France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-airlines-tax-idUSKCN1U412B <comment><USER2> Finally. It's really frustrating to see how heavily subsidized airlines, plane fuel and airports are and how big of a tax breaks they get when they come to a city.

At the same time people are shamed for buying salad in a plastic bag when the big lever is somewhere completely different. Had the same thought yesterday when I saw:

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1148317244893597696](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1148317244893597696)

<comment><USER3> International Air Travel is one of the most heavily taxed, if not the most heavily taxed, activity. It's not unusual for the taxes to exceed the ticket price. Here I just looked on kayak for a flight from SFO to Berlin. Here is the price breakdown:

       Ticket price USD 465.00
       Taxes, Fees and charges USD 540.52
       </comment></comment><comment>---
       International/Domestic Surcharge USD 350.00

       APHIS User Fee USD 3.96

       Immigration User Fee USD 7.00

       Customs User Fee USD 5.77

       United States International Departure Tax USD 18.60

       United States International Arrival Tax USD 18.60

       Passenger Civil Aviation Security Service Fee USD 5.60

       Air Transport Tax USD 46.58

       German Aviation Security Charge  19.15

       Passenger Service Charge - Intl USD 23.95

       Passenger Service Charge - Dom. USD 36.81

       Passenger Facility Charge USD 4.50

       Total price USD 1,005.52

<comment><USER2> Take-off and landing account for a lot more pollution than a flight in cruising altitude on long trips. That's why we usually talk about the problematic domestic flights where trains are an alternative. There's not really a good alternative for long haul flights.

Flights within Europe are not that heavily taxed, otherwise I wouldn't be able to fly Berlin - Brussels for 9 Euros.

<comment><USER4> Wait, Berlin to Brussels for €9? Good lord, that is far too cheap. For example, the distance is roughly equivalent to Denver-Albuquerque. Kayak's cheapest quote is $119 one way, scheduled 1 month in advance. I knew flights in Europe were cheaper, but how is it possible to operate profitably at that price? Kayak shows $23 for Ryanair Berlin-Brussels.

For comparison, I had a vehicle breakdown and needed to take an (awful) bus that distance in the US, and it cost far more than $23 (IIRC, it was ~$75 and took 18 hours).

<comment><USER5> "How is it possible to operate profitably at that price?"

It isn't: Air Berlin, Monarch, Primera, Small Planet, Azur, Cobalt, VLM, PrivatAir, Icelandic carrier WOW.

<comment><USER6> They were run like traditional airlines, but traditional airlines can offset short haul losses with long haul profitability.

Primera and WOW were in trouble because they couldn't offset losses on their long-haul with anything.

I mean... I will not consider lower confort on transatlantic route, while sub 3 hour flights Ryanair is actually great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The UK already taxes flights in a similar way. Whilst this does feel like progress, it would be much better to tax the fuel instead of the passengers. Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt. The problem with taxing passengers instead of fuel include:

\- it doesn't encourage improving the efficiency of planes

\- airlines can't fill their planes with really cheap seats, and empty seats seem like a ridiculous waste

\- freight isn't taxed

If you tax fuel too much there's a risk that planes will fly in with enough fuel to fly out again, but that could be fixed by legislation or (better) by a standardised fuel tax across a large area.

<comment><USER8> > Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt.

"Without any international agreement on taxing fuel, it is highly likely that moves to impose duty on international flights, either at a domestic or European level, would encourage 'tankering': carriers filling their aircraft as full as possible whenever they landed outside the EU to avoid paying tax. Clearly this would be entirely counterproductive. Aircraft would be travelling further than necessary to fill up in low-tax jurisdictions; in addition they would be burning up more fuel when carrying the extra weight of a full fuel tank."

This document explains it pretty well: [http://www.parliament.uk/briefing- papers/SN00523.pdf](http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN00523.pdf)

<comment><USER9> It seems like regulators could just tax planes based on how much fuel they leave with, regardless of the source?

<comment><USER10> That would incentivize planes to fly with as little fuel as possible. That could lead to some flights running out of fuel when unforeseen issues arise.

No matter how you tax the fuel, there are going to be some perverse incentives.

<comment><USER11> ICAO already regulates the reserve amount of fuel required to be carried.

This isn't a valid argument

<comment><USER12> ICAO sets a _minimum_ amount of reserve fuel, not a _maximum_ , so this is not a valid counter-argument.

<comment><USER13> On the contrary:

1\. Tax the fuel in a plane when it leaves the airport (i.e. including the fuel the plane imports). 2\. Airlines will reduce to the amount of fuel planes leaving the EU fly with to dangerously low levels. 3\. ICAO prohibits planes from flying with dangerously low levels.

Point 3 entirely deals with the problem of point 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am actually surprised that short-distance flights aren't taxed more in Western Europe. The train infrastructure in France is world class and can get you from Paris (North-Central part of the country) to Marseille (Southeast), a distance of about 500 miles, in 3 hours.

For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours)

<comment><USER15> Is the carbon footprint for train travel significantly lower than for plane travel?

<comment><USER14> About 5-10% of a flight, according to this:

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/trains-vs- planes-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/trains-vs-planes-whats- the-real-cost-of-travel/a-45209552)

<comment><USER16> I was going to say that these figures ignore infrastructure and necessarily underestimate emissions, but it seems that wouldn't change much the overall picture: [https://uic.org/IMG/pdf/carbon_footprint_of_railway_infrastr...](https://uic.org/IMG/pdf/carbon_footprint_of_railway_infrastructure.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why are they taxing flights rather than fuel?

There's nothing wrong with "flying"! What's wrong is how they get their airspeed, namely by burning fossil fuel.

Also those prices are insulting. There is no jet fuel tax in the EU. This gimmick tax is less than what people driving cars pay in taxes on their fuel for a tank of gas. Governments want to increase tax on car fuels (hence the yellow jacket movement) but still give airlines a break!

<comment><USER18> Airlines are already included in the EU cap and trade scheme. That's effectively a fuel surcharge for CO2.

(When that happened, the US disliked it so much that they passed the "European Union Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act" to prohibit US carriers from complying. And China threatened to cancel airbus orders. As a result, flights that go outside of the European Economic Area are not covered by the scheme.)

<comment><USER19> So sad...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't really understand what the purpose of this tax is. There's no alternative to burning fuel by energy density on an airline, so why go after flights? What do they expect them to do? If you're taxing petrol cars you'd expect electric cars to become more economically viable.

Either way I disagree with carbon taxes. They're regressive, and ignore the fact that regular people are being badly hurt by them whereas the rich won't even feel it.

<comment><USER21> The purpose of the tax is to recover the external cost of flying.

Ideally there are alternatives to flying, but it's not a requirement: as long as flying has an environmental price, recovering it through tax is a decent logic.

We can discuss the offered price, or how the tax could be structured, but I don't think the approach is unreasonable on its face.

<comment><USER22> But close to nothing is being recovered. We would recover more or less the same if we introduced a tax on bad weather to be paid by those suffering from it.

The money collected with this tax may or may not reduce air travel and will be spent on government employees, welfare distributions, healthcare, roads, military etc as all other taxes and only a fraction will be spent on improving the environment.

<comment><USER23> They could destroy the money collected from the tax and it would still improve the environment: the tax will discourage people from flying and encourage people to use alternatives, which helps the environment.

<comment><USER24> As I write this, I imagine people are rushing to their phones to cancel their transatlantic business class tickets because of the 18 euro surcharge.

I'll be traveling via barge for the foreseeable future because of this tax.

<comment><USER25> All of this has been studied and modeled extensively. It's called elasticity of demand. The fact that professional trading firms are selling airline stock, pushing the price down, shows you that yes, this will indeed have an effect.

<comment><USER26> The stock price of Air France barely took a hit, and already rebounded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They say it will "help support the environment", which could mean through funding of greener initiatives, R&D or level the playing field (although the tax is really low/symbolic, in my opinion).

It makes sense to tax flights in order to subsidize rail for short-distance trips. I would have expected a higher tax on flights outside the EU, so that people change their habits (although then you need a carbon-tax sort of scheme, not to penalize low-income people who visit their family once a year).

<comment><USER28> Related: I was surprised to learn recently that short-distance trips by plane actually have lower CO2-emissions than long-distance ones, because the plane does not need to carry so much fuel just for later use.

<comment><USER29> Do you have a citation on that?

[https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving- clim...](https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math- of-flying-vs-driving/) says "Longer flights are more efficient overall, as cruising requires less fuel."

