Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/cellphone-cancer-link-found-in-government-study-1464324146 <comment><USER2> Does anyone have a link to the actual paper? As usual, it's impossible to get any useful information from a sensational mainstream science article.

The article states that they studied rats and mice at 9 hrs/day exposure (at what RF power?) but aren't reporting results for mice at this stage.

Of the rats (how many?), they found the "cancer association appeared in male rats" but no effect size or confidence interval is reported. No mention of dose sensitivity is mentioned.

So they report some cancer association (how much? we don't know. how confident? we don't know) in a small subset of their study population (excluding female rats and all mice) at some unknown RF power and at an exposure time considerably larger than what most humans would receive.

I'm sure the science behind the study is much more rigorous than this, but wow - the reporting sucks.

<comment><USER3> Mother Jones posted this link: [http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

Key points:

\- The rats were exposed in utero and throughout their lifetimes

\- They did pilot studies to find what radiation level did not cause a body temperature rise to remove that as a confusing factor

\- 900MHz CDMA and GSM signals

\- SAR of 0, 1.5, 3, 6 W/kg. For comparison the FCC limit is 1.2 W/kg in 1 gram of tissue. In the UK/EU it's 2 W/kg.

\- 18 hour cycle each day, 10 minutes off, 10 minutes on (i.e. a 9 hour 50% duty cycle)

\- 90 rats per gender per group (I think 1260 total)

\- 106 week study

\- Litter weights were slightly lower in exposed groups (~10%), but over time there was no significant weight difference between the exposed and control groups

\- For the things they studied, the exposed rats had a defect rate of a few percent compared to control values of zero. Historic control values were (in my opinion) comparable to the exposed group and it seems to be barely statistically significant. The exception seems to be heart schwannomas which were as high as 7%.

\- More will be published this and next year.

Here's a fun statement:

At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR. Survival was also slightly lower in control females than in females exposed to 1.5 or 6 W/kg GSM-modulated RFR. In rats exposed to CDMA-modulated RFR, survival was higher in all groups of exposed males and in the 6 W/kg females compared to controls.

<comment><USER4> Oh great, now those damn people with CDMA phones are going to be _even more_ smug. :P

<comment><USER5> Pretty much everyone uses CDMA these days. 3G/UMTS and 4G/LTE are both based on CDMA, which transmits continuously, unlike 2G/GSM/EDGE, which transmits in pulses and makes the dit-dit-dit-bzzz sound in nearby speakers.

Edit: actually LTE uses OFDM, which is mathematically distinct from CDMA, but a naive receiver is unlikely to notice the difference.

<comment><USER6> "CDMA" means something different than "code division multiple access" multiplexing when contrasted with GSM.

Instead it refers to the CDMA2000 family of telephony protocols ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA2000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA2000)), which are a series of whole stack (radio modulation all the way up to text encoding schemes) protocols. Calling it "CDMA" is a branding thing than rather than having anything to do with multiplexing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's important to note that according to official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer. I've heard my own concerns about non-ionising radiation dismissed (even belittled) so many times that I've lost count. Most often this comes from educated people who think that their education constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is nothing left to be discovered. But one should understand that if this dogma was correct, there should be no link found at all.

I did a physics degree at uni, and then spent many years working in genomics. And I've never (even before the biology work) assumed the "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" to be a true statement. You can only come to that conclusion if you assume that ionisation effects are the _only_ pathways that can cause cancer.

After working with biologists for many years I've come to the understanding that biology is extremely complex, we have an extremely limited understanding of it, and there could be any number of as yet undiscovered effects of non- ionising radiation on cellular biology.

I would hope that as more of these studies are done (this is not the first and probably wont be the last) that we would hear less of this dogma spouted by supposedly smart people, but I doubt this will happen. It doesn't matter what you do, intelligence and education often go hand in hand with ego and a feeling of infallibility. And the dismissive "non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer" people never miss an opportunity to tell you that doubting this "proven fact" makes you stupid.

<comment><USER8> "official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer."

I doubt that you can find a scientist doing research on radiations effect on the body that dogmatically has said that "non-ionising radiation _can not_ cause cancer". I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits of doing science scientifically.

So if you "doubt" the dogma by saying "non-ionising radiation _can_ cause cancer" every scientist, and me, can go "F __k yeah, thats a working hypothesis, go prove that and bring society forward ".

But if you would say that "non-ionising radiation _causes_ cancer" you are "stupid" in the way that you don't base that sentence on the current state of science and you are just making things up because you have been "working with biologists for many years" and you are a proud user of Common Sense™.

<comment><USER9> > I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits > of doing science scientifically.

Feynman did in 1974: [http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

In light of these things, my working hypothesis is scientists can dogmatically claim things too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced.

We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA.

<comment><USER11> Conjecture:

There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions.

Another way to think about this is with an analogy: "non-lethal weapons"... but then see [https://mic.com/articles/123410/nonlethal-weapons-are- much-m...](https://mic.com/articles/123410/nonlethal-weapons-are-much-more- lethal-than-police-want-you-to-think). It would seem smarter to start thinking about things as "less" and "more" of something, rather than "non".

If you find some wavelength in the middle that seems to be safe, perhaps it is safe in the near term, but when put in terms of "less ionizing than we can notice" it doesn't sound like something I want to hold next to my brain for the next 15 years.

Also note, it's already known that Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky[1], letting more chemicals into your brain.

Edit: apparently, this Bluetooth / WiFi point is moot.

1\. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8012056](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8012056)

<comment><USER12> It's been a while since I took chemistry and physics so I could be wrong, but I think you may be incorrect due to quantum effects. Specifically, the quantum in quantum mechanics refers to various phenomena which are quantized, a very common example of which is an electron moving to a different energy level. It's entirely discrete what energy levels an electron may orbit an atomic nucleus at, it's not a continuum, and for an electron to receive enough energy to be free of the nucleus (causing the atom to become an ion) requires some minimum energy level. Energy is directly proportional to wavelength in the case of em radiation, so there in fact is some minimum energy required for something to be "ionizing".

It is possible that other mechanisms cause cancer, but your conjecture is almost certainly false. Someone who does this for a living please let me know if there's clarification needed.

<comment><USER13> You are somewhat correct. In principle the system is quantized but due to the sheer number of degrees of freedom (or quantum states) the spectra may still appear continuous.

Take for example a single water molecule in vacuum: If you calculate the QM vibrational (motion of the nuclei) and electronic frequencies you would conclude that there is no way that microwave radiation can excite a water molecule. This is because the nuclei interact with three discrete (quantized) frequencies in the infrared (IR light), whereas the electronic degrees of freedom only interact with much higher energy photons (UV and above).

However, if you now move into the bulk, you will notice that there are is also an interaction energy between the water molecules which causes rapid changes in the water conformation at room temperature. From the quantum mechanical perspective, you now get an explosion of possible states including states which excite the hydrogen bond network between the water molecules. You can now induce translation and rotation of water with respect to each other. This is why water absorbs across a large spectrum of frequencies including radiation in the microwave region.

For DNA, the situation is similar. You will also find a continuous broadening of states. BUT how well you absorb energy at a given frequency still varies. Cell phone bands do not carry enough energy to break electronic bonds directly (unlike UV light). Instead, you can only induce thermal motions of the nuclei (heat). Luckily, our DNA transfers excess heat very rapidly (~picoseconds) to its environment, so no danger of local heating to the point of bond breaking if you don't climb up a massive cell phone tower.

In the end, its very unlikely that cell phone radiation alters chemical bonds in our DNA. However, beware of the sun while talking on the phone! I would guess that outdoor usage of cell phone significantly increases the dangers of cell phone usage. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I suspect that this experiment is substantially underpowered and that the few positive results found reflect false positive findings." \- Dr. Michael S Lauer, Director of Cardiovascular Sciences at NHLBI. Peer Review in Appendix G starting on page 36 of the study.

[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

<comment><USER15> Indeed, I did not find their response to this reviewer to address the statistics criticisms satisfactory. Also, although they try to adjust for this, I'm not sure if their rate correction fully corrects for longevity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These are partial results from a larger study:

"This report presents partial findings from these studies. The occurrences of two tumor types in male Harlan Sprague Dawley rats exposed to RFR, malignant gliomas in the brain and schwannomas of the heart, were considered of particular interest"

So a key question should be: how many variables was the study looking at? If they were testing 40 different things, you'd expect two 'significant' results by chance.

The discussion also mentions that pooling other studies in the program, the rate of gliomas in male controls is 11/550, rather than the 0/90 from this study. The incidence in the test group (pooling all dose levels) is 11/540, which is indistinguishable from that larger control group.

The numbers for heart schwannomas are a bit more compelling, but that's now just one variable, so the question of how many things the experiment is looking at is crucial.

</comment><comment><USER17> From the paper a sample of 90 control rats had no cancer found while the groups (90 in each) of rats exposed to radiation had between 0 and 3 instances of cancer being found. I would have though the odds of it coming out like that by chance would be fairly high.

