Usernames reveal the age and psychology of game players - limbicsystem
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215301655
======
AnkhMorporkian
As someone who runs a fairly large multiplayer game with a good mix of
children, teenagers, and adults, I've always been convinced of this[1] but
haven't had any data to back it up, and I certainly didn't have the time or
drive to conclusively demonstrate it like these fine folks did.

I would love to see someone tackle some solutions to this problem with some
A/B testing. Sadly I don't think my userbase is large enough or antisocial
enough for me to effectively test it.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3op7e2/wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/3op7e2/whats_up_with_these_riot_surveys/cvze54n?context=1)

------
Natsu
From reading the results, they found out that you could guess someone's name
when they put a year in the username and that antisocial words meant the
person was more likely to be a jerk.

Am I missing something here? The idea that SatansDick2007 is probably an 8
year old troll won't come as a shock to much of anyone.

~~~
feral
That's an appealing and intuitive idea to me too, yeah; but they have
validated that it's actually the case on a large population of users. Their
paper seems very methodologically careful/thorough. It's also interesting to
me that they correlated this with the post-game player-feedback.

Its easy to say 'we knew that' post hoc, but they've done the science. (Also,
hindsight bias is a real thing.)

This seems like the opening step in a line of research. Its like in Feynman's
'cargo cult science' address about the (apocryphal?) experimenter 'Young':
this is learning how to carefully do science in this domain.
[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

~~~
Natsu
While it's good to validate the things we all know, any forum mod could've
told you that it's not usually hard to predict the troublemakers or spammers
by name.

~~~
feral
There's the things we all know, and there's things we all know because they
have been scientifically studied and validated, and these two sets of things
are not the same.

I'm sure the research in this area will uncover more unintuitive things later!

~~~
mreiland
I once saw a study that concluded heterosexual couples were more likely to
have children than homosexual couples.

I mean, there's the things we know, and then there's the things that have been
scientifically studied and validated.

And then there's the things that really don't need to be validated.

I once had someone claim that if you drove a vehicle through mud, it would get
muddy. But since it hasn't been scientifically proven and validated, do I
_really_ "know" that to be true?

Is this really going to be an existential crisis where we don't really know
anything until science tells us it's true?

------
cjslep
I played LoL briefly during the beta and before the Tribunal was implemented,
and even won their first contest (logo lookout) when Nikita was still an
intern for Riot. I was very interested in the community and the lore since
Riot was proactive in words and, for a brief time, actions.

I even have an email dated Oct 12 2010:

> 2\. Has the idea of a "Summoner Spotlight" ever been discussed? I think a
> small article written by a Summoner about their own character, and approved
> by Riot Staff could do wonders to enrich Roleplay almost to the point of The
> Hollow.[0]

Suddenly, on Oct 22 2010 Summoner Spotlights showed up! Probably a coincidence
since the content was totally different, but for a fan like me at the time it
was exciting. [1]

To say I was drooling the Kool-Aid at the idea of having a positive community
would be an understatement.

Then something must have happened internally because Babaganush was soon fired
and nothing was really done to stop the community from suddenly becoming
overwhelmed with adolescents describing their urges surrounding "Nikasaur"
once the Spotlights did show up. That, coupled with the in-game behavior, made
the whole community smell of rot.

I left after it became clear Riot was not actually focused on really cleaning
up the community. Riot took the game towards the e-sports competitive scene
which, sadly, helped shape the community into what it was and is. I've heard
the Tribunal has helped, but it's not one of those features that is going to
make me come back.

[0] [http://imgur.com/VfUvarl](http://imgur.com/VfUvarl)

[1]
[http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Summoner_Showcase](http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Summoner_Showcase)

EDIT: To the downvoters, if you disagree with how I am recounting history,
please do elaborate. Riot got rid of a significant amount of their moderate
playerbase by their early business decisions, which was a contributing factor
to having a negative-attitude playerbase in the 2010-2012 years. That negative
attitude at this point has become a stereotype, and perhaps it could have been
avoided.

~~~
Natsu
How long have you been gone? I think you might be out of date. Most games
aren't negative (compare to, say, voice chat in CS:GO...) and they've rolled
out plenty of features to report people who are being jerks.

That said, honestly, you can't prevent people from saying things you don't
like, especially a bunch of anonymous kids. They can always sign up for a new
account or whatever. Better just to punish and move on, especially as they
have plenty of things to lose for being a jerk (IP, rank, champions, money
they've spent, etc.).

The Tribunal is gone, but you can file reports, some punishments are automatic
(did they spend the entire game swearing at their team and get reported?), you
can mute anyone you like, etc.

~~~
cjslep
> How long have you been gone? I think you might be out of date.

Many years, I last solidly played sometime in 2011 and maybe a couple games
with close friends in 2012.

I fully realize I am out of date, but I just wanted to provide a perspective
of LoL that most people do not realize: There was a significant community of
roleplay/lore interest in the game early on, most of whom were not the ragey
type, that was immediately alienated by Riot's early business and personnel
decisions. That brutal year or so of negativity within their community that
still plagues the MOBA image could have been avoided if the more moderate
parts of their community from the beta and first year had not been driven
away.

~~~
Natsu
You won't find that many people raging at you these days, most of those are
chat banned for life, more or less. If you want to hear 8-year-olds claiming
to have done obscene things to your parents, CS:GO chat has you covered,
though.

Small RP communities rarely survive contact with the outside world. Sad, but
true, in my experience. I've yet to see one grow large, especially when mixed
with other people who simply aren't interested in that. Lore in LOL is more of
a long-running gag at this point, though there are a couple of interesting
champion interactions in game (Khazix vs. Rengar, battles for the Frejliord).
But most of it doesn't make sense, the entire summoner thing was retconned out
of existence, and would you even guess that Janna and Singed are from Zaun?

~~~
mreiland
What a load of crock.

LoL is still easily the most toxic community I've ever laid eyes on, and most
of the toxicity is created by the way Riot has implemented their system.

All it takes is 1 person to ruin an hour of your day, and if you try and
refuse to allow it to be ruined, riot will ban you (you're forced to play a
game with someone who is purposefully losing the game because they didn't get
what they wanted, and there's nothing you can do except spend the next 30-40
minutes in a game you know is a loss or get banned for leaving the game
early).

The result is that the community writes these long articles about the "art of
dodging". For those unaware, the game happens in 2 stages. "champ select"
during which everyone decides on the role and character they're going to play,
and then the game itself. If you leave during champ select you get a penalty
before you can rejoin a game. First dodged game is 5 minutes, every subsequent
dodge is 30 minutes (resets 24 hours after your first dodge).

Because champ select + game tends to last an hour and a dodge only lasts 30
minutes, you save time by dodging and waiting. It gets more subtle than that,
in that your teammates might get angry at you halfway through the game and
then decide to purposefully lose the game for you. Because of this, it becomes
an art to determine how much risk you have of wasting time going into a game.

So there's these guides running around about how to determine when to dodge as
a means of climbing rank (most people will tell you that learning when to
dodge is absolutely a skill necessary for climbing quickly).

This is all a result of Riot's decision not to give players a means of
extricating themselves from these games in a reasonable manner coupled with
too much leniency in ranked games with respect to people who do this sort of
thing.

What happens a lot of times is people get really angry because they end up
wasting 3 or 4 hours from these trolls in a single day. A 17 year old off for
the summer can play 10+ games a day, a 25 year old with a job cannot, and so
that 25 year old can often get very frustrated when he loses multiple games in
a row due to trolls. And when you consider it takes another win to even out
the loss, it's actually 2 hours that troll took away from you.

I stopped playing league because I got tired of just how time consuming it is
to play that game and climb rank.

~~~
Natsu
> LoL is still easily the most toxic community I've ever laid eyes on

Then I would submit that you lack experience, they're towards the head of the
pack. Also, from that language, you appear to be a bit toxic yourself.

> All it takes is 1 person to ruin an hour of your day, and if you try and
> refuse to allow it to be ruined, riot will ban you

You can mute them. What you cannot do is ruin other 8 other peoples' day
because of one guy. Moreover, the new pick intent systems are calculated to
avoid trolling due to conflict over desired role.

Champ select remains a problem they're working on, and there are games worth
dodging, but they're far in the minority for me. Of course I'm happy to
support, so no one is ever forced into that role unwillingly.

> I stopped playing league because I got tired of just how time consuming it
> is to play that game and climb rank.

Ranked is inherently frustrating due to being competitive. Not everyone there
is trolling, some are just having really bad games and there's almost a Poe's
Law where you can hardly tell the difference. You will find that people are
stressed in any competitive game, though, and LoL is really not as bad as
most.

Note: I've never been banned. Granted, I'm only Gold II myself, but I have
played with and against Challengers.

