The F-35 Is a $1.4 Trillion National Disaster - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-f-35-is-a-terrible-fighter-bomber-and-attacker-and-unfit-for-aircraft-carriers-c6e36763574b <comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869679)

</comment><comment><USER5> Alternatively, it could be viewed as one of the most successful US military projects ever. It has funneled X* amount of tax money to the military- industrial complex. Siphoning that money seems to have been the US militaries primary function for several decades.

*Some giant number

<comment><USER5> Actually, building a ridiculous plane is a much better way of achieving this than bombing innocent people.

<comment><USER6> Why do you reduce the choices between "building useless piece of hardware" and "bombing innocent people" ? There are lots of choices here. Just a sample : less tax or invest more in health and education.

<comment><USER5> The military industrial complex in the US is a self-perpetuating system that just so happens to have the influence and lobbying power to get the funding.

It would have been great if some harmless or even beneficial industry had developed in this way, but that is not the case unfortunately. The US also has a burgeoning prison-industrial complex which also, unfortunately, results in bad consequences for innocent people.

You can see these self-perpetuating systems all over the place in modern civilization. The mechanism by which they grow is the same one which causes management in large corporations to grow exponentially. The bureaucracy will grow to fill the resources available. In the case of these self-perpetuating systems, they can grow in lobbying power and influence and increase their available resources, which allows them to expand and gain even more lobbying power and influence, and so on. The core business could be military, or making fake vomit, it doesnt matter.

ps. 'self-perpetuating system' is just a term I use to talk about these things. Maybe theres a widely accepted term I dont know. Also all this is just a product of my own reading and ruminations.

<comment><USER6> I also searched for something like "self-perpetuating system/bureaucracy" but didn't find an accepted term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The cost is incredibly high... but as I'm reading the article, it sounds like most of these issues would apply to any fighter we build _with these capabilities_. How much of this is just the cost of building these new capabilities?

The capabilities described sound useful. And some of what we learn from it can be applied in the future to new planes. So is it a good idea to simply back off from the advanced software, and build a dumber plane just to save money? The f16 is 40 years old.. we're going to have these new planes around for a long time.

<comment><USER8> The whole concept of manned jet fighters is laughably obsolete today. If you were designing an actual modern weapon it would be a mostly autonomous drone. Basically think of a rocket with a lot more intelligence in it. These things would be much lighter since they wouldn't need to carry a pilot, would be able to handle Gs that would turn humans into a paste, and react to changes in the environment in microseconds. There would be no competition between that and canned meat flying around. Note that Russia is moving precisely in that direction with their modern arsenal [https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea- ever-w...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea-ever-why- putins-nuclear-powered-missile-is-possible-and-awful/)

<comment><USER9> Especially for air to ground attack this is true. Not having a human takes away lot's safety margin needs.

The question there is the impact. If you just risk some thing and money it lowers the barrier for going into action, as the risk of having to handing a flag to a pilot's family goes away.

However a such plane also has other roles. On domestic protection a key task of alarm squadrons is to take visual contact to pilots of civilian planes who lost radio contact. Also for surveillance/intelligence roles a human on board can have a better overview and decide where to go.

<comment><USER8> This approach will work for air to air as well as air to ground. You have a rocket powered drone platform that can launch micro-drones to attack targets. It could carry thousands of them and dispatch them to destroy pretty much anything around it in a matter of seconds.

Same thing goes for surveillance. Have a supersonic carrier drone fly over the target area, release thousands of small drones to photograph the shit out of it in every spectrum and then relay that back to command.

<comment><USER9> Cluster bombs are outlawed in many countries (not in the US, though) as it's too likely to hit civilians.

Also the more advanced those micro drones are, the more expensive is the deployment and the more interest an opponent has in collecting unexploded devices for reverse engineering them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> $1.4 trillion is a scary number to throw around but it's a lifetime cost. Add up the total life cost of all the F-16s and F/A-18s that it will be replacing for comparison.

I'm no fan of the F-35 but it is what we've got for the next 50 years so let's stop sniping and start fixing.

<comment><USER11> And most of the complaints boil down to unfinished software and systems. So it's not that the F35 is ineffective but that there is still more work to do. Happens almost every time a massive new engineering project is undertaken.

<comment><USER12> > So it's not that the F35 is ineffective but that there is still more work to > do.

A full third of the article is about how the F-35 is inferior to the A-10 for the specific application of close air support. The last part of the article is about how the F-35C is poorly designed for maintenance on aircraft carriers.

I don't see how either situation can be resolved with new software.

<comment><USER13> > the F-35 is inferior to the A-10 for the specific application of close air > support

The A-10 is defenseless against modern air defense systems; it wouldn't get within 100 miles of the battlefield against a sophisticated enemy; it would be merely a flying coffin for the pilot.

Against unsophisticated enemies, such as ISIL, a drone could do the job, based on what I understand. The F-35 could too, though it's an expensive option.

<comment><USER14> And of course it turns out we use A10s frequently right now, so it's fantastic that we have them. We need more. They are cheap. We need a variety of different airplanes for different scenarios.

<comment><USER13> > we use A10s frequently right now, so it's fantastic that we have them

We use them _because_ we have them. Lots of people use high-carbon emissions cars and planes, and Facebook, but I'm not sure it's fantastic that we have them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1.4 trillion has not been spent yet! Only a fraction so far. Unless we fall for the sunk cost fallacy, there is still plenty of time to cut our losses.

<comment><USER16> And do what? Create a new $1T bungled project?

<comment><USER17> Reviving F-22 production for air superiority (and export to key allies like Japan) and starting a new program for a modern close-air support fighter might be a good start.

I don't think the F-35 is a bad plane and does what it was designed to do very well, but it isn't the best tool for all the roles it is expected to fill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Although there are teething issues, for US allies the unit the F-35 is attractive due to a unit cost which is lower than any of its competitors (such as the Eurofighter Typhoon).

For domestic use, the F-35B STOVL jet used by the Marines is a dramatic improvement in range and capabilities over the Harrier.

The F-35A/C are less of an improvement, but I would by no means call them a failure. It's easy to criticize a program due to cost overruns and mismanagement, but that doesn't mean the end result is bad. At the very least it's a sunk cost now, so we'll just have to deal with it.

<comment><USER19> I don't even know how to respond to your comment without sounding flippant. 10 billion dollars for a questionable program would upset me, let alone 1.4 trillion. It's blindingly obvious that this is a result of graft.

No one has made a clear case that the US is in any sort of danger if we don't upgrade our planes.

Imagine if that 1.4 trillion went towards fighting global warming, cancer, or lack of health care. It's sick.

<comment><USER17> The United States has a role in the world. Leaving aside subjective thoughts on whether we should fill that role, or continue to fill that role, if we vacate that role then somebody _will_ fill that role instead.

The most obvious and likely right now would be the PLA if the United States were to vacate that role tomorrow. Or more likely, it would go unfilled for almost a decade before the PLA takes it.

Personally speaking, I would rather the US continue to fill the role it currently has than see it vacated and filled by a group like the PLA, and in order to do that, the United States has to maintain technological and military superiority over its competition which _means_ continuing to research, develop and procure new fighters, carriers, destroyers, submarines, and maintain the US nuclear arsenal. Or to put this another way, the world isn't standing still, so why would America?

<comment><USER19> It seems I mixed multiple issues together. I can't claim that I understand geopolitics enough to suggest that we should stop all military spending. I was mainly suggesting that for such a huge expenditure a clear case for it should be made to the public. The other issue I'm getting at is that there's no way the F35 should cost as much as it does. For instance if Musk for some reason was tasked with designing and building the next generation of aircraft I'm sure it could be done for at least an order of magnitude less than the F35. The money is mostly lining the pockets of sociopaths and massive intentionally inefficient bureaucracies.

<comment><USER17> If Musk wanted to bid on future US Military contracts I am sure he would be able to, but since he doesn't seem to be in the business of constructing fighters for the Air Force I think we can safely leave him out of this discussion.

