A 140-Acre Forest Is About to Materialize in the Middle of Detroit - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/10/140-acre-forest-about-materialize-middle-detroit/7371/ <comment><USER2> Personally I think this is an excellent idea. If nothing else growing hardwords on unused land at least puts it to use. The fact that they are going to leave all of the streets in place means it is going to become quite strange to drive around in. When I was growing up in Vegas, before it covered the valley, aggressive developers had gone out and put in streets where "new developments" would someday be, and driving around had that weird feeling of sort of a maze race track. Hansel and Gretel probably will feel right at home :-).

<comment><USER3> I wonder who will be responsible for maintaining the streets? My guess is that will still fall on the city of Detroit (because the farm is paying taxes).

<comment><USER4> They could always let them go back to gravel roads; _much_ cheaper to maintain, and if they're just for traversing through the hardwoods "forest", your top speed should be no more than ~20 mph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't a forest. It's a for-profit business that happens to be a farm in the middle of a major city.

That said, I'm really excited about this. The project is removing blight and contributing much needed tax dollars to the city.

<comment><USER6> Is "for-profit" incompatible with "forest"? It certainly doesn't seem to be....

<comment><USER2> Of course not, you need only drive around the managed forests in Oregon to see some. (and it really tweeks your brain to see a forest where all the trees are exactly the same age for the most part!)

<comment><USER7> Obligatory video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQobzdCNDgQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQobzdCNDgQ)

Before anyone freaks out, note that (as ChuckMcM said) all these trees are almost exactly the same size/age. This isn't an old-growth forest -- it's a lot closer to harvesting a field of corn.

<comment><USER8> Did you actually think that they were somehow planting an "old-growth" forest?

<comment><USER7> What made you think that? I said nothing of the sort.

Judging from the comments on the video, there are plenty of people who do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _" planting 15,000 trees, and mowing regularly."_

I guess the idea behind the mowing is that you want to prevent the weeds from choking out the saplings? Otherwise "mowing" and "forest" seem kind of mutually exclusive to me.

<comment><USER10> In this area, if you just let some land go that started as grassland, in the first couple of years it will be mostly weeds, then for the next several years it will become overrun by shrubs, such as [1]. At the height of this phase, the land is essentially uncrossable on foot, covered with 10-15 foot tall sharp, spiky plants that are not very hard compared to most wood, but certainly much harder than your skin.

Over the next couple of decades, the trees will start getting a foothold, starting with the faster growing trees, which crowd out all the nasty shrubs but still produce a dense group of small little trees just barely spaced out enough for an adult to get through, then eventually stabilizing on oaks and the other very tall, hard trees, culminating in what one traditionally considers a "forest", something you can walk through because it's mostly very large, mature trees spaced dozens of feet apart. This will take a century or two to progress to the final stable state, depending on how tenacious the smaller trees are.

But if you want to jump straight to that and avoid the middle bit, it takes some maintenance. I assume the promise is a combination of a promise to do that maintenance, and probably to maintain some trails through it.

I could have sworn I learned a term in school for this sort of "biome progression" to what I thought was the "terminal biome" (the final, stable biome that results) but Google does not agree. Anyone who remembers their biology better than I, I'd be much obliged for the term.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaeagnus_angustifolia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaeagnus_angustifolia)

<comment><USER11> Given a few years, softwoods (pines - fast growing) will grow, then hardwoods (oak/hickory - slow growing) will begin to appear in abundance. Hardwoods are more valuable, but softwoods grow quickly and have less market value.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old- growth_forest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-growth_forest)

I think the term you were looking for was a "climax community."

<comment><USER10> Bingo.

I see Google says the idea has fallen out of favor, though even when I was taught it I was taught that the oak trees will still fall, creating clearings, which then march back through the same progression, so even then it was only notionally "climax".

<comment><USER11> I hope the company is interested in harvesting the hardwoods, which will allow for more biodiversity, less ecological disruption, and a more aesthetically pleasing environment. Hiking through a constantly harvested pine tree forest is not very enjoyable. In any case, letting nature do its thing, somewhat, is better than having delapidated houses strewn all over the place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would really love it if they took this a step further. Instead of buying a big block that can become a massive park like Central Park in NYC or Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It would be more interesting if they created a "graph" of park nodes linked by park edges so that there isn't a separation between the two. For an example of what such a project could look like check out this proposal for the city of São Paulo called Ecos na Paisagem:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/12588351@N02/sets/7215762319266...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/12588351@N02/sets/72157623192662899/show)

Additionally, Park Avenue was on e an example of this when it used to be a park that stretched from Central Park to Battery Park:

[http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2011/05/27/old-new-york- in-...](http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2011/05/27/old-new-york-in-photos-4/)

<comment><USER13> Park Avenue is interesting but I would like to see a picture not one saying "this is not it".

<comment><USER12> It's remarkably hard to find images of what it used to look like. I've seen some before. Here's what one section looked like in the 1870s when the railroad run underneath it:

[http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05...](http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/05/f1.jpg)

Here's park avenue in the 1920s:

[http://screencast.com/t/7GRMhOzq](http://screencast.com/t/7GRMhOzq)

Park Avenue (used to be 4th Avenue) has probably changed more than most Avenues in NYC. Here are some images of when railroads ran down it.

[http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/three- views...](http://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/three-views-of- park-avenue-in-the-east-50s/)

You may also enjoy seeing these photos of the NYC mansions from back in the day:

[http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/02/09/looking_back_at_man...](http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/02/09/looking_back_at_manhattans_lost_gilded_age_mansions.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If someone could post a link to a Google Maps view of the area, that would be interesting to see.

<comment><USER15> This article has a map: [http://www.freep.com/article/20131018/BUSINESS06/310180105](http://www.freep.com/article/20131018/BUSINESS06/310180105)

I grabbed that address and plugged it into Google Maps, so the pin here is the northern corner: [https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=Mack+%26+St.+Jean%2C+...](https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=Mack+%26+St.+Jean%2C+Detroit%2C+MI&data=!1m4!1m3!1d16228!2d-82.980734!3d42.3695785!2m1!1e3!4m15!2m14!1m13!1s0x8824d46395a86267%3A0x1855ad08de3d9a8a!3m8!1m3!1d18983!2d-122.3926051!3d37.7913156!3m2!1i1215!2i1156!4f13.1!4m2!3d42.3791293!4d-82.97854&fid=7)

Edit: and according to Google Maps, "Indian Village" (home of the developer) is literally the southwestern edge of the area.

PS: I know nothing about Detroit, this is all just looking at a map.

<comment><USER2> Ok, I had the weird experience of looking at the street view map, wanting to move forward and just, out of habit, used the WASD keys and damn if they didn't work just like they "should". Reminded me of the first time I used vi(1) and wanted to move the cursor and went with the rogue(7) keys and that just worked. Games as usability training tools for the win I guess.

<comment><USER16> Vi and Rogue were both influenced by the hardware of the old ADM terminals, which had the arrows printed on HJKL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For comparison, NYC currently has about 30,000 acres of public parks, and a several thousand acres of privately owned open space on top of that. The amount of parkland in NYC is greater than the total amount of land in most cities, period.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.hantzfarmsdetroit.com/](http://www.hantzfarmsdetroit.com/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm wondering that if all of the spotlight on Detroit will also lead to enough canny entrepreneurs trying to revive it for a buck, leading to a phoenix-like (or Alex Murphy-like) resurgence a few decades down the road.

Will Detroit be the hot new startup city of 2045?

<comment><USER20> Quite possibly, and for a very important and underrated reason: the fights over water are already starting and are going to get bigger and nastier over the next few decades, but the cities on the shores of the largest freshwater supply in the world will be sitting pretty. Detroit may have to spend its forty years in the wilderness (rather more literally than that phrase is usually used), but there's really no question about it coming back eventually. Not with all that fresh water close at hand.

<comment><USER9> > _the fights over water are already starting and are going to get bigger and > nastier over the next few decades_

What do you mean by this? Cities in North America tend to be on rivers, and isolated poor location choices (Las Vegas, Phoenix, a few CA cities, etc) don't translate to problems in other cities since they are on different aquifer. As far as I can tell, there is no threat to the water supply in most American cities. Egypt/Ethiopia's little water spat doesn't threaten water supplies elsewhere, fresh water isn't really a commodity like oil or iron is. If it was, there would be a killing to be made in fresh water arbitrage.

<comment><USER21> Even if water was scarce in the US, it wouldn't be a problem in the US, at least in terms of residential use. Desalination costs less than a dollar per cubic meter, and a quick calculation based on existing pipelines gives me a price of about half a dollar to pipe that a thousand miles.

For comparison, water today, where I live, costs slightly under a dollar per cubic meter. So even if my calculation was off by an order of magnitude, desalinated water would be a reasonable option for all US households, well under other budget items like cost of food.

Industry that depends on cheap water might be different, but how much of that is stuck in places without good water supply?

<comment><USER19> What do you think about all of the dystopian scenarios with LA running out of water?

