregated from the rest of the files under /usr that come with Unix. The contents of /usr/local are local to the machine and are further subdivided into programs in /usr/local/bin and read-only data for these programs in /usr/local/share.

[/usr/X11...]

Once, one of the biggest subsystems in Unix was it's support for the graphical user interface known as the X window system. There were development libraries and include files, commands, man pages, and other executables. Rather than swamping the neat file hierarchy with these new files they were placed under a single subdirectory of /usr. You will probably not need to look at this very often.

[/home]

Users home directories are placed here; mine is /home/todd. Often /home is on a different physical partition so that it can be unmounted and a new version of the operating system can be installed without touching /home.

[/tmp]

Temporary files, for example that don't need to be backed up, are placed here.

[/mnt]

I've mentioned mounting and unmounting. Unix systems support a number of different filesystem formats, and devices can contain multiple filesystems (for example on distinct partitions). These filesystem become accessible once they are mounted into the hierarchy. Users need to temporarily (and now automatically) mount USB drives somewhere so that their files can be accessed via a pathname. In the past, users would just pick a directory to mount over. Now, it's traditional for temporary mounts to be placed in /mnt.

[/dev]

In Unix, low level access to devices is done through device drivers that support a number of file interfaces. Because they appear as special files they can be found under this directory. This is a convenience for programs because it makes naming and access to devices very similar to naming for ordinary files.

[Finding out more information about Unix and its hierarchy]

The Unix manual pages are a great resource. Originally, the manual was a physical book (I've still got a couple) divided into sections. Section 1 were the commands one might type on the command line. Now it is much easier to simply use the man command to access the exact same content. Use a terminal and enter "man ls", for example, to get all the information on the ls command to list directory contents. (You will be surprised at the number of options.)

When you aren't sure of the command's name try the command "apropos" followed by a word you'd like to find the man page for. Passwords are an important subject so "apropos password" on my system lists 47 different manual pages for information on passwords. I see one listed as "passwd(1)". The (1) means it's section one so its about a command named "passwd", the command for changing your password.

Here are the sections:

(1) Commands

(2) System calls

(3) Library functions

(4) Special files like device files

(5) File formats

(6) Recreations like games

(7) Misc info

(8) System admin and daemons

If I was looking for the format of the password file I would enter the section number 5 as the first argument to the man command: "man 5 passwd". This would show me the documentation for the password file, /etc/passwd.

Filesystem hierarchy manual page: "man 7 hier" or, since it is in only one section: "man hier". To find the name, "hier", of this man page one could have used the command "apropos filesystem".

I hope this helps; it's probably too long.

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

</comment><comment><USER11> A lot of people talking about FHS here, let us not forget history.

[http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074...](http://lists.busybox.net/pipermail/busybox/2010-December/074114.html)

<comment><USER12> For more on which see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11647304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11647304), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3519952) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9554134) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Version control of installed packages would be awesome. I am still on Arch coz I am lazy. It would be perfect if it worked like nixpkg or guix but simpler

<comment><USER14> Nix is much easier than it used to be, _assuming_ you go all-in. Specifically, NixOS is; nix-without-NixOS has weird corners.

If you haven't tried it in the last year or two, then you might want to give it another try. Keep to some simple rules:

\- Look for 'enable' toggles for particular software (for configuration.nix), rather than adding just the package. If it exists, use it; it wraps any extra configuration that's needed.

\- Don't use nix-env. If you want a package installed temporarily, use nix- shell. Your system is probably single-user anyway, right? This way you can put configuration.nix in git.

\- If you must use unpackaged software, then install and use steam-run. Despite the name, it's really just an Ubuntu-esque chroot. (...which duplicates the Steam runtime environment, yeah.)

Forcing people to build package recipes for everything they want to use is helpful, but not actually required. :)

<comment><USER15> I came here to ask how GoboLinux compares to NixOS, because NixOS sounds like the perfect distro to me, and your comment pushed me to actually try it, thanks.

<comment><USER16> If you have any trouble/questions, drop in on #nixos in Freenode

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So they take the MacOS file structure to Linux? Sounds horrible to me. I always loved the structure of the Unix file system. It's simple and rather efficient. You wonder if a specific binary is installed? Look in /bin. You wonder if where to configure something? Look in /etc. You want to write a program that gives you a list of all binaries installed (like a shell)? Use the path variable that contains a few paths and check their contents. In gobolinux this variable is either huge or they use yet another mechanism. It clearly will not get better though.

The file structure should be efficient for the computer and can be abstract for the user as they want a icon on their desktop and not much more.

<comment><USER18> You think /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin (and so on) is simple and efficient?

You do know it's a hack because the original Unix computer was running out of space and they hadn't invented Union mounts yet... right?

