The Soviet license plate game and Kolmogorov complexity - <AUTHOR> https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/02/02/landau-kolmogorov/ <comment><USER2> Huh, I thought I was the only one playing this weird game in my head. I used to live in a country where license plates are all numeric digits. But with 4 digits and my limited knowledge of math operations (I was a child), it was hard to find plates that "had solutions". So I gave myself a little wiggle room by imagining the numbers were written as they were on digital alarm clocks, where certain numbers (like {2,3,5} and {6,9}) required the same number of "bars" to represent [1]. I added a rule that the bars can be rearranged to form different numbers (e.g. 2, 3 and 5 can be rearranged as each other).

Eventually, I added another rule that allowed the bars to be "concatenated," for example, "1" with two bars and "2" with 5 bars can be added to form "8", which requires 7 bars.

[1] [https://goo.gl/images/t2njyy](https://goo.gl/images/t2njyy)

<comment><USER3> Trying to understand if a plate number is a prime also works quite well :) Though local congestions are rarely large enough to allow checking for factors over 11 or 13.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article falls a bit short I think. What if you consider each function as one character? What about automatic generation of solutions? (Maybe by dynamic programming?) IMHO it proposes an interesting problem and brushes it off.

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem of complexity is solved neatly in Prolog and Erlang¹, by counting "reductions". For simple tasks like in the article,

one _function call_ ≅ one reduction.

Loops? There are no loops in Erlang, they are usually tail-recursive _function calls_.

¹) in Erlang it plays a very important role because the VM uses that information for scheduling.

</comment><comment><USER6> > In theory you can enumerate all Turing machines of a given length, or all > Python programs of a given length, and find the shortest one that does a > given task, but the list grows exponentially with length.

Another problem with this strategy is that it generally requires solving the halting problem: you can only know whether a program "does a given task" when you know whether it halts or not.

<comment><USER7> That's only true if you care about knowing when you are done enumerating.

The definition of enumeration commonly used in computability does not require that you know when you are done enumerating.

<comment><USER8> > The definition of enumeration commonly used in computability does not > require that you know when you are done enumerating.

Sorry, but this is a non-sequitur. In order to find (by enumeration) the shortest program producing a certain output, you absolutely _do_ need to know when you're done, and thus you _do_ need to solve the halting problem.

<comment><USER7> Ah, you're right. I was focusing too much on the statement itself and not the context of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> An interesting application of the Kolmogorov complexity to measure the similarity of various languages etc.

"Abstract—A new class of distances appropriate for measuring similarity relations between sequences, say one type of similarity per distance, is studied. We propose a new "normalized information distance," based on the non computable notion of Kolmogorov complexity, and show that it is in this class and it minorizes every computable distance in the class (that is, it is universal in that it covers all computable similarities). We demonstrate that it is a metric and call it the similarity metric. This theory forms the foundation for a new practical tool. ..."

[https://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulv/papers/similarity.pdf](https://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulv/papers/similarity.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> The issue with trying to apply Kolmogorov complexity to extremely small data (4 digits here) is that the universal Turing machine itself might take more than 4 digits to write down. In principle, one could extend it to any sufficiently long pair of n digits, and then the question would be mathematically robust (though still uncomputable).

Also, for what it's worth, for large enough n, probably there are no interesting _short_ answers. C(x|y) - the conditional complexity of any string x given any other string y is close to maximum (approximately the length of x) for most pairs x and y. This means, for most pairs x and y, there will be no simple _short_ equations connecting x to y, regardless of the mathematical operators we take.

</comment><comment><USER11> "In theory you can enumerate all Turing machines of a given length, or all Python programs of a given length, and find the shortest one that does a given task, but the list grows exponentially with length."

Can it be proven that the shortest program is always the fastest?

This is the problem I had when studying mathematics and still have with mathematics to this day: mathematics when stripped and laid bare is just clever transformations, "pouring from hollow into empty", as the old folks' saying goes. What is or are the practical applications of Kolmogorov complexity, how might I be able to turn this to my advantage?

<comment><USER10> It is rarely the case that the shortest program is the fastest.

To see a simple such phenomenon (very roughly) in the case of Kolmogorov complexity, consider two programs to print a sequence of 0x1000000 zeros.

Program 1:

       for i = 1 to 0x10000000:
         print 0

Program 2:

      i = 0x1 << 28;
      for j=1 to i
        print 0

(I may be off by a constant, but you get the idea). Program 2 is shorter, since it takes about log 28 bits (the other code has basically constant length), while Program 1 takes about 32 bits (the remaining code being of a different constant length). They both produce the same string. Program 1 is longer, but "faster", since it does not have the left-shift loop.

Philosophically: Program 1 has identified that the string to be printed is a very simple one. Program 2 has exploited the additional fact that the length of the string to be printed, itself is a very simple number, and has a short description. But then it needs additional time to figure out how many zeroes to print, since it needs to decode the length first.

This effect can be amplified with larger constants involved.

Kolmogorov complexity is a "well-defined" notion, hence mathematically nice, it is just that it is not computable. That's bad, but not catastrophic. The halting problem is undecidable, C++ compilation with templates is undecidable [1] - that does not make coding useless.

About the larger problem of dry mathematical textbooks, I agree with you. Some of it just boils down to the fact that the pure and the applied side are often tightly segregated, and very few mathematicians care about both. When you talk to practising mathematicians, you often get a livelier picture.

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/794015/what-do-people- me...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/794015/what-do-people-mean-when- they-say-c-has-undecidable-grammar)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm reading a 5 page paper from "German Aerospace Center Aviation and Space Psychology" titled "DLR - Basic Knowledge". Under "Training Mathematics" section it says "Try to quickly first add, then multiply the digits of the licence plates of the cars in front of you when waiting at a traffic light". So, I guess they wrote this because of Lev Landau.

</comment><comment><USER13> One solution to the problem of measuring the length of the Python program is to turn it into machine code and measure that instead:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/138521/is-it-feasible- to...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/138521/is-it-feasible-to-compile- python-to-machine-code)

<comment><USER14> Doesn't this just kick the problem down the road? Now you've introduced the optimisation of the compiler abd the expressiveness of your processor's machine language. The problem of knowing you have the "best" solution remains.

I think if you are trying to come up with a canonical languahe to measure kolmogorov complexity in you can do better, like Binary Lambda Calculus.

[https://tromp.github.io/cl/LC.pdf](https://tromp.github.io/cl/LC.pdf)

<comment><USER15> The same mathematical problem or operation can have several different Kolmogorov complexities, depending on how efficient an algorithm is when solving the problem.

I don't think there's any way around it. If I create a Turing Machine that calculates 1+1 by counting all the atoms in the universe, it's going to have a high complexity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And, of course, one must always ask what is the least number of bits required to explain Kolmogorov complexity.

</comment><comment><USER17> > In theory you can enumerate all Turing machines of a given length, or all > Python programs of a given length, and find the shortest one that does a > given task, but the list grows exponentially with length.

That works as long as you solve the halting problem first.

<comment><USER18> You don't have to do anything impossible, just something exceedingly impractical. Because we know that the function doesn't halt if its runtime exceeds the busy beaver number for that length. Now, we will obviously not know that for any non-trivial length, but in theory it's fine.

<comment><USER19> > Now, we will obviously not know that for any non-trivial length, but in > theory it's fine.

It's not fine in theory because we can't know the busy beaver number for any Turing machine larger than the one doing the enumeration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > √74 = sec arctan sec arctan … √44.

He meant "sec arctan sec arctan … √74 = √44." (sent him a message)

Also why not just applying the power 0 (assuming numbers are different than 0) both sides. Would be a school-level operation and very likely the shortest.

<comment><USER21> You can't write down new numbers in the formula.

<comment><USER20> Oh, I read too quickly, the ° is uses is the degree "operator" (it really isn't an operator IMHO).

<comment><USER22> You could argue that the degree operator is just another name for multiplication by the constant pi/180.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Some pretty advanced high school math operators for this game to work

<comment><USER24> In a standard curriculum this should all be covered by 10th grade.</comment></comment>


Why we need an Open Wireless movement - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/open-wireless-movement <comment><USER2> Sigh.

How about this idea, we create device that can send digital data by modulating and demodulating sounds which can be sent from one computer to another. Then we'll invent a store and forward protocol where you could type in a message on a local computer, and that message would then move between you and its recipient through a series of jumps we will call "hops." [you know, like its hopping from computer to computer]. You could send a message from anywhere to anywhere else just by putting in the places it had to go between here and there. We could even create a system where by we can create a category or subject area and messages can be sent to everyone who wants to read them on those messages. The coolest thing is that because its just computer to computer there is no evil mastermind in the middle pulling the strings and we'll have the source code to everything so that anyone can become part of the network. It will be a network for the users and we'll call it User Network, no that doesn't sound quite right, I've got it _Usenet_.

Silly history lesson aside, connections aren't "free" and the people who pay the bills set the rules, if you don't like the rules pay for your own network. You can argue the prices are fixed or too high. Fine. You can get a USB Softradio and the Gnu Radio stack and create your own white space wireless.

