skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think regardless of what the majority is saying, most people want an exit of their business eventually. Even if only for the fact that being able to work on something new is fun and challenging.
Noise and lack of resolution are different beasts. That paper has nothing to do with "zoom & enhance", which will never reach the level we see in movies, since the information is just not there.
Anecdata: I've seen two of those old-school aluminium body land rovers, still running.
Two heads side by side on a 30" 300 dpi monitor should be enough to drive need for this tech, then.
Android itself can be installed without the Google suite otherwise known as GApps. Actually most roms don't include GApps for this reason. Look at any AOSP based rom. Its just they want access to the Google suite and this requires OHA http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/ requirements.
This is an article about return, not risk. Taking VC money in no way increases your risk—you're not personally liable for that money and a failure still ends with $0.

I'm not sure whether the change in return value matters enough to avoid VC money, but I do know that taking VC money absolutely 100% decreases personal risk.

If you bootstrap, you're investing both your own time and your own money. If the company fails, you've just lost a lot of time AND wiped yourself out financially. That's a huge risk.

If you take VC money, you're only investing your time. Yes, you might make less money off middle outcomes, but you've also eliminated all financial risk to yourself. There's no way that you walk away from a venture-backed startup with less money than you had going in.

I don't think anyone should consciously be advising the first option (bootstrapping) to anyone who is risk-averse.
I've worked on similar code. Global state which is sometimes twiddled directly in the main loop, other times functions are called that take no arguments and return nothing, but they compute something and set global variables.

Not pretty is an understatement. It's ugly at best, and rage inducing most the time.
> getting paid for doing very little (lifestyle biz)

You couldn't be farther from my understanding of what a lifestyle business is. I understand a lifestyle business to be one that you plan on making part of your life for the long term. It is meant to provide enough income to live at a certain level (ie lifestyle), but not necessarily to become filthy rich, or result in an IPO, or some other exit point.

What makes you think a lifestyle business implies that people want to be lazy?
I just use a wiki page. We run a private Mediawiki instance for ourselves to share and store all sorts of information & knowledge, and I have a Phil_TODO page on there. I just plug stuff in at the top as it arises, then put <strike></strike> tags around stuff that's done and move those to the bottom. Periodically I come in and re-shuffle the ones near the top to reflect relative priority.

It's not perfect, but it works reasonably well for me.
Currently I'm working as a database architect but, I would love to consult or start a development business.

The most difficult part I see is where I'd get clients. Seems like I'd need to specialize in some CRM/etc or have a really good network to draw from.
(Both)
I wonder how making millions affects an individual's ability to relax and build cabins in the woods.

If Zach were doing the things he is now solely to make a living, how would that impact his happiness while conducting those activities? Would he realistically even be able to?
My peeve is that even when Windows came with all the bloatware crap that was bundled by OEMs there was a way to uninstall it. On Android you have all these apps (Facebook and the like) that you often can't uninstall without rooting the device. I guess that's just some of the poison that comes with it being open: carriers can do even worse than with Windows.
More often than not, repair places simply replace body panels as it is, because trying to fix much more than minor dings tends to be more labor intensive than just putting a new one on. So for the average service shop, it wouldn't be much difference.
I use this for my blog site. It is an awesome Content Management System (I wouldn't call it a Web framework). It has some caveats but is as good as Django in my opinion.
>This question is so naive and it's loved by the lazy because it lets them indulge the fantasy of either telling their boss to get stuffed and getting paid for doing very little (lifestyle biz), or getting paid millions and never have to work again (exit).

No, the question is loved (sic) because it's an important decision to make, and it leads to totally different ways of business development, relationship with investors and such.

>I really dislike this question and I tend to distance myself from entrepreneurs having these kinds of conversations.

Well, it's not like it's their loss.

>How do you think Steve Jobs would have answered this question?

Judging from what he actually did, he would answer that "fuck exits", he's going all the way.
Certainly, but you don't even need closures for this:

def foo():
a = []
append_foo(a)
return a

def append_foo(a):
a.append('foo')

But then I wouldn't call this "local mutability", in the sense that you modify your list in a different part of the code. Not a problem in a trivial example like this, definitively an issue when the actual action performed is ten levels deep.
It's ironic... Doesn't it seem businesses you build with the goal of an exit turn into lifestyle businesses-- while the ones that you build as a lifestyle business tend to be the ones you get the most offers for.
I guess it goes back to the YC teachings of "Build something people want".
I think therefore you need to strive and be happy for your company to be a lifestyle business, even if your ultimate goal is an exit- or else you'll never have the passion to actually turn it into something worth exiting.
I chose option 3 because I think every business is therefore a bit of both. Because conversely, even a business which someone builds as a lifestyle-- will eventually exit if the "price is right".