<comment><USER19> I think "/usr/bin" is simple and efficient, and Fedora/CentOS have converged on that a couple of years ago (/bin is a symlink to /usr/bin on those distros). /sbin is the same (linked to /usr/sbin).

I find macOS paths atrocious (too long, too inconsistent, and derived completely outside of UNIX traditions and norms) and I certainly wouldn't want them on my Linux system.

Discussion of the usr move on Fedora: [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/UsrMove)

Folks can progress without throwing away decades of tradition and tribal knowledge.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure I follow you; naming is an area where "UNIX traditions and norms" is clearly an example NOT to follow.

<comment><USER19> Why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is exactly what I have wanted for many years. This helps make Linux understandable and accessible to new computer users. Fantastic work, and thank you!

</comment><comment><USER22> That's cool and all, but oh dear god WHY did you have to capitalize things?! BLASPHEMY.

<comment><USER9> Capitalizing the directory names is a way to guarantee that they will not conflict with the directories in the legacy file system hierarchy.

<comment><USER22> I find that to be quite a weak argument. Avoid conflicting with known standard structures such as "bin" ans "etc" if necessary (which it isn't—you could theoretically run all applications in a filesystem namespace mimicking their expected structure), but that should be the only concern. Non-standard structures might clash anyway (capitalized folders in root does unfortunately occur).

<comment><USER9> The known standard does change though. For example, since Gobolinux came out in 2003 the FSH added /run and /sys...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is incredibly sane.

What a nice logical system, I've been a Linux user for about 15 years but would definitely prefer this.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've always wondered why things wasn't set up like this from the beginning, much less pain for humans!

<comment><USER25> Because computers where originally designed to work within the given limitations.

In current time, where we have more computing power and storage than we know what to do with it, we can allow computers to be inefficient for the sake of becoming easier to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So place your programs in a directory structure that makes sense and use symlinks to maintain compatibility. Simple and elegant.

But... how do I go about actually installing those programs? Web search and then git-clone / manual download? How are dependencies resolved? Admittedly I haven't read the documentation, just the overview.

On a related note, I feel like Arch struck a nice balance with pacman and AUR.

<comment><USER27> There are two sets of programs/scripts (much of the gobo tools are actually shell scripts, with a few binaries or python scripts for higher performance). Scripts and Compile.

[https://github.com/gobolinux/Scripts/tree/master/bin](https://github.com/gobolinux/Scripts/tree/master/bin)

[https://github.com/gobolinux/Compile/tree/master/bin](https://github.com/gobolinux/Compile/tree/master/bin)

A package in Gobolinux is basically a tar-ball of the versioned dir in /Programs.

So if a precompiled version is available in the Gobo repo (sadly fairly limited as there is not really any resources for a compile farm available), InstallPackage will fetch the latest from there, unpack it, and run SymlinkProgram to have /System/Index updated.

Inside each package or recipe there is a Resources directory, inside there are a few files that describe the program or recipe, and a list of dependencies. these are parsed before compile or install, and additional updates/installs suggested.

Compile is the recipe equivalent of InstallPackage. It will parse a recipe, check dependencies, and download the source from the included url. The compilation and install will then take place in a union mount overlaying /System/Index, redirecting writes to the target dir in /Programs. After that completes successfully, SymlinkProgram will again be run to update /System/Index.

If you want to make a new recipe, there is MakeRecipe. You give it a name, a version number and a url (though it can attempt to guess the first two from the tar-ball name if left blank), and it downloads the tar-ball, unpacks it, and sets up a basic recipe of the content is one of the tools it has built in support for. Mostly a recipe is a set of steps to make things compile, things like switches to pass to configure.

If you simply want to a newer version of an existing recipe, there is NewVersion. All you may need to feed it is the new version number, though it may need a url as well if the one from previous recipes are no longer valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've occasionally played with Gobo for years now. I am delighted to see it coming back to life of late.

One thing I've always thought would be ideal would be if either or both of the 2 Linux desktops that natively implement the idea of application-directories were top support Gobo app-dirs.

Those 2 are GNUstep:

[http://www.gnustep.org/](http://www.gnustep.org/)

... and the ROX Desktop:

[http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/](http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/)

GNUstep implements NeXTstep/macOS style app dirs: a top-level Appname.app folder with an OS X-like structure inside it.

ROX Desktop implements Acorn RISC OS-style app dirs, called

!Appname

... and containing a different but comparable layout.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's currently pretty annoying to set up gobolinux in "home-dir" mode. I tried, and the documentation failed to link to the correct scripts, and after searching the scripts out, I got a "permission denied" error when I tried to download them, and a request for a user/password combo that wasn't documented anywhere.

What I wanted to do was create an "append only" "everything is installed" operating system on top of ipfs. Gobo, with it's ability to have multiple versions of each component in the same tree, seemed perfect for that. The idea being that you just run an executable right out of the ipfs mount.