The F-35 is a complex weapons and sensors platform, tasked, perhaps overtasked, for many different capabilities and mission-types. I think you can make a compelling argument that it may have been cheaper to divide those into separate proposals and take separate bids for more specialized fighters, but then you would have been stuck justifying each and every one of those to Congress rather than the F-35.

Not developing _any_ sixth generation fighters when the competition _is_ , was not an option though. I'm not happy, as a member of the public and US taxpayer with precisely how the F-35 turned out, nor am I happy that F-22 production was shut down by the Obama administration with the F-35 expected to fill its role instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hilariously we spent all that money on R&D and then the chinese hacked the pentagon to stole the designs and made their copy plane for the fraction of the price. It says alot about the military industrial complex.

We'll be at war with them soon enough so hopefully these will perform when the time comes.

<comment><USER21> > We'll be at war with them soon enough

Actual real live shooting war between China and USA is going to be a nuclear war so the performance of the planes in that scenario will be kinda useless.

China has ballistic missiles with the range to hit any location of their choosing on main land USA and the tech to fit nuclear war heads onto those missiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The F-35 is a weapons system designed to continue the US's ability to easily win a conventional war against a high 2nd tier state power in their own territory. What this might look like is the total rout in 1991 of Iraq, which had the fifth largest army in the world, and advanced surface-to-air defenses, defeated in large part by stealth technology. This fighter is basically stating to these threats: _you are not going to be able to defeat or stalemate us at our own game._

I know this isn't a popular sentiment around here but consider the difference in outcome between the 1990 invasion of Kuwait vs the 2013 invasion of Crimea: only in the one where we had absolute military superiority did the US - <USER2> "the UN" if you prefer - actually get a say in how it turned out.

Who does this entail today? The big two are clearly North Korea and Iran. Stretching it, I'd add Taiwan, Ukraine and the Eastern bloc, India on the China border, Philippines, and Venezuela becoming some type of Cuba situation. Then there are proxy wars between major powers like Syria, which will likely continue to occur in the middle east and Africa for several decades. Even if we don't enter these fights, we'll be able to give our allies this plane. (Or maybe they'll turn down the most advanced plane ever built because the pilot helmet has issues in high humidity situations /sarc.)

This isn't going to neutralize the other two main powers, it will continue to be an imperfect - maybe even useless - weapon against their anti-ship and surface-to-air capabilities. It can't defeat the 3rd world and it can't defeat a superpower. The question is: is the price worth what it can do (which is defeat 2nd tier powers / proxy adversaries for the next ~25 years)? Or is there something which can do that better?

</comment><comment><USER23> In theory, a unified platform for all three air support roles is a good idea, but I think it's becoming apparent that airframes are too complex of systems to make universal.

I really hope they can overcome the issues because overall it should help with logistics and cost over the long term.

<comment><USER24> Yes excellent idea to have a carrier and land based shared airframe, like the hornet did. But sharing it also with STOVL?? At what point did they pause to think "wow this will either make it 2/3 almost completely separate planes, or give it a lot of compromises in efficiency for the other roles, or add billions to the cost, or all of the above"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe it's a disaster in the sense of Windows Vista being a disaster - <USER3> it there wouldn't have been Windows 7? So even if the current version is underwhelming, the production chain is set up and the next version will have all quirks ironed out...

</comment><comment><USER26> The problem I have with the article is that it doesn't actually ever talk about if the ideas are good or not. It points out that the MVP of the ideas need a lot of work, and talks at length of why they don't work. For example, he spends a lot of time talking about how maintenance on the F35 isn't the same as the F18, so people who maintain the engines will have to change how they work, and new types of people will have to be added. Most interesting part of the article for me was learning about passive detecting. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERA_passive_sensor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERA_passive_sensor)

<comment><USER27> Interesting, though i believe the doctrine is that stealth aircrafts rely on a data link from a AWACS to guild them to the target, and only turn on their own radar when within weapon range, then only for as long as is required to confirm target and launch the missile (who invariably has its own radar these days).

Not to say that there are a myriad of assumptions that go into making an stealth aircraft, as was demonstrated when apparently an F-117 was downed by a modified SAM site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> After reading this, I came across this article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17479508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17479508)

I was genuinely shocked when I read some of these points. I still have hard time believing things like survivability after the ejection and the need to repaint after every flight.

<comment><USER29> I actually did the same and upvote both articles.

Here is THAT line:

 _OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS. If the plane tries to TURN, it can crash._

<comment><USER30> This is true of all planes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm thinking about the Eisenhower interstate system and maybe Americans just have to figure out how to make crumbling infrastructure a national security terror. There's clearly money. Let the military complex have it to build bridges instead of bombers.

I'm also reminded by the amazing technology in the US carriers. They're floating disaster response bases. Again, find ways to funnel military money into repurposable technologies. It's palatable and it has value beyond killing power.

</comment><comment><USER32> One size does not fit all, it would be a silver bullet, whenever F35 replaces legacy fighters. Maybe by that time the who theatre of war would change with swarms of drones.

</comment><comment><USER33> >> The F-35 is being sold to the American people ...

Can we get a refund?

</comment><comment><USER34> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy)

</comment><comment><USER35> Thing is, any replacement will take 20-25 years to develop if started today, so better just build more of these and hope to win by numbers.

<comment><USER36> Could order and receive Advanced Super Hornet a lot faster than that. Might not deserve the label "replacement", but it provides at least some of the same capabilities.

<comment><USER35> U.S. has a shitload of 4gen planes, more than needed. They aren't an answer to anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The article waves away the stealth benefits but that's the number one issue. If a low radar signature is important then everything else is irrelevant. And I think it is. It doesn't matter if a F-16 can out dog fight a F-35 because that's not how the engagement will play out. The F-35 will shoot down an F-16 before the F-16 knows it's there.

</comment><comment><USER38> The "elephant in the room" is the grand bet western nations (led by the US) are making by investing in advanced and sophisticated weapons.

Historically, you did need good weapons and vehicles/horses/planes but there has always been a balancing effect caused by how much of them you have, how many troops can operate them and how well defended they are.

Aircraft carriers are a good example,they compliment existing capability by acting as floating military bases that can take the battle to the enemy's homeland. But that's the thing,they compliment,they don't replace.

Even if the F35 delivered as promised,is it better to have 10 F35 , 50 F18 or even better -- 1000+ armed drones?

They're making Navy boats smarter and more powerful as well,requiring fewer sailors. I am not against smarter technology and advanced capabilities. But it just doesn't seem wise to replace man count and existing capabilities when the new tech hasn't been battle tested against a worthy adversary.

I wouldn't want to rely on a few powerful counter measures,but rather a large number of "good enough" defensive and offensive technology.

But that's why I called it "the elephant in the room",this could work and actually counter-act other future super powers. Or history would repeat itself and the opponents will win with sheer troop count and "good enough" weaponry.

The US spends 20% of gdp on the military,yet it is quite obvious the greatest threat is internal strife and divisions typically exasperated by economical divisions. Not to mention, severe lack of physhical fitness for military-age men and women. Military leaders already consider this a national security threat. I have a feeling this might be one of the reasons they're relying on technology so much. They don't think they can mobilize and train enough soldiers in the event of yet another world war. It would be much easier to have them operate drones and wear head gear with HUD (just like in the games) that costs a fortune. They might just be playing to the nation's strength. But still,maybe if they spent 10% instead of 20% in defense (even russia and china don't spend close to 10%) ,and use that 10% for internal socio-economic stability and just maybe enact mandatory military service,that might be wiser than relying fully on technology that hasn't been battle tested against the intended scenario and adversary.

Will economic strength and advanced weaponry be enough? Maybe,but many empires with all that and more have fallen for various reasons. Economy aside,the cancerous defense-contractor industry that is the cause behind why so much of the GDP goes into defense is one of chief internal security threats. The whole industry is structured around politics so that politicians in specific districts approve spending in exchange for jobs+economy in their district. Many articles and blogs on that specific issue(e.g.: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the- tra...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-tragedy-of- the-american-military/383516/))

</comment><comment><USER39> It's good to remember these kinds of corrupt disasters whenever someone says we can't afford to pay for things like universal healthcare and free public universities in the US.