For anyone that's going to claim snapchat as an example of this not being true-- I'd argue they're waiting for a higher valuation or to monetize and then go public-- both exit strategies
I feel like this author just doesn't know what he's talking about and is just ranting on google because AOSP != google experience. He makes no mention of Open Handset Alliance http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/. This would be the first place to start.
The phrase "lifestyle business" is reductive and simplistic.

What about: High-quality, mission-driven, sustainable, impervious to fashion, self-motivated, resistant to the incursions of finance capital . . .

I could say similar things for the word "exit," since there are many different kinds of "exits," but I will leave that for someone else with more skin in that game.
I would posit that studies of lottery winners and human psychology could help predict the behaviors and fates of founders that receive VC-funding.

Founders may have much better (self-selected) odds of success, but financial management remains a separate skill-set from product/service development and funding solicitation.

Other studies demonstrate that wealth tends to decrease empathy and influence the mind in other ways. Whatever their past history, you are dealing with a different person after they take VC funding. This goes doubly so for predicting your own behavior, given the intrinsic limits of self-awareness.

This is why I have taken a tiered approach to my own creative projects.

I started with a small Kickstarter, just enough to gauge whether people would pay for a novel. That succeeded. Even though the funding failed to cover all the production costs, the several hundred dollars in expenses after that made for a very cheap education in crowdsourcing.

For my next project, I plan to do an anthology. It requires similar skills to a novel, but involves working with many more people, more coordination, and more money. Even if I lost all of my work and had to start it from scratch, though, it would only put me out a few thousand dollars.

Only after a such few projects, each of increasing complexity, will I take on even a small-scale video game Kickstarter. By that time, though, I will have mastered all of the production skills and will only need to ramp up on each.

And the most important of those skills? I will know what to do with thousands or tens of thousands of backer dollars. That way, even a wildly successful Kickstarter (and video games are the most-funded category) will require managing perhaps only 10x more money than before, rather than 100-1000x. I will already know what I don't require to get a project out the door.
Traditional education is really tough for venture. Teachers are probably the most change averse folks in the world. I applaud your desire make things better. VC hasn't historically mixed well here.

You might consider alternatives like http://www.newschools.org/, http://www.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do

I've Spent time trying this myself (both writing software and in the classroom). Its a hard nut.
"Four Hour Work Week"
"but Facebook and Google et al are not looking for small, moneymaking businesses."

There are for sure many companies (that are not google and facebook) out there that would be interested in acquiring "small, moneymaking businesses".

A business that makes money can be sold. Period.

I've both owned and sold (both that I've owned and for others) "small, moneymaking businesses".

Part of the issue really is most likely:

a) lack of effort in trying to sell the business (making the assumption that nobody will really buy it or that it's not worth the trouble) or

b) the people who work at the business that we are referring to here (startup lottery) perhaps won't stick around after the company is acquired. So the asset has dubious value since the most important employees won't be there post acquisition possibly.

I tend to think that it's more "a" than "b". People are lazy and are looking for an easy route and if they don't find that easy route or have no evidence that others have done it any other way (because of their lack of experience in general business) they assume it's not even worth it to try.

Of course if you want to remove the word moneymaking from the statement....

As a recent example I was trying to help someone sell their "small moneymaking business" so I sent a cold email to the head of Rackspace. I got a reply the same day and they assigned people at Rackspace to consider the request (can't say what obviously). It didn't take investment bankers it didn't take business brokers it simply took identifying an obvious target and sending an email. If the email didn't get answered (it did) I would have sent a postal letter or fedex stating the opportunity. Did the same with a reality tv star presenting an opportunity. Same thing got a reply and a deal was done. (I guess I write good emails?) And that didn't even take effort. Of course there are emails that have not resulted in anything obviously but that didn't make me stop trying to do deals. Most people get rejected and don't understand the value of plugging away.
"Consumer cards have multiple monitor outputs too"

I mean something like this:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvs-compare-product-specs.html

"Oh but you can add another video card", not always, this is needed in some cases (a niche case, true)

For the other aspects, your guess is as good as mine. Sure, games stress the card more than Autocad, but maybe things like Maya put more (or different) stresses on it

I don't disagree with you, I would use a regular video card first to see if it meets my needs.

Now, for CUDA or other calculation apps, I would go for the Pro video cards, specifically because I would have someone to complain if it didn't work the way it should. And that's usually why things cost more sometimes.
It's still easily possible. If you save a mere $10k/year for 20 years and get a return on your investments that beats inflation by 5%, you'll end up with $350k in today's dollars.
YogaGlo Update
> have you seen the output of make?