~~~
mreiland
The difference between you and me is I don't view disagreement, even strong
disagreement, as toxic behavior.

Which is the other part of the community that frustrates me. Riot has spent a
lot of time worrying about "chat toxicity" when in fact it's a non-issue due
to the mute feature. They've put all this effort into machine learning so they
can start banning people automatically for things people find offensive (IIRC,
one of their touted successes was folks in asian countries using last names as
an insult. The system learned that was offensive and started suspending people
automatically for doing it).

Imagine if all that effort was instead put into social engineering to help
tamp down on people's frustrations with ranked.

But it won't be, because ultimately the really loud people are those like you
who think disagreement or criticism is tantamount to being toxic (instead of
demanding that they change the ranked system to put less power in the hands of
the assholes). And yes, I did catch that you edited in that jab about me being
toxic after the fact, did you seriously think you were going to get a rise out
of me?

The truth is I've been playing multiplayer games since the old MUD days before
Ultima Online and Everquest were ever a thing. Back when colored text was
considered a luxury and people would switch clients based upon the speed of
the triggers (especially for pk). I've been involved in enough communities
that someone calling me a bad name on the internet rolls off my back.

But you know what doesn't roll off my back? Having someone announce in champ
select "mid or feed", or "me and X duo bot or feed" and then watching everyone
else forced into the following decisions:

1) give them what they want, 2) refuse and risk wasting 2 hours of your time
(an extra game to make up for the loss) 3) dodging and being forced to sit out
for 30 minutes.

Because riot doesn't give them a 4th option 4) opt into giving up the game
early.

Here's how poorly designed Riot's ranked system is.

This is the internet. This means people will have disconnection issues. It's
normal.

If someone fails to connect to the game (from minute 0), Riot forces the other
4 players to continue playing the game. If any of those 4 players leave they
risk getting suspended or banned, and no matter what they do, they take a loss
on their ranked record. They automatically lose 2 hours of their life because
someone's internet crapped out.

Of course people find that shit frustrating.

A primary reason Riot has so many shitty people acting shitty in their system
is because the design of their system gives those bad actors all of the power.

For anyone who is truly curious, watch this video. This man is spot on, and if
you doubt it, keep in mind that I stopped playing the game specifically for
the reasons this man spoke about.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M)

~~~
Natsu
> The difference between you and me is I don't view disagreement, even strong
> disagreement, as toxic behavior.

It's not disagreement, it's how you express it ("crock"). I cannot agree that
it's a "jab" to call someone on expressing themselves in a negative way,
though, nor do I want a rise out of you--only self-awareness. It's true that I
edited that in, my bad for not calling that out. As you can see, you were
downvoted for that and neither of us is able to downvote the other.

They are trying to get rid of some of the frustration with ranked by making
people call two roles and changing champ select. They have also studied the
negativity regarding this. What they haven't done is copy DOTA2's leaver
system.

> But you know what doesn't roll off my back? Having someone announce in champ
> select "mid or feed", or "me and X duo bot or feed"

Does this mean you haven't seen the new season 6 champ select yet?

I honestly don't see that many DCs, especially in ranked. People get called on
it if they play when their connection cannot support it and when there have
been network outages, Riot turns on Loss Prevented.

~~~
mreiland
> It's not disagreement, it's how you express it ("crock").

YOU don't like how I expressed my disagreement. I could copy/paste what I said
before about loud people being loud and it would be just as valid.

> As you can see, you were downvoted for that and neither of us is able to
> downvote the other.

How many people read that post and chose not to downvote?

This goes back to what I said before about loud people who are overly
sensitive. Most people read it and passed on by.

> Does this mean you haven't seen the new season 6 champ select yet?

When people realize declaring support will give them a faster queue, they'll
start declaring support and then refuse to take the role using the same
tactics. The duo's will still attempt to force the roles they want and exhibit
the same behavior as they are currently.

People's internet will still crap out and those 4 players will still be forced
to play it out.

It will have an effect, but not nearly as large an effect as you're trying to
imply. They need to give the group as a whole more power to deal with the bad
actors.

> I honestly don't see that many DCs, especially in ranked. People get called
> on it if they play when their connection cannot support it and when there
> have been network outages, Riot turns on Loss Prevented.

That must mean it doesn't happen, right?

As for Loss Prevented, it has to get extremely bad before they use that. I've
seen too many instances of consistent disconnects in games over hours and days
where no Loss Prevented was given. Loss Prevented is, by definition, late to
the party and their last resort for the most dire of situations. Any
discussion about how to deal with things such as random disconnects by players
cannot include Loss Prevention as a possible solution.

~~~
Natsu
> YOU don't like how I expressed my disagreement.

And whoever downvoted you. You may not realize it, but you read like someone
who got banned for raging at others. It _doesn 't matter_ who started it, you
just have to not bite.

And with that said, I'm out. Have a good evening.

~~~
cjslep
> It doesn't matter who started it, you just have to not bite.

To be fair, that reason right there is the _entire_ reason early groups of
human beings -- me, many of my friends, and many strangers -- fled League of
Legends. Coming out of beta, that was the _only_ defense a person could take.
And it stayed like that for way too long. People have human limits -- to
embody this self-defense of "just ignore it" is limiting Riot's player pool to
only those who have the mental and emotional fortitude of a machine. Surprise:
people are not machines. Taking the humanity out of the individual has been,
and still sounds like, the root of the bad behavior in the LoL community.

~~~
Natsu
Taking revenge in kind does not work, it only leads to a chain of people who
feel entitled to snowball the problem, because when you respond, you're
helping ruin the game for eight people because of one. People who cannot keep
the peace when someone trolls are are _part_ of the toxicity, as well as
victims thereof.

The proper way to deal with it in LOL report and move on, not making the game
worse for the eight people who had nothing to do with it.

There's nothing to "defend" yourself from: they're words, you're not being
"attacked" that's ridiculous hyperbole.

~~~
cjslep
> Taking revenge in kind does not work

Nowhere did I say to take revenge.

> People who cannot keep the peace when someone trolls are are part of the
> toxicity

Nowhere did I say to go up in arms and start a mob war, either. Being silent
and "just ignoring it" is not the same as keeping the peace. I agree with your
notion that feeding trolls is also bad, but because people are _humans_ and
not machines I have to disagree that they are _part_ of the toxicity. They are
a _symptom_ of it; a side-effect. Curing that _symptom_ is all that Riot
really wanted to do in the early days, which is why I quickly abandoned the
community.

I really do not think my original point was properly conveyed so let me
clarify further:

There is someone being negative. That is the fundamental problem that needs to
get solved[0]. As I mentioned before, Riot's stand has always been to "just
ignore it" or "don't be a symptom". So:

> The proper way to deal with it in LOL report and move on

Is really Riot's sentiment from 2010: "Just ignore it". "Don't feed the
troll". "Don't become a symptom of the toxicity". These statements are
equivalent to saying: "Players are expected to have the mental and emotional
fortitude of a machine". Tough shit if a guy instalocks Ez and calls mid, and
tough shit if a teammate purposely feeds kills. Under the "Just ignore it"
doctrine, there is no recourse during the negative experience. Sure, _after_
ruining the experience the negative person could be reported. But its no
surprise there are people that would rather _not_ have to put up with the bad
experience in the first place.

> not making the game worse for the eight people who had nothing to do with
> it.

That right there is what is wrong fundamentally. The implication is that _the
game is already bad because of one negative player_. See [0] above.

So when I originally replied to the comment:

> It doesn't matter who started it, you just have to not bite.

I was not talking about revenge in the sense you were describing it. League
has a huge community and therefore huge peer pressure. _Bite back_ by
leveraging that peer pressure for good: getting people to encourage each other
to try new characters when they queue for a week straight with the same
character, or encourage when making good cooperative plays, or not letting
people instalock multiple games in a row, or being able to boot people back
into queue if being obnoxious in champ select, or having mods review game chat
_while games are going on_ , or creating a culture of support by giving
probationary people pink names and making it cool to encourage them when they
display positive behavior. There are a ton of ideas like this, and they were
there in 2010. But fundamentally, Riot seems OK with that first negative
player. That low bar is why I do not play.

> There's nothing to "defend" yourself from: they're words, you're not being
> "attacked" that's ridiculous hyperbole.

No, it is not ridiculous hyperbole because that is not what I am saying.
Please, quit the attempts of putting up a strawman argument.

