Nontechnical 17 year old startup founder with chutzpah is asking for advice - <AUTHOR> Thanks in advance for any advice you give.
I don't know how to program but I love startups and am dedicated to becoming an entrepreneur.
I have read all of PGs essays (some many times) and "Founders at Work". I came to realize that the hackers are the core of any good startup team. Thus, I want to learn. I have tried and am making progress but it has been a slow and hard process. I am not to the point where I can actually make stuff yet.
But, I have an idea that I really like. I feel like Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail (excepts I can't program). I have my best friend signed on and he is so behind the idea (and not into high school) that he is willing to drop out to pursue this idea full time. He is ahead of me on the hacking learning curve but is still in the process of learning.
I don't know if we are the rock star founding team that PG talks about but we have heart, are incredibly optimistic and want to work like hell to make it happen. I don't want to wait until finishing college. I don't even want to wait until finishing high school.
I have always been somewhat interested in startups but my interest has grown this summer. I now know entrepreneurship is my calling. I am doing a 3 week internship and am meeting really cool people and doing research. It has probably been the best 3 weeks of my life.
So my tentative plan is to apply to Y-combinator and similar programs for next summer's session after spending a year trying to get as far as possible in the development of the project.
My co-founder and I will split the coding (he will probably do more) and he will do the design interface and I will do the market research and corporate stuff. We have a lot of focus on product vision (even though we are yet to have a product).
So does our plan make sense? Any advice. <comment><USER2> Don't drop out of school. You've got all the time in the world, what's the rush? Your early twenties (let alone the time before you're even 20) are there to be enjoyed, not spent hacking away at a start-up 15-hours a day.

Here's how it will happen if you start up now. Your first start-up will be an unmitigated disaster. Your second one will be slightly less so, but still fail. Your third will break even. Your fourth will finally make you a reasonable sum of money. Then your fifth will make you rich. Allow for 1-3 years per start-up - with this, you'll probably be very wealthy by the time you're 27. However, you'll also have wasted the best years of your life working your ass off.

Wait a little, and chances are you might even be able to skip one of those failed start-up - after all, life experience does count for something. Finish school. Go to a cool university. Learn lots of interesting stuff. Meet lots of really interesting people (that you'll be able to recruit into your future ventures, among other things - but more importantly, some of them will be your best friends for the rest of your life - money cannot buy that). Sleep with lots of girls. Get drunk. Enjoy life. Wear sun-screen. Erm. Anyway, you can always start up after uni. If anything, it will be easier, since a) you'll be wiser to the ways of the world; at the moment your inexperience pretty much guarantees dismal failure, b) maybe we won't be in the middle of a credit crunch then.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will work that much harder to prove doubters wrong.

The rush is to learn. If we fail now, oh well. We are that much closer and had a reason and motivation to learn.

A startup doesn't mean we can't have fun.

A credit crunch has very little effect on our idea.

<comment><USER3> You are 17 years old and about to drop out of high school...I personally would advise you to at the least, finish school and get into a cool university and experience life outside the _comfort zone of your parents' house_. There's still a lot to learn, see and experience out there.

However, that does not necessarily mean that you completely stop working on your startup. While being committed is important, there is a _right time for everything_ and it may not be the best time to drop out of school... suppose an year down the line, you change your mind- it will be a lot harder and for you to get into good universities. The risks vs. benefits at this stage may be out of whack.

The important thing is that the idea should not die and should always be on the backburner until the time is right and you have the matured view of the world [and how cruel it can be] to make the whole scheme of things to work in your favor.

Just my 2 cents...

<comment><USER4> Honestly curious- have you experienced bringing an idea on the backburner back to life? I've always felt like if immediate action isn't taken and maintained to move an idea forward it dies.

I'd love to hear your perspective here, I'm interested.

<comment><USER5> I just brought one back a couple weeks ago (<http://eve- language.blogspot.com/>). I'd started it 3 weeks before my startup, and then let it die to focus on something that might actually make money, and am now bringing it back as a hobby project.

If you're really passionate about something, it's not going to die just because you spend some time on other stuff.

I think the "strike while the anvil is hot" phenomena is largely because of survivorship bias. Most of the time, if you drop an idea after 2 weeks, you're not going to come back to it. But that's because most ideas that are only 2 weeks old aren't very good and should probably be abandoned anyways. While if you've been turning the idea over in your head for 2-3 years (as Eve had been, before I started working on it), another 18 months isn't going to make much difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Learn to program. Deciding at 17 that you're "nontechnical" is premature optimization, without the optimization. At that age you're not non-anything you don't want to be. And if you're going to be in a world where people make software, there's nothing more valuable you could learn than how that's done, even if it's not what you ultimately spend most of your time on.

<comment><USER7> I don't know. At 17 I had been programming for 5-6 years, which is pretty normal for most decent coders I know.

In my experience, if someone does not have the mindset for coding (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;)), then trying to make them is an excercise in frustration.

Maybe better to focus on the things you are good at, such as business development, marketing, sales and whatever else is crucial in a startup.

<comment><USER8> >> (anal retentive, OCD, borderline autistic, you know the type ;))

Being a jackass does not make you a better coder, it just makes you a jackass.

<comment><USER7> Thin skin much? It was a (possibly lame) attempt at self-deprecating humor.

I was trying to say that not everyone is cut out for coding, and if you haven't had an interest in it (or that type of thing) before, you probably won't be very good at it. I have seen this with a bunch of people who thought they'd get into IT and be millionaires.

<comment><USER8> I know it's hard to tell in type, but I wasn't offended. I know people who fit the stereotype, but I also know gregarious, social, coders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Public high school in the USA is indeed a waste of time. And, there is no time like the present to start a company. However dropping out can really mess up your life, and I don't mean 5 years down the road. I mean it can immediately mess up your life. A hacker friend of mine in high school did just what you are proposing, but 10 years ago. As soon as he dropped out of high school his parents kicked him out of the house. Being homeless at age 16 really puts a damper on getting anywhere with your startup.

I'm voting for finishing up high school. But, if you're going to drop out anyway, be sure you have some plan to cover all the basic life essentials type stuff.

<comment><USER10> I don't mean to suggest dropping out, but it's not necessarily as bad as you imply. I dropped out at 16 (12 years ago) and still managed to go to a good college, and have had a series of good jobs.

More problematic things that I see:

You'll need an older co-founder. Justified or not, business folk and investors aren't going to take you seriously at 17. Not to mention that you won't be able to rent hotel rooms for business travel, or cars where need be, won't be able to open a business bank account, etc.

If it doesn't work out in the first go, which realistically speaking is probably for any first-off startup, you're not going to have a lot to show for it when you're, say, 18 or 19 and throw in the towel. Actually the worst case is it just stringing you along but not really going anywhere and it getting frustrating late to start college.

In my case, despite "making it", I still view dropping out as more or less a mistake. It didn't really screw up my life in any significant way, but looking back on it, it's just nine months of part-time, easy work. Nine months is nothing. I spent six months (while working full-time) just trying to learn what I'd need to know to jump into a start up before going full-time on it.

My brother was smarter about it. He just decided to not take any honors classes, set up about half of his time senior year to be internship hours and skimmed by putting in almost no effort. You could probably intern in your own company if you had an older co-founder...

<comment><USER9> I didn't mean to suggest that you're automatically out on the street if you drop out of high school - I just wanted to point out a worst case scenario. Dropping out and being successful requires some sort of support team, since you're starting out with a huge social disadvantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Go to college for at least one year. The act of finishing high school with decent grades and getting admitted to a decent college (a state university, at least) is a basic badge of competence that will serve as a useful social signal for the rest of your life. Among people who went to college, high school dropouts get zero respect; even the ones who are rich get only the respect they can _buy_. I know that's unfair, but that's society for you.

Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs went to college. They dropped out after a year, but I assure you that the first year is _important_. Among other things, you might decide that you really like college: It's completely different from high school, not merely because you're no longer in a minimum-security prison, but also because some of the smartest people on earth are literally eating lunch in the seat next to you.

OTOH, college is _very_ expensive and you might decide you don't need it. But first go for a year and get the best grades that you can, given that you intend to spend every available hour hacking on your part-time startups. :) After you've been admitted to college and done a year of decent work, it will be that much easier to get readmitted to college, one or two or five years down the road. It will improve your maneuvering room, it will place you in the college-student social class (which might very well be the one you're marketing to, and the one your coworkers are in...) and it will be that much easier to tell the story of your life to a future employer, customer, or bank manager: "I did well in school and went to college, but then got distracted by my startup company and took a year off, but then the startup tanked so I went back to school for a couple of years before my _second_ startup hit it big."

</comment><comment><USER12> Along with majority of comments, I agree, stay in high school. I would go even further to say, go to college because it is like elven paradise and will help in your startup adventure. Here's why:

A) Smart people. It's not a perfect filter (not everyone is smart), but you'll find some folks in there who might be willing to join your fellowship. Oh, and everyone lives really close to each other- and perhaps you could even live together.

B) Resources. You'll be blessed with many gifts- economies of scale to help you out here. You can work with professors on cutting edge nerdy stuff, get free bandwidth from the school, be able to snag a few servers, get the school's PR department to work for you, and get some money to start a "startup club" to pay for your pizza when you're working.

C) Education. You can't program. Neither can I, but for god's sake I wish I had just taken a few classes to get me started because self-starting is tough and you hit some road blocks. If you do that, then you will be learning from people better than you and perhaps can make more friends for your quest.