But moaning about the fact that no one is willing to give you "the nice one" free access to their network becasue they can't also prevent "the bad one" from getting access is a phenomenal waste of time.

We can probably have 'free' wireless for anyone as long as everyone got their own IP address. There is a proposal floating around where the US Government would install wired and wireless networks everywhere like the interstate highway system, and then individuals would apply for their own block of IP:V6 address space. In that world everything you owned would then 'DHCP' off your personal address space. And every packet you sent would be tracable right back to you. Last I heard both the MPAA and RIAA thought this was a great idea of tax payer funded network so that everyone, rich or poor, had equal access to a quality internet experience.

Its not free. It never has been.

<comment><USER3> The other day, someone walked by with their dog and asked if they could get use our hose to give their dog some water. I bit the bullet, and allowed them to take $0.05 worth of water that I had paid for with my hard earned money.

Same deal here. Connectivity is getting to the point where the costs are so low, you might as well give it away to passersby, because seriously, are we really counting nickels and dimes?

Not free, but cheap enough that most of us can be generous with it.

<comment><USER2> Point taken.

I had a really funny experience that kind of relates. My sink had some of those poorly made fiber washers, if you weren't careful, which meant if you over-tightened or under-tightened the sink valve when you closed it, it would drip. Just a little bit, you know drip .... drip .... drip ...

Then California got this whole drought thing going and the water company was asking everyone to cut back. We fixed the faucet and saved a bit over 3% on our total overall water bill.

For me in the US I'm fortunate because water is cheap. I find I can't ignore it though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure how making your wireless network open is the "socially responsible" thing to do anymore then letting strangers come in and use your bathroom at will is.

Sure, most people won't cause any harm, but it only takes one asshole (or too many people taking advantage) to make it a nightmare for you.

<comment><USER5> FWIW, I believe the idea is to segment the network so you are sharing your bandwidth, but not your "home network."

A closer analogy would be letting strangers use the outhouse on your property, but not letting them in the house.

The router used by Numericable here in France offers a "guest WiFi" connection out of the box. It is not enabled by default, mind you, but it is available nonetheless.

<comment><USER6> Probably the closest analogy would be seeding on bittorrent. No harm to you, beyond perhaps reduced network speed, but significant benefit to everyone else.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, in many countries[1] you'll be prosecuted as an accessory if someone commits a crime via your connection, unless you set it up in such a way that you're legally an ISP. This is obviously a lot of trouble, so you're better off not bothering.

[1] there have been a number of cases in Germany, for example

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't this what fonera was(is) trying to achieve for some years now? <http://corp.fon.com/us/this-is-fon/> .

Anyway, in my home country (europe), with a fiber optic connection plan (80ch tv+net+phone) for about 40€/month you also get 3G connectivity included. In the US I pay ~$35 for 10Mbps rcn internet only.

I used to have my european wifi router open but since everyone in the neighborhood has wifi and the really cheap 3g connectivity is ubiquitous, I ended up setting up wpa.

</comment><comment><USER9> When my kid was a teenager and had a laptop, I wanted to impose a "no internet after 10pm" rule. I could turn off my router easily enough, but I had to ask a couple of neighbors to secure their network. They were happy to help. One of them needed technical assistance, which I was more than happy to provide.

Now there are smartphones. That certainly poses a problem that I am grateful not having to deal with anymore.

</comment><comment><USER10> 1\. There are a bunch of greedy selfish bastards here 2\. Greed can be a powerful motivator so how about this

Original proposition:

Make it easy to share your network freely and securely because it's the nice thing to do.

New proposition:

Make it easy for people to monazite their networks.

Build APs that come with standard captive portal pages tied to a merchant service. Owner puts in their bank account info, user puts in their CC info, merchant provider takes a cut, and you get paid.

Heck if you're the merchant provider you could even set standard rates based on how much bandwidth is 'shared.'

I bet, as long as they were the merchant provider, comcast would go for this idea. Get paid twice for the same connection? Sweet! They already give out modems, giving out APs that make them money would be a small step.

</comment><comment><USER11> Shame on everyone who complains about the recent federal government domain seizures (torrent, poker sites) but poo-poos this important and highly reasonable article. Shame on everyone who despises the Great Firewall and the Middle Eastern Internet off buttons we have heard about recently, but is unwilling to take a small step towards ensuring free speech on the Internet.

<comment><USER2> I'll continue on my karmakazi rant here. I disagree strongly that 'whining for free wifi' is a reasoned argument against domain name seizures.

<comment><USER11> It isn't directly, but on the censorship/P2P continuum, it moves a step toward freedom. Using Internet you did not pay for helps voice dissent and helps whistleblowers. It just might be a first step towards the P2P/mesh decentralized utopian Internet of Doctorow is enamored.

"Whining"? … I think that is grossly unfair, but it's not a real accusation, is it?

<comment><USER2> Agreed, whining is perhaps too strong.

I don't know where the ends of the censorship/P2P continum are however. I was wondering the other day if a crowd of people wanting to legalize pot started protesting in the streets of Washington and demanding that the government give in to the will of the people, and then Mexican drug lords sent some tanks up to support their efforts, is that freedom? It sounds when I read it like a red herring but I'm trying to get my head around any positive aspects to network anarchy. It seems anarchy in virtual space would have the same downside as anarchy in meat space. (cue jokes about the Libertarian Paradise of Somalia)

So for articles like the EFF one to be compelling they have to move the conversation forward. This one, for me at least, didn't rise to that standard. It seemed to get stuck in the complaint about how people who pay for online access have an easier time getting online than people who don't.

<comment><USER11> The people demanding drug reform would be fantastic, and the Mexican drug gangs is absurd on the face because if growing were legal here, they would have a hell of a lot less business. Not your point, I know.

Decentralization doesn't preclude smart, opt-in filtering, etc., by node operators, FWIW

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm all for open Wi-Fi networks but I'm not quite sure how it's a "tragedy of the commons". People locking their Wi-Fi network aren't harming other users of the RF spectrum, which is the common resource. The resource being locked out is the telco's backhaul, which isn't really a commons, is it?

<comment><USER13> RF isn't the commons they're talking about. The commons is the open access points that people would come by and torrent / download kiddie porn through. People abused open access points, so everyone started closing them.

<comment><USER14> People abused open access points, so telcos started going after the hosts, not the abusers, so everyone started closing them.

Then there's also Firesheep. But that's just a cherry on top, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Previous discussion at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2491686>

</comment><comment><USER16> In a spot where I lived where there were 20+ networks visible, there was one very strong open network (they were obviously using a substantial antenna or two) that was around for more than two years. It was quite popular - you could routinely see a dozen or so clients connected in the evening. Connecting to that network would often yield a OS finger print scan + occasional attempts to exploit vulnerable services. Traffic going over router also very obviously was having its adsense traffic replaced. God only knows what else they were doing. Since it's on their network, it's very likely a lot of that wouldn't even be illegal.

I certainly wouldn't go around encouraging people to connect to random wifi networks. It's a different world out there than it was 5 or 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> "Our failure to work together prevents us from enjoying better, more widespread Internet access."

I almost didn't manage to read further. The same can be said about so many things (if everyone just took or borrowed what he needed in a responsible manner, we wouldn't need money at all... to name the most utopian example), yet this kind of reasoning simply doesn't work, as has been shown both practically and theoretically (from game theory to "selfish gene").

It makes me always kind of sad to see smart and enthusiastic people not to grasp this simple fact.

<comment><USER18> The EFF is trying to propose a technical solution, not simply to change people's attitudes by an appeal to greater good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Too little, too late. Free Wifi was interesting a decade ago. Nowadays in most countries 3G is so cheap that nobody bothers trying to find an open access point. I currently pay 4 Euros per Gigabyte per month (or optionally 9 Euros for 9 Gigabytes) - that's all, no other monthly fees, no minimum charges, can be (optionally) combined with a voice plan. And in addition most newer laptops provide (optional) builtin 3G modems, so you don't even need a USB modem to use your 3G connection.

<comment><USER20> 1G costs about $30K if I decide to use my phone in other country, so I'd say that reports about cheap 3G is greatly exaggerated

<comment><USER21> Or you could just get a local prepaid data SIM

<comment><USER20> and notify everyone who could potentially call me about my new phone number... I do sometimes but it's far from optimal solution

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Instead of single open access points I would prefer seeing unified mesh network. It is my understanding that the 2.4 GHz spectrum where WiFi is operating is extremely busy, and therefore noisy. Instead of setting up your own AP which competes for a piece of RF spectrum, there should be a way of providing bandwidth and range for neighboring networks. Of course I realize that routing a mesh to internet is quite difficult, so I just keep dreaming on....

</comment><comment><USER23> They acknowledge but do not even address the "cops breaking down your door" problem. I don't think it admits of a solution. Technical approaches like putting unknown MACs behind a firewall to block filesharing or filter the web are imperfect and prove that you knew leaving your wifi open might help baby- rapers.