<comment><USER27> Best i understand, the "home-dir" mode, or Rootless, was depreciated because it needed a major rework to be compatible wit their switch to the /usr like /System/Index.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Gobo is a cool district - one of my favorites. I used it for a while in college with good success. Back then I recall the process for packaging being a little rough.

I should give it another go to see how it has evolved.

<comment><USER27> The change from /System/Links to /System/Index was done in part because of the issues with packaging.

While Links used a gobo unique set of directory names to house the symlinks, Index basically acts like /usr/local.

meaning that these days a compile is done pretty much as if one would do ./configure --prefix=/usr/local. But the install stage is captured by a union mount and the files transferred to their designated location in /Programs.

Sadly this change makes it that much harder to run Gobolinux in Rootless form out of a home dir or similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Kind of interesting, but honestly I'd like to see a much more drastic departure from UNIX roots. If you want to clean things up, go all in. I wouldn't hire a cleaning service to clean 1/5th of my house (especially if they left some clutter in that 1/5th because they thought I might miss it).

A small change like this is cool but pacman/aur leaves almost nothing to be desired for dealing with my programs. I do like the idea, but I would need to see a compelling philosophy for the __whole__ system.

</comment><comment><USER32> Have to say -- it's looking real good otherwise. Cool scifi fonts and colors, awesome by default. Apparently it also skips systemd and pulseaudio -- a big plus, a big plus indeed.

</comment><comment><USER33> I like this a lot. This seems to be how it should be. However, not sure I'd use it. I guess I'll try it out in a VM and see how it goes :)

</comment><comment><USER27> A little something to note, with the latest release there is a tool, Alien, that integrate language specific package managers with the Gobolinux directory tree.

Meaning that downloads from cpan or similar will be placed in a sub-directory of /Programs and managed just like any other Gobolinux package.

Right now perl, python, ruby, and lua are supported (afaik).

</comment><comment><USER34> I live the gobo fs, but I don't lie the rest of the distro that much. I've often though a bigger distro like manjaro could use the fs and show the world how good it is.

I've been sysadmining for a long time, and even I get lost in the old dir structure sometimes, I've just gotten good at the find command.

</comment><comment><USER35> Copyright 2002-2017... must've been going for quite a while now.

<comment><USER36> Indeed, 2003 was the first stable release: [https://gobolinux.org/releases.html](https://gobolinux.org/releases.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was interested in Gobo a few years ago, but I was a bit turned off by learning that it achieves this mostly by using a lot of symlinks.

<comment><USER38> ...and? What's wrong with simlinks?

<comment><USER27> Likely parroting the age old claim that symlinks are inefficient.

<comment><USER37> No, I just think it's a messy way to address the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's funny how more and more macos designs are being copied over. First systemd, now this.

<comment><USER40> GoboLinux was first released in 2003.

<comment><USER41> ...and the NextStep/OSX layout is from '88.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> They are basically doing what GNU Stow does for everything. I enjoy the isolation but a normal package manager is in my experience more comfortable.</comment>


Elon Musk Releases All Tesla Patents to Help Save the Eart - <AUTHOR> https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/elon-musk-releases-all-tesla-patents-to-help-save-the-earth-1986450 <comment><USER2> What does the "in good faith" mean?

Of course if as a hobby I want to use their patent to help me build/improve my electric car, then now they won't sue me. But the question is, what if I'm Tesla's competitor, or if I want to be, will they allow me to use their patent when I'm trying to compete with them, and "steal their business"? Because no one will use their patent if they might sue them after for "using their patent against them", but on the other hand, is using their invention against them "good faith"?

Is there no proper and legal way to share their invention that indicates exactly what can and can't be done(something like an open source license)?

<comment><USER3> > Is there no proper and legal way to share their invention that indicates > exactly what can and can't be done(something like an open source license)?

Yes, this is usually done with broad cross licensing agreements and/or patent pools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Earth*. Also (2014): [https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong- you](https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you)

This is what probably triggered to re-print of old news: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1091080660100440065](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1091080660100440065)</comment>


GoPro Camera Captures What Exactly a Log Sees as It Passes Through Sawmill Line - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/video/gopro-camera-captures-what-exactly-a-log-sees-as-it-passes-through-the-sawmill-line <comment><USER2> I find industrial processes fascinating. I suspect many other people do as well, hence the popularity of How It's Made and related shows.

<comment><USER3> Another fun thing to watch is slow motion video of process defects. There's a few on this channel but if you dig around you'll find some cool ones.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdvDMFuYmmc8Fpp53JbNg...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdvDMFuYmmc8Fpp53JbNg5Caf6CebuTyz)

Some of these processes go so fast that things like aerodynamic lift and standing waves in feed stock can blow up a run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I nominate this for the intro to the next season of Twin Peaks.</comment>


Faber boss says future of book publishing is mobile - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/04/faber-stephen-page-book-publishing-mobile <comment> chestnut-tree Books come in an enormous variety of shapes and sizes. E-book readers, tablets and smartphones, in contrast, come in very limited sizes.