<comment><USER40> Universal healthcare would cost approximately $4 trillion per year at today's per capita spending figures. You might get that down to $3.5 trillion if you hammer down costs in the system big time and ration care as all socialized systems do.

The F35 will cost $20-$25 billion per year averaged.

Several of the most liberal states in the US - including California, New York and Vermont - have all looked at doing universal healthcare. They all run away immediately when the cost estimates come back.

<comment><USER36> I wonder what an investment of $20 billion a year in training additional doctors (and NPs and so on) would do to medical costs.

<comment><USER41> Not much. You're at the mercy of a capped number of practitioners getting sanctioned into practice a year. This creates artificial scarcity.

Also, you still have the blatant consolidation of the medical industry into a gigantic monolithic hybrid of pharma, hospital, insurer, and artificially scarce doctor.

The solution is not to pump more doctors into a system geared to extract multiple industries worth of profit. Instead, it should be investing in increasing the capability of individuals to provide and manage their own medical care.

This means more accessible diagnostics tools, fewer barriers to entry in getting access to good medical literature. Investing in teaching people how to do research, and make medically relevant observations, or to at least be able to tell when "First Aid" stops, and more advanced facilities are needed. When "First Aid" can encompass using a small, affordable X-ray device cheap and easy enough to safely use in a residential home, THEN you start seeing healthcare costs plummet.

Same goes with Pharma. We have an exceedingly low capability to create environments conducive to productive research per capita. The brain power that can crank on these types of things are artificially limited by the inability of many who may have the interest and time to get access to facilities to make meaningful observations and potential discoveries.

Come up with acceptable test analogs. Document, enumerate, and simulate as much as possible so someone can pick up a protein, shove it into a tissue and see what interactions may happen.

Make the information accessible, and start working on boiling it down into learnable paths where a person can get the 80%, but still drill down into the more specialized.

Cheaper, more prolific research and education is the key. NOT letting the market sit on top the misery of the hurt and dying and demanding the toll be paid. Empower first. Optimize last.

<comment><USER36> I meant sensibly invested, so removing the caps would be part of the investment.

I figure if you move from a tight doctor market to a looser doctor market, it becomes more likely that people are working for themselves and competing for patients and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> 1.4 trillion is an absolute joke. Invest that in infrastructure or energy security and I am absolutely certain that you would obtain an order of magnitude better ROI than whatever sort of benefit (protective, preemptive, deterrent, or otherwise) you are getting from these planes.

This is truly an unfathomable amount of money that I feel it's hard to understate.

Edit: I'll admit the helmet cam seemed pretty cool but 600k feels like a lot.

<comment><USER19> s/understate/overstate/</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I be worried about this? - <AUTHOR>

This is off-topic, but I would appreciate comments from the folks here on HN.
I've recently discovered that there is an "Appreciation Society" for me on Facebook.  SHould I be worried?  Is there anything I should do?
It feels a little creepy to be honest, although all the comments seem to be positive and generally "feel good".  I'm just concerned that someone or something might turn nasty and I wouldn't have any control over it.
Thoughts and comments welcome.  Thanks. <comment><USER2> Is it nicely done? Is it appropriate? I suppose I'd feel flattered first and then bemused followed by wonder - wondering all those things you mentioned. All in all, if the spirit is right, I'd embrace it. I think I would send a PM to the organizer asking if they wanted me to be involved in any way. That might be weird though.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I would watch it periodically and if anything got posted that made me concerned, I would try to think of some way to set the record straight without turning it into an Issue. It might not even be appropriate to rebut something directly, just be aware that people are saying X and maybe try to use your normal pathways of communication to casually make remarks which "disprove" whatever is being said that is erroneous. (Jumping into the conversation to rebut something when you haven't previously participated in the group is generally going to come across as defensive, offensive, harsh....etc...and can do more harm than good.)

Having fans seems like a two-edged sword to me. Look how ugly things can get when a Hollywood celebrity does something their fans don't approve of. Britney, Madonna and countless others have gotten lambasted at one time or another. Personally, I think Britney made a huge mistake when she created a reality show about her marriage. I think she was looking to "prove" to people that her marriage was a good idea and looking to get the approval of her fans. And when you do that, you signal they have a say in your private life. It's kind of like letting yourself get dragged into certain kinds of arguments: Doing so only convinces the other person that they have some "right" and that you need to "justify" your choice/position. In some cases, it's best to prove to folks their opinion doesn't actually matter by treating it as insignificant. Yet, at the same time, you have to realize that their opinion may not matter to _you_ but can influence other people, so saying nothing may also be a huge mistake. Rebutting something without winding up in a Chinese- Finger-Puzzle-style social trap is an art and takes a light hand.

Good luck with this.</comment>


The Spaceline: a space elevator alternative achievable with current technology - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.09339 <comment><USER3> > _By extending a line, anchored on the moon, to deep within Earth 's gravity > well, we can construct a stable, traversable cable allowing free movement > from the vicinity of Earth to the Moon's surface. With current materials, it > is feasible to build a cable extending to close to the height of > geostationary orbit, allowing easy traversal and construction between the > Earth and the Moon._

If we still need rockets to reach the bottom of the cable 36,000 km above Earth's surface, doesn't that negate the point of a "space elevator"?

<comment><USER4> Appendix B calculates a fuel savings of ~25% vs using only rockets to get to the moon.

The saturn 5 rocket weighed 3,000 tons and was 96% fuel. Even if we only save 10% fuel, that's an extra 300 tons we can get to the moon.

<comment><USER3> 25% fuel saving seems like a small saving compared to the cost of building such cable. And of course, the saving up to geostationary orbit would be zero...

I don't think you have your maths correct, either.

<comment><USER5> It's not about paying for the fuel, it's about not having to lift the fuel.

Going from a rocket that is 2880T fuel and 120T for everything else to a rocket that uses 25% less fuel gives you 2160T fuel and 840T everything else. Decreasing the fuel by 25% increased the rest of your budget by 7x!

<comment><USER3> That's not how I interpret " _using the spaceline can save around 25% of the cost per launch in fuel_ " (c.f. paper).

If the starting point is 2,880t fuel for 120t payload, so 24t of fuel per ton of payload, then 25% less fuel gives 18t of fuel per ton of payload and thus your 3,000t rocket can now carry 158t of payload, or 32% more.

Even " _we can see that the spaceline cuts the fuel cost of such a mission by approximately two thirds_ " is not a game changer compared to the cost of building the cable.

Space elevators are touted as game changers because although building one would be extraordinarily expensive it would slash the cost of sending payload to space by orders of magnitude, making it worthwhile.

<comment><USER6> But amusingly enough, a spaceline costs orders of magnitude less than a space elevator. It might make sense as an intermediate step, where we launch a Spaceline using ol' fashioned rockets, and then use it to haul up the materials we're going to build an actual space elevator from.

<comment><USER7> A space elevator needs to be anchored in geostationary orbit at about 36,000k altitude, which isn't possible with available materials.

This article talks about a cable from geostationary orbit to the moon.

That still leave the ground-to-geostationary part for conventional lifters.

<comment><USER6> I must have misunderstood - I thought the Spaceline was going to actually reach into the atmosphere?

Dang, I totally misunderstood, I thought this thing was going to go much lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My favourite space elevator alternative is the space fountain ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain) ).

It's an active structure made of small parts that are held together with a stream of magnets.

If the fountain fails then each part can have its own parachute so that it can safely return to Earth. i.e. without destroying entire cities as would be the case for a traditional elevator design.

<comment><USER9> A space elevator wouldn't destroy cities if it fell. Most of it would be flung away from earth, the part that fell would mostly burn up in the atmosphere. The rest would flutter like leaves as it came down.