But since you (trollishly?) went there, it is clear that the power of words
may be lost _for you_. For other people, words can be emotionally charged. It
is unreasonable to ask others to also trivialize their emotions (See the theme
of my posts?). If I am a tank and I see a teammate say: "Our tank is a fucking
gringo cracker nigger faggot slut bitch for feeding their carry", that carries
some emotionally charged weight to it.

If you take anything away from my post it is this:

That first negative player is the _root_ of the problem. Players are humans:
they will sometimes feed back as a _symptom_. Leverage the players' humanity
for good to fix the _root problem_ instead of trying to turn them into
emotion-less robots fixing the _symptom_.

~~~
Natsu
Well, you go back to champ select as a source of team friction and they are
fixing that. You don't find people using racial epithets any more, either, so
about the worst of the chat text nowadays is someone complaining that you fed.
They ban for slurs and swear words really fast, even automatically, and so
most ragers don't get to chat, though they can play while chat banned. There
are smart pings for communication and those are honestly more than enough.

That said, I personally, when I was an admin of a completely different online
game, have been called every single insult, swear word, and racial epithet (I
learned most of them from said trolls). I did not lose my cool or even rage at
them, I keep the idiot talking to me (and away from the public chat) until a
higher one could come on to ban them. It's better when they suffer from their
own rage rather than you :)

But if someone is doing something that gets you banned (or in trouble) when
someone else does something that upsets you, well, I can't agree with that
just being a "symptom" because then there would be no "disease" in the first
place. Everyone has to take responsibility for themselves because nobody else
can.

And on that note, I do apologize, because I think my tone sounds worse than I
intended in a few places and I don't mean to blame you for any specific
problems. I'm just explaining that keeping chat peaceful requires that people
do not feed trolls and those who start trolling because of another troll also
require punishment, generally chat bans. And there's only one person with
control (and thus, responsibility) for one's emotions: the person themselves.
Learning self control takes practice, though.

------
Animats
It's a weak result. When I saw the title, I thought it might be useful for
detecting jerks on blogs and Wikipedia. It's not. The mean age of their sample
is 15.9 years. This result may not apply to higher ages, even college age.

Running a similar analysis on Wikipedia might be interesting, minus the age
analysis.

------
CM30
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that online usernames say a lot about someone's age
and personality. Heck, they often say a lot about a variety of other things
too, like their gender and political affiliation.

Either way, while it was fairly obvious to anyone who runs forums or other
communities, it's nice to see some actual research that backs up our common
sense intuitions here.

On another note though, do you what would also be interesting to study here?

The correlation between avatars and age, psychology, etc.

Because let's face it, the picture someone choses to go with their profile (or
the in game model they design or choose for an online game) says at least as
much about them as their name does. A lot of people do tend to choose pictures
or characters that look a bit like what they look like in real life (or in a
lot of kids case, what they wished they looked like).

P.S. Am I the only one somewhat surprised about the 'ages figured from
usernames tend to match what was entered on registration' aspect? Given that a
lot of games and communities are 13+ only (or perhaps older), I'd expect a lot
of kids to lie about their age when signing up.

------
HappyTypist
This analysis is certainly interesting, but I can't help but think supervised
machine learning (e.g. neural networks) would have been a far better way to
analyze this data.

We're using neural networks to predict future actions of users from weakly-
correlating metrics and achieved surprising accuracy from one day of
tinkering.

------
whoopdedo
What about cultural references in user names? The use of non-English words can
reflect cultures other than American. Someone with the name "Browncoat" (a
Firefly reference) may be younger than the name "Krell" (a Klingon in the
original Star Trek).

I imagine there are other types of information that can be inferred from an
alias. It supports the argument that metadata contains private information. As
well whether use of pseudonyms provides anonymity.

~~~
ChrisGranger
Perhaps we'll see Diceware-or-similar usernames in addition to passwords if
enough people care about keeping their pseudonyms as anonymous as possible.

~~~
qbrass
Most people will re-roll if they get a name they don't like.

------
NicoJuicy
I really wonder what they would think of my counterstrike nickname: Right Ball
of Legolas, which is just meant as something funny

------
jakejake
The most interesting part of this to me was that fact that players tend to use
their birth year in their username. And that the number 88 was a statistical
outlier because for some reason people must really like that number.

~~~
coke12
One possible reason that isn't discussed:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)#In_white_nationali...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_\(number\)#In_white_nationalism)

On Reddit a username with 88 in it can be interpreted as a dog whistle for
racists.

Although considering how popular League of Legends is with Chinese people, the
other hypothesis seems much more reasonable.

~~~
whoopdedo
> On Reddit a username with 88 in it can be interpreted as a dog whistle for
> racists.

Or NASCAR fans. Which contrary to popular belief is not the same thing.

------
kincardine
> Data from League of Legends reveals links between real-world and online
> personality.

Surprising?

~~~
Laaw
That's something I think people forget; the vast majority of folks _don 't_
have some kind of split personality disorder, and their behavior online is the
same behavior they exhibit in real life, except perhaps toned up a bit.

~~~
lsc
We all sometimes have the urge to do or say inappropriate things, no? A big
part of what makes you, you know, you is the degree to which you have a
"filter" that screens out those inappropriate urges before they turn into
inappropriate actions.

This filter is rather different in different situations, because what is
appropriate (and what has consequences) is different in different situations.
In a very real way, I would argue that changing that filter enough (and
pesudoanonymity is usually 'enough') makes you, essentially, a different
person.

Most people, in a pseudonymous situation, have much less of a filter, in part
because bad behavior is more acceptable, and in part because bad behavior has
fewer negative consequences, both to themselves and others, than it does in a
real life situation. (I'm not saying that there are no consequences; people
are hurt. But usually not as much as people would be hurt if the same people
removed the same filters in real-life interactions.)


Show HN: Sublime Text Book - wesbos
https://sublimetextbook.com
======
jawns
Let's talk about the price of the e-book, $36.

For a standard nonfiction e-book, that price is fairly high, but when it comes
to software/programming books, you expect it to be a bit higher than average.

I took a look at some O'Reilly titles around the same price point, and
specifically at books that are similar to this, where you're really learning
about how to make use of a particular software program's features, rather than
how to write in a particular programming language or understand a particular
abstract concept or niche in software development.

"Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac" is 200 pages, $30 for a print edition.

"Practical Vim: Edit Text at the Speed of Thought" is 346 pages, $30 for a
print edition.

"Learning GNU Emacs: A Guide to Unix Text Processing" is 536 pages, $36 for an
e-book.

It seems to be generally the case, and these examples bear it out, that
e-books are priced lower than physical copies, and shorter books are priced
lower than longer books. I would add that niche books (where the information
is hard to find elsewhere) also command a premium.

Based on that, I would suggest that this Sublime Text book should probably be
priced a bit lower. It's an e-book, it's only 220 pages, and though it's nice
to have all of the information conveniently packaged in one place, it seems
like the majority of the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about
(and typically find a high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text
community is so large and active).

Edit: I don't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that
people are downvoting this because they disagree, not because they think it
doesn't add anything substantive to the discussion. I'm an author myself, so I
know how much work goes into producing (and marketing) a book, and I'm totally
supportive of the author trying to make the project worth his time. I'm merely
pointing out that if you look at the market, its list price should probably be
closer to the "with coupon" price.

~~~
mbesto
> _I don 't usually complain about downvotes, but it's pretty evident that
> people are downvoting this because they disagree_

I think you're getting downvoted because people disagree with your advice to
the author. In other words, you aren't adding value to the discussion about
what value the book can bring because your premise is rooted in a totally
obsolete measuring stick (i.e. # of pages). The value of information/education
is immeasurable. Let the market decide.

~~~
chdir
> The value of information/education is immeasurable

Doesn't the parent comment address that with : _it seems like the majority of
the book talks about stuff you can easily Google about (and typically find a
high-quality answer, precisely because the Sublime Text community is so large
and active)_

------
Silhouette
Looking at the sample chapter, this book seems reasonably well written and
might be a good buy for someone new to ST who wants to get up to speed
quickly.

I think calling it a book for power users is highly optimistic. Much of it
seems to be more like the manual ST should have had but never has, describing
routine tools and pointing out keyboard shortcuts that you could find for
yourself just exploring the default keyboard map. That is certainly a useful
gap to fill, but there seems to be little if anything in the table of contents
about real power user features like defining or customising languages,
templates/snippets, themes, plugins, etc. I hope the choice of title doesn't
lead to disappointment from actual power users while causing those who would
enjoy and benefit from the book to go elsewhere.

I did notice that the sample chapter PDF has quite a few obvious layout
problems, and that the expanded TOC on the web site has obvious typos, so the
jury is out on editorial/production quality.

As a final comment, the author seems very keen on ST3, which makes me
hesitant. I gave up and installed ST3 myself a little while ago, after too
many packages I relied on self-updated into just not working any more on ST2.
Now instead of a productive text editor that I enjoyed and recommended a year
or two ago, I have a crash-prone, bug-ridden mess, which just has different
packages I used to rely on that don't work reliably instead. So I'm pretty
down on the whole fragmented ST ecosystem and lack of progress/support for
existing customers right now. While I assume none of this is the author's
fault, perhaps the timing of this book launch is unfortunate; it might be a
better buy if and when ST3 and its package ecosystem are up to production
quality, updated to reflect whatever the best available supporting packages
are at that time.