<comment><USER22> LA sits very close to the ocean, and at the same elevation. Desalinated water using current technology costs $0.75/cubic meter (recycled water even less), and your average person uses 100 cubic meters a year. So, we're looking at a cost per person of about $6/month for water. With conservation you could easily get that down to $3/month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23>
      The company has committed to... mowing regwlarly

I was a lot more excited before I read this. What's the point of a forest if you have to mow it? Seriously, though, sounds like a good idea.

<comment><USER24> I can't speak for that area specifically but I used to work at a county forest preserve during my summers in college. Typically when you are trying to restore a natural environment it takes a bit of work to make sure invasive species don't turn your forest into a bramble patch. One particularly common invasive species is Buckthorn that will choke out more desirable trees like Oaks which grow slowly. Mowing is one way that keeps the undesirable invasive species from taking over

[http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody...](http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialplants/woody/buckthorn/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's some more info on the Detroit LocalWiki here - [http://detroitwiki.org/Hantz_Farms](http://detroitwiki.org/Hantz_Farms). When I asked my friend about it, he responded with "long story."

</comment><comment><USER8> It's amazing how many people are hung up on the "mowing" part of this. First, who cares? It's such a minor point. Second, this land is surrounded by neighborhoods with sidewalks (and even has homes interspersed between land parcels). Certainly, they should maintain the landscape near the sidewalks and adjacent lots that they don't own. It seems reasonable that the maintenance would include mowing. And maybe there's even more "mowing" than that but this obvious explanation is enough to justify their "mowing" comment.

</comment><comment><USER26> Detroit should also invest in city parks of this size. For instance, the city of Cincinnati has benefited greatly from an abundance of large parks:

[http://www.cincinnatiparks.com/history-master- plan](http://www.cincinnatiparks.com/history-master-plan)

One well-known park came about after the purchase of a vineyard from Nicholas Longworth:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Park_%28Cincinnati%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Park_%28Cincinnati%29)

</comment><comment><USER27> I live not far from here, and drive by it every day. The rapid pace of change in the city limits is unprecedented...in the last 3 years, perhaps. This city is rebuilding itself quickly after lying stagnant since the 1960s.

</comment><comment><USER28> I hope the city has budgeted for adequate police coverage. Otherwise, they're building New Sherwood forest!

</comment><comment><USER29> And this is how cities return to the land. Or at least, it's one way.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wish every city did this.

<comment><USER9> Doing this is sort of like getting a robotic limb. I mean sure, a cybernetic arm may be really cool and futuristic... but it means your real arm got chopped off. They are carving this thing out of blighted urban decay. An urban forest may be nice, but what leads up to it is not the sort of thing that you want in your city.

This isn't to say that I'm not happy for them; I just don't want to find myself in the same situation.

<comment><USER23> You may as well argue against having parks because one happened to have been built on similar ground. This instance might just have been recovering from a bad situation, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea in general. Granted, it would be better to set aside space for it at the planning stage.

<comment><USER9> > _This isn 't to say that I'm not happy for them; I just don't want to find > myself in the same situation_

I'm not arguing against this happening, I am _happy_ they are improving their city. All I'm saying is that I hope I never find my citing in a position where we say _" whelp, we have massive chunks of deserted unkempt land, lets knock down these abandoned condemned buildings and make a forest"_. While that action is an _improvement_ , being in that position in the first place implies a shitty situation all around.

Kind of like how somebody getting a new fancy robot arm is _great_ , but I certainly don't want to get one myself because that would imply that I had lost my arm.

<comment><USER23> You seem to have missed my point. Hypothetically, you don't need to be in that same situation to have a forest in your city.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Online Advertising Resources - <AUTHOR>

Is there a comprehensive resource (preferably in book format) that covers ins-and-outs of online advertising? I am looking for a resource from an online advertising client perspective.
What are different online advertising avenues? I am aware of Google Adwords, Commission Junction, Amazon Associates. I am looking beyond such majors in this area. How effective they are? What type of advertising work best for each avenue? Something that will help me make decision on appropriate online advertising channels and maximizing return from these channels. List of online advertising avenues, best practices for creating and serving ads, specialized channels.
Thanks <comment><USER2> In short, no. But there are a lot of places you can start.

It would help to know what the end goal is for your online advertising? Lead gen, sales, page views, ect will all have different best practices by channel.

<comment><AUTHOR> My end goal is to learn more about online advertising so that I can make better decision on what online ad avenues/strategies to adopting depending on the goal. It is not about making a decision in isolation whether to focus on lead gen, sales, etc. But to come up with a cohesive plan for incorporating online advertising in different part of sales and marketing aspects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Quicksprout.com has a ton of resources on online marketing ranging from SEO, content marketing, conversion optimization, PPC, growth hacking, etc</comment>


Google joins Samsung in patent dispute with Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.bgr.com/2012/07/02/samsung-apple-patent-dispute-google/

<comment> X-Istence Isn't the whole point of FRAND licensing so that companies can't ask for exorbitant amount of fees in licensing for technologies that are required for standards defined by various standard bodies.

This reminds me of the Apple v. Motorola lawsuit in which Motorola was attempting to charge more than FRAND for a patent that is related to UMTS networks and is part of the standard. That case got dismissed with prejudice (no re-filing). Samsung seems to be doing the same thing and I wonder if this judge will throw that part out.

<comment><USER2> Actually, all of this talk of unscrupulous companies poisoning the standards- bodies wells reminds me of the Rambus case with JEDEC.

Rambus applied for a bunch of DRAM patents and then simultaneously kept mum when asked by their JEDEC co-members for a list of relevant patents (which they were _required_ to provide as JEDEC members). JEDEC finalized their standard, everyone started making and selling products, and then Rambus' submarine patents surfaced and everyone was stuck having to pay Rambus license fees. Rambus betrayed JEDEC, their JEDEC co-members, and everyone involved in DRAM standardization and cleverly steered them all right into an iceberg.

Somehow what Motorola and Samsung are doing here is morally above this. I guess it's because they're working with Google.

<comment><USER3> And we all know what happened with Rambus. They've spent the last decade in litigation with the FTC/EU.

I hope history repeats itself with the Android OEMs and a hard lesson gets sent to everyone that the standards process is sacrosanct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the second time Google has supported a partner who is asking absurd percentages on FRAND patents.

Of all the IP litigation that is happening, why is Google seemingly supporting the least defensible and moral claims?

Maybe Google feels that the world is indifferent about their behavior here, but outside of strong supporters of open source code I feel like Google is losing the PR war about their integrity.

<comment><USER5> High fees are the "least" defensible? Apple _just asked for and got_ a full-on import ban on the Galaxy Nexus...

None of this serves to justify the nonsense out there. But if you're willing to look the other way when one side plays hardball, don't be shocked when their opponent hits back. Patents are a huge mess, but this is hardly a one- sided issue about "Google", and to try to make it so is plain disingenuous.

(I suppose the counter argument is that Apple's patents were never termed FRAND, so that makes a technical difference. Might be so. But that's certainly not a "moral" difference, which seems to be the terrain you're standing on in your argument. _Edit: and multiple folks posted just that. Let's just say I find that argument nonsense, "FRAND" is a technical distinction, not a moral one; try explaining it to your non-industry friends for an existence proof of that._ )

<comment><USER6> The moral difference is that they're not keeping their promise to the standard bodies which would've tried to work around the patents otherwise.

Lets say a company abuses a FRAND patent related to Wifi or GPS (that it previously deemed FRAND due to which their technology was included) and demands 20% of the price, that is much worse than Slide2Unlock, since Slide2Unlock can be worked around much easier than making a new Wifi or GPS standard and shipping hundreds of millions of devices, routers, GPS chips and launching satellites again.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the stupid Slide to Unlock patent as much as you, but there is certainly a moral difference between abusing a regular patent and a FRAND patent.

With Nokia getting into losses, this is a worrying trend since they own so many FRAND patents. If all these cases set a bad precedent on FRAND patents, we'll be doubly screwed.

<comment><USER5> I don't see it that way at all, sorry. Both have the effect of eliminating valid competition from the market. Both are bad. Condemning one and not the other _makes you, personally, part of the problem and not the solution_ , because you're fighting only on one side. Your utopia, apparently, has Apple squeezing everyone else from the market. You'll forgive me if I question the moral basis for your argument.

<comment><USER7> One way might be ethically bad, but the other puts the squeeze on _everyone_. What Google is involved in here is unquestionalby worse than what Apple is doing (attacking one company for a perceived copy job).

I think the issue is that you're an Apple hater/Android Fanboy and you're letting this clod your logic.

Getting kicked in the shin by a stranger is bad, as is getting shot point blank in the belly by a sawed off shotgun. Two things being bad doesn't mean one isn't worse.

<comment><USER5> No. Just no. Google (really Samsung, but whatever -- let's leave Google as the proxy here for simplicity) isn't squeezing "everyone." They're squeezing exactly one party, who happens to have already sued them. This is a defensive move in a larger battle, and viewing it as one-sided while cheering for an at- best-equally-at-fault party is just perpetuating the absurd status quo. Either you think patents suits are bad, or you are part of the problem.

<comment><USER7> Nonsense. If Samsung gets away with this it will have implicates for all agreements of this kind. Your hate for Apple is completely clogging your logic here.

