What should you say to a parent scared of Wi-Fi? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/21/parent-scared-wifi

<comment><USER2> Anyone who has ever been to a school meeting where there are a large number of parents will realise that some adults are scared of the universe and everything it contains.

<comment><USER3> This situation can hopefully be improved by educating parents about reality.

<comment><USER4> Some people seem to actively replace reality with their own notions. It continually baffles me. I can only suspect that I do the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Schools need wireless networks; the pupils need a device (handheld computer, or laptop) each, which they have access to whenever it is needed"_

Why do we need one laptop per child in a school? Computers are useful tools but hardly central to learning.

<comment><USER6> I've observed some of these classrooms where every child is using a laptop. About the only benefit is the occasional need to carry less books on their back -- the rest just provides a neat factor and gives the kids an increased familiarity with technology. Education isn't suffering from a lack of laptops and technology.

<comment><USER4> I think you are undervaluing "increased familiarity with technology".

I think the school systems are missing out on the transformational capability inherent in the use of technology. It's like using airplanes to drive around the country without ever leaving the ground. Until they transform the process of education, it's just typing instead of writing.

<comment><USER7> Then one DS or Wii per child should do wonders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quite telling is the data point (not a very accurate data point, but the only one around), that the radiation from wi-fi was below detectable levels, but the child's night-light was not. If wi-fi is fearsome, is it fearsome compared to what?

<comment><USER9> Wi-Fi is technological magic, and some people are afraid of that.

Also: unfortunately, a lot of the approaches here aimed at educating people about wifi won't work. Not that the approaches are _wrong_ \-- they're the best approach -- but they still won't work in too many cases, because people sense that they have no reason to trust you, and if you're trying to change their opinion, it's only because you're trying to push your own agenda forward at the expense of their health.

People in that mindset then treat facts as scary things that confuse them, so they avoid them altogether.

I live in an area with a higher-than-average ratio of such people, and we also happen to have a fairly thriving tech community. The wifi "debate" comes up often, there have been town meetings about it, it's interfered with city-wide wifi rollouts, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A killer argument in those cases (though not always applicable) is to ask the people if they are smoking. If so, they do not have any reason to be afraid of any environmental influence, since smoking will definitely kill them first.

<comment><USER11> I've made similar comparative harm arguments on a number of occasions. For example: the higher fat content in the organic milk [1] will kill you long before trace amounts of _evil scary chemicals_ in inorganic milk will.

Strangely, arguments like that never seem to convince anyone. Anyone susceptible to the power of reason is already convinced.

[1] 1%/2%/3% milk has a wide range of acceptable values. I.e., 3% means "between 2.8% and 3.5%" or something like that. Organic milk is always at the top of the range, which makes it taste better. (It's also pasteurized at a lower temperature.)

<comment><USER10> I drink organic milk myself, never having considered milk that deadly. I think most people consume only a minor part of their fat through milk, dont they?

<comment><USER12> I'm a vegetarian who does regular, strenuous exercise. I probably get a lot of my fat through whole milk, which I drink with protein powder. I go through about a gallon every 3-4 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> cool-RR I don't understand why everyone is so sure that Wi-Fi is not dangerous.

I know a few things about Physics and radiation, and I know Wi-Fi is supposed to be in the same frequency as wireless phones and microwaves, but still I would prefer not to be too close to a wireless router (Although of course, in this time and age I often have to put this concern aside and spend a lot of time close to routers anyway.)

Firstly, research about radiation, and generally research regarding health matters, is always vague and ambivalent, probably because of the big commercial interests involved.

Secondly, the fact that wireless routers "operate in 2.4GHz like wireless phones" does not calm me. How do you know they transmit only in this range? How do you know it's exactly the frequency that matters? Maybe it's some combination of frequency, amplitude, and something else? How do you know wireless phones aren't dangerous in the first place?

I've worked enough with technical things to know that eventually, you can't really know with certainty whether something will work. (Or in this case, whether something will not harm your health.) Sometimes everything makes sense, but you're still getting a different result.

If this helps you accept my point, I think Knuth's quotation is relevant: "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

<comment><USER13> The amount of energy put out by Wi-Fi is absolutely dwarfed by the radio, television, and cell phone EM signals that we are swamped in at all times. And none of them put out enough energy to do anything but raise our temperature an immeasurably small amount.

See here: [http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2009/09/wifi_and_radiat...](http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2009/09/wifi_and_radiation.php)

<comment> cool-RR Some people say that, some people say the opposite. How can I know which are right?

<comment><USER14> Example: People other than you claim to be sentient. You have no direct access to their first-person experience, and are incapable of coming up with a falsifiable method of testing for its existence. How can you know they are sentient?

Philosophical answer is that you can't, really. Provided you want to remain in the realm of localism, materialism, etc. (variously known as "science" and "common sense"), however, you could just measure the energy output of a television and the energy output of wireless router and stop worrying about how nothing is certain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Introducing foil hats as part of the uniform should calm the parents.

</comment><comment><USER16> You know, recently in the UK, there was a case where the authorities said a woman was too stupid to have children:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/6365363/Social- services-to-take-baby-from-teenager-deemed-too-stupid-to-marry.html)

This law should be applied in this case.</comment>


Your Life in Weeks - <AUTHOR> http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html <comment><USER2> > Are you making the most of your weeks?

Nope. I have wasted all weeks before now and will waste however many are left.</comment>


Incorporations and LLCs Free Again — All Week - <AUTHOR> http://www.smallbiztrends.com/2008/12/incorporations-and-llcs-free-again-all-week.html/ <comment><AUTHOR> I would be wary of jumping into that, but if you're a lone founder type like me, it's worth considering. I did my LLC myself.</comment>


Anonymized list of engineering salaries from bootcamp grads - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JR4KrVH1dygniLiLFAMTvdSp5gGLVKKkOxBYiPQagvE/edit?usp=sharing <comment><USER2> 1\. These salaries are for Bootcamp graduates, which means they'll be lower than someone with 5 years experience in programming.

2\. These salaries are likely for the Bay Area, where a 1br apartment can cost you $3k+, and your tax rate will be 35% (state + federal). It's not comparable to places with lower tax rates and lower cost of living.

<comment><USER3> Location does make a huge difference. I make $110,000 as a CTO with 20 years experience but if you calculate for cost of living differences that is $164,162 in San Fransisco.

Although I'm probable still underpaid if #1 is true... some of these salaries are approaching that.

<comment><USER4> $110K as a CTO does seem low to me. Do you mind if I ask where you live?

<comment><USER5> I earn far less than that, as CTO of a Southern California e-commerce company.

The salaries in this spreadsheet seem incredibly high for one year of experience.

<comment><USER6> The salaries aren't high. It's just that you're getting screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's another one that has 3600 salaries: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1a1Df6dg2Pby1UoNl...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1a1Df6dg2Pby1UoNlZU2l0FEykKsQKttu7O6q7iQd2bU/edit#gid=1023506792)

<comment><USER8> This data doesn't seem too reliably sourced. Sorting by ascending years of experience shows negative numbers with the top entry being -9001 and an annual base pay of "a trap a day makes the boner go away"...

<comment><USER9> The data is not scrubbed at all [0], but once scrubbed looks believable.

Per this self-reported data, base Salary for engineer-class jobs (excluding management)in the San Francisco Bay Area pays:

1 yr. experience $104,000.

5 yr. $132,000

10 yr. $175,000

15+ yr. $171,000

Cash bonuses average about 7% of base salary.

[0]Most salaries are written out fully ($120,000). But enough are in $1,000s ($120) to throw it off if you're doing any averaging.

Location naming is all over the place:

\- San Francisco

\- SFO

\- San Francisco Bay Area

\- Bay Area

\- San Jose

\- San Carlos

\- Mountain View

\- Sunnyvale

etc.

Job title is all over the place...

So you'll need to do some scrubbing in order to get it to a useful state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honestly was expecting a lot more, considering the salaries people throw around on Hacker News. Using [http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost- of-l...](http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living- calculator.aspx) the adjusted value for $136,000 in SF to where I live in New York is a decent chunk less. Especially being in a DevOps/Systems role, and not a Software Dev one.

<comment><USER11> Everyone on HN makes $200K+, drives a BMW and has a supermodel for a partner. Whenever salary comes up, there's always someone here who knows someone whose brother's girlfriend's room-mate makes $400K at Google, and therefore it's normal for a Software Engineer to make this much.

The averages in this spreadsheet seem to agree _roughly_ with average/median for the Bay Area as reported by Glassdoor[1] and Payscale[2].

1: [https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software- en...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-engineer- salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM759_KO14,31.htm)

2: [http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary/a5e48575/San- Francisco-CA)

<comment><USER12> _> it's normal for a Software Engineer to make this much_

Yeah I wouldn't say "normal" (how should we quantify that?), but they do exist. Most engineers at Google, Facebook, etc. don't pass the senior level, and that's the last engineering rung everyone is expected to at least achieve.