(Pardon the throwaway, but I do run an open wifi. If I do win that unlucky lottery, I don't want some zealous prosecutor digging up this comment.)

<comment><USER18> In a world where it was understood that everyone ran free wifi, the courts would stop accepting that illegal activity from your IP was a reason for the cops to break down your door. Just as it's obvious today that illegal activity from a Starbucks open wifi isn't a reason for the cops to break into Starbucks.

I'm not saying it's easy to get there from here, but a solution is clearly not inherently impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not only do we need an open wireless movement, we need mesh networking amongst mobile internet devices and all wireless routers within reach of each other hooking up to form a carrier-independent infrastructure. There are a few projects working towards the former, however the latter would provide a solid backbone especially if the blank spots can be filled through an internet connection.

<comment><USER25> The biggest problem here is sharing your IP address. I do not want the FBI at my house every time my neighbor downloads something illegal (recent cases show that this does happen). Some level of protection is necessary. NAT for example seems a poor choice. Maybe with IPv6 the FBI would know not to bother the network operator but to go directly to the offender. Or maybe some sort of a part-way link level encryption gateway is the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I get where the EFF is coming from. From a technical standpoint, the notion that "WiFi everywhere" could be delivered easily if everyone just opened their networks is sound, but their arguments trivialize a lot of the consequences. Take this gem:

"...a desire to prevent their neighbors from "free riding" on their connections; and a fear that unencrypted WiFi is a security or privacy risk. Both of those reasons have a degree of legitimacy..."

A _degree_ of legitimacy? The article goes on to state that the risks inherent to untrusted network access have "other solutions", but that's a pretty bold statement. Good security is about layers. If you don't want people snooping on your network communications, you need layered security.

Their proposed solution of link-layer security is cool and all, but it's a long ways off. There was a time when I was all about open networks for the common good, but the whole Firesheep fiasco changed my tune pretty quickly.

<comment><USER18> If your wifi is to an internal network firewalled from the internet, then yes of course you'd want to secure it.

But most home wifi (which is what we're talking about here) is routed more or less directly to the inherently untrusted internet. If you're sending unencrypted data you care about to that then you already have a problem. (Yes, it's true that people are sending unencrypted data they care about across the internet and it's true that they already have a problem.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have an open anonymous wifi setup that doesn't allow eavesdropping.

I have an ADSL/wifi router as my primary access point. It provides a WPA2 encrypted network for my own laptops. Then I have an old secondary wifi router plugged to that one over ethernet. It offers another passwordless network and has some bandwidth-limits in place, does NAT, and provides another subnet over dhcp to anonymous users. You can't use the secondary network to eavesdrop on what happens on the primary router.

When I'm out travelling and find an anonymous wifi myself, I just ssh to my account at a unix box, forward the connection to a remote http/s proxy to my laptop and thus route all my web traffic over ssh via a trusted exit node.

</comment><comment><USER28> This seems like a non-issue to me, especially in the age of smartphones with personal wifi hotspot abilities.

<comment><USER29> The problem is that not everyone can afford that. In fact, almost no one can afford that. The internet as a whole is only viable because of vastly pooled resources - it could never have happened on a "my slice, get off my lawn" basis. Even if you _can_ afford it, you're being vastly overcharged compared to a decentralized network. One that already exists in many areas, most of it is already fully painted with WiFi supposing people could actually all use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wish this could some how be shoe-horned into the current standards. Microsoft, Apple and the OWA aren't known for their speed.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is exist, it is call FON fon.com</comment>


Drugs and Wikipedia don't mix - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/12/02/drugs-and-wikipedia-dont-mix

<comment><USER2> I'm sure this is true and the article presents relevant points about Wikipedia's drug coverage, but it probably largely comes down to what's in the second to last paragraph:

"But no internet source can replace the authority of a physician, doctors said."

In other words, "no computer can do my job better than I can."

Never heard that before and I can't imagine the motivation behind the statement.

At some point (if not already) it seems likely that it will be generally safer to look up a drug and find out the effects on the Internet (maybe never on Wikipedia, but somewhere). No doctor's brain can contain a complete database of every drug and its effects and interactions with other drugs.</comment>


Ask HN: Career and family, can we have both? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
This looks like Quora like question, but I am really interested in what you guys think.
I started writing code since 10 years old, I did a PhD and really liked working on complex problems. At the end of the thesis, my wife and I got our first kid, two years later the second one. We decided to stay in the same town to be close to the family (which is really helpful), but there is not that much "great" opportunities around here in tech. Meanwhile, all those who were PhD students with me left to other countries and found amazing positions.
It has been a while that I'm feeling depressed... I love being close to relatives, but at the same time I would love to work on amazing things...
I'm not looking for "solutions", but for wisdom :) <comment><USER2> You can but you need to be in a position where either you earn enough so that your partner doesn't work (if you have one), or that you earn enough to pay for fulltime childcare, or that you work in a role where childcare is provided. If you have children before you're in that position it'll essentially be impossible to get there because you'll be uncompetitive in the workplace so you're stuck where you are now.

This is a serious problem with the tech industry, and a large factor in why tech companies fail to attract women (and consequently why there's such a shortage of developers). The good news is that tech founders recognise the problem and are, albeit very slowly, doing something about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> PhD in which subject? In Math you can survive without too much money, in Chemistry you need a lot of money to buy fancy compounds, ...

Also, in some areas it's easy to collaborate at long distance. Can you try to do some work with your friends?

[And also sometimes the positions in other countries are too time consuming. Enjoy your family. :)]</comment>


Ask HN: I'm desperate to stay in Denmark. Anyone need a great web/ios dev? - <AUTHOR> Using a throwaway account, although I'm pretty active on HN.
I spent 6 years working in Silicon Valley where I worked many years for companies such as Yahoo! and Facebook.
My overall experience is probably around 10 years.
I specialize in Python/Django as well as pretty good in Obj-C/Cocoa/Cocoa Touch, and I've got many apps in App Store and few Mac OSX apps as well.
I know C, C++, and PHP pretty well.  I also know some Perl, and can pickup any technology very quickly.
I can do development, server admin, IT work, etc.
I freelance and run my own small business specializing in web apps and ios/osx apps.
I'm from US, but now find myself in Copenhagen, Denmark where I met a nice girl and want to stay for foreseeable future.
My tourist visa is quickly expiring, and I need a work visa to stay longer than 3 months.
Anyone interested in hiring me and sponsoring my work visa?  I promise I won't disappoint and can bring my tremendous experience to any tasks you have.
Send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll talk more.
EDIT: Thanks for all the advice and suggestions.  I'm floored at all of the help.  If someone is in CPH, and wants to grab coffee, and talk about tech, travel, or whatever, let me know as well. <comment><USER3> Danish attorney (and python noob) here.

Just want to add that if you can't qualify for one of the working visas or a family based visa, which can be tricky due to the many specific requirements, you shouldn't lose hope. If your girlfriend is a Danish citizen or a citizen of another European Union country you can make use of the EU rules regarding free movement of labor, i.e. live and work in Denmark without a visa and without financial requirements, without having employment at hand, without expensive application fees or the other usual obstacles set up to make immigration hard.

This follows from the Metock ruling from the European Court of Justice:

[http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:62008J0127:EN:HTML)

In short, the Metock ruling says that the free movement of labor entitles any EU citizen to bring a partner/family member, who is a citizen of a third country such as the US, with her when she moves from one EU country to another for work.

To make use of this ruling both of you will have to move to another European Union country to work there for a short period (for example 3 months). You will probably have trouble getting working visa there but your girlfriend can work there as an EU citizen. You don't have to go further away than across the bridge to Malmö. It will probably be necessary to marry, since the requirement for unmarried is a "durable relationsship", which you may not fulfill in such short period (as I understand it you met recently).

You need to live in the other EU country, not just stay there at a hotel. To be well within the requirements your girlfriend should try to work there in what is at least a half time job. She doesn't have to get any kind of qualified job.

Though they are reluctant, the Danish immigration authorities are obliged to explain how you benefit from this EU loop hole if you ask them about it. Be sure to ask in detail about the requirements.

Good luck, and welcome to Denmark :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there anyway to contact you? I wanted to ask a simple visa question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can try contacting your embassy (<http://denmark.usembassy.gov/>) and see what options you have available. It sounds like you're pretty overqualified to be in Denmark. :)

You could also try to hit up the Robocat guys (<http://robocatapps.com/>) and ask if they know someone in the community who have any open positions.

I don't know how well they're doing, but Planely (<http://www.planely.com/>) offer visas for employees, and I imagine they'd love to have you there.

Airbnb also have a Copenhagen office, and while they don't explicitly have an open position, I imagine they'd love to make an exception for you: <http://www.airbnb.com/jobs/locations/copenhagen-denmark>.

I have no idea how getting a cool developer gig in Copenhagen works, but you could do worse than those suggestions.