Yes. That's a good point. Make is awful to read through quickly.
>"I really like web development but I can't get anyone to take a chance on me even at half of my current salary. I don't really have time to do side projects and build up a decent portfolio so I understand why people are skeptical."

Find the time.

It seems like you already know how you can carve it out, you just have to accept the sacrifice[0].

Figure out what's most important to you and start cutting out things that don't move you closer to that goal. You'll simultaneously start moving in the direction you want to go and possibly spend less making the possible reduction in salary easier to swallow.

This is all certainly easier said than done, but it's not like your situation is terribly unique - I expect it's pretty common experience around HN.

Everyone I know who found happiness leaving or reorienting themselves in tech did it by preparing rather than simply leaping. Turning hobbies and part-time projects of passion into careers.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6245844
9 Live Wallpapers to Make Your Macintosh Even More Beautiful
>As I see it, America has always had a big issue with cults of personality since WWII

Where exactly have you seen this?

>While the public foreign policy statement is something like 'oh, if your people elect you, you're a-ok' it's much more like 'if you're a friend of the U.S. and don't do anything we find objectionable, you're a-ok'. Objectionable being, basically murdering your own people enmasse and or giving signs that you're not going to be a benevolent dictator, or trying to get more than conventional weapons.

How exactly did Mossadegh, Allende, or Arbenz fall under this rule of thumb? The US has a history of overthrowing democratically elected leaders and installing mass murdering despots who were friendly to gigantic US businesses.

Has the US ever overthrown a dictator in favor of democratic elections?
I think the point is, if smartphone cameras eventually get to say 40MP then people will start uploading at that resolution even if there's absolutely no benefit from it. The image may then be scaled down to be shown on the page, but FB can keep the original.

it would be cool to make group pictures, though.
Same issue happened to me, Google responded several hours later with the following email:

"""
Dear AdMob Developer,

Last week, we wrote to let you know that on December 19th 2013 we would initiate refunds to you for unused legacy AdMob advertising credits. Today we are writing to let know that between December 19th and 20th we inadvertently processed refunds for more than your unused balance. In some cases, customers will see multiple refund amounts on their bank card statement.

To correct this error, we have reversed these incorrect refunds with corresponding transactions for the same amount(s). These corrections have been processed on December 23rd and December 24th to the same bank card that the initial refund(s) was processed to. This means that you will see one negative and one positive transaction on your card statement for each refund made in error. These transactions will have “GOOGLE*ADMOB” as the description for the credits.

We will be processing the correct refund in early January 2014 for the correct amount owed to you. You will see a separate transaction for this refund amount on your January or February bank card statement.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

If you have any questions about this communication please check out our FAQ’s linked here.

Sincerely,
The Google AdMob Team
"""
Most of my todo items come to me as emails, so I wanted something that lives within my Gmail. I managed this in three steps...
1/ I created a label called "todo"
2/ I made this a section in my Gmail priority Inbox so it's always displayed
3/ I created a filter to fire on emails sent to myname+todo@gmail.com, and label them as todo.

So I can just label an email as todo, or send myself an email to myname+todo@gmail.com
Amen, it's the distribution of the weight. Also, if there is less weight, one can use an narrower tire to provide the same amount of pressure per square inch of contact patch.

In other words, less weight + smaller tire == same snow bite. Smaller tire? Cheaper tire. Smaller tire? Less rolling resistance. Lighter spare tire.

Lighter truck? Better gas mileage, better stopping, better cornering. If there is a 1000 lbs less to stop on the snow, that will make a huge difference.
One thing which might skew your statistics, is that taking VC funding or going to YC is itself the result of wanting a large success being your mindset in the first place.

In other words, it's true that investors don't necessarily have leverage over founders, and I'm sure the scenario that Daniel describes is just as rare in YC as you say it is.

But the reason this is true might be that the kind of people who go to YC are also the kind of people who want to take a 1-in-a-million shot at big money, rather than taking more conservative odds for less money. And one of the reasons this is true, is that founders don't understand the statistics and the risk profiles of their options, or in many cases don't recognise that they even have options in the first place when choosing what type of business to build.

Daniel's meta-point about founders being able to choose which kind of business they will build, including choosing it's risk profile, is something I hope more and more founders get exposed to.
Have caps lock mapped to quick escape and control (i.e. tap for escape and hold down for control).
Somewhat related, left-control is mapped to Hyper. This post was an inspiration: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/#happ...

Combined with ShiftIt, I can approximate a primitive keyboard-controlled tiling window manager on the Mac: https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt
Maybe not so much forgot it, but bundled it into "lifestyle business".

Amazingly, people using the term to mean every kind of steady growth company (as opposed to some exponential growth byout-IPO style exit vehicle).