You cannot always successfully transpose the content from a physical book to a smaller electronic device, at least not without re-designing the layout of the book.

Plain text books, such as fiction, are the most easily adaptable to smaller electonic displays. But many other books require a redesign to make them suitable for reading electronically. For example, the simple act of scanning a two-page spread with your eyes is difficult or impossible to do on mobile devices (and not very comfortable if done on a big monitor compared to holding a book or magazine in your hand).

So E-books will evolve, but physical books have a long shelf life ahead of them.

<comment><USER2> > Books come in an enormous variety of shapes and sizes. E-books, tablets and > smartphones, in contrast, come in very limited sizes.

There's actually a fairly wide size range of devices that are ereaders or have ereader software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe books resiliency has more to do with the aberrant prices for ebooks? They are rarely cheaper than physical books and I often find them to be even more expensive!

Either way, I hope that phones do not become the preferred way to read books, I really like my e-reader, if only the technology seemed a little more modern (Its hardly changed in 5+ years) I think they would have no problem becoming more popular.

<comment><USER2> > They are rarely cheaper than physical books and I often find them to be even > more expensive!

ebooks are easier to store, easier to back up, and easier to access where and when you want than paper books, and can support functions (search, etc.) that paper books don't. There's a good case that -- outside of the downsides of DRM for those books that are burden by it -- ebooks are just plain _better_ than paper books in many ways. So its not really unreasonable that they'd be more expensive (books generally _don 't_ have direct substitutes, and the ebook and physical version of the same book don't come from competing entities, so the tendency for a perfectly competitive market to drive prices down to production costs is mitigated -- OTOH, the forces driving prices _up_ to marginal utility are present just fine.)

<comment><USER4> I understand the upsides of ebooks, but this often happens with technical ebooks too. You know, ones containing equations and diagrams, which are atrocious as ebooks with few exceptions (one that comes to mind is Knuth's TAOCP -- it is decent as an ebook, but that took a lot of effort from a team at Stanford).

<comment><USER2> Actually, technical ebooks are the ones I find most valuable (I tend to prefer a 12" tablet as a reading device for them, though there are some that have decent PDF versions.)

<comment><USER5> What is your preferred 12" tablet?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The gig economy is here to stay. So making it fairer must be a priority - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/03/gig-economy-zero-hours-contracts-ethics <comment><USER2> "But the most glaring omission of all in the report is no mention of trade unions – not one case history citing an innovative trade union response nor one recommendation about how gig workers could win greater bargaining heft. Unions could, for example, develop into fully fledged worker co-operatives hiring out workers to gig employers and providing benefits as members of the co-operative. There could be a reform of collective bargaining. There could be a wave of apps in which gig workers band together, share information and even act together. That the report could identify no such initiatives, nor think of any of its own, is a telling indictment."

Hypothesis: The reason that we're not seeing any kind of worker cooperatives is that the people who have the leadership and technical skills to create them from the digital ether are too busy being lured to a handful of towns in California promising them vast riches to propel the engines of economic violence.</comment>


Ask HN: Can you negotiate the opposite way after an offer? - <AUTHOR> I started a SaaS startup last year. Launched; found good product market fit; have a $208k run rate for the year. Adding customers pretty steadily.
I was reached out to by a former colleague who heard what I was doing. Had a few meetings and saw this guy as being a great first step towards getting me off biz dev and letting me focus on tech.
While the company is doing well, it still needs a lot of work. I mulled it over and saw him basically coming on as a co-founder. Many people I asked said he should get 5-15% which I felt was insulting given where I am in the process.
I came to him with a verbal "pre-negotiated" offer meaning I've already accounted for back and forth between both parties because I hate wasting time. The offer was a solid 40% which I felt was an incredible offer.
He then spent a month in back forth trying to get to 50%. In his defense, he threw out some very aggressive and generous conditions to get to 50% but I kept saying 40% is where I'm drawing the line. We're still in limbo.
I've started evaluating other ways to push the needle and part of that is just raising 500k via notes from some friends, family, and execs of my last two companies. Informally, it seems like I could close this in less than a month and get an engineer and the first "sales person."
However, if I do the note and the first person, I wouldn't have 40% to give him. It would be closer to like 30%, which is still a a great IMO.
Can I reneg from 40 to 30? To be clear, I want to work with this guy and he brings a ton of value. But in the time that he's tried to get to 50% I think I've found a better use of that 10% maybe 15% on the cap table? <comment><USER2> I think you should hire him with a small salary, make his stake less than 50%, vesting over 4 years.</comment>


How Microsoft avoided the IPO scam that LinkedIn just fell for - <AUTHOR> http://yllus.com/2011/05/21/how-microsoft-avoided-the-ipo-scam-that-linkedin-just-fell-for/ <comment><USER3> Microsoft closed up ~60% on the first day. At the peak on the first day is was up more than that (~80% IIRC).