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/06/aviation...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/06/aviation- q-and-a) also states "short flights tend to be more harmful to the climate per mile travelled than long-haul flights are (because they have more empty seats, and because taking off and landing burns more fuel than cruising)".

<comment><USER28> Thanks, it is indeed a bit more complicated than I first thought! There is a sweet spot: "Above a certain distance it becomes more fuel-efficient to make a halfway stop to refuel, despite the energy losses in descent and climb." [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Fligh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Flight_distance)

Interesting tidbit (from the same): Very long non-stop passenger flights suffer from the weight penalty of the extra fuel required, which means limiting the number of available seats to compensate. For such flights, the critical fiscal factor is the quantity of fuel burnt per seat-nautical mile. For these reasons the world's longest commercial flights were cancelled c. 2013. An example is Singapore Airlines' former New York to Singapore flight, which could carry only 100 passengers (all business class) on the 10,300-mile (16,600 km) flight. According to an industry analyst, "It [was] pretty much a fuel tanker in the air."

<comment><USER30> Singapore Airlines relaunched that flight.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flights_21_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flights_21_and_22)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> As subsidies and taxes can be used to incentivize and disincentivize behavior, I'm happy about this. Flights have truly large ecologic costs, and flyers need to be aware of that, trying to minimize travel if not necessary. I'm particularly happy that it's not a flat tax but based on ticket class.

<comment><USER32> Should be based on passenger mass

<comment><USER33> Can't tell if you're trolling. The A320 weights 42,600 kg. A passenger weights 100kg, let's say 150kg with luggages. That's 0.3% if the overall mass of the plane. Wouldn't make much of a difference if you have an extra 50kg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the gov went in the wrong direction here, the tax for flights within France should have been the highest, to give more incentives for using the train, which is quite good (and very good when travelling to/from Paris).

</comment><comment><USER35> > Want to do something about climate change? Start with yourself

I really dislike this line of thinking. I don't manufacture millions of tons of concrete or millions of single-use plastic shampoo bottles. Our current path is irreversible if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don't occur soon.

<comment><USER36> There's a constant war of words here: are individuals responsible for cleaning up their footprint, or are corporations responsible for their dirty practices, or are governments responsible for putting policies to guide the economy?

The answer is: we need all three. We will not tackle climate change without strong change on the personal, corporate, and governmental levels.

<comment><USER37> If you could only pick two out of those three, which would you choose?

<comment><USER38> individuals and government. Corporations don't exist in a vacuum.

<comment><USER39> It is weird how people pretend that corporations and governments are some type of weird entities with minds of their own instead of just a group of individuals. Individuals changing priorities will directly result in corporations and governments changing priorities.

<comment><USER40> But the inverse is also strongly true. It's why people decry the "nanny- state". The government and corporations can make decisions that result in changes in individual behavior. Many times, it's easier to get 51 senators (or whatever) to agree on pushing policy than mobilizing millions of consumers on the same issue. Part of the advantage of a representative government is that it's a smaller group of people to arrive at a consensus.

Societal changes are always about some group reaching a consensus on a topic and collectively acting on their decision. Governments and Corporations can sometimes be easier to deal with than 300+ million individuals when it comes to driving that consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Here are the ways I see airline industry produces pollution: * The airports are built (clearing so much green land, using so much concrete) * How flights taxi when on airport * How much time they spend in air due to congestion or weather * How far airports are located from city population centers and transportation between them. * Amount of time people spend at airports waiting - hence need large facilities to host them with food, entertainment (shopping) etc with air-conditioning.

I can imagine ways of switching over to alternate fuels, optimizing the process flows to reduce fuel needed or avoid certain step entirely through innovation and drastic changes.

But huge segment of travel generated pollution can be completed avoided by replacing in-person business meetings with alternate equally rich and rewarding experiences.

In the future, some day, I hope there will be holographic rooms that one can use to holographically teleport to another location and do meetings as if they are there in person. This would consume way less energy and hence reduce pollution. Imagine "holo-portation" hotel rooms that you can rent for doing meetings.

<comment><USER42> > I hope there will be holographic rooms that one can use to holographically > teleport to another location and do meetings as if they are there in person.

HP took strides on this in 2007 with the "Halo Room".

[http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/halo/ds_ha...](http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/halo/ds_halo- meetingroom.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Not sure why the title was edited. The article mentions both domestic and international flights.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20392885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20392885)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's surprising the government didn't start with that instead of abruptly raising gas prices. Both are eco-friendly moves, but this one targets the rich more than the poor. Maybe it would have prevented months-long Yellow Vest protests.

<comment><USER44> I am also surprised by how much this seems to be an answer to that movement, yet it comes a year after this apparent deadlock and all this fighting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > A round-trip plane ride from New York to London costs another three square > meters or so of Arctic sea ice. [0]

It sounds like it wasn't a high enough tax. And perhaps we need to do more at the individual level to discourage international travel.

[0] [https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn- co2-sea...](https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-co2-sea- ice-20161103-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm getting to the point where I think 'tax incidence analysis' should be a required course, perhaps required every few years throughout ones life just to ensure it's not forgotten[0]. It would improve the political discourse substantially.

[0] Actual implementation of this would be very difficult on many axes and perhaps impossible without introducing more problem than it solves, but I think it's worth it to try to figure out.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Airline shares fall", so?

Would they also put a headline line: "Colony gets freedom, East India Company shares fall"?

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder if this will roil the working masses like the planned gas taxes did. Maybe it will take a while until the work stoppages and lay offs kick in.

</comment><comment><USER49> Will flights still be cheaper than trains?

</comment><comment><USER50> I would rather them working on removing subsidies to airlines rather than them adding another tax.

</comment><comment><USER51> So, this will mostly affect CDG as a hub. IF that tax gets painful, people will move to LHR or FRA.

<comment><USER52> By starting with a small tax which won't affect much CDG, the strategy is probably for France to push it on a EU-level after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there any way this could impact plane manufacturers? Lighter planes would mean less pollution.

<comment><USER36> Would lighter planes mean less pollution? Shouldn't we look at per-customer emissions? There's clearly benefit to a 2 seater vs 1 seater, what about 30 seats vs 60 seats? I don't actually know the physics here, would be interesting to see that calculated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Please use the tax to fund research into holoportation to replace quite a bit of travel.

</comment><comment><USER54> Based on recent events, I'm sure this will be well received...

<comment><USER55> Why?

The protest that originated "gilets jaunes" was because the increase in gasoline price would affect low wage workers for which their car was one of the main tools for their job.

I cannot imagine many low wage workers that depend on international flights to take home some bread...

<comment><USER56> I think the powerful french farming lobby had more to do with it

<comment><USER57> It's the first time I hear that, and that would be quite surprising since farmers do not pay taxes on the diesel they use.

<comment><USER56> Precisely at some point (duty free fuel for farming) that has to go and it was a pre-emptive flexing of the faming lobby's muscles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> French government, unlike German one, is a lot smarter, and didn't kill its nuclear industry, adding more coal burning emissions. Surely this will pay in the long term. And a lot.

</comment><comment><USER59> Some of the posts here amuse me because they're based on the idea that everything that exists now somehow must exist forever.

The train, or electric car, or boat, or other less polluting option from A to B, may well take a lot longer.

That might make certain things impractical. Like, say, me wombling down to Heathrow and taking a weekend in Krakow.

That may well just be the way it has to be. It may be temporary due to technological advancement; it may not.

Just as it may be the case that, in fact, there is no suitable alternative to say, plastic wrap on food. And maybe we'll have to change our diet.

I make no claim that any of the above is true; but if it is; such is life. We will have to adapt.

<comment><USER60> There are indeed a lot of things that were "normal" just a few years back: driving without seat belts, smoking in clubs, having sex with strangers without condoms, eating things that are now restricted due to environmental or health concerns.

It is hard to think that cheap flights can be a "dangerous convenience", but they may very well be.

<comment><USER59> Stuff like the Clean Air Act and equivalent elsewhere.

You could just burn whatever in the stove. It's your house, and castle, why not.

Turns out that didn't quite work out, so now you can't. There is no replacement for a proper log fire that's quite the same. Life goes on.

I'd imagine that the wise amongst the older generations would have a better understanding of this, and also those who grew up poor.

Go back 15 years and jetting around Europe on Ryanair flights for the cost of a night out just wasn't a thing. Didn't exist. Completely unimaginable.

Now? I can arb my flat in London against a flight and an Airbnb in a country 2000 miles away and have a weekend holiday for free. Something has to give.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Isn't the title misleading? From the article: "The new French tax will be 1.5 euros for flights within France."