D) Time. Instead of partying like Bilbo Baggins, work on your startup. School does get in the way, but you have more vacation time and free 3-day weekends to get you going. If you do just school and your startup, you'll find your startup will take up more of your time. You can time public release to the school year- 3 months (about the same as YC). You should be able to make something each semester and get progressively better.

F) Failure. You might find out that you don't like this startup trip to Mordor. In fact, you may find you don't like the software task at all. Well, you have a lot of other things to learn and to enjoy.

G) Success. If you're successful, then you can easily leave college. In fact, many colleges let you defer indefinitely. I think Sam Altman is on leave from Stanford still... :)

</comment><comment><USER13> > We will work that much harder to prove doubters wrong.

I imagine you may be getting a far amount of backlash from older people in your life, namely your parents. I am much older than you and I entertain a fantasy of quitting my job and going to Latin America. At one low point during work, I almost booked non-refundable tickets with a co-conspirator. To show how serious I am about this fantasy (to my family and to myself), I am indulging in 3-5 hours a week of private tutoring in Spanish. The odd thing is that I can foresee myself in a middle ground of not quitting my job but learning Spanish in the States and taking the initiative socially.

I do not think your plan makes sense. The odds of success are against you. Most businesses on the Internet are unfortunately or fortunately, all about _marketing_ , only partially about innovation. I'd like to advise you against it, as an older and not necessarily wiser person. Life does not always have to be dive-in, you can dip your toes in the water, wade - if you dive-in, you can drown. In this country, unfortunately, a GED degree is condescended upon and will hurt your academic prospects.

Build your startup part time. You have one of the most important ingredients, chutzpah, faith in yourself. But at the same time, L'Chaim ("To Life"). There is more than life than saying "I did it". If your parents are serious about you not leaving school, they will cut off funding. And in this country, money is important to maintain a lifestyle. And, if you do drop out and go back to school, you'll fall behind (disconnect with/lose your peer year/cohorts).

Maybe some of us are wrong. And we'll read about you in the 3rd edition of Founders at Work. But if we aren't wrong, you might be torpedoing your long- term life with short-term half-constructed disconnected realities.

</comment><comment><USER14> Stay in school. Yes, you and your cofounder could get a GED, but I think you're missing a lot of the advantages of high school. It's hard to see them when you're there, but when you're in high school you have:

1) Large amounts of free time. You've got a six to eight hour or so block of time every night, every weekend. You can probably pull programming books into class with you if you're that insatiable. If not, just carry around a notebook with you dedicated to the startup, it'll be chalk full of ideas whenever you have a spare moment.

2) No responsibility. Granted, high school is tough, but it's also inconsequential. If you've studied the PG essays as much as you think, you'll remember the concept of a day job in "What You'll Wish You'd Known". Here's the link, it's worth a reread in your situation. <http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html>

3) Your parents are funding you. They pay for your housing, food, and are probably quite open to the idea of buying you and books you want to pursue your goals. You can afford to take the time to learn right now. If you drop out, are your folks going to want to keep feeding you while you sit around the house? You'd probably be expected to get a job, which cuts into all that free time you'd be gaining by dropping out.

Delay University if you want, but honestly you can get a lot of the same deal out of it if you approach it well. Right now you've got an idea and no skills with which to execute it. Don't create a situation that's more hostile to you getting those skills.

</comment><comment><USER15> "I feel like Sabeer Bhatia of Hotmail (excepts I can't program)"

Is it just me that finds this quite funny. I feel like David Beckham (except I can't play football).

<comment><USER16> I think his sentence was reasonable - like Sabeer, he feels he has a great idea and is willing to quit school (Apple for Sabeer) and work on it night and day.

ps to the OP: don't quit school. You might have the best idea in the world, but if it doesn't work (and there are many reasons that are not under your control for this to happen), it may be hard for you to return to school... School is generally lame, but it is the 'gateway drug' to better experiences in University.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't drop out of high school, just bullshit your way through it and do enough to get by- this isn't hard stuff, and you get food, shelter, and a good internet connection. I know, in high school, that might not seem like a lot, but it's huge when you're out in the real world.

Put as much time as you can into your startup and learning to program, just don't fail out. If you're smart enough to write as lucidly as you do then you're smart enough not to fail high school. Find some loopholes to make the classes easier, figure out what the easiest way to make 70% is, and execute.

Like someone else said, hack morning, hack lunches, hack nights- put your time into moving your startup forward.

Skip college, it doesn't sound like you need it- if you do need it down the line you can do it then.

However, experience does matter- and you can pack a ton of experience into a short amount of time if you're ok with taking risks, which it sounds like you are.

Check out Inside Steve's Brain if you get the chance, this quote stuck out at me a lot:

"For Jobs, innovation is about creativity, putting things together in unique ways. "Creativity is just connecting things," Jobs told Wired magazine. "When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

Also:

"I wish Bill Gates the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger." -- Steve Jobs

With all that said-- you've got a great opportunity. You've got a co-founder, you (hopefully) have a good idea, so execute and give it a shot. If it doesn't work, bone out to Argentina or Eastern Europe for awhile, regroup, come back, and give it another shot.

And, on college, there's a great article by Sean Nelson of Harvey Danger about the merits of dropping out of college:

<http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=12087>

Good luck!

<comment><USER17> re: Getting by in high school - my last year of high school I was able to spend all of my time in the teacher's lounge or around the school (I helped paint a mural) as long as I got A's on all my tests. Perhaps you can work out something similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Finish high school...but feel free to work on your startup after hours and on weekends. You'll probably never have more free time for the purpose...unless/until you raise money in order to pursue a startup full-time (which, let's face it, is going to be a major uphill battle for a 17 year old). You'll probably also be better served by going to college--maybe taking a light load--and using the opportunity to meet additional co-founded and people you can work with to bring your vision to life.

You know far less than you think you do at 17. Confidence is wonderful, and I certainly encourage you to start a startup right away...today (I had a business in high school, and I learned a lot from it). But don't let it get in the way of having fun, going to college, and learning some stuff. Travel is also probably wise.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looking over your responses, sounds like your plan is a thinly veiled excuse to drop out, and you were posting in the hopes that you'd see enough "ra ras" to drown out the voice in your head that knows better. Dropping out of high school at this point is phenomenally foolish and a lot like quitting a marathon in the last quarter mile. Being a good entrepreneur is about making good decisions, and most importantly, about _not_ quitting.

</comment><comment><USER19> Please read carefully what i will write. Unlike other people i will not give you advice like "Go for it dude" or "Wait, don't be stupid". Instead i will give you my point of view.Im 18 and i have one year left in school. I started programing years ago, but never got any deep. Started with pascal, then c++ in school, but never learned anything. In December last year i started learning python and i am now quite knowledgeable of the language. I started learning Django a while ago and i also read a lot about other languages. I view my self as an entrepreneur, although i have no business ideas, or even anything close to a product(or anything that can evolve in to a product). My goal in life if for spiritual balance. Its my philosophy. I don't care about money, or people that much. I like learning and solving puzzles. I'm poor. My family has no money, we live in Bulgaria and even by local standards, we are below average. I don't mind at all, all i need is about 20 cents(euro cents) for the coffee automate in school and a running internet connection at home(we are not that poor) I love technology and stuff like that, i love science, all kinds of it, biology, math, physics. i love it all. What's my point you will ask? I am lazy. I hate doing things unprepared. I hate having to do things the hard way. If i go start a company now it will be very hard, it will be almost impossible(not completely impossible) I will have to learn so much on the run, it will not be business, it will be home school. Its not worth it, so i just enjoy being 18. I play football(European football, soccer is a stupid name), i drink beer with friends(its legal here ha ha) I draw stuff, i listen to music, and i learn. I learn as much as i can, i prepare my self. I don't like failure. I know how to fail, I've failed a lot of times in my life and I've learned to prepare my self for what i want to do. You do what you want. Drink beer if you like too(don't mind the illegal part, i drink since 13) just think about stuff. Don't do stupid stuff you know are stupid, that way you don't have an excuse of being ignorant. Learn from peoples mistakes and think about stuff. Try to understand your self and the world. And read Sun Tsu's Art of War, its going to help you to a lot. It helped me understand the situations in which my actions matter, and i use it as advice every time i have to make a hard decision. Good luck, from a fellow entrepreneur and wannabe hacker.

<comment><USER20> I'm not trying to flame you, but in what usage of the word can you call yourself an entrepreneur?

<comment><USER19> I will explain. I work on my self. Most people around me waste their time. They just want to go get drunk or something. Some of them are ambitious, but most of them just say they are. A girl from my class says she wants to become a layer ant thinks that she can become one without any understanding of rhetorics or any other essential theory needed for that job. She doesn't even try to get good grades in the classes that she will need(she got some good grades but that is through obedience in school, not knowledge or any understanding of the subject). A lot of people around me are like that. They try to go the easy way. I am more ambitious. When i was a kid, me and my friends tried to make ice cream money through a lot of different means(some of them illegal too) Like selling sandwiches or cleaning houses and stuff like that. Most kids just watched TV, i was learning about the world, understanding my surroundings and looking for options. I knew from an early age that i had potential. My plan is simple. Go through school, and get in to a good university(all i have to do is get through a few math tests and i have a whole year to get ready) Then just study, have fun and meet people. Then if i actually get somewhere i might not graduate, but i think that i will get to the end probably(as a safety net) Then start a startup in Bulgaria, probably will not make a lot of money, but my hope is that it will be enough to move to the USA(or any other startup hub that may be existing in 8-10 years) and make money there. Of course it might not happen that way, so i don't make strict plans, i just try to learn to hack, its hard, because there are not a lot of good hackers near my town.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >I came to realize that the hackers are the core of any good startup team.