I also note the control rats seemed to have survived less well "At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all 2 groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR" which shows these things are a bit random and would probably not justify saying cell radiation makes you live longer.

<comment><USER18> The subtleness if the differences between the groups seems to undermine their hypothesis. How are they saying this is statistically significant?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure. Also from an NYT article:

>Also it was unusual that the control group had zero tumors. In previous studies at the National Toxicology Program, an average of 2 percent of rats in control groups developed gliomas. Had that happened in this study, there would have been virtually no difference between the exposed rats and the controls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> At the moment the wsj article doesn't correctly link to the abstract so I put it in my post [1] (which also includes the full PDF link to the study [2]).

Considering there are an absolute _ton_ of studies showing there isn't a link this is highly interesting. I'm not a telecom engineer so I don't entirely understand the methodology but part of their pilot study was to test various field strengths that do not raise the mouse or rat's body temperature (does this mean they are not using the same field strength as our towers?). They were also put into custom reverberation chambers; wouldn't that amplify or at least repeat the signal? Or is that not an issue and if so, why?

Also this section has me confused (maybe I'm reading it incorrectly?):

 _" At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR. Survival was also slightly lower in control females than in females exposed to 1.5 or 6 W/kg GSM-modulated RFR. In rats exposed to CDMA-modulated RFR, survival was higher in all groups of exposed males and in the 6 W/kg females compared to controls."_

This makes it sound like the ones exposed to RF lived _longer_ than those in the control. Am I reading that right?

[1] [http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699](http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699)

[2] [http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> Ok this is the first study that says there is a link, but let's assume for a moment that what it says is correct and it has the same effect in humans: Would the same also be true for wifi?

According to Wikipedia the average cell phone TX power is 500 mW vs 200 mW for 802.11n [0]. Cell phones usually operate at lower frequency than wifi, however wifi (at 2.4Ghz) is at the same frequency as microwave ovens.

In the study the rats were exposed for 10 minutes on - 10 minutes off for 18 hours a day (at an unknown TX power), if you work in an office you are going to be exposed continuously (apart from coffee / lunch) for 9+ hours a day, and even more if you then go home and use a wifi device.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm)

<comment><USER21> I think the reason why people worry about cell phones and not other radio equipment is that they are transmitting very close to the body. Remember, EM intensity falls off as 1/r^2 so proximity makes a big difference.

<comment><USER22> And a particularly stupid way to react to cell phone radiation fears is to insist that cell network base stations should be moved away from schools and there should be no wifi base stations. Think of our children!

What that means is, of course, increased exposure. The kids are not going to give a way their phones, they'll continue using them. When there is no wifi, they will be using the LTE or 3G or 2G networks. When the base station is further away,the phone will transmit at higher power. The phone itself is by far the dominant source of RF power to people's bodies.

Thus, ignorant parents want to decrease radiation, and the very proposals they make would increase it. Whether that really has any impact, we don't know, there's no proof, or a good theory about possible mechanisms, just speculation, mostly based on fear and suspicion.

<comment><USER23> Indeed, increasing and improving technology and reducing exposure can go hand- in-hand, and it seems that many people don't understand this. More antennas; less power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Similar article but no subscription required: [http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal- study...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-study-links- cell-phone-radiation-cancer)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm especially interested in hearing how this study is different than this one in 2011:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594)

</comment><comment> yc-kraln Study proves cell phone radiation makes you live longer!

What about the huge, decades long study run by various governments with hundreds of thousands of people showing no association?

<comment><USER25> yeah. one would say that even before study, this

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_othe...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_other_cns_incidence.jpg)

and this

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_i...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_incidence.jpg)

would show at least some acceleration

the only thing that really moved the average:

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_combined_incidence.jpg)

was this, I think related to HIV:

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sar...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sarcoma_incidence.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A take from one of my favorite medical bloggers:

>Where to begin? I didn't see any sample size calculation, nor any discussion of what they expected to see. One of the reviewers did a power calculation for them (page 37) and found that based on 90 rats per group, the power was about 14%. This means that false positives are very likely. The cancer difference was only seen in females, not males. The incidence of brain cancer in the exposed groups was well within the historical range. There's no clear dose response. Why schwannomas? Schwannomas in other locations than the heart were not significantly different. These are rats. I don't know how this compares to real world exposure. And one more thing – the survival of male rats in the control group was relatively low, and if these tumors developed later in life, this could be the whole reason for the difference.

>Cell phones are UBIQUITOUS in the United States. If they were causing cancer, we would expect to see rates of [brain] cancer going up, right? That's not what we're seeing. They've been decreasing since the late 1980's. At least when we talk about vaccines and autism, the rates of the latter went up as we increased the former. With cell phones, there's an inverse relationship. What's going on?

I suggest reading the whole post.

Personally, I am unconcerned by this single study of rats, in groups of only 90, that found barely significant correlations out of many possible correlations looked for.

[http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you- can-...](http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you-can-troll-me- like-austin-can-also-cell-phones-and-cancer-again/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Well ... 900 MHz. GSM. CDMA. - Sounds like outdated to me. What about what we are using daily e.g. 2.6 GHz LTE and 3G signals.

<comment><USER28> What about wifi ? Since I, we, are sitting next to routers all day long, which I guess are sending more EMW energy through us than 3G towers.

<comment><USER29> The exposure from towers and base stations will be tiny compared to the exposure from devices. Inverse square law and all that.

<comment><USER30> With regard to cell-towers: the inverse-square law will underestimate your radiation exposure from a cell-tower, because they are directional and the inv.sq.law relates only to to perfectly isotropic radiators. In other words: you need to factor the cell-tower antenna gain (typically between 7-10dB) into your calculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This paper was linked, on a MotherJones article, found via the "web" link.

[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

</comment><comment><USER33> If cellphones and WiFi caused cancer you'd think we would see the cancer rates explode over the past 20 years. Have they?

<comment><USER34> Cancer is a very broad church. There have been a lot of lifestyle changes over the last twenty years, very difficult to specify control groups ....

<comment><USER35> You could possibly use the Amish as a control group. They are probably exposed less than almost any other group to these types of radiation due to their distance in proximity. They, of course, do come into contact with it in minor ways when interacting in public, but far far less than the general population.

<comment><USER36> That's actually a bad control group; you want some group whose lifestyle, including lifestyle changes, matches pretty well the rest of society _but for_ exposure to the kind of radiating devices at issue, to isolate changes due to the effects of the devices at issue from the effects of other lifestyle changes.

Since the Amish lifestyle and lifestyle changes over the time period of interest don't match the general public in ways _other_ than cellphone/wifi exposure, they aren't really a good control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm too much of an idiot here. What frequencies, range, power? How about other ubiquitous signals like Wi-Fi?

<comment><USER38> Wifi exposure using a computer should be hundreds of times lower than a cellphone that is emitting radio at full power next to your head.

If you are talking about Wifi in your phone, its' basically the same effect/power as GSM/CDMA.

<comment><USER37> Ah yes, sorry, wifi in phone! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Sanity check: This was 9 hours per day exposure equivalency for their entire lifetime. Consume or use almost anything at the same cycle over your lifetime and one can expect blow back.

</comment><comment><USER40> "The tumors were gliomas, which are in the glial cells of the brain, and schwannomas of the heart."

I know these are real words, but you gotta admit they sound strikingly fictitious.

</comment><comment><USER41> One in 20 studies will find that, with 95% certainty, there is a link. You can easily find 19 others that found that, with 95% certainty, there is no link.

<comment><USER42> To be fair, a meta-analysis is already done, and it proves there is a link: [http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/](http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/)

<comment><USER16> That article does not describe a meta-analysis (or at least it's not clear that it does), and it certainly doesn't 'prove' a link. They classified it as 'possibly carcinogenic' because there is some evidence indicating that it increases the risk of cancer. The evidence is inconsistent, and applying the precautionary principle doesn't 'prove' something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Does this same paper come out every five years, or is it just me?

</comment><comment><USER44> ok, now lets check wifi a/b/g/n

</comment><comment><USER45> Paywall

<comment><USER46> Click the "web" link below the title.

<comment><USER47> I feel like I'm missing something. Here's what I see: [http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg)

What should I click on?

<comment><USER48> Look at the top of the HN page. Under the article's title that links to its website, there is a "web" link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> In a similar vein, don't even think of questioning GMOs. You even just hint that you wanna see more studies on their safety you will be torn limb from limb, even if you admit to trusting them and eating them yourself.

<comment><USER50> That's because there already have been many many studies, and regulations require that each new food GMO be studied as well. If you don't mention all those, I'm guess the "tearing limb from limb" is actually annoyance at your ignorance.

<comment><USER49> You and others proved my point. I wasn't even criticizing GMOs myself, only talking about the dialogue about them, and still downvoted immediately and responded to negatively. There is no other tech on this planet with the same rabidly fervent support as GMOs that disallows even discussion about discussion.