</comment></comment><comment> gene-h TL;DR we can stretch a really long piece of fishing line from the Moon's surface to geostationary orbit. And we can probably send payloads to the moon by docking with said cable in geostationary orbit too. The funny thing is I literally mean fishing line here, they call for using a constant cross section cable made of zylon or dyneema with a diameter of about 0.35 mm. At least initially. Both dyneema and zylon with this about this diameter are sold as fishing line. Initial payload to/from moon seems a bit low as the line at the Moon end can only support 100 kg. The dynamics of such a thin, flexible cable which passes through an unstable(!!!) lagrange point should be interesting. We know that very long space tethers can behave in weird ways[0]. This idea is crazy and attractive enough that it warrants further investigation to at the least find out what the problems are so other people don't make the same mistake. [0][https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6aff/70794d94b8979d0c5a67ff...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6aff/70794d94b8979d0c5a67fff7c2500cda082d.pdf)

<comment><USER6> > _Initial payload to /from moon seems a bit low as the line at the Moon end > can only support 100 kg._

But on the Earth-side, it can support up to 2000kg! And launching from the Moon is cheaper, anyway, since it's a less massive object than the Earth, and there's no atmosphere to deal with.

<comment><USER10> That's interesting, I wonder if they meant 100 Earth kilograms or 100 moon kilograms.

Edit: On 2nd thought they are probably using kg in terms of mass, not weight.

<comment><USER9> Grams are always mass, never weight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Even if we built a space elevator, imagine that the payload travels up at 100km/h - _really_ fast, basically a car on a highway. Even in that ludicrous mode, it would take 15 days for the payload to reach 36,000km. Probably unrealistic for human cargo.

<comment><USER12> You've got it... upside down. The line is dangling from the Moon, down to ~36000Km above us. That car would have to reach geostationary orbit, jump on that tiny cable, _then_ travel... oops, the remaining ~350,000Km to reach the Moon. To do that trip in 15 days, it'd have to run at mach 1.0.

Edit: it gets even weirder, if you consider the Moon's distance from Earth goes from 363,300Km at perigee to 405,500Km at apogee... just how long should the line be? If it's 327,300Km, we might only be able to operate it near perigee, sure if it's a bit longer it'd be more usable, but it cannot extend past 363,300Km - or it would touch down here :) - that means there's no way we might use it near apogee, since it would always be too far away.

<comment><USER13> > That car would have to reach geostationary orbit

No, it would not have to reach orbit, it would have to reach the altitude but not the horizontal speed. Huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is not a launch alternative. This is _maybe_ a get-to-geostationary alternative. This is really an L1-base station-keeping alternative. The Moon- side cable anchors the base in the radial direction, and the Earth-side cable keeps the Moon-side cable in tension, and lowers the fuel cost of reaching orbits that the cable crosses.

The math suggests that putting a rendezvous base 41% of the way from the Earth to the Moon would be better than extending more cable down into Earth's gravity well. Meeting the cable closer to Earth would always cost more fuel. You could save fuel to GEO by meeting the cable further out, and then climbing back towards Earth. But every bit of extra cable you add on the Earth side increases the tension at the max-tension point at L1.

So just stop at the lowest-fuel rendezvous height, and add enough mass there to keep the whole cable in tension, but not enough to break the cable at L1.

(The L1 point is at about 84% the distance from Earth to Moon.)

The same type of material would likely be usable to anchor a halo relay satellite slightly beyond Earth-Moon L2, just by bolting it down to the darkest antipodal point on the dark side of the Moon.

<comment><USER15> If you can source materials _in situ_ , this _might_ be a useful way to create GEO platforms at lower cost than Earth launch.

<comment><USER14> If the theory is correct, you could build satellites on the Moon and slowly walk them to GEO at zero fuel cost with solar power.

Any circular orbit with height between 5% and 41% of the Earth-Moon distance could be placed more cheaply by flying out to rendezvous at 41% with fuel, then walking it back in along the cable with solar power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well if we can get a cable to the Moon, we could attach it to a crank at the North or South poles to generate electric power.

<comment><USER17> Wouldn't that slow down the speed of rotation of the earth and the revolution of the moon around earth? That would be catastrophic.

<comment><USER18> I'd imagine that the amount of energy stored in orbital momentum is a lot higher than anything we could use up in any reasonable amount of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an interesting idea, for sure.

But relative to the feasibility of this, how far are we from building automated systems to mine raw materials, refine and process them, and build stuff? Initially, of course, to build more such automated systems.

</comment><comment><USER20> Forgive my ignorance, but if the moon orbits around the earth (ie not geostationary), how can the end of a line attached to the moon stay in one place above the earth?

<comment><USER21> The moon is tidally locked to earth, meaning it rotates at such a speed that the same side is always facing earth. (This is also why the moon can have a "dark side")

It usually takes millions of years of tidal forces from a planetary body acting upon its satellite for the latter to be tidally locked to the former.

<comment><USER20> Thank you. I understand that part, but is the line supposed to be at the same point above the earth?

<comment><USER13> No. It wanders around the earth every 28 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ohh - is there anyone here who can answer a question for me. I have been writing a science fiction story which features large rotating space stations like the one in 2001 and I wondered...

What is the force on a rotating structure in space. Is it possible to build a space station that rotates with 1G force on people at the rim, and if so what scale of structure could be built with current, or plausible technology? Where does a structure go from "imagined future" to "magic"?

<comment><USER23> There's discussion on /r/spacex that two Starships could be teathered nose to nose and set in a rotation during their ballistic flight to Mars, in order to provide at least Martian (~.3g) level artificial gravity along the way.

This is important because even things like convection in the air stop working well at 0g, so for example, you can suffocate on your own CO2 if you fall asleep and there isn't a fan running.

Funny enough the hardest part about this doesn't even seem to be the tethering or rotation, but two things; 1) you have to make slight course corrections along the way because the initial burn is never precisely accurate enough to target something as far away as a planet, and 2) occasionally you have to put as much mass as possible between you and the sun due to solar storms spewing radiation, so you have to stop the rotation occasionally to point the engines sunward to use your fuel as a radiation shield, or to course correct.

<comment><USER15> Water supply as rad shield might be better, presuming you have a large water store. Designing a chamber within the water supply would put mass between you and radiation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Another interesting angle - is it possible that there is a continuous void between the earth and moon that _never_ intersects _any_ space debris already in orbit?

<comment><USER25> Considering geosynchronous orbits and that the moon progresses around that band of highest distribution of stuff to bump into, I would not bet on any window lasting very long without serious maintaince

</comment></comment><comment> java-man I want to see an analysis of the different failure modes (catastrophic failure, hit by a satellite) and the consequences of the failure.

I believe this idea is just incompatible with reality.

<comment><USER26> Let's ignore the physical catastrophe of a cable at 380,000+ km long dislodging and becoming either locked in earth orbit or crashing into earth.

Let's ignore that.

What if the cable attached to the moon and then locking the other end to earth orbit alters the month's orbit? There was some stuff I read that the moon doesn't neccesarily orbit the earth. It's the earth and moon orbit each other. Essentially our orbit is significantly affected by our moon compared to other planets and their moons. We have a ton of wildlife that depends on the current orbit pattern. Wouldn't this cable greatly alter said orbit?

Plus, 380,000km worth of material? Along with they just hand wave that all failure will happen on the moon side and never affect earth... um okay? Because of testing?

This seems more like a joke paper in all honesty. Kind of like the paper based on Silicon valley where they dev an algorithm to find out how long it would take to give an audience handjobs. d2f ratio

<comment><USER6> > _they just hand wave that all failure will happen on the moon side and never > affect earth... um okay? Because of testing?_

They don't _handwave_ it, they _calculate_ it. It's significantly less handwavy than your back-of-napkin objections.

<comment><USER27> Can you point to the specific section of the paper where this is calculated. I admittedly only skim read, but I did go through the whole thing, and I'm convinced I missed this kind of analysis somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Relevant and entertaining take on this: [https://what- if.xkcd.com/157/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/157/) (A direct moon - <USER2> elevator, not really what's proposed here though)

</comment><comment><USER29> The earth-moon cable is just a construction fixture. The space elevator extends to geosynchronous orbit, as usual.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ok, I didn't read the paper...

But everyone knows the moon orbits the earth with a cycle sort of similar to what we call a month.

How is an earth-moon cable feasible again?

<comment><USER31> Suggestion - read the paper.