EDIT: Oh, right, there is also the newly re-released Django People: <https://people.djangoproject.com/dk/>. Check out the profiles and see if any companies and openings show up.

EDIT2: You could also try setting up a profile on <http://angel.co> aimed specifically at Copenhagen.

EDIT3: You could also check out LinkedIn and Quora. I doubt they'll get you anywhere, but it doesn't hurt to try.

<comment><USER5> > overqualified to be in Denmark

explain

<comment><USER6> Ya, that's weird. From my own anecdotal experience, Denmark has the maybe highest per capita computer science PhDs in the world.

<comment><USER7> Very interesting. What do you think is responsible for this? How did it come about? My understanding is that the education system in Denmark (and their core educational values) is different than most places.

<comment><USER8> All of scandinavia is really good in IT in regards to their tiny population. They also often have the best gamers/clans in the world :) Most of the year its very cold, IT infrastructure was very very good 10 years ago already and the countries are wealthy and have very good educational systems.

<comment><USER7> Yeah true. However from my understanding a country like Finland focuses on different things than Denmark. Look at their rankings on the international PISA tests for example. Finland scores are great, Denmark not as much (18th I believe). I remember reading at some point (though now I'm not finding it) that Denmark focuses a bit more on personal development relatively, while Finland (and most other places) on the knowledge (math/science).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can help, I am an entrepreneur having a web startup in Copenhagen.

Come to Founders House, Gothersgade 8d, 1123 Copenhagen. It's a shared working space with 15-20 web startups. Ask for Luca from Evertale (me). We don't need to hire but I am happy to give you an introduction to all the companies and possibly someone might need your skills! You will find us any working day 9:30-18:00. We'll be on holidays in August, so try to come in the next two weeks.

Good luck and take care,

Luca

<comment><USER10> _We'll be on holidays in August_

You have a national holiday that last a month?

<comment><USER11> There's a reason he's desperate to stay in Denmark...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hi, try and give me a call if you like +45 31 36 97 05 or write me here firstname.lastname@example.com. I cannot make any promises though.

Today we do development in Barcelona and with some externals, but our main office is in Denmark and I could use someone locally who can work independently. We are making a very successful daily deals site in Denmark and 7 other countries.

Best of luck

\- Jonathan

</comment><comment><USER13> Even before I clicked I knew it was about "girl". ;-)

<comment><USER14> It was that or the weather :)

<comment><USER15> No-one would move to Denmark for the weather. Trust me, I'm Danish.

<comment><USER14> I was kidding. I moved to CPH three years ago from Andalusia, Spain. I am still in shock

<comment><USER16> Hey man, the cold and the rain just makes you appreciate the summers :p

<comment><USER17> yeah .. which occurs on average every forth year or so ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If nothing pops up soon, just move to Malmö. Just about everyone here is shacked up with a Dane and living in exile (Denmark changed their residency laws so that now even if you're married to a Dane it's still difficult to get a visa). In Sweden, you'll get at least 6 months on a tourist visa.

</comment><comment><USER19> We are hiring qualified people for both our office in Malmö and in Copenhagen. Send me your resume and come by for coffe. Best Phil firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER20> Unity has an office in DK: <http://unity3d.com/company/jobs/overview>

</comment><comment><USER21> Trifork (www.trifork.com) are pretty big in the app space in Denmark. Try applying there.

Edit: also, tradeshift have their development offices in CPH.

Yet another edit: A Danish blogger recently assembled a list of Danish startups. Try looking through that for a match.

[http://www.version2.dk/blog/opdateret-liste-over-danske- ivae...](http://www.version2.dk/blog/opdateret-liste-over-danske- ivaerksaettere-43340)

<comment><USER22> Just to add that Tradeshift also has development offices in San Francisco and that they might (well) be on the lookout for an experienced iOS developer in Copenhagen, even though it may not show from <http://tradeshift.com/jobs>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Microsoft has a development center in Copenhagen. I believe they develop the Dynamics CRM product there. Here's a list of open engineering positions as of today:

[https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&p4=DK...](https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&p4=DK&p0=&p5=all&p1=18%2c3%2c20&p2=all&p3=all)

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure you already thought about it, but you might consider Sweden (Malmo) as well, since it's really close to CPH and will probably increase your chances of staying in that area at least, although it's not Denmark.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Malmö is also an option, although I'm not sure how big the tech community is there?

<comment><USER18> tech community here is actually pretty good for a city of its size. Malmö is kinda the Oakland to Copenhagen's San Francisco... A lot of startups seem to come out of projects related to Lund University, so you might also look for things in Lund as well (about 10 minutes N. of Malmö .. actually just search for anything in Skåne, which will catch anything in Malmö/Lund/Helsingborg )

monster.se and se.indeed.com are pretty good for generic job listings. Also i've found universities here (i.e. <http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/about- lund-university/jobs> , <http://www.mah.se/english> , <http://www.slu.se/en/> ) are a good place to look for Python jobs, as a lot of bioinformatics/science dept. are looking for developers. I guess you might also try blocket.se and thelocal.se , as there are some jobs posted there...

Lastly, not too clear about your situation, but another option might be to enroll in a Pd'D program, as they will give you a visa and a decent wage. This is true in either Denmark or Sweden.

But, just to be warned, Denmark does have a reputation of having rather harsh visa requirements. I'm not joking when I say a lot of people in Malmö moved here because of the somewhat recent Danish crackdown on visas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hi, drop me an email (email@example.com), I have good connections in Copenhagen

</comment><comment><USER26> Good luck. Welcome to being a visa requiring foreigner ;-) I have no idea about the Danish system, hopefully it's easier than in the UK. In the UK an employer needs to apply for a sponsorship license first, then they can sponsor you, it costs money and takes many months, and subjected to a monthly quota.

Seems like Denmark is a lot easier. Their points based system still let you in without a work permit (but only with certain occupations and if you have a masters degree or better) or if a Danish employer offers you more than 375k dk ($80k US), you won't need to get a work permit either.

<comment><USER27> hahaha 375k dkk is about 62k USD right now...I wish it was 80k

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I know someone that might be hiring in Copenhagen. I linked them here ;)

P.S. We should totally make a Django meetup in Denmark soon!

</comment><comment><USER28> Perhaps you qualify for a green card?

[http://www.nyidanmark.dk/en- us/coming_to_dk/work/greencard-s...](http://www.nyidanmark.dk/en- us/coming_to_dk/work/greencard-scheme/greencard-scheme.htm)

</comment><comment><USER29> Conferize is looking to hire a Senior Developer with Rails experience based in Copenhagen. Might be worth a shot:

<http://jobs.hasgeek.com/view/g7588>

</comment><comment><USER30> Trustpilot is actively hiring. Take a look, mb you'll find something. <http://www.trustpilot.com/jobs>

<comment><USER31> We Are very international and already have english speaking people on the team. We Are primarily a .Net shop though.

<comment><USER32> Yea. Otherwise it would be cool to have him I think :)

/Søren P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Another possible avenue: if you can work as a private contractor (or remotely) for companies OUTSIDE of Denmark, you may be able to base your source of revenue in the US, pay US taxes only, and get a long-term visitor visa in Denmark.

Basically, you set up a business presence in the US (an address and a phone number.. which could be a paid virtual office service and a SkypeIn number... and stick with US bank accounts, file a D/B/A, etc.), then you simply work remotely, all the time.

From the Danish perspective -- my experience is in France, but I know other European countries have variations on the same theme -- basically you prove to them that you have sufficient money and external income to stay in Denmark, housing (your gf would sign an affidavit), health insurance, and they give you a visa for a year, which you can renew each year by proving the same thing over again.

In France you have to apply from _outside_ the country, so if you have to get things set up in the US this would be the time to fly back there to get the process going.

Whatever you do, best of luck; my wife & I have worked our way through different immigration statuses in various countries, and it's always frustrating.

<comment><USER3> It probably wouldn't work. Denmark taxes residents on their world wide income, cf. the Danish Act on Taxation at the Source: <https://www.retsinformation.dk/forms/r0710.aspx?id=134306> (Sorry, I can't find a translation)

Another question is whether he would be interested in avoiding Danish taxation.

If he chooses to incorporate in Denmark, the taxation is a flat 25 percent of the profits, and - which is just as important as the percentage - <USER2> expenses can be deducted when calculating the profits for tax purposes. I don't believe American corporate tax is lower.

If he doesn't incorporate, or if incorporates and pays out salary from his corporation to himself, he is taxed personally. The Danish income taxation is on a progressive scale, ranging from around 10 percent to around 60 percent but again with quite good possibilities for deductions. As a rule of thumb, most people end up paying little more than 40 percent of their total income, even if it exceeds USD 100,000. I don't think the combined federal tax, state tax in California and social security is much lower than that.

As an American citizen, the US would tax him on his world wide income although he is no longer resident in the US. But there are different possibilities for tax deductions such as the foreign earned income exclusion for the first USD 95,100 made abroad. Also, there is a double taxation treaty between the US and Denmark which may take care of any taxes exceeding the USD 95,100.