<comment><USER50> Well I didn't downvote you, but if you refuse to even acknowledge that "torn limb from limb" is just annoyance with your inability to acknowledge the existing information, then perhaps the fault is with you and not others.

One might also say that there is no tech with as rabidly fervent detractors as GMO. I don't really care about the technology much, and for some reason you think I'm a fervent supporter! Ridiculous.

<comment><USER49> I'm not really just speaking about you. It is near impossible to speak about GMOs in anything but glowing terms pretty much anywhere on the internet.

I have no idea what you are speaking about regarding ignoring existing information by the way. I didn't even mention any specifics.

<comment><USER50> Another area besides GMOs where you're going to experience a visceral reaction for offhanded skepticism is evolution. Saying, "I think we need more studies on evolution" has implicit in it the assumption that we don't know much about it. While of course we have a lot left to discover on evolution, making that statement without acknowledging that we do know a lot about evolution and its status is not in doubt, will put you in the nutter category that denies that evolution is a fact.

Similarly, if somebody tells me "I think we need to study climate change more before we can tell if humans are causing it," then I'm going to challenge them to actually tell me what they know, and why they ignore the science.

If you've never encountered somebody that's spreading similar FUD around the science around GMOs, then great. But anybody who's informed about the actual science of GMOs is going to be somewhat put off by uninformed skepticism of the science that is endemic in the general population.

There's a huge body of evidence that GMOs are safe, over decades, that rigorously assessed safety of many types of GMOs (each one of course is unique and presents its own unique potential risks). Despite this huge amount of study, no safety concerns for food have been found. Yet I still get regular emails about, say, the impacts on monarch butterflies, when in fact that early-stage study was followed up upon in a conclusive manner, and the early- stage concerns were not found to be significant.

Any reasonable discussion of GMOs must acknowledge what we already know about GMOs. I don't know who you're talking to where you get shut down form talking about it, but in my experience that feeling comes from those who refuse to lok at the data that's out there that may not support their presuppositions.

<comment><USER49> You see though, you don't even know the details of my thoughts and you build a strawman that doesn't resemble them.

To be clear, by your analogy, I do believe that GMOs exist.

Jokes aside, GMOs are not a binary proposition, like the question on global warming or evolution, which is whether the theories are true or not. The question is two fold - whether individual GMO crops are safe or not, and whether it is possible that harmful GMOs are possible at all. The answer to the first question seems to be that existing crops are safe, based on several studies. The answer to the second is easy - yes, harmful GMOs are obviously possible - it doesn't seem all that difficult for instance to insert a gene from a toxic organism into a food plant. Not that anyone would do that, but it's physically possible. People conflate these two questions, which is where the crazy internet arguments come from.

Considering that it is indeed possible to create a harmful GMO, and considering that we barely understand how regular old nonmodified genes operates in relation to the entire organism, it is neither unscientific nor absurd to question whether subtle problems could arise from transgenetic modification. Current safety testing involves statistical studies across time and subjects, looking for correlations between the crop and harmful effects. It is impossible to simulate from first principals and predict all effects to an organism and its ecosystem due to the countless parameters involved. Science doesn't prove anything - it only posits theories and strengthens them with evidence, which could always be overturned with future data. To claim otherwise is the true anti-science stance.

<comment><USER50> Let's go back to your original statement, that baited me into responding:

>You even just hint that you wanna see more studies on their safety you will be torn limb from limb

So what more studies do you want to see on their safety that hasn't yet been performed, or would not be required by law for a new GMO?

You started with persecuted hyperbole, but now it seems to have come to this:

>Considering that it is indeed possible to create a harmful GMO, and considering that we barely understand how regular old nonmodified genes operates in relation to the entire organism, it is neither unscientific nor absurd to question whether subtle problems could arise from transgenetic modification

which is essentially "we don't know everything about gene regulation, therefore anything could happen." This is somewhat fallacious.

Well, really, nearly anything could happen. But it's all about chances of bad things happening. Maybe due to random quantum fluctuations, my fingernail turns into a blackhole. The risk of that is extremely small.

We spent many many decades bombarding plants with ionizing radiation in order to mutate them into better species, a roll of the dice every time. Most of these mutations were not desirable, but a very small few were desirable. Now we can be more focussed rather than just rolling the dice billions of times.

We base risk on the amount of experience we have with things, certain behaviors become less and less likely. Introducing non-native species to control some part of the ecosystem has proven to be exceptionally risky, for example. Randomly mutating plants with lots of radiation has not proven to be very risky. So far, genetically modifying them has not proven to be risky either.

If there's some potential risk that you can specifically determine that should be tested for, but is not currently, please publish your findings. But in all these paragraphs you've said nothing that would not be considered in the first five minutes by a thoughtful scientist, so I doubt that you have any deep insight here. I'm officially putting you into the nutter category. Consider this me wanting to tear your metaphorical limbs off ;) You have been vindicated in that sense...

<comment><USER49> > I'm officially putting you into the nutter category.

Insults and invective make you come off as immature and are explicitly disallowed on HN. You should be able to stand by the strength of your argument. If you feel it is too weak so that you must resort to epithets, then maybe you should keep your comments to yourself. I said nothing that I haven't tried to reason out, and am totally open to discussion, but you don't seem to be interested in having a discussion in good faith. if an expert in programming was discussing with a beginner making wildly wrong assertions, do you think calling that beginner a "nutter" would be in order? You seem to think you have a strong grasp of the subject, and I am clueless, so educate rather than insult.

I do have a response to your comment here, but I will only continue if you agree to discuss in good faith. I am not so hard headed as to be closed to new ideas, but I will not just throw everything out the window before thinking critically about the facts and understanding the merits and flaws in both my and your argument.

<comment><USER50> I apologize for insulting you.

However, I don't think that either of us see any incentive for continuing this off topic discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Eck, worth mentioning that science is done by consensus. Individual studies might be interesting, but it means nothing until it's shown in the context of an aggregated review.

<comment><USER52> So this is the one report people will refer to when they will justify their views on mobile use

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> So anyone know if the WSJ has accepted climate change and apologised for denying it for decades? Or are they still to be considered unreliable handlers of science findings?

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't think this applies anymore due to no one using phones as phones anymore and when they do it's hands free. No more antenna to head.

Also modern phones transmit at the bottom of the device. Lastly radio power is much lower now due to much smaller cells.

</comment><comment><USER42> Cellphones or Wi-Fi today are like cigarettes in the '50s. A huge lobby pretend they are just fine, people are in denial because they love them and we lack of longitudinal data about their effects on health.

But thanks to further research, and time, we are starting to understand better the effects of cellphone radiation on health. The World Health Organization already had a rapport in 2011 about cellphones possible dangers: [http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/](http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/)

Meanwhile, people should learn to use cellphones in a healthy way, and not living 24/24h with them (during sleep, for example). And at home would be better using cables instead of Wi-Fi...

<comment><USER17> Cellphones or Wi-Fi today are unlike cigarettes in the '50s in that if you run the numbers cigarettes cause loads of deaths (maybe 10 years off lifespan) while the effects of Cellphones and Wi-Fi if they cause any harm are so small as to be pretty much undetectable (see eg [http://bigthink.com/laurie- vazquez/your-cellphone-absolutely...](http://bigthink.com/laurie-vazquez/your- cellphone-absolutely-will-not-give-you-brain-cancer)).

If there's a modern equivalent to cigarettes it's probably air pollution which can probably knock about a decade off your life in the worst places. ("Life expectancy is 5.5 years lower in northern China than in the south because of heavy air pollution, a new study examining 20 years of data has determined."...). Or maybe sugary food.

<comment><USER26> Don't put faith in that Chinese pollution study. Their "statistically significant" discontinuity in life expectancy only happened because they chose to fit the data with a strange third order polynomial plus step function. Take a look at the data behind that China pollution study and see if you would draw the same fit line: [http://andrewgelman.com/2013/08/05/evidence-on-the-impact- of...](http://andrewgelman.com/2013/08/05/evidence-on-the-impact-of-sustained- use-of-polynomial-regression-on-causal-inference-a-claim-that-coal-heating-is- reducing-lifespan-by-5-years-for-half-a-billion-people/)

There's so much bad science in the world. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Sigh, this isn't going to help the (mentally ill?) people who believe cellphones / wifi are making them sick. I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it needs some careful reading to determine actual risk.

And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop using them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt?

<comment><USER19> > I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it needs some careful reading to > determine actual risk.

It's not paywalled. It's linked in the article as well as in other articles. Take a look here: [http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

> And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop > using them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt?

Everything comes with a risk. If phones _really do_ cause cancer we need to figure out the possibility and weigh it. It's likely very small if it exists whereas every person in the United States, over an average life time, has an almost 2% chance of dying in a car (which is insanely high when you think about it) and yet we're still using cars, non-stop.