<comment><USER5> What implications will it have, exactly? Let's just say what you seem to be implying: that FRAND agreements are worthless once you sue someone. Is that so bad? The patent covenants in the open source world almost always include this kind of term already.

So explain to me why the world will fall apart if everyone gets to ignore FRAND terms when used against parties that are already suing them over patent licenses? That sounds like a _good_ thing to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A patent owner can accept FRAND conditions and the patent becomes part of the standard. They then earn a steady stream of licensing money off the ensuing trillion dollar industry.

A patent owner can reject FRAND and their technology does not get included in the standard.

There is no third option.

You can't decide after the trillion dollar industry establishes, to renege on FRAND, because your patent was only made part of the standard -- and therefore only has value -- because of that commitment to FRAND.

<comment><USER9> Not all of the patents are FRAND licensing related! See my answer in the other comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've seen some hyperbolic statements on Google/Motorola/Samsung vs. Apple FRAND patent litigation recently, as if such tactics were unprecedented, and the amounts asked scandalous. I would suggest every person who is getting emotional in the Apple-Android dispute to have a look at this document on 4G FRAND patents:

[http://www.investorvillage.com/uploads/82827/files/LESI- Roya...](http://www.investorvillage.com/uploads/82827/files/LESI-Royalty- Rates.pdf)

It gives some context: _Audiences can expect to see the same licensing challenges that first appeared in GSM (2G) and which re-appeared in UMTS (3G) starring again in LTE (4G). The plot is essentially the same: lots of essential patents and many different patent holders._

And an interesting quote from Motorola (undated, accessed in 2009):

 _Motorola expects that its essential patent royalty rate for LTE systems and equipment will be approximately 2.25 percent._

I'll leave to the courts to decide if this is an appopriate royalty rate for an iPhone. Note that there is a trend of declining rates: Qualcomm used to collect between 4% and 5% of the sales price for FRAND patent royalties[1]. This has since declined to about 3% [2]. As for court actions, Nokia settled with Apple in 2011[3] over FRAND patents[4] for €800m. Apple would also pay Nokia €8 per device, equivalent to 1.75% of the sales price.

That being said, I agree that injunctions should not be granted on FRAND patents. I can't imagine a case where it makes sense.

[1] [http://www.sramanamitra.com/2007/05/22/iphone-and-the- future...](http://www.sramanamitra.com/2007/05/22/iphone-and-the-future-of- qualcomm-addendum/)

[2] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/01/21/qua...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/01/21/qualcomm- faces-falling-cdma-royalty-rates/)

[3] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/14/apple- nokia...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/14/apple-nokia-patent- case)

[4] [http://www.scribd.com/doc/28285432/Nokia-s-Motion-to- Dismiss...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/28285432/Nokia-s-Motion-to-Dismiss- Apple-s-Implausible-Claims)

</comment><comment><USER11> Direct link to full article: [http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2012/07/133_114203...](http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2012/07/133_114203.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't a FRAND agreement legally binding? Surely it's more than just a "gentleman's agreement"?

</comment><comment><USER13> Software patents are intrinsically a mutually assured destruction scenario. The button has been pushed, it's too late to complain about the unfairness of overly brutal retaliation.

This farce should never have been started, now that it has, the entire racket needs to be ended, the ball is in the court of the legal system. I'm not holding my breath on the expectation that they'll fix everything anytime soon, so now the market suffers.

There's plenty of blame to hand out, but as in all mutually assured destruction scenarios the lion's share has to go to the guy that pushed the big red button.

</comment><comment><USER14> Time to boycott Google? /sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER15> I suppose it's too much to hope that this patent war keeps on escalating until the destructiveness of patents is evident to everyone, for at some point these big companies will declare a truce and turn their attention to smaller victims, at which point the patent war won't garner as much attention and it'll be back to business as usual: keeping the smaller companies from challenging the bigger ones.</comment>


Google's Lively Will Be Shut Down - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html <comment><AUTHOR> Google should open-source the project and let the community take over and continue development.

<comment><USER2> They probably can't in any way that would make it usable to people.

As Steve Yegge always points out when he talks about open sourcing his Google side projects, Most of it depends on other Google technology that isn't open source.

<comment><USER3> _As Steve Yegge always points out when he talks about open sourcing his Google side projects, Most of it depends on other Google technology that isn't open source._

That doesn't really prevent you from open-sourcing it. The Google-specific parts can be replaced by someone who cares.

<comment><USER2> That's why this sentence was put first.

> They probably can't in any way that would make it usable to people.

No worries:)

<comment><USER3> My point was, "show us the code anyway, we'll decide what is and isn't usable".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> there were some bad decisions, chief among which was the decision to NOT to use flash as the platform. Kinda the same mistake they made with the original Google Video.

<comment><USER4> Surely these days they could pretty much have used javascript, with canvas etc. No flash==even bigger win.

<comment><USER5> Why?

<comment><USER4> Because the new crop of internet devices don't have flash?

<comment><USER6> And they somehow support Canvas?

<comment><USER7> Yes. WebKit _invented_ <canvas>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Every new toy requires a browser plugin will DIE

</comment><comment><USER9> i honestly think that this was mainly setup in anticipation for the yahoo- google ad deal. yahoo would've been able to bring all the yahoo games to lively with a fresh new interface. the whole idea behind lively was that you can use lively as a virtual room to do other stuff, such as listening to music, watching videos, playing games, etc.

maybe i'm thinking too much about this, but i would've loved to see the yahoo- google partnership happen. it would've meant that google gets to distribute and leverage it's huge ad selling platform over yahoo, in return for higher yield and revenues for yahoo - good for both parties. i think if microsoft buys yahoo, the whole web will continue towards a downwards path where users get less and less. i'm not against microsoft, but it's just that their business is vast and has a huge eco-system. microsoft will partner with many traditional media companies and service providers, who will want to run the web their own way.

thoughts?

<comment><USER10> I was working at Google when lively was still just a one man 20% project. It didn't start in anticipation of anything, it was just a guy having fun and he eventually got enough momentum internally to garner official interest in it. The one thing I remember though is that there seemed to be a big internal debate about the whole concept being cheesy and out of scope for Google. Generally though google will embrace just about anything internally.

As for the ad deal, I'd have loved to seen it go through but don't have anything really insightful to add.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would be interesting to see if someone can learn from Googles experience and implement a similar service that will be more successful.

</comment><comment><USER12> i commend them for experimenting

i also commend them for shutting it off when the experiment has failed

if you want to grow new products, you have to engage this process

<comment><USER13> If they promote the guy that had the idea and got it off the ground they're really onto something.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the proper way to bring a job offer to my current employer? - <AUTHOR>

DISCLOSURE: I'm a regular HN user with 5-figure karma. This is a throwaway account.
BACKGROUND: I'm a software engineer at a funded startup and I've been here 1 year. My pay is fair but probably on the lower end of market rates. Also, no medical/dental. I have a job offer from a larger software firm. The salary increase is 20% and includes good benefits (no relocation required). I'm actually quite happy at my current job but the pay/benefits increase is worth considering. I know only I can make the decision on where to work but I have a few questions.
QUESTIONS:
- Is it uncouth to bring this offer to my current boss before deciding? I don't want it to seem like I'm just leveraging the offer to get a raise.
- For founders/managers who have had to deal with this, what's the most respectable way to bring this to you?
- If I decide to leave, how much notice should I give?
Thanks for any input you have. <comment><USER2> If the culture is such that "couthness" inhibits discussing the basic element of the employee/employer relationship, compensation, and a critical issue for long term personal financial stability, access to affordable health care; then the workplace culture is bad.

There's no need to mention or even solicit other offers. Market rate benefits and compensation are something that should be reasonable to discuss with your boss. There's no reason you should have to leverage. Just have the discussion. Keep the offer in your back pocket, and if the discussion doesn't happen in a reasonable way, then you still have the option of disclosure or just taking the other job or sticking it out with your current employer and no one is the wiser.

The fact that all this is coming around the one year mark, may be a symptom that the boss hasn't been paying attention to the need to re-evaluate compensation as circumstances evolve...your actually having a job offer in hand, shows how long this has been festering.

If it comes down to playing hardball and you're willing to walk, both sides are probably better off if you just take the other job. If you're not willing to walk, then you're not playing hardball. This is why couching it as a discussion about reviewing your situation rather than an ultimatum is so critical. It deescalates the conversation and gives your boss time to recognize and acknowledge and mitigate the issue on their own if they are so inclined.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Is it uncouth to bring this offer to my current boss before deciding? I > don't want it to seem like I'm just leveraging the offer to get a raise.

If not leveraging the offer to get a raise, what benefit would this action have?

> If I decide to leave, how much notice should I give?

On the low end, 2 weeks. On the high end, "enough time (reasonably) to allow them to ensure a smooth transition".

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I watch too much "Silicon Valley", but my understanding is it could be seen as _she never intended to jump ship; she just wanted to strong-arm us into a pay increase_

<comment><USER3> Well, what do you hope to gain by bringing the offer to your current company, other than to strong-arm them into a pay increase?