Only software startups need them, but there are many kinds of startups.

First think of your idea, then see if you need programmers.

By reading those sites you are causing yourself to ignore all the other kinds of businesses in the world, and especially since you are not a programmer, that's a mistake.

Those sites are written by hackers, so they will of course laud hackers, but it's perfectly possible to create a startup that does not need hackers. Just a hired, regular, programmer or two.

<comment><USER16> I'm kind of surprised to see this down-modded. There's nothing wrong with casting a wider net, especially if you're not a technologist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you're smart enough for starting-up, then the time spent on school is pretty much the time spent _at school_. Also, if you're smart, you've probably taken a lot of extra classes the first 2 years, so you only have 5 or less classes now? Seems to me you can be at home and coding by 1-2PM, leaving a lot of time. Plus weekends. If you think I'm provocative, I'm just trying to convince you not to drop out of HS.

Also, talk to people about your idea. You can probably even post it here. Ideas are supposed to be worthless anyways. Per your description of yourself, you're young and not a programer, so an older and wiser programer may be able to tell you in 5 minutes that your idea stinks (for real) or has been tried n times before.

I was involved in a startup when I was 17, and let me tell you, it was chaotic. Dropping out of any school over it would have been a huge mistake. Fortunately I didn't.

</comment><comment><USER23> Test your chops. I wrote my first contract program when I was 17 on an Apple IIe for a local bookkeeper. Once I did that I finally realized that I could take my skills and make something of value (Instead of just playing at programming where you never actually deliver value to anybody)

There's a difference between idle and productive dreaming. I had a hard time with this when I was your age. Productive dreaming is envisioning something just outside of your reach and then making it happen. You string together enough of these and you can go anywhere. Idle dreaming, on the other hand, is thinking about some ideal future state with no idea at all how to begin. It's a lot more fun -- but it doesn't take you far.

So test you chops. Prove you can code something somebody likes. Then prove people will pay you for it. Continue along this pattern.

My advice only -- good luck!

</comment><comment><USER24> Lots of people will tell you lots of different things, but as always take it w/ a grain of salt.

The thing about dropping out is that you have to be willing to figure out everything on your own (which is sounds like you are). However, you'll find that you'll end up learning alot, but there will be holes in your basic knowledges and skill set. Unless you really dig deep into things you don't understand, you'll end up with just a shallow broad knowledge of what you need to know. And that at times can make or break your project.

I'd say, wait until you can make stuff to drop out.

</comment><comment><USER25> Can you do independent study to finish high school? Don't drop out and don't do GED. Either will put you in such a low educational caste it may be hard to break out of later in life. Finish, get a real diploma for the reasons everyone has already stated. Think of yourself as a guerrilla warrior and right now you're biding your time and building strength.

It sounds like you aim to be the CEO type. If that's the case, you've got to train yourself to be a CEO. No one is going to do it for you, at least not if you're an entrepreneur. A CEO wears a lot of hats, but mostly a CEO is a salesman, especially in a startup. So learn about that and get good at it, even if it means you take a job selling someone else's crap for a few months just to know what that's like.

Yes, you definitely should learn to program to the point where you can build real things. It's not hard. If it seems hard try a new language or technology, or find a mentor. A CEO needs a pretty good bullshit detector, so having some tech knowledge is critical if you're doing a tech startup.

One final thing: People often emphasize that failure is ok and that is how you learn and find your weaknesses and build strength. All of which is true. _But_ you get to choose your failures, probably more so than your successes. Make sure the projects you pick will teach you valuable things and let you make a lot of contacts. You'd be amazed how many happy coincidences happen when you just happen to have learned some unique thing or you just happen to know so- and-so from the last project you worked on.

</comment><comment><USER26> Stay in school. Do the startup thing over the evenings and weekends. If things take off (you can live off the earnings full time for the foreseeable future), _then_ consider leaving school and doing it full time.

It sounds like you are looking for a reason to leave school and startup may not be the right thing. Have you considered getting a job at a tech firm to develop your tech skills which you can apply on your startup.

</comment><comment><USER27> Don't drop out of high school: Hack nights. Hack early mornings. Hack at lunchtime. Allot some time to party/chase girls/work out. Most of all make sure you're having fun.

Before long you'll find you've built something of substance. It might be something people want. It might not. Either way you'll have both a startup and have/be-on-your-way-to a high school diploma.

Best of all you'll have options.

</comment><comment><USER28> At 17, you probably don't have a very realistic idea of your capabilities. Most 17 year olds are a lot better at dreaming than they are at accomplishing difficult things. (Some 37 year olds too, ahem.)

If you have a track record of completing long term projects that _you_ wanted to do (not your teachers, not your parents) that's evidence that you're an exception. If you don't have that kind of track record, take a little warning.

Either way, you should still go for it.

School truly sucks, but I'd get the HS diploma at least, and encourage your friend to do the same. If your venture doesn't work out, you'll be a lot less stuck if you've graduated. Treat school as a system to be gamed and worked around.

Learn to program. See "realistic assessment" above. If you can't program at all, you're not likely to do well running a code based start up. You don't have to be a brilliant coder, just reasonably capable.

(On the other hand, I've heard Ryan Carson doesn't code. Don't know much about the guy. Exceptions, rules.)

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER29> Contact Christopher Blizzard: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Blizzard> , who dropped out of high school, got a GED later, and is now working for Mozilla. Find out what he would advise after having gone the high school dropout route himself.

</comment><comment><USER8> College is a LOT of fun, and getting rich is no replacement for enjoying life moment-by-moment.

I'd finish school, AND go to college. Try your hand at being a CS major. You really do have enough free time at college to start a business if you want. If your buddy is really so determined, go to the same school together. Drop out only if you get traction.

Walking a tightrope is safer if you have a safety net (education) to fall back on. Not only that, but reading these startup stories, you get the mistaken impression that quitting/dropping out is some mystical talisman that leads to success, but there's a selection bias. The people who burned their bridges and failed aren't in any founders at work stories, they're often stuck in relatively menial/low paying jobs or back in school.

</comment><comment><USER30> First ask yourself do you really need 24 hours in a day, if not go back to school. You should have a very good reason to drop out. If you are not interested in education or if you think you can survive without it, then drop out. Remember it is all about knowledge, you will have to know more than an educated guy and always be a step ahead of the college educated people to win. If you are lucky you might hire some of the more educated people to work for you.

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like a lot of fun; I wish you a lot of luck.

I would highly advise that you work on the startup outside of existing school hours- While I can certainly understand why you might not find finishing HS as fulfilling as the potential of a startup, there are several mitigating factors:

1) Highschool is not (easily) deferrable. You can put off a Master's degree, or even a Bachelor's.. You can put off taking a new job, and find a new one later. Highschool is not deferrable in the same way though. Once you're out of the system, it's very difficult-to-impossible to re-enter.

2) Most startups fail, even ultra-determined ones.

I understand that some entrepreneurs might advocate throwing yourself into the wind and hoping for the best- The theory behind their advice is that if you eliminate your backup plan, you have no choice but to succeed. The difficulty comes in that many shortfalls are outside of your control- The market could change dramatically, you could become sick, or burned out, or a major player could release a stronger, slicker, competitor. It's not to say that you _couldn't_ work around these problems, but you shouldn't ensure that you _have_ to.

3) Many people, not only future jobs, but VCs and Angels included, view HS graduation as a necessary filter. Unfortunately, you're age will make it more difficult to get meetings with a great many investors- Not finishing HS will further exacerbate this.

4) You don't yet have the background you need to go full-time on the project. Right now, your team needs to beef up their programming skill. You're job, as the producer and business guy will be to make sure that happens, even when it's boring for both of you.

You're other job is to be looking out for the long-term survival of the partnership and the company; Everyone else might panic from moment to moment and want to rush into things, but you're the one with the calm, reasoned plan, and the wherewithall to see it through.

As annoying as it is, that means that you probably should focus on developing your programming skill and finishing the degree. They'll both be crucial later.

You should each work to pick up whatever language you're going to be writing in; Even if he'll be doing most of the coding, you can't do a reasonable job of helping where necessary, and eliminating roadblocks if you don't understand what's going on.

I find that pair-programming, or at least reviewing together and discussing design together, will greatly improve the quality of the code, as well as making sure that any design decisions get a second set of eyes.

I think you're on the right track with your plan, but would recommend that you take the time while you're each in school to focus on getting to KNOW the technology.. Not just "I sort of understand it", but really knowing it, and knowing it's limitations.

Again, as the business-guy, one of the things that you'll need to do is think three steps ahead of where the code is right now- You want to make sure that your programming language/framework won't cause you major problems, and then you want to start to tackle the business planning and revenue side.

If everything goes well, the two of you should be able to put together a prototype just before graduation, at which point you'll be in Great shape to apply to YC, Techstars, and CloneOfTheWeek.

Best of luck to you and the team- You sound like you've figured out what you want to do, now it's matter of executing.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Despite high school not being easily deferrable he can get a GED instead and go to community college

2) We are not most startups. We may still fail and we accept that. We believe the process has inherent learning value. So we win regardless of financial gain.