Microsoft did no different to LinkedIn, Gates actually wanted to price the stock lower to assure that a liquid market would be created. They re-priced the listing late in the process, just like LinkedIn did.

Most of the Microsoft negotiation with Goldman was about commission charges.

This was all the same thing, both hot stocks who could dictate a lot of their own terms. The only difference is that we got a good insight into the Microsoft process via that Fortune article and the only insight we got into LinkedIn were press releases (most announcing another tilt up in the price)

See my last comment about how list pricing works and why nobody got 'ripped off':

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2571248>

<comment><USER4> I'm not a finance guy </disclaimer>

I think the closing price of the first day is irrelevant, my understanding is that the opening price is the issue. LNKD started trading above $80 a share, while the bankers priced the shares at $45 -- a huge delta that means that their customers realized a large windfall instantaneously and LNKD could have raised nearly twice the capital at the same dilution.

Compare that to MSFT, which was sold by the company at $21 while the first trade was $25.50 ([http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2006/03/16/looking- back-...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2006/03/16/looking-back- microsoft-ipo-march-1986/)) -- a much smaller gap.

Once it's on the open market, anything can happen. The issue at hand is if the bankers low-balled LNKD in order to guarantee huge returns for their institutional customers, short-changing the company.

A note to all not-yet-public companies: the banks are not on your side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are some details of trading on the day of the offering: "Microsoft had its initial public offering on March 14th, 1986. Microsoft was initially priced at $21. However, due to intense demand, the stock first traded at $25.50. Microsoft peaked the first day at $29.25 The stock closed on the first day at $27.75. The stock had a volume of over 3.5 million shares, larger than the 3 million shares offered in the IPO."

Source: Microsoft Stock Split History | eHow.com [http://www.ehow.com/about_5077008_microsoft-stock-split- hist...](http://www.ehow.com/about_5077008_microsoft-stock-split-history.html)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the source - I had a vague idea of the numbers. I am now trying to find the first week and month performance, because IIRC it went very very well.

LinkedIn and Microsoft both listed with similar revenue numbers (adjusted for inflation, $266M for MSFT vs $240M for LinkedIn) except LinkedIn are growing a lot faster, and Microsoft had a 35% net margin with no long term debt (almost all self funded) vs $105M raised by LinkedIn and still in growth/development stage. Very different market caps at list time, but the market fixed that for MSFT over the years afterwards

<comment><USER5> Yahoo Finance has the first week and first month prices. According to Yahoo Finance, the first day of trading was March 13, 1986, which is one day earlier than the date that is on the eHow article I linked to. I think March 13 is correct (it matches the date on a file I found on Microsoft's website for calculating the value of shares purchased from IPO: [http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Downloads/Stock%20Informat...](http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Downloads/Stock%20Information/IPOsharecalc.xls))

Here's a link to the Yahoo Finance page I mentioned (prices rounded to quarter of a dollar): [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=MSFT&a=02&b=13&c...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=MSFT&a=02&b=13&c=1986&d=03&e=12&f=1986&g=d)

According to the numbers on Yahoo Finance, the first week arithmetic return (relative to IPO price, not the opening trade price) was, at close on March 19: (28.25-21) / 21 = 34.5%, and the first month return was, at close on April 11: (28.75-21) / 21 = 36.9%

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was surprised to learn that Sun, Oracle, and Microsoft went public within days of each other in March 1986. What a week!

</comment><comment><USER7> For an industry founded on the bedrock principle that the efficient allocation of capital is king, IPO mechanics strike me as inefficient: Money on the table, expensive fixers, etc. Auctions seem like a superficially more efficient mechanism for pricing an IPO and distributing shares. How about this:

Solicit bids for shares. After bidding, sell all shares to the bidders for the highest price at which all shares are sold.

(I suspect that this would also work well for concert tickets.)

<comment><USER8> And this is essentially how Google IPOed, using a "Dutch" auction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> MSFT's IPO was 25 years ago, at the dawn of the Information Age. LNKD was post-Google (and post-GOOG) and, well, have access to an automated system for finding friends of friends who are the best experts in the word on any topic, including IPO pricing. They have no excuse for leaving so much money on the table.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have always wondered why the big banks were so eager to work an IPO - <USER2> there must be more money in playing the market.

Which makes me think: couldn't a company simply get a law firm to write and file the documents needed? I realize that it would cost a lot of money, but it must still be cheaper than being taken to the cleaners by the banks.

