A long time ago, I worked on Renderfarm.fi, which was like what you're proposing but free. I was just an extremely junior developer working on the front end. The volunteer computing system itself was based on BOINC. I recall it was quite the effort to keep it running. If I remember right we rendered everything multiple times on different nodes to make sure that jobs weren't being faked.
There's no point to this post other than a trip down memory lane. I wish you the best with this project!
It's not exactly a nice move to link to the download folder before the main website has been updated, because as you might notice this has resulted in a lot of confusion from normal HN users who don't follow the Blender mailing lists/developer forums closely. The release is in fact today, the 30th of July, but possibly several hours from now, as many developers are currently at SIGGRAPH in California.
Even if the link is changed to https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/ (which it probably should be), that page hasn't been updated since RC3, which will possibly just confuse more people.
It would probably be better for the Blender community to not jump the gun and wait until the website is updated.
This is (a release candidate for) a huge milestone in Blender's history. So much has been improved, that some, including myself, have speculated why they didn't choose to make it a 3.0 release.
Aside from the fantastic new features geared towards existing users, which are described in detail & with pictures in the OP, this release also makes Blender a lot more user-friendly for those who haven't used it before. 3D software almost necessarily has a steep learning curve for new users, as you have to learn not only how to use a new program, but also how 3D content creation itself works. But in this release the developers and designers have made an effort to get rid of the biggest "gotchas" that many new users complained about when using previous versions of Blender.
If you've wanted to get into 3D content creation before, there's never been a better time!
Finland and Denmark have mandatory military service for males. Sweden got rid of mandatory military service in 2010, then reinstated it in 2016. Norway currently has "weak conscription" in that recruits are not forced to serve. Latvia was a part of the Soviet Union a generation ago, and had conscription until 2005.
So what all those countries have in common is that a large portion of the male population has actual military training.
Interestingly, while in English we now say "business card", it seems that at least Swedish and Finnish, and probably other languages too, retained some form of "visiting card". In Swedish "visitkort" and in Finnish "käyntikortti" (literally, visit card) are still the terms for business card in use today.
Another small UX thing: Never use window.prompt(). On Chrome at least it prevents me from switching tabs, I know on some systems it also plays an annoying sound.
Well if you're looking for any kind of project, some famous ones are:
* Netscape a.k.a. Firefox
* Blender (http://blender.org) was commercial until 2002 when the company behind it failed. The rights to the code were bought for €100,000 of user donations.
* Lightworks, a video editing program, is apparently supposed to become open source, right now it could be described as "freemium".
> On this last point, they talk about leveraging a non-corporate image, like the Dudesons or Madventures, and throw “the largest events, gigs, and parties of human kind”.
It used to be like this, but throughout this year in preparation for the 1.0 release the devs really stepped it up. The official guides are good nowadays.