Anyways, he would have to talk to both a Danish and an American CPA about that. It would be very expensive. In my experience, tax planning is for large corporations, not for the rest of us.

<comment><USER33> As I mentioned, I can't say anything about Denmark, but I spent 5 years with this setup in France.

In France during that time, I wasn't a resident (and not allowed to work for a French company, or get any benefits of residency); I was a long-stay visitor. It's a status designed for people who's lives, income, and often main residences, etc. are based elsewhere who just have a reason to stay in X country for more than the normal tourist visa (but they'll be going back someday, probably).

If he gets sponsored by a Danish company, he'll surely need to pay Danish taxes then. Though it's possible he'd get a discount; I know the Netherlands gives US immigrants (my brother among them) a significant tax reduction -- to US-similar rates -- to make immigration there more enticing.

If he does need to pay Danish taxes at some point, quite right, there's a treaty to avoid double-taxation -- whatever he pays in Danish taxes would be basically subtracted from what he owes in US taxes.

In France as a long-stay visitor, I was required to submit French tax returns (where I owed nothing, and it's pretty simple -- the middle-aged ladies in the tax office are really nice to me) and US tax returns (where I have a US accountant to help me out; he's not hugely expensive, actually, even though we have bank accounts in 3 countries and own residences in two; I think we paid about $1K last year).

Danish taxes are probably closer to the French system (fairly simple) than to the US system (horrendously complex unless you just have W-4 income), so he may never need a Danish accountant.

It would be nice if tax planning were just for large corporations, not individuals; unfortunately, depending on how interesting you make your life, sometimes it's unavoidable. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It looks like a ton of people have helped you but I still thought I would put in my 2 cents as I may be the person closest to where you are...I went to DK on a student visa, met a girl, finished school in the US(where I am from) and moved back with the need of a visa.

You will have 3 options I would say, one, get a job that pays you enough/is on the positive list(this is what I did), but you will pay out your ass in tax and not have the right to stay if you lose the job. Two, get enough points on the Danish immigration system to stay(unlikely I would guess, but I haven't looked in a little while). Three, what I would suggest, keep freelancing but pay tax in the US, spend 3/6 months in DK. You will spend less in plane tickets by a ton then the difference in tax.

I can't really push this tax bit enough, the difference in cost of living combined with the high tax will change your lifestyle most likely. Unless you find someone who will pay you 2X what you make now you will end up with less in the bank and not be entitled to a lot of what the Danish welfare system offers. Just a warning. All the best in CPH!

</comment><comment><USER34> If you're kick ass, my start up AppBlade (mobile application distribution, management, and security) is looking for help, <https://appblade.com>

We have native SDKs (open-source [android, ios, javascript, and blackberry]) and are developed in Ruby on Rails on the back end. Send me a message if you are interested.

</comment><comment><USER35> Google's V8 is being developed in Denmark. Just apply at Google :-)

<comment><USER36> If he already worked at FB and Yahoo it seems he has the right qualifications.

<comment><USER37> Not necessarily.

The Danish dev team is working almost entirely on V8 and Dart which is primarily C.

They work on very specific things related to optimization of virtual machines and programming language design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Read this post, they are looking for some (game devs) and will provide housing. No pay for 2 months though.

[http://www.gamedev.se/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7030&start=0...](http://www.gamedev.se/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7030&start=0#49038)

</comment><comment><USER39> Sitecore is based in Copenhagen. You may have a shot there: [http://www.sitecore.net/Company/Job- Opportunities/Denmark.as...](http://www.sitecore.net/Company/Job- Opportunities/Denmark.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER40> You'll need to get residency first. They don't use work visas per say, it's the EU which regulates it all. I'd apply for residency first, even without a job. You can ask for residency based on you living with your girlfriend (EU laws are a lot more relaxed). If you were in Sweden I could help out more, but unfortunately I'm just across the water from CPH.

Denmark also has a central job site (run by the govt), and LinkedIn has a lot of jobs there as well.

</comment><comment><USER41> Try starting a company. You'll probably have to have some money to start, but I'm guessing that's not a problem.

Look for other americans on forums. They should know the drill.

Look for an authorized translator. Born in US. She can probably advise you the best.

Search for a way to get an extension. Even if that means you have to go back to US for a couple of months. If the girl is serious she should still be in Denmark 3 months later.

Bottom line, avoid begging for a job.

</comment><comment><USER42> Marry the girl?

<comment><USER43> Danish immigration law is more complicated than that!

<comment><USER44> I remember Danmark had issues with skilled human resource leakage, (partly) because of high taxes. So maybe they enhanced the immigration laws a bit, for easy "importing" skilled workforce.

<comment><USER45> We care more about scaring away muslism than keeping qualified workers.

<comment><USER44> I didn't know cartoon industry had so many lobbyists in Danish government :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Think about the Swedish job market. It's the wrong way to be commuting from Denmark to Sweden but if you're desperate it might keep you going.

</comment><comment><USER47> All the best for and hope something works out for you. And despite what few of the comments suggest, i don't think your motivation and in turn your dedication would be any less towards the company hiring you. And based on your qualifications, you would be a "Catch"<hope i am using it right> for any company.

</comment><comment><USER48> Well, send an email to zendesk, they are based in Copenhagen and are a nice bunch. They are a rails shop though.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why don't you start a PhD job? e.g. at <http://www.itu.dk/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure any company who don't have their heads up their asses would love to have you. This is a great opportunity for anyone who knows someone in Denmark to do them a nice favour and get them to hire him. They'll be happy they did.

</comment><comment><USER49> How about making trip outside of EU and return back which should give you another 90 days tourist visa?

It is not permanent solution, but it give you some more time to get better visas.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would need to stay out 90 days as well before returning for another 90 days...

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This online petition might be a good directory of startups to get in touch with. Best of luck!

<http://www.westart.dk/>

</comment><comment><USER51> Phase One A/S is looking for a dev; take a look: <http://www.phaseone.com>

</comment><comment><USER52> Good luck with everything dude, Denmark is a lovely place (I'm biased, grew up there). A tweet was all I could lend though ;)

</comment><comment><USER17> Could you be a bit more specific about the kind of work you would like to do? Web apps? iOs? Game development? HTML+Js?

</comment><comment><USER45> <https://www.workindenmark.dk/> might be worth looking at.

</comment><comment><USER53> Podio is a great place to work in CPH, and not only because we have the best parties. Get in touch: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER54> Podio is in Denmark. Send them a line.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is your best option, apply to everything

<http://it-jobbanken.dk>

</comment><comment><USER55> > want to stay for foreseeable future.

and then

> I need a work visa to stay longer than 3 months.

I don't know about the law, but if a company sponsors you, you probably need to stay with the company for at least a year. And, I personally wouldn't hire someone whose primary purpose for staying with the company is a girl. You didn't have to mention about it at all. But, good luck.

<comment><USER56> >I personally wouldn't hire someone who's primary purpose or staying with the company is a girl.

You've got your head up in the clouds man. You actually think you'll find an employee who is loyal to your company above all other things in the world, even his soulmate? I can't help but laugh at this attitude.

Take a look through human history and find me some literature about the epic struggle of a man to satisfy his boss, above all other things, including his family and wife.

I think it is a very honorable thing to be committed to a woman (or man, or robot) and if it were me doing the hiring I'd not discriminate against someone who's actually being honest about his priorities rather than blowing a plume of smoke up my arse.

<comment><USER57> >and if it were me doing the hiring

Ie. you are not

This is more about motivation and a financial commitment (for an employer), than love and honesty.

I'd rather hire someone that have a genuine interest in my company, customers, products and technology. Not very romantic, I know ;)

<comment><USER33> It's not a binary decision; he should indeed find a company that honestly interests him, or he will be unhappy there (regardless of how happy his private life is; work takes up a large chunk of your waking hours!).

And that doesn't rule out explaining what brings him to the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Broaden your search: If you find work with any company in continental Europe (=> Schengen area!) the work visa will allow you to live in Denmark. You could, for example, work remotely for a company in Germany.

For example in Germany, most IT jobs with a salary over 40000 Euro/Year qualify for a work visa (first three years, then unlimited).

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm no help sorry, I just wanted to say: Good luck and I hope you get to stay there.

</comment><comment><USER60> Write me at email@example.com - we're always interested in meeting talented people.

</comment><comment><USER61> Just so you know, VMware has a dev office in Aarhus. Good luck.

<comment><USER20> Google does too (V8), not sure if they are hiring though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I've dreamed to work for LEGO.

</comment><comment><USER63> try out nodes.dk perhaps, dunno if they are still looking for iOS devs

</comment><comment><USER64> marry her

</comment><comment><USER57> <http://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-us/coming_to_dk/work/work.htm>

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER65> I forwarded this to a friend ;) Good luck with that!</comment>


Reble, Reble, I Like Your Playlist - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/05/reble-reble-i-like-your-playlist/ <comment><USER2> From comment:

I tried to prove my friends wrong. Techcrunch does not destroy startups.</comment>


Using Mechanical Turk for Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/12/using-mechanical-turk-for-your.php

<comment><USER2> I would love to use Mechanical Turk for a number of activities however, I can't believe you still need to be in the USA with a USA bank account to submit jobs? Ditto for Amazon's payment system.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting, but there are better-tuned services for this.