~~~
wldcordeiro
I've been using ST3's dev builds with no issues whatsoever so I don't see how
it's a crash-prone, bug-ridden mess. Maybe your crashes are a result of
plugins you use?

~~~
Silhouette
It seems to crash occasionally (or at least hangs for long enough that it
might as well have) even with no plugins at all installed, with build 3065.
Certain plugins, particularly more heavyweight ones like SublimeCodeIntel,
crash so often for me that they are completely unusable with ST3.

But the bottom line is it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. I used to
have an editing suite using ST2 and powerful plugins like SublimeLinter and
SublimeCodeIntel that worked very well for me. Now I don't, and no combination
of ST version and available plugins for that version will get me back there
short of figuring out which packages I used to have and then going back to ST2
and manually installing historical versions of each of them assuming they are
still available. Since ST without those powerful plugins is a decent text
editor but nowhere near adequate for professional software/web development,
the currently fragmented and broken ST ecosystem is their problem one way or
another even if it isn't supposed to be their fault.

------
KobaQ
I'm just asking myself if this belongs to hacker news. When does something
deserve to be posted as "Show HN"? Does the link to what someone wants to show
us lead to a rich discussion about tech, start-up, programming, business and
other topics of general interest here?

Is it a interesting website, that we can experience and talk about? Is it
code? Is it an interesting business idea?

In this case, I think this "Show HN" post is advertsing only.

------
danso
Nice...I generally skip over the endorsements section but Addy Osamni's
statement of confidence caught my eye, and it reminded me why I should even be
interested in such a narrowly-tailored book: optimizing workflow.

I've clearly lost brain cells as I've gotten older, but I think I've been able
to maintain a constant rate of learning new things by reducing the amount of
slack and drag in how I work (and read)...I really like the selling point of
"As a developer, I value my time at $100/hr and this book will save me 30
min/day...This means I will have an extra $12,500 per year". That's a nice way
to think about it, though it probably underestimates the impact of more time
in life.

I like the pricing of the video (at least at the launch price)...I almost
never learn via video (yes, I'm that old) but for an extra $9 (or +$5 of the
regularly-priced book)...that's not at all a bad deal. And I've been trying to
make screencasts on workflow and tooling and am always interested in how the
pros teach with video.

So, sold.

~~~
grimtrigger
By that logic, this is a very expensive book. If it takes 6 hours to read
fully it costs $600 + sticker price!

Just because you get paid $100/hr doesnt mean you value your time at $100/hr.
In fact in means that you value your time LESS than $100/hr (though not by how
much).

~~~
slavik81
Not every unit of a resource has the same value. Marginal utility is typically
a curve, with the value of each unit of the resource decreasing as you have
more of it.

In theory, yes, the time someone spends working is worth less to them than
what they are paid. Hence why they spend it working.

But, in theory, they only stop working because the remaining time they have
left in the day is at that point worth more to them than their hourly pay.

------
_raul
Very nice. One thing I'm missing in the TOC is a chapter on creating your own
packages: the official docs are (as usual) quite sparse and I'd love to have a
couple chapters (tutorial + reference) instead of following the typical "take
a look at a existing package and wing it from there" approach. Can someone
recommend some good resources on this topic?

~~~
zzleeper
Yes.. I purchased the book although I already know most of the things there;
but what would be _really_ useful is better tutorials for how to make your own
packages/syntax highlighters/build systems.

~~~
xs
I've created my own syntax highlighter plugin for ST. I still don't know how
to do it even after completing it. There's just so much about it that is
guesswork.

------
ghshephard
Love the concept - but reading the sample chapter, the layout was extremely
distracting. Tons of widows/orphans, and even some images that were cut
_across_ pages.

When you are selling a book for $36, the bar is a little higher in terms of
the quality of the presentation.

~~~
wesbos
Thanks for the feedback - I have a newly formatted version of the book coming
out later today which remedies the orphans and adds in some new bookmarking
features.

~~~
mamurphy
I will check back later today for the newly formatted version. In the sample,
some sentences were split between pages (with the top half of the letters on
the bottom of one page, and the bottom half of the letters on the top of the
next page), and that low production quality really threw me off.

------
wesbos
If anyone wants $10 off either package, use coupon code LAUNCHDAY - 100% money
back guarantee

~~~
Krowbar
I used this code for the $45 bundle. The site showed $35 before purchasing but
my credit card was charged $45! Hopefully Wes will refund me that $10

Edit: And in the time it took me to complain, he already responded. Way to
stay on top of things!

~~~
wesbos
This goes for anyone who bought it before seeing this code - email me and I'll
refund the $10 right away!

------
DevX101
I've been planning on registering my sublime for some time. Gonna do it now. I
just did a trial of WebStorm and realized my Sublime setup is still the
superior editor (with the right plugins: VIM, git, git gutter, Origami,
HTMLPrettify).

I've evaluated it for the past 6 months but looks like they finally convinced
me to fork over the cash. If you've been evaluating for more than a few months
and you're not a student, pay up!

~~~
Lambdanaut
I know this might not be kosher, but I have to ask, why? I'm all for
supporting the artist, but is that the only reason?

Edit: I expected the downvote, but honestly believe that a discussion on this
could be valuable. If you're going to downvote me, in return please tell me
why you think this question shouldn't be asked.

~~~
rdebeasi
Sublime Text isn't free; it's sold on the honor system:

"Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must
be purchased for continued use."

The developer could try to enforce this rule by building in DRM or by
threatening legal action, but those things would make for a pretty crappy user
experience. Instead, the author chose to do the right thing by users and
provide an evaluation version with no restrictions.

Legally and technically, you can certainly use Sublime Text without paying for
it. To me, though, using Sublime Text for your everyday work without paying
for it is the ethical equivalent of using a cracked version of Photoshop.

~~~
Lambdanaut
Are you sure it's the honor system? It seems to me more like a clever move to
disseminate the software so that people are more likely to pay, particularly
since he explicitly defines "continued use" as being whatever timeframe the
user wants.

Adobe's Photoshop license doesn't do anything like this. If you crack it,
you're breaking the rules.

I think it's a gray area, but it's undeniably true that paying for a license
is a respectful thing to do at the very least.

~~~
jacalata
Well, there's no enforcement aside from your own conscience (or peer pressure,
if that applies to you) so yes, it's an honor system. That doesn't stop it
from _also_ being a marketing move.

------
kendallpark
I can't find a text editor superior to Sublime. Maybe one day I'll buck up and
learn vim then join the superiority-complex crowd, but until then Sublime all
the way.

I was hoping that Atom would be better or comparable, but just doesn't feel as
solid as Sublime. So laggy.

Has anyone read this book? Good reviews?

~~~
shubhamjain
> Maybe one day I'll buck up and learn vim then join the superiority-complex
> crowd

Is that the sole reason for learning vim? I mean I am all for investing in
productivity, but vim seems to be a tool for geeks to boast about and surprise
a lay-person how fast they can work. Is it worth the time you invest to get
used to it when you compare it to Sublime Text?

~~~
andrepd
Don't listen to those people. Vim was very much worth the initial learning
curve, for me at least. I never really used Sublime that much, so I can't
speak for it. Maybe it gives you 80% of vim's productivity for 1/4th of the
effort, but make no mistake, vim is an absurdly powerful tool which I'm 99%
sure beats Sublime out of the water (though, again, I never got deep into
Sublime, so take this with a grain of salt).

Oh and the learning curve thing is greatly exaggerated, often by vim users
themselves, seeking to brag to everyone about how they mastered the "fearsome
learning curve of vim".

~~~
xs
I used vim for 10 years; now I prefer Sublime Text. I have a need to use a
text editor a lot in Windows and never liked the experience that vim for
Windows gave me so I gave Sublime Text a try. I quickly fell in love with the
multi-cursor editing and ability to auto-recover unsaved files when I close
and reopen the program. From there I discovered new awesome features including
vim mode which lets me use vim commands within ST if I so choose. I am really
happy to know vim because it's installed on every linux/unix distro ever and
when I'm sshing into servers that's what I use, but for the bulk of my coding,
ST all the way.