Unless "out of France" simply means originating in France, regardless of whether the destination is in France or not.

Either way, the original title is better, I would keep it: "France to tax flights from its airports"

<comment><USER61> "The new French tax will be 1.5 euros for flights within France or the European Union, 3 euros for economy flights out of the EU, 9 euros for intra- EU business class and up to 18 euros for business class tickets out of the EU. Transit flights will not be taxed."

I read that as most flights in or out of France being taxed.

"Transit flights" Is that a connecting flight? Seems to be the only exception.

<comment><USER62> > "Transit flights" Is that a connecting flight? Seems to be the only > exception.

Makes sense, economically, in that there is quite fierce competition between CDG and other major European hub airports for filling spare intercontinental capacity and multi-hop connections are _far_ more price sensitive than direct flights. If CDG would lose a majority of regional (but still international) feeder traffic to FRA or AMS, Paris would experience a noticeable drop in direct connections.

<comment><USER63> I wonder, even if AMS takes over CDG as a hub, would it hurt Air France — KLM in any way?

<comment><USER62> Oh, wasn't even aware of that group. But it only makes the threat of a traffic shift out France bigger: while a standalone Air France would be forced to defend the status of their home hub against the odds, the group would not really mind an internal shift.

According to Wikipedia (en. and de.), the French state has been divesting from air France quite a bit while the Netherlands, who had very little at the time of the merger, are about to match their government stake to parity (but both will remain at <30% combined). I'd assume that French leadership is quite aware of the risk of Air France KLM effectively becoming KLM Air France if they push too hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> About time. Traveling is killing the planet. One of major causes of climate change. We need to take it seriously. I'm glad France is willing to take a bold and brave step to support the environment.

<comment><USER65> Flying is 5% of CO2 emissions.

<comment><USER66> I think it's less? < 1B [tCO2eq] out of > 40 global annual emission.

But make it 5% to account for underresearched impact of stratospheric emission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Why are Americans so obsessed with religion, devil and sins?!

Taxes exist to capture money and finance the externalities that are ignored by corporations. If corporations were more responsible countries would not have to tax these issues.

In this case France is using the money to improve an already pretty good rail system. Compare this to the US and the California train line?

<comment><USER68> "Sin Taxes" are not meant to literally tax sins but to tax behaviours with negative consequences that where the price is ultimately bourne by society. For example, the cost of second hand smoke is bourne by others, and when they get sick, many times by taxpayers. The cost of alcohol is partly bourne by a variety of parties.

"Sin Taxes" are not meant to discourage literal sins but to discourage such activities with external costs. Many argue sugar should also be added to the list of "sins" though of course it is not Biblically a sin.

<comment><USER23> Pigouvian tax is a synonym if you want to avoid the connotations of sin.

<comment><USER69> I think there's a subtle difference in intent, as elucidated by laken above[1]. Basically, if you're doing it with the intent to reduce the behavior, it's (best called a) sin tax. If you don't care how much people continue to do it, as long as they're paying, it's (best called a) Pigovian tax.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20394548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20394548)

<comment><USER23> OK, I'll go disagree on the linked comment then. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I've flown through a French airport once - Paris Charles de Gaulle and since have gone out of my way to not fly through it again. It was a hot mess. They lost the luggage, it was hard to find gates, parts of it looked outdated, customer service sucked. A year after, the ceiling at its _new_ terminal collapsed killing several people ([https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-de- gaulle-airport-terminal...](https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-de-gaulle- airport-terminal-collapse-3972251)).

Maybe it was just me having a bad luck, but it was certainly enough to convince me to stay out French airports even if it means longer flights, delay or changing the duration of my stay.

<comment><USER52> I had a pretty good experience on my case, nothing to say really. The passport control queues were pretty optimized and things worked as they should. I've definitely seen much worse airport than that.

<comment><USER70> Ah ok. It was close to 15 years ago for me so maybe they have improved and I've just held a consumer grudge for too long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I think there is this thing called the train.

<comment><USER72> Specifically in France the train has a near-zero carbon footprint, because it's electric, and the electricity comes from nuclear power.

<comment><USER73> Well looks like we need nuclear planes

<comment><USER72> We don't have nuclear trains, do we? We just replaced coal-fired electric generation with nuclear (in some places at least).

Same with planes. Use energy produced by nuclear / solar / wind plants to synthesize jet fuel, operate the planes as normal.

<comment><USER74> Nuclear trains sounds badass but no I'm not aware of them existing.

The two nuclear powered vehicles in the USA are carriers and submarines. Owned by the US military. All other nuclear generators are static and surrounded by metric fucktons of concrete.

<comment><USER75> Nuclear trains sound pointless. Unlike ships, you can power trains with catenaries.

<comment><USER76> Ahem.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_boat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_boat)

<comment><USER75> That's awesome, thanks. But it's also a boat, not a ship ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Y'all have fun with that. France is at the bottom of the places in the developed world I'd actually want to visit.

<comment><USER78> Can you please not post unsubstantive comments so we don't have to ban you? If instead you'd read the guidelines and take the spirit of this site to heart, we'd be grateful.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER77> What? It's my opinion and is true. And is probably the lowkey opinion of many other people. I'm literally in Tokyo right now cause Japan subsidizes travel instead of punishing people for it. Honestly fuck hackernews. Y'all are the actual assholes. I wasn't being mean or a dick in any way. "Unsubstantive" my ass.

<comment><USER77> And further. When I do have an actual real and legit point to make I'm shadow banned. I bet there's thousands of others in my position.

<comment><USER78> When we ban established users, we tell them we're banning them and why. Shadowbanning is for new accounts that show signs of either spamming or trolling—especially serial trolling, i.e. someone we've banned before and whose new account indicates more of the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Smells like 2007

</comment><comment><USER73> It's nice how you can rename any tax to an "eco tax" and suddenly everyone's delighted. Kudos for the social engineering.

(there is absolutely no indication that this will somehow help the environment. I 'm heavily against flying , but i m also appalled by the level of gullibility here)

<comment><USER80> Ecology is a new religion, except instead of Apocalypse they have Global Warming, and instead of sin they have "carbon footprint".

<comment><USER81> And instead of a bible, we have evidence ;)

<comment><USER80> No, all we have are scientific papers. And while in theory they should be considered evidence, the current financing system basically turns climate scientists into grant-seeking whores, and the results of research are determined not by facts, but by the needs of the sponsor. "Fighting" global warming is multibillion dollar business after all.

<comment><USER62> Facilitating global warming is a multitrillion dollar business, so that argument is kind of weak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Because in France ecofascism is becoming the #1 religion thanks to leftist propaganda. Government uses that to increase taxes.

<comment><USER83> Do you have a working definition of fascism here or are you using it as something closer to "a bad politics thing"?

<comment><USER72> From Wikipedia: «Fascism ... characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society and of the economy».

There are people who see the enforcement of the green agenda in these terms, like this: you can't speak publicly against it, you can't act openly against it, and it gets forced on the economy through the power of the state.

I personally think that such a view is a bit of a exaggeration. But we should remember that the danger of fascism is always around the corner, in the groupthink and in the enforcement of One True Way in anything.

<comment><USER84> >>"[..]you can't speak publicly against it, you can't act openly against it,[..]"

By this, I suppose you mean that, if you do it, you will get some angry answers in your direction, but, is that not true about anything deserving to talk about?

It works in the other direction too: I have heard pretty harsh insults against ecologist (yeah, sometimes they are even called fascists).

>>"[..] and it gets forced on the economy through the power of she state."

Yes, but all economic organization is forced through the power of the state, starting by property rights. So, nothing new there.

<comment><USER72> I'm mostly talking about a PR suicide that is speaking against beliefs of majority, or even a vocal minority. This has real economic consequences, so it makes businesses stay in line with the accepted beliefs by talking the only language that matters to them.

Yes, a state is an instiute of enforcement, violent if needed. Nothing new here indeed. People just tend to see enforcement of ideas they like as good, and of the ideas they don't like, as evil. Nothing new here either.

I just tried to explain the train of thought that may have led to the original (flagged) comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> This is simply rent seeking. It won't reduce flights, it's too small to incentivize any fuel efficiency changes, it's passed on to the consumer so it won't alter airline behavior, and while the article claims the revenue will go towards financing trains, it doesn't state how that will be implemented. Are they going to reduce fees on trains accordingly? Are they going to improve train efficiency? Are they going to build additional infrastructure? It's possible that they could do all these things and cause a tiny shift away from air travel toward less-polluting options, but it's more likely just another general tax revenue source that's politically easier to acquire because it's easy to demonize airlines. I'm not defending airlines; they pollute a lot. I just don't see how this helps.