But if you do know staff or senior staff engineers at Google and Facebook working in NYC or SF, it is disproportionately likely that they are earning in excess of $300k/year between salary, bonus and stock grants. I know people like that directly, and I also know undergrads who are receiving between $120-$150k/year in coastal cities in total compensation offers amortized over four years.

People probably aren't lying on Hacker News, the medium just lends itself to reporting bias. Large forums like this have enough participants that I'm not really surprised when 10 or so people come into a thread and claim to earn something like half a million per year. It looks outlandish but there is a vast swath of engineers who are just not speaking up; for the distribution, it's probably about right. It's not as if people are claiming these salaries as base compensation before bonus and stock.

<comment><USER13> > _in total compensation offers amortized over four years._

Which is an incredibly disingenuous way to phrase it. As a new graduate you can't pay rent with stock grants that vest in 48 months.

The value of $1 worth of stock 4 year from now is work a small fraction of $1 in someone's paycheck today, especially when they're just starting out. That $120k "in coastal cities" (just say NYC/SF) is closer to $75-80k in cash compensation, before discretionary bonus, which means in San Francisco you've got a 2-hour one way commute from your studio with 4 roommates.

And what's the average tenure of someone at a tech company these days? A year and half, maybe two? So your 4-year average compensation including stock grants, discretionary bonuses, free beer and catered food, etc is still well above average when you consider many people won't get half of what needs to vest.

<comment><USER14> Almost all new grad offers vest 25% of equity in one year, then it is typically monthly, quarterly at most.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Look at the company names, I'm not buying this for graduates of a 12 week bootcamp.

Either this bootcamp is very selective in who they admit, or they are very selective in which salaries they show.

The only way you're passing multiple rounds of interviews at google/facebook/big name sv company after 12 weeks of study is if you already had a _significant_ knowledge base before hand, you're some kind of algorithms savant, or you got _incredibly_ lucky.

<comment><USER16> I'm an App Academy grad. I don't work at Google myself, but I know a few who do.

App Academy is indeed extremely selective, with an acceptance rate less than 3%.

The salaries shown are all self-reported (App Academy isn't releasing this), so there is likely some sample bias for sure.

And you doubt that a/A grads work at Google or similar companies? See for yourself: [https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent...](https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrentCompany=%5B%221441%22%5D&keywords=App%20Academy&origin=FACETED_SEARCH&school=App%20Academy)

<comment><USER15> No I don't doubt they work at Google--I doubt that it's what they learned at app academy that got them the job at Google.

You can't take someone new to programming and train them to pass a Google interview in 12 weeks.

<comment><USER17> I did this and 1 other person did this in my cohort.

The flaw with your assumption is that you're new to programming by the time you start a/A. By the time you start a/A you can already solve sophomore-level algorithms problems.

<comment><USER15> >The flaw with your assumption

I never assumed that. I prefaced my assertion with: unless you have a significant knowledge base going in.

I've done a bit of reading up on app academy and from what I can tell it's a pretty standard curriculum, but it includes 80-100 hours per week of work.

It's basically a 12 week long interview that's doesn't so much _train_ developers as it does _select_ them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is it only me or aren't these wages crazy high for people with only 0-2 years of experience?

I started as a fresh software engineer in Tokyo this year, and I'm making around $37k a year. I think that newbies earn about that much in Helsinki, Finland, too, where I'm originally from.

<comment><USER19> California is financial fairy tale land in every way. Wages, taxes, real estate, and cost of living are all crazy high.

<comment><USER18> How strong financial "gradients" there are around the Bay area? Do people try to come up with all kinds of remote work scenarios etc. to be able to earn the same wages without having to pay for living there?

How do people who are not software engineers, manage? Are all wages high?

<comment><USER20> Not really. Some people take their bay area salary and swing it into remote work somewhere else. But most of us like it here and have no desire to move. High cost of living = higher pay. High housing costs = higher expected appreciation. And most people just pay the piper and deal with it. It doesn't seem particularly difficult to afford living here, versus anywhere else I've been. It's just a different world. My sister owned a house in Rochester for 5 years, and when they sold it, they were worried about being able to get the money they paid for it, let alone pay the agent. A roof costs 20% the purchase price. All of a sudden renting looks more attractive. This is not to say you're guaranteed to make money on real estate in SF or Boston or wherever, just that it's a different game, and you can't bring all of your old assumptions into it.

Whether you're in SF or the middle of Wyoming, how many people really optimize for retirement? The software engineer in SF might treat herself to a nicer car after a few years of good raises. The rancher in Wyoming might buy a newer side-by-side for hunting trips after having a few good years. Almost nobody goes full Mr Money Moustache and restricts their spending as much as possible in order to retire as soon as possible. Most people spend most of the money they make and make a vague plan to retire somewhere around 65. So if you're going to spend a decent chunk of what you make, why not do it in the Valley versus anywhere else?

If you're looking to get out as soon as possible, ABSOLUTELY get an SF salary, move to Wyoming, and live in a trailer. Or, better yet, a foreign country with an even lower cost of living.

For the rest of us, we have hobbies, families, interests outside of work, and uprooting all of it to move to Wyoming to save some money is just as unthinkable as cutting all hobbies and travel and dining out expenses just to sit on the couch every night.

<comment><USER19> This comment is hilariously "Bay Area."

 _> The rancher in Wyoming might buy a newer side-by-side for hunting trips after having a few good years._

Right, because everyone outside the Bay Area lives in a double-wide.

 _> Most people spend most of the money they make and make a vague plan to retire somewhere around 65. So if you're going to spend a decent chunk of what you make, why not do it in the Valley versus anywhere else?_

This is a ludicrous strawman. Most employees in technical fields in average American cities have the means to make a concrete retirement plan, build an emergency fund, and live debt-free without going full-Mustache. My first year out of college, I was spending maybe 20% of my income on a 700sqft 1BR apartment with off-street parking in a walkable, safe neighborhood in a clean, well-educated midwestern city. Now I spend 20% of my income on a short, low- rate mortgage that would be several million dollars in the Bay Area.

 _> For the rest of us, we have hobbies, families, interests outside of work, and uprooting all of it to move to Wyoming to save some money is just as unthinkable as cutting all hobbies and travel and dining out expenses just to sit on the couch every night._

For the rest of us outside the Bay Area, we too have hobbies, families, the option of financial security, and moving to the Bay Area for nice weather and snobs who think the rest of the country lives in trailer parks is just as unthinkable as whatever else it is you think we do in the rest of the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is really data from bootcamp grads (the top of the spreadsheet says so).

<comment><USER22> This is an important distinction. The salaries on this sheet seem low overall, and it's probably because they're new grads from bootcamp. Someone with 10+ years of experience should be demanding more than the average salary on this list.

<comment><USER23> You're kidding me.

I'm in the UK, 10 years dev experience, BSc Computer Science.

Every single salary in that list is higher than mine.

<comment><USER24> anecdotal evidence from Facebook: if you transfer to London office instead of Bay Area, your salary gets slashed 20%

<comment><USER25> That would still be very high for London/uk

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bootcamp marketing methinks? I have never met a _recent_ bootcamp grad who seemed even remotely qualified to work at Google as a SWE. Just don't buy it (keep in mind none of them had CS degrees or worked in industry before). I'd love to be proven wrong, in a verifiable way.

<comment><USER16> People on LinkedIn who have gone to App Academy who currently or previously work at Google: [https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent...](https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrentCompany=%5B%221441%22%5D&keywords=App%20Academy&origin=FACETED_SEARCH&school=App%20Academy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't anonymous sourcing of data like this likely introduce some significant biases?

<comment><USER28> I would think anonymous contribution is likely to yield more truthful information.

<comment><USER27> It (by design) includes only people who self-select to share their compensation details. I would expect that to skew high, even if 100% truthful.

<comment><USER28> what self gratification does one get by boosting his/her salary when it's anonymized?

<comment><USER27> I didn't argue they're likely to boost their salaries, or that they receive self gratification from doing so, so I'm not sure how to answer your question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Salaries should not be secret. They don't have to be open to tying someone to a particular salary but I think there should be some law that mandates a greater transparency here. If economics taught me anything it's that the worst decisions are made when someone else has more information than you

</comment><comment><USER30> This makes me want to cry. I'm below all but one of these entries. 30 years experience + full stack + dba.

All because of where I live (small northern ontario town -remotism?) and likley ageism (57). I should be getting paid MORE because of where I live.

<comment><USER31> Why would your remote location with a lower cost of living(I'm assuming, at least for housing) mean you should make more?

<comment><USER32> The more remote the location, the higher the cost of non-housing things are. Shipping in groceries to Yellow Knife costs more than shipping groceries to Toronto, even though Toronto's housing prices are significantly more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> These seem higher than most of my colleagues straight out of very reputable CS degree programs.