<comment><USER30> "The Spaceline. By extending a line, anchored on the moon, to deep within Earth's gravity well"

That's the concept. They could have fit that within in the title of the post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm excited for a space elevator almost exclusively just so we can get rid of nuclear waste. Nuclear power is the only current viable alternative to fossil fuels at scale, from my understanding. However, people are squeamish about the spent fuel...if we could take it up to space and launch it into the sun (without having to deal with the perils of escaping gravity) it would be a lot easier to get rid of.

<comment><USER33> That sounds way more dangerous than just burying it in the ground. An accident in space spreads radioactive materials over some part of the Earth almost at random. An accident in a buried site stays mostly contained, with the biggest danger being contaminated groundwater.

<comment><USER32> OH yeah?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So they found a material which won't degrade in 24 hours due to radiation from the sun, or a way to shield it? And what about the mismatch between the rotation of the moon around the earth and geostationary orbit? And they figured out how to go around the van Allen belts to prevent frying sensitive electronics in the payload? And when the payload gets close to the moon, they have a way to stop it plunging to the surface of the moon for unscheduled disassembly?

Of course the cheapest part of getting to the moon is the bit between the edge of space and moon orbit. Approximate current cost: $0. Approximate cost after placing 40,000kg fishing line in the way....

I'm also pretty sure crawling along a fishing line will be prohibitively slow compared to letting a rocket coast with its engines off.

<comment><USER34> > Of course the cheapest part of getting to the moon is the bit between the > edge of space and moon orbit. Approximate current cost: $0.

No, it costs 4.1km/s of delta-v. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v)

<comment><USER27> I meant to compare getting to GEO (as proposed in the paper) as opposed to Lunar orbit.

Of course the way I worded this is a bit lose, and it's not completely free, but according to the figure in that Wikipedia article, the difference between getting into geosynchronous orbit and getting to lunar orbit _from earth_ seems to be only about 0.1km/s, which is negligible compared to the total cost. So my basic point still stands.

It's actually really expensive to get to GEO.</comment></comment></comment>


We surveyed 10K employees about perks - <AUTHOR> https://zestful.com/how-it-started <comment><USER2> I genuinely think this only applies to people who can't think rationally.

We had this conversation with our CEO, and virtually every dev said they want more money over "perks".

<comment><AUTHOR> I was completely blown away. I actually thought I had switched the two results around, I would have guessed the complete opposite too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Zestful's business model is based on offering perks.</comment>


Is TDD Dead? - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/articles/is-tdd-dead/ A series of conversations between Kent Beck, David Heinemeier Hansson, and Martin Fowler on the topic of Test-Driven Development (TDD) and its impact upon software design. <comment><USER2> My experience with TDD is that it is very helpful from a design perspective because it gets you to think about the code before you write it. How is the API going to work? What should I name this method? As an industry we use to dedicate too much time to this (RUP, etc). Now, we don't think about it enough.

As far as actually improving code quality... not so much. For the money, I would much rather see an hour of functional test development rather than an hour of unit test development (and I put TDD in the unit test category). I think functional tests provide more value and our industry has put way too much emphasis on unit tests.

100% unit test coverage says nothing about code quality. 100% functional coverage does. Functional tests also tend to be less brittle – which is a nice bonus.

<comment><USER3> Haven't seen the supposed benefit here as well.

I tried it as an experiment. With 100% coverage, TDD everything.

Code still fails in production. That is because unit tests detract from running functional/integration tests. Database, connections, hardware all mocked and each little cog is the right size. Put the cogs together into a gearbox and it shits the bed.

The one thing TDD helped was to find exact code breakage easier. Functional tests give higher level (less precise) error, maybe "something failed in the backend" then one has to look at logs to see what happens and such. But I'll take that over a false sense of security.

So am definitely not against unit tests, I am all for having a mix of both.

Another way to look at it, unit tests are a bit like drugs. It is easy to get addicted, create 10000 tests and a little micro-burst of pleasure hormone every time you see the dot on the screen for a passing test, it just feels good. But it is important to realize that is what it is (maybe I am writing all those tests just as a therapeutic exercise...), as it might not translate immediately to a ship-able working product.

<comment><USER4> I test your way, but if you're not aware of it you might want to watch this talk called Integration Tests are a Scam: [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/integration-tests- scam](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/integration-tests-scam) It may explain why the "gearbox shit the bed" and how to fix that problem.

If you want a talk that preaches to the/our choir, check out this one: [http://vimeo.com/68375232](http://vimeo.com/68375232)

It's interesting how different they are. Mutually exclusive in fact. But is _one_ wrong, _both_ or _neither_?

<comment><USER3> > Integration Tests are a Scam: > [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/integration-tests- > scam](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/integration-tests-scam)

Thank you, that was interesting! A lot of good points. I agree with some of them and don't agree with other parts of it.

First, let's start with this basic principle -- "customers don't care if I have 1M unit tests or 0 unit tests". They just don't. They will complain and not like my product if it keeps crashing or is showing other pathological behavior. First and foremost it is important to ship, and to ship working code as far as customers are concerned. Taken from that side, I want to ensure that when the system is setup in customer's configuration (and we do know it, in our line of work), then we want to stimulate the system as close as possible to what a customer would do. If that doesn't break and is behavior properly. We gain immediately a large degree of confidence because it is closer to "doesn't break when customer uses" use case.

Unit tests also promise that, and they would also promise that "if I have unit-tested my code well, there is a higher chance that the code will not break when it gets into customers' hands". However notice that this is further from being true than the first one.

The problem with integration tests as discussed in the talk it they take a long time to run and give imprecise results. When something is broken I might not be able to quickly zoom in on it. I can't experiment as often as I would like because it take too long to discover precise mistakes. And I agree with those, but, I still maintain it is better to have integration tests because once you get into a stable steady state and all of the sudden one commit breaks the tests it usually is pretty clear what broke, in the worst case just revert the commit or examine in detail until it works. That helps with the "I don't know what broke, something did" part. Usually that something is the one commit where tests started failing.

Yeah, it would be better to also have complete 100% unit test coverage as well and zoom in immediately on the problem. No doubt that 100% unit test coverage also costs a lot of time and money and I posit it is often un-necessary.

Another criticism, perhaps I misunderstood the presenter, it seems to me that the talk focuses more on machine-local, object oriented code. Today the systems are more and more distributed. In a pure, local, single threaded, object oriented code (say a 3D modeler or Photoshop).The behavior or objects is more predictable and it is easier to write what he calls "focused tests". Now introduce threads and well that starts to become hairy. Add in multiple machines (a distributed system) and it gets even more complicated. There is a whole slew of strange problems. Often involving consistency, timeouts, networks failure, partitions, hardware peculiarities. Un-expected input that is generated maybe because a front end service is broken and back-end write might never expect that case and crashes. Unit tests will catch basic errors but it will mask those harder to find those kind of errors.

One more criticism is psychological and it is the false sense of security. And I have seen this happen from those that advocate unit testing everything 100%, when their code breaks, they simply don't believe their code could break because it has 100% coverage and they "just ran it and it passed". Well in production it crashes. And customers don't pay for passing tests they pay for a working product. Anyway I am repeating myself at this point and this is longer rant, so, sorry about that.

<comment><USER4> > The problem with integration tests as discussed in the talk it they take a > long time to run and give imprecise results.

I think you left out the main complaint: It's impossible to cover a majority of code paths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Software architects arguing about methodologies without discussing the real problems and context where those methodologies are applicable - because they can't show that code. Instead they use some fuzzy general notions which don't communicate any relevant information.

I don't understand - how is this useful? Can anything be learnt from this at all? Its very clear to me that no useful conclusions can be reached from debating like this - is it just me?

The only substantial content was a comment on the gist [1] that explores a problem that looks like it came from a production system. Methodology discussions would really benefit from at least one semi-realistic example like that.

[1]: [https://gist.github.com/dhh/4849a20d2ba89b34b201#comment-122...](https://gist.github.com/dhh/4849a20d2ba89b34b201#comment-1228640)

</comment><comment><USER6> Was TDD ever really alive? I have a hard time getting less technical bosses to accept automated unit testing at all, without having them just reduce it to a % coverage metric that I not only have to report, but also satisfy annual goals. For them, TDD is a potential source of new buzzwords.