<comment><USER55> Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Uzbl: a browser that adheres to the Unix philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://tuxtraining.com/2009/09/05/uzbl-and-uzbl_tabbed-py-a-browser-that-adheres-to-the-unix-philosophy

<comment><USER2> I use this browser. It's put together mainly by a bunch of Arch Linux users. It's little more than a thin wrapper around webkit providing pipes and things. It requires a _lot_ of work to configure, (unless you copy the default) but it's very lightweight and integrates with some systems and styles of work better.

Edit: : A few more thoughts,

If you like the stuff that the suckless people (<http://suckless.org/>) put out, you will like uzbl. Otherwise it might be a bit of a culture shock. I still haven't been able to let completely go of firefox yet.

<comment><USER3> I don't want to install just to check this point - from the keybinding info it appears you can do a google search but you can't simply enter a url?? Is that right or did I miss something.

<comment><USER2> There are no keybinding by default. You have to bind them all yourself using the config file. The example config shipped with it contains usable defaults though.

      o<space><url><enter>

will do what you are expecting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just noticed that there've already been interesting discussions about Uzbl on HN:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626281>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=578618>

What I wonder the most about is why they don't try to bring a command line interface to firefox, kind of like how you can call safari and its content from applescript.

I think firefox can already be used with keyboard shortcuts only and they have a hard time getting their browser to be half as fast.

What configurability is concerned, I think that mozillas choice of saving all the user configs etc in a sqlite database is easy enough to access by script.

Still interesting and probably good fun to fool around with!

<comment><USER4> >> What I wonder the most about is why they don't try to bring a command line interface to firefox

See <http://labs.mozilla.com/ubiquity/>

<comment><AUTHOR> yes that is really cool too but no, i meant an actual shell interface to communicate with the browser

<comment><USER5> Something like this: <http://wiki.github.com/bard/mozrepl> ?

<comment><USER6> or like this: <http://surfraw.alioth.debian.org/> (works fine with "minimalist" browsers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worth mentioning conkeror as well -- it's basically Firefox with emacs keybindings. You can use the mouse if you want (as training wheels) and a lot of FF plugins still work.

Moreover, the .conkerorrc is in javascript rather than emacs lisp. Very cool.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just downloaded this and gave it for a whirl. Running Ubuntu (Jaunty), it definitely felt buggy. (Which is ok, considering it's stage in development)

For starters, the window maximized height-wise past my screen and I couldn't resize it so I had trouble seeing everything (all I did was copy the default config)

Additionally, loading up YouTube.com in it made it grind to a crawl. Video loaded, but the front page took a good 10 second pause before it was fully loaded.

I like the idea though and I plan to tinker with it more in hopes that it is more ... uzbl :)

<comment><USER2> The chief performance issue is that the default cookies handler has to spin off a new process for every cookies handled and that can make things _really slow_. That might be the problem you are having now. There are better scripts available, but I can't tell you much about configuring them.

<comment><USER9> > the default cookies handler has to spin off a new process for every cookies > handled

What? Why?

<comment><USER2> The default handler is a python script. Part of the design philosophy is to keep it separate from the browser itself.

There is an alternative: <http://www.uzbl.org/news.php?id=14>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am running it now (just got it through arch linux package management), and it has made a good first impression. I liked the transparency of all settings within the config file, customizable keybindings, ect. The defaults seem pretty usable; probably the most apparent problem that I can see is its speed -- for instance, loading hulu took quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here I am thinking that it's a required nowadays that browsers are huge, hulking monsters because of the multitude of things that need to be parsed and rendered on a web page. A minimal and unix-y browser sounds wonderful.

I've been enjoying Arora lately because of how small and lightweight it is, it runs blazingly fast on my old 64mb/333mhz: <http://code.google.com/p/arora/>

How does Uzbl match up to it in terms of memory usage? I'm (probably wrongfully) assuming it runs slowly because it's written in python.

<comment><USER2> Uzbl is actually written in C. Many of it's companion scripts (for cookies, etc...) are written in python however and can be slow.

<comment><USER12> True, however the scripts aren't compulsory - you can have uzbl call anything in response to actions, so you could call scripts in python, bash, whatever - or other native compiled apps, or tool your own stuff in assembler if you like - it's agnostic about the external apps it uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unix philosophy is great for some things, not so great for others. C'mon, handle my bookmarks through an external script? No, thank you. I'll keep with Chrome/Firefox/Safari.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't XULRunner bit like this

</comment><comment><USER15> > letter-spacing: -1px;

Please don't do this for copy.

<comment><USER16> yeah, that was horrible. I actually went into firebug and changed the class so that i could read it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> awesome What about flash?

<comment><USER8> Works fine if you have the right plugins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Warning: Doesn't work on Windows yet.

<comment><USER19> Seriously? "Uzbl - a browser that adheres to the Unix philosophy." You expect this to work on Windows?

<comment><USER18> Yes of course, its written in Python. I hope with a few tweaking, it might be able to start; I haven't looked at the code though.

<comment><USER20> BTW: It is not written in python. The core is C. The outer control systems (like cookies) are written in python.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: who's hiring for Clojure? - <AUTHOR>

Hiring is good, but who's hiring for interesting tech? <comment><USER2> you will find some offers in this thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3300290>

</comment><comment><USER3> Mexico Cities fractalmedia.mx</comment>


Two More Chinese DRAM Fabs Ready - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12681/chinese-dram-industry-spreading-its-wings-two-more-dram-fabs-ready <comment><USER3> > According to a media report, the equipment move-in will be completed by > early July and the first phase of the fab will be able to start volume > production of DRAM in the third quarter.

Ouch, that's an aggressive schedule. Two months to qualify the equipment and the process, train technicians, establish PM schedules, ramp up testing and QA departments, and run pilot lots? If anything at all goes wrong -- one bad mask, one misaligned robot that scratches all the wafers, one misconfigured test program -- you lose three weeks and have to start over. More if you have to revise a mask. Even more if you don't discover the problem until after burn-in. If they hit volume production in the third quarter, it's going to be at the very end of September, and it's going to be a very generous definition of "volume."

<comment><USER4> The move-in started late in 2017. It's almost a year to do all the preparations.

<comment><USER3> Could be. The article wasn't totally clear on the status of the fab. Most equipment has a few weeks of work (more for a scanner, less for a wet hood) to be done between when you bolt it to the floor and when you're ready to try it in production, but it might make more sense to wait until the dust (literally) has settled if you're moving in a whole row of tools at once.

<comment><USER4> Do you really think they will start making things ready after all the equipments are moved in?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dis-sys When the $ spent on importing chips is more than the amount spent on importing oil, you know full well that that there is no real alternative but to invest heavily into the semiconductor industry. In 2016, $227 billion worth of chips were imported by China [1].

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china- chips/chi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-chips/chips- down-china-aims-to-boost-semiconductors-as-trade-war-looms-idUSKBN1HR1DF)

<comment><USER5> Silicon is the new oil! No, it is by a big extend more important.

Nothing today can throw any country back to a stone age than loss of access to microelectronics:

1\. Loss of powerplants and the grid infrastructure - possible to rebuild, and immediate impact is not catastrophic

2\. Loss of food supply stocks - unless, you are blockaded, you can just buy abroad

3\. Loss of fertilizer stocks - just as survivable as loss of food supply.

4\. Loss of hydrocarbon supply - an even more laughable national emergency.

5\. Heavy industry - just rebuild, you can wholly rebuild it with pre- industrial tech level.

6\. Loss of microelectronics - you fc*ked - to make microchips, you need more microchips, and to build those microchips, you need a ton of other microchips. You achieve nothing if you manage to replicate the technology of the era of first ICs.

<comment><USER6> I can't see how #6 would be a larger problem than the others unless all existing microelectronics disappeared overnight, which doesn't seem like a real concern.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> DRAM prices have increased by over 200% since 2016 (more than tripled). Hopefully these new fabs will bring prices to more reasonable levels.

<comment><USER8> DRAM has _always_ been feast (shortage when new apps cause demand to outstrip supply) and famine (new fabs lead to oversupply).

This cycle was why Grove and Moore got Intel out of the memory business in _1985_.

<comment><USER9> Except I have a feeling that the moment chinese DRAM is reaching viability prices will magically drop to smother the new competitor.

<comment><USER10> Considering how it worked out in the solar cell manufacturing business, you might expect the exact opposite: eventually all the older manufacturers get driven out of business.

<comment><USER11> I really don't see Samsung Electronics being driven out of that segment.

<comment><USER12> They basically don't make mobile (non TV) LCDs any more... and they used to be one if the largest manufacturers. It's not quite the same, but it's similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a dissenting opinion.

Rather than getting two more fabs, Chinese state funds have just launched two more barely working ones that add to a long long list of their failed attempts to achieve self sufficiency in memory supply.

There were numerous attempts by Xinhua University Group in the past to launch memory businesses. Judging by that those fabs stand dark for years, none of them succeeded, and a lot of taxpayers money just got wasted again.

<comment><USER13> 1\. They weren't as serious as this time around.

2\. The money involved before were tiny compared to this round.

3\. They now have a market to absorb some lower quality components.