This doesn't make much sense since it appears most of these a/A (App Academy) finishers don't have relevant work experience and degrees.

It looks like App Academy really helps its participants negotiate salary and interview well. A few people have fairly senior titles. The reason for that isn't apparent.

<comment><USER34> Yeah, the senior titles for people with 1 or 1.5 years out of bootcamp don't make any sense at all, and cast doubt on the validity of the data. Come on, we've all worked with smart people that are a year or two in to being a developer, and you can't label them "senior" no matter how smart they are.

Is it possible that someone from one or more bootcamps is fluffing the data, knowing that it will get posted on HN?

<comment><USER35> Eh, if you're one of the few devs at a startup it's easy to get a "senior" title. It comes down to responsibility. Now whether any sane startup should be HIRING as one of their primary devs a recent grad is another question entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> These numbers are interesting, but could non-US folks please stop crying about the crazy high absolute numbers before doing some basic math and adjusting for other metrics besides total salary?

I always use Numbeo ([https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/)) to compare cost of living, and quite often find that I would need to double my salary to have the same standard of living in SV or NYC, which would put me right in the middle of this list. But, and that's the bigger point here, this does not factor in that I could never live in places like the Valley, or work at some of the places on this list without being unhappy most of the time. I know this sounds harsh towards some folks here, but if you're happy where you currently are please do the math and really be honest to yourself about your priorities. Often you'll find that the grass isn't greener on the other side...

<comment><USER37> > These numbers are interesting, but could non-US folks please stop crying > about the crazy high absolute numbers before doing some basic math and > adjusting for other metrics besides total salary?

Quite a few of us non-US folks are in London, which is only 13% cheaper than San Francisco, so we will continue crying, thank you very much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For comparison see average Police and Firefighter salaries in California: [http://www.sacbee.com/site- services/databases/article2573210...](http://www.sacbee.com/site- services/databases/article2573210.html)

A police lieutenant in Mountain View averages 198k

<comment><USER33> Wow, I'm in the wrong industry. I could be walking Castro Street on this sunny day, breaking up fistfights over which is the superior text editor; handing out speeding tickets to Teslas, McLarens, and Lamborghinis; giving parking tickets to exotic cars spilling all over the street for the latest open house.

All for way more money than almost everyone I know is making. Not bad at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wow, totally editable. I'm completely shocked this hasn't just been replaced by a picture of a penis yet.

<comment><USER40> a disturbingly accurate observation about the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Shameless plug but I made a website to search through almost 7 millions salaries from 2000 to 2015(I'm currently working on getting more recent data).

[http://www.jobsintech.io/visas](http://www.jobsintech.io/visas)

Unfortunately its only salaries of foreigners.

<comment><USER33> I like your website. It has more features than h1bdata.info, my normal go-to for salary comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Who here has actually interviewed Bootcamp graduates? I've had people who didn't know the difference between an object and an array, and people who had to comment their way through implementing a function that replicates "filter" in javascript.

I really don't buy it that people straight out of Bootcamp can land a job at any of these companies at such salaries. You need a lot more background knowledge before that.

Or is this a case of survivor bias, where these are the salaries of only the most qualified graduates who had a ton of background knowledge before going in?

I don't see it.

<comment><USER35> > I've had people who didn't know the difference between an object and an > array, and people who had to comment their way through implementing a > function that replicates "filter" in javascript.

I don't know a single person from my cohort who fits that description...and we aren't the most selective bootcamp by far.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, I was also shocked that you can graduate a bootcamp without understanding that. But I watched candidates building a React app with Redux and literally not understanding, when you ask them to declare an array, what you even mean by that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Should this really be publicly editable? Won't it just become a jumbled mess?

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal here is to make it easy for some one to add data.

I protected the initial 100+ salaries (Feature in Google Docs). An plan on locking in rows as more people contribute.

The other option was to do a google form but would of been an extra step.

<comment><USER44> Why are they mostly from the same bootcamp?

Why does it say "over 100+" when there are 91 responses?

<comment><USER45> This was informal survey/spreadsheet passed around specifically between App Academy alums. Somebody got their hands on it and published it. It's also pretty old -- we have a newer version that's in use now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Hey all, I actually work at App Academy in the admissions department. Happened to see this while at work. These numbers are very much in-line with our graduate history ($105k average in SF, $89k in NY).

Seems like there is a decent amount of skepticism in this thread, but feel free to ask me anything!

</comment><comment><USER47> Salaries without location is does little useful; I would argue it harms more than it helps anyone.

<comment><USER48> All except one of these has an associated location, and that 1 lists "Facebook" as the company, so a location can be assumed. Not sure what you meant by this comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The vast majority of these are App Academy (a/A) programming bootcamp graduates, which explains why only 10% have CS degrees. Bootcamp graduates are probably not representative of all CS grads, or even most devs, so take this with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER33> It looks like App Academy grads vastly out-earn their CS-degreed counterparts. I wonder if that is representative of App Academy. If so, that is impressive.

<comment><USER16> App Academy is extremely selective (less than 3%). Also there is probably sample bias, since these are all self-reported.

<comment><USER33> So App Academy is fulfilling the selection process that companies really want?

Sounds like a cheaper way to a $150k salary than spending 4 years at a top CS university or MBA program.

<comment><USER16> Indeed. I'm a graduate (3+ years ago). Best thing I ever did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> And here I am, living in Germany and getting told that asking for 60,000€ p.a. as a software engineer with 11 years working experience is waaay too much for most companies. Only the big ones like Bosch, Porsche, Daimler (all non-IT companies) and a few other exceptions will pay enough for a sustainable life.

At the same time we hear about regular reports about "shortage of skilled professionals" here in Germany, it's laughable, it's because no one wants to pay enough money, because cheap students are good enough. And I have to clean up their mess...

<comment><USER50> But Germany has great public transport, excellent beers, free/close to free healthcare and liberal icon like Angela Merkel. That is all good hackers/developers care about.

<comment><USER49> That is all true, but the thing is that most of the developers I know are single and have lots of time on their hands. Some of them literally play computer games only in their spare time. I decided I want to have kids and so I have a family now, and I can tell you having even just 1 kid is expensive enough. Me and my wife we both work full time, only to have enough spare money at the end of the month to put aside, just so we can believe this money will be worth something in 30 years or so (I don't believe it). And we are not living an extraordinary/luxury life. I'm not materialistic, and I only care about money because I need it to keep me and my family alive. Germany is quite expensive in that regard compared to the average salary.

<comment><USER42> What area of software development are you in?

<comment><USER49> I'm currently working as a web developer, with a focus on frontend development.

<comment><USER51> You should put some way of contacting you in your HN profile, or message me if you're open to remote work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Way too much of a hard salary cap on $150k in this industry.

It'd be interesting to see a graph of how much additional compensation every additional year of experience gets you.

Also, how do I sort this dataset by column (eg. salary)?

</comment><comment><USER53> This might be an interesting sheet to add to this service [https://spreadshare.co](https://spreadshare.co)?

Here is another one regarding salaries in engineering [https://spreadshare.co/spreadsheet/salaries-of- engineers](https://spreadshare.co/spreadsheet/salaries-of-engineers)

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't know if this has been said yet, but this probably has heavy response bias. If you're a bootcamp grad making 70k per year, you probably won't report it.

The top 5-10 kids from each bootcamp per year probably make these high salaries. It's been years so there's a ton of them around. The others probably aren't making something this high.

</comment><comment><USER55> > Software Developer | Salary: $62,757.0 | Total comp: $80,000

Found the Canadian. I wonder if these are all in USD or local currency?

</comment><comment><USER56> Along these lines though not completely ready for launch yet, been working on a simple site for comparing title levels across companies. Salary data is more useful when contextualized across level / experience.

See: [http://www.levels.fyi](http://www.levels.fyi)

</comment><comment><USER57> From this it appears as though a full stack developer makes about the same or just a little more than a front end or back end developer. Wonder why this is. I would expect a full stack developer to make at least 1.5x of a FE or BE being that they are working in both among other things.

</comment><comment><USER58> Senior dev salary in Berlin is 60-80k EUR, >40% taxes. Compared to SF and London, rents are still cheap though. 2BR can be had for 700-1000 depending on quality and location. I saw a post from Buffer where 60k in Berlin equal 120-130k in SF or NY, not sure if that is true.

</comment><comment><USER59> As a backend developer living in Germany, these salaries make me want to work remotely, for a US based company. I only make 40k, with several years of experience. Does someone here have experience with with working remotely from Germany?

</comment><comment><USER60> Hmm, interesting.

I know software engineers with 10-20 years of experience in Seattle making roughly the same amounts at the same companies.