TDD is one of those things that only works when developers have a high degree of control over their own work. Anecdotally, that has been hard for me to find.

I think the only way to get widespread and useful adoption is to actually construct a high-level language around it, such that the code and the test are tied together by syntax, in the same file, and coverage is enforced by the compiler.

Otherwise, you're stuck trying to enforce TDD via voluntary human cooperation. While you may have confidence in writing and refactoring your code, that just shifts the uncertainty that remains in development of a complete product onto the screening of new hires and avoidance of certain management edicts.

Essentially, you need a fully automated test cop.

<comment><USER7> For the environment you describe in first sentence, no good software methodology could live. It's just not possible (unless you ignore them / break "rules") to create good software with incompetent, meddling, pointy heads like that.

<comment><USER6> That sort of environment is depressingly common outside of the major tech hubs. My current employer just _celebrated_ its millionth line of code on a glorified CRUD+reports application. I have been _reprimanded_ for _suggesting_ better development practices. Obviously, I am trying to find a better job that still pays reasonably well for a 40-hour work week.

<comment><USER8> Damn - has anyone suggested to them to perhaps pick a non-LOC based milestone to celebrate at? Or perhaps was the announcement aimed more at non-technical folks elsewhere in the company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used to be TDD fanatic with java junit + spring unit tests and I went for 100% test coverage .

However, in my Clojure code, I feel 100% test coverage is unnecessary. REPL does a good job of proving my code works as intended. I wonder if I am doing it wrong!

<comment><USER10> A REPL does a good job of proving your code works as intended _now_. If you save that code in a file and run it regularly (which is a fine way to start making a test suite), then you can prove your code still works _later_.

That's especially important when multiple people work on a project: you have some chance of remembering what important REPL incantations prove a system works. They won't. If you haven't put your REPL magic in a test suite, then they're going to break your stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In part IV DHH says that he believes the code should be the master reference over the documentation or the tests. The problem with that is there can never be a bug because current behaviour is by definition the reference behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER12> Burying as dupe.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=is+tdd+dead#!/story/sort_by_date/0...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=is+tdd+dead#!/story/sort_by_date/0/is%20tdd%20dead)

</comment><comment><USER13> I can't find the summary. This appears to be a link to the videos themselves.

<comment><USER14> You need to click the 'more...' button at the bottom of each topic to see the summary.

<comment><USER15> Wow, thanks for that....what a terrible UI presentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Specifying invariants via tests before or during the writing of code is a great technique.

Making your whole development approach blindly revolve around one technique is self-evidently a poor idea.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well. It's... it's good he calls it "Summary", because if he called it "Brief" it'd be very ironic, correct?

Like any experienced developer I have a lot of respect for Martin Fowler and his work, but sometimes I wonder if his best skill is saying simple things in many, many, _many_ words.

<comment><USER18> Well, could anybody sum this up? Because I'm definitely not going to read Part 2 since it seems Fowler didn't even bother to produce correct sentences.

<comment><USER19> Automated tests are awesome but they aren't useful in all cases and it doesn't always make sense to write them first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _INSERT STUPID ATTENTION GRABBING HEADLINE_

</comment><comment><USER21> No.[0]

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER22> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4722251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4722251)

<comment><USER23> I disagree. Betteridge's law is useful.

<comment><USER18> It is a shitty generalization slandering all articles which (possibly poorly) chose a question as headline.

This is obviously an "article" where the author was legitimately interested in answering the question in the title. This is one of the cases where Betteridge's law does not apply.

Betteridge's law may be useful to remind people to watch out for poor journalism and fact checking. In that case, I propose that all articles shall henceforth use questions as titles because people should do that anyway.

<comment><USER21> It's funny because author at the conclusions basically says that it is useful and people should use it hence the answer to question "Is TDD Dead?" is No.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cambridge Analytica Uncovered: Secret filming reveals election tricks - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpbeOCKZFfQ <comment><AUTHOR> How was this a dupe?</comment>


What Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2011/11/16/6-things-jeff-bezos-knew-back-in-1997-that-made-amazon-a-gorilla/ <comment><USER2> I'd add to this: the most sure fire way to dominate a market is by executing with a combination of skills that do not naturally tend to go together.

Google succeeded by combining high quality software engineering with cutting edge computer science research and beyond state-of-the-art data center operations.

Apple succeeded by combining solid software engineering with equally solid internet services engineering and more than anything exceptional design and aesthetics.

Amazon succeeded by combining solid web development with state of the art inventory management and fulfillment processes.

It's easy to do one thing well, there are literally millions of talented people in the world who can do one thing exceptionally well. But to be a company like Google, Amazon, or Apple you need to have a combination of talents that are typically unusual or difficult to keep together.

There are so many tech companies out there who have a band full of guitarists who all have the same musical tastes and background and they wonder why they haven't conquered the world yet.

<comment><USER3> Agree this is a great point.

Sadly, companies that are good at two things have a very difficult time getting funded. My own company, Fohr, has made it to the full partner round at one very highly-respected VC firm, but because we're in two industries (tech and film), and innovating in both, we're in a no-mans land for funding. :(

<comment><USER2> It's not just about diversity of competencies. It's about complementary but dissimilar skills. Apple is able to make beloved consumer electronics because they mesh aesthetic sensibilities and design with quality hw&sw construction. Google succeeded because better algorithms (page rank) led to higher quality results and good software engineering techniques (map-reduce, sharding) married to novel data center operations (heavily automated consumer hw based servers) allowed them to crank out results faster and cheaper than the competition, making ad revenue all that more potent and enabling lower margin ads (such as adwords).

Without a solid track record of success I can imagine it might be difficult to convince outsiders of the merits of a company that is more unusual than its competitors. I think the solution to that is the same as always, keep efficient and execute well until you acquire the profit or the funding to grow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most of these points strike me as contrary to traditional lean startup advice --e.g. it's ok to expend a huge amount of resources without seeing results for 5-7 years, and it's important to be first in a big market.

Obviously, this worked for Amazon, and there are some opportunities you won't be able to take advantage of in any other way, but it's certainly high risk. I mean, Pets.com arguably followed much of this advice.

I suspect what really separates Amazon from the pack is their actual customer experience--but that's only 1 of 6 points here.

<comment><USER5> Some research companies will build things that are 5 years off from being viable and that approach is generally contrary to "lean startup advice".

But Amazon built something that was viable immediately AND fit into a 5-7 year plan.

<comment><USER6> Amazon was nowhere near immediately viable.

It was founded in 1994. It had its IPO in 1997. It posted its first net profit in 2002.

It lost money for 8 years. Hardly "something that was viable immediately".

On the other hand it didn't take that much investment before IPO. It was seeded with 300K from Bezos and his family followed by 50K in angel money and finally an 8MM round.

[http://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-original-investors-in- Amaz...](http://www.quora.com/Who-were-the-original-investors-in-Amazon-and- how-much-pre-IPO-investment-did-Amazon-receive-in-total)

It rode the cheap cash infusion from the dot com bubble for as long as it could until the bubble collapsed. At that point it had cash but was going to run out eventually which is why I imagine they decided then it was time to try and make the company profitable rather than expand through investment.

<comment><USER5> Maybe a better word to make my point would have been "launchable" rather than viable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I observed these traits from a unique vantage point.

Worked with the "world's biggest auction site" for 8 years since 2002. I remembered the pride the company had about it being profitable from Day 1 and the dismissal of Amazon for not turning any profit for so many years. The company had strict quarterly goals and any decision, no matter how appropriate, if it hurts the quarterly goals was discarded.

Comparing this myopic view with Amazon's patience, stubbornness and customer focus; it's no wonder that Amazon went from half to more than double the market cap of my previous company.

</comment><comment><USER8> _One thing I learned a long time ago about really smart people: study, read, or listen to the things that they think are great. It's a shortcut to greatness._

No. No. No. No. A million time NO. Granted, at least it's better advice to study the things great people study, rather than study great people themselves.

By obsessing over what successful people do, we forget to study what the vast majority of people who did not become great did. For the six lessons listed, you can trivially find businesses who did that and failed. I sure you can find businesses for whom that is straight forward bad advice. And finally, you can find businesses who did not do it, and who still succeeded.