3) Due to our youth we will have to prove our competence in other ways. We will work extra hard to make people take us seriously. Age is only a biological number. Maturity is different.

4) I am making sure we both work hard to learn. Learning is part of the process. There is always more to do so we want to work as hard as possible.

I will do my best to remain calm and keep the team level headed. That is some important insight.

I agree with you about the importance of collaboration on the different elements and we will check and help each other.

Time to execute

<comment><USER32> I started up when I was 18, and ended up going to uni when I was in my mid 20s - "these people are so much younger than me!". It was a mistake (for me) not to go when I was 18.

But in your heart you know what it is you want to do. You can always change track later. Richard Branson didn't finish high school.

<comment><USER8> >> Richard Branson didn't finish high school.

Neither did the guy who served me fries this afternoon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Dude, you are only 17 so go for it. I would NOT drop out of school yet. You're doing the rightthing, apply for programs for next summer, but I would add one task between now and next year. Learn how to code! Its fun, you seem like you guys both want to be hackers, so just jump in. Even though knowing how to code is not a game breaker, it certainly helps when you are lean and small, so just take the leap of faith.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the encouragement.

I am taking the leap. I am working on learning to code but am having some difficulty but I will persevere.

If my co-founder dropped out he would get his GED and could always go the community college transfer route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Do you have funding for a year or two? What about your partner? If your parents say OK, go for it, we'll support you for two years (as mine did), it may be the right thing to drop out.

Second thing is, you absolutely must gain the technical skills as quickly as possible. A startup of two cannot support one business guy. But you already know that I take it.

I wish you luck!

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill It is great that you are enthusiastic! I recommend seeing if you can find someone who can serve as your mentor and who can give you some advice when you hit whatever bumps your business will encounter. Having the ability to call on someone who has already been tripped up will help immensely.

</comment><comment><USER35> drop out only if it can quantify something. odds are you can finish high school. dont just drop out because "gates and jobs" did it. Yes, I "stopped out" of college with one semester left. Before, you call me hypocritical realize that I had spent a good 2 years working up to that point. Take it one step at a time, fuck up a lot, learn from it, go fuck up some more, learn more, and eventually it will work out well. As long as you don't factor in _"give up" into those plans, you will be fine. Hope this helps.

_ give up means, give up all together. odds are your first idea or vision or even company will not be "what makes it". Flexible people never get bent out of shape.

</comment><comment><USER36> Good luck, I hope your idea is really hotmail level. The world needs more paradigm shifts.

If you guys want to talk about your idea with someone, email me, I could sign an NDA if you want.

</comment><comment><USER37> dude learn programming.. dont fall into the trap of thinking you are an "X" kind of guy, where X is "programming", "marketing", "design" and so on... keep learning as much as you can and build what ever you can.. you may not make it into an app but you will learn heaps to propel you forward...

</comment><comment><USER38> its summer you dont go to school so make your attempt now and see how you do. If you cant see that and talking about dropping then its obvious you are not ready to evaluate your resources and time so allow me to question at least the validity of the idea.

</comment><comment><USER39> High school is evil. It is satanic. I hated it too. Still, I'd at least get a GED. Also, I myself did not finish college, but to "offset" that resume-wise, I got a couple of those COMPTIA certifications. If one doesn't do much on the education side, balancing it with a couple of certifications is always a good thing. At least that is what I have heard from other people, and is what I did myself. (I got the A+ and Network+ certificatons). As for programming I started with a "teach yourself java" book myself, but if I had to do it all over again I would have started with c/c++. Currently I have a job writing test scripts in silktest which has similarities to both java and c, so it all works out, lol. Good luck.</comment>


Imagining lots of tedious steps? Or one fun step? - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/steps

<comment><USER2> I wonder how this affects programmers, who ostensibly think of things in a series of steps. When I explain programming to someone who doesn't know what it is, I liken it to instructing someone to do something they don't know how to do, e.g., make a sandwich. You have to tell them to walk to the fridge, gather the ingredients, place them down, work with them one at a time, etc. If programmers spend all day thinking like this, I wonder if that doesn't do something to their world view. I know that I personally find a lot of everyday activities very tedious, but maybe that's because they really are.

<comment><USER3> I actually find things a lot more enjoyable when there are a large number of well enumerated steps: It's easier to track progress and it doesn't make me worry that I'm doing something wrong.

What I don't like is something that requires lots of details but where the required details are ill defined.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We as human beings have an almost innate ability to overlook the tediousness of certain tasks if we enjoy the overall process of accomplishing them. Personally, I find that I love working on distinctive projects that not only help myself become more productive, but also help my fellow earthlings accomplish tasks much more dexterously. This "love" is what fuels the fire of innovation and consequently cremates the long ladder of steps we as humans occasionally become overly aware of.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow,

This fellow has "discovered" one small fragment of vast enterprise known as Neurolinguistic Programming.

NLP has explored many generalizations of this sort and manages to make somewhat fewer generalizations than our blogger. NLP would say _for some people_ , Tediousness is many small steps and fun is one big step. They'd even go into some manipulations to use that fact.

Of course, the validity of NLP itself is open to question but it's vast field that has already explored many of these kinds of things, the kind of thig that people often ... think they've invented themselves.</comment>


Pg-Basic - <AUTHOR> https://repl.it/@paulgraham/repeat <comment><USER3> PG tweet for context: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1256526589300441093](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1256526589300441093)

> I wrote this yesterday as an example for my kids.

> A lot of people learned how to make web pages using view->source. Replit is > view->source for code, plus a server you can run a copy on. A generation of > kids will learn to program from it.

<comment><USER4> > A generation of kids will learn to program from it.

Undergraduates at mid-tier schools are already using it nearly exclusively for their lower-level coursework. And mainly by word-of-mouth. While I've seen all the students using it to essentially do code reviews, I haven't seen any professors mention it to their classes.

<comment><USER5> That's awesome -- how did you find that out?

<comment><USER4> Not an exhaustive survey by any means, but I'm currently getting my second bachelors, in computer science from a city university. We have some Discord servers with CS students from a variety of schools, and repl.it seems to be a primary resource for everyone. You may be able to get more reliable statistics by determining location of users with repl's named "HW", "Assignment", "Lecture", "Exam", or common course prefixes like COSC, CSE, etc. ('CS', and 'Quiz' might not be as reliable for isolating academics).

It would be useful to have private repl's for students, as it's a technically a looming academic integrity issue to have most student's repl's public[0]. I understand this is potentially a breaking change for your freemium model, but there's a bit of a time bomb waiting there. Whether it's a tempest in a teapot or a "real" problem, and for whom, is debatable.

For my coursework, all C++ code must be complied with a .replit file containing:

> run = "g++ main.cpp -Wall -Wextra -std=c++11 -o a.out && ./a.out"

> language = "c++"

This is because everything is "turned in" on ZyBooks, which uses these options.

It's very, very cool that you let us change the compiler+options using either a .replit file or directly compile and run from the repl.run command line. However, most of my peers never discovered that the repl.run command line was interactive -- and certainly didn't find the .replit file feature. As a result, some moved away from repl.it mid-semester (generally migrating permanently to CLion) because clang "fixes" too many errors for them and things would "work" on repl.it but not on ZyBooks where it matters. For this reason I think there's potentially some use in putting a compiler/compile option inside each repl's side navbar's setting button menu. If this doesn't seem appropriate (for example because repl's in many language don't need to change compiler/options), then I'd recommend at least putting a link there to an explanation on .replit files for better discoverability.

Speaking of ZyBooks, I think the Repl.it company could compete well in the educational space. In particular, I think OpenStax would be a good organization to get in touch with, depending on how it fits your financial model / philosophy. Most broadly though I find there is an incredible lack of rigorous application of the _science of teaching_ in online learning solutions, dating back to Khan Academy and affecting every online learning platform since. Here's an example of what I'm talking about [1]. The linked video is somewhat long/boring and very low production quality --- but I hope the concepts in the content stick with anyone who works in edu-tech. I'm often very surprised that given the budgets of companies like Khan Academy, Udacity, etc that I don't see strong evidence they used a small portion of the money to consult with an expert who specializes in techniques and science of teaching.

Lastly, (at least as of 8 weeks ago) when the repl.run console is broken out into a separate window (great for multi-monitor displays!), it did not display segfault error messages in the break-out console. This happens with any red- colored text in the repl.run window - it displays in the primary editing window's console, but does not display in the broken out standalone repl.run console window. It was very difficult to determine why my code wasn't outputting anything after a certain point, but also was not throwing any errors :)

For example:

int main(void)

{

        main();

        return 0;

}

Case A: Using g++ via .replit in main window (same .replit file as shown above in this post) ('exit status 139' is printed in red):

> g++ main.cpp -Wall -Wextra -std=c++11 -o a.out && ./a.out

Segmentation fault (core dumped)

exit status 139

>

Case B: Same setup as Case A, but reviewing output shown in the repl.run break-out tab/window: (there is no red 'exit status 139' output)

> Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Case C: Using g++ directly in repl.run console in main window (also no 'exit status 139'):

> g++ main.cpp -Wall -Wextra -std=c++11 -o a.out && ./a.out

Segmentation fault (core dumped)

>

Case D: Using clang in main window ('exited, segmentation fault' appears in red text):

> clang++-7 -pthread -std=c++17 -o main main.cpp

> ./main

exited, segmentation fault

>

Case E: Using clang in repl.run breakout tab/window ('exited, segmentation fault' does not appear at all, in fact nothing appears):

>

Lastly, I'm sure this is asking for the moon, but eventually it would be incredible to have debugging tools in the development environment (step through, current values of variables, and maybe memory inspection) - <USER2> applies to nearly every language you currently support. More specifically to C++, some people may also enjoy having features similar to those found at [https://godbolt.org/](https://godbolt.org/) although I'd imagine that's a very niche group of people at the moment. You're serving a very wide audience as it is.