If you aren't intending to leave, don't bring them the offer.</comment></comment></comment>


Where do you find the time for side projects? - <AUTHOR> http://justinjackson.ca/where-do-you-find-the-time-for-side-projects/ <comment><USER3> > The short answer is: I work on side-projects whenever I have a spare moment. > I sacrifice other things (watching TV, reading the newspaper, playing video > games) so that I can do creative work.

This is the real answer. You do not find time, you make it.

<comment><USER4> Time is important, but another factor is mental energy. I have only a certain amount of mental energy for each day. Things like TV, reading, and exercising are good when I'm in a low mental energy state. If I have a hard day at work, it doesn't matter how much free time I have since I just won't have the mental energy left to work on a side project.

<comment><USER5> I find that I get energized on my short (20 minute) drive home. Maybe it's the change in context, but even if I'm mentally fried at 5 I find that I can at least get another hour or two.

<comment><USER6> That happens to me, I have a 20 minute commute too. I do it by motorcycle and it makes me wake up in the morning and be ready to do whatever I want to do in the afternoons.

<comment><USER7> I find motorcycles amazing for this. Even a ten minute ride completely energizes me. It might have something to do with the total focus required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is no shame in _not_ having the time and mental energy for side projects. Working full-time is hard, and not everyone is born with the capacity to be an intellectual superhero.

It's good that some people are, but I think the relentless focus on people who achieve great, nearly superhuman things sets an unrealistic standard for the rest of us. If you can't find the time, energy, inspiration or focus to do other ambitious things on the side of your regular day job, there is no shame in that. You'll be a perfectly good person if you do your day job and fill the rest of your time with low-powered hobbies, or even mindless things like TV or reddit.

Even in Norway, with our 9-5 culture with 5 weeks of compulsory holidays and court-enforced overtime payment, it can be hard to get enough distance from things to do other stuff on the side. And it is always a question of priorities. If your time goes to your personal side projects, there will be less time and attention to maintain your health, your relationships and your family. This is simply not a question. I don't even want to think about doing this kind of thing if I was working the startup grind, or even the regular West Coast "60 hours a week".

Don't feel bad if you can't do this. Your mental health will thank you. Time and time again, I see intelligent people display a focus and ambition which almost merits an OCD diagnosis. Many of us should take a step back and investigate what we _really_ want to do. If your side projects are important enough, take a part-time position instead of trying to fit it in alongside your full-time job.

<comment><USER9> A lot of people project an image of themselves as an "Intellectual Superhero". This may make everyone feel lesser because no one actually is an intellectual superhero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I leave my house 90 minutes before I'm due at work. It takes me between 15 and 30 minutes to get to work, depending on traffic and public transportation. Instead of going into the office, I go into a coffee shop around the corner and write for 45-60 minutes, and then head up into the office.

I've managed to keep this up for 3 months straight now, and while I'm not anywhere close to being ready to publish, I've got more words written in my book(s) than I wrote in the last 3 years combined.

As another wise person once said: there's no such thing not having time -- only not making it a priority. Everything comes down to priorities. Do you not have time to do side projects, or is making side projects not a priority for you? Make a list of everything you do in your time, and fo reverything that is a lower priority than your side project, bump it off the list. Don't do it. Do your side project instead.

Drinking with buddies less important than finishing your side project? Schedule it for another time. Is Breaking Bad less important than finishing your side project? Watch it on Netflix later.

And so on. Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

I decided a few months ago that publishing a book was one of my top priorities. What wasn't my top priority? Watching yet another episode of some TV show on Netflix. Instead of watching 3 episodes a night, I can watch 2, go to bed an hour earlier, wake up an hour earlier, and have time to write in the morning before work with zero distractions.

Works for me, anyway. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> The short and skinny for me:

> _The short answer is: I work on side-projects whenever I have a spare > moment. I sacrifice other things (watching TV, reading the newspaper, > playing video games) so that I can do creative work._

In late August of last year I had come to the conclusion that I needed to start and finish a small project to get a feel for what it takes to see things through and gain perspective on what it takes to bring an idea to reality. I've been building things for as long as I've been able but in software it's never, "finished," and I always have my nose to the grindstone. So I picked a hobby I'm passionate about, scoped out a project I felt could be reasonably completed in my spare time and at the advice of a friend I signed up to be a vendor at a local comic/arts/games festival... _and I only had an idea!_

Needless to say it put a lot of things into focus. I did sacrifice time with my wife in the weeks leading up to the event. I spent every spare moment I had when I wasn't at work or taking care of my family on it (with the occasional night off of course). I realized pretty early on that I wasn't able to do everything: I farmed out illustration and typesetting work to other freelancers. I never did find an editor in time which hurt the project a little I think. But every step of the way up until that milestone I was thinking about what I needed to do next in order to get there.

And when I was finally there? I printed twenty books. Sold six. And couldn't have been happier with the outcome. I have a website up, the beginnings of a fun little project and this year my goal is to work on marketing and promotion: something I have never done before.

You just have to play with the hand you've been dealt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats on shipping!

Could you share a link to the book? I'd love to see it.

BTW: My next book is specifically aimed at helping developers with marketing - [http://justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers/](http://justinjackson.ca/marketingfordevelopers/)

<comment><USER11> [http://dungeonmastersdelight.com/](http://dungeonmastersdelight.com/)

Thanks for taking a peek. Let me know what you think of the site.

If it's something that really interests you, get in touch. I really like to get reviews/feedback. :)

<comment><USER12> This looks really cool.

However, my first inclination was to close the tab because I didn't get it.

I love playing board games (Dominions, Pandemic, etc) and have always wanted to try D&D. Am I your target audience?

Then I found your value prop at the bottom of the page:

"Dungeon Masters Delight is a series of books that aims to collect useful hacks and tricks for the discerning dungeon master. It aims to fill in the gaps of literature concerning running and developing tabletop role playing games. "

I've put together some changes here

[http://imgur.com/xcI4xn6](http://imgur.com/xcI4xn6)

I used [http://www.webedit.io](http://www.webedit.io) to do this review.

<comment><USER11> That looks much better. Thanks!

 _Update_ : Changed the subtitle text and added links to the "Buy" and "Subscribe" pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> The short answer is: I work on side-projects whenever I have a spare moment. I sacrifice other things (watching TV, reading the newspaper, playing video games) so that I can do creative work._

I tried this approach for a while, but it greatly degraded my quality of life. Eventually I found that I was always hunting and hoping for a spare moment, instead of just enjoying whatever moment I was already in. It's true that I get less side project stuff done now, but I'm happier, so that's what counts for me.

<comment><USER14> I know the feeling -- It makes me seem like I'm always distracted when I'm around friends and family because I'm either thinking about or working on a side project. What I need to do is stop multitasking and focus on the right things at the right times -- and the author suggests good ways of doing that while not sacrificing quality time with others: wake up early, use lunch (don't like this idea), wait 'til kids asleep, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My problem is not that I don't have 2 spare hours a day. The problem is this time is severely _fragmented_ , with 15 or 20 minutes being the largest fragment.

Working on code takes some concentration which is hard to attain in 30-60 seconds; it's closer to 10-15 minutes, but then the time is up.

<comment><USER16> What takes up the majority of the time in your day?

Try these:

* Sleep one hour less a night.

* Don't drink alcohol.

* Prepare all food for the week in advance.

* Cut down your time from awake to shaved, showered, dressed to 15 minutes.

* Work less at your day job.

<comment><USER15> * Sleeping less than the norm makes you stupid, I try to avoid this.

* I don't drink alcohol at all.

* Nice idea about food, which I mostly follow. Not all food can stay palatable for a week, though.

* Faster startup is a nice idea, too.

* Working less on my day job would be nice, but probably my employer won't be happy. I'm not overworking.

<comment><USER17> I find it really useful to prepare all "menus" in advance for the week. Preparing food in advance for the week doesn't really work for me as I like to eat fresh food. Not having to decide what to eat on the fly saves me so much mental bandwidth. It can make the shopping more efficient too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Every "main project" I have (or have had) began life as a "side project." Literally. 100% of my non-consulting income (and my consulting income is peanuts) for the past 5 years has been from side projects that stuck and did well enough to go full time.

Given this, it's absolutely imperative I continue to invest time into experimenting and trying out more side projects, because they could well be my main gig in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know exactly where Justin is coming from. I'm married with 4 kids. I'm glad my wife supports my side-projects. After the kids are put to bed (around 8-9 p.m.) I will work until midnight. My wife will hang out in the office with me while I work. On the weekends I wake up at 6:30 a.m. and work until around 10:30 a.m. From there I will spend the rest of the day with the wife and kids.

I tend to set a goal for what I want to achieve in a given period (for me it's about 4 hours). It's easy to be all over the map when you don't have a full day to commit. With a strict schedule and a goal anything can be achieved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks: yes, having a supportive spouse _really_ helps.

In some ways, having the constraint of a family is helpful: you know you only have x number of hours. There's no time to fool around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One thing I can suggest. Don't commute to work and if you do make it as short as possible. This time is wasted.