------
ivanca
Disappointing that it doesn't have a chapter for plugin development, in my
opinion that's the best feature of Sublime Text: You can use all the python
ecosystem plus it has a nice API. Plus you understand anyone's plugins because
is all python, not some random lang they like.

------
code_chimp
Just skimming and the content seems really good so far, just a couple of nits
to pick. The PDF appears to be missing a table of contents and the chapter
links starting on page 2 are not working in Okular running on Ubuntu 14.04 -
they appear as links to files on the author's local DropBox.

The epub looks pretty good on the iPad.

------
stuntmachine
CSSDEVCONF removes $15 off of the price.

------
wnm
i love sublime, and i love to learn new things that make me more productive or
efficient, so i'm your target audience. if i'd want to convince my boss to buy
this (as you suggestest on your salespage :)), i'd probably need a paperprint
version... but i'm actually thinking about buying this just for myself.

great work on the sales page! looks very well done.

one thing you can think about: why not let users give you their email address
to get the free chapter?

------
zaatar
Thanks; I just purchased the book+video; is there a recommended way to print
out a paper copy for my own use beyond just hammering my own (or work)
printer?

------
pdknsk
This is personal preference, but I dislike when sites force a download for
files which can just as well be displayed in the browser, such as the sample
PDF.

------
Pamar
I have a Mac for use at home, but most of my coding is done at the office on a
windows machine... Can anyone suggest a similar resource for Ultraedit?

~~~
deevus
Probably, but Sublime Text runs on Windows anyway.

------
bhaumik
First thoughts via @tholex.
[http://i.imgur.com/7me4WYG.png](http://i.imgur.com/7me4WYG.png)

------
alphabetam
I'm a proficient VIM user. Can Sublime compete? Is it worth trying to learn
it?

~~~
jbrooksuk
Yes, Sublime has a plugin called "Vintage" which acts like Vim.

~~~
mklim
The Vintageous plugin does a better job of emulating Vim than Vintage, I
recommend using that instead. Neither one is perfect, but Vintageous covers
most of the commands. It's good enough that I felt comfortable dropping Vim
for ST entirely (disclaimer: not an expert Vim user so my bar is probably
lower than average, YMMV).

------
RubberMullet
The volume level in the sample video seems very low. Are all the videos like
this?

------
jaset
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8424337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8424337)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418552](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418552)

~~~
jackmoore
In fairness, this time it was submitted by the author and he is responding to
comments.

------
oron
Looks nice and priced fairly, got my copy, Thanks.

------
sergiotapia
Shame you only accept Credit Cards, I live in South America and only have
access to PayPal for online payments.

~~~
derengel
Not sure what you mean here, what country in south america doesn't have credit
cards?

~~~
sergiotapia
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but Bolivia.

~~~
ivanca
That's... strange. In Colombia we do have credit cards.

------
tsax
Bought!

~~~
tsax
Why is this downvoted? Would the author not like to know if a commenter
purchased his work?

------
victorhooi
I'm pretty tempted to buy a copy.

However, the thing holding me back is, I've recently switched from SublimeText
to Atom.

I didn't see much development on the SublimeText front, and Atom seemed to
have a growing community.

For anybody that's purchased it - what are your thoughts on how applicable
this might be Atom? Or helpful to somebody using it?

(I know that Atom is "inspired" by SublimeText)

~~~
luketherrien
I have not purchased the e-book.

I just wanted to note that although Atom is a derivative of Sublime Text, they
may not end up having 100% feature parity. That may not be a problem due to
the ease of creating an Atom package.

------
nayak
Editor is $70 if you want to buy and this book is more than $30. Combined
price of both of these is more than I paid for my OS long back. Too much
investment for a editor and learning it.


Publishers That Say No to Automated Ad Sales - prostoalex
http://www.wsj.com/articles/publishers-that-say-no-to-automated-ad-sales-1443650792?cb=logged0.13897654577158391
======
shostack
Nothing new here--publishers want more direct buys vs. programmatic remnant
sales on the exchanges. Higher margins, controlling the data, keeping things a
black box--can't say I blame them, but that's not to say they'll get their
wish.


Sold my startup for nothing just before it took off. Now i'm broke. Need advice. - ahugefool

How do you recover from a success (first success after a multitude of failures) that you let slip through your fingers - by selling just before it took off?
It is eating me alive. I'm almost back to square one (broke, no ideas) and can hardly hold myself together.<p>I try to pump myself up to try something new but the thought that had i held on just a little longer i wouldn't even be in this position saps my productivity.
Faced with the prospect of having to reenter the job market (after having actually built something that works) is a nightmare that i never thought would be realised. But here i am.
Every day - completely paralysed by the outcome of my decision.
Really would appreciate anyone's advice here.Thank you.
======
DocG
Congratulations!

You managed more than most of the start-ups! Your idea was worth it and it
will go and change part of the world. It was your doing.

By now, you have experience in starting, you have confirmation on your ideas.
This is bigger win in long term.

Bummer that you didn't get paid in money, but money comes and goes. You will
do fine. being a employee for a while, might be a nice change to reflect on
your experience and work on your ideas. Less hectic and more stress free
change.

~~~
ahugefool
Thank you for taking the time to write this. You have no idea how much i
appreciate it.

------
username99
Get out of bed and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Life goes on. Do the
following actions:

1\. Get at least 8 hours of sleep every day. Go to bed at a reasonable hour,
and get up when you wake up.

2\. Get a small notebook and a pen. Carry them with you _everywhere_.

3\. Eat properly. No excessive junk-food. Don't skip meals.

4\. Ever day for at least 1 hour, go to a quiet place and bring out your
notebook. Spend the entire hour writing out ideas. It doesn't matter if they
are good or bad. Just write them out. Do it. The point is to use your "idea
muscles".

5\. Spend at least 1 hour every day walking, running, moving, or doing
_something_ to make your body active and actually get your blood pumping. Even
if it's just 5 minutes here, and 2 minutes there... do that a bunch of times
every day.

6\. Repeat step #4 at least two or three times per day.

With the above steps, you will condition your body and brain to be a thinking
machine. You'll find after a week or so, it will become easier and easier to
think up ideas for your notebook. Soon you'll have hundreds of ideas written
down. Eventually you'll get an idea for a new startup that just work. Pursue
it! (Don't stop the steps above, though... maybe just limit them a bit.)

Remember, your brain is a muscle. Exercise it. Keep your body in decent
condition because it feeds your brain.

~~~
ahugefool
This situation has led me to James Altucher's blog a few times . This sounds a
lot like his advice. I think it's great. I'm going to go ahead and take it and
buy a notebook today.

Thank you.

~~~
desipenguin
I was about to say "James Altucher" :) Best Wishes !!

------
lazyjones
\- What was it that your startup lacked while you were in charge? Be honest
with yourself so you can learn from this experience and do it better next
time.

\- Perhaps this will come across as cynical, but your current position has
several advantages too: a) you don't have much to lose, b) your potential is
higher than what you're currently going through, so it's likely that your
situation will improve, c) you are experiencing a situation that is very
common these days, it might inspire you to create something that will be of
use to many people

Find yourself a job to stay afloat and plan for the future. Of course you can
do it again!

~~~
ahugefool
It can be very hard to see these positives. But it is true. They are there.
The mind seems to love to play awful tricks when things go wrong.

Thank you very much.

~~~
bmm6o
Following on GP's advice, you might find it therapeutic to write something up
about your experience. What (if anything) could you have done differently to
be more successful? What skills should you work on to be more successful in
the future? If you're up to writing a blog series, I think you've got a big
potential audience and you could make some decent ad revenue from it. Do it
anonymously if you wish.

------
neilk
You're paralyzed because you now believe that you are 'ahugefool'.

Step one would be to try to find some way out of that pattern of thinking. No
wait - step zero is to not give yourself usernames like that.

If you're an ordinary human like the rest of us, your brain goes haywire with
low-probability/high-consequence outcomes. You'll want to punish yourself in
proportion to what you missed out on. But maybe you should consider evaluating
yourself on what knowledge you had at the time?

I think you need to engage in some "accounting" of everything you did, with
someone you trust, like a therapist or a person whose business advice you
trust.

Maybe you can try cognitive-behavioral therapy, with a trained therapist. You
start with your negative thoughts like "I'm a huge fool" and recursively break
those down until you arrive at baseline observations and facts. If you're a
programmer this highly rational mode of therapy may work well for you. You
will almost certainly find that your negative conclusions about yourself
aren't warranted.

------
Tomte
Being an employee is no nightmare.