<comment><USER86> > I just don't see how this helps.

Just curious, what would be your favorite solution(s) of the climate crisis?

<comment><USER87> Not GP, but any action that does not occur at a global level is nothing more than a feel-good measure. You're kidding yourself if you think that this, or even this multiplied across all of Europe would make a dent in climate change. Meanwhile, it allows people to feel like they're doing something, reducing the likelihood that we will actually see a globally coordinated effort to really change direction on the climate.

<comment><USER85> Exactly. It's like recycling. It lets people feel like they're doing something, raises prices, but doesn't actually achieve any of the objectives used to market it.

If you want to reduce pollution, regulate it, cap it, and provide penalties for breaching limits that far outweigh the profits for cheaters. Simply taxing everything never changes behavior.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hidden features of Python  - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of-python <comment><USER2> I really hate to be the one to say this, but what is with all these links to stackoverflow? These features are all well-documented in the respective specifications, and to call them "hidden" is just silly. So why the 30 upvotes?

I don't expect the discussion in a stackoverflow thread to (currently) be more intelligent or interesting than a discussion here, or a blog post which actually shows such "lesser-known features" in a more coherent fashion. Taking that into account, it seems to me that these recent submissions are simply an attempt to improve the quality of stackoverflow. Call me selfish, but I don't think it's right to (even temporarily) decrease the quality of Hacker News in an effort to improve the quality of stackoverflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sigh....

I submitted the links because there had been a discussion about how many politics and economics articles there were on the front page. So, I noodled around and found some articles on language features that might stimulate an interesting discussion here on HN.

And, even though I'm a python programmer, there were one or two elements on the list that made me want to go read up on them in the documentation.

I originally found the articles on javascript.reddit, not on stack overflow. It's not an attempt to boost stack overflow at all. These are the first few posts from stack overflow that I've actually read.

If people would like to see different kinds of articles, or more interesting articles, I'd be thrilled if others would take the time to find them and submit them: <http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=BrandonM>

<comment><USER2> Sorry about the unwarranted criticism. I think that one annoyance was that the titles presented programming in a way that someone would present video game cheat codes or easter eggs, when they were (of course) nothing of the sort. I realize that those were the original titles and you can't really be blamed for that; it is a reflection of the current population of stackoverflow, though, and is one example of why I don't exactly rate its submissions highly.

I am also sorry that I made a false assumption about the reason for the submissions, especially since that is what bothered me the most. I had assumed that you were a "loyal" member of stackoverflow and were trying to encourage us to join in on the discussion over there, which seems somewhat counterproductive as far as the community here is concerned. Coupled with the numerous stackoverflow comments I've seen to the effect of, "If something is wrong, why don't you go fix it?" (also not your fault), it just touched a nerve I guess.

I applaud your efforts to improve the community and to help shift it away from its recent politics/economics trend. As you can see from the link you gave, I submitted an article today, too, so I am in the same boat that you are (in terms of trying to improve the HN community). I am not much of a blog reader and don't often have much of value to submit, but since I did today and I had improving HN on my mind, I was glad to have something to contribute. I am certainly grateful for members like you who get the ball rolling with many good contributions, I just get disappointed when I feel that the community is overvaluing a submission without a lot of substance. (For example, I liked your "PHP vs. Lisp?" submission, however slanted it was, better than the stackoverflow ones.)

Also, I realize that your link was mostly a swipe at my lack of submissions, but that does not mean that I am not an active, contributing member. Nearly all of my 800+ karma has come from commenting, and I feel that buried in there are some gems with useful personal experiences, educated opinions, etc. In addition to that, I spend a decent amount of time lurking... reading submissions and voting them up if I feel they are "Hacker News"-worthy, reading countless comments and voting up/down based on my opinion of their value to me and to the community as a whole, and heading over to the "new" page when I have some time to kill.

Surely there is something to be said for members who contribute not as a primary filter (initial submitter) but as a secondary filter (up/down-voter who reads and votes on the submissions and comments) or as a commentator, adding insights to the discussion provoked by the article. After all, many of us are here at Hacker News for not only the low signal-to-noise ratio but also the unparalleled quality of discussion, and there are many non-submitting members who are doing this work behind the scenes without a lot of recognition.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry about the swipe, Brandon. I was just annoyed, because there were a couple of disparaging comments about the stack overflow articles. I should have handled that a bit more tactfully. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's been about a year or two since I've done anything serious in python, and ... yikes. Does anyone else get the feeling that Python is "C++ing" itself into a confusing mess? While lots of these elements weren't surprising to me, some were. And many that were convey little to no real value (c.f. "decorators", or "the step argument in slice operators").

This is the same thing that happened to C++. If you keep adding features that are useful to someone in some specific context, what you get is a more powerful language for an expert user _writing_ code, but one that is much _less_ productive for the people who have to maintain it.

And, can I just ask: how many ways to iterate over stuff does python really need?

<comment><USER4> Well, a lot of these suggestions are the sort of "tricks" that you wouldn't want to use in any normal situation. I think the additions to python are mostly making it cleaner and simpler.

List comprehensions are a great example. If you want to reverse the keys and values of a dictionary you can do

      reversed_dict = dict((value, key) for (key, value) in original_dict.items())

Whereas in c++ this would have to be something like...

      map<string, string> reversed_dict;
      for (map<string, string>::iterator it = original_dict.begin();
           it != original_dict.end(); ++it) {
        reversed_dict[it->second] = it->first;
      }

C++ may have added a lot of new stuff but they did not make the simple cases simple, they just made the simple cases possible but still ugly.

<comment><USER3> You're comparing the python syntax with the equivalent C++, not with the python syntax it replaced, which by my count is three lines shorter. The point is this: does the savings in code size from a list comprehension (which is 100% pure sugar on top of the existing loop syntax -- there's no new semantics in that feature) balance out the difficulty of teaching them to every new python programmer?

If you're a python expert, clearly your answer is "yes! this is a great feature!". But that's what the C++ experts say too, even as their language buries itself under a mountain of complexity. From the outside looking in, I'm seeing exactly the same thing happen to python.

Some fancy features make a language fun and productive. Too many such features make it a mess.

<comment><USER5> List comprehensions don't exist in their own vacuum though. For generators (the generalization of list comprehensions) and then coroutines, it's a feature that _can't_ be replicated in Python without serious kludges; it does indeed add semantics. It enables you to do more: threads, actor model, state machine, modularize large functions. I think the cost of implementing list comprehensions was more than worth the while for all the benefits that have been reaped from it.

<comment><USER6> Python could have had generators without having lisp comprehensions, so you don't get to use "generators good" to conclude "list comprehensions good".

List comprehensions were initially syntax for loops over generators. The current version introduces another variable scope.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, what a great resource. Thanks for posting!</comment>


Show HN: Pure CSS toggle Web component - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rajasegar/css-toggle-component/tree/master <comment><USER2> I never use those anymore because I discovered a lot of people don't know how to use them.

They see it as slide, so what happens is that they try to slide the thing. This causes events like 'releaseOutside' so nothing happens.

The other thing is that with most designs the state isn't obvious. 'Does the check mark mean I should slide to the mark to activate it?'

So yeah, it looks nice but most (older) people don't know how to use them

<comment><USER3> > The other thing is that with most designs the state isn't obvious. 'does the > check mark mean I should slide to it to activate it?'

The author solved that in the custom options section, labeling ON and OFF state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hardly "pure css" when the page doesn't show the controls without javascript enabled.

</comment><comment><USER5> This does not look accessible. It should probably be focusable with tab navigation.

Otherwise pretty impressive.

<comment><USER6> they seem to be focusable with tab navigation, but there is no indication (dashed outline) of which element is selected. I was able to tab through and toggle the switches with the spacebar in Firefox.</comment></comment>


Gun death & gun ownership data for OECD countries from Wikipedia (image) - <AUTHOR> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/38668/deaths-vs-guns.png <comment><USER2> Wikipedia apparently used out-dated data for Switzerland. The latest official statistics on gun deaths is available for 2010:

[http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/19/03/02/...](http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/19/03/02/dos/03.Document.139174.xls)

According to this document, 24 persons were killed by gun in Switzerland in 2010. Switzerland has about 8'00'000 inhabitants, i.e., the there were closer to 2 deaths per 100'000 inhabitants and not around 6 as indicated in your diagram.

Independent from the statistics, gun ownership and gun deaths have significantly decreased over the last 20 years. I take it for granted that wide availability of gun leads to a more often use of guns. In Switzerland, the reduction of the army's and tightened gun ownership legislation probably led to this decrease.

<comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm- re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm- related_death_rate) got updated.</comment></comment>


How Respawn/EA make informal payments to streamers - <AUTHOR> https://urscrubb.substack.com/p/the-final-circle-diego-dropped-from?r=76mdj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy <comment><AUTHOR> I did a little round-up documenting some of the times that Respawn/EA, who make Apex Legends, made payments to streamers. It's a fascinating gray area for me between legitimate payment for marketing and an outright bribe for good social media buzz. Thanks for the read!</comment>


Your words and thoughts have physical power - Will Smith - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfWGoLj1JCM&feature=related Will is awesome. <comment><USER2> Will Smith is awesome

<comment><USER2> Will Smith is STILL awesome!</comment></comment>


Playstation 5 will cost 749 dollars in venezuela - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/superjuegosstore/photos/a.1394901697268956/3306848759407564/ <comment><USER2> Hello to our friends in Venezuela. What's the reaction? I'm seeing that "Suerte con eso" but how does the pricing compare to other new computers or game systems that are available on the same market? Is this really the anticipated price?

<comment><AUTHOR> things usually cost three times the international price

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this different than any other imported electronics in Venezuela?

<comment><AUTHOR> no. things usually cost three times the international price</comment></comment>


Simple git workflow with hack and ship - <AUTHOR> http://object.io/site/2010/12/hack-and-ship/ Branches are virtually free with git, it makes a lot of sense to create short-lived feature-branches for each new thing you start working on. This does mean a bit of shuffling back and forth to integrate changes from others in your local work, but this "pull changes and rebase my work" workflow can be greatly eased by these small scripts. <comment><USER2> Uh, his hack script is just "git pull --rebase". This is even the default when a fast-forward is safe.

<comment><USER3> What about "ship"?

Meanwhile, has `git pull` had a `--rebase` since the dawn of Git time in 2005, or did it appear at one point?

<comment><USER4> git pull --rebase was added in 1.5.4, released in February 2008 ([http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/GIT_1.5.4_An_Unusually_Long_Cycl...](http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/GIT_1.5.4_An_Unusually_Long_Cycle)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The " || exit 1" is unnecessary. Just use "set -e" at the top of the script _once_.

<comment><USER6> Looking for more about this, I found a pretty good post:

[http://www.davidpashley.com/articles/writing-robust-shell- sc...](http://www.davidpashley.com/articles/writing-robust-shell-scripts.html)

<comment><USER7> Just be aware that using 'set -e', while good advice in general, won't catch everything. Particularly lists and sub-shells may return with the status code of the last command, not the failed command, depending on how they were used. So it is possible a command failed within but won't trigger the -e.

The best way is to write the compound commands and any sub-shell commands so that they will exit with the return status of any command that failed, using, say, &&.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This workflow would probably also benefit from a gitc script, for fast committing:

#!/bin/bash

git commit -a -m "$*"</comment>


Presslabs Dashboard – First Cloud-Native Hosting Platform for WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://www.presslabs.com/blog/presslabs-dashboard-first-cloud-native-hosting-platform-for-wordpress/ <comment><USER2> It comes packed as a k8s app in the Google Cloud Marketplace</comment>


I quit my job to do a startup. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eval.me/?p=26

<comment><USER3> Not to be "that guy," but the font you're using everywhere for your headers (which is called "Gothic" in the CSS) appears to be "Knockout" from Hoefler & Frere-Jones. The license for that font — as well as all of their fonts for that matter — isn't currently web-embeddable[1]. So either I'm wrong and you've got an extremely good replica font (maybe a little too good), or you're using a font against its license.

[1] <http://www.typography.com/ask/faq.php#Ft_10> \- choose #20

<comment><USER4> This is super important. Use Typekit, or another font that allows embedding (Lost Type Co-Op is great <http://losttype.com/browse>).

If it's not "Knockout", I'd love to know what it actually is. Always need more good fonts.

<comment><USER5> It is Knockout, the meta data in the font files say so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea, but I believe there are some issues.

PRICING 1) 1,25 $ is a lot of money for one (1) completed survey. 2) What prevents a company from doing this themselves (is your added value worth 0.25 $ per survey?)

SAMPLE 1) Charities are arguably not the best motivator for people. 2) In a world focused on the right metrics, your surveys automatically incorporate a bias into the results by only selecting those people who care about charity (to put it very blunt and stereotypical, you will only get tree hugging hippies). Same goes for prizes, but a prize is less about the core identity of your respondent (not a belief).

PITCH VIDEO 1) I felt a world-changing idea when you talked about "in person", was kind of disappointed when I realized it's still a survey with a different incentive 2) Half of the people a survey got mailed to don't respond. That's not a disadvantage, it's an awesome conversion rate. 3) I can't find any information except for that video (maybe a use case). 4) I don't really see a benefit for me as a user. Let's say deliverables: will you give me an SPSS database, a report, an analysis, can I import it in excel?, will it even have forms or is it just a way to give an incentive. Lot's of unanswered questions.

PERSONAL 1) Love the chat box and the 'I'm a real person and founder' part. Not sure how long you will keep it up :). 2) I like that you as a person are part of the brand, something very potent.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great feedback. Thank you.

Pricing: It may be a lot but I think every customer's opinion should be worth at least $1.25. If a company does not value their customer's opinion that much, they shouldn't send the survey.

Sample: I would argue the sample is already skewed towards people who either love or hate your product. I think the charity component skews it less because the act of giving your time and opinion is very similar to the act of giving to charity. Hence, more of your customers can connect with that charitable act than say, entering a drawing for a prize.

Video: I am sorry you were disappointed about it not being an in person survey system. That was not my intent.

       3. There is more information on the About page, but I think you're looking for a feature comparison page. That's a great idea and I will get on it.
       4. The results is a webpage report, with the option of downloading it to excel.

Personal: Customer feedback is very important to me and if I am online I want any customer to be able to talk to me directly immediately.

<comment><USER7> You could do 1 survey @ 25c and charge them in 4s? I think $1/ea is a bit steep as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's my social responsibility? Screw you. Make your own choices, don't try to foist them on me.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I also took issue with the insinuation that working for other people always results in your job becoming "soul sucking". I can be creative, innovative and be constantly learning new things while working with incredible people at my current employer thank you very much.

It's always a brave decision to start a business, but this entire article reeks of the author trying convince/justify to themselves this risky decision.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I agree. I'm really happy for the author to launch his product. It's an amazing feeling. However, I think it's important to stress that quitting your job to do this is _not_ the only way for _us_ to do this (as he says in the article.)

From the article:

> [Staying with your job and working on your idea at nights and weekends] > seems to be an option because you always hear about ventures starting out as > side-projects built on late nights and weekends. Well, I only have a few > hours of focus every day. By midnight, I just blankly stare at my screen. > Maybe it works for you, but it took me 2 years to figure out it does not > work for me.

You know, some of us _make_ it work for the same reason the author quit his job: We don't feel there is another good option. I have 2 kids, wife stays home, and we have a mortgage. I don't feel I have any choice _but_ to keep my full time job. So we make it work. (Yesterday I worked a solid day at my company, came home, ate dinner, spent some time with both the kids and my wife, then put in a solid 8 hours on my own product trying to touch up the marketing site and get a major new feature up for some new customers. I got to bed a little after 5 AM. It's hard work, but again, I feel it's this or nothing.)

The only recommendation I would make to someone who feels they _must_ quit their job in order to do a project like this: You may want to try and find a better company to work for that is more compatible with this sort of work and your goals. Flexible schedule and an understanding manager, for example, makes a huge difference. That allows you to work all night when you've got the urge, motivation, or potential customer, and still be successful in the job that pays the mortgage. In 4 years at my last job, I was never able to get a product of my own out the door. I had one out the door within about 7 months of joining the consulting company I work for now.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great comment. I definitely missed this in my blog post, and I think you bring up a very important point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My feedback with some tough love:

1\. evaluate.me or evaluate.it would be easier to remember.

2\. I don't see why anyone would pay $1.25 per response. If I have 10,000 customers, you think I'm willing to potentially put up $10,000 for charity and give you $2,500 to have them fill out a short online form? I don't know...

3\. This is way too much for something that should basically be free, since it's very trivial, there are tons of free services around, or it's not hard to whip up even for Joe's PHP loving cousin.

4\. The fact that $1 of $1.25 goes to a charity is even more in my face annoying. It's sending the message that you don't really want all my money, instead you're giving my money away. Given that you're so small, it sends the message that you will go out of business soon.