<comment><USER20> Depends on the commute - I bought a small laptop so I could work on my side project while on the train. I've found that I can get a lot done in the 10 20-minute legs of my weekly commute. I'm sure it is less efficient than taking the 200 minutes in a solid stretch - but it was easy to fit into my life so I kept with the habit (which is the hard part for me).

(At least until I stumbled on a good book - totally off the wagon now)

<comment><USER21> I've been doing this 40 minutes total a day for almost a year. I've probably doubled my knowledge of programming in that time. Something about the short time and nothing else to do gets me to focus like crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Scheduling time for yourself and sideprojects is super important. I just started to do this recently and it's making a world of difference. So lock down a night a week or whatever and make it your "sideproject" time rather than grabbing a beer with someone or whatever.

Great Post Justin! I love how open you are with this stuff :)

<comment><USER23> Super true; it's the same principle as "pay yourself first" in finances. Locking down time in advance truly helps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For a long time I fell into the trap of thinking that I needed to find a block of a few hours so that I could sit down, get into the zone, and get some side- project work done. The result of that was that I never found a 4 or 5 hour block unless I took a day off work and so I made slow or no progress.

More recently I've made the concious effort to do small pieces of work wherever I can fit it in: lunch break, get up an hour earlier, an hour in the evening, etc.

If your tools are set up for a quick start then it's pretty easy to get some good work done in a spare 30 minutes and all those small pieces of work soon add up to a finished product.

</comment><comment><USER25> I made the decision not to get married or have children so that I would have time for side projects. Unfortunately, single people are often expected to stay later to enable those with family obligations to leave earlier.

<comment><USER10> Screw that. It's not my fault you settled down and knocked up your partner. If we have the same level of responsibility, we work similar hours. Done.

<comment><USER25> While I too look forward to the impartial application of policy, employers have their own interpretation of who, in fact, is "done." I have bolted from less than mutually beneficial working arrangement, myself.

<comment><USER26> Quit. Find another job. Your time is too valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One thing that I didn't fully appreciate till I had kids was some of the hobbies I did before weren't really that important to me. There's a difference between the things you do because you truly want to and those that are just filling time or you're doing them because you feel like you have to.

Once you identify and remove the time-wasters, it gets easier to make time for other stuff, and I still get away with spending time with friends and some tv here and there.

</comment><comment><USER28> Set up times to work with people. The best stretches of pounding out productive side project work usually start with discussing it with a friend, both lamenting how much we're wasting time and messing around on it, and then we show up at one person's apartment or a coffee shop and hack on our respective side projects for 4 hours straight.

</comment><comment><USER29> the real answer is also generally:

"do minimum at work, you don't need to actually do more than that"

it frees your brain to work on the side stuff. its not just time that is needed. many of us keep working and thinking about work even when they're not technically "at work", for hours. Or the "i really should have this finished".

Nope, you don't.

</comment><comment><USER30> Justin, I did not see you mention wife and kids activities anywhere in the article. 1\. Does your wife work? 2\. Who takes kids to their activities? including playing the basement, reading stories to them, taking them to McDonalds 3\. How much family time do you spend per day? 4\. How does your typical day and weekend look like ?

Curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure:

 _For reference: I work 8 hours a day at my day job, with an hour for lunch._

1\. Wife does not work outside the home (full-time caregiver) 2\. We both share kid activities - I try to take as many of these as I can. 3\. Basically from 5:30pm - 8:30pm I'm in dad mode: dinner, chores, playing with kids, reading bed time story, putting them to bed. 4\. Typical weekend: I wake up early Saturday & Sunday and work on personal projects. The rest of Saturdays is hanging out with family. Every Sunday we try to go skiing as a family.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wow, not bad. I've got 2 small kids, but 4 kids sound like a different level, kids don't scale in my experience.

I'm approaching my side projects strikingly similar, got just one thing to add: Time not spent physically working on projects can still be spent working on projects. I routinely solve both technical and non-technical problems I'm facing in my projects after thinking them through during a walk with the boys, or chores. I enjoy and treasure the time with them, but spending time with toddlers doesn't seem to require my full mental capacity.

That said, I'm doing this not because I think I ought to have side projects just for the sake of it. I'm doing it because this is my best shot at building the future I want to have for me and my family.

</comment><comment><USER32> Manage your own 20% at work. Depending on your environment (colleagues, management expectations, your personal levels of productivity), this can be doable. Not necessarily 20% (that's a lot), can be 10, or even 5, but that's still something.

<comment><USER33> is it really possible ? I think whatever you do during your work hours becomes property of your employer, not you.

<comment><USER34> * if they find out

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you do not have kids - I really do not see how you can say you do not have time for side projects. I live in manhattan, work between 50-70 hours per week, have a girlfriend, exercise 5 days a week for 1 hour, drink a lot, and watch some tv (HBO only), and have multiple side projects.

Here is what I do not do: watch sports (huge time suck), watch TV (unless im programming at the same time), commute to work (5 minute bike ride), go to bed early, have kids, program because I have to.

I would love to see a csv with one column that is "Have side projects (Y/N)" and "Watch sports weekly" in the other .... I think you would see a trend

<comment><USER36> You and I are very similar (I live in Seattle not Manhattan and my commute takes 20 minutes not 5), but I do watch sports. And I still have side projects. I am in fantasy leagues as well, and I still have time for side projects.

Do you mean all sports? Or maybe Baseball, Basketball, and/or hockey? Since those sports have multiple games during the week, they can be a time suck. For hockey, I generally only watch Hockey Night in Canada on CBC (assuming I can find a bar that will put in on). For basketball, I generally only watch the 4th period during regular season (they don't start playing till the 4th). Baseball I don't watch on TV because they only show the pitcher and batter, and all the other cool parts aren't shown. But football isn't a time suck at all unless you are trying to watch EVERY game on Sunday. But even when I go on binges of watching every game on Sunday, I still make time for my side projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> As mentioned in the article, give up useless timekilling activities (TV, Facebook, etc).

The other big thing for me is cache warming. If you are doing non-mental activities such as showering or driving, use that time to plan what you're going to do next on your project. Pre-solve the problem: write the code, book, whatever, in your head. When you have free time - even if it's only fifteen minutes - dump the contents of your brain into your laptop. Don't spend that fifteen minutes thinking "where was I?" Do that in advance, and maximize your output in short stretches of time.

This approach is literally magical for me.

</comment><comment><USER38> For those of you who write code for your side projects how long does it take for you to get ramped up and going. Sometimes it can take me 30 minutes before I feel like I'm in the full swing of things and if I only have an hour total of free time that means next to nothing gets done. Somedays I find it particularly hard to flush out problems I've been thinking about at work switch gears and work on problems for my own projects. My mind will just get stuck in a state of trying to crunch on the work issue.

</comment><comment><USER23> Start freelancing, then raise your rates and use my little calculator [1] to "make time", then work on side projects.

Also: as someone who did a lot of side-projects over the last few years, my advice is "start a side product" instead (if you want to end up living out of it, that is).

[1] [https://www.wisecashhq.com/goodies/bootstrapper- calculator](https://www.wisecashhq.com/goodies/bootstrapper-calculator)

<comment><USER39> Uhhhh [http://cl.ly/image/3l1h251S060B](http://cl.ly/image/3l1h251S060B)

<comment><USER40> Perhaps some validation would be useful, but 20 days per week?

<comment><USER39> Oh I thought it said 20 HOURS per week.

<comment><USER23> Sorry for the confusion! I'll clarify the wording.

I emphasize working with days (vs hours) because I find it really pleasant to have days dedicated to one project instead of more than one.

In my organization, each day is dedicated to one main topic (consulting, or my own product, or something else etc).

Hope this helps!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great discussion here. I particularly like the debate over whether of not there is merit to the notion of conservation of mental energy. I did a side project [https://github.com/gengstrand/clojure-news- feed](https://github.com/gengstrand/clojure-news-feed) over the winter holiday. It was not exhausting to me because it was a learning project so I found it to be fun instead of tiring.

</comment><comment><USER42> I always find there's a lot more time available than people realize. If you cut down your time wasted, it really ads up. I like to think of it this way: There's 24 hours in a day, I spend 6-8 asleep. Where are the other 16 to 18 hours going? If I spend 10 hours a day working, that's 6 to 8 hours evaporating. If I can capture just an hour a day to work on something fun, it really adds up.

<comment><USER43> Yup, there's those that are doing things and those complaining on hacker news that they dont have enough time to get everything done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I usually sacrifice sleep. You can't do it too long or it can get to you, so I will do a week of little sleep and then one or two weeks of a good nights rest. In my mid 20's though, I sacrificed social interaction for my "side projects". To be frank, sometimes it's my work. (a whole other rant about lack of incentive)

</comment><comment><USER45> On my commute... it doesn't sound like much, but when you add it up, it is close to 8 hours per week

</comment><comment><USER46> Try and get an hour before work in, or an hour right after work. I like to sit at a coffee shop or a bar for this. Then finding some weekend time should be trivial.

It's a marathon not a race, well, at least for many of us.

Edit: Oh yes, and there is always 15-30 mins you can squeeze in at lunch breaks.