<comment><USER11> Preparing for an IPO is tough enough on senior management at the company as it is, let alone having to arrange underwriting, vendor placings, etc, without qualified professionals holding your hand. Lawyers know the law, not the market.

Also, who would do the pricing (flawed as it may be?)

Also, in the UK, a 'sponsor' (typically, a financial institution, like an ibank - <http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Doing/UKLA/sponsors/index.shtml>) is very often required, by law and by stock market listing/trading rules, to be involved throughout a stock offering to the public. Sensible, or regulatory capture? It may be a bit of both.

Likewise, it's tricky for lawyers here to advise on the offering of shares to the public (it's a "regulated activity" per s21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 - <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/8/section/21> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why couldn't Microsoft say to Goldman: "If the average price on the first day is more than 30% of what we get, your commission is reduced" ?

<comment><USER11> For a setup with conflicts of interest left right and centre, you end up adding another: a bank wanting to depress the share price once it hits a threshold. Who, if that were to happen, would buy a share knowing Goldman's eagle eyes are on it, ready to slap it back down to 30%?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Avoided? Microsoft's stock price went on to increase 600X. Anyone who could get in on the IPO stood to make millions.

<comment><USER14> However, unlike LinkedIn, it took longer than a few minutes on the stock market.

<comment><USER13> Microsoft was up nearly 100% on the first day, and closed somewhere around 50-60% up.</comment></comment></comment>


Lavabit gets new crypto key, gives users 72 hours to recover e-mails - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/lavabit-gets-new-crypto-key-gives-users-72-hours-to-recover-e-mails/ <comment><USER2> The new certificate does not offer Forward Secrecy [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=liberty.lavab...](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=liberty.lavabit.com)

Does this not mean that the NSA could patiently log all the traffic going in and out of the site over the next few days, then get a court order for this new SSL private key, then decrypt the traffic they collected?

I may have misunderstood, but doesn't that make this something of a trojan horse? Many users will login and try to download all their email, and for everyone who does, when the NSA (very likely) get a court order for the new SSL key, they'll have that large amount of private email everyone tried to copy from the site?

<comment><USER3> Destroy the key immediately after the 72 hours?

EDIT: And hope the relevant courts are not running _during_ those 72 hours?

<comment><USER2> Perhaps... but does it not seem rather a little odd that someone so knowledgeable about security who had Forward Secrecy on before would now /accidentally/ get a new certificate without it?

This doesn't make sense, he would have had forward secrecy on unless there was some reason not to do so (like he was compelled not to, or if he isn't even the one doing all this).

<comment><USER4> If he intended to give the government access to your email, wouldn't there be much easier to implement and harder to detect ways of accomplishing it than a wonky cipher suite setting?

<comment><USER5> This is probably wandering too far into conspiracy territory, but what if he's being forced to do it but doesn't want to, and this is his way of obeying badly?

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's at all too far into conspiracy territory. Keep in mind that him being forced to do something and obeying badly (because he couldn't talk publicly about it) is a pretty precise description of the events leading up to the shutdown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't trust this. The government could be running the site now. It's happened before.

<comment><USER8> Occam's razor, for once, actually supports the conspiracy theory.

It's far more likely that Levison has been bullied into 72 hours of snooping to avoid contempt than that he's suddenly decided, months after shutting down, for no reason at all, to open up a window for users to grab their emails.

<comment><USER9> wut.

Occam's razor says he replaced the compromised ssl key (the one the court ordered him to hand over)

Ladar shut down his servers than accept snooping on all his users, I certainly doubt he just decided after all this fighting to just give up.

<comment><USER8> So then he suddenly, after all this time, woke up and decided, "hey, you know all those hosts I shut down and mothballed? I'm going to fire them up NOW, spend some time restoring backups, reconfiguring things where necessary, while facing possible contempt charges, for an arbitrary number of hours, with a new keypair, signed by a US certification authority, without ephemeral keys, and invite everyone who has been avoiding snooping by state entities to log in with their private credentials!" ?

He could have done this a while ago, but he didn't.

He could have relaunched fully, under a new entity, but he didn't.

He chose NOW, to relaunch for only 72 hours. Why?

<comment><USER9> The warrant that was given to him only asked for the ssl keys.

The court records were just unseal on October 2nd.

>He could have done this a while ago, but he didn't.

Maybe he's been working on it since the 2nd?

>He could have relaunched fully, under a new entity, but he didn't.

Why would that change anything? This would only serve to hurt his existing customers.

>He chose NOW, to relaunch for only 72 hours. Why?

Again, maybe he's been working on it since the 2nd?