So, 37 Signals say, with tens of millions in revenue, tens of employees and 12+ years in business is also labeled a "lifestyle business".
Write it in LaTeX.
I think money, in this case, is a stand in for security. Some individuals have the mental makeup that allows to have peace and security internally even if an outsider wouldn't say that about them from their external circumstances.

A person like this takes their security from their faith in themselves, god, their relationships or their belief in some higher purpose or perhaps in their own self-delusion.

Having enough can mean enough money, enough love, enough self-actualization. Money, to me, is the easiest one.
I went to law school thinking I would come out a lawyer. Makes sense, right? Quickly, I found that I was having to use tools and websites that seemed to be designed to actively make the job of legal research harder than it needed to be. Not only that, but anything "digital" or "electronic" really just seemed like someone said "put up the paper version on a screen" with no recognition of what web technologies were capable of.

So out of those three choices, I would say the third is most applicable assuming "exit" means a buyout/sale of shares. I'm not looking for an exit or to run a lifestyle business. I'm forming a business that I'll hand off the reigns to at some arbitrary point in the future, unrelated to financials, when I feel like I can finally be the badass super lawyer I know is possible when these tools are built.
Two ways:

1. Pen and paper for daily tasks.

2. A desktop app I wrote for personal use that helps me track intermittent tasks / projects. It's more geared toward tracking train of thought than tasks, though.
Every person I've known to do it, all three of them, has been the happier for it. These were all computer-science-degreed, top tier consultants. Just couldn't stand the industry anymore. One woman went off an trained to become a master clock builder, all off of having taken a tour of one builder's workshop only a few months prior! She's my hero.

I've considered it. I got halfway there, building museum props for a short spell. It wasn't enough money so I took the first programming contract that came my way. I do have to say, life has been much better as a freelancer than as an employee. It's still not perfect, though that is partly my own fault for not finding more clients.

I think that's a large part of it: the self determination of working for yourself. I know some people can't motivate themselves enough to get the work done on their own. I guess they just find working for someone else a lot easier than I do. I don't know, I wake up and remind myself of cubicle farms and it kicks my ass out of bed every morning.
Watch less TV, go to bed earlier/get up earlier and read more nonfiction.
Who knows. It will make firefighters' jobs a lot more interesting at accident scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z2uwC4mvoY
YC/Palo Alto/California/America/Continental North America/Western Hemisphere/Terrestrial Earth/&c
The smaller the aperture, the more diffracted incoming light rays. Once the 'circle of confusion' or airy disc exceeds the size of a single pixel on the sensor, you begin to lose lens sharpness. If you imagine two strips of paper, one green, one blue, directly adjacent. Now imagine photons from either side of the adjacent edge passing through a lens which slightly diffracts them.

This results in an obvious merging of the blue/green strips. The more the diffraction the more they merge, the less sharp the images become.

Current APS-C sensors at 18 megapixels have pixels small enough that an aperture of around f/11 is the minimum size before this effect begins. As sensors get more and more dense, the required aperture size gets larger and larger. F/8 is considered a 'normal' aperture and once sensors hit that density then the payoff from increased resolution is significantly less and can impact image quality adversely.

This is why science missions use 2mp CCDs that they know the characteristics of, rather than some 40 megapixel phone sensor.

edit: I've just realised I've typed all this out with the wrong idea. You wanted a simple explanation of diffraction. Imagine a water tank with waves being generated from a source at one end. Put a wall with a narrow hole in the middle of the tank. If the wavelength of the waves is significantly less than the width of the hole, they will for the most part pass through unaltered. As the hole gets smaller, more significant changes to the waves occur. They begin to 'spread out' or 'diffract'. An intuitive explanation is difficult but this is a practical one that makes sense to people.
This is a slippery slope. You have to keep in mind that >2% (some estimates as high as 7%) of Google Queries are related to lyrics/ RG related content. They also (arguably) have much better, much more relevant content.
As such a large amount of google searches would end up with someone wanting a RapGenius page - it's only fair that they would get preferential treatment over a niche startup/site/blog.
That's really pathetic and embarrassing.
Why are you linking to this?
I love the idea of Bullet Journaling. I used to do something similar couple of years ago. Now I use Wunderlist mostly because its OS/Device agnostic and reasonable looking.

The reason Bullet written journaling didn't work for me because carrying a notebook is annoying, since I don't keep a bag with me all the time, it means I have to keep one in my pocket all the time. Also Notebooks gets damaged.

The positive was that it "feels" more personal when writing down your todo list and there is definitely a "cool" factor to it. But probably not for everyone.
> I would dispute it based on principle.

What principle exactly? You had an accident that (minimally) affected me, so I'm going to charge you for it? I could understand if it was something major, but for the hypothetical dollar, really?