<http://www.usertesting.com/> comes to mind.</comment>


Employee #1: Dropbox - <AUTHOR> http://themacro.com/articles/2016/09/employee-1-dropbox/ <comment><USER3> I was lucky enough to hear this story almost verbatim from Aston and it's so exhilarating to listen to how much fun everybody seemed to be having. He tells it with a lot of enthusiasm that you can feel just from the depth of his responses.

I think the one thing that stuck with me, personally, is the issues Dropbox had in the early days (TC 50 tech issues) and that it took _six months_ to get Aston on board. From what I understand, pre-YC was not easy for Drew either.

As a stubbornly impatient person, this has to be hands-down the hardest part of building a startup. You're running an endless marathon as if your life depended on it, and you have to stop at the sidelines and calmly ask people if they'll run with you. And then be okay if they don't - because the course will change, and as it does it will become more attractive to different sets of people. You might see the finish line, but you have to understand that not everybody will see it the same way you do.

The thing that I'd add here is that Aston kind of downplays how important having a business model is as an employee / founder (at least per Drew joking around about pricing). I don't think he did this intentionally, but generally we're over saturated with these ideas that you just need a product people love. These stories inspire technical founders, but having a defensible business is something you should think about sooner rather than later. Not everybody can be a Dropbox, so learn as much as possible about every aspect of what your company can and will be, learn how to communicate that, and stack the deck in your favor. It's an ongoing process and I certainly am not one to claim mastery (far from it), but as somebody who's in the weeds it's the perspective I have.

<comment><USER4> What I don't get is why try to recruit the same person over and over for six months? I wonder what the outcome would have been had they just hired someone else equally as talented right away instead of going without an employee for all that time. You can't re-play these things so we'll never know, but it just seems odd to me.

<comment><USER5> They didn't have funding (other than YC, which at the time was $6k/founder, not nearly enough to support an employee) until right before they hired Aston.

Drew had approached me about being employee #2 for DropBox, and I had lunch with him, Arash, and Aston in Feb 2008. They'd only closed the Sequoia seed round about a month before. IIUC, Aston had been officially hired the day before. I (stupidly in hindsight, but for good reasons at the time) ended up declining. I actually reconsidered about two months later and asked if the position was still open, but they had long since filled it - I think they got some very good MIT grads literally later the afternoon after I had declined.

So they were hiring very aggressively, but they started recruiting _before_ they were in a position to actually hire, to warm up potential employees.

<comment><USER6> Interesting example. Genuine question, had it been the opposite, if you circle back in time, would you really take that job? (Trick question: Are you less happy than you think you would have been in other case?)

<comment><USER5> Complicated question. It certainly would've been better financially, though honestly, the difference is "set for life" vs. "set for a long time", so I'm not certain it would make a material difference in my life now. Besides, I think it's fairly likely that even if I were set for life, I'd be doing something fairly similar to what I'm doing now. I think that in terms of lifestyle & personal goals during the 4-5 years I would've been at DropBox, I actually did better (I ended up folding up the startup I was working on and working for Google, and I had a relatively stress-free, enjoyable, lucrative, and personally fulfilling time at Google where I grew a lot as a person).

I do think that my _reasons_ for not taking the job have been invalidated by future experience. My top reason was "I'm not going to leave my cofounder", and then he ended up leaving me 2 months later. My second reason was "Well, you've got a startup, I've got a startup, it is unclear which of us is actually going to succeed," and of course my startup was dead in 6 months while DropBox is now a $10B company. (Interestingly, I had a gut feeling at the time that I was turning down something important - I could tell Drew/Arash/Aston were crazy smart, and I really liked their product concept video.) But Drew actually told me "Honestly, if I were in your position - <USER2> I _have_ been in your position - I wouldn't take the job" and he was right. The bargain we make as entrepreneurs is getting to call the shots, and the consequence of this is that sometimes we make the wrong call, and in a way it's not wrong after all because the whole point was _making the call in the first place_.

There's also the issue of whether DropBox would be a billion-dollar company at all if they'd hired me. I think my skillset actually duplicated Aston's to a fairly large extent, and we would've argued over technology choices (I would've pushed for Django, JQuery, and git over Pylons, Prototype.js, and Hg - the fact that these won in the wider webdev world is immaterial, just arguing over them would've cost precious time that a startup can't afford). Instead they hired some very talented MIT grads instead, and my understanding is that these engineers were responsible for things like reverse-engineering the Finder and writing the syncing algorithm that were what really contributed to DropBox's success.

<comment><USER7> Hey Nostrademons,

I appreciate your thoughtful responses so I was wondering what your thoughts are on importance and corresponding compensation of the 1st employee at a company.

If the first employee is important enough that in your mind, it's possible that with depending on the first employee they may or may not be a billion dollar company, do you think the first employee compensation is commensurate with that? Aston also mentions specifically the commitment he has as a first employee, and how he feels "you're basically a founder" in terms of responsibility.

In my opinion, he made off about as well as any first employee could reasonably expect (even unreasonably I'd argue).

I don't have the perspective of either a startup founder or the first employee anywhere so I'm not trying to slight the Dropbox founders in any way.

I guess my question boils down to two parts 1\. What do you think a reasonable level of compensation is for a first employee 2\. Given the success rates of startups (low), why would someone want to be the first employee somewhere versus either their own startup, or a later stage company that could pay them a much higher salary then the typical startup compensation. My unstated assumption here, which you might disagree with, is that someone who could have the impact of Aston, could become a staff engineer at somewhere like facebook/google/microsoft/etc and pull total compensation of 300/400k with a significantly higher chance.

<comment><USER5> I think the key difference between founders vs. early employees is in risk tolerance. An early employee should be able to go to work reasonably confident that he will get paid for his time and his efforts will not be completely futile. The job description for "founder", however, involves _finding a reason for the company to exist_ , and that inherently involves the risk that you could put in a lot of work and it'll still count for nothing.

Aston (presumably) made out with a lot more than the $300/400K a year that a Google/Facebook engineer tops out at. He also took on more risk, but the risk was largely technical risk: the possibility that him and his teammates couldn't deliver what 65,000 people said they wanted. That risk is largely under their control, while as a founder, the primary risk is that nobody wants your product or it can't be built economically.

I do think that the large amount of money in the funding ecosystem lately has distorted this bargain somewhat. In boom times, you get cases where the founders get funded on hope & pedigree and draw a salary immediately (meaning that their financial risk is more akin to an early employee's), and then they go and hire a bunch of naive employees at below-market rates before getting any validation that people want their product (meaning that the employee now takes on market risk that was previously reserved for the founder). This doesn't do either the company or the employee any good; these companies are significantly more likely to fail than ones who stay founder-only while they prove out the market, and they ruin more peoples' lives when they do. If you look at employee #1's who have actually made out well - eg. those at Google, DropBox, Thumbtack, AirBnB, SnapChat, etc. - all of those companies had validated demand, had raised funding, and in many cases were already in use by thousands of people when they hired their first employee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > We were all using the product so when there was funny stuff we tended to > catch it.

I love this. There have been so many times I've run into a bug that makes me wonder if anyone on the engineering team actually used the product.

<comment><USER9> Also known as 'dogfooding' or 'eating your own dog food' [0], and yes, not enough companies/software teams do this. Developers that build software aimed at or naturally used by other software developers kind of have an unfair advantage here.

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

<comment><USER10> Back when I worked for a pre internet messaging company our terminals speed was slowed down to the same (1200 or 2400 baud) as a dial up user would see.

<comment><USER11> There was a story last year about Facebook having "2G Tuesdays" to give employees an idea of what life on a slow network is like. I wonder whether it caught on?

<comment><USER12> Such a genius idea. I see far too many web applications not caring about latency. Forcing a developer to experience the same pain should help them. Unless that simply becomes the day everyone typically takes off, blames productivity on slow network connectivity, etc.

<comment><USER5> Google had a latency proxy on the corp network that you could use to simulate dialup, 2G, DSL, etc (along with unreliable connections). It was a great tool, and you could learn a lot by doing all your normal searches through the latency proxy. Alas, not many developers knew about it, and even fewer were willing to take the convenience hit to use it as part of their normal experience.

<comment><USER13> OS X used to have a "Network Link Conditioner" that shipped with XCode, I believe. It did a lot of the things you're suggesting, but right at the network interface level. Unfortunately, it broke with the advent of Mavericks. No idea whether it works now, or even still exists.

On the last web-app project I worked on, we had a middleware that activated automatically in dev mode and just inserted a delay in every request to bring a local delay up to our users' median delay. It was intentionally a bit of a pain to turn off, so almost everyone ran in that mode.