<comment><USER8> Well, it's certainly possible, but I'd like to point out one thing. IANAL, but I've been through enough to know that courts will often/always consider the aspect of compliance known as "good faith". It's almost certain that handing over the key and them immediately changing it would be seen by the presiding judge as compliance in bad faith, and would put him in a substantially worse position with regard to possible contempt. Given this, unless Levison is legally suicidal, I think it's a fair bet that any relaunch using a new key pair was done, at the very least, with the blessing of the feds and/or the judge. And I can only think of one reason the feds would give such a blessing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This really makes little sense. The service was designed so that the data was encrypted.

He could just let people download their data and decrypt it locally. Instead the site is prompting you for a password which it could freely capture.

<comment><USER11> how do you authenticate the said person so you could allow she/he to download her/his data?

<comment><USER12> Why would you need to? The data is encrypted by the password.

<comment><USER13> Particularly weak passwords could be brute forced with a dictionary attack.

<comment><USER12> In that case, the feds already have it ...

<comment><USER13> Yes, but no doubt some of Lavabit's users are more worried about random or targeted hackers, and not so worried about the US government. No need to give everyone the data just because one group already has it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Since the SSL certificates formerly used to protect access to Lavabit have > been compromised, we recommend manually validating the serial number and > fingerprint your computer received before using this website. > [[https://liberty.lavabit.com/](https://liberty.lavabit.com/)]

What? If an active attacker is changing certificates on the fly, he's also surely able to change the values in the HTML content of the page.

This will add absolutely no security for the users, only false sense of security via complex-looking measures, and he should know this.

<comment><USER15> Hopefully liberty.lavabit.com uses a new uncompromised cert?

<comment><USER14> The point is that if it is uncompromised we are safe, if it isn't writing the fingerprint in the HTML will be of no help at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So he hadn't deleted everything? I presumed he had not only shuttered the service, but also that he had deleted everything.

<comment><USER17> Destroying everything is kind of permanent. Even if he wins the court battle, he loses.

<comment><USER18> I suspect he would have deleted everything if he could (when we shut down our mail service at Silent Circle, we deleted everything specifically because we still could). If he did it after this whole show got started, it would very likely have led to even more significant contempt (or even obstruction) charges.

Destroying everything does indeed cause some pain, but it also sets a very definite upper bound on just how much pain is possible (especially for your customers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a trap?

<comment><USER20> With Forward Secrecy disabled when it wasn't before, it only being a quick configuration change to re-enable it (I'm talking two or three lines in Apache or nginx), and no discernible gain in disabling it other than to make it easier for people to look through the traffic after the fact... it's almost the only explanation.

Either that or there's an amount of incompetence here that should might as well amount to the same degree of stay away.

However, the server is probably not actively compromised, because if it was they could use PFS and still listen in. It is still required, however, that they'll need either to own this key pair being used at some point to listen in to the traffic.

But that would mean that they can likely change the key pair on the server but for some reason they can't enable PFS, even though once they have access to the server in production, PFS is useless... so... who knows on that part.

tl;dr: If they get the key pair later (even if years later through brute forcing or whatnot) and don't have access to the server, then PFS disabled is a bad thing. If they have control over the server or the server logs all the session keys and they receive these at some point in time, then PFS enabled is, of course, a useless thing. If they don't get the key pair at any point, then it's fine, but I'd consider that unlikely.

Edit: The proper way forward is to estimate the chance they will get the key, which might as well call at 50-50, multiply that by the losses you would incur where they to gain access to these emails (and that's likely to amount to $0 for the vast majority, sorry if I'm being presumptuous and devaluing privacy) and compare that to the losses incurred if you didn't have access to these emails. Counter-intuitively arising from that, for some it might even make sense to connect assuming that traffic is intercepted, to show that they are boring and are using Lavabit for very mundane reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This has got to be an FBI orchestrated trap!

</comment><comment><USER22> The original key was revoked by the CA. Lavabit couldn't operate with the original key even if they wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER23> Did anyone else take a look at the site source code?

For a trap, it's pretty damn obvious. The form submits the user name and password in plain text over the "secured" connection--the one that doesn't support forward secrecy, operated by a provider who's already known to be compelled to disclose SSL private keys.

Further, I can't imagine Ladar willingly set this up. This means that not only can they compel Ladar to hand over his private SSL keys, but they can apparently compel him to take positive action to fuck over his users. <s> Talk about a free country! </s>

</comment><comment><USER24> Hypothetically speaking, could you download the files over Tor from public wifi and be protected? Or, is Tor now considered insecure due to exit node monitoring?

<comment><USER25> This is orthogonal to Tor.

SSL protects an adversary from seeing _what_ you're talking about, not _who_ you're talking to.

Tor will prevent an adversary from seeing _who_ you're talking to, but not (in itself) _what_ you're talking about[0].

Here, the topic of concern is an adversary (in this case, the government) finding out _what_ you're talking about, so Tor isn't relevant.