My classmates are extremely impressed with the quality of repl.it - the deep feature set does not seem to have compromised usability at all. My classmates are also very impressed with your 'careers' page, I would keep that up for engineering roles as you grow, if not necessarily also for non-technical administrative roles.

0: [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arepl.it+COSC](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Arepl.it+COSC)

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=hC0MV843_Ng...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=hC0MV843_Ng&feature=emb_logo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool see this here! But let me provide some context: This is a program PG wrote with his kid. He asked me to build into Repl.it a classic Basic implementation and make it really easy to do graphics programming. So I wrote an interpreter and called it pg-basic

Try it here: [https://repl.it/l/basic](https://repl.it/l/basic)

Docs: [https://docs.repl.it/misc/basic](https://docs.repl.it/misc/basic)

Interpreter source code: [https://repl.it/@amasad/pg- basic](https://repl.it/@amasad/pg-basic)

PG's tweet: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1256526589300441093](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1256526589300441093)

However, we realized that we can do a much better job on syntax and other features. So in collaboration with PG, we're evolving the language to make it more expressive and cleaner without losing the magic that makes Basic a great introductory programming language.

<comment><USER6> Thats awesome! Have you ever written a blog post or anything about the how repl.it works? Its not typically a JS reimplementation right? I always assumed a container/nsjail.

<comment><USER5> Yes so regardless of what language or where the language runs, we give you a container, inside that container we drop in a server that's responsible for most of the functionality including editing, collaboration, hosting, etc. A little about that here: [https://blog.repl.it/collab](https://blog.repl.it/collab)

The IDE is built on top of a window-tiling manager abstraction we built in React.js: [https://blog.repl.it/ide](https://blog.repl.it/ide)

Now, as for languages, most of them do run inside the container, which is built from our base image polygott ([https://github.com/replit/polygott](https://github.com/replit/polygott)). However, a select-few are better suited to run on the client. We have a client-side jail called: replbox ([https://github.com/replit/replbox](https://github.com/replit/replbox)). Basic, for example, runs on replbox because I wanted to graphics to be instant. For something like PyGame or LOVE frameworks we had to go with VNC streaming but that's not ideal for obvious network reasons.

There is a lot more to it -- it sometimes feels like building an entire city -- and you can find some more posts on our blog: [https://blog.repl.it/](https://blog.repl.it/) (which incidentally is hosted on Repl.it).

<comment><USER7> Any update on open sourcing that window tiling abstraction in React? Sounds very useful!

<comment><USER5> We've made progress but remain not entirely satisfied with its API. This is a big focus for us now and hope to have something to announce soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was a kid, I thought one of the coolest things in the world was that when I turned the PC on, it dropped into a programming environment if you didn't put a disk in the A: drive.

I felt like my kids would miss out on this experience of random programming.

repl.it is a nice substitute though. Maybe I'll just pull out an old computer and force it to boot into repl.it...

<comment><USER9> If you have a spare raspberry pi laying around, give dosbian a try. A custom raspbian that drops to a fullscreen dosbox in seconds. Drop qbasic on there and some example code from the sites out there, and let them have at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is actually a little bit emotional to see line numbers, gosubs and gotos. Throws me back to wee old me in the 80s, hacking along on my VIC 20 before I even had a grasp of English.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very cool. For all it's age and warts there is nothing like Basic for a kid to start textual coding.

<comment><USER12> Yes!

I think this is a great step between Scratch and something like Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome and cool. Related (from 20 days ago): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22841336](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22841336) \- a similar setup, not inside repl.it

<comment><USER5> I just made line numbers optional and it kinda starts looking like EasyLang. I think they also started from Basic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> +1 Kudos for providing the repl.it tool.

The classroom/assignment feature [i] is absolutely brilliant! Also, now might be a great time to do another [ii] hackathon.

[i] [https://docs.repl.it/classrooms/intro](https://docs.repl.it/classrooms/intro)

[ii] [https://repl.it/talk/announcements/Massively_Multiplayer_Hac...](https://repl.it/talk/announcements/Massively_Multiplayer_Hackathon/22788)

</comment><comment><USER15> Does this not work in Firefox? Upon running the code I get the prompt and a blank grid drawn, but no colors or anything to indicate what's being drawn.

<comment><USER16> It works for me (Firefox latest on Windows or Ubuntu).

Did you click Run?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Line numbers are awful, but other than that I think basic is a great first language. I loved learning how to make games for myself in Qbasic

</comment><comment><USER16>
      10 cls
      20 print chr(2 + rnd(2) * 45);
      40 goto 20

[https://repl.it/@gabrielsroka/amazing](https://repl.it/@gabrielsroka/amazing)

</comment><comment><USER18> I initially thought this was something to do with postgres, like for writing stored procedures or something.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can I host my own repl.it ssrver? Sorry for off-topic but I cannot find an answer either way. Thanks.

<comment><USER20> I'm curious about this as well. From what I can see, all the components are open-source.

Documentation - [https://docs.repl.it/](https://docs.repl.it/)

Repl.it evaluation server - [https://github.com/replit/polygott](https://github.com/replit/polygott)

Universal interpreter for REPL - [https://github.com/replit/prybar](https://github.com/replit/prybar)

Client-side protocol - [https://github.com/replit/crosis](https://github.com/replit/crosis)

Evaluation sandbox - [https://github.com/replit/replbox](https://github.com/replit/replbox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Am I only one thought of pg-basic for stored procedures in stored procedures?

<comment><USER22> I expected something about PostgreSQL too.</comment></comment>


CircuitHub (YC W12) Aims To Be A One-Stop Shop For Electrical Parts - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/24/backed-by-y-combinator-and-google-ventures-circuithub-aims-to-be-a-one-stop-shop-for-electrical-parts/

<comment><USER2> From a guy who surfs for electronic parts on a tablet while falling asleep at nights. Most vendor sites get _painfully_ slow for this.

First impressions:

The pop-over splash screen makes me want to reach for the 'close tab' button reflexively.

If it's "the worlds fast free univeral parts library" I expect to see some part pr0n right when I pull up the site.

I don't want to click [microscopic white-on-gray X] to close the popover, I don't want to "Connect with Dropbox", and I don't want to click a magnifying glass to "Browse the library".

Then on the main page I'm presented with a GitHub-like dashboard. I see big videos for expensive CAD packages I don't own. I see 'LATEST ACTIVITY' which is a long list of entries that are all like: _ibelimb updated domain template HTSSOP to var documentType = "/template/footprint/0.9" 24 minutes ago_

Where are the parts?! Show me some parts!

OIC, there's a little grayed-out word "parts" at the top. Maybe that takes me to some parts.

Yay! A list of parts! While writing this, I find Firefox can't select and copy the text from this list. That's a pain, because often I have to paste part numbers into other search boxes. I click on the first entry: Microcontrollers NXP Semiconductors LPC1768FBD100,551 IC ARM CORTEX MCU 512K 100-LQFP

OK, a datasheet on the left, cool! Something on the right about dragging-and- dropping to add a symbol and a footprint.

"Add components to this part" "Drag and drop domain models here to form components." I don't get it, but maybe it makes sense if you're a heavy CAD user.

I learn that I can expand the right-hand pane to cover where the datasheet was on the left. I'm a little annoyed that I can't expand the datasheet on the left to cover the section on the right. But I learn that I can move the datasheet to the right and expand it to cover the left.

It seems the datasheet pages are just images? I can't Ctrl-F and search them. But I find the 'download pdf' button on the first try.

The 'summary' section looks useful. It would be even more useful with a parametric search.

Looks like a good start! Bookmarked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi from Jonathan (cofounder). Thanks for the awesome detailed feedback. We hear you and are already working on (or have it on the near-term roadmap) almost all of this. I apologize for any frustration thus far. I really do.

Perhaps this will help until then: (1) You can click anywhere that isn't the splash screen (any dark area) to dismiss it. (2) You can jump straight to parts by URL <https://circuithub.com/parts> or (3) by the big button on the splash screen in the lower right.

<comment><USER2> No apology needed. Just keep doing cool stuff and I'll check back from time to time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I hope you will. Things are moving really quickly internally. In other news, we fixed the splash screen. It now permanently dismisses so you shouldn't see it too often. That was our intention we just didn't quite get it right the first time ;-)

<comment><USER2> I confirm only seeing the splash screen once more. Thanks. :-)

I feel silly even suggesting this, but have you considered some kind of 'like button' and a way to share comments on parts? I swear, I've never asked for such a feature before, I don't even have a FB account! :-)

Is there somewhere else can we circuit dreamers and designers chat about parts by number? For example, this search <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=555+timer+comments> doesn't turn up much for arguably one of the most well-known part numbers.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I didn't know any better, I'd say you hacked into our white board software... ;-) Yes! It's all coming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When they say "shop", I thought it was going to be a specialized store for _buying_ parts.

In fact, it seems to be more focused on becoming some kind of cross- application database of parts information, storing data sheets and CAD models for use in schematics design. Their own description includes the word "library", which is more descriptive. I guess I'm (as a non-native speaker) is intepreting the term "one stop shop" too literally, when the context seems to allow it.