Those six things was probably the right thing to do for Amazon, at the time Amazon did them. Except abstracted beyond recognition, they are not generally applicable.

</comment><comment><USER9> My favorite: "It's ok to make mistakes but it's not ok to be timid." I know in silicon valley that sort of thinking is encouraged, but in most of corporate America it's very rare.

<comment><USER10> If your job is to shepherd, say, Proctor and Gamble forward, then the upside of boldness is radically less than if you're Amazon. And the downside of boldness, profligate spending, is likely to come out of your margins without ever being made up in the long term.

In a relatively mature segment, operational discipline is more important than big ideas and plans. Since the reward system is different, it attracts different people, and a more suitable mentality.

This is heavily related to why it's so often that the best people from a growth company leave as the business matures -- the skills that make you great at growing a company will not make you equally successful at managing an existing business, even aside from the fact that growth-company people usually don't _like_ doing the more mundane tasks of a later-stage business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yup, that is why I bought Amazon stock in 2005 (really, from an interview that was very similar to this one). Jeff Bezos talks about long term thinking and also executes on it.

I think it also relates to the point made a few weeks ago about Silicon Valley being ADD in some respects -- chasing the hottest new thing, rather than conscientiously building value over years. I think someone said something about Bezos choosing Seattle for that reason. He wasn't from that area like Bill Gates -- he was in NYC I believe and moved out to Seattle to start the company.

<comment><USER12> I agree, though, zero sales tax certainly plaid a role, too.

<comment><USER13> Zero sales tax where? WA has a 7.6% state sales tax and individual counties have added on top of that.

WA doesn't have an income tax (if that's what you actually meant).

<comment><USER14> All over the place. They have deliberately avoided establishing tax nexus in almost every major metro area. California orders all ship from Nevada, for example.

Seattle is the exception, for obvious reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A great article but it lacks reference cases to compare with. We easily fall for survivor bias.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just curious, couldn't we apply all 6 of these to Groupon? I think you'd get a "yes" on all of them.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's an impressive testament to Bezos's vision and integrity that he was able to both articulate these principles early on _and_ stick to them for 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would just add that all these things are common knowledge. The most remarkable thing he did is - he followed and delivered on all those things. Just look at number 2:"Think long-term meaning 5 – 7 years, not 5 – 7 months". Almost every sane person knows this. But only few deliver. It takes a lot of guts and integrity to undertake such a journey, and Jeff made it look easy. Great guy.

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome interview from 2000:

<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/bezos.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> "Infrastructure web services had to happen."

Honest question, why? I'm glad they did it, and Amazon is pretty good at it, but I'm not sure why it was inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER20> stuff like this is pretty much why my online shopping is almost exclusively done at Amazon.

Even if it's a few bucks more compared to some other site, I just trust them not to screw me over.</comment>


The A/B Testing Manual - <AUTHOR> http://abtestingmanual.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm making this with @patio11. He's a regular here, so I figured I'd post it and spend some of the day answering questions.

<comment><USER2> I've listened to patio's podcasts and think I have some intuition about why the project is structured the way it is. But I'm not sure that this particular blog post is the right pitch to the this particular audience because there's nothing that people can walk around a kick the tires.

By which I mean that the article did not have three things about A/B testing that made me say, 'gee I really want more of that'. When I hit the browser back button, I didn't feel like I my odds of making money had been increased.

A few pieces of random internet advice: Don't explicitly discount preorders - making the product $900 today and raising the price later anchors differently than a discount today and at the price point you're seeking the discount isn't going to move the likelihood someone buys and in the segment into which you're selling the discount suggests cash flow issues and hence an increased risk of the presale winding up fulfilled.

A little further along, in an area like A/B testing course materials, I'm on the fence about whether presales is a distraction from just completing the course. Anyone who is in an A/B testing pickle today isn't helped by purchasing a presale course and neither is anyone who can wait. Someone who has decided 'I will learn A/B testing Q1 2017' might purchase a presale, but it's hard to see a business case for doing so.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!</comment></comment></comment>


Want to be the next Google? Create enduring values - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/17/want-to-be-the-next-google-create-enduring-values/

<comment><USER2> Having the right long term vision helps.

A friend of mine wrote to Google in 1998, offering to help them "pretty up" their homepage, and they wrote back saying they wanted to preserve a clean, fast experience, etc etc. Exactly what they're still saying today.

Then there's this pretty extraordinary interview which lays down exactly what they've followed up with: [http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/09/googles_first_s...](http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/09/googles_first_steps.html)</comment>


Newly released UFO files from the UK government - <AUTHOR> http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ <comment><USER2> I think at this point that there are (somewhat simplistically) two opposing camps in this debate. The first believes that UFOs are entirely the result of terrestrial phenomena, and take the Sagan/de Grasse Tyson view. The other viewpoint is that there is sufficient evidence to point to some sort of extraordinary phenomena which belies common explanation.

Now, this is obviously a simplistic breakdown. Broadly speaking, however, this is usually what we see in such debates. (With typically much ridicule being thrown about by both sides.) Files like these, though, give even the most hardened skeptics room for wonder. While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate.

These files are, unfortunately, just more in the circumstantial category. Although they have the "official" seal of approval they are still, at root, not hard evidence. It is frustrating to those of us who are curious about this that nothing beyond eyewitness reports ever seems to surface, no matter the source. I think most people at least pay attention to these news items, but do not know what to make of them beyond raising more questions.

<comment><USER3> >While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate.

I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

<comment><USER4> > I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" > is not "data".

Honestly, where is the barrier between the two? I'm not suggesting it doesn't exist, just genuinely asking where it is, or at least where it's near?

<comment><USER5> Well, roughly and someone may have a better answer. Data is collected in a structured, systematic way, and the sample is carefully chosen. Anecdotes are not structured or collected in a systematic way, but worst of all the sample you've taken is the people who've chosen to speak up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're a scientifically minded skeptic, I'd encourage you to read this book on the UFO phenomenon:

[http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government- Offici...](http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government- Officials/dp/0307717089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342503506&sr=8-1&keywords=leslie+kean+ufo+book)

It's a very good read. Also, in all UFO threads there should be a disclaimer that you are not making a point by pointing out that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object not Alien Spaceship; most people when referring to the truly unexplainable cases use them interchangeably since extraterrestrial origin is one of the few hypotheses that are consistent with the evidence, though it's never obviously conclusive.

<comment><USER7> Another well researched book is:

[http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State- Chronolog...](http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State- Chronology/dp/1571743170/ref=pd_sim_b_2)

It covers the intersection of military/governmental organizations and the phenomenon, mostly in the latter half of the 20th century. The short version would be to search YouTube for Richard Dolan. He's a great speaker and presents the information in a way that should be palatable for even the hardest skeptic.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I have read that book and several others on the subject and have been blown away. As both an open-minded and scientifically minded skeptic, it would be intellectually dishonest - even foolish - to deny that something extraordinary is going on that is worthy of investigation by science. While most cases can be explained away, about 5% of the cases deserve further study. For example, there are well documented cases of objects spotted moving at speeds of 20 or 30,000 miles per hour and making right angle turns and other impossible maneuvers, backed by both air and ground radar readings, and dozens of eyewitnesses. Or of massive objects the size of a football field gliding at low speeds, with no sound at all, over an entire city, and observed by hundreds of people. Something strange is going on in our skies, and sadly mainstream science and media are dismissing it, even ridiculing it.

<comment><USER9> Can you point to the documentation of these events?

<comment><USER8> Read any of the books above or watch this Yotube documentary <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk> where hundreds of high ranking officials in Govt, military, aviation etc. are willing to go on the record and testify under oath, of some of these events.

<comment><USER9> That is not documentation. That is eye-witness testimony.

 _Edit_ : I won't sit through 2hrs of slow-talking elderly men reminiscing about that time they see some unexplained lights in the sky. It is difficult to take proponents of the ET-hypothesis serious if they always point to such bad evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Found a great paragraph..