4\. The market is now making so much money from NAND and DRAM that is unseen in past time. There is not better time to enter the market. Even at half the yield then other major competitor they would still be able to make money.

5\. I don't think they will catch up in 3D NAND any time soon. But DDR4 seems to be a easier target.

<comment><USER5> Ksec, there may be merit to your thought here, but just for point 4. Even though memory market was always the ultimate cash cow, and price collusion was always the second name to it, what we see today is something completely "beyond good and evil."

I regularly meet Unigroup people just below the C-suite level during industry events in China. The do not give off any sense of brilliance to me, nor I can say anything high of their ability from what they did before.

Sure, they are probably the top fund by concentration of Oxford and Ivy league grads in China, and have few returnee cadres with past stellar career in Western top tier investment funds. I can even go as far as to say that if judged individually, some can be said to be genuine talents.

With all that star crew, why don't they fly? Because they are dominated people with stellar credentials, but all of whom are just meh and so so...

Just look what their "genius stratagem" of joining RDA and Spreadtrum did: they took a leader in one market, a leader on another market, joined them and got one without lead in any.

When Qualcomm was still greatly greatly handicapped in Chinese market by the fact that they were limited to high-end as low-to-mid-end market was a shark tank with likes of Spreadtrum and RDA in their prime. But when Unigroup decided to forcefully uproot both of them from their power base - <USER2> mass market, and mandate them to "abandon it all, focus on high-end, and make a chip to nail Qualcomm in under a year" they both lost their grip on their market niches, which Qualcomm and Mediatek were happy to devour, and of course they never came even close to scoring anything in high end market that Unigroup wanted. Now they have neither low-end lead, nor high-end lead.

As the saying goes: you don't get iron by joining brass and bronze.

<comment><USER13> I do agree with you on their silly "directions", But,

Let just say marking DRAM isn't rocket science. The key really is yield. And there is going to be some learning curve involves. UniIC actually posted a picture last year in December about their success on DDR4, but it was quickly deleted because the yield was only in single digit, i.e really bad, the info was shared on Weibo and known internally within the industry but it was deleted.

In Feb when Anandtech posted the news, I thought it was hoax again. Turns out UniIC actually did post a PR and yield is now 30%+. Which to be honest is still crap, but at least in today's market value, they could still break even. The more trial and error they do, the quicker they will be to up its yield. Something the market has allow them to do, if it was any previous years, the lost would be too great no one will be willing to "shoulder" this lost and lots of work will be needed to save faces.

I don't think Unigroup will mess up again, unless they decide to focus on something like HBM or LPDDR4, otherwise I think there is going to be sizeable low end market within China using UniC. I don't expect them to complete in the high end, but their entry I hope will put a stop in the memory pricing. Which is like at a ridiculous level.

P.S - UniGroup also has a change a direction and new objective under Xi, no longer are they acting mindlessly. Which is both a good and bad thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Orion Project [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109.jvn.spring00/nuc_rocket/Dyson.pdf <comment> 4x5-Guy An interesting thought experiment, but not something you want near a planet.</comment>


Tesla's $140,000 Model X SUV Does 0-60 in 3.2 Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/29/teslas-140000-model-x-suv-does-0-60-in-3-2-seconds-hits-the-road-starting-tonight/ <comment><USER2> It's pretty impressive overall, but for an SUV (people very often take them for longer camping/ski/road trips) to have a maximal range of only 260 miles (super charger stations won't be very common on the way to Yosemite), and base price of $35k MORE than a BMW X5M (while being slower and has way less range), this is truly a niche product for a very niche demographic.

I think the technology involved is fantastic, but it feels more like a product where they built it simply because they can.

EDIT/Disclosure: I own shares of TSLA. I was hoping of a X5/Q7/Caynne competitor that starts at $50-$70k, not a X5M/Caynne Turbo competitor which in themselves are very, very ridiculous and niche cars.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is really aimed at people who "take them for longer camping/ski/road trips," though.

For a while now, SUVs, like the Audi Q5 and the BMW X5 that the Model X is trying to compete with, have been basically a "cooler" alternative to minivans. The key feature they share is the space and seating that they provide, but having off-road capability is useful to a small subset of SUV owners and is just there to add to the cool factor that differentiates it from a minivan.

Tesla is trying to grab the wealthy, 30-to-50-something parents whose focus on luxury and style prevent them from buying a minivan, which would probably suit them and their driving habits better than an SUV. Take a look at wealthier suburbs of San Francisco (e.g. Marin) and you'll see tons of luxury SUVs without a speck of mud on them.

The ads for these SUVs really reflect this trend. Audi demonstrates the prevalence of SUVs-as-kid delivery machines:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soJs3ZUYtLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soJs3ZUYtLI)

While Lexus tries to present the same car Audi was bashing as sexy but safe:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rohl8v_IGKk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rohl8v_IGKk)

<comment><USER4> Most importantly for these purposes, the range on the Model X is sufficient to drive from Palo Alto to Lake Tahoe (220 miles) or Yosemite (165 miles) without issue.

<comment><USER5> Towing a small pop-up camper? At highway speeds the whole trip?

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you ran out of juice before reaching Yosemite.

Grades and highway speeds have a huge impact on range IME. Not to mention an extra 500lbs in passengers, a couple hundred lbs in camping gear, and that's not even getting to the camper.

The type of miles you're driving definitely matters. A gas vehicle is most efficient around ~60mph. Maintaining maximal range in an electric vehicle is a bad bet if most of your driving is highway miles. At least if my Nissan Leaf experience is relevant.

<comment><USER4> Tahoe could be trouble with a camper in tow, but the distance to Yosemite is only 2/3rds of the published range for the Model X -- I'd be shocked if there wasn't sufficient range to get there. Curb weight for the X is ~5,400lbs, call it 5,500lbs with driver.. Adding 5 passengers averaging 100lbs (family of 6) and 200lbs of gear would only add ~13% to the vehicles weight which would only minimally impact range since drag is a much bigger determinant for highway trips.

I found a nifty little site that takes into account elevation / vehicle weight, etc. for the actual route. Looking at the Model S, base range on the road to Yosemite with normal driving is 240 miles. Adding 700lbs to the car results in a range of 210 miles. So a 40% increase in vehicle weight only corresponds to a 12.5% decrease in range. This can be partially mitigated by driving at a "3/10" instead of a "5/10" in terms of range-extending, which results in about 225 miles of range with the same weight.

[http://www.jurassictest.ch/GR/](http://www.jurassictest.ch/GR/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is just awesome. I'm hoping to get one of these next time I need a car, which will be in a good few years.

If you compare Tesla's X and S to other cars, nothing really compares. How many cars fit 7 people yet accelerate like a Ferrari? How many cars effectively have 2 boots without being a van? How many cars cost a tiny fraction of the price to drive the same distance?

At that price point, you tend to be looking at either a little sports car, a luxury tourer, or a family tractor. This compares favourably with all of them.

At the moment the downside isn't even that bad: battery life will probably improve with time, and you can already go as far as most people need. Yes, your grand tour of the continent will take a few more stops, but pretty soon I'm guessing it will be close enough. And already the car drives itself. That's a huge, huge win.

I am expecting some competition though. I can't imagine the established manufacturers letting Tesla take the market in electric cars. That will hopefully bring down the price and increase variety.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't bet on the established manufacturers, they can cruise along making money for a long time without needing to change their mindset. There's a good video talk by one of the Tesla founders who points out that the reason they can build a car is that the big manufacturers outsourced everything, and so they can buy wheels, suspensions, wipers, windows etc. from the same places as the incumbents.

The only thing they didn't outsource, the thing they think of as their core, is the engines. Which is the one bit that Tesla, and the future, neither needs nor wants.

But I'd expect to see a few more new names in this area, like BYD (a battery company, so you know their priorities are well aligned).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you missed the live stream they just posted it here:

[http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx](http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx)

The gull-wing-in-a-tight-space starts at ~18 mins in

<comment><USER2> Serious question, can you still put a bike/ski rack on top of your roof? The more I learned about this car the more I went "that's cool, but WHY????"

<comment><USER4> Check out right at 25:00 into this video, they have a pretty slick bike / ski mount that attaches to the rear of the SUV and still allows access to the trunk:

[http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx](http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As much as I admire the engineering that went into the design of this vehicle I'm not looking forward to sharing the road with inexperienced drivers with vehicles of this size and weight with this much acceleration.

<comment><USER10> Yes, because inexperienced drivers tend to buy $130k vehicles.

<comment><USER11> Inexperienced drivers and drunk drivers. Where I'm from there are _many_ inexperienced drivers with lots of money due to political connections. In fact inexperienced drivers are almost a target market for cars in that price range here. There are also brats with rich parents. There's also pretty widespread drunk driving across the board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a very nice car, but I could buy two Porche Cayennes for the same price. Or a bungalow in Manitoba. or a houseboat.