That said, having been close to a bug payout sucks, but it's basically the
same as standing at the roulette table "if I had only bet 28 black" when you
missed your number by one.

Agonizing over "close, but not quite, good luck" is human, but it leads
nowhere.

~~~
wikwocket
Good analogy about roulette. How and when things go viral and take off can be
as random as any casino game.

And most importantly, what happens at the table after you walk away has no
effect on you. You left the game when you decided to. Asking "What if I had
bet one more time?" is a rabbit hole that can paralyze and cripple your
forward decision-making.

Relatedly, you may want to look up the idea of a sunk cost: things that
happened in the past are done with, and cannot be changed. Sunk costs are
irrelevant to your plans for the future. It is very _very_ tempting for us to
dwell on things like this, but ultimately it is healthier (and more
strategically profitable) to look forward, not back.

------
bengali3
1\. remember, "only the mediocre are always at their best" 2\. get Seth
Godin's blog via email

p.s i wish i had a startup success under my belt, if you and I are starting at
the beginning of the next startup race, then you clearly have an experience
advantage. Hey, give it to me if you aren't going to use it :)

------
danfalos
Give yourself courage , i started mine left me broke and i closed it stayed
without work for an year but did some mear jobs here computer hardware repair
and enhanced my knowledge nowadays when people ask me i feel good telling them
i got broke and closed it but am better now knowledge wise and am planning to
start it again and this time it will pick up ... be proud you started it and
remember the way and the ideas you had are still there and you can even start
and enhance it more ..... i read the guy who started Github left to stsrt
another you can also do so ... think of an idea you will succeed again.

------
ibstudios
One wrong decision prevents all future decisions?

This is a stress and you need to build your self confidence to get out of the
self doubt loop. You aren't living when you are thinking of the past.

Create, create, create!

good luck!

~~~
ahugefool
Thank you

------
Im_Talking
I wouldn't knock yourself on the head about this. Most times the first time
someone tastes success, they make someone else rich. It's only the second
taste of success that makes you yourself rich.

I made my first boss quite wealthy with my software. But it allowed me to
understand business and I learned well.

Try to use your experience to come up with ideas within the same
industry/domain/etc. Did you sign a non-compete?

------
macguyver
Kudos, what I've learned:

\- When we don't get what we want, we get something even better than what we
originally wanted

\- Events that lead to the best outcomes often are disguised as failures

\- We always get what we need

Best wishes to you. If only there were a startup that made it easy for
founders to find jobs/gigs after their startups.


Waymo leads autonomous race with lowest human driver takeover rate - electriclove
https://9to5google.com/2018/01/31/waymo-in-lead-in-autonomous-race/
======
electriclove
In the article is a link to a Twitter post by Amir Efrati who compiled a quick
tally:

[https://twitter.com/amir/status/958826166286102528/photo/1](https://twitter.com/amir/status/958826166286102528/photo/1)

~~~
Fricken
Here's the California DMV site, with pdf links to disengagement reports for
every company registered to test in California:

[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2017)


BoA Merrill Lynch publishes target price for Bitcoin: $1300 - jackgavigan
http://cryptome.org/2013/12/boa-bitcoin.pdf
======
crntaylor
Don't get too excited. The actual quotation is

      "Assuming Bitcoin becomes a major player in both e-commerce
       and money transfer *and* a significant store of value with
       a reputation close to silver, our fair value analysis
       implies a *maximum market capitalization* of Botcoin of
       $15bn (1 BTC = 1300 USD).

       This suggests that the 100 fold increase in Bitcoin prices
       this year is at risk of running ahead of its fundamentals."

So if two questionably likely events both occur, BAML think that Bitcoin might
have a _maximum_ value of 1300 USD.

~~~
scotty79
The assumptions they made are quite insane. To calculate how much value in
bitcoins is required to facilitate online trades they fixated on proportion of
total US households cash and deposits to their total expenditures. They
assumed they will have amount of wealth in bitcoins that's in same proportion
to 10% of their online expenditures. Then they extrapolated it to whole world.

Do Americans actually have cash and deposits at all? I was under the
impression that most of their household expenditures are either directly
coming from their paycheck or are credit based.

Not to mention that they "calculated" (how? they say that they divide 11trn by
0.7trn to get that) proportion to be 0.07 then they sliced it down to 0.04
because Americans have recently started saving money which is unusual.

They also assumed that shops will convert bitcoins back to dollars
immediately.

When assessing bitcoins as a store of value they state bizarre things:

"Furthermore, the reputation of gold as a unique and safe store of value has
been growing for the past ten thousand years. It will take some time for
Bitcoins to acquire that reputation. We don’t know how to quantify the value
of gold’s reputation, but this reputation is probably the main reason that its
value is 60 times that of silver."

Personally I though that the reason gold is many times more expensive than
silver is the fact that silver is vastly more abundant.

So for me it sounds more like: "If two questionably likely events both occur,
BAML think that Bitcoin might have a maximum value of 1300 USD. Unless of
course it turns out that pigs actually can't fly, then it could go higher."

~~~
sanxiyn
Historically gold to silver ratio was around 15 -- Coinage Act of 1792 defines
ratio to be exactly 15, for example. I don't think abundance of gold and
silver changed much since then. So change from 15 to 60 indeed is based on the
reputation of gold.

~~~
scotty79
Roughly there's 10 times as much silver mined as gold. So you are right that
60 times is a bit high. 17.5 times is estimated proportion of those metals in
earths crust (not sure if it takes into account gold and silver dissolved in
oceanic waters.

Whether the difference between the actual price of gold and the price that can
be derived from fundamentals is a value of trust in gold or, as BAML puts it
in case of bitcoin, speculation, is up to debate. Pointless I think because
speculation is enabled by trust.

------
tpeng
My thoughts on the BAML report:

The calculation of BTC's value as a currency uses the correct methodology,
which I had previously outlined in this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829518](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6829518)

BAML uses M1 (cash + checking accounts) instead of M2 (M1 + savings accounts +
time deposits). Using M2 is a lot more aggressive but it also captures the
"store of value" value. M2 is really a best case scenario for BTC owners, as
it assumes that users will hold their savings in BTC. BAML is fine to be
conservative with this.

BAML's inclusion of Bitcoin's value as a money transmission business is
absurd. While transfer fees accrue to the shareholders of Western Union, the
transfer fees of BTC transfers do not accrue to BTC owners. In fact, the
transfer fees are quite small to zero and they accrue to the miners. So if BTC
does take share from WU, etc., it only shrinks the pie.

Some posters on HN and elsewhere are saying that BAML is "too conservative",
but they have not posted their own numbers and assumptions.

The reality is that BTC's current real economy is nowhere near the size needed
to justify the current BTC price, and enormous growth of this economy is
already baked into the price. While it's not impossible that this growth can
occur, there are real reasons to believe that it won't.

------
zmitri
In case HN wasn't completely aware, most bank "research papers" are content
marketing designed to try and get you to buy products from their desk. They
are often very biased and should be analyzed with caution.

I don't know much about bitcoin, but I've seen enough "research" from desks to
know the analysis is very slanted - hence the page of disclaimers at the end.

~~~
justincormack
The disclaimers are because they used to be overt fraud. Now they are mostly
paid for by "soft commission" and are supposed to be "independent research"
for people who will not pay for research with their own money but will spend
customers money on it.

------
salient
They will look like complete fools when Bitcoin goes way beyond their
"maximum" value $1,300. This seems like a very shallow analysis, done by
someone who's new to Bitcoin, and within a single day.

------
Havoc
I've always found the notion of a "target price" somewhat entertaining. Its
market forces at work - baring Goldman schenanigens - nobody is targeting
anything.

------
drakaal
Author apparently didn't read the article from Merril Lynch

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/885843-banks-
researc...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/885843-banks-research-
report-on-bitcoin.html)

What it actually says is that if BitCoin is to be viable it has to be used as
Currency exchanged against the price of the local currency at the time of
transaction.

This makes sense. You wouldn't want to buy gas based on the high or the low of
the day. So you can't say that Gas costs 1/300th of a Coin, and leave that as
the price all day because right now that could be Cheap at $900 a coin and
Expensive at $1300 a coin.

It also says that there has to be enough people using it for it to not have
huge price swings based on Volatility. This also makes sense. We don't buy
things with gold often because knowing the value at a given moment is hard.
And since we don't trade in raw gold we trade in coins, typically those coins
each have values, a Krugerand and a Panda don't have quite the same value per
ounce and the difference fluctuates per day. So unless we can get to a point
that BTC is only changing fractional percentages per day, people are going to
always be changing coins to local currency.

All of this summarized in one sentence:

BoA ML thinks that BitCoin will become a Merchant Services System that works
on the instantaneous exchange rate with the local currency, and based on the
market share they believe it could have and the total number of coins in
circulation the cap will be $1300. (yeah it is a long compound sentence)

------
exo762
BoA Merill Lynch current price is 231% of it's target price.

Best regards, Bitcoin.