"I am afraid we have a slight political problem. This ufologist is of course the Earl of Clancart, with whom HMG exchanged views in the Lords Debate. I feel our political masters would think it improper if the RAF News should be too rude about him. I suggest the problem could be resolved without altering any of the text from "Brinsley ...." to ".....interior of the earth" but toning down the faintly derisory setting and letting the idiocy of the Earl's ideas speak for themselves."

<comment><USER11> Could you link or cite the PDF? Curious to know what that was about the interior of the Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Having seen a UFO myself I can safely say that there _are_ aircraft with capabilities far above that what I would expect from our own air force in our skies.

A friend and I witnessed formations of lights sweeping across the horizon making 90 degree turns in the blink of an eye.

There you go.

<comment><USER13> lights =/= aircraft

There are a myriad of natural phenomena, optical illusions and - dare I say - mental aberrations that could account for one seeing lights in the sky.

I've seen several objects in the sky that I've not been able to immediately explain. Having been 'tricked' in this way and later realising the 'natural' explanations the idea of UFOs being explained as extra-terrestrial is not at all surprising to me.

<comment><USER14> I've seen a UFO once, it was probably either a Beechcraft or a Cessna.

It was unidentified, flying an most definitely and object.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't Bayesian statistics solve this pretty easily? I have a lot of priors for weird aeronautical and weather phenomenon (e.g., St. Elmo's fire/ball lightning), meteoroids, missiles, balloons, and secret prototype aircraft.

I have no priors for technologically advanced alien life.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the idea that governments, so incompetent in oh-so-many ways, are capable of a multiple-decade coverup involving one of the most fantastic discoveries possible, somehow managing to prevent leaks of any meaningful data, including any mention whatsoever in data dumps such as, e.g. WikiLeaks.

And yet still people choose to focus their energies on UFO conspiracies, despite releases like these showing the true meaning behind the term UFO: stuff that looks weird in the sky and can't be identified by the viewer.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Obama administration has some believers

[http://www.examiner.com/article/the-obama-administration- s-s...](http://www.examiner.com/article/the-obama-administration-s-startling- ufo-connections)

</comment><comment><USER18> Hold on a sec, I thought the UK outed all their UFO cases a number of years ago.</comment>


Apple's response to the WoSign incidents - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.security.policy/lWJ1zdUJPLI <comment><USER2> Couple notes for people less familiar with the Internet PKI/CA industry:

1\. WoSign (who also owns StartCom) violated all sorts of industry standards. The worst of them was circumventing the SHA-1 deprecation by backdating an SSL certificate.

2\. Now all the root programs (Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, and Google) need to decide how they will react to this.

3\. Mozilla proposed dis-trusting all new WoSign/StartCom certificates and giving them a chance to re-apply as a trusted CA in a year. This is only their proposed action, and they have not totally committed to it.

4\. Apple has now said they will take similar action to Mozilla. Apple will block a specific intermediate certificate: "WoSign CA Free SSL Certificate G2"

But they will continue to "trust individual existing certificates" if they had been published to Certificate Transparency logs by September 19th.

While I have not personally confirmed this, my understanding is that there are other Wosign certificates that are trusted on Apple via cross-signing. So this seems like an incomplete solution - in the sense that some WoSign certificates (mainly the commercial certificates they sell, vs the ones they give away for free) will remain unaffected in anyway.

(Someone more familiar with the specifics of the Apple root store may be able to provide more clarity here)

5\. Google and Microsoft have not yet committed to any action yet. Google will certainly make a detailed public announcement when they are ready.

6\. Mozilla is meeting with QiHoo (a chinese tech company which owns a majority stake in WoSign). It is expected that Mozilla will make a final decision following this meeting.

<comment><USER3> For those who may not remember or may not have heard, QiHoo is the company behind the most popular scam browsers in the world: Qihoo 360 Secure. It was one of the most popular browsers in China with 28% of the market a few years ago. It used an IE logo colored green, force-uninstalled competing browsers by claiming they were unsafe, made uninstallation so difficult you'd often have to re-image the machine, breaks SSL, can expose user passwords, etc.

Remember, this is a "security" company.

It's rather fascinating: [https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/qihoo-360-secure- the...](https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/qihoo-360-secure-the-most- popular-browser-youve-never-heard-of--cms-24074)

Personally, I wouldn't trust anything this "security" company is connected with anywhere need my devices, software, or business.

<comment><USER4> And yet, unless you go through the effort of removing every trusted CA from your browser, you implicitly trust them because Mozilla/Google/etc. do.

And thus why the CA system is broken in a nutshell.

<comment><USER5> >And thus why the CA system is broken in a nutshell.

I wouldn't call it broken. From what I see on Linux and Windows, Chrom[e|ium] relies on the system's trusted certificates. You always have the last says on who's in and who's out.

EDIT: Just checked, the Chromium-specific trusted CAs can be revoked through its configuration interface, doesn't just rely on system certs. Important detail, but still, user has the last word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previously on HN, Mozilla's response to WoSign (also a good summary of what they'd done wrong): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12582534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12582534)

</comment><comment><USER7> That should serve as a clear warning to other certificate authorities. Behave or you will be ruined. For most CAs having either Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft or Google remove your root certificate will drive customers away to the point where you might as well close up shop.

<comment><USER8> nobody has been ruined just yet. and when i look at how sheepishly slow mozilla reacts my guess is nobody will ever really get thrown out of that club.

what they've done is clear. it's been misconduct as a ca. untrust them. done. fuck you.

<comment><USER9> Representatives of Google, Apple, and Mozilla have all dismissed the suitability of a fast reactionary nuclear approach.

There are plenty of innocent sites who use WoSign/Startcom certificates.

It's easy to be flippant when you're not actually responsible for a browser which users use, and need to worry about adverse side-effects. You kill WoSign overnight and you now have millions of users habituated to ignoring TLS errors, and now know how to override internal browser security settings.

Hope it was worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I came across this: [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204132](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204132) earlier today.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sorry if this is obvious to others, but just to be clear ...

As it's widely reported that WoSign has taken over StartCom's infrastructure, this implies that StartCom StartSSL Free certificates going forward won't be trusted by Apple either, correct?

It also sounds a little strange to only call out the free certificates. Are they going to allow new paid OV/EV (and what they call 'IV') certificates to remain valid?

<comment><USER9> My read on the announcement is that they won't be taking action against the StartCom CA & intermediates at this time.

The WoSign existing-certs exemption probably involves a whitelist they're shipping along with the OS. A lot of the feasibility discussions on this approach have centered on the size of the required whitelist [1]. Taking the same approach with StartCom may not be possible due to the scale. Also, StartCom certificates don't have the same coverage in the Certificate Transparency logs - so the certificate dating is problematic.

Hmmm, thinking about this now, if I were Wosign, I would be having a fire sale on StartCom. Selling the brand immediately (maybe to an existing competent CA) and asking the trust store operators for understanding (probably conditioned on full CT reporting) might be a way to recoup some losses out of all this mess.

Representatives of Qihoo 360, StartCom, and Mozilla are meeting in London next week. I'm very curious what they will be discussing. [2]

[1] [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.security.policy/...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.security.policy/O_oCZafjfF4/fiOUpeeEEAAJ) [2] [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.security.policy/...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.security.policy/1XI3Y7PJ1Uc/exSBjnFzFQAJ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like a sensible response. I do wonder how they will know what certificates are currently signed by WoSign, as they stated that individual certificates will still be trusted somehow.

<comment><USER2> Apple will continue to trust existing certs from WoSign (provided they are CT logged). New certs will not be trusted.

mac OS will make this decision by first looking at signatures. It will receive the "end-entity" certificate (a cert for a specific site, like example.com) and while checking the chain, will see that there is a signature from the "WoSign CA Free SSL Certificate G2 intermediate CA" certificate.

It will then look at the "notBefore" date listed in the certificate, which tells you when the certificate was issued. If it is a new certificate, it will not be trusted.

If the certificate is preexisting (presumably issued before 9/19/16) it will be trusted ONLY if the certificate is CT logged. It will know if this is the case by looking for an SCT belonging to that certificate. The SCT will either be embedded directly in the certificate, or provided with the certificate during the SSL handshake (this