Is it a selection bias, or are California comp packages really that much higher than Seattle? (for entry level)

<comment><USER61> Bay area has higher cost of living and Washington has no state income tax. But yes, Bay Area comp packages are higher in raw numbers than those in Seattle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Would like to see this with more data, and then filtered down to only rows with full stock-refresh-vest cycles going on (e.g. if stock vests over 3 years, then only employees with 3+ years tenure, etc).

</comment><comment><USER63> How are all these engineers with 0-2 years experience making 100k+ ??

<comment><USER32> Keep in mind that most of these are Bay Area positions. These people may be making $100k+ and still in a living situation with 6 roommates to make ends meet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I would add a 'company is public' column to this spreadsheet. Even if you don't disclose the company, you can at least say if you can sell your equity easily ;)

</comment><comment><USER65> Can't sort the table, and copy the whole document (though copy-paste of individual cells works). Is it Google's fault or is it published in a wrong way?

</comment><comment><USER66> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14536254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14536254)

</comment><comment><USER67> What determines if a person receives a signing bonus and the amount normally? Some received none while others with less experience received more...?

</comment><comment><USER68> Wow! Plot this and visually analyze this. Flip out.

Even discarding the most intense outliers, there's essentially no logic to comp in these numbers.

People keep telling me they don't want to unionize. But you look at data like this and go, "Wow, what the hell is even going on."

</comment><comment><USER69> It may be interesting to also list age, besides gender and race.

</comment><comment><USER70> Make over 100k, spent most of it on housing.

</comment><comment><USER71> Hahah, line 139...

</comment><comment><USER3> If this spreadsheet shows me one thing it is that people need education on stock options. Several people put their number of stock options in the additional compensation field... which as many of you know is an absolute meaningless number.

</comment><comment><USER72> Pardon my ignorance of the google ecosystem but... how can I download this spreadsheet?

<comment><USER39> File -> Download As -> {{whatever you want to download as}}

<comment><USER72> I don't have a menu at all. Other comment worked though, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Will we see one for female employees? Or would that be too expensive to compile?

<comment><USER74> Well. As a former Google female employee, I've learned that with 4 years Google experience and 10 years industry experience, I was making as much total comp as a person with about 1.5 years industry experience.</comment></comment>


Why You Should Want to Pay for Software, Instagram Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/why-you-should-want-to-pay-for-software-instagram-edition/266367/

<comment><USER2> While I agree with the overall sentiment of the article, the hypothetical monetization numbers in the last paragraph are just ridiculous. Getting 20% of a free userbase to pay anything is extremely high. ~0.2% to 2% sounds like a more likely number, based on my admittedly cursory knowledge of monetization of apps. $5 a month also sounds a bit high for essentially a photo-sharing service, a yearly charge of ~$20 sounds more likely. However, for users that have passed the "willing to pay anything" barrier, the actual cost might not as big a deal.

This also completely ignores the viral nature of these types of services; people are more likely to use Instagram when their friends are using it. Without being free, it's not clear whether it would have taken off enough to gain 2 million users (or whether it could keep 2 million after the remaining 98 million left).

That said, I'm all for paying for services, and much prefer that model to ads. But just because some of us would prefer that doesn't mean it would have been the right choice for Instagram. It's easy to look back and say "they should have charged users," but we can't be sure we'd be in a place to analyze them if they had.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. But it would sure be nice if there was an option that said "Terms of Service A is free; Terms of Service B is $X/month". Then I could make the decision about whether the service/privacy/cost tradeoff is important enough for me to shell out either cash or privacy. This is _especially_ true at points like this, when a service is trying to "go to the next level" in terms of revenue.

Use the free stuff to get people hooked, then let people decide how to pay for their habit. If you can make $25/year off of me through my private info, let me decide if I want to pay $25/year for your service (which is, quite literally, pocket change). As it is, I'll just stop using your service (like I'm going to stop using Instagram).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this is actually an argument for open protocols. If Google put this clause in the terms of service for Gmail, you could switch to Yahoo! Mail, or you could switch to Fastmail.fm, or whatever else. But when it's a proprietary social network, you can't switch (in practice), because all your friends and followees are on Instagram - not the other thing that you switch to.

When services interoperate using open, decentralized protocols, competitive pressure helps keep a lot of the ugly stuff out of their Terms of Service. We all win. But with Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook, one company has a complete monopoly on a particular combination of (functionality + approximation of social graph). Competition is locked out, and only regulation can prevent the company from doing whatever they want.

<comment><USER5> I think you mean control of your data, rather than open protocols. For example, you can still access your Gmail via IMAP.

It would be great if users could have a decentralized store of the private data, and merely gave websites or applications access to the data. Unfortunately this is a privacy geek's pipe dream, as data hosting costs and complexity would result in low adoption rates (e.g. setting up your own OAuth server).

On a side note, this is a another area where Google+ falls behind Facebook. Facebook is a platform for other apps. Sometimes this results in stuff like Zynga spam, but there are good use cases such as allowing Twitter / Instagram apps to post in more than one location. Vic Gundotra has stated in interviews that Google wants a single conversation thread rather than have it fractured across different platforms, but that strategy is an all or nothing approach and they're late to the social networking game.

<comment><USER4> > ... _users could have a decentralized store of the private data, and merely > gave websites or applications access to the data._

I have to ask, are you familiar with Tent? (<https://tent.io>) You just described exactly what they are setting out to do (and on a basic, somewhat limited level, already do).

I agree the effort faces serious challenges, but as I hoped to illustrate with my email analogy, it doesn't require every user to set up their own server to benefit. You could choose between keeping your data with a hypothetical GTent, or Yahoo! Tent, or Fasttent.fm, whichever one had the best policies, ad- supported or, if you prefer, paid.

<comment><USER6> The issue with a distributed social network is that it doesn't scale well, and there's no amount of tricky coding that can change that.

Imagine I have a thousand friends on a distributed Facebook-clone. I post a photo, and that instantly gets pushed to anywhere up to one thousand different servers. Every server has to store a copy and index it. If that was a 1MB image, I just pushed a solid gigabyte of data out. Pushing an album of 50 photos pushes that to 50GB, or 5% of my dedicated servers allocated bandwidth for one users photo album.

There's no way an individual or group is going to be able to host their own servers. The whole system just dissolves down to a single large provider serving the vast majority of people, and we're back to Facebook again.

It's a great idea when you sketch it out on paper, but it becomes impractical very rapidly.

<comment><USER7> This is a practical use case for Bittorrent.

<comment><USER6> And asymmetric encryption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This make a wildly naive assumption that paying for a product somehow makes it less likely that they will monetize your likeness. The truth is large companies with any swath of investors are expected to grow, thats how money is made. This means that there will need to be constant new revenue streams added on.

TLDR: Paying for any app just delays the inevitable monetization of content as the company is forced to expand and create more revenue.

<comment><USER9> Agreed with a caveat:

People could prefer services that have some sort of contractual agreement for perpetuity to never do anything creepy with your stuff. Those services would by definition have to have some sort of paid angle or make due with dumb ads. Now most people don't care but it's possible someone could, in DDG fashion, try and leverage the "don't be creepy" angle.

<comment><USER8> Perpetuity is a funny word when it comes to the law. In hindsight site it always seems to be a synonym for convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Atlantic is being deliberately misleading here. Pay for Software? I think they should have said, "Why You Should Pay for Internet Service."

That is, unless there's a way for you to download Instagram's entire service as a package and install it on your own infrastructure (not likely), you aren't ever going to pay them for "software." If you pay them, it will be a subscription to their service.

I think the real culprit here is actually Google, who can (and do!) release all kinds of useful free services. They then actively support the misconception that all online services should be free – this helps them because consumers then make the error of assuming that this is reasonable; meanwhile, Google benefits as consumers turn a blind eye to their data mining, advertising, etc.

I suppose it would be fair to blame all the large cloud providers competing in the same space (Microsoft and Yahoo for example). However, Google was the first to try this and arguably the most successful.

<comment><USER11> Google was not even close to being the first to give away services. Hotmail and Yahoo mail were around before Google even existed. And that's just the first two that came to mind.

<comment><USER10> That's not what I said, of course. Google doesn't just "give away services:"

They release all kinds of useful free services. They then actively support the misconception that all online services should be free – this helps them because consumers then make the error of assuming that this is reasonable; meanwhile, Google benefits as consumers turn a blind eye to their data mining, advertising, etc.

In other words, Google was the first to really push what could be done in free services. Sure, HTTP was a "free service" before Google ever existed – but that's not my point. Search engines existed before, but Google took a first step by placing the search results first – instead of the flashing banner ads.

<comment><USER11> I remember the 90s before Google existed. There were search engines without ads. Search engines added ads after gaining an audience, just like Google did. Text ads were invented by Overture, another search company, before Google existed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'll bet instagram never thought of that! If only they had these guys coming in to tell them that they could charge for software. "Guys, if you charge just $5 a month - you'll have $300m a quarter!" Genius!