5\. You could say that the $1 is there to get people to fill out the survey. But wouldn't people just fill it out just to send the $1 to charity with junk answers, as you mention in your video wrt the iPad?

6\. In the video you say that if I just do the survey per email for free myself, less than half will respond? In a pitch, I interpret "less than half" as "about half". That sounds pretty good, I wouldn't think more would respond anyway, and email is free! Anyway, I think you should change the text of the pitch.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> First, thanks for the feedback. It's very helpful.

1\. I thought shorter = better in domain names. No?

2\. It's an interesting point. Some think it's too much. Some told me it's too little. This covers credit card charges as well. Anything less than $1 donated is not worth it (hence why iPhone apps are .99).

3\. By that reasoning any software should be free. But I would like to continue eating and sleeping in a bed at the same time.

4\. Interesting point. I hadn't thought about it sending that message.

5\. The research I looked at shows that if the company does a selfless act, their customers are more likely to be genuine in their acts. So, while you might give trash answers to get in to an iPad drawing, you're less likely to do that for the Red Cross to get a $1. Basically, people who like giving to charity typically aren't the type to give junk answers to surveys.

6\. Response rates vary by industry. The university I worked at had a 80% response rate, whereas a local bank has a 10% response rate. So I tried to use an average response rate.

Thanks again for the feedback.

<comment><USER12> As a web dev, seeing "eval" in a domain immediately makes me think of malware or javascript exploits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congrats on getting your MVP up and running. That's a big accomplishment.

However, you're at a point in your business's life where things might get dicey. I think you'll find that the business grows slower than you might hope, and no amount of coding will change that. For bootstrappers, it's just the way it goes. You're not going to spend $10,000 on ads, so you just have to do things the slow way (talking to bloggers, writing articles, posting on forums, etc, etc).

Your business will still require a lot of work from you, but at this stage it also requires time overall for people to hear about it, find it, leave, and come back later when they hear about it again. You have to give it time to grow and that means providing yourself with income. Maybe think about getting a job or doing freelancing. I know you said jobs require too much mental energy, but once the MVP is launched, you can dial back on the coding. You have to dial up the selling, but I've found this to be possible in parallel with a normal job, especially if selling doesn't involve phone calls and is just you emailing bloggers.

Anyways, I'm sure you'll find your way. Good luck!

<comment><USER14> Your thoughts are spot on. I am a technical guy who is trying to bootstrap my startup.

I have an MVP which I have been testing with early users. But scaling up marketing is the really hard bit. It is something which will take time, because its not really in your control. You have to keep showing up in the right places in tasteful ways.

And then people _may_ convert.

But I think it all can be done with a side income. Right now, if you have web- development + mobile skills, getting freelance jobs to pay the bills is not a bad option.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. However, freelancing takes a bunch of time and focus and it's up to you to make sure you still give your startup enough focus. Otherwise, it may be better to take a lax job instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More power to you. But can you please make the article more readable? That background texture and drop shadow is causing me considerable eye-strain.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great point. Do you have any suggestions?

If you send me the CSS code that would help make it more readable, I'll make it live.

<comment><USER16> Drop the drop shadow and the wooden floor background. Don't use 298301pt fonts for the headings.

Not to be disrespectful, just helpful, but I'd start with these three simple things. Right now the page looks tacky and doesn't invite you to read the content.

The piece itself is great by the way.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget to take a look at your site without your custom font. Firefox, for example, doesn't load it at all in 3.6 or 8, and it looks like crap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for telling me this. I will get on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats on the getting the MVP out!

Criticism: The problem you are trying to solve is the lack of quality in online surveys. The way to improve the quality of the surveys is by enabling users to chose a charity wich will receive 1$. This doesn't really make sense to me. Can you rpove there is any correlation between both of these two elements and how do you mesure quality?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. That's not inherently obvious.

The correlation goes more like this:

Scenario 1: Company wants to take 20 minutes to complete their survey so they make more money. You delete it.

Scenario 2: Company wants you to take a 5 question survey, and they will donate $1 to a charity of your choice if you do it. You are more likely to actually take it because the company showed they're willing to do something selfless in return for your selfless act.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> First and foremost, congrats on shipping your mvp (even though it went a little late by your original timeline), I hope it sustains well. Like others have said, the video is great and design is consistent and appealing - <USER2> work and thanks for sharing your story.

A few thoughts I had while perusing eval.me:

1\. There doesn't seem to be information about what charities you partnered with on the anonymous site pages. I suppose this could be contractual, but it was one of the first questions I had.

2\. I was confused by the use of "Sign Up" and "Sign In" together; at first glance I thought there was an issue with your site and there were two Sign Up buttons. Maybe "Sign Up" and "Login" or "Register" and "Sign In"?

3\. I haven't investigated thoroughly, but wouldn't a charitable incentive inherently skew your survey pool? Although upon consideration, a product-based incentive may do the same thing - just in a different direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great feedback. Thank you.

1\. Somebody else had mentioned this and I am working on it. Currently, the list of charities will show up when you create the survey and you have to select 5 of 20 charities.

2\. This is a great suggestion. I wil A/B test whether Register or Sign Up gets more sign ups to be able to decide which is better.

3\. Product based incentives are a great idea. I am not entirely sure how I would implement that though.

As for skewing the survey pool, I would argue the pool is already skewed towards people who either love or hate your product.

I think the charity component skews it less because the act of giving your time and opinion is very similar to the act of giving to charity. Hence, more of your customers can connect with that charitable act than say, entering a drawing for a prize.

<comment><USER18> This is ancillary to the effort, but I think it's interesting. So here goes, I am not certain about skewing the pool less than more prize-based incentives -- as opposed to somewhat evenly. However, I definitely agree with the implied concept that the resulting pool will yield more carefully completed (and hence more useful/accurate) survey results.

And before we deviate too far from the core point of the thread, I'll simply echo my earlier sentiment regarding the act of quitting for a startup: great job so far, and good luck moving forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here are my thoughts from someone who has been in the market research industry for 10 years:

1\. First off, congrats on quitting and going full-steam ahead on something you're clearly passionate about. That's a huge accomplishment on its own. The "having no regrets" part of it is especially important.

2\. The charity element is a differentiator, but you're going to have to work hard to beat some existing initiatives in the industry (Op4g - www.op4g.com - is the one that comes to mind first). The MR industry has a bit of an "old boys club" feel to it, and there is a flood of DIY survey tools coming out each day that make it harder and harder to break through the noise.

3\. I would spend some time on your site explaining why compelling people to participate through charities is better than direct cash incentives. There is a ton of great research on intrinsic motivation out there that supports this idea, with the book "Drive" by Dan Pink being one of the best summaries of why this concept works. However, your potential customers are not going to understand why that works to generate higher quality responses (as evidenced by some of the comments here on HN).

4\. If you're truly in this for the long-haul, I would try hard to build your own panel of respondents underneath this. That is going to take you a lot of time to do, but it's going to be the only thing that separates you in the long-term from all the other DIY survey tools. Plus, if you ever try to sell the business the value of it will be substantially higher to a potential acquirer.

Just my two cents... You're off to a great start!

<comment><USER20> tchock23: I am working on something tangential to the MR industry, and would love to hear some thoughts from you on what I am building. How do I contact you?

<comment><USER19> Happy to help... My email address is in my HN profile (it's just my HN username @gmail.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why do you firmly believe that your first startup should be on your own dime? I have two issues with this. First, if you can't convince investors to give you money, it might be a sign that it will be hard to convince users to use your product. Also, it's a bad risk management strategy. You seem to be already investing over $10,000 of your time in this project, so if it fails, you will feel it regardless. An upside would be that you have more control and might worry less about dilution, but at this stage I would be more concerned about having the best resources to create a great product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it's a lot easier to spend other people's money. Instead of hiring people when you need something done, you learn it and do it. That way, when you do hire someone you are more knowledgeable and careful with your decisions.

I think it's a good way to teach yourself to be "lean" (in the parlance of our times)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very similar experience here.

> Finishing the MVP is Priority #1. At all times. Anything else is a > distraction: hackernews, twitter, food, sleep, gmail, friends. Saying no is > hard (...)

I quit my day job in 2010 to work on my first web startup and to help fellow startuppers (and would-be ones) overcoming procrastination:

<on-topic-shameless-plug>

asaclock, an anti-procrastination web community for startup single founders and people working on side projects.

</on-topic-shameless-plug>

</comment><comment><USER23> You should show people exactly what they can do with the money they raise.