</comment><comment><USER47> 9pm to 1am. after the kids go to bed. I don't watch tv. at all. ever. When you find stuff you're excited about, its easy to stay motivated. I keep my side work fresh and new.

</comment><comment><USER48> Early morning (5AM-7AM) OR after the kid and SO goto bed between 9:30 and midnight... Then I quite my job and went all in so I guess it's not a side project anymore ;)

<comment><USER48> Man, I really hate article titles that are a question...

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Definitely agree with setting a deadline. I set a 3 month deadline recently for a large side-project and we're just about ready to launch on schedule :)

</comment><comment><USER50> Immediately after dinner from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM. Then all afternoon/evenings on weekends. I forgo most leisure time except time with wife and baby.

</comment><comment><USER51> For me it´s cyclic, every six months I fall into a creation craving period. An understanding wife and not so intense daily workload helps.

<comment><USER52> Something like a bipolar disorder?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> You have to MAKE time for stuff out side of work.

</comment><comment><USER26> I can tell you how I do it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend my path to anyone else. I'm not even 100% sure I'd recommend it to a younger version of myself, although I'm also not sure I'd recommend _against_ it either.

Basically, I'm single and childless, and darn close to my every free minute goes into the startup project. When I was working full-time, that meant "after work" M-F and the majority of my Sat and Sun. hours. I make an exception during football season to watch the Dolphins game on Sunday (yeah, yeah, go ahead, say it... I'm a glutton for punishment).

I force myself to take a break every once in a while and read a novel or watch a movie or something... but truth be told, lately, even when I watch movies or something, there's an angle related to the startup. For example, I've been reading and studying a lot about sales lately, and I've seen more than one sales book mention "be like Columbo".

I had kinda wanted to rewatch some old Columbo episodes anyway (yeah, I'm old, deal with it) so I've been watching Columbo and thinking about "how do you apply his attitude / approach to this 'diagnostic business development' thing"? And the movies I make time for tend to be ones that I find inspirational (Rocky, The Karate Kid, Rad, etc.) that help keep me motivated.

About 6 months ago, I dropped down from full-time status to part-time status at my regular job to free up more time for the startup. I had a little bit of money saved, but not enough to quit outright... luckily the owner of the company was willing to be flexible and let me do that. I've pretty much burned through my savings though, and we aren't profitable yet, so I'm going back to working full-time next month.

These days I forgo most social activities like dating, parties, and most non- technical social events. I rarely mountain bike anymore, and almost never set foot in the gym. I bailed on going home to see my parents for Christmas so I could use those few days of "down time" as recovery time. I stay amped up on more caffeine than could possibly be healthy, and do everything I can to the tune of heavy-metal[1] or hard-rock of some sort. My mantra right now is "Caffeine, heavy-metal and adrenaline". \m/

I know, I know... you're thinking "dude, you must be miserable". Nah... I _enjoy_ this in a certain sense, and since I'm 40 now, and haven't achieved anything yet, my mindset now is to say "fuck it" and go for broke. It's now or never, ya know? My mindset is to achieve the biggest and most ambitious of my dreams, or - when life finally breaks me - pull a _Leaving Las Vegas_ deal and go to Vegas and try to drink myself to death.

Do not try this at home...

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQcOQsCFnw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQQcOQsCFnw)

<comment><USER17> Wow, I'm reminded of the saying "be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it" (i.e. at the expense of everything else).

You just might be successful in your startup, but what is that worth if there is nothing else in your life, and no one to share it with?

<comment><USER26> Valid question. All I can say is "it's complicated". I'm pretty content with where things stand though. The being single and childless thing also isn't _just_ about the startup thing... it's also a function of me never having met anybody that I felt that strongly about, to want to settle down, get married and have kids, blah. And it could still happen, I'm just not defining my success in life, or happiness, by whether it does or not.

<comment><USER17> I understand the "it's complicated" thing. My best to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> 5am - <USER2>

</comment><comment><USER55> Where do you find the time for side projects?

</comment><comment><USER56> doing less work at work</comment>


Where Sci-Hub Is - <AUTHOR> https://whereisscihub.now.sh/ <comment><USER2> Hi all, I made this. I just received a notice from Zeit that they blocked it:

> I am writing to let you know we have blocked your deployment: > whereisscihub.now.sh

> This is because the deployment contained illegal content.

> Please let me know if this is not the case or if you have any questions.

I hadn't noticed it was on Hacker News, but that explains the sudden attention.

While I don't believe the site was illegal (it's just a link, after all, and proxied from Wikidata - so that would be illegal too?), I understand that Zeit are not too happy about it.

The source code to the website is at [0], if you want to run it yourself. That said, a recent Wikidata policy change resulted in the data not being great any more [1]. For now, I'd recommend just visiting the Wikipedia page on Sci-Hub to get a recent URL, or use an alternative [3].

 _Edit:_ I should also add that this was just an afternoon project I did once, and I should plug the main thing I'm working on in this area. I'm trying to remove the incentive for academics to publish in "top" (but closed access) journals: [https://plaudit.pub/](https://plaudit.pub/)

[0] [https://gitlab.com/Flockademic/whereisscihub/](https://gitlab.com/Flockademic/whereisscihub/)

[1] [https://gitlab.com/Flockademic/whereisscihub/issues/9](https://gitlab.com/Flockademic/whereisscihub/issues/9)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci- Hub)

[3] [https://sci-hub.now.sh/](https://sci-hub.now.sh/) (though also hosted by Zeit)

<comment><USER3> Something similar happened to me ([https://twitter.com/Citationsy/status/1156626811398307840](https://twitter.com/Citationsy/status/1156626811398307840)) when I posted a link to Sci-Hub on my blog. In the EU it's apparently copyright infringement to link to copyright infringing URLs.

I ended up removing the links because I didn't want get into more legal trouble with Elsevier. More details here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20606362)

<comment><USER4> It's a bit more complicated and a result of: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-playboy- copyright/play...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-playboy- copyright/playboy-wins-copyright-battle-over-web-links-to-its-images- idUSKCN11E1LR)

Basically, if you post a link and know it links to illegal content, you are in violation of copyright law. If you do not know, you're not in violation, but upon being informed, you do know and have to take down the link.

In case of Sci-Hub, it would be reasonable to assume somebody who made a website with the purpose to link to the ever-changing Sci-Hub domain, that is ever changing because of copyright takedowns, then I'd think a court would find it reasonable for you to know you're linking to something violating somebody else's copyrights and thus are in violation of copyright law yourself, in EU jurisdictions at least.

<comment><USER2> I do know that the website hosts lots of illegal content. That said, I also know that many people use it just because it's so much more convenient, and who do are allowed to access the material: either because it's already Open Access, or because they're at an institution that has a subscription. See [0]:

> Some critics of Sci-Hub have complained that many users can access the same > papers through their libraries but turn to Sci-Hub instead—for convenience > rather than necessity. The data provide some support for that claim.

Note also that the article you linked spoke about linking directly to photo's and articles, not to websites that host both infringing and non-infringing content. I presume Wikipedia wouldn't do that either, even though they _do_ link to the homepage.

(And fun fact: some articles published by Elsevier actually _do_ link to Sci- Hub versions of articles. Not really relevant to this, but still funny.)

[0] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading- pir...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated- papers-everyone)

<comment><USER4> Problem is that even when people who have valid licenses are using the site out of convenience, it's still illegal for Sci-Hub to host the content.

Sure it has some legal content too, but it has undeniably and openly a LOT of infringing content (bad faith), so I'd guess a judge would convict. Wikipedia may have some infringing content, but they hardly flaunt it and actually work to minimize such content (good faith).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am of the opinion knowledge should be free and easily accessible. Research papers through sci-hub only helps to make knowledge easily accessible. Humanity's progress depends on people who shared their knowledge, not by people who use it as a tool to rule and hold on to power.

It will be nicer if whole sci-hub is able to move to IPFS network and accessible through a domain. The problem is IPFS do not offer anonymity of the nodes hosting the content. So publisher can sue any of the nodes being part of the network providing a chunk of data. Even though they are not liable as intermediary, but now a days it's pretty hard to defend in court and like the default judgement in case of sci-hub will happen with the node owners.

Hopefully libp2p and IPFS, IPNS can provide some way to be performant and anonymous.

Indeed some countries like India, China, Russia will even punish intermediary for hosting such content (there is no Safe Harbor laws in these countries). In USA and other economies hiring a lawyer and getting access to legal remedy is so expensive that even with Safe harbor law, one cannot defend unless have deep pockets like google, facebook, microsoft etc.

<comment><USER6> > I am of the opinion knowledge should be free and easily accessible.

I understand hatred for academic publishers, however this argument makes no sense.

It takes work to produce human knowledge. Writing a book, creating educational materials, and writing research all takes time, just like it takes time to build a house.

<comment><USER7> > It takes work to produce human knowledge. Writing a book, creating > educational materials, and writing research all takes time, just like it > takes time to build a house.

My understanding is that most / all articles in academic journals are written by researchers who are not paid by the journal. Then, the articles are peer reviewed by another set of researchers - who are also not paid by the journal. Then, those same researchers are charged by the journal if they want to have access to the article. It's very unclear what value the journal actually brings - outside of slapping a particular well known name on the publication they don't do much. All of the people that actually do the hard work receive no direct compensation.