Great reporting Atlantic, I'm normally a fan, but this is quite poor.

<comment><USER13> This article's claim (even stated in the title) is not that Instagram should have charged, but that users should demand to pay. The article is not written for Instagram: it is written for users.

> Truly, the only way to get around the privacy problems inherent in > advertising-supported social networks is to pay for services that we value. > It's amazing what power we gain in becoming paying customers instead of the > product being sold.

<comment><USER14> > users should demand to pay

People have a hard time paying for parking space, yet some claim those same people should _demand_ paying for the ability to upload a small file to the internet. I don't think anybody outside of the tech bubble treats such advice seriously.

<comment><USER13> ... so because the attempt is futile, you are saying we should pretend he didn't say it, and interpret the rest of his article in that light?

FWIW, I have a friend in the planning division of the city I live in, and just a few days ago we were having a discussion about the issues with parking.

[http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking- Updated/dp/1932...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking- Updated/dp/193236496X)

People certainly can and do make arguments that people should demand to pay for parking, as to do anything else causes even worse problems.

<comment><USER14> I was curious if somebody will bring this title to the table as I've found this book some time ago on Goodreads, but frankly, 800p about this subject is a TLDR for me.

My point was, while I think people should be comfortable paying for services, claiming they should demand to pay instead of getting it free is a bit absurd. It's not like there are no paid more feature-rich alternatives for uploading photos, or that web users just don't pay for online; it's just that Instagram, Twitter & co wouldn't grow to those numbers if they were a paid service. Prove me wrong, but I also got the feeling Pinboard users are there for the statement, not because they believe bookmarking links is worth $10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "X has Y millions of users, if they charged $5..." yeah, right. I am willing to pay for online services, but sharing phone pictures of coffee mugs or posting status messages isn't one of them. I bet most people feel the same.

</comment><comment><USER15> "You might call this the anti-free-software movement." - More like anti-free- services movement. There is nothing wrong with free software.

</comment><comment><USER16> Why It Doesn't Matter If You Pay for Software, Sparrow Edition

[http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and- acquisitio...](http://mattgemmell.com/2012/07/21/entitlement-and-acquisition/)

</comment><comment><USER17> >It's amazing what power we gain in becoming paying customers instead of the product being sold.

Since when did customer have any power what so ever in regard to products and services? DRM'infested products, streaming services that throw anti-piracy ads down consumers throat, and other similar things.

Paying for a product or service don't mean that a company will suddenly start acting ethical.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wasn't app.net largely using similar sounding arguments to reasonable effect? This isn't anything new.

</comment><comment><USER19> The sad truth is that even when you pay, the service will still monetize your profile and data.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is basically like assigning a copyright to all your creative work for free to FB/Instagram to use for Marketing Purposes. Seems Non-trivia, if it is true.

TL;DR==Bait and Switch. Oldest game it town.</comment>


Short Is In - <AUTHOR> http://kk.org/ct2/2008/03/short-is-in.php <comment><USER2> Four word review: Not really that interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ever shrinking attention spans.</comment>


Ask HN: Best technical books of 2016? - <AUTHOR> What are your favorite books you've read (/tried to read, lol) in 2016? <comment><USER2> The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch. I put off reading it years back when I heard about the principle when I read the 4 hour work week. I thought just a simple groking of the idea was enough. This past year I came across a few posts where people mentioned it, and I decided to give it a read. Well worth it if you are looking for a better way to be more effective.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not even halfway through it, but Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell by Simon Marlow. Great read so far.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are interested in the new trends in AI, Deep Learning by Ian Goodfellow can be your choice!</comment>


Mind-Blowing Facts That Will Make You Use Email Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.wrike.com/blog/01/24/2012/5-Mind-Blowing-Facts-About-Email/

<comment><USER2> 5 Mind-blowing facts!

1\. Social media didn't kill email.

Blind. Mown.

2\. Outlook is the most popular email client.

Utterly shattered.

This linkbait article is bad and submitter should feel bad.

<comment><USER3> Adding to the top comment providing the other three so HN people don't need to give this site more views:

3) E-mail is still a growing business communication tool. 4) E-mail for task management can work. 5) You can power up your e-mail with multiple app combos.

A bunch of crap, don't bother going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who doesn't use email?...

This is linkbait.

<comment><USER5> Well, I work with teenagers and it is quite suprising to me how infrequently they check their email. SMS and Facebook messaging have much higher priority in their communication hierarchy.

<comment><USER6> I'm 23, my preferred means of communication list goes:

Face to face

SMS

Twitter

Facebook

Email

IM

Phone

Post

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Advertisement submitted by a newbie, first comment is by a newbie, 10 bucks says all up votes are from newbies.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ad for something most of us don't need on a platform most of us don't use.

</comment><comment><USER9> And I can't understand a damn thing on that page because they used cute little food icons instead of real graphs and charts.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the least useful web page I've read in weeks/months.</comment>


The Perils of Using Technology to Solve Other People's Problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/06/tech-and-other-peoples-problems/488297/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> I really enjoyed this article because it doesn't grab the most immediate reaction to a poor attempt to solve a complex social problem through technology. A knee-jerk response to that might be to condemn technologists and "solutionists" for even trying.

This guy is smart enough to acknowledge that while technology alone cannot solve complicated social issues, it can and often is a part of the whole solution.</comment>


(Windows) Move the Firefox or Chrome cache to a RAM disk and speed up surfing - <AUTHOR> http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/11/10/how-to-move-the-firefox-or-chrome-cache-to-a-ram-disk-and-speed/

<comment><USER2> If you're manually managing your ram, then something is very broken.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using a Ram disk as the TEMP folder on Windows for more than a year and the overall speed of the system is quite better than without it, and certainly quite less disk activity. You can change the temp folder location in the enviroment settings.

The advantages besides speed are, the temp folder cleans up every time you restart, it's also useful for storing anything disposable, an archive you'll need to download only once and use its contents, and useful for doing anything potentially unsafe for your regular disk.

The disadvantage for setting your temp folder to the ram disk is that sometimes, some programs will try to store a lot of data on the temp folder and fill it up (I use 384mb), but that's something you can usually change in the programs' settings.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you have a lot of tabs open this may not be a good idea. The OS may end up paging more often - especially when switching to and from the browser. This causes uncomfortable wait times while the harddisk thrashes.

<comment><USER5> Right - I'm skeptical that using a RAM disk like this has a benefit on any current OS.

The idea of a RAM disk being quicker than a real disk -- when memory is backed by the file system, and the file system has a cache in front of it -- sounds a lot like 1975 programming: <http://www.varnish- cache.org/trac/wiki/ArchitectNotes>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a lot of 'that doesn't make sense' comments here, but let me tell you, it CAN make a difference.

My linux machine was having issues with one of its hard drives (an external one) being slow to access. For some reason, chrome would decide to hit that drive once in a while and that would halt everything for a few seconds while it did so. I told it to stop using disk cache at all and suddenly everything is much nicer.

With apps waiting on disks for -any- reason, it doesn't surprise me that making the temp dir be ultra-fast helps.

</comment><comment><USER7> For OS X, you can create a RAM disk like so:

      diskutil erasevolume HFS+ "ramdisk" `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://1165430`

ex:

      Initialized /dev/rdisk4 as a 569 MB HFS Plus volume

works for me in firefox. but doesn't really seem faster, probably because my main disk is an ssd raid array.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/186198/Screenshots/7k4b.png>

<comment><USER8> Isn't speedtest for the bandwidth?

Maybe you should try to find speed tests for browsers, like at [http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/articles/test-browser- spee...](http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/articles/test-browser-speed.php)

<comment><USER7> that was just an open tab and not related to my ramdisk setup tinkering

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure 20% is worth the hassle, to be honest. I did an experiment like this recently with our project compilation. Our project's pretty big, 875k LOC Java according to SLOCCount, and takes around 15 mins to do a clean build on my workstation. I tested putting all the source, output dirs and ivy cache in a RAM disk, and was really surprised that it made less than 20% difference. I guess disk caches are really good these days.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In FreeBSD, you can create a RAM Disk by doing:

 _mkdir -p /mnt/ramdisk_

 _/sbin/mdmfs -s 256M md10 /mnt/ramdisk_

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, but this is stupid. Your Os already caches files in your ram. No need for a Ram Disk.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've heard just increasing the size of the cache can have noticeable impact. So much so that they're going to increase the default (or maybe already have in the latest versions).

</comment><comment><USER12> In Ubuntu,

        vi /etc/sysctl.conf
        vm.swappiness = 0

</comment><comment><USER13> Can someone explain why a Ram Disk has any advantage over cache based disk?