At least that's what I think, so far. Also, the only way to "log in" seems to be to connect my Dropbox account to their site, which I found odd.

Also, since they promise free access, I'm not at all sure about the business model here. Of course, lots of other people seem to be so I'm sure it's fine. :)

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I was expecting Octopart II, when I like the original Octopart just fine. I hope these guys work together with Upverter and Octopart to become the killer platform for online hardware development though--Upverter's existing Octopart integration is good, but it sounds like Circuithub could be the missing link since adding device footprints, different package styles and pinouts etc. is still a PITA with just about anything (without even getting into SPICE models).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Speaking as someone who designs hobby electronics, this is a very good idea. I can't count the number of times I had to type things like "mcp23018 eagle library" into google. And get no useful results except link farms. And then have to create a library part in Eagle, which is a painful process, thinking all the while that many other people are probably doing the same thing right now.

I will definitely be contributing my libraries.

<comment><USER6> You should try Kicad. Similar problem with libraries, except making new footprints is my favorite part of the suite. It is a pleasure to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's basically datasheets.com but somehow even more annoying.

I wouldn't trust a 3rd party footprint database either - the amount of times I've seen people fuck up their first prototype by throwing some footprint they found on the board and then realising the pins were wrong etc is insane. Saw 5 on the same board once!

<comment><USER8> What would it take to make a footprint database you can trust? I would imagine that community ranking/flagging of content could surely clean up inconsistent or invalid designs making the database more reliable.

Would approved manufacturer accounts that contained all the parts from a manufacturer make them more trustworthy?

<comment><USER7> To your second paragraph, 100% yes :)

<comment><USER8> Well lets hope that the CircuitHub team can get the traction they need to get the attention of the big manufacturers then.

There's certainly a chicken and the egg problem happening with this kind of innovation right now. I know for a fact that there are many people at the large manufacturers that know that symbol and footprint library management is a major headache. They all want a good solution to the problem, but nobody is willing to take the plunge on an as yet unproven system.

<comment><USER9> Hi Ben, I hope your well. Ideally we would like manufacturers to setup their own accounts and approve their own lib's, that would be a big win for users. Basically i think this problem has slipped between the cracks, the semi co's, engineers, EMS houses, EDA vendors etc all palm it off to each other!

<comment><USER8> Yeah I think that's definitely been the problem thus far.

There's a wind of change in the air though, I would definitely encourage you to try contacting the large manufacturers directly and see if you can get some buy-in. We've had some very encouraging discussions with some of them recently.

Let me know how it goes, if you don't get any joy perhaps we can hook you up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a professional electronics design engineer, this is potentially a hugely valuable service. A big chunk of time is, as @jwr states, spent creating CAD representations of real parts. Other professional library services exist, but they are very expensive. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER11> "The world's free universal parts library" "There are 124 more parts"

A ways to go!

If footprint/symbol files and part metadata will be sourced from users, will that communal resource be made available through an API and/or bulk data releases? Or will it be controlled and enclosed?

The screencast has an old front page which mentions "Like Wikipedia[, we will not charge for access]", so my hopes and expectations are high! Of course Wikipedia is not a for-profit endeavor.

<comment><USER9> actually the API is public and the file format is standards based, we just havent had time to document everything yet!

Agreed we need to do better with adding more parts, please free to help out haha.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I missing something? I realize I didn't login (I don't use dropbox), but every part I click on has nothing but a datasheet and specifications? No footprints, no symbols, etc. listed?

Unless this is a bug, perhaps it would do well to show that there are X symbols and Y footprints for those of us just perusing? Additionally, only getting reference to about 140 parts, I'd hope that you would've launched with more than that.

<comment><USER9> we've had a bunch of new parts created today as people test out the site. Please feel free to signup and contribute.

Here's a part that's pretty complete.

<https://circuithub.com/parts/MOLEX/87715-9006>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am wondering - how do these startups get the media (techcrunch in this case) to write about them on their launch day. They just launched, have no business. There are countless new startups everyday. Is it because of the relationship (YC, Google Ventures)? Or do they pay for the articles? Or the journalists' personal preferences? Or what?

<comment><USER14> Techcrunch literally covers every single YC start-up.

<comment><USER15> Is YC paying TC for the coverage or is TC doing it for the clicks and caters to HN because many people here will look?</comment></comment></comment>


Backdoors and other vulnerabilities in HiSilicon based hardware video encoders - <AUTHOR> https://kojenov.com/2020-09-15-hisilicon-encoder-vulnerabilities/ <comment><USER3> The vulnerability is not in the computer chip. The vulnerability is in the management software of the OEMs.

I was expecting some exotic VPU hardware backdoor. Nevertheless, the article was a good read.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it seems this is all just buggy application code. The title should probably be changed to something less suggestive, particularly given current paranoia around Chinese surveillance.

<comment><USER5> CVE-2020-24215.

Full administrative access with hard-coded password: [https://kojenov.com/2020-09-15-hisilicon-encoder- vulnerabili...](https://kojenov.com/2020-09-15-hisilicon-encoder- vulnerabilities/#backdoor-password-cve-2020-24215)

Commonly known as backdoor.

<comment><USER6> They're not claiming it's not a backdoor; they're claiming the backdoor is not in "HiSilicon based hardware video encoders", but rather in management software associated with said encoders. The former would be near impossible to fix, whereas the latter can (supposedly) easily be replaced.

Edit: to be clear: 1, I don't know that the backdoor _isn 't_ in the hardware itself, but that's what they're claiming. 2, it sounds like the software in question is the manufacturer-provided drivers for the hardware, which is worth emphasizing, but not the same as the hardware itself being compromised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No, this is a backdoor in application software that runs on a device based on huawei silicon. This is like blaming broadcom for openwrt bugs.

The title is extremely misleading.

<comment><USER8> Is openwrt the only software that works with broadcom chips? My raspberry pi doesn't run it.

<comment><USER9> OpenWRT doesn't run on Broadcom chips because the devs do not want to include non free software in OpenWRT and Broadcom only works on Linux with their proprietary blobs. The raspi thus requires this proprietary stuff in their Raspbian OS and afaik in all the third party OSs for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They went to some amount of effort to hide it.

On a Hikvision one I pulled apart recently it was literally a binary running as root called `backdoorServer`.

<comment><USER11> Hikvision, a effectively state owned company.

<comment><USER10> No, literally state owned. The stuff they sell under a huge range of brands (even Monoprice I believe) is malware. Plain and simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is actually one of many reasons I started my own project to rewrite some of the firmware on an IP camera that I bought (WyzeCam). I wanted something open where I owned most of the stack and could customize as needed. I'm not as worried with a hardware level backdoor but firmware backdoors and/or just bugs are more worrisome. It has been a great learning experience working on the embedded side.

If anyone is interested this is the project: [https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko](https://github.com/openmiko/openmiko)

<comment><USER13> FYI the pine64 has an open source camera called pine cube launching soon(ish?) [https://www.pine64.org/cube/](https://www.pine64.org/cube/)

<comment><USER12> Cool! I wonder how much it will be. The Wyze/Xiaomi cams are MIPS 32 bit and the pine cube is ARM. Also the pine cube seems to have a better wifi and more flash. Wyze only has 16 so it can be a tight fit. Also bluetooth and PoE. All very nice additions but I wonder if it will push it over the $20 price point for a cheap IP cam.

<comment><USER13> >PineCube (formerly CUBE) going into production soon, with improved hardware specs; available in 6-8 weeks for ~$24.99

Apparently it's gonna cost 20-30$ :)

<comment><USER12> Wow. I wonder if I can preorder. I can't seem to find a link.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.pine64.org/cube/](https://www.pine64.org/cube/)

This is the store page but it's not available to order yet. Your best bet is probably following their news blog .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have two of these Hi3520D video encoders, from different manufacturers. They provide services (live-encoding H.264/HEVC to SRT or similar) you'd otherwise have to get a box that's 20x as expensive for, but they are also of course rather buggy, and don't have the best quality-per-bitrate.

When I asked the manufacturers about the telnet password, one of them refused to give it to me (I followed basically the same steps as OP to get the passwd file, and cracked the hash -- it was their domain name...). The other one went, "err, we're not quite sure, but we think it might be <name of competitor>". And while the competitor's name didn't work, I found _their_ default root password on some random site, and lo and behold, full root access...

<comment><USER15> > we think it might be <name of competitor>

You know who has in past been sued for copying competitors work, sometimes stealing the whole package including bugs and backdoors?

Here is a hit: the company is currently banned from multiple markets due to national security.

<comment><USER16> But if Cisco's software wasn't full of bugs and backdoors, Huawei's wouldn't have been either. Huawei's mistake was just stealing crappy software...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" root access via telnet...The telnet daemon is running on the device by default, and there is no way to disable it via the official admin web interface"_

That brings a bit of nostalgia on for me. Interesting that a modern device would be set up this way.

<comment><USER18> Thought the same, until I bought a tiny drone, which you access by connecting to an unsecured WiFi access point it provides, over which one can access an open telnet server giving you something in the shape of kernel debugger for the RTOS it's running.

<comment><USER19> What about wifi wall plug which every minute sends your wifi ssid and password in cleartext (inside some binary status packet, but still cleartext) to chinese servers. It was some Ogemray one.

<comment><USER20> What is a Chinese server going to do with your WiFi password? Is it also sending packet captures?