<comment><USER8> Look up Chesterson's Fence. It's always a good idea to figure out why the fence exists before tearing it down.

Researchers who publish in these journals can publish anywhere, but they choose to publish in these for-profit journals.

Do you know why?

<comment><USER7> I'm a big fan of the Chesterson's Fence idea - maybe not applied slavishly, but as a general principle. And I have no idea where the journals came from. Nor do I have a suggestion for what to do about them. What I would be interested in reading about is any type of value that they bring to the process other than a name that was established long ago. I have yet to find much in the way that explains their current value for advancing academic knowledge.

<comment><USER8> Their value is very similar to that offered by Ivy League schools - prestige. The journals have the reputation for only publishing the highest quality, high impact papers. They act a filter.

Getting a paper in Nature will help you get tenure or win you that grant you need. Publishing in a no name journal is barely better than not publishing at all.

Because these journals are so prestigious, they can charge a lot for access. Every top school will buy access because it would be embarrassing if they didn't.

There is nothing stopping researchers from publishing in their favorite open access journal. In fact, they'd probably have a better chance of getting it published. However, they don't want to - those journals aren't prestigious enough. And without enough prestigious papers, they'll never make tenure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Wikipedia article is also kept reasonably up to date with the URLs: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)

They used to have a .onion address, which I assumed would continue to be the most reliable way in, but it's been down for a long time. I'm surprised, it seems like Tor would be the best way to remain up and accessible.

<comment><USER10> DNS-over-Wikipedia is my goto strategy for websites like this (Scihub, Libgen, Piratebay, Popcorn Time, etc.).

<comment><USER11> How does it work? I'm trying to find the referenced Wikidata entry about sci- hub, but when searching, I don't understand what I am reading.

<comment><USER11> I think I found it. [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21980377#P856](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21980377#P856) But it's not trivial to understand

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sci-Hub is such a marvelous resource. I like to read research papers for fun sometimes but I'm, let's put it gently, no scientist. So it'd be a huge waste of money for me to pay the steep prices of scientific journal subscriptions just to read 1-2 articles per month where I understand at most 75% of it.

However, I still feel bad about accessing them without any benefit to the scientific teams. Is there any way to give back to the people whose work I'm reading or at least some kind of science-related general fund or charity that I could contribute to?

<comment><USER13> If you enjoy a paper you read, email the first or corresponding author and say so! It would make my day if this happened to me, a PhD student.

Giving back doesn't have to be monetary. A note like that could give someone the encouragement they need to finish an experiment or a draft.

<comment><USER14> This.

Paying taxes is (at least in western countries where i know a tiny bit about academia) sufficient to support the authors.

If you want to go beyond that: reach out / blog / tweet / etc about papers that peek your interest. If someone else wrote about a paper of mine, I'd be over the moon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> HTTP 451. I never thought I'd see one of those before. I live in Canada... Not some authoritarian dictatorship. Wonder who blocked it.

<comment><USER16> Same result here in Brazil. An HTTP status code implies the domain name was properly resolved to the IP of the HTTP server. The page must have been removed by the host.

<comment><USER17> > An HTTP status code implies the domain name was properly resolved to the IP > of the HTTP server.

This is not true. Your ISP can in theory route the requested address to whatever they want. In the Netherlands TPB is blocked and my ISP returns a 200 status code which shows their blocking landing page. Other ISPs give a 30x redirect to their domain.

Basically the ISP can do a man in the middle attack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The sooner academic publishers die the better—not a very original thought, I'm aware.

There's still very much a distinction between (self-)publishing on the arXiv and publishing in a 'real' journal/conference within the academic community, and I think it comes down to two factors:

1\. The arXiv moderation process has a much lower bar; you see some pretty rubbish papers (often from large tech companies) make their way onto the arXiv which would never be published in a 'real' journal; ultimately this isn't a shortcoming (the arXiv has had a monumental impact on academia), but rather that the arXiv isn't trying to be a peer-reviewed journal.

2\. Visibility/'impact' is lower on the arXiv; there are ~14k submissions per month, so inevitably the signal to noise ratio is low.

I feel what we really need is for a few universities to put the many millions they spend on annual subscriptions into some kind of endowment to pay for proper editorial boards for a peer-reviewed arXiv instead, open access, perhaps with a token fee for submission (or a slightly higher academic affiliation bar). I think if two or three big universities from each of the US/UK/Europe suddenly made this change we would see the death of academic publishing in months.

<comment><USER19> Just an arXiv with peer-review is not enough. There is a lot of room for innovation and improvement. There was quite an interesting discussion[1] about creating something in between Overleaf[2], ArXiv[3], Git, and Wikipedia, moreover with the ability to do a peer-to-peer review, discussion, and social networking. Check out the last[4] article in that series. There are a few implementations, albeit not covering all features, like Authorea[5] and MIT's PubPub[6] (it is the open source[7]). See also GitXiv[8]. See also the Publishing Reform[9] project. Moreover, there is quite an interesting initiative from DARPA, to create the scientific social network of a kind - Polyplexus[10].

[1] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers- gitwikxi...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers-gitwikxiv/)

[2] [https://www.overleaf.com/](https://www.overleaf.com/)

[3] [https://arxiv.org/](https://arxiv.org/)

[4] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/05/20/gitwikxiv-follow- up-a-...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/05/20/gitwikxiv-follow-up-a-path-to- forkable-papers/)

[5] [https://authorea.com/](https://authorea.com/)

[6] [https://www.pubpub.org/](https://www.pubpub.org/)

[7] [https://github.com/pubpub](https://github.com/pubpub)

[8] [https://medium.com/@samim/gitxiv-collaborative-open- computer...](https://medium.com/@samim/gitxiv-collaborative-open-computer- science-e5fea734cd45)

[9] [https://gitlab.com/publishing- reform/discussion](https://gitlab.com/publishing-reform/discussion)

[10] [https://polyplexus.com/](https://polyplexus.com/)

<comment><USER20> I will probably create a Show HN thread very soon to officially announce it, but I am creating a startup that aims to cover these areas.

Essentially it's 'Reddit + Patreon for research'.

[http://asone.ai/](http://asone.ai/)

<comment><USER21> What is your business model?

<comment><USER20> We plan to take a cut of the crowdfunded transactions, like Patreon or Kickstarter does. We could also show academia-relevant ads on the sidebar. We will never paywall content on our platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In libgen, you can search for stuff and find books/docs that match the query, but unfortunately that appears to not be possible on sci-hub, which is inconvenient.

That said, both are incredible resources for academics, researchers, students or even folks just wanting to read up on a subject in more depth than Wikipedia has.

<comment><USER23> It's not really acting as a search engine, no. You can use Scholar for that, find the DOI, and paste it into sci-hub.

Speaking of which, Scholar should really be showing DOIs on their search results. That is, the DOI should appear as a top-level clickable link from every result entry. I've tried to suggest many things like this to Scholar over the years, but to no avail... Like Google in general. Just a feature request into the void.

<comment><USER24> They would never display it. It's basically the same reason why they won't show a complete url anymore, the more time you spend on Google the more money they get.

<comment><USER25> Google does not run ads on scholar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> webarchive URL (orignal shows http 451):

[http://web.archive.org/web/20200225000142/https://whereissci...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200225000142/https://whereisscihub.now.sh/)

<comment><USER27> > HTTP 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons

So not exactly useful if this one is blocked, heh.

Or is it some joke going over my head?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> PSA for those looking for access to research papers. If it's hard to find via scihub/libgen, you can also email the authors. No researchers want their work to be inaccessible, they just need to publish in journals for visibility/prestige.

Source: have research publications, always happy when someone reaches out

<comment><USER29> In computer science you can often find copies of the paper on the author's website as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oh no! I'm seeing it down.

[https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/whereisscihub.now.sh](https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/whereisscihub.now.sh)

Sending HugOps to everyone at Zeit trying to keep 99.99% uptime for now.sh at a time like this

<comment><USER31> There are no issues with the platform ([https://zeit-status.co/](https://zeit- status.co/)). The deploy has been blocked due to ToS violations.

<comment><USER32> What terms?

Edit: I didn't know Sci-Hub was illegal.

<comment><USER33> [https://zeit.co/terms](https://zeit.co/terms)

> You shall not... (b) use the Service in any unlawful manner (including > without limitation in violation of any data, privacy or export control laws

> This TOS shall be governed by the laws of the State of California without > regard to the principles of conflicts of law.

<comment><USER34> Pulling domain names from a Wikipedia article doesn't violate any laws. That's literally all the page did. It just checked the sci-hub Wikipedia article and reposted the latest domain listed. But it's their site/company, so whatever.

<comment><USER33> Ya I don't see it as illegal nor correct to block this site, but i bet they don't want to be anywhere near elsevier's radar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Too bad it's blocked by our telecom :(

> Dear customer, Due to a warning in accordance with Section 81 (1a) UrhG / > preliminary injunction / court decision, access to this website had to be > blocked.