<comment><USER14> Most ramdisks map memory non-pageable. So, no matter how long those files have been sitting around, they will still be memory-resident, even long past the the time the files would either be not in the on-disk cache or still held in memory by the OS cache manager.</comment></comment>


On Mathematicians' Standards When Evaluating Elementary Proofs - <AUTHOR> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12019 <comment><AUTHOR> Also being actively discussed on /r/math: [https://reddit.com/r/math/comments/ed96j6/on_mathematicians_...](https://reddit.com/r/math/comments/ed96j6/on_mathematicians_different_standards_when/)</comment>


My Privacy Plan - <AUTHOR> http://benrmatthews.com/2013/06/my-privacy-plan/

<comment><USER2> I feel like this is a rather porous plan for privacy.

> 1\. Sign up to relevant pressure groups

Ok, I like this one. No reason not to. Support the EFF.

> 2\. Install HTTPS Everywhere

Since I believe that the NSA likely already have all of the relevant private keys, I'm not sure about this one. HTTPS is still better than no HTTPS, but don't overestimate it.

> 3\. Install Adblock Plus

Yep ok. Making it harder to be tracked across the internet is good.

> 4\. Review my browser use

Sure. Use Chrome + best practices.

> 5\. Review web services I use and switch if necessary

Suddenly this appears: a catch-all "change everything I do on the internet". Stop using Facebook, Skype, Gmail, etc. Probably not going to happen. I'll come back to this in a second.

> 6\. Download and Use Tor

Given my belief that the government is probably running enough nodes to reconstruct Tor identities, I'm not convinced that this helps much.

> 7\. Use the Onion Browser on my mobile

See #6.

> 8\. Run "host-proof" Web applications

This is an extension of #5. I like the idea, but this is hard. Startups like Ciphercloud and Social Fortress are ostensibly working on it; I look forward to when they're available. I imagine that if any significant percentage of people start using, say, Social Fortress on Facebook, Facebook will make it against the TOS.

I do think that the NSA has probably broken RSA. It's notable that they haven't approved it for securing classified data, despite the fact that it would significantly simplify the DOD's current pains around key distribution. This, of course, takes SSL with it, but importantly takes PGP, too. Running GPGMail on a desktop isn't enough.

###

My privacy plan will involve learning more about politics. Who are our representatives? What districts play disproportionate roles here? How are the oversight committees formed? Who's on them and why? What can we do to be involved? This is a much longer timescale play -- it's a lifetime of being involved, rather than a quick technological fix now. I'm not confusing a personal interest here with having influence -- I'm just one person, and not a high-profile one, and alone I won't have much impact. But, I don't believe that there's any substitute for a politically engaged constituency.

I don't believe that Washington is fundamentally corrupt or irreversibly damaged. In the Snowden video he spoke about how these decisions are viewed as policy and not law -- so a future president may decide to go off the deep end into despotism. But since it's still policy, there are systems for this. It's not ok to simply complain that the system will defend itself and there's nothing you can do. Apply the same mindset that drives you through the multiple brick walls that are a startup to changing Washington.

<comment><USER3> > 5\. Review web services I use and switch if necessary > Suddenly this > appears: a catch-all "change everything I do on the internet". Stop using > Facebook, Skype, Gmail, etc. Probably not going to happen. I'll come back to > this in a second.

You say that, but having switched to DuckDuckGo[1] for the past few weeks I'm slowly but surely losing my reliance on Google for personal stuff. Sure, it's not as good as Google in terms of finding relevant results or having the rest of the ecosystem, but it's no worse than using the web a few years ago, which to me is good enough (and I make some pretty esoteric searches).

I'm looking further into moving away from the traditional Internet to something a bit more self-hosted and it looks possible.

<comment><USER4> The trick about using DDG is their !bang [1] notation, which you can use to pipe searches directly into the search of another site. ( At least for many large sites.) Especially, if you prefix your search with !g you will get the Google result page for that search. This is of course a privacy vs usability trade off, but Google still sees only a few searches. With this, I actually think that DDG beats Google as search engine, since quite often I want to just search Wikipedia (!w) or Stackexchange (!se) and in this cases DDG takes me directly to these sites.

[1][https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html](https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, I don't think I've ever felt so paranoid. Thanks President Obama, this is the exact opposite thing we wanted you to do when we voted for you.

<comment><USER6> I think people are beginning to realize that the demorepublican party is two sides of the same coin. Tails you lose, heads they win.

<comment><USER5> Ha, no. Save possibly Rand Paul, I still think the Republicans are _way_ worse.

<comment><USER7> Would that be the Rand Paul who said this?

"I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison".

[http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-06-08/entertainment/ba...](http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-06-08/entertainment/bal-20110608_1_rand- paul-speeches-comments)

<comment><USER5> I realize the consequence of throwing support behind Rand Paul, because as an Obama supporter, there's clearly a lot I would disagree with him on. But, enough with the cult of personalities; if he's going to make waves on this issue in Congress, then I support him on it. That does not mean I suddenly agree with all of his policy positions. This is politics, not football. I care about the issues, not the teams.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a fundamental problem with being truly secure online. That flaw is that the sites and services we use are compromised. In order to me to write this comment, I'm relying on the free wifi at Starbucks to not log my actions. I'm relying on their ISP to not log the traffic to HN's servers. I'm relying on Google's Chrome browser to correctly recognize HN's certificate and encrypt my packets properly, and I'm relying on Entrust Certification Authority to correctly assert that I am actually sending my data to HN and not an intermediary. Then I'm relying on HN to receive my data and store it securely (well, as secure as I should expect a public forum to be, but the scenario applies just as well to banks and email providers). Finally, I'm relying on all software installed on my laptop (including the operating system) to respect my privacy by not logging keystrokes.

Any 3-letter agency that wanted to track my internet usage only needs to collude with one of these services to compromise my privacy. I think the solution to privacy is a combination between government transparency and accountability, and our own due diligence to carefully vet the programs and services we use.

<comment><USER9> >In order to me to write this comment, I'm relying on the free wifi at Starbucks to not log my actions.

No, you aren't. Hacker News is HTTPS-exclusive.

<comment><USER8> They still know where to send my packets, and it's possible that they are proxying the SSL (although that requires a secondary breach in Chrome's CA list and/or Entrust).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In today's environment, the most secure person computing set-up might be Richard Stallman's. I don't think I could do it though, as it is too restrictive.

[http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html](http://stallman.org/stallman- computing.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> There's one more thing all Tor users with good bandwidth should consider: start relaying.

I relay when I can, which is not very often because I am mostly behind a NAT which I have no control over.

</comment><comment><USER12> If everyone uses Adblock, it could be detrimental to a lot of free web services that are supported solely on ad revenue. I am not sure if there is a good solution here...

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a good start, but in the end the NSA can bypass any of these measure if needed (even the cryptography). The only think that really can change this situation is a protest versus your political representatives.

<comment><USER14> You think NSA has a way to break AES/RSA?

<comment><USER13> [https://sslimgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png](https://sslimgs.xkcd.com/comics/security.png)

<comment><USER15> I don't think that scales very well...

<comment> UVB-76 Alas, the NSA can afford a million dollar cluster to crack your password...

<comment><USER14> A million dollar cluster won't make a dent in cracking an AES key of a proper size. Not unless the NSA have managed to solve some pretty baffling math problems and keep it secret.

<comment><USER16> The NSA is currently the largest employer of mathematicians in the US. To think they haven't found anything of use would be naive at best. [http://www.nsa.gov/research/tech_transfer/advanced_math/](http://www.nsa.gov/research/tech_transfer/advanced_math/)

<comment><USER17> AES is a specification of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). USA use it to encrypt the most sensitive informations. It's hard to think that they would use a broken cryptographyc algorithm themselves

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Learn and understand crypto, develop and follow procedure to embrace secure end-to-end communications with your peers.

</comment><comment><USER19> Move out of the US.

<comment><USER20> I did that five years ago after coming to the conclusion that the US didn't care about any of these abuses and that decades of surveillance state would go by without any improvement. I implored everyone that would listen to leave; I thought that was the end of it.

After Snowden proved me absolutely and indelibly wrong, I decided this week to come back.

These people operate in secret because they can't justify their actions in a free and open debate. The secrecy has now been lifted.

There's a war coming. It's time to fight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's what I did. [http://www.battle-school.co.uk/Blog/2013/06/08/its-our- own-f...](http://www.battle-school.co.uk/Blog/2013/06/08/its-our-own-fault- deal-with-it/) Got rid of every cloud based service I use.

<comment><USER22> I use Dropbox with encfs. But now I'm wondering if the client could have a backdoor, since it's a binary.</comment></comment>


Social conformity despite individual preferences for distinctiveness - <AUTHOR> http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/3/140437 <comment><USER2> The problem with this sort of analysis is that its trivial (assuming you have time) to turn any common sense argument into a mathematical model. In game theory, it's unlikely that the math is ever going to say "I can't let you do that" [1].

What actually gets published tends to be filtered by its political content. In particular, results with a liberal bias tend to be promoted.