If Apple is looking to compete with Tesla with their rumored iCar, we should probably expect a similar price. Someone will probably buy them, but that person won't be me.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is exactly the car I want: a six seat electric car with enough space for my wife and me, our two kids, a brace of grandparents, a stroller, pack & play, whatever crap we buy from the county fair we visit, and enough range for a weekend trip. It's ideal. It is, however, _twice_ the new list price of the used Mercedes GL that currently fills that role for us and even zero fuel costs don't make up for that over 5 years. It's a downpayment on a house, or a four figure lease. Not for us.

I'm pretty excited for the future though. This kind of thing will get cheaper. Tesla may be able to swallow the risk of offering warranties on used vehicles as more long-life reliability data comes in.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm really not sure how the Model X is going to perform. I really don't think the European market will go for the gull-wing doors. On a sports car yes, but on an SUV? I sincerely doubt it but I'd be happy to be proven wrong if it works well even in our über tight parking spaces and seriously narrow lanes.

<comment><USER15> It seems to work well in the video here - the doors are pretty flexible, equipped with motors and sensors so they can adapt: [http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx](http://www.teslamotors.com/modelx)

<comment><USER14> Yeah it looks pretty good there alright. Like I said, I'd be happy to be proven wrong but a few things spring to mind.

1\. Once fully extended, the door seems to protrude out from the car a bit which may cause a problem if you're tight against a wall. I'd be curious how they have solved this? It may be that we just can't open the door similar to a regular door when you're forced to park too close to the wall?

2\. Similar to above, since the door protrudes a bit, what happens when there are Xs parked beside each other?

Other than the door questions I agree it looks like a superb SUV. If Tesla can manage to convince people on the door design and it reviews as well as the S did, then they've another great product on their hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Strange the author didn't mention anything about the impressive safety ratings

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh great, another urban tank, this time with much more power.

<comment><USER17> I'm torn between "yay, another Chelsea hyper-tractor" and "yay, a super-cool future-car". But mostly "cool!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> doesn't look like SUV at all - just a hatchback

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks like they improved the front styling... wonder if the interior has been improved.

</comment><comment><USER20> Until some idiot soccer dad/mom kills someone by not being able to handle such accelaration.

Killed Paul Walker (gas engine).

<comment> Syrup-tan I assume there are multiple steps you have to take in order to reach that performance, ie having to put it into ``Ludicrous mode'', then forcing the pedal to the floor. I assume it isn't something that could happen easily on accident.

It's also notable that Paul Walker wasn't driving when he died.

<comment><USER21> He didn't actually say that Walker drove the car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> $140K and "falcon wing" doors only in the back. Epic fail. They seem like an afterthought that way. Sure, you can open them in tight spaces, but you won't be able to get into the car because the front door is basically the same as any other car door. Why bother with the back doors then?

<comment><USER23> The back doors have to be longer to accommodate both rows of rear seats. Shorter front doors open in tighter spaces than longer traditional back doors would.

Same reason they out sliders on vans and minivans - bigger openings.

<comment><USER24> Also you won't have child car seats in the front seats. Having rear doors that get completely out of the way even in very narrow spaces will be huge for parents of young children. Squeezing yourself through a narrow opening into a front seat is comparatively pretty easy.</comment></comment></comment>


Why We Need to Confront the Billionaires' Paradise - <AUTHOR> http://billmoyers.com/story/need-confront-billionaires-paradise/ <comment><USER2> FTA:

> The ICIJ's Panama Papers revealed that many people are using illegal means > to avoiding taxation.

> The Paradise Papers reveal something equally important: how billionaires and > corporations can evade taxation — and public scrutiny of their wealth — > through legal means.

These are consecutive sentences. Which is it?

<comment><USER3> Both.

<comment><USER2> So the solution to loopholes in laws is to pass more laws?

Re: illegal tax evasion, yes that should be prosecuted. However, when Amazon didn't charge state income tax, I sure didn't go out of my way to pay the government.</comment></comment></comment>


Horses can use symbols to talk to us - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/horses-can-use-symbols-talk-us <comment><USER2> Something about the experiment design seems off, but I can't place exactly what.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if it is the same thing you're talking about, but I thought it was interesting that they could assume that the horses would know that a blanket causes both relief from cold weather and overheating in warm weather, and also that they should think of the blanket based on how they were feeling. I thought those assumptions were almost as interesting as the part about symbols because of what they seem to imply about the horses' ability to reason through cause and effect.</comment></comment>


Am I seeing corruption on Google Play? How's this possible – legal? - <AUTHOR> When I went to Google Play to check if our recently published game was in the subcategory Top New Releases of Games category, I entered some random games to see what's good about them.
One that really caught my attention and shocked me is the Calculator: The Game by Simple Machines: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sm.calculateme
I'm not advertising them; I'm trying to understand how they got 844 ratings while Installs says: 10-50? Updated on July 13th and today is 16th, I'm sure the installs data and ratings is up to date for that date.
But how can they have so many ratings and only 50(max.) installs?
As far as I know Google Play allows you to rate an app only when you have installed it.
I can believe that it's possible to download and rate it without launching, but still looks strange to me to have that many ratings.
Are we seeing corruption? Have they agreed with Google somehow? Is this cheating? <comment><USER2> One possible explanation could be that the ratings count is updated immediately while the install count is updated at a slower rate...

<comment><AUTHOR> From our experience as publishers and creators of these apps: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=548828401423122855...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5488284014231228557&hl=en) I know that the delay is max. one day. Both for rating and installs. I'm sure that the numbers you see in the store now, are from yesterday, but still they don't match.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sharing a gif that will serve as a proof in case they do some changes to this app page. [https://twitter.com/vitovalov/status/886563706494218240](https://twitter.com/vitovalov/status/886563706494218240)

Apart from that, I continue monitoring, and the numbers of ratings keep growing. Also I noticed something strange when you refresh a couple of times the play store page. [https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohryBbqtYeAkomS3u/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohryBbqtYeAkomS3u/giphy.gif) It appears to be two different counts of ratings? Crazy...

</comment><comment><USER3> Aren't there farms of mobiles on racks in Thai and Chinese houses set up specifically to game those ratings? (Remembering some arrests within the last month or so...)

<comment><USER4> I guess you mean this one: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/12/15786402/thai- clickfarm-b...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/12/15786402/thai-clickfarm- bust-iphones)

Would be easy to assume there are many such setups around the world.

Speaking of which, how are they controlling iPhones like this? I cannot imagine they are all jailbroken, so how do they achieve automation like this?

FB also has a huge setup like this [https://code.facebook.com/posts/300815046928882/the- mobile-d...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/300815046928882/the-mobile- device-lab-at-the-prineville-data-center/) but it doesn't exactly say how it is done.

<comment><USER5> Manpower is cheap in developing countries, why automate any of it?

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Clc- CCAUYAABB76.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Clc-CCAUYAABB76.jpg) That particular image is from a TV show, but when people say "click farms", that's what to picture.

Imagine creating email addresses to make app store accounts to rate apps. For 10 hours, every day, for $1/hour.

<comment><USER6> $1/hour is more than a reasonable rate for this in any developing country.

Most blue collar jobs pay significantly lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the numbers have caught up.

[https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/image/2662962/ccd995aa49dc...](https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/image/2662962/ccd995aa49dc51d0db29d52afc80a9f9)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't think the install number is accurate or maybe based on something else than actual, physical installs? Also if you install / deinstall does that count as install (it should imho) or maybe not?

i'm not sure how easy it is to farm Play Store accounts; maybe someone knows? You need gmail which then turns into a Play store account right?

Does install count per device and how far does Google go in limiting that?

<comment><AUTHOR> These days is harder to create a google account since you need to make the sms verification process. That's now a requirement to be able to login to Google Play Store. The installs count since the moment you pressed install button. They don't decrease when people uninstall. However the uninstalls are visible in developer dashboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is installs the current number as opposed to the total over time? That would allow people to install, rank, then later remove, and so make sense of the statistic.

Another option is that people get to rank each device install but only count as being one (person with an) install? That would allow for such "corruption".

<comment><USER10> So you'll download an app, find it brillant (see how many 5 stars it got), and then remove it ? Well if this is so, it's surely some form of cheating. The question is : is Google have a system to permit it or have it been misused and abused ? I believe it's the second option (as explained on other comments) but either show there is a problem with rating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> download numbers are absolute, independent of any version or uninstalls of the app. the store updates the number with a lag. the ratings can be done only after download and are shown faster.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also the time will show if this is true. If tomorrow the installs count doesn't grow to 1000-5000 or at least 100-500, it's cheating for sure.</comment>


The Zoo vs. the Savannah - <AUTHOR> http://kevin.scaldeferri.com/blog/2008/03/23/ZooVsSavannah.html

<comment><USER3> This is a great post. A much more balanced perspective. I worked at a large well-known company, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit there and learned a lot of engineering. My leaving had almost nothing to do with them - I had to relocate for personal/family reasons, and I combined it with starting up. I have been reasonably successful, though I started for the "wrong reasons". I actually was sad to leave that bigCo.