<comment><USER36> I'm surprised you put up with that kind of censorship. I'd get a VPN if I were you.

<comment><USER35> I've tried various VPNs over the years but they add considerable latency to my already latency-laden LTE connection, which is only very briefly fun for the nostalgic 90s feeling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As academics, your institution is paying publishers to get access to journal (and you may loose access to electronic versions if the institution stops paying contrary to paper versions), you write papers for free, you review papers for free, you are part of the editorial board of the journal for free (or some crumbs for travelling to a conference), as an editor you spend most of your life managing people for a really small stipend compared to the time spent. People still do it because they believe it is useful. But current openaccess solutions that cost sometimes $5,000 are not a solution either. In both options the publishers is making the money and the researchers or their institution have to pay... There are legitimate concerns about scihub from some librarians as it doesn't allow a correct attribution of funds to ressources that are needed by researchers and there are some concerns of researchers credentials being stolen and shared (willingly and not) by scihub but also less reputable actors. University libraries are struggling with credentials reuse as they are the ones that get punished by the publishers with ban of ips or full institutions and harder contracts negotiations. Talking about those negotiations, they are all confidential, despite often using state or federal funds there is no way to know how much, what and how these secret deals are negotiated. So we still don't have a good solution. Preprints are useful, but we had already too many publications to skim through and the fact that anybody can publish anything with no filters makes finding meaningful information much harder....

<comment><USER38> >you write papers for free

Actually you often pay a couple thousand dollars as a publishing fee to get your paper in the journal after review. I'm sure it's not necessarily like that in every journal, but the bigger ones do it that way. So basically pay them to take your content, pay them to view their content, and do labor for them by reviewing papers for free.

<comment><USER37> True, but it is the case only in some high end tabloid-like journals, not more regular ones (at least in my field). Unless of course you ask for their openaccess option, then they charge thousands for CC-BY-NC-ND and sometimes more for CC-BY...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm getting a 451... Did zeit.now take this down?

<comment><USER33> For reference, 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Did a mod edit the title? If so, this has to be the most useless edit -- it completely eliminates the whole point of the domain name.

<comment><USER40> If they did, they did it very quickly as [https://hackernewstitles.netlify.com/](https://hackernewstitles.netlify.com/) didn't track a change on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> " _Where_ Sci-Hub Is"

Sci-Hub (/scimag/) has been located at the same IP address for at least three years, and neither domain names (DNS) nor onion addresses (TOR) are required to access it.

</comment><comment><USER42> As we can see by the fact the above URL is currently not working, there's a high risk associated with the centralized nature of sci-hub. It's already been the target of a major court case in the US and the only reason it's still running is because the site and it's founder (Alexandra Elbakyan) are outside of the court's jurisdiction. But there's still a chance it could disappear one day, and what sort of impact would that have on the productivity of researchers, many of which will be unable to access the articles they need?

If you have the disk space and bandwidth, I would strongly encourage you to participate in this torrent seeding effort: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ed9byj/library...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/ed9byj/library_genesis_project_update_25_million_books/)

The library genesis project maintains the full collection of all articles archived by sci-hub. At [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/scimag/) there are links in the download menu for both the torrents and database dumps.

For the full thing, you're going to need just over 70TB. The database dumps are updated weekly are are about 10GB each, compressed. As of today there are 81,000,000 articles in the collection. However, the collection is split up into many different torrents (100,000 articles each) so you can just grab a subset and seed those.

If sci-hub ever disappears, a highly-replicated backup will ensure that access to the articles is not lost, and a new frontend can be set up fairly easily. This won't help for new articles or those that haven't been archived, but it will preserve those that have.

As for the case against paywalled journals and the for-profit publishing industry, I can't make a better argument than that put forward by the editors of the Journal of Informetrics, who collectively resigned from Elsevier and published the first issue of their new open access journal just this week: [https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/qss_e_0...](https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/qss_e_00025)

As for the case for liberating paywalled articles: Aaron Swartz gave his life for this fight. It's now up to us to continue it.

</comment><comment><USER43> HTTP 451

<comment><USER34> Which comes from the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, wherein society goes awry to the point of publicly funding the destruction of valuable information. It's also the temperature paper (books) burns at.

Nobody actually uses this status code, despite it being an official spec. I'd like to think the dev or dev ops person who configured this server used the status code as a minor protest. The spec authors would be proud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think in software you don't appreciate how important papers are compared to other subjects like chemistry.

I wonder if they had hobbyists in mind when they built that site.

<comment><USER45> In software, many times new things come out of industry, and conference papers are (IMO) equally prevalent as journal papers.

<comment><USER44> Sure but a lot of that still ends up on github (or so.) The feeling I get with chemistry is that these journals are their equivalent to our github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> [https://archive.md/cNLVe](https://archive.md/cNLVe)

</comment><comment><USER47> looks like you should look into skynet (It's a web hosting/CDN platform based on a decentralized network of incentivised hosts.</comment>


Ubuntu vs RHEL in enterprise computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1072 <comment><USER2> Check out the source: <http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os- linux/all/all>

Specifically, Mark fails to mention that Centos is listed separately from RHEL in the survey, and when added together they come to 41%, more than twice that of Ubuntu.

I'm a Canonical fan, I'm typing this on 12.04 right now, but that seems a bit misleading.

<comment><USER3> It's also misleading because he talks about "large scale enterprise workloads," when he really should mention that their marketshare is almost entirely Linux desktop workstations. Most server workloads are entirely RHEL and CentOS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Source data?

<comment><USER3> <http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all>

CentOS and RHEL combined total 41.1% of all websites on the Internet. Ubuntu is a distant 3rd or 4th place behind Debian, depending on whether you count RHEL and CentOS as the same OS, or separate.

<comment><USER4> That's true, but that page says nothing about desktop statistics and how they compare to server statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We would love to sell and use Ubuntu based systems to the military and some enterprise but unfortunately there is a slew of certificates that RHEL systems have that Ubuntu don't. Like FIPS 140-2 etc.

[http://www.redhat.com/solutions/industry/government/certific...](http://www.redhat.com/solutions/industry/government/certifications.html)

Ubuntu is just not on many of those lists. It costs quite a bit of money and effort to get some of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Send an email to Mark Shuttleworth as instructed here: <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1056>

Or post a comment. Mark will likely respond personally (he usually does on his blog).

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. I just sent him a message.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is Ubuntu a supported platform for proprietary enterprise software & hardware the way RHEL is? Most of the time i've seen RHEL picked not only for its own support contracts but because it's supported by vendors like Oracle, Dell, RSA, VMware, etc. I'm sure apt has the same core features as rpm/yum, and probably similar stability with regards to patchsets, but vendor support is the killer enterprise feature for any distro.

(P.S. it's true that CentOS is used a lot in place of RHEL for cost cutting; they just change the redhat-release files and RPM provides and lie to the vendors about the platform)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's how the stats were created: <http://w3techs.com/technologies>

Although interesting, not really covering much of an "enterprise computing".

</comment><comment><USER8> I am just curious. I see MacOS being used by high traffic sites at this page. (<http://w3techs.com/technologies/market/operating_system>) -- Market Position image.

Any one have a list of popular websites run on MacOS?</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best book or advice on building online community? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "Social Architecture" by Hintjens.

"Digital Habitats" by Wenger et al.

I second "Building Successful Online Communities."

</comment><comment><USER3> "The Art of Community" by Jono Bacon

"Building Successful Online Communities", by Kraut & Resnik

</comment><comment><USER4> Copy whatever you can from other sucessfull ones.

PS: Make sure to add stories</comment>


Ask HN:  Company treating me like employee not independent contractor. - <AUTHOR>

Background: I am an Independent Contractor and own a US-based LLC.  I have a major client from a different country, who, about a year ago, established a US presence.
I now get paid once per month from the US-based Inc.
Story: Over a year ago, the client asked me to make them my only client.  I basically laughed it off and said ok...while keeping a handful of other clients that don't keep me very busy.
Earlier this year, the foreign portion of the company hired a CIO and I began reporting to him directly.  Over the last few months, my independence has been taken away from me with this CIO dictating the # of hours I must work each day (8), how I am to accomplish the work and that I only work for them.
I feel that they've now broken at least three cardinal rules with regard to independent contracting work:
1.  I am NOT free from another's right to direction and control.
2.  I am NOT free from the manner or method used to accomplish the work.
3.  I rely solely on them for my monthly income.
What are my options?  I don't feel that I can say anything to them for fear of them "not needing my services anymore".  I have no money saved up and finding a job in this economy has been really difficult for me. <comment><USER2> It wouldn't hurt to start looking for alternative clients. Bide your time till you can have enough breathing room to renegotiate your relationship. Even take advantage of the fact of it being the 1st and post in the freelancer's thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6310240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6310240)

Depending on how your contract works with these guys, there's no reason you can't renegotiate your terms.

Voicing your concerns is a huge first step. Just don't make a move on a whim. Make sure you're in a position to where you can negotiate.

If you don't feel you're as skilled to where you really can get a job, then build up your skills where you can.

You're the only one who can dig yourself out of this.</comment>