~~~
Kequc
So if you buy in now then Bitcoin becomes a major player in both e-commerce
and money transfer. Then becomes a significant store of value with the
reputation of silver. And for some reason this estimate is off by a factor of
two then you could theoretically double your money by whatever time that all
this happens.

All you need to do is risk it all.

~~~
exo762
Unless you've bought in year ago.

Also, you don't have to treat Bitcoin as a mean of storing value. You can use
it as a way to transfer money over great distances.

------
tim333
Stockbrokers always give a target price about 20-100% more than the current
price for any asset. It's a marketing thing. They make commision or get
investment fees whether the estimates are wrong or right.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
Not quite correct. They downgrade below current levels occasionally too.

------
headgasket
These analysts are not to be trusted. The stock market is a 0 sum game, your
loss is someone else's gain. Analysts and brokers are out to get you at worst,
or part of the noise at best. the market is an information/disinformation
battle. From a dev mindset it might be hard to grasp, in our world people
don't gain anything from worsening someone else's prospect. In fact open
source can be actually seen as the opposite.

------
Tenoke
Why the double submission pdf - the report has already been submitted and has
been in the top for a while -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6859832](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6859832)

Yeah, this is direct link to the pdf but does this really justify a second
submission (and upvoting to top)?

------
Aqueous
They are way understating the growth potential of a currency that has
unlimited growth potential because it knows no borders, and serves as a new
technological platform.

------
wellboy
Lol, right now almost no one is using Bitcoin for actual purchases, because
it's not a viable currency yet. Right now it's just an investment opportunity
until Bitcoin has found its price.

Then not an investment opportunity anymore and becomes a viable currency. That
point is reached when 1 Bitcoin is worth between $100,000-$500,000, because
then it has replaced all banks, all currencies and taken up around 10% of the
world gross product.

I give it 3 years.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
"Value" of an investment during a bubble is not a useful number. We can write
all the imaginary numbers on the wall we like; only backed currencies reflect
real wealth. Because in the end our standard of living doesn't change by
fiddling with the numbers; only investing in real infrastructure, energy
mining and manufacturing, makes any difference in the real world. Fiddling
with numbers just bids up the price of those things, a zero-sum game.


Employee Equity - yurisagalov
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/11/employee-equity.html

======
zallarak
I like that this is being discussed more. Some related thoughts:

\- I personally find the numbers low; there is a glut of startups out there
partially due to engineers realizing that they are more than often underpaid
in terms of equity.

\- Employers and VCs should realize that a hyper-motivated engineer is worth N
engineers. Not juts in terms of effort, but engineering quality, reduction in
politics/a more meritocratic culture, morale, etc.

\- Heavily invested engineers will be retained; recruiting and skill-retention
are huge resource consumers.

------
michaelochurch
Slide 11 puts the average equity for a software engineer at a 51-100 person
company at 0.07%. That sounds correct-- I hesitate to use "right", here-- but
that means that a person is getting about _1 /20_ of a proportional share. To
me, that's absurd. Yes, founders and management and investors deserve their
take, and 40-70% is reasonable. But not 95%.

For those who'd argue, "0.07 percent is generous for someone who just joined,
hasn't done anything yet, hasn't taken any risk" let me remind them that the
0.07 is _vested_ over 4 years (as it should be). After 4 years of loyalty and
good work, she probably deserves much more than 7 pennies.

I think startup equity is toxic because it's designed to _look like_ real
business partnership, and it confuses the naive into thinking they're actual
owners, but actually falls into the uncanny valley.

I think it's better to be honest about the employer/employee relationship (in
the way that Wall Street is, with its generous profit sharing) than to try to
hide with it bullshit. Startup equity: people paid in penny stocks that
couldn't be legally sold to them and that they can't possibly evaluate because
they aren't even given the social access to understand the relationships (e.g.
investors) involved-- because if they had that access, they'd go off and start
their own companies.

If you want to do the Cravath model and promote people to real partnership
after 7 years, then do that. If you want to be like a hedge fund (which
prefers generous cash bonuses over the increasing ownership complexity, and
employees usually prefer that too) then do that. But the VC-istan "ownership"
culture is (for engineers) a fucking lie. If we (as engineers) are going to
own something, it'll be something we build ourselves and it won't happen in
VC-istan.

~~~
spamizbad
I can speculate on two reasons why things are the way they are:

1) Companies generally set aside a certain percentage of their common stock
for employee compensation. I imagine much of this is allocated towards C-level
hires, and anyone else is getting the scraps. I've also heard (but not
confirmed firsthand so take with a grain of salt) that VCs don't like overly
large employee stock pools. I have no clue why - VC stock is preferred and
employee stock is common so it's not they're offering any competition. It
might have something to do with founders getting discouraged by additional
dilution, which in turn limits the kinds of deals that founder is willing to
participate in.

2) Paying out more cash to engineers makes it more difficult for your company
to achieve a positive (or break-even) EBITDA. Negative EBITDA makes you a much
less attractive acquisition target unless you're either trendy or have some
ungodly large number of "eyeballs" that haven't been monetized yet (They're
paying for the upside). An entrepreneur contemplating offering market-clearing
salaries could talk themselves out of it by concluding "I can probably just
hire the same engineer for less if I just wait longer and work harder at
screening" \-- effectively trading time to save money. Not always a smart
move, but not necessarily a stupid one either.

Again, just speculation.

~~~
michaelochurch
These explanations make a lot of sense.

For #1, the stated reason VCs discourage substantial employee equity is that
they don't want the "equity-oriented culture". The real reason is greed in
what they perceive as a zero-sum game (but it's not; different policies would
create different companies!)

#2 is probably quite accurate. It's sad, though, that paying well confuses
Wall Street into thinking a business is ineptly run.

~~~
tptacek
Once again, you beg the question. You pretend to draw a conclusion about how
VC works, but that conclusion is based on the unsupported premise that VC
works the way you say it does.

To the extent company boards are parsimonious about equity, it's probably in
order to preserve optionality: a new chief operating officer, or a new high-
profile engineer to lead a new product team, or a new CEO, all draw
significantly from the pool of equity available to employees. Humans are loss
averse, so a smaller up-front allocation is preferable to a larger allocation
that subsequently has to be diluted down.

------
Pro_bity
Didn't we have the same conversation yesterday?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6762562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6762562)

~~~
mik3y
If you read the post, he's responding to that article: "So I was excited to
see that First Round Capital featured a blog post by Andy Rachleff on this
topic yesterday.."


Ask HN: What do you expect from a meaningful technical interview? - pthreads
Recently there was a post regarding technical interviews (how performance is arbitrary) and it got a lot of responses from HN'ers. So I wanted to ask the community how would they design a great technical interview? Disclosure: The reason I am asking is I am thinking of starting a service that provides resources for companies that want to hire technical talent but are not able to suitably test candidates for technical competency. These interviews would be tailored to specific needs. But I am not sure if there is a need for it in the industry.
======
rosspackard
I am in the process of building a service like that too. Mainly because I want
it for vetting the candidates that I am trying to hire (I am a principle
engineer who also manages).

My focus has been on these things:

-easily distributing and receiving challenges privately (not through github or email)

-tool to help easily and quickly manually review code

-a library of challenges that aren't algorithms based (think like a challenge to fix a bug in a moderately sized system, building a feature onto an existing codebase... I have many ideas for these)

-example qualitative scoring systems (the idea of which comes from Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman's book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow')