<comment><USER14> Still exists. [https://developer.apple.com/download/more/?q=Hardware%20IO%2...](https://developer.apple.com/download/more/?q=Hardware%20IO%20Tools) is the link you're looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "MIT is cheating. Going to MIT you end up getting to meet lots of people who are smart and fun to hang out with and you'll get along with naturally. It's much harder after school."

</comment><comment><USER16> Aston is a class act. He volunteered to act as a mentor to students in a coding bootcamp I attended several years ago, and it was my privilege to meet him. He's the sort of person who is unequivocally a net positive in this world, and I wish him all manner of continued success.

</comment><comment><USER17> > But I ended up picking Mercurial for the distributed version control system, > which we were definitely wrong on that one–should have picked Git.

I'm curious to know: is this sentiment widely shared? Is git really that much better than hg?

<comment><USER18> Never used mercurial. I suspect it's just as good, but the problem the author probably sees is, like me, most everyone is familiar with git and new hires need to be trained in something unfamiliar with less community around it.

<comment><USER19> I wonder how large that friction is. I look at git, mercurial, etc as distributed version control first and foremost, and that they're more alike than different.

It _could_ be that I witnessed the popular adoption of all this via Linux going from tarballs/patches/mailing lists -> bitkeeper -> git, and have used and witnessed-the-evolution-of rcs, cvs, subversion, various DSCMs, and so my concepts of source control are stretched more broadly than people that are experiencing the dissonance between (e.g.) mercurial and git.

Edit: clarifying words

<comment><USER20> If you are used to an "always branch" workflow, mercurial can impose a lot of friction.

<comment><USER21> Do you have anything you can point to for that friction? I'm always looking to do better than I already am and would be interested in understanding the issues here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "In general, my thing is, again, in keeping with Dropbox's conservative culture, if you can use languages and tools and databases and frameworks that are 10 years old or older, you're probably doing pretty good."

That's a level of understanding I have trouble getting from very experienced developers and system admins, let alone a fresh college grad. I wish more people would realize that.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does Drew come from a privileged family?

<comment><USER24> His dad went to harvard so I am guessing he grew up pretty well off.

<comment><USER23> Yep. That explains how he was able to focus full time on Dropbox then. He must have always had a trampoline to bounce him back up should he fail. I know it was funded from the beginning most likely, but there had to have been a time before it was funded.

<comment><USER25> I know it's fun to be envious of rich people, but I grew up in poverty, and so far I've earned myself 5 years to focus full time on my stuff. I know it's a little harder, maybe, but all I had to do was go to work first. Most people go to work anyway.

<comment><USER23> Maybe I did come off as envious, but I'm not angry, or sad, or feeling like I don't have opportunities to be a successful startup founder myself. It's just that you do often see a pattern among founders. It's so common that I've started noticing it.

It's certainly not true that you have to come from a privileged family to be a successful entrepreneur. Look at examples like Larry Ellison.

<comment><USER26> It seems like your question was set up to confirm your conclusion. If you had instead asked how Drew was able to support himself, you'd probably get a more accurate answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Ironically, Drew's YC application is stored in Google Docs: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone noticing from these interviews that a lot of first employees are kinda just randos that aren't very impressive in their own right and don't stay at the company very long?

<comment><USER29> Aston's tenure at Dropbox (four and half years) is "very long" in Silicon Valley terms in general and in early stage startup terms in particular.

As for being "randos that aren't very impressive in their own right", you're zeroed in on a set of people who joined a startup before there was much traction, let alone profit, with almost the same risk as the founders but with less upside. That group is going to skew young and/or unsuccessful before they join and, since the interviews are conducted with #1 employees at successful companies, will skew towards having FU money for their post-exit careers.

<comment><USER28> I realize first employees will tend to skew young and/or unsuccessful and, as a result of being first employees, these people have FU money, but my point is that their success seems to be kinda random. There's no sense of inevitability about their success like you see with really great founders. And it seems like they never go on to do anything amazing in their post-exit careers.

<comment><USER29> How amazing is the post-exit career of the average great founder? What if the success of the "really great founders" similarly has quite a bit of randomness involved? The halo effect and associated myth-making doesn't get applied nearly as much to employee #1.

<comment><USER28> I think you might have a point about the "post-exit career of the average great founder" in that it's usually not that impressive.

Larry and Sergey certainly would qualify as "great founders", given their level of success, and, while they continue to run Google competently, they really haven't done anything else (Google still really only has one line of business, after all).

Whereas on the other hand, we have someone like Bezos who, with AWS, has created not one, but two ten billion dollar plus businesses and whose ambition seems to be boundless. Or, of course, Elon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A minor detail, but I am surprised about the whole "it was hard to figure out when someone moved a file" thing. I always assumed the actual file on disk was abstracted away into a database record, that specified the folder etc. Were they actually using S3 Bucket/Folders for file structure on Dropbox itself?

<comment><USER31> It was more of a lack of abstraction than anything. The server reflected more or less what the OS presented -- an add and a delete rather than a move. Putting the pieces together later to present better information to the user was difficult. Not sure what they do today, but I remember many talks about ways to put that abstraction in place as close to the OS as possible. Reconstructing multiple, quick, renames/moves after the fact proved to be somewhat difficult from the frontend, which Aston worked on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What a great interview. There's so much under-appreciated advice here, particularly around founder/idea fit.

I've been lucky enough to know Aston over the past two years, and have always been super impressed by his insight.

</comment><comment><USER33> Awesome story

</comment><comment><USER34> An interesting titbit Aston leaves out about his early days is that he was actually cofounder of AutoAdmit.com[0], a law school admissions forum, semi- notorious for its defamation lawsuits and being an incubator for troll, Michael O. Church[1] (banned on Quora, Wikipedia, and Hacker News for being a thorn in Paul Graham and Dan G, sides) that formed after the great Princeton Review Discussion Board exodus and has persisted with an active user base for almost 13 years now. I wonder if he's ashamed of that history since he fails to mention it (despite it being on his early resume!).

[0] [http://www.autoadmit.com/](http://www.autoadmit.com/) [1] [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/)

<comment><USER35> What is the connection between AutoAdmit and Church? I don't understand how he's relevant here.

<comment><USER36> Church used to post obsessively on AutoAdmit under the name "pensive" and have lengthy conversations with sockpuppet accounts.

Draw your own conclusions.</comment></comment></comment>


Employers are hiring more graduates from nontraditional schools like Flatiron - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/coding-boot-camps-attract-tech-companies-1470945503 <comment><USER2> "curricula that are constantly retailored to meet company needs"

it's always worth remembering that the firms discussed in the article are not really educational institutions as much as they are career training centers, providing a very specific skillset in order to meet very specific labor demands. in a traditional university, faculty call the shots on curriculum (or at least they should); that's not the case here. furthermore, these firms work both sides of the deal by acting as 3rd-party recruiting agents to the companies that ultimately are looking to hire. (i now have to ignore spam from hacker bootcamps trying to pitch me candidates).

let's call a spade a spade -- these are businesses. i'm very concerned about allowing federal student loans into this cocktail.</comment>


CoreRT – .NET Core runtime optimized for AOT compilation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/corert <comment><USER2> I don't get it. Wasn't this already released under MIT like two years ago?

<comment><USER3> I would also appreciate a little comment on this because the readme doesn't do much explaining what it is, why it's important, how it's different from .NET Core 2 compiler? To put it in another way, why is this so relevant?

<comment><USER4> It is the POSIX version of .NET Native, for AOT compilation into native code.

Using a much better compiler backend than NGEN, similar to Mono when targeting iOS.

Additionally, it is also adding WASM as target "CPU".

.NET Core only does JIT currently, the generated binary is a mini-bootstrap code that starts the runtime and feeds the main application Assembly into it.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the explanation. It's good to see that Microsoft finally decided to port .net native to other platforms than uwp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More info in `Documentation` folder:

[https://github.com/dotnet/corert/blob/master/Documentation/i...](https://github.com/dotnet/corert/blob/master/Documentation/intro- to-corert.md)

[https://github.com/dotnet/corert/blob/master/Documentation/h...](https://github.com/dotnet/corert/blob/master/Documentation/high- level-engineering-plan.md)

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see more of a road map on where this project is going. It's exciting, but not clear where it's heading.

</comment><comment><USER8> So using this a .Net application run without the .net framework?

<comment><USER9> The framework is included with the application, so no install is needed. You can already generate a self-contained platform-agnostic deployment that includes the framework, but it contains lots of files. You need to specify the platform, yet that is just for the bootstrapper. There are also some pre- requisites that have to be installed, such as SSL libs.

.NET Native (a.k.a. CoreRT) is more like what you get with Go, a single native binary. You need to know the CPU architecture ahead-of-time, but it has performance advantages. You can also strip out unused code with IL Linker and do things like Profile Guided Optimisation.

Keep in mind that if you're using Docker containers then you probably want to share the framework, otherwise this will increase the size.