[1] In classical economics, the reverse holds. It's very hard to show that any mechanism is possible under the assumptions of classical economics. Hence the huge number of negative results: (a) Coase theorem, (b) the Modigliani-Miller Theorem (irrelevance of capital structure) and (c) Ricardian equivalence. All these results basically say that if you try to do X (where X is (a) change people's actions that have externalities by assigning property rights, (b) change the value of a firm by changing its capital structure, and (c) change people's actions by government spending), the free market will completely undo your actions and leave the situation unchanged.

<comment><USER3> Don't most of those theorems require rational agents ("homo economicus") with perfect knowledge?

<comment><USER2> Yes, and so we should treat the result with caution. But the results I were critiquing are worse, because they assume homo economicus plus some very specific deviations, or some very specific (non-free market) environment.

The paper (and most game theory based papers) also assumes that people are perfectly rational and have perfect knowledge. The only difference is that instead of actions being restricted to the free market, and payoffs being consumption, game theory allows an arbitrary environment (chosen by the paper author) to provide the actions and payoffs.

<comment><USER3> Somewhere I have bookmarked a list of all the assumptions that go into the "classic" theorems of economics, written by a practising academic in the field. I'll try and dig it out.

<comment><USER2> You seem to have missed my point. Either way, you are making a lot of assumptions. It's like "assume zero friction" vs "assume friction follows exactly this formula". In either case, your result is wrong if friction isn't exactly as you specify.

<comment><USER3> You seem to be assuming that I'm trying to put you down instead of contributing (hopefuly) interesting things to a mutually beneficial discussion. Online discourse in a nutshell sadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just scanning this, but it looks like a huge attractor for conformity is baked into the model, in eq 3.1. Each agent prefers to be some number of standard deviations from the mean. If conformity increases, the standard deviation shrinks and all preferred distances from a fixed point (the mean) shrink. They note it themselves, that if the entire population starts at the same point, it is an equilibrium, regardless of how the other model variables are initialized. This seems to me entirely artificial.

</comment><comment><USER5> Explains the Goth coterie from South park :)

<comment><USER6> Pretty sure the paper was intended to explain the hipster phenomenon in real life. However, other commenters have flagged up its methodological flaws.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: YC Schedule for Spring Round - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm planning to apply for the spring-round of YC funding, but I can't find any information about the schedule. I'm sure they'll post it when the time gets nearer, but I'm currently living outside of America, and want to have moved back by the time they call people out to California for interviews (I am an American citizen, just currently living abroad). I want to buy a plane ticket soon, so I would like to know when, at the latest, I can come back to America and still be in time for a potential interview (flying to California from outside the country would be too expensive, so I want to already be moved back).
So if anyone could let me know during what period interviews will take place next year, it would be really helpful.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I believe YC does two investment cycles a year, one starting in January and the other in June.

So there isn't a spring round; the next one will be summer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought the deadline for the application was in March, that's why I called it "spring."

Then, for the summer cycle, when do interviews take place?

Thanks.</comment></comment>


What makes Android 5.1 fast - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+FranciscoFranco1990/posts/KB6JYHDG5U8

<comment><USER2> the optimizations are for nexus 6 only right? otherwise we could see performance improvements for more devices on 5.1 (oneplus one would be perfect)?</comment>


Shiok Meats Raises $4.6M Seed Round to Develop Cell-Based Shrimp - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2019/04/28/shiokmeats/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty stoked for this TBH. I love shrimp but not the way its produced/farmed so I think this is a pretty interesting solution. I'll still buy wild caught live shrimp for more "fancy" events but I'll absolutely buy this product regularly!</comment>


It Looks Like Nobel Economics Laureates Don't Like Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-30/so-it-looks-like-nobel-economics-laureates-don-t-like-bitcoin <comment><USER2> >It doesn't serve any socially useful function.

I never thought I would so heartily disagree with a Nobel Economics Laureate, but this appears to be a misguided opinion. Bitcoin drives an entire black market which enables consumers worldwide to securely and faithfully make purchases that they would be unable to otherwise make. Direct tax generation isn't the only measure of socially useful functions.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention it's the best-funded behavioral economics experiment in history :)

<comment><USER4> I was thinking about this, since the blockchain is public, there is a lot of data out there steadily accumulating. Are there any published studies exploiting this data already?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The obvious speculation aside, Bitcoin's behaviour is revolving more and more about good vs bad money, aka _Gresham 's law_. "Good money" (bitcoin) is being hoarded because people are starting to trust it as a long term store of value, while elastic moneys like USD/EUR/JPY are being used for paying and playing.

Most modern economists just instinctively hate good money because they believe saving is evil.

"It doesn't serve any socially useful function."

They use the exact same phrasing when discussing gold.

(My only beef with bitcoin and blockchain is that it can become bad money in a matter of milliseconds, without any heads up. E.g. when a major bug is found. Bitcoin may ultimately just be too complex to be good savings money. Its "badness" can be hidden in a massive, single occurence tail risk.)

<comment><USER3> That's not what Gresham's law says. As Hayek put it in denationalisation of money (section VI The confusion about Gresham's Law):

> Gresham's Law will apply _only_ to different kinds of money between which a > fixed rate of exchange is enforced _by law_

(Emphasis in the original)

<comment><USER5> Why would the same principle not apply to any situation where a person owns two kinds of money (both fungible, liquid, universally accepted), regardless of exchange rate rules? People will always prefer to hoard ("save") the better of the two and pay ("get rid of") using the worse of the two.

<comment><USER3> Because in an efficient market, if one of the currencies is preferable that will already be reflected in the price. If, based on public information, you would rather hold currency X than currency Y, then so would your counterparty in the exchange, so the buying power of currency X would rise accordingly.

Gresham's law applies when a legally fixed exchange rate means that the price can't reflect the difference between the two currencies.

<comment><USER5> I'm not going to get dragged into a discussion on "efficient markets". You win by forfeit.

<comment><USER3> Efficient markets was just a simplifying assumption to make my point brief, but the second sentence of my explanation does not rely on any more assumptions than Gresham's law does.

In any case, I recommend that chapter of Hayek, it's a quick read and you might find it clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not a Bitcoin person, but it strikes me that neither of these people is known for predicting markets successfully, so why would they be relevant predictors here?

</comment><comment><USER7> You would think that these people would understand that bitcoin, from a financial perspective, behaves like disembodied gold. A store of value outside of legal control.

So much so that, very likely that's exactly what its creators hoped to achieve. You mine it after all.

<comment><USER8> Some of the key characteristics of a store of value are durability, limited supply, uniqueness, and portability. Unlike gold, BTC is neither unique nor truly in limited supply, thanks to forks that create "inflation" and altcoins that can substitute for BTC in all pertinent ways.

The vast majority of participants in this market aren't parking their money in BTC to preserve it, and neither to use it as a medium of exchange. They're doing it with the expectation of a return. If those returns fail to materialize, the money will move elsewhere.

<comment><USER9> There are a load of comparatively worthless metals, compared to Gold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From a technical standpoint, Bitcoin makes no sense. Bitcoin supply is fixed. How can, then, a currency be valued 100x within a few years when there's no major possibility of finding a magical utility of it. But, neither does Facebook's success. I couldn't have imagined anyone could create a $400B+ social network company.

I guess if by being rational you're avoiding burning your hand, you're also missing out on the hen who will lay golden eggs in the future. In a few years, $10,000 might look peanuts to pay for Bitcoin. It seems logically absurd to think so, but time and again, the skeptics have been proven foolish and the believers have made the gains.

<comment><USER11> The utility of Bitcoin, and the value it provides right now, is almost entirely the returns it provides relative to a fiat currency during the period of hyper-valuation.

If it fails to continue growing relative to the perception of the people buying it, it's value on the market will plummet, and that will likely cause a run on the exchanges.

<comment><USER12> Is there even reason to expect exchanges to play along if the value starts to really go south? It's pretty obvious that exchanges would be practically out of business after a total collapse of bitcoin valuation, so a collapse would be an existential threat to them and existential threats are known to inspire desperate measures. What regulation would keep market makers from experiencing "unexpected technical difficulties" in a panic (e.g. until their own holdings are liquidated, and those of their friends)? There are many ways to add arbitrary friction and hidden prioritization to sell offers if you are not under the full scrutiny of all that regulation bitcoin aficionados want so dearly removed.

If you were forced to find buyers for your btc on your own in a panic, without the help of market makers, then collapsing nominal market rates would not be the main problem of "btc millionaires", getting that collapsed rate, or even just a significant fraction thereof, would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm still wondering if bitcoin is currently and possibly being used to launder money.

I guess bitcoin exchanges are not really regulated in any way.

Or maybe more drug resellers have found a way to sell drugs online using bitcoin, meaning drug users are buying bitcoin en masse, inflating the price.

One possible way to launder money, would be to find a way to convert dirty dollar bills to bitcoin at a higher dollar price.