\- Answer this survey, feed a child for a week

\- Answer this survey, a village can buy a goat

etc

<comment><USER19> I second this idea... I've come across a few studies that say pinpointing exactly where/to whom the money will go goes a long way to increasing donations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Startups are about making difficult choices. Quitting your job is easy, especially if it's "soul-sucking". Be sure you're quitting because you need to build something that can't be built any other way. If you have a fantasy of walking out the door and hitting it big, this is a warning sign. If the idea doesn't keep you focused for more than a few hours a day, and doesn't keep you up past midnight, that's another warning sign.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. That is a good metric. Some say you should only build products that you would use yourself. While I use surveys, I don't think I'm the target market. So, your metric of building something that can keep you focused is much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The design of this blog reminds me why I rely so heavily on Instapaper to read blog posts. It's as though someone etched a blog post into the surface of an IKEA desk.

I'm sure that you put a lot of time into this post, so you shouldn't distract from the content by having a design that makes it harder to read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Steven, I'm sorry about that. I'm working on making it more readable. Thanks for understanding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am going to pitch for you. Let me know if I can help in any manner. I will surely spread the word etc. But if anything extra is needed, feel free.

And if you are wondering why I am ready to help, I have a personal selfish motive, Learning, Working with smart ass guys like you. So we have a fair deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha, it's a deal. I definitely need customers right now. So, if you get a survey, email the company and tell them about eval.me

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am somewhat skeptical of charities so I use <http://www.givewell.org> to find the one that most effectively uses the money. I would suggest you research thoroughly the charities you work with so the money is actually put to good use.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a nice idea, but it seems to already have been somewhat done: [http://www.websurveysformoney.com/exchange-your-points- for-c...](http://www.websurveysformoney.com/exchange-your-points-for-charity- donations/)

<comment><USER29> It doesn't matter if it's already been done.

<comment><USER30> Can't up-vote you enough. If we quit doing anything, because it's been done already... I don't event want to start imagining where we'd be right now.

<comment><USER29> It's always the response I get whenever I talk about a side-project I'm working on. "Oh, that's been done before." It immediately takes the wind out of my sail. It seems like schadenfreude to me. Don't tell me about other similar apps unless you know something about them. And if you know something about them, be helpful and tell me what you don't like about those solutions. Otherwise I'd prefer you just keep to yourself about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Good UI. I'd say, however (from a business model standpoint), with prices out there in the in-between 'almost free' (see: Amazon's Mechanical Turk; <http://aws.amazon.com/pricing/mturk/>) and the 'great value' range (see: Survey Monkey; <http://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/details>), your per- customer costs might be a touch overly-ambitious.

The charity niche is pretty rad tho. You may increase your chances of capturing a piece of the market if you exploit that benefit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think most of the comments so far are missing the mark. This article is about leaving the working world and building something on your own.

It's quite impressive that the author has completed their first project in just 4 months. The article provides a good dose of motivation to anyone teetering on the edge of pursuing the start up life.

It's great to hear about these stories on HN, everyone started somewhere and it's great to see the process.

</comment><comment><USER33> Interesting idea... I actually quite like the concept. I'm seeing this as more of an activist site than a sustainable business, though. What's to stop companies from just counting the respondents in their existing survey systems and just making their own donations?

I'm really glad you're propagating an idea that will raise a lot of money for charity, but I don't fully see how this can become a profit making business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing stops companies from doing their own survey system, and then counting responses and making charity donations.

However, this is a service already built to do that and it may save them the time and money to build their own.

Moreover, customer feedback often needs to be anonymous. So, if the company runs it, the customer may not feel as comfortable sharing their true opinion. A third party would be more desirable in those cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why would more money go to te charity than to your service??? Wouldn't they rather pay less and give you the same amount??

<comment><AUTHOR> Because some research shows that people are more motivated by a donated dollar than being entered into a drawing for an iPad. What do you think?

<comment><USER35> There is a fine line and in my experience with a venture revolving around "portion to charity" model, it all comes down to one thing, your demographic users. I co-founded a startup (handled the tech) for an auction site where we promised HALF of every dollar we made would make to to charity. It was a risk to start and we knew that, but seeing as it hadn't been done, I can now say that at least I tried. It cost us so [insert frustrating word] much more to run the company, handle support, produce the product, market, mitigate fraud and deal with people trying to game the system than was worth it to even the charities involvement. We even took the steps to become a Commercial Fundraiser and be bonded in the states we operated to instill confidence in our users which ended up being a stark realization of why more companies dont do charitable acts, because theres so much in the way of doing good in this world when it comes to proper legal way of doing things.

All that said, about 8 months into the venture (and at the end of what we had left in the bank) I sent out this survey with the responses highlighted: <http://9mtr.co/2v0S2X1C3G093t06273Y>

As you can see, people responded with the best intention, but in the end, could care less. My point here is know your audience before you bank it all. We did our homework and found similar research that showed it might just work as well, but finding those people may be harder than you think, so don't underestimate the work involved. Regardless I wish you all the good luck and karma in the world to make this planet a better place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man. This is very helpful feedback from someone who has done it.

This is hard to test before having a product because most companies will say they would donate to charity, but then do not when it comes down to it.

I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks again.

<comment><USER35> absolutely. my email is in my profile, if you ever need any advice on all the charitable red tape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I visited the site and after a couple minutes Flaviu had started a little chart with me. I up voted because of this. Great way to show a product on a personal level which goes right along side his idea that surveys would have better results if the participants cared about the survey.

</comment><comment><USER37> I, for one, think that your idea is great. Good luck!

Suddenly, an idea - what if you let charities request to be included in your service? Once a charity is on-board, they have a great incentive to tell people about you, link to you and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That's a great idea.

I want to keep it manageable for my users. If you give a user infinite options, they will be overwhelmed. So, I am not entirely sure how to strike that balance.

Currently a company chooses 5 of 20 charities, and their customers choose 1 of those 5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I wonder how effective donating to charity is on improving the survey quality.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have some measurements for that and as I get more customers, I will be able to answer that question for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Very neat UI and I like the video very much. How did u make the video?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I used <http://www.revolution-productions.com/> and @lukedupont helped me a bunch with the design.

Lesson Learned: I thought you just pay and a video gets made. But there's a bunch more work I had to put in, like write the exact script, and make sure the story boards matched that script.

Same goes for design. You want the designer to have some creative freedom, but also enough guidelines to make what you want. I had already designed the site and logo and most of the functionality myself, so the designer had an easier time improving upon the ugly design I had made :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> If I pay you to donate, do I get to write off my taxes? Why not just pay you 25 cents per respondent with a commitment I'll donate to charity and let me decide if I want to do good or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I am working on the $1 to be processed separately from the 25 cents so that you can write the amount off.

That's a good idea to give customers the option to do it on their own. However, in that case I cannot guarantee to their respondents that the company will make good on their promise.

<comment><USER40> My only feedback to that is I'm not sure it's your place as survey company to guarantee anything to my customers. I'm just hiring you to get the form filled out, you should let me handle the rest.

Kudos to separate processing however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > _What doesn't make you stronger, kills you_

Beer doesn't fit, sorry :)

Seriously, the expression is the other way around - _What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger_.

</comment><comment><USER42> Fails in IE8 - mandated by Uni on Windows machines... I agree with not supporting IE7-, but IE8 probably still needs some support.

<comment><USER29> I don't know if I agree that MVP's need to work well or even at all on IE8-

<comment><USER43> Or, rather "I don't know if I agree that MVP's need to work well or even at all for _over half the people using it_."

That's what you're saying if you decide not to support the current most popular web browser. Like it or not, you need to build things for the platform your users are on. If I were building a product, I'd make sure it works in IE first and foremost before worrying about niche browsers like FF and Chrome.

Just because 100% of the people here use one of those two "niche" browsers as their main browser, don't assume your users will.

<comment><USER44> First, over half of people do not use IE8, so not sure where that stat is coming from. Second, not sure I'd call FF or Chrome niche.

Not paying too much attention to IE (IE8 specifically) is a strategy worth doing. It's a pain in the ass to support IE8 and not worth the extra development time in the short term. Plus, not sure if this applies to this startup (I'd say it does), users like those in HN (the majority of whom use FF or Chrome) are the users you want initially to use and support your startup. If they like it, they become quite the dedicated user, which really helps to get your startup off the ground initially. So targeting FF and Chrome users is hardly a bad strategy for release 1. Adding IE8 in the mix is way more frustration than it's worth.

<comment><USER43> Would it make you happier if I said 1/3? Is that a reasonable fraction of your potential userbase to leave with a bad impression of your business?