<comment><USER21> People are quick to jump to conclusions especially when it comes to China but this is more like a half-assed attempt at a cloud account system than anything intentionally malicious.

I guess the idea would be that you'd have an account on their cloud service and it would cache the Wi-Fi password for you so that next time you buy a new smart home device, the client app can retrieve that password (as apps - <USER2> least on iOS - are not allowed to access saved Wi-Fi passwords) and automatically send it to the new device so it can connect to your wifi network without having to ask you to type the password.

How do they send that password? Well, they already have a telemetry channel for other reasons (like syncing the local on/off state of the plug with the cloud so local chances to the plug are reflected in the cloud app) so they decided to just stick it in there even though it's unnecessary and wasteful as the password would not change (and if it does, then the device would lose connection anyway so it would require explicit user intervention to reconfigure).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> all the HiSilicon stuff I've RE'd had hardcoded root passwords less than 8 characters in length, and a telnet server running with root login permitted. many of the passwords I've run across are actually the SDK defaults. all but one used the default webadmin setup included with the SDK that allows downloading a config backup that _includes the passwd file_. not much need for a back door when the front door is wide open...

</comment><comment><USER23> So in short, when plugging in CCTV cameras, avoid wifi and instead keep them on wired ethernet physically and logically segregated from anything that matters. This should already be standard practice.

Clearly, the cause is just shitty firmware from vendors.

Vendors are just small factory owners who decide to tool up to fabricate 1000s of simple reference design based products by assembling PCBs, cables and plastic enclosures, possibly in cardboard boxes with manuals, and then ship them at cut rates as quickly as possible to as many ends of the earth as will accept them.

For vendors, firmware security is low on the priorities list. Their fixed costs, tooling costs, design rebadging overhead and the open reference designs from silicon vendors mean that with minimal value add they will have to produce a vast number of each design very quickly and cheaply in order to have any chance of obtaining a profit in a market essentially guaranteed to have numerous competitors.

This misaligned incentive situation will remain the status quo so long as the majority of the market (which is Chinese, not foreign) doesn't practically care about anything other than cost.

It is not some evil state conspiracy.

If you think there is a market for open source high transparency devices with closed source silicon and driver isolation as a top level design priority, then by all means do a startup.

</comment><comment><USER17> _" 5150 - serial to TCP Mysterious service. netcat connects but the server does not seem to react to any input"_

Pretty sure that would just be something that implements RFC2217. Virtual serial ports. Maybe ser2net. It's not going to react to input if there's nothing connected to the real serial port, or if you aren't implementing the protocol.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hisilicon owns surveillance chip market, like 90+% of the market. TI used to own it but was beaten to death in about 3 years time span there.

Based on recent Huawei silicon restrictions, not sure if there will be any alternatives.

the best and secure way for surveillance market will be like PC in the old days, i.e. off-the-shelf components with open source code releases that anyone can install and upgrade.

<comment><USER25> There have been plenty of alternatives for a while. Ambarella is the higher- end option, and Grain Media is one of the lower end options. I expect both of these companies (and others) to benefit from Huawei's loss here.

<comment><USER24> Indeed those two are alternatives but they are near squeezed out by Hisilicons these days, I guess now might be time to buy their stocks.

I'm actually interested in working on some open source surveillance software

<comment><USER25> Why do you think they are squeezed out by Huawei? Ambarella has been continuously releasing improved products for surveillance cameras. Many of the top vendors of video cameras (Axis, Avigilon, Hanwha) either never used HiSilicon chips at all, or only used them in lower-end products.

HiSilicon has been the SoC of choice in many lower-end and consumer oriented products, but they were far from a monopoly in the space.

<comment><USER24> Partially because of the "low-end" keyword, for chips, volumes are key criteria, hisilicon sold way more chips there than others, it does seem like a monopoly to me though. Two years ago I read somewhere it has 80% of the chips shipped in surveillance market, not only for cameras, but NVR/DVR as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why is all that stuff even in there? Ngnix? Telnet?

 _" The default credentials are admin/admin"._

This is so common. That's one problem with embedded Linux - there's just too much junk in Linux that has no business in an embedded system, and it's hard to take it all out.

<comment><USER27> Don't blame Linux for it. A web server and telnet are not part of Linux. If extra "server" software is included, it should also be secured.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's the state of alternative firmware for Hikvision cameras? I have several. I keep them shuttered away from internet access, but why're still on the LAN and that makes me nervous.

<comment><USER29> Separating these devices physically is more secure than looking for alternative or reverse engineered firmwares. A VLAN would also suffice as long as it's not under the same subnet as your main LAN. Same applies to Wi-Fi. Also, separating these cameras is something you can reliably do yourself and today.

<comment><USER21> Yep, separate network segment with no internet access with a VPN gateway acting as a bridge. If you want to access the cameras you VPN into the gateway first.

This will shield the insecure cameras from remote attacks, provide transport- layer security thanks to the VPN without depending on the cameras themselves supporting that and would neutralize most backdoors unless the cameras have code to search for public wifi networks or bruteforce private networks to use as a covert channel.

<comment><USER30> You bring up a point of interest to me about the potential for malicious code that would bruteforce private networks to use as a covert channel. In regards to IoT devices, is there any documented cases of this happening in the wild? I could possibly see actors inserting malicious code baked in that would search for public wifi networks in things like a smart TV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The term "backdoor" is motivation-neutral - while this is a backdoor, you don't have enough information to establish intent, so I'm surprised at this conclusion:

> _While most vulnerabilities seem unintentional (i.e. coding mistakes), one > of them stands out. The hardcoded password is a deliberate backdoor._

It certainly _could_ be, and there are good arguments that it _probably_ is, but it also could be something they put in for testing and forgot to take out. (It could be quite literally a backdoor they deliberately added during testing but didn't intend to ship in production.) Certainly there's no shortage of US- based companies that have done this and have offered that rationale for why their production products have backdoors.

It's also not a backdoor that the Chinese government (or whoever) can particularly easily exploit, since it listens _on your local network_. Unless you're connecting it directly to the internet or forwarding the admin port from the public internet with no further authentication, it's not accessible to outside attackers.

If they had an automatic firmware update mechanism that connected to a server on the internet, that would be much more easily accessible (but also, we generally don't call automatic update mechanisms "backdoors").

<comment><USER32> > It certainly could be, and there are good arguments that it probably is, but > it also could be something they put in for testing and forgot to take out.

No, because you will find stuff like this in nearly all of their products.

It's fully intentional.

> It's also not a backdoor that the Chinese government (or whoever) can > particularly easily exploit, since it listens on your local network.

Network isolation is well known to not be a reasonable security measure. Especially in home networks. I mean think about it many people have ton's of not necessary supper secure/trustable devices in their home network like: TV setup boxes, the TV itself and most of IoT. Furthermore especially vendor provided routers are known to often not be so secure and well maintained taking often way to long to get security patches or not even get them at all.

Sure this is probably not build intentionally by the Chinese government to spy on US people. In a certain way it's worse, as it shows how Chines companies put backdoor by default in all kind of things "just in case" they are needed by anyone.

<comment><USER33> > Network isolation is well known to not be a reasonable security measure.

Network isolation is effective. What you're describing is just a poor implementation / not really isolated.

<comment><USER34> They didn't say it is not effective but that it is unreasonable for most consumers. Most consumers aren't running smart switches and somewhat advanced access points with multiple VLANs and configuring the firewall to control traffic flows between the VLANs. They're running an ISP provided router/modem/combo unit with no VLAN support at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What an amazing article and breakdown/RE.

Very informative and helped me to understand what all the different vulnerabilities were and how they could be exploited by easy to understand examples.

Well done!

As a side note, THIS is why security research is needed and why attempts to make security research illegal (Voatz) will have disasterous effects on national security.</comment>


The numbers show why you should choose a complex password. - <AUTHOR>

Although I already had a fairly good understanding of why you should choose a complex password when I first sat down and worked out the figures I was quite surprised at the margin between a good password and a bad one, so I thought it was worth sharing. This chart began life as a way to convince my non-techie friends that they should make their email and banking passwords slightly harder to guess than 'monkey'. It's worth noting that in a lot of cases a password taking interface will implement rate-limiting, which can mean that even simple passwords become almost impossible to guess. However we can't assume that this will always be the case and so choosing a proper password retains it's value.
Below is a table showing the approximate strengths and cracking times of a variety of simple passwords. Each password is constructed from a 'character set', each of which is easy to type with a standard US Keyboard. The cracking times are estimated using a baseline rate of 1000 password guesses per second which should be easily achievable using commodity hardware.
Note: Any password that uses dictionary words will be guessed even faster than listed below. This is because cracking programs will generally use a list of dictionary words  and try them all before resorting to trying random combinations of characters. Given that there are (including scientific terms) approximately 1 Million words in the English language any password consisting solely of a single, lower-case, english word could be cracked in only 16 minutes!