I still have gifted friends "over there" and they are quite happy, seem to enjoy what they do, and have no intention of leaving. From a purely technical perspective, I have to say they have done some really interesting work - <USER2> than I can say about my own technical work. I have learned other things like product management, sales & marketing.

Keep in mind what kinds of innovations that Bell Labs & IBM Research & Xerox Parc (my bigCo was like them in a way) produced during the few decades of their high point. The foundations of this industry were laid in those places, and they were all huge companies.

<comment><USER4> I've been avoiding this whole latest essay debacle, but this essay particularly struck me. It is not a balanced perspective at all in my opinion, and is quite frankly the silliest and saddest rebuttal I've read so far.

What this person fundamentally doesn't understand is sacrifice, the key component to starting any company, and having any sort of real success in life. Does this person honestly think that starting a company entails living a life of poverty forever? I mean give me a break, you can spend your life eating at fancy restaurants and going to museums when you're 50. When you start a company, you give up ephemeral comforts like eating at PF Changs for a short period of time for a chance to do something incredible. The argument that you shouldn't start a start up because you will not have a lot of cash for a fews months or a few years is pretty shallow in my opinion. In fact, its much sillier to say "you are lame because you can't afford to eat out for a limited period of time" than it is to say "you are lame because you haven't started a company" (not that pg implied that).

I had this guy's life. Before Y Combinator, I worked at a very high profile company on a very high profile product, and had all the money I needed to buy the latest and greatest tv, or take my girlfriend to a fancy restaurant or go on some fancy vacation. My cofounder and I ate out EVERY night. We owned crazy gadgets, we bought expensive toys.

Guess what: that's not what happiness is about. And thank god. At the end of the day, unless you're curing cancer or something, you will not feel whole, even when working on something incredible. At least I didn't.

Now I'm in Y Combinator. I get way less sleep. I am stressed all the time. There's no such things as weekends.

But I'm doing something, and if I succeed, it will be mine. And if I don't, well guess what, I can still always go back to that old life.

And at the end of the day, that's the most important thing: the worst case scenario for me, is the best case scenario for this guy.

<comment><USER5> If you fail will you be happy with going back to your old life? Will you all of a sudden enjoy being in a "cage"? What happens if you're only happy when working on startups and every single one of them fails? Will you be poor forever? What if your current startup succeeds? Will you stick with it as it becomes a large company or leave and try to recreate the startup environment you enjoyed so much? (it seems to me that YC might be a way for PG to relive his startup days, which is why he tries to reproduce the Viaweb model so closely).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Provides a nice contrarian perspective. Though I personally don't function like that, I can understand workers who work to enable other more important things (family, hobbies, etc). In essence, they trade being caged for stability, safety, personal time, etc. To some, that can be happiness too.

I don't think it takes anything away from PG's original point that for a lot of younger, more ambitious folks, being caged is not the best way to live or work.

<comment><USER7> Well in some sense perhaps .. you can also say working your ass off is like becoming "caged in work". The question really is what is more important to YOU. If doing excellent technical work or making money is your first priority, then if you are working in a megacorp, then one can say you are caged. On the other hand, spending time with your family or watching movies or travelling are important to you, startup life is a cage for you and you will feel "trapped" by work.

The definition of caged seems relative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Does it strike you as odd that the startup founders at YCombinator apparently get told when they can take a day off? Me too."

That is pure and utter crap... There isn't a single mandatory day at YC (though you'd have to be a little daft to miss Demo Day). Paul (and the other folks at YC) haven't the slightest clue what hours (or days) the founders keep.

</comment><comment><USER9> 500's for me. Alternative link?</comment>


Windows 10 to start running Edge in a VM for added security - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/windows-10-will-soon-run-edge-in-a-virtual-machine-to-keep-you-safe/ <comment><USER2> borrowing idea from Qubes OS.

<comment><USER3> FTA, it sounds like a natural extension of the services they have already been building.</comment></comment>


MIT: AR is the way to interface with smart objects, with working demos.  - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2013/05/20/virtual-and-real-objects-meet-and-become-smarter-objects-at-mit/

<comment><AUTHOR> I work in AR, and our CEO has a great observation correlating the early days of film with these early days of AR.

Basically, when they first came up with moving pictures, they didn't know what to do with them. They filmed basic motions in the world - animals walking, an arm swinging a hammer - as well as the existing entertainment (plays, from a fixed viewpoint). People would be really impressed the first time, but since the usage was, ultimately, "gimmicky", they didn't come back to it.

It took the invention of special effects; if I'm remembering correctly, merely the cutting and re-assembly of the film (editing), for people to begin to actually see what the medium was capable of and for it to start taking off.

This is definitely that moment for AR. (Feels like there'll be more, but this is definitely one of them)</comment>


Solved: The Ciphers in Book III of Trithemius's Steganographia (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://profs.sci.univr.it/~giaco/download/Watermarking-Obfuscation/Trithemius.pdf <comment><USER2> _This I did that to men of learning and men deeply engaged in the study of magic, it might, by the Grace of God, be in some degree intelligible, while on the other hand, to the thick-skinned turnip-eaters (imperitis Rapophagis) it might for all time remain a hidden secret, and be to their dull intellects a sealed book forever._

I initially thought _imperitis Rapophagis_ was simply a knock to the uneducated commoners. Then I read that the turnip is used as an emblem (charge) in the shield (escutcheon) of various coat of arms of prominent Austrian families. One particular family would be the Keutschach family, of whom Leonhard von Keutschach was Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg during Johannes Trithemius time. It's a stretch, but I wonder if Trithemius was merely being nationalistic rather than discriminatory?</comment>


Ask HN: Where is the fastest Internet connection in India? - <AUTHOR>

I work with video and am struggling to find a fast enough connection to upload my videos to clients. Out of interest, i'm curious as to what the fastest connections are in India. Universities? Business parks? Anyone care to share? <comment><USER2> Depends primarily upon the region you live. Even though, I live in Chennai, I cannot even get a broadband connection on the area where I reside.

Hyderabad's beem provides upto 25 Mbps of speed. ( [http://www.beamtele.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=ar...](http://www.beamtele.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=149&Itemid=104) )

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiosity, which area do you live in?

<comment><USER2> Madambakkam area. ( Comes near Medavakkam area.) They have a BSNL office there. But they aren't giving any new connections since their capacity is "full".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The trouble is that all of the bandwidth available on ads is downstream bandwidth. And what you care about seems to be upstream bandwidth.

Airtel, Reliance and ACT all have approx 1Mbit/s upstream for their most expensive plans.

The last office I worked in skipped a layer & had an MPLS connection to the US premises.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've witnessed speeds up to 6 MBps down (i.e. 48 Mbps) at IIT Madras on a wired connection.

<comment><USER5> AFAIK, IITM had the best speeds even 7 years back!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> IIT Kanpur has great speeds. You can go upto 100 Mbps at times</comment>


Ask HN: Tell me everything you know about customer experience? - <AUTHOR> How would you define the perfect customer journey? What are some great resources to learn from? What is your best customer experience story? <comment><USER2> Books: They Ask, You Answer, Inspired, Don't Make Me Think

There is no perfection, only iteration, and the best source of learning is always to talk with users. It also helps to have deep domain experience and insights. Steve Jobs said something about the customerS not seeing leaps in innovation (in UX), so instead look to engineers for these. This is more when you are early in a product and see a large problem that could be solved a very different way than today.</comment>


Ask HN: Did you ever resign from a company on your first day? - <AUTHOR> I have had an offer from a company in Berlin, Germany around two months ago which I accepted and have had to join next month. I have got a better (much better in terms of salary, relocation benefits, tech stack etc) offer from another company in the same city and I want to accept that. Now a part of me is telling me that I should stick to what I accepted before and it would be wrong if I tell them that I am not coming and the other part of me is telling me that I will not be happy there both from the work that I will be doing and the other monetary benefits and so wants me to accept the second offer.<p>I am confused now that whether I should join them or accept the other offer. Did you ever had a situation like this, did you ever resign from a company on your first day? <comment><USER2> I resigned on my second day. On the second day, it came out that the founder wanted to review my code every 30 minutes. _What!?_ Apparently, he was traumatized by some prima-donna self-proclaimed genius who went off by himself for two months and built entirely the wrong thing. I suggested that he at least give me a day or the afternoon or something. Nope. So I became the Sofa King and I was Sofa King outta there!

Another thing about that founder: He wanted me to write everything by scratch, ground up, nothing outside of Apple APIs, out of fear of patents and copyrights. I'm sorry, but that's just technical ignorance. In that case, go ahead and use 3rd party libraries, but do it mediated through a _facade_ or some kind of adapter library, so you can rapidly switch to another one. This gives the best of both worlds -- more rapidly put together a functioning App, but still be immune to people changing licensing terms.

<comment><USER3> > In that case, go ahead and use 3rd party libraries, but do it mediated > through a facade or some kind of adapter library, so you can rapidly switch > to another one.

That's how I was taught to do it. But I've yet to see people take the time to do this in real-life Code.

<comment><USER4> What adapter library?