You make it sound like supporting Internet Explorer is difficult. If it's 2003, then yes, I'll agree with you. But today it's not.

Supporting IE in 2011 is a matter of building your site against Chrome while not going out of your way to use non-standard things like Object.keys, localStorage or Canvas when you can avoid them. Then you test on IE7, notice your corners aren't rounded, and decide you can live with that.

If, on the other hand, you go out of your way to cram in as much HTML5 nonsense as you can fit, or refuse to spend a few minutes getting IE to render, you need to realize that you're not taking a stand. You're just being lazy.

But then at the end of the day it's your business, so you're well within your rights to be lazy. You may or may not make less money as a result, but then again that's nobody's business but your own.

All the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Congrats on making it happen!

There's a typo on your about page: anually -> annually.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man. I changed that and will push the change tonight. Let me know if you find any other bugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Isn't there a fourth option, being, going to work part time?

</comment><comment><USER47> It is so inspiring to see MVP! Great job!

</comment><comment><USER48> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER49> What is a MVP?

<comment><USER50> Minimum Viable Product. Defined in the book The Lean Startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> nice to see a startup from a romanian on the first page of YC

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man. There were quite a few Romanians that messaged me, so I think there is a startup spirit in Romania.

For anyone interested, I am organizing a Startup Meetup in Cluj on Dec. 20: <http://www.meetup.com/cluj-rb/events/43578682/></comment></comment>


Show HN: Building a Black Mirror 'Nosedive' rating app in a couple of hours - <AUTHOR> http://devan.blaze.com.au/blog/2016/11/30/building-a-nosedive-rating-app-in-a-couple-of-hours <comment><USER2> You should put it in the app stores. Netflix are the good guys, they won't sue.

<comment><AUTHOR> We may do something once we build out more functionality. I would really like to try some face detection on there, and start recording aggregate ratings etc. and make it truly social.

It's just that we have been burnt by C&D letters in the past for even mentioning a brand name or using similar colours etc., so I am wary of waking the savage beast, so to speak. :) I may drop NetFlix an email asking for permission.</comment></comment>


My analysis of the Voynich Manuscript text - <AUTHOR> http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/blog/Blog.html <comment><AUTHOR> The last 12 articles in my "blog" ([http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/blog/Blog.html](http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/blog/Blog.html)) cover my statistical analysis of the Voynich Manuscript. I have concluded that the text is almost certainly meaningless, and figured out how it could have been generated. My generated text has all the important statistical properties of the original, except for some details of paragraphing, which can easily be handled by postprocessing.

There's a related thread discussing it at Voynich Ninja: [https://voynich.ninja/thread-1812.html](https://voynich.ninja/thread-1812.html)</comment>


New Cognitive Training Study Takes on the Critics - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/10/09/new-cognitive-training-study-takes-on-the-critics/

<comment><USER2> I want to see some intelligent discussion here! When I read the article, the first thing I did was to come to Hacker News to find the discussion.

So, anyone? :)</comment>


Designing accessible color systems - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/accessible-color-systems <comment><USER2> Previous discussion from a couple of months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21267606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21267606)

Somewhat related, the Hacker News bar in its current dark red has a contrast that's a bit too low for my tastes.

<comment><USER3> > _Somewhat related, the Hacker News bar in its current dark red has a > contrast that's a bit too low for my tastes._

Not just your taste. It fails WCAG.</comment></comment>


Google Strikes an Upbeat Note with FCC on Title II - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/12/31/google-strikes-an-upbeat-note-with-fcc-on-title-ii/

<comment><USER2> This article prompted me to read more about pole access rights, and this article[1] seems interesting and informative.

The question it begs, though, is why must a pure ISP be classified as a cable provider or telecommunications provider? It seems clear (and is made explicit in the article I have linked) that a good portion of the problems surrounding this issue come from applying yesterday's regulations to today's technologies.

Why is the following not an option: Add a new classification of utility for ISPs and allow them utility pole access at either one of the existing rates or a new one.

Why is regulation according to Tittle II (a contentious issue) a necessary prerequisite for ISP access to utility polls (a competitive boon wanted by pretty much all internet customers)?

[1][http://www.kandutsch.com/articles/access-to-utility-poles- fo...](http://www.kandutsch.com/articles/access-to-utility-poles-for-ftth- providers)

<comment><USER3> > a good portion of the problems surrounding this issue come from applying > yesterday's regulations to today's technologies.

And that is why a functioning congress would be nice.

<comment><USER2> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe that the FCC would need congressional approval to do anything proposed in the parent article or what I've mentioned. They are a regulatory commission that designs and implements regulation.

I may be wrong on that, and if I am a good primer (from anyone or just link) would be nice.

<comment><USER4> See the 1996 Telecom Act. It explicitly laid out the classifications the FCC can use: telecom, broadcast, cable and information service. [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_199...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996)

Per the courts, the FCC does not have the authority to create a new classification, only Congress can do that. The FCC must apply one of the classifications to ISPs and regulate them according to that classification per the 1996 act. The FCC currently classifies ISPs as information services, and information services _can_ discriminate because they offer a service that requires a greater level of control in order to function.

Also see the court case where the FCC attempted to apply special regulations to the ISPs, and the courts shot the FCC's special regulations down: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._v...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verizon_Communications_Inc._v._Federal_Communications_Commission_%282014%29)

<comment><USER2> Thanks much. This is helpful for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Current coverage is the north side of Kansas City, a suburb of Provo, Utah, and part of Austin, TX. That's all. Google talks big, Google Fiber seems to be more about hype and politics than installation.

Verizon got a lot further with fiber-to-the-home, with coverage for about 12% of households in their territory, before they gave up on FIOS expansion. It wasn't making money.

Sonic.net makes money with their fiber to the home system, but they only have a few cities around Santa Rosa, CA installed, and are trying for three neighborhoods in San Francisco. Maybe it pays because they don't spend so much on PR.

<comment><USER6> The purpose of Google Fiber isn't to make Google the world's ISP, it's partly to demonstrate the feasibility of fiber to the home (in a big, public way) and partly to create demand (by being big and public).

Yes, it's more about hype and politics than installation. I thought that was obvious. If the hype and politics doesn't get the big ISPs off the dime, then it may have to become about installation, in which case the experience Google Fiber is obtaining will become important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It will be difficult to make any change in this to open up for alternatives like Google; there's so much entrenched interest/power among cable MSOs and telcos. Hence, the best shot at succeeding is just reclassifying. This would be fantastic, and flip a switch to enable significantly more competition.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much of this statement, if any, is intended to scare the telecoms into not pressing this issue any more. Ina strategy that was probably intended to get Google to commit or get out of the market, they might not like the direction Google takes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Meanwhile in civilized world (Europe): Poland/Warsaw, Regulatory body prevented UPC Cablecom, European cable giant, from completely taking over local competitor. UPC was forced to sell hardware infrastructure gained in the merge, and obligated to lease it for at least 12 months after the sale.

"In May 2013 Netia acquired from UPC Polska a part of former Aster cable operator's network, which was classified for resale according to the decision of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) as of September 5, 2011 approving the acquisition of Aster cable operator by UPC Polska. Netia purchased from UPC Polska and UPC Poland Holding BV 100% of shares in Centrina Sp. z o.o. and Dianthus Sp. z o.o., which own cable networks in Warsaw and Krakow reaching a total of 446,000 homes passed. The transaction has been treated as a purchase of network assets and related liabilities with a net valuation of PLN 5.8m. Simultaneously, UPC Polska concluded with Centrina and Dianthus a 12-month network rental agreement in order to ensure service continuity to its customers during a transition period. Total consideration payable to Netia Group for this network rental amounts to PLN 4.5m. Moreover, Netia will receive discounts on certain ongoing commercial agreements between the Netia Group and UPC Polska. These discounts are estimated to amount to PLN 16.4m and will be recognized as they are received."

Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) - sounds pretty alien to all USians, doesnt it? :)

Result: 300Mbit/s internet is $17/month. 300Mbit internet + A la carte TV (YES, about $1.5 per 1-17 channel bundles you can freely pick from, 170 channels in total) starts at $20/month.

[http://giga-kablowka.pl/](http://giga-kablowka.pl/)</comment>


Top 500 Startups Batch 14 Startups – Sorted by the Growth Score - <AUTHOR> http://mattermark.com/top-10-500-startups-batch-14-startups-sorted-by-the-growth-score/ <comment><USER2> "Top 10 500 Startups ..." is the actual title, which better reflects the content of this article since you must sign up to a free trial of Mattermark to see the rest.</comment>