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Arjuna

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Jacked up, clocked in, and ready to bring it.

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I am particularly encouraged by the response to this comment that I wrote; a reader replied that it was the first time that they wanted to gild someone the equivalent of Reddit Gold on Hacker News:

"You have to do the work."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076143

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The school of suffering graduates rare scholars.

- Mary Jo Reaser

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The path I walk, I walk it with my own resolve.

- Killswitch Engage

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That which you work against will always work against you.

- Henry Rollins

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Leave out the fiction • The fact is • This friction • Will only be worn by persistence

Leave out conditions • Courageous convictions • Will drag the dream into existence

- Neil Peart

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Nature, nurture, heaven and home • Sum of all, and by them driven • To conquer every mountain shown • But I've never crossed the river

Braved the forest, braved the stone • Braved the icy winds and fire • Braved and beat them on my own • Yet I'm helpless by the river

Angel, angel what have I done? • I've faced the quakes, the wind, the fire • I've conquered country, crown, and throne • Why can't I cross this river?

Pay no mind to the battles you've won • It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle • Open your heart and hands, my son • Or you'll never make it over the river

It'll take a lot more than words and guns • A whole lot more than riches and muscle • The hands of the many must join as one • And together we'll cross the river

- Maynard James Keenan

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I wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night any dream you wanted to dream? And you would, of course, be able to alter your time sense, and slip, say, 75 years of subjective time into 8 hours of sleep.

You would, I suppose, start out by fulfilling all your wishes. You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life: love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, music beyond belief.

And then, after a couple of months of this sort of thing, at 75 years a night, you'd be getting a little taste for something different, and you would move over to an adventurous dimension, where there was sudden dangers involved, and the thrill of dealing with dangers. And you could rescue princesses from dragons, and go on dangerous journeys, make wonderful explosions and blow them up, eventually get into contest with enemies.

And after you'd done that for some time, you'd think up a new wrinkle: to forget that you were dreaming, so that you would think it was all for real, and to be anxious about it. Because it'd be so great when you woke up.

And then you'd say, well, like children who dare each other on things, how far out could you get? What could you take? What dimension of being lost, of abandonment of your power - what dimension of that could you stand? You could ask yourself this 'cause you know you'd eventually wake up.

And after you'd gone on doing this, you see, for some time, you'd suddenly find yourself sitting around in this room, with all your personal involvements, problems, etc... talking with me.

How do you know that that's not what you're doing? Could be, because after all, what would you do if you were god? Because if you were, well, there is, the Self. In the Upanishads, the basic texts of Hinduism, one of them starts out saying, "In the beginning was the Self, and looking around, it said, 'I am.'" And thus it is that everyone to this day, when asked, "Who is there?" says, "It is I."

If you were god, and in this sense that you knew everything, you would be bored. Because, if looking at it from another way, we pushed technology to its furthest possible development, and we had, instead of a dial telephone on one's desk, a more complex system of buttons, and one touch would give you anything you wanted; Aladdin's lamp. You would eventually have to introduce a button, labeled, "Surprise." Because all perfectly known futures, as I pointed out, are past; they have happened, virtually. It is only the true future is a surprise.

- Alan Watts

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I know Hammond and May think my 928 Porsche is a bit dull, but for one very good reason, it isn't dull to me. You see, back in 1994, I was living in London, I got a call one evening from my mum to say that my dad was desperately ill in a hospital in Sheffield, and I needed to get there as quickly as possible.

I'd just taken the chicken out of the oven, and I thought, well, I'll take that for my mum because she won't have eaten, ran outside, and I had a 928 on test that week.

And when I arrived in Sheffield, the chicken was still warm, and my dad was still alive; in fact, he died half an hour later.

And the truth is, if I hadn't have been driving a car which could sit quite happily at 170 miles an hour, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to say goodbye to my dad.

So as far as I'm concerned, the 928 is alright.

- Jeremy Clarkson

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Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it.

- John Carmack

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It's hard to do a Kickstarter when you regularly Tweet photos of your Lamborghinis.

- Cliff Bleszinski, when asked, "Why not Kickstarter?"