  Character Set				No. of characters in set
  ________________________________________________________________
  Lowercase (L):					26	abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
  Upper and Lowercase (UL):			52	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
  Upper, Lower, Numerals (ULN):			62	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789
  Upper, Lower, Numerals, Symbols (ULNS): 	94	ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789~`!@#$%^&*()_-+={[]}:;"'<,>.?/|\

  Example password strengths:
  ___________________________
  Length: 5	Characters: L		Possible variations:	11881376	Time to crack:	3.3 	     hours	Example: abcde
  Length: 5	Characters: UL		Possible variations:	380204032	Time to crack:	105.6 	     hours	Example: AbCdE
  Length: 5	Characters: ULN		Possible variations:	916132832	Time to crack:	254.5 	     hours	Example: A12cd
  Length: 5	Characters: ULNS	Possible variations:	7339040224	Time to crack:	2,038.6      hours	Example: !A1cd
  Length: 7	Characters: ULN		Possible variations:	3521614606208	Time to crack:	978,226.2    hours	Example: 1AbCdE2
  Length: 7	Characters: ULNS	Possible variations:	64847759419264	Time to crack:	18,013,266.5 hours	Example: !cd1FE_
 <comment><USER2> Why do people insist on having short (<12 chars) overly complicated passwords? The passphrase: "totallysecretpasswordthatyoullneverguess" (or other similarly-long phrase) serves as a much more secure pass-phrase than the hodgepodge of non-alphanumeric characters people suggest that good passwords are and is far easier to remember.

The only impediment to decent pass _phrases_ are services that limit how many characters your password can be.

<comment><USER3> Modelling the probability of a single typo in a long but simple password shows it more likely than in a short but complex password.

Long-but-simple: type 40 characters correctly, each with 99% success (independently) and you're only 67% likely to get it right.

Short-n-complex: type 10 characters correctly, each with 98% success (independently) and you're 81% likely to get it right.

Choose your own numbers. People will type long passwords incorrectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How did you test these?

Are you attacking a "site" (as in spoofing passwords till you get lucky) or actually cracking known hashes.

Im assuming the latter (because of the length of time). In which case you could add some straight cracking stats into the mix as well just to emphasis the point.

For example you can generate a Sha1, 5 character rainbow table (which holds all the hashed passwords for a particular keyspace) for the lowercase charset in 13minutes.

And then use it to crack hashes in under 1 second. :)

Upper/Lower 5 chars can be attacked the same way with 40 minuts table generation and, again, under a second to crack.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is simply to illustrate the sorts of time involved in guessing someone's password using a brute force attack. If I were attacking hashes then rainbow tables would definitely be my main worry!

In this case the main worry is websites (email, banking, etc...) that don't implement rate limiting on their login forms and therefore allow people to make targeted attacks with fairly simple hardware. Because this is out out of the user's control it's very worthwhile choosing a difficult password...</comment></comment>


How Emojis Complicate the Effort to Standardize the World's Alphabets - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/magazine/how-the-appetite-for-emojis-complicates-the-effort-to-standardize-the-worlds-alphabets.html <comment><AUTHOR> IMHO, Unicode should not involve itself with emoji at all. Give one code page over to the tech companies, and let them go nuts with whatever pictograms they want, but it's a huge distraction and unrelated to the real goals of Unicode.</comment>


Inter IKEA Systems BV called me - <AUTHOR> http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/06/inter-ikea-systems-bv-called-me.html <comment><USER2> IANAL, but isn't it incumbent upon IKEA to issue a C&D, whether they want to or not, in order to show they are actively using their trademark?

From what I've heard, if they didn't, someone else might have a case that their trademark is open to use.

<comment><USER3> It's incumbent on IKEA to police unauthorized use of their trademark somehow, but that doesn't have to mean that they must start by sending a nasty letter. When Jack Daniels thought their trademark was being infringed, they started by sending a nice letter simply asking the infringer to stop.

[http://abovethelaw.com/2012/07/cease-and-desist-letter-of- th...](http://abovethelaw.com/2012/07/cease-and-desist-letter-of-the-day- captain-jack-doesnt-need-mean-lawyers/)

Another way to deal with unauthorized use of a trademark is to authorize it. So IKEA could have started with a letter asking IKEA Hackers suggesting a potential agreement and a nominal fee. An imperative cease and desist letter isn't required.

<comment><USER4> The Jack Daniels C&D letter should be a case study in public relations. While not universal, people really do respond quite well when faced with civility and respect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _What will happen next?_

They will make the "IKEA Hackers" logo look less like the official IKEA logo, and they'll put a big "not an official IKEA site" banner on each page. My guess.

<comment><USER6> That's my guess as well. That would have been the solution to go with from the start - putting in a simple disclaimer along the lines of "not affiliated with IKEA in any way". It's what I would have done if IkeaHackers was my site.

If I was an Ikea exec though, I'd additionally suggest a partnership with the site. Displaying Ikea ads and creating a funnel from individual articles to Ikea's order form would be a great idea to benefit both the site and Ikea financially. Not that Ikea needs it, but it's still good business sense.

However, we don't know what they'll come up with. It's a giant corporation so pretty much anything is possible and it's probably too early to get your hopes up.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _Displaying Ikea ads and creating a funnel from individual articles to Ikea > 's order form would be a great idea to benefit both the site and Ikea > financially._

It is possible that IKEA does not want to be associated with a site that encourages people to use their products in ways they were not designed for. I noticed a hack to make a baby changing table by taking an IKEA dresser and attaching stuff to the top. Obviously that is something that anyone is free to do with the furniture they bought at IKEA. But... if something happened and a baby is injured and IKEA is seen as endorsing such a thing, they might be sued. I know some places are more litigious than others but companies often take some fairly hard-line "cover your ass" steps to avoid such a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't tell what's an ad and what is content on that site.

<comment><USER8> No shit, IKEA should hire this person just for the free marketing that it constitutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So the cease & desist letter could've been just an over-enthousiastic legal employee?

<comment><USER10> Not sure I would call it over-enthusiastic. If you don't protect your trademark, you lose it. It's is probably standing orders for the legal team to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given the obvious benefits TO Ikea of ikeahackers.net, it seems likely that it was an overzealous legal department move to "protect" the trademark. It's easy to forget how many people there are in a company like Ikea, and the fact that not every trademark cease-and-desist gets vetted by the people who run the company.

The thing is they should be able to protect it by simply "licensing" it to the guy who runs ikeahackers.net and charging him an "undisclosed sum" for the license (a dollar should make it legal, though IANAL).

<comment><USER12> girl, not guy.

<comment><USER13> I'm as anti-sexism as the next rational human being, but I too catch myself doing this default-to-guy thing. Any idea why it happens?

<comment><USER14> I know that according to the dictionary "guy" means "man" but there's no good gender-neutral word for "some person" especially if you want to be informal.

"Some guy couldn't make a right turn at the light for 10 friggin minutes so now I'm late"

Not necessarily a guy driving (let's suppose I couldn't see the driver; I just know their car didn't move for forever) and it's unfair/sexist to men to assume it was a man, could have just as easily been a woman.

"Hey guys, is everyone ready to go to lunch?"

There might well people girls in the group that's going to lunch (there often are) and I don't want to offend them. But "Hey people, " doesn't sound right, "Hey folks," doesn't either, and "Hey everybody," isn't a good substitute either: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8LqozaaB7s&t=1m12s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8LqozaaB7s&t=1m12s)

Anyone have a good gender-neutral word I can use instead?

<comment><USER15> In your first example I usually use some creative pejorative. In your second example I say "folks".

<comment><USER16> I try to default to "hey folks" or "hey all" unless it's all male "hey guys" or female "hey girls" or friends for sure "hey (words I don't normally use in public)".

I also try to stick with "person", "someone", singular they, whatever is as flexible as possible until I know what the person prefers to be called.

I do find myself accidentally defaulting to assuming he/she depending on the context. Been trying to correct myself so I don't make people feel unwelcome though. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ikea is evil, plain and simple. I'm boycotting them.

<comment><USER18> This is perhaps a bit overzealous, but for those who aren't aware, IKEA does have a dubiously legal corporate structure: [http://www.economist.com/node/6919139](http://www.economist.com/node/6919139)</comment></comment>


Redux-form is dead - <AUTHOR> https://matwrites.com/redux-form-is-dead/ <comment><USER2> Really a shame- we've come to depend on redux-form in a data collection app. The rate of turnover of seemingly popular libraries in the JS ecosystem makes it tough to know what is safe to use</comment>


Does your idea really need a server? - <AUTHOR> http://talsraviv.com/2012/07/20/do-you-really-need-a-server-build-your-minimum-viable-product-entirely-client-side/

<comment><USER2> My concern with using localStorage.has_paid isn't a malicious user trying to cheat, but a legitimate user loosing their has_paid status, which bring up the larger issue that you are saving the user data in the mysterius localStorage, and how many people know where that is, or that erasing your history will delete it, or any other thing that could go wrong.

Also,isn't saving key-value pairs on a per user bases a common enough problem to have already been solved. It would involve one blackbox program on the server, the javascript could be as simple as:

serverStorage.login(username, password) serverStorage.getValue(key) serverStorage.function setValue(key,value)</comment>


Amazon.com App Released | Just Another iPhone Blog - <AUTHOR> http://justanotheriphoneblog.com/wordpress/2008/12/03/amazoncom-app-released/ <comment><USER2> I realise you were just copying the page title but it would have been better if you had ditched the "Just Another iPhone Blog" text from the title. It's just duplicating what's automatically available in quotes at the end of every submission.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, will do in the future. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Amazon.com has information about the application on their web site at <http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000291661>

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know why the seller is listed as "Reinke LLC" and not Amazon.com?</comment>


Music to Listen to While Coding - <AUTHOR> http://zach-adams.com/2014/05/music-to-listen-to-while-coding

<comment><USER2> Good picks, love Tycho. Subscribed to your spotify list. [http://www.musicforprogramming.net/](http://www.musicforprogramming.net/) (seen here a few times) is also a good list of dev tunes</comment>