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Like many of the commenters here, I found his "How To Get Rich" inspirational, thought-provoking and endearing. I read a lot of books targeted at entrepreneurs, and they're mostly fluff. But Felix's writing is honest: He literally begins the book by trying to convince you not to make the attempt! But, like any wise uncle, he recognizes that any person reading a book entitled "How To Get Rich" doesn't want to hear that, and proceeds to tell you that mere desire is not enough; you need compulsion. Stamina. He tells you plainly that the getting of wealth builds a sort of armour around your heart - a 'carapace', I think is the word he used. You'll probably lose your family.

But he also tells you the joys of wealth. The jets (rented, of course: "if it flies, floats, or fornicates - rent; don't buy"). The Rolls Royces. First editions of antique books. Chateau d'Yquem.

And then tells you just as plainly that he would give it ALL up, if he could get his youth back. Time.

I've long believed that you should add some books to your calendar, as a recurring reminder, may be once or twice, to re-read them. "How To Get Rich" is one such book for me. As the top review on Amazon says for the book: An honest account from a person who has been there and done that."

Thanks, Uncle Felix.

Edit: Pleasant coincidence: My HN username is the same as the name of his magazine :)

Then, there are the senior managers who know enough to know that they want admin access so they can do whatever, but not how to protect themselves. They're gonna call your boss, who's gonna tell you to give them admin access. And WHEN something goes wrong, guess who gets the blame?

I don't miss those days...

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with that as a general principle. In this specific instance, with Comcast et al who benefit from monopolies, sure. But as a general principle, the 'value' of a product or service is whatever people are willing to pay for it. If I buy widgets in Asia for $1 each, and Americans are willing to buy them for $1,000,000 each, than that's their value.

When you type 'pip install package_name', pip connects to PyPI to retrieve package_name.

You said it best: "at the end of the day, money equals freedom." My previous sentiments: [0]

>At the end of the day no one can argue that someone that lives on $20,000 a month doesn't have a better quality of life than someone living on $5000 a month.

Oh, you'd be surprised. TONS of people will disagree; I know several of them :). They'll create strawmen, saying things like "Oh, yeah, he spends $20,000 / month, but he {had to sell his soul to get it | isn't happy | has a bad relationship with his family"}. Personally, I think it's just jealously, and bitterness.

Me? I'm a 1st year CS student. I have a math final on Thursday, but I owe about USD380 on my tuition, so I'm gonna be barred from sitting the exam, which means an automatic fail. The course is a pre-requisite for semester 2 courses. Which means my degree plans just got pushedback. Being in this situation, when I hear people talk like money ain't a thing, it kinda makes me shake my head. No beef with @carsongross, but to me, money is really, really important. For want of 0.4BTC, my kingdom is lost ;(.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025537

My 'Ode to Wealth': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2026680

I think that Windows 7 is the new XP: It's a great OS, with perhaps no obvious warts, so nobody really needs to upgrade, as wee needed to upgrade from Windows Me (Ugh!). It looks modern enough, is very stable (c'mon now, let's admit it) and simply does its job. For most people, why bother upgrade?

In time, of course, we'll see Windows 8 numbers improve, as people replace old computers. But most laptops now, are like Windows 7, and XP before it: They're good enough for most people, so why bother upgrade?

The author makes it seem as if isolation while coding necessarily precludes one from collaborating with teammates or meeting with the customer.

But what, exactly, is so difficult in say, having a team meeting in the morning, going off to your batcave to code, and perhaps another meeting in the afternoon (depending on how regularly you need to meet).

He makes some good (if obvious) points, but on the whole, this article is poor.

Happy Birthday :)

Say, for example, you go into a carpenter's shop, and you see that he writes down what you want built on a scrap of paper. That's your "in". Ask if all orders are stored on paper. "Oh? I'm nikentic, and I build software for businesses. Where do you store these papers? How are you tracking receivables? How are you tracking the progress of each piece? Do you store your customer's email?"

Ask them these questions, in as much detail as you need, using your knowledge of what's possible with technology to make suggestions. You will be pleasantly surprised how much details they are willing to share about their businesses. Ask them if they would pay XXX/month for a system that covers all the major pain points they mentioned. If they would, find other carpenters and ask them if they would be interested. If you get enough interest you might be on to something. Also, how many devs are out actively looking to create software for carpenters?*

*Where carpenters = small - medium companies that are not in the technology sector.

I'm not surprised, per se, but rather always amazed whenever I hear stories of rich people acting in ways inimical to their economic interests. One would think that an experienced (I guess) businessman, such as a VC, would be somewhat more rational than that. Then again, this is an article about 'Investor Herd Dynamics', so I suppose that should inform my opinions about human behaviour.

If SIAI approaches me to buy $WIDGET and Google approaches me to buy the same $WIDGET, I'm charging Google an order of magnitude more than I'm charging you.

When musicians directly copy another's work, i.e., sampling, don't they need to get permission? And if the owner of sampled work says "no, you can't have it", then that's that.

Again, easy to do =! ethical.

Mass surveillance has become widespread. Deal with it.

Every time the copyright debate comes up, you tirelessly try to inject reason into it. But they're not having it. I simply cannot, for the life of me, understand why people think that it's their RIGHT to copy the works of others. I'm no saint - I love me some isohunt - but I don't have the self-entitled mindset that says "I'm supposed to be able to pirate your stuff, your hard work be damned."

"Oh, well technology has outdated their business model, artists need to get with the times!" Well technology has updated the NSA's surveillance model, but everybody's mad? If ease of copying is a justification for piracy, then ease of data collection is a justification for mass surveillance.

But the HN crowd is unaffected, because they're relying on SaaS to make money. I keep waiting for the day when someone invents a way to reverse engineer webapps, and all and sundry will be able to download $SociaLocalMobileStartuply.com's code, and freely use it to create their own competitor to it. Then we'll see the hypocrisy of these entitled pirates.

You don't have a right to people's stuff. If you did, it'd be your stuff.

Keep up the fight, Thomas. You're a better man than I am.

Mind you, there are good reasons for training soldiers this way - In the heat of combat, the Platoon Commander can't put everything to a vote. But this way of life does have its negatives.