<comment><USER2> The one you write.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Be honest. Tell HR the truth. Tell them the other company has offered you a much bigger salary. Tell them that salary is very important to you at this stage of your life.

The big question.....have you signed a contract? If not then get the second contract signed before you diss the first. You never know what might happen. Even if it entails traveling there to sign the contract...do it. And while you are there go in person to the first company that offered you. I believe that until you sign the contract you still have room to make changes. The contract is the key. If you have already signed a contract with the first company it could mean trouble. That changes everything.

</comment><comment><USER6> I once worked for a company that did some intensive training sessions for the first week. When I finally got around to working on their codebase it was entirely written in VB. This was something they chose to leave out in terms of their technical stack. I had better opportunities working with a consulting gig that later got me relocated and _that_ led me to even better opportunities later down the road. It's better to just pursue what you want than get bogged down, just be professional and straightforward about it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yes. I accepted a job some years ago at a company that was working a contract for a General Dynamics subsidiary in Georgia (some of you will know exactly which one). They had incredible difficulty giving me a start date and strung me along after signing for about a month.

I was extremely eager to get out of my then-current employer, so the situation became extremely stressful to me. I didn't want to burn a bridge with my then- employer and wanted to give them a full two-week's notice.

Eventually I'd had enough of waiting and gave them my resignation before I worked a single day, even though I was supposedly an employee (went through full handbook, tax stuff, etc). This was on a Friday morning. The full rest of my day was them calling me over and over convincing me that they could start me the following Monday.

I still walked -- not worth that kind of disorganization and hassle. I'm convinced that the whole time I wasn't working they were billing the client for me to be there. ...They paid a lot of money for my background check too... whoops!

<comment><USER8> Did you already have another offer or did you resign to just continue the job search?

<comment><USER7> I stayed at my then-current job until I relocated back to New York and changed careers (into development).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As an employee I almost resigned the first week at a startup but convinced myself the bad vibe I was getting was an overreaction. It wasn't. I ended up resigning within six months.

As an occasional hiring manager I would prefer a candidate reject my job offer as early as possible. First, so I can revisit the other candidates and hopefully not have to repeat the entire process. Second, if the new employee quits, it's more expensive to restart the process six months.

I don't know German employment law, but in the US you would have no obligation to the employer unless you've accepted reimbursement already or signed a contract of some sort, and even then you can usually work out not takng the job.

<comment><USER10> What were examples of those bad vibes?

<comment><USER9> The company was hyper focused on developing a complex solution which was not practical for the state of technology at the time, yet dropped everything to burn three weeks of development time on a pet project of one of the founders which had absolutely nothing to do with the core product of the company.

<comment><USER11> Good grief, that sounds terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> End of the first week, from the first place I worked out of college. A web design/dev shop in Connecticut that built out sites for schools and hospitals, mostly. This was back in 2008.

I had joined and was learning the ropes of their dev process. There was still some paperwork that needed to be signed. Someone brought me the contract to sign, and I read it through, and it had a non-compete clause that said that I could not work for rival company, or "any other software engineering company" in "connecticut, new england, the eastern United States, or anywhere else in the United States" for "a minimum of 2 years." No joke.

I asked them what that was all about, and they said it was a company policy. I did some research, learned all about non-competes, and told them that the clause was so broad that it would never be upheld, but they said everyone just signs it. I told them no, grabbed my stuff and drove home. Was probably one of the best decisions I made, since the path I went down led me to a company that was acquired by Fb, etc etc

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes. Took a job with a defense contractor in the UK. On day 1 they told me that it would take 6 months to get security clearance. The bummer was that the men's bathroom was in a secure area and I would have to be escorted every time. On day 1 I quit.

<comment><USER14> That says a lot about the company. How moronic not putting another toilet in a less secure place.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, they'd have to be some new rookie company to make a mistake like that. In fact, it was EDS :0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Signed the employment contract with the first company? Then notice period during the trial period applies. Didn't sign? Ghost them, send an email, whatever. Don't feel obliged in any way if the employment contract hasn't been signed by both parties. I see no problem with resigning on the first day (if they want cheap, they'll pay twice) although I've never done it myself. Personal advice? IT companies in Berlin are awful cheapskates, make everyone a favor and increase the average.

<comment><USER16> There are laws in some countries where the contractual notice period is not applicable if you haven't served enough time with the company. As always consult a lawyer before doing anything in this situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Did you ever resign from a company on your first day?

More or less.

I once received an offer from a great company doing avionics. In a bizarre turn of events I then received an offer out of the blue with a company I'd applied to about 18 months previously and had forgotten about.

The result was I rang the first company and told them I wouldn't be starting the following Monday after all. I felt bad, but the truth is I'm pretty sure they were able to fill that slot quickly enough.

I would follow your heart - that first company really doesn't want to have an employee that doesn't really want to be there...

</comment><comment><USER18> I have been in the exact same situation 6 years ago. I found a good job that I accepted but my girlfriend found a job abroad the week after. I decided to let go of the offer I had already signed to relocate with her.

It sucks big time to call someone and let them down (especially since I called on Christmas :s). But it's much more desirable than joining anyways with after thoughts. Worse thing you can live with is regrets. They'll find someone else in a couple weeks.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do what you want to do and don't consider the effect on the company. Your priority should be to make the best decision for yourself and your own interests.

</comment><comment><USER20> Definitely let them know immediately. You not being happy in your job (because of a better offer), or you quitting within first 3 months, is much worse than saying even a day in advance that you had other offer and this is how things are. Really tell them your position, there is nothing wrong with this.

</comment><comment><USER21> That an employee quits the first day or does not show up sucks big time. It is better to say that another process that you thought had failed resurrected and had much better salary and relocation benefits. Tell them it was a difficult decision (it was, you even asked it in HN) but that you felt you had to decline it because you felt than joining the company with strong feelings of regret could seriously jeopardize your performance. Tell them that since you found the job offer interesting (indeed you accepted it) if you ever become available again, you would let them know in case there is a matching opportunity.

<comment><USER15> > Tell them that since you found the job offer interesting (indeed you > accepted it) if you ever become available again, you would let them know in > case there is a matching opportunity.

The equivalent of the phrase from the rejection email: "shall any matching opportunities arise in the future we will _totally_ contact you again" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Take the better offer (politely and professionally). It's just business not a play date.

</comment><comment><USER23> if your going to do it tell them as soon as possible. It will probably burn bridges, but don't get stuck at job your not going to like.

<comment><USER24> Exactly, they need to hire someone for that position now. I dont know employment law in germany, but I doubt they want a miserable employee, and they'll want to start searching immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the US, in tech, it is relatively common for people to sign an offer and then change their mind and choose to not join. It happened a few times in different companies where I worked. It wasn't really a big deal, it is considered part of the game.

Note that the opposite can happen too and it is much more frequent. It can happen especially to students. They get an offer starting in 6 months after they graduate and by then the company has problems, like layoffs or hiring freeze, so they cancel the offer.

If company A is paying you much less than company B, that means they are paying you below your market value. So it is up to them to either match the other offer or lose you.

<comment><USER26>
      Note that the opposite can happen too...It can
      happen especially to students. They get an offer
      starting in 6 months after they graduate and by
      then the company has problems, like layoffs or
      hiring freeze, so they cancel the offer.

Ditto...

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine was hired by a well-known tech company (based in NYC) but was soon laid off just 2 months later, together with several other newly hired employees, due to the financial difficulties the company had at the time (at least that's the reason he explained to me). It should not be that he was not fit for the job position, or something related to his capability (the job was an entry-level one...I knew him well and he was a fresh PhD graduate at the time).

I just feel that it is quite often that the value of morality is overlooked for profit (or at least financial) reason, especially for big organizations. The larger an organization is, the more rational and more abstract, and less human, it becomes -- especially for employees working at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Morality usually is valued most for individual human beings (perhaps that's also the reason why the OP is having the feeling of cognitive dissonance that is described in his question)...The rules of morality are quite different at a level of statistical aggregation of individuals...

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yes, it happened once a long time ago. The job interview was held at a beautiful office but when I arrived at my workplace (my fault that I did not ask where exactly my seat would be) I saw a different building a squalid conditions, dirty and without heating. I resigned at the end of my first day

</comment><comment><USER28> Take the better offer, tell the losing company ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm confused, "first day"? Wont you start in only a month?

Pretend everything is ok and announce you are quitting just on the first day, that would be unprofessional.

Confirm and _sign_ with the other company and inform that you will refuse the offer of the first one as soon as you have this confirmation. That's professional.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sign with the other company then resign from the first. This is not uncommon. How ever do it now before starting and taking any relocation assistance from the first company.

</comment><comment><USER31> You don't owe anything to anyone, but be fair with them and just tell them you got a better offer and you won't be starting at all, don't wait for the first day to start and resign...

</comment><comment><USER32> Wrong in what sense? You owe them the courtesy of explaining your decision, but that's about it. It's your life, it's just business for them.</comment>