[0]Because the last step is unencrypted and sent in plain text, even though intermediate steps are encrypted.

<comment><USER24> Thank you for the explanation. I guess my previous thought was made under the assumption that this was not some sort of law enforcement honeypot. If in fact they are just listening for your username/password on the server, there ain't no way around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> given the government is behind all this (which, after all, isn't too unlikely) at least some thug at some agency is now furious because of us here and commenters all over the web warning people. the question arising in their minds, and certainly meetings, is "what to do about people talking?".

now, you'll just wait what happens and be as surprised by the outcome as you've been with the surveillance revelations this year.

brave new world.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's a trap.</comment>


Employee #1: Airbnb - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/07/nick-grandy/ <comment><USER2> I think this is the 2nd such interview where an early employee was a founder of a different YC startup that fizzled out. I think it underscores one of the powerful aspects of YC as a network–the startups that fail become a solid pool of candidates for the ones that take off. They've already been vetted as resourceful hackers (or they wouldn't have go into YC) and they're already accustomed to the startup life (not like you're trying to poach them from Google).

If it was planned this way, it was very smart. If it was an unintended consequence, its very fortunate.

<comment><USER3> Something similar happened to me going through the Startup Bootcamp incubator in Europe. In the end, the best leads come from your network. As you said they are already vetted and you have already worked with them through the program so the decision becomes much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So as employee #1 of a ten billion dollar company, what was the equity portion of his compensation like? So many YC companies sell equity as a higher risk replacement for salary. What does the outcome look like in a case like Airbnb where the company was a huge success?

Has he even been allowed to keep his shares or sell them on a secondary market like early facebook employees did?

<comment><USER5> I think this would have been a good question to answer. I recognize that Nick might be uncomfortable answering it.

There are always questions around how "successful" employees are versus founders, and the situations all are a bit different. For example, in my experience I was employee #9 at GolfWeb (a startup in 1995) and my stock was worthless when CBS Interactive acquired the company, I was employee 1990 at Sun and at Sun's peak valuation in 1998 the total stock I had owned would have been worth over $10M (I didn't have it all at that point :-), having sold much of it for mundane things like down payments on houses and cars and such, but the point was the equity from Sun was much higher than it was from the "startup" and I wasn't a founder in either case) People who joined Google (or Apple!) in 2009 and are still there, probably did quite well on their stock if they held it.

To answer your more basic question, when you exercise your option at a non- publicly traded startup, your shares will be covered by the purchase contract that is included in the option. That contract can (and often does) restrict to whom you can re-sell those securities. As the company keeps the books on who actually owns the shares, they have a lot of control over them. For example they can refuse to transfer them to a buyer when you and the buyer approach them to settle your transaction.

And since there aren't a lot of liquidity events where employees can sell stocks these days, its an interesting question to explore.

<comment><USER6> I think you interviewed me at GolfWeb! You made me an offer there but I declined and went to iPass. Small world.

<comment><USER5> The SF Bay area is exceptionally small in many ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The importance of having an MVP out there that potential first employees can play around with:

'Whereas with the Airbnb guys, they were super early and small but they had a product, a V1, that was up and running. And the product was working. I used it as part of my application process and was like "Yes, this is super cool, this works, I can totally envision this growing and taking over the world and I want to help do that."'

</comment><comment><USER8> Really enjoying this. Tiny typo: andd -> and

</comment><comment><USER9> The question I want answered is how much money did he make

<comment><USER10> he hasn't yet, no mention of selling anything on the secondary market, and no IPO so we just have to assume he still has his illiquid shares</comment></comment>


The Homeless Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://blog.willwashburn.com/post/12316569253/the-homeless-entrepreneur

<comment><USER3> This is like an extreme way to make your startup work. Don't know but looks like too much. The question is : will you be worrying about your users, next feature, server load etc or where to find a friend's couch.

Anyway, its an interesting way to test the guts. Question to all hackers and entrepreneur: though it shows that the guy is determined to make his startup work, it can also be termed as foolish (in common _default_ sense) - which way you go?

<comment><USER4> Blog post OP here:

Interesting points about the about the mental capital angle. I'd like to think I can just focus on my users, but the reality is that I'd probably be more focused on where'd I'd be sleeping that night.

I think you can make an argument that even jumping into a startup is common sense foolish - that is, you're risking way more than what is normal. What I've given up in opportunity costs in other careers is already huge - <USER2> just feels like another step. I've always tried to live by the "go big or go home" mantra. In this case, it's quite literal.

<comment><USER3> You are right will. In every sense of it. Anyone starting a startup would want to succeed. I will do this too. Its that, your post gives me a new level of extreme. Startups are hard, we get to hear the success stories all around. But your post was an exception and it gives real sense of what a founder goes through before he makes it.

Nice post.</comment></comment></comment>