~~~
pthreads
Neat. I hadn't thought about distributing and receiving challenges privately
as I was planning to basically interview candidates on site. But I see the
value in your idea as not all candidates will be able to spend half a day on
site. The library of challenges is equally useful.

~~~
rosspackard
I also think that onsite technical challenges don't represent a candidates
strengths. Due to nerves or insecurity. They may think googling for something
simple in front of you is deemed bad (and it can be seen that way by
inexperienced interviewers).

If you want to discuss more feel free to use my gmail, its my username with an
extra r in front.

------
chrisbennet
As a candidate, I use the interview process to determine if I want to work for
the company.

Part of the way I judge a company is wether they value my time as much as
their own. When a hiring manager calls me up or emails me, he's "doing the
work" and I will always respect that. The phone screen is something that costs
them as much time as it does me.

I don't think I've ever jumped through any hoops _before_ talking to the
hiring manager. Why should jump through hoops for a company that hasn't
convinced me that I might want to work for them?

I'm not sure if that's helpful or not. Good luck.

------
victorhugo31337
I tend to prefer the following:

1) Phone screen

2) In person interview with 3-4 people

3) Take home coding question


That Person Won't Scale  - cwan
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/05/that-person-wont-scale.html

======
billybob
Rant: one thing that certainly doesn't scale is micromanagement. If you are
getting copied on every email sent by your employees, you do not scale. You
are very busy, oh yes. And that makes you look important. But you're missing
details, and sometimes the whole point.

The secret: nobody scales. You have a limited amount of attention each day. To
scale, you must: 1) Find trustworthy people to delegate to, 2) trust them. And
eventually, let them delegate, too.

If you don't trust your employees, you've got a hiring problem.


Revolting Mind: Jonathan Swift – The Reluctant Rebel - lermontov
https://literaryreview.co.uk/revolting-mind
======
joggery
So he was cold, frugal, petulant and severe? What did they expect? A genius
that was easy to get on with? Was there ever such a one?

There's such a relish nowadays for pointing out how bad people were in private
who created marvellous stuff which produced and produces unlimited benefits to
society.

Especially unsocial geniuses. They are described as cold or inhuman despite
perhaps being _more_ human than the rest of us. After all it is only their
_integrity_ that allows their inner worlds to flourish.

(I suspect that sociable people are secretly afraid of other humans. Which is
why they designate a subset of other humans as 'friends' and are nice to them
on condition that they are nice back. They then project their personal issues
onto humans outside that set.)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>A genius that was easy to get on with? Was there ever such a one?

Yes, almost definitely. For instance, Benjamin Franklin was quite the
socialite. Richard Feynman was also considered very sociable, and while many
people also think he was an asshole, that may just be the effect of meeting
tons and tons of people in your life.

>I suspect that sociable people are secretly afraid of other humans. Which is
why they designate a subset of other humans as 'friends' and are nice to them
on condition that they are nice back.

That's a really creepy thing to say. I'm not even particularly good with
people, but I'm nice to my friends, family, etc because I actually like them.

~~~
joggery
Franklin and Feynman were smart but spread themselves too thinly and so didn't
develop their genius, in part due to their social escapades. They didn't
create as much as they should have. The test of 'getting on' with somebody
would have to be something like roommates i.e. spending a significant amount
of time together.

Yes it's creepy but ask yourself why. Perhaps it reveals something evil? It's
not enough to like one's friends to refute this idea, which goes deep; it's
about _why_ you like them. Note that a truly good person loves his enemies
while the highly sociable person will toady to some of his 'friends' and
exploit others.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Franklin and Feynman were smart but spread themselves too thinly and so
didn't develop their genius,

Oh, no, they're only some of the most celebrated and accomplished men in our
whole culture. It's not like they did anything with their lives /s.

>Note that a truly good person loves his enemies while the highly sociable
person will toady to some of his 'friends' and exploit others.

Now you sound like you're just redefining "sociable".

~~~
joggery
There's a difference between celebrity and accomplishment. I'm claiming that
to an extent they squandered their gifts and could have accomplished more of
depth and value. John von Neumann is another example (too social; spread too
thin).

It's understood that social people are people who enjoy socialising and have
lots of friends. But I would say that appearances are deceptive and they're
actually not close to any of them. This isn't an accident because what they're
really seeking is to allay their secret fear by gaining fame and/or power.
Which is just a mistake.

It's not wrong to have friends and to like them, even if only to honour the
past, or because business demands it. But progress lies in a different (inner)
direction.


A better Hackerbuddy - illdave
http://hackerbuddy.com/posts/2
======
mike-cardwell
I nominate myself for geekiest profile:

<http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2670>

~~~
mike-cardwell
FYI, to get a monospace font, you have to wrap the entire thing in a
.
However, when displayed, line feed characters (\n) are converted to
"\n
\n", which turns into three blank lines in a pre. So when editing, you
need to make sure you use
 and never any real \n's.

To start a line with spaces, you have to use " " when editing. You should
also convert all double spaces " " to "  " if you want them to be
displayed nicely.

That's how I lined things up in my profile.

The idea is that you select the PGP signed text, and then paste it into "gpg
--verify". This works fine in Firefox and Chrome, but when you copy the data
in IE, the clipboard version contains no \n chars. If I could have used
instead of
 this problem wouldn't have manifested. The profile editor
wouldn't let me do that though.

I wish "copy" behaviour was consistant across browsers, when copying from a
web page.

~~~
illdave
I am really impressed that you did that :)

I'll make sure when I'm updating the CSS to leave
 styled the same way it
is - if I change anything that messes with your formatting, let me know - I
don't want to break what you've done!

~~~
mike-cardwell
Thanks, but you shouldn't let one users profile dictate your sites styling.
Feel free to break it. I'll just fix it if you do.

------
helen842000
Hey, this is a great site. I hope it continues to gather a following.

I had an issue with the slider button (to help other hackers) it wouldn't let
me move it to Yes. Tried on several machines/devices..hmm. I'll test it again
at home.

It would be good to see a "live feed" of what people are searching for. It may
help people to realise they have important skills they wouldn't have otherwise
listed!

~~~
illdave
Thanks for the feedback - I know the slider doesn't work on the iPad, so it's
definitely one to fix. Good idea about the live feed - I tried adding an auto-
suggest bit but I couldn't get it to play nicely with the rest of the
JavaScript, but it looks like it could be really useful, so I'll keep trying
with it.

------
dylangs1030
This is fantastic. Here is mine - <http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2875>

In fact, I'm adding it to my own laundry list of links on my blog and
elsewhere. Really, great job and idea, and you implemented it well.

I love the very easy use of HTML editing on profiles, and I've already
reserved my vanity url id (Dylan). Speaking which, it'd be fantastic if you
could make the user profile url's /username (as others have commented). It
would be more easily identifiable than a set of numbers, especially if you're
building a network of hackers.

I also suggest adding even more social features. Not on par with a social
network, but maybe forms for the typical information you'll find on a
professional profile.

You did the back-end as well as the design, or it was a split effort with a
hackerbuddy :p?

~~~
illdave
Thanks very much, glad you like it. I like the /username idea too so that's on
my list of things to update (I'll make sure that everything redirects properly
so you won't need to update your links if you don't want to).

I did the back-end as well as the front-end, although I cheated and based the
design on a chopped-up Themeforest theme. I love Themeforest for things like
this.

------
hieronymusN
I think this is a really cool idea, especially as I am a remote worker.
However, why the focus on startup hackers? Why can't any coder/designer get
involved regardless of their workplace? This would be great for freelancers
and small agency employees as well.

------
will_critchlow
This is looking great Dave. I'm excited to see where it goes. Here's me:
<http://hackerbuddy.com/users/28>

~~~
illdave
Thanks!

------
jasonkolb
Cool idea, I hope it reaches some kind of critical mass!

One question though: what does the available/unavailable status mean? I'm
unclear what the difference is, especially since anyone who would fill out a
profile here is available in some form. You may want to add some
clarification, I wasn't sure what to use that for.

------
JayNeely
Can you make searches return partial matches after exact matches? "General
Advice" yields 49 results right now, while "Advice" yields only 3.

P.S. <http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2863> here, if anyone needs help with CSS
or marketing.

------
wisty
Nice idea, don't love the UI. I don't want to click on just thumbnails - some
kind of one line pitch under each thumbnail would be nice.

------
Brajeshwar
Nice. Added me with details - <http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2648>

------
johnx123-up
CakePHP? Is it scaling good for HN traffic?

~~~
illdave
It's running on Rails, and using Heroku - it looks like it's holding up fine
(although if you have any issues or notice any errors or downtime, let me
know)

------
thiagofm
You could make cooler routes like:

hackerbuddy.com/:user

or

/user/:user

Instead of using their user ID's.

But I god damn love this.

~~~
illdave
Ahha, thanks - and you're right, /:user would look cooler. I'll add it to my
list of things to do.

I might add a quote from you to the homepage saying "I god damn love this", if
that's ok?

~~~
thiagofm
Hahaha, do it!

------
bdg
It's basically an index of users against tags. I don't understand how this is
helpful to me.


Critique my idea: AsyncSharing.com - reggiepret
https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/post/-KwGrYmdEQi-jNkpY1j8
======
reggiepret
[https://asyncsharing.godaddysites.com](https://asyncsharing.godaddysites.com)
Until DNS propagates and asyncsharing.com is live.


When do you dump a product even when “it still works”? - ohjeez
https://insights.hpe.com/articles/are-your-servers-past-their-best-by-date-1708.html
======
Piskvorrr
"Don't ask a barber whether you need a new haircut."