There's some more discussion around this in the .NET Core talks that I've given: [https://unop.uk/talks/](https://unop.uk/talks/)

<comment><USER10> > .NET Native (a.k.a. CoreRT) is more like what you get with Go, a single > native binary.

I think this really needs to be emphasized, it's a great feature and this was the one question I had when I clicked the link, but I didn't get the answer until I came here.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Aquietplace, a small writing tool - <AUTHOR> http://joevennix.com/aquietplace/

<comment><USER2> I generally like distraction free writing environments, but i doubt that it's really a good idea to have such without the ability to open / manage multiple "files". If you have to type everything into one textbox, without the possibility to switch context, you are IMO likely to be distracted by what you wrote earlier.

Nonetheless, nice tool!

<comment><AUTHOR> _wakes up 10 hours later to find this on HN homepage_

Sorry, originally I had some functionality so that changing URL hash gives you a new file. At some point I switched this to using location.pathname and broke it. Let me add it back :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Okay, feature implemented :) To work on a new file just change the URL hash

[http://joevennix.com/aquietplace#newfile](http://joevennix.com/aquietplace#newfile)

<comment><USER2> Nice, i really like the idea of just using URLs for that but not having any specific GUI. Great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't mean to be rude, but what is the utility for this ?

There is plenty of text editor out there, many of them are very good. What is the added value of this tool ?

<comment><USER4> It's not the first one I've seen, but the general idea is that it lets you write in a completely distraction free environment (when you full-screen it).

<comment><USER5> WriteRoom ([http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom](http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom))

DarkRoom ([http://jjafuller.com/dark-room](http://jjafuller.com/dark-room))

iA Writer

Write! ([http://wri.tt](http://wri.tt))

To name but a few of these distraction-free writers.

Write! is cool but Windows only. iA Writer isn't free but Dropbox integration and mobile version justify the price for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I tried it with Opera Android and I get a cursor in a white page. I can type but nothing else. Is this a desktop only editor? I sometimes use this tablet to type or annotate Google docs files so there is definitely some space for mobile editors.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love the black background in full screen feature a lot. I have actually wanted to write this (trivial)tool myself. I do not like others (around me) to read my blog posts or emails before I finish writing them. And this is perfect for getting the initial draft to work with. I usually am distracted by what I'd already written before I finish writing what I wanted to write. This tool helps me not do the root of all evil.

Now the black background in full screen thing seems like a bug to some of you. I think it was unintended too (given the name - aquietplace). But it's definitely a useful feature.

<comment><USER8> How do you change the background?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can't, there was a bug in my code when run on firefox fullscreen.

Formatting options would be nice, for now you can copy some text from an external HTML document and it will preserve the formatting. You can then edit this text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the votes :) The code is here if anyone wants to modify it (this site is hosted on github pages):

[https://github.com/joevennix/aquietplace](https://github.com/joevennix/aquietplace)

</comment><comment><USER9> It was not obvious to me how to save my work, other than as a webpage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah right now there is only saving as the browser allows (print to PDF is another way). I'll add support for saving as a .txt on cmd-S through HTML5 download API in a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added a cmd-S to save to txt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I swear by plaintext text editors for pretty much any kind of (non-coding) writing work but nothing beats TextEdit (OS X built-in) in plaintext mode with a good fixed-size font.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice, but full screen mode won't accept input on OS X 10.10.3 using Safari 8.0.5.

I can input in the browser and it shows fine. If I full screen it the text remains but it ignores input.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a Safari bug unfortunately.

[https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer- technology/allow-k...](https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer- technology/allow-keyboard-input-968a142b5b9b)

Seems like the best recourse is to disable the feature in Safari. Bummer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In full screen mode, the entire screen goes black. It still accepts input, but I can't actually see what is being typed.

This is on Mac OSX 10.10.3, using Firefox 37.0.2.

<comment><AUTHOR> I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix this. Maybe someone here knows. I define the fullscreen bg color:

        bg:fullscreen, bg:-webkit-full-screen, bg:-moz-full-screen {
          background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);
        }

But it does not get respected

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed it with *{background: white;}, strangely enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If it could save automatically to a note in evernote/dropbox/whatever with a name automatically created from date of creation, it would be great.

</comment><comment><USER14> Doesn't do anything in Safari, it's just a textarea. Is it supposed to give you a unique URL per document?

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice. I was unable to type in full screen mode, using Chrome.

<comment><USER16> You will have to click the middle again (the textbox) to refocus</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Fast HTTP server for Windows - <AUTHOR>

I need a fast HTTP server for Windows which can proxy between 7 different applications and 3 different hosts. 5 of these apps are deployed on Tomcat. nginx, lighttpd are not directly available for Windows. Apache HTTPD seems slow due when huge number of connections are made as it creates a new thread. <comment><USER2> What about the built in IIS web server?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have much experience with IIS, do you think it will be able to handle load as that of httpd, nginx, etc?

<comment><USER2> I have seen IIS handle 1000s of requests per second using .NET.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but my code is in Java, C++ and static files.

<comment><USER2> You can probably run them all through IIS, I know you can do Java, PHP etc and of course static files everything can handle.

Is there a reason you're going with Windows when it sounds like your experience is with other platforms? The best platform is the one you know best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> node.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't node.js for building apps, than being used as a static file server and reverse-proxy?</comment></comment>


Female 'Purity' Is Bullshit - <AUTHOR> http://jezebel.com/female-purity-is-bullshit-493278191

<comment><USER2> What a sexist text: the author (L. West) complains that (some) men have ideas about female sexuality that (some) women disapprove of, yet she keeps pushing ideas about male sexuality that (some) men disapprove of. Wasn't the phrase "double standard" invented for such phenomena?

<comment><USER3> Don't be obtuse. It's pretty clear what type of men she's talking about from the get go. If the article is guilty of anything it's generalising somewhat, but that's a minor concern.

Otherwise, it's on point. Notions of female purity are a load of horseshit.

<comment><USER2> You are confusing two things: (1) whether notions of purity, body image etc are "horseshit" and (2) whether she is guilty of double standards or not. She clearly is guilty of double standards because she denies men to express their own opinions about what they value in a woman, while at the same time she feels entitled to bloviate about what she values in men (e.g. not being interested in virginity).

In this context it is irrelevant whether "[I] know the men she is talking about" or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is this garbage here?

</comment><comment><USER5> straw man.

<comment><USER6> straw _person_.</comment></comment>


Traffic Server is finally here (Y's http proxy/cache server) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ogre.com/node/320

<comment><USER2> I'm glad to see Yahoo put this project out in the open source world. What I'm having a hard time with is understanding precisely where it fits after having read through all the public docs. Despite the comparisons drawn on the intro page, Traffic Server seems close to squid and varnish functionally, but really only close to squid in actual implementation: a highly configurable split ram/disk caching proxy. Varnish is quite a departure from this approach (<http://varnish.projects.linpro.no/wiki/ArchitectNotes>), and nginx at its core is not a caching proxy at all. This doesn't diminish its value as a system that's served tremendous traffic volumes over the last decade, but I'd love a more complete description of why I should choose TS over the alternatives in caching and reverse proxy roles.

<comment><USER3> nginx does caching reverse proxying now, as of 0.7.48

<http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpProxyModule#proxy_cache>

<comment><USER2> It's been in for about five months and seems to be undergoing heavy development. Like everything else nginx I'm sure it will be rock solid, but I don't think it can be considered core yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is Inktomi's Traffic Server, resurrected and used for years in Yahoo's internal caching system. Congrats to rtroll and everyone else!

<comment><USER5> Note that Squid is _also_ heavily used in Yahoo's internal caching system. I suppose there must be reasons for that.

But, this is certainly a good thing. Traffic Server was an extremely good product in its heyday (my previous Squid-based company competed with Inktomi- based products), and maybe an Open Source version will be good for the eco- system in general. Varnish gets mentioned a lot as a super fast alternative to Squid, but it has a very limited set of use cases compared to Squid.

<comment><USER6> A fine pocketknife has a very limited set of use cases compared to a Leatherman.

It also is actually good at a limited set of tasks, instead of just being mediocre-to-terrible at %90 of everything some bureaucrat thought might be useful 5+ years ago, all in a monolithic pile with awful configuration.

<comment><USER5> I happen to love my Leatherman.

And, there are no bureaucrats involved in the development of Squid. The Squid team are old friends of mine, and they are smart, competent developers working with a much larger set of problems and compatibility issues in a much larger codebase than most of us have to contend with, and they do a fine job of it. As is shown by the market leading position of Squid; it is the most popular Open Source web caching proxy server, by far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does it work for Comet style apps? I am not sure, but I think one would need a proxy server that can keep a lot of connections open. Not sure if classical proxy servers are designed to do that?

</comment><comment><USER8> Awesome! Finally something that combines the best of Varnish and Squid.</comment>


Show HN: A Usable CSV and JSON to SQL Converter in Elm and Phoenix - <AUTHOR> https://sqlify.io <comment><USER2> I want that as a library!

<comment><AUTHOR> The plan is to release an API soon!</comment></comment>