[https://i.imgur.com/DocUl2S.png](https://i.imgur.com/DocUl2S.png)

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't like Bitcoin as well, even tho I own some. The problem in my mind is that it is just sitting money, it is not circulating therefore it is not good for economy.

<comment><USER15> Bitcoin would be circulating way more if more services and online stores, e.g. Amazon, PayPal, simply accepted it as just another currency. Rejecting it as payment method because it's not circulating is just circular logic.

I have been spending plenty of mBTC in the stores (shopping, flights, hotels) that accept it such as Overstock, Abitsky, Destinia, etc. and my experience there has been way more comfortable than shopping with credit cards or even Paypal.

<comment><USER16> Shopping with cryptocurrency has always seemed safer to me, personally.

I keep all my BTC/LTC/ETH in Coinbase wallets, and whenever I want to send money from those wallets I need to go through multiple 2FA prompts. My debit/credit cards have never required anything more than a static number to be used online.

<comment><USER17> If my credit card gets stolen then I just report it to the credit card company and I get a new card (free) and all of the fraudulent charges reversed. If the bank goes under, my funds are insured by the FDIC. If I lose my wallet I can report that to my banks and get everything (except the cash in my wallet) restored to pre-loss state.

If my Coinbase wallet account is hacked because I use a bad password, can I get anything back? If Coinbase as a company goes under, what happens to my bitcoins? If I accidentally send cryptocurrency to the wrong recipient, how do I reverse that transaction?

As somebody living in the USA who doesn't transfer funds internationally, I'm quite well covered by existing banking regulations: I'm struggling to see how Bitcoin is 'safer' for me in any way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My largest Bitcoin question is this; Bitcoin's continued growth requires the addition of new coins to pay for the cost of verifying transactions. This creates pressure for the price of Bitcoin relative to the dollar to increase, leading to deflation of the dollar, and most other currencies relative to Bitcoin. This will lead to one of two conclusions.

Either the hyper-valuation of Bitcoin relative to fiat currencies continues above the rate of rise for the cost of verification, or it doesn't.

If the accelerated price of Bitcoin fails to outstrip the rise in cost, due to public perception, regulation or any other reason then the network will cease verification and exchange within the network will stop.

If the accelerated price does continue to outstrip the rise in cost, then people won't sell their Bitcoins because they will be worth more tomorrow than they are today. So exchange outside the network will stop.

So in both scenarios you have a cease of exchange, the only difference is that one ceases within the network and one outside the network.

Isn't this a failure in both cases?

<comment><USER18> > If the accelerated price of Bitcoin fails to outstrip the rise in cost, due > to public perception, regulation or any other reason then the network will > cease verification and exchange within the network will stop.

The mining "difficulty" automatically adjusts every 2 weeks to always target 10 minute blocks.

If the price drops dramatically it can temporarily slow block creation, especially if a different cryptocurrency (with the same mining algorithm) is more profitable to mine, but it will eventually adjust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think they do not understand it well. Or, they do understand, but it just rubs them the wrong way. Probably because they are either ardent money printing Keynesians or all-powerful-state loving social-democrats.

<comment><USER20> They do understand it but this disagreement masks a deeper issue -- they think economics functions just as it did some years ago and others disagree. With differing underlying assumptions, both sides' arguments are rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Relevant HN discussion of the Bloomberg article from yesterday regarding Stiglitz's opinion of Bitcoin (not a dupe): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15812247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15812247)

</comment><comment><USER22> Perhaps because Nobel Economics Laureates are not equipped to deal with a means of exchange that cannot be inflated, cannot be controlled by central banks, and has equivalent utility to cash.

</comment><comment><USER23> This sounds more like a vim versus emacs, dynamic versus static type argument to me. I see Bitcoin as a new form of gold that is more easily transferred and stored. Does he object to gold as well?

</comment><comment><USER24> Bitcoin doesn't care if economics laureates don't like it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hyperbitcoinization is not something any "traditional" economist will like.

</comment><comment><USER26> It should be outlawed for its environmental cost alone.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps we should outlaw dollars for its environmental cost, the fact that it inflates (which encourages consumerism instead of conservation) and the fact that a huge percent of it enables immoral wars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't think that they like tulips either.</comment>


Any CEOs on HN? What do you look for on here? - <AUTHOR> Curious to learn more about the non-technical / not-actively-hacking business leader community on HN. Do you see any contrast between how hackers think about business vs. less technical more entrepreneurially minded people? <comment><USER2> Hide procrastination with a false sense of keeping up to date on new stuff.</comment>


Apple 1 Motherboard Sold for $905,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/22247/lot/286/

<comment><USER2> That's a crazy amount of money. But I'll be honest... if I had a ton of money I would buy it too. IMO, this is a part of computing history that is very important. I think having a collection of the history of computers would be awesome.

<comment><USER3> The Computer History Museum in Mountain View has exactly that. [http://www.computerhistory.org](http://www.computerhistory.org) It's a pretty cool place to spend an afternoon.

<comment><USER4> Fry's in Santa Clara used to have one on display on their floor, bur it's gone now. My friends and I would fantasize about Hudson Hawking in at night and stealing the thing, but it was removed from display before we could ever attempt it.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the 90's flashback.

It sounds so much better as a verb than Mission Impossibling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always enjoyed the Apple 1 auctions. I probably should have bought the one at the Vintage Computer Festival in 2000 for $5,000 but I couldn't see its value :-). Somewhere out there is my home built Digital Group machine (also with bodged together keyboard and converted tv for a monitor) but Dr. Suding didn't go on to create an influential computer company. But he did have the coolest dual cassette tape system that tried to be a DECTape equivalent.

</comment><comment><USER7> > Indeed, the story is perhaps just as famous now as the one that inspired the > company name: Newton theorizing gravity under the apple tree.

This is incorrect according to Jobs biography - apparently the name was given in reference to Steve Jobs' eating preferences. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Two months ago I ordered an original ZX Spectrum 48K, on board series 3B for about $200. It is the same I had as my first computer when I was a kid. I knew I could have it all on the emulator, and, I didn't expect how much excitement and inspiration I had after loading several games from a cassette recorder and playing on a pixel-crawly TV. In fact, had to take sleeping pills after the first time. Now I am thinking to buy myself a C64, a separate small TV, and an Apple ][ with a monitor... will have to buy a separate table for that.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder what kind of condition those large electrolytic capacitors are in after 38 years? They don't last forever.

</comment><comment><USER10> Did anyone notice this link on that site?

[http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21652/lot/188/](http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21652/lot/188/)

How cool, I wish they had put it into production.

<comment><USER11> It looks a lot like a Macintosh color classic.

<comment><USER12> But the most distinctive feature is the monitor in portrait orientation. Apple never shipped an all-in-one like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hmmm.

I have a set of original IBM 5150 (PC/XT I think) technical and operator manuals. Wonder if they're worth anything. Doubt I'd sell them, there's something about opening a computer manual and seeing actual schematics!

</comment><comment><USER14> I always wondered what a fantastic resale value Apple gear has and always had.

<comment><USER15> I've got an old MacBook kicking about somewhere. If an Apple I is worth that much I should get at least a million for a MacBook, it's way more powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't miss the video of it in operation.

[http://www.bonhams.com/video/17458/](http://www.bonhams.com/video/17458/)

<comment><USER17> Oh man....

10 print "Hello "; 20 goto 10; run

what memories

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure who won the auction, but this should be in a museum somewhere. Hopefully it will find its way to one.

<comment><USER19> It was bought by the Henry Ford museum, which seems about right.

[http://www.cultofmac.com/300624/museum-pays-record- breaking-...](http://www.cultofmac.com/300624/museum-pays-record- breaking-905000-apple-1/)

For a museum, it's especially nice that it's not just the motherboard, but a whole setup including home-built power supply, vintage monitor, and home-built keyboard. That really makes you appreciate the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If I had a completely unreasonable amount of money I would buy this, quite a bit out of my price range.

</comment><comment><USER21> The Apple 1 is open source so you could create this yourself.

<comment><USER22> And gold is available everywhere, so you could create your own vintage coins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My old MSX dont worth anything... maybe someday :-/

</comment><comment><USER19> Rare + unmodified + working = $$$$$

</comment><comment><USER24> This is why, if you own one of the first FPGA/ASIC Bitcoin miners, you should keep it. They could become historical artifacts of a technology that may end up changing day-to-day trade & finance... Personally I kept my Ngzhang Icarus units, Enterpoint Cairnsmore1 units (one of them is serial# 3), Ztex 1.15y units, Avalon gen1 units (the first commercially available Bitcoin ASIC), and our TAV 105 Gh/s units. Most of them were extremely small production runs: less than 1000 units ever built.

Back in 1976, very few people understood how the Apple 1 and personal computers were about to change day-to-day communication.</comment>