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At IBM in the 1980s, typical productivity would be 1,000 debugged, shipped lines of code per year. That was the metric that they used for their median employee. Where as, when we were shipping Half Life 1, one employee, Yahn Bernier, was shipping 4,000 lines of code per day.

- Gabe Newell

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The things that we fear are a weapon to be held against us.

- Neil Peart

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To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

- Carlos Castaneda

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Every morning you wake up, there are two doors, and there are thundering knocks at each one of them. Behind one lies your destiny, in living the greatness that you came here to fulfill in your life; behind the other lies death.

- The Ultimate Warrior

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If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.

- Nikola Tesla

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Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price.

Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there. Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.

I've never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline.

A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.

- Vince Lombardi

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~ Sol Robeson ~

You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time.

It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks. Insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end.

Finally, his equally exhausted wife... she's forced to share a bed with this genius... convinces him to take a bath to relax.

While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density... weight over volume.

And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka!" and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery.

Now, what is the moral of the story?

~ Maximillian Cohen ~

That a breakthrough will come.

~ Sol Robeson ~

Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. You listen to your wife, she will give you perspective. Meaning, you need a break, you have to take a bath or you will get nowhere. There will be no order, only chaos.

Go home, Max... and you take a bath.

- From the film Pi

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en.wikipedia.org 8y ago

Ruth–Aaron pair

Arjuna
1pts0
fd.fabiensanglard.net 9y ago

John Carmack Archive – Interviews [pdf]

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240pts61
www.popularmechanics.com 11y ago

Elon Musk: Failed Strut Caused SpaceX's ISS Rocket Disaster

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6pts1
www.extremetech.com 11y ago

NASA's New Horizons Space Probe: Powered by PlayStation

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John Carmack Q&A

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Crowdpark Raises $6M For Social Betting Games

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7. Scott Francis[Mecham asks:

“Recently someone posted about their experience in determining the file structure of the Doom WAD file. How did you feel when people were discovering how to modify Doom, from building new levels, to changing the executable itself (dhacked) originally without any information from id? In your opinion, is the modding community a valuable place for creating future game developers?”

John Carmack Answers:

“The hacking that went on in Wolfenstein was unexpected, but based on that, DOOM was designed from the beginning to be modified by the user community.

[…]

I still remember the first time I saw the original Star Wars DOOM mod. Seeing how someone had put the death star into our game felt so amazingly cool. I was so proud of what had been made possible, and I was completely sure that making games that could serve as a canvas for other people to work on was a valid direction.”

https://m.slashdot.org/story/7828

In my analysis, you absolutely did the right thing.

I have this underlying, background process that is continuously running in my mind that is essentially, “Please don’t let it be my fault.”

And so that thought has guided me while driving, in daily living, and in one particular instance that reminded me of your experience (because I was not in charge of safety).

I was a patron at a wave pool in the heat of the summer. The waves were churning, and the water was packed with people.

I am hyper vigilant by internal design, and I noticed this young girl starting to drown.

If you have not seen this before, it is nothing like you would imagine; there is no wild flailing of the arms, or urgent calls for help. It is an almost surreal, quiet experience.

I made my way to her in what seemed like a slow motion moment blended into a faster-than-life response, and scooped her up in my arms as if she were my own child.

I remember that she was stunned as I raised her from the water, with somniferous, glassy eyes before she inhaled.

I am welling up just thinking about it. It was an intense experience that I will never forget.

”It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.”

It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel that someone of John Carmack’s caliber is capable of delivering was not being followed.

In the tweet, the waveform image on the left is Mick’s original “BFG Division” track from the Doom 2016 OST.

In the same tweet, the waveform image on the right is Chad’s edited version of Mick’s track for the Doom Eternal OST, entitled “BFG Division 2020.”

The comparison is valid, because it is Mick’s music, and it also serves to demonstrate the audio engineering expertise on the Doom 2016 OST, which was hailed as a masterwork soundtrack in the genre.

However, Mick did not mix this particular track for the Doom Eternal OST, and this is the critical point of this specific waveform comparison; that is, as Mick expresses in the article (and the waveform comparison demonstrates), the Doom Eternal OST is not entirely representative of his actual work, or the full depth of his audio engineering expertise.

This is due to decisions and modifications that were made without his input (e.g., the aforementioned editing).

This sounds like a similar strategy taken straight out of the Hollywood Accounting [1] playbook:

“On Friday, Reuters reported that J&J secretly launched ‘Project Plato’ last year to shift liability from about 38,000 pending Baby Powder talc lawsuits to a newly created subsidiary, which was then to be put into bankruptcy. By doing so, J&J could limit its financial exposure to the lawsuits.”

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

”The 10x programmer is a silly myth.”

Incredibly high performers exist, but are rare.

For example, the following quote is from a talk given by Gabe Newell.

(Unfortunately, I do not have the URL to the source video for this quote.)

“At IBM in the 1980s, typical productivity would be 1,000 debugged, shipped lines of code per year. That was the metric that they used for their median employee. Where as, when we were shipping Half Life 1, one employee, Yahn Bernier, was shipping 4,000 lines of code per day.”

Regarding the topic of career longevity as a software engineer:

Focus on combining your software engineering skills with delivering value in a specific, core competency.

That is to say:

Good software engineers tend to focus on being good at programming, and all of the details that venture entails (e.g., mastery of specific languages, knowledge of specific ways of operating in a given framework, IDE, or tool, etc.).

Better software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to apply a deeper level of problem-solving ability that has been laser-focused by their experience in the art.

Finally, superlative software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to leverage those skills to deliver value as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in a specific domain.

I believe that you have to be more than just a programmer if you want to maximize your career's longevity, and its associated compensation package.

Two verses from the lyrics to Limelight by Rush come to mind:

Cast in this unlikely role • Ill-equipped to act • With insufficient tact • One must put up barriers • To keep oneself intact

[...]

Living in a fish eye lens • Caught in the camera eye • I have no heart to lie • I can’t pretend a stranger • Is a long-awaited friend

Originally posted by OrdaGarb on April 26th, 2015...

I have a slight fascination with sweeteners. About five years ago I imported a kilo of "Neotame" sweetener from a chem factory in Shanghai. It was claimed to be 10,000-12,000 times sweeter than sugar. It's a white powder and came in a metal can with a crimped lid and typically plain chemical labeling. Supposedly it is FDA-approved and a distant derivative of aspartame.

US customs held it for two weeks before sending it on to Colorado with no explanation. When received, the box was covered in "inspected" tape and they had put the canister in a clear plastic bag. The crimped lid looked like a rottweiler chewed it open and white powder was all over the inside of the bag. I unwisely opened this in my kitchen with no respirator as advised by the MSDS which I read after the fact (I am not a smart man).

Despite careful handling of the bag, it is so fine in composition that a small cloud of powder erupted in front of me and a hazy layer of the stuff settled over the kitchen. Eyes burning and some mild choking from inhaling the cloud, I instantly marveled at how unbelievably sweet the air tasted, and it was delicious. For several hours I could still taste it on my lips. The poor customs inspector will have had a lasting memory of that container I'm pretty sure.

Even after a thorough wipe-down, to this day I encounter items in my kitchen with visually imperceptible amounts of residue. After touching it and getting even microscopic quantities of the stuff on a utensil or cup, bowl, plate, whatever, it adds an intense element of sweetness to the food being prepared, sometimes to our delight. I still have more than 900g even after giving away multiple baggies to friends and family (with proper safety precautions).

We have been hooked on it since that first encounter. I keep a 100mL bottle of solution in the fridge which is used to fill smaller dropper bottles. I've prepared that 100mL bottle three times over five years, and that works out to about 12g of personal (somewhat heavy) usage for two people in that time. Probably nowhere near the LD50.

I carry a tiny 30mL dropper bottle of the solution for sweetening the nasty office coffee and anything else as appropriate. Four drops to a normal cup of coffee. We sweeten home-carbonated beverages, oatmeal, baked goods (it is heat stable), use it in marinades, and countless other applications.

I don't know if it's safe. The actual quantity used is so incredibly tiny that it seems irrelevant. I'd sweeten my coffee with polonium-210 if it could be done in Neotame-like quantities. Between this, a salt shaker loaded with MSG and a Darwin fish on my car, I'm doomed anyway.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440566

Anytime Woz comes up, I can't help but think of this sentence that he wrote, way back on Google+, sometime in 2013, after the release of the Jobs film:

"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."

Gus Fring said it better than I ever will:

"What does a man do, Walter? [...] A man provides. And he does it, even when he's not appreciated, or respected, or even loved. He simply bears up and he does it, because he's a man."

The speed limit in the US is 1000mph, else it’s a munition.

Please note: my apologies in advance for a comment that may be perceived as pedantic, but I just wanted to further illuminate this statement.

The U.S. regulation, which technically falls under the Export Administration Regulations (Navigation and Avionics), does not exclusively regulate GPS navigation in munitions applications; rather, it serves to regulate any airborne application where the GPS receiver is capable of resolving navigation telemetry at speeds in excess of 600 m/s. This equates to approximately 1,968.5 ft/s, or 1,342.16 MPH.

Given the speed limitation parameter of the aforementioned regulation, this regulation would not only apply to GPS receivers in munitions applications, but it would also apply to GPS receivers that are utilized in fighter aircraft, space vehicles, etc.

Coffee, and its associated caffeine effects, has an interesting history in the battle theater. These comments regarding coffee are from the American Civil War:

"Perhaps the North's access to caffeine gave its soldiers a strategic advantage. At least that's what one Union officer, Gen. Benjamin Butler, thought. He ordered his men to carry coffee in their canteens and planned attacks based on when his men would be most wired. His advice to other generals was: 'If your men get their coffee early in the morning, you can hold.'" [1]

"In 1859 Sharps Rifle Co. began to manufacture a carbine with a hand-cranked grinder built into the butt stock — or handle — of the rifle. Union soldiers would fill the stock with beans, grind them up, dump them out and use the grounds to cook the coffee. As the morning began, one Civil War diarist described a scene of 'little campfires rapidly increasing to hundreds in numbers that would shoot up along the hills and plains.' The encampment would buzz with the sound of thousands of grinders simultaneously crushing beans. Soon, tens of thousands of muckets (coffee pots) gurgled with fresh brew." [2]

[1][2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/25/485227943/if...

I would like to recommend "The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing" by Steven W. Smith. It is free to read online or download at https://www.dspguide.com/

It is suited for the reader that does not possess a heavy mathematical background; in fact, the author writes:

"This book was written for scientists and engineers in a wide variety of fields: physics, bio-engineering, geology, oceanography, mechanical and electrical engineering, to name just a few. The goal is to present practical techniques while avoiding the barriers of detailed mathematics and abstract theory. To achieve this goal, three strategies were employed in writing this book:

First, the techniques are explained, not simply proven to be true through mathematical derivations. While much of the mathematics is included, it is not used as the primary means of conveying the information. Nothing beats a few well written paragraphs supported by good illustrations.

[...]

Second, complex numbers are treated as an advanced topic, something to be learned after the fundamental principles are understood.

[...]

Third, very simple computer programs are used."

Regarding the topic of career longevity as a software engineer:

Focus on combining your software engineering skills with delivering value in a specific, core competency.

That is to say:

Good software engineers tend to focus on being good at programming, and all of the details that venture entails (e.g., mastery of specific languages, knowledge of specific ways of operating in a given framework, IDE, or tool, etc.).

Better software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to apply a deeper level of problem-solving ability that has been laser-focused by their experience in the art.

Superlative software engineers are capable of all of the preceding, plus the ability to leverage those skills to deliver value as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in a specific domain.

I believe that you have to be more than just a programmer if you want to maximize your career's longevity, and its associated compensation package.

John mentioning his NeXT computer in this post reminded me of his NeXT computer purchase story from Masters of Doom:

"On a cold winter day, Carmack laced up his shoes, slipped on his jacket, and headed out into the Madison snow. The town was blanketed in the stuff, cars caked in frost, trees dangling ice. Carmack endured the chill because he had no car; he'd sold the MGB long before. It was easy enough for him to shut out the weather, just like he could, when necessary, shut Tom and Romero's antics out of his mind. He was on a mission.

Carmack stepped into the local bank and requested a cashier's check for $11,000. The money was for a NeXT computer, the latest machine from Steve Jobs, cocreator of Apple. The NeXT, a stealth black cube, surpassed the promise of Jobs's earlier machines by incorporating NeXTSTEP, a powerful system tailor-made for custom software development. The market for PCs and games was exploding, and this was the perfect tool to create more dynamic titles for the increasingly viable gaming platform. It was the ultimate Christmas present for the ultimate in young graphics programmers, Carmack."

"Woz likes teaching I'd be surprised he sold his name for nothing else but money."

I feel the same way. This is part of what he had to say in a comment [1] he wrote in 2013, discussing the then-released Jobs film. It absolutely speaks volumes about his character:

"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."

I was unable to link to his comment directly. Also, I had to click the "View previous comments" link in order to view his comment.

[1] https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf

This is the part... John discusses his functional programming adventures in Haskell at QuakeCon 2013.

"So what I set out to do was take the original Wolfenstein 3D, and re-implement it in Haskell."

[...]

"I've got a few conclusions coming from it. One of them is that, there's still the question about static vs dynamic. I know that there was a survey just coming out recently where the majority of programmers are still really not behind static typing. I know that there's the two orthogonal axes about whether types are strong or weak, and whether it's static or dynamic. I come down really pretty firmly, all my experience continues to push me towards this way, that strong, static typing has really significant benefits. Sometimes it's not comfortable, sometimes you have to build up a tight scaffolding to do something that should be really easy, but there are real, strong wins to it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uooh0Y9fC_M#t=4876

(Starts at approximately 1:21:16 in case the direct link doesn't work correctly.)

I found these insights interesting:

"I know that most people won't believe it, but a 100x increase in income really didn't have that big of an impact on me as a person. It is certainly nice to be in a position where people can't exert any leverage on you, but it's definitely not the primary focus of my life. I get to drive a Ferrari in to work, but my day to day life is almost exactly the same as it was eight years ago. I get up, go in to work, hopefully do some good stuff, then go home. I'm still happy." [1]

[...]

"I feel bad for some companies out there. The founders, who are these incredible engineers, are now directors of their departments doing management rather than engineering. At the same time most of the people they are managing are nowhere near as good as they were at doing the actual work. That's what I hope never happens to me. I want to stay in the trenches working on the things all the time. There is some benefit to sitting back, reading and researching and getting some broader scope on it. But if you're divorced from the low level nuts and bolts of things, like how this actually applies to the real world, then you're just an academic. You get these huge disconnects between what an academic can do and what somebody in production can do." [2]

[1] Page 77

[2] Page 89

Hello... this is a topic I'm interested in, because I'd like to write one day. Anyway, I thought you might find these resources useful:

1. Nathan Barry has written extensively about his success with self-publishing. Essentially, his method (I'm simplifying here) is to 1. position yourself as an expert in your field via blogging, then 2. directly market to your audience via email using a 3. tiered pricing model (i.e., multiple packages at increasing price-points). He wrote a book about his methodology entitled "Authority."

Authority:

http://nathanbarry.com/authority

Nathan Barry’s Lessons Learned Selling $355,759 on Gumroad:

http://blog.gumroad.com/post/73421524134/nathan-barrys-lesso...

2. Bob Nystrom has written about his experience writing and marketing "Game Programming Patterns."

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/04/22/zero-to-95688-h...

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2014/11/20/how-my-book-lau...

A comment he wrote regarding publishing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878280

3. Advice and insight on the topic of traditional publishing from Patrick McKenzie:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12118914

4. Thread entitled "Ask HN: Has anyone here self-published a book? Any advice?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6052075

5. Self-publishing success comment involving multiple pricing tiers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878266

6. Self-publishing success story entitled "How I Made $70k Self-Publishing a Book about Ruby on Rails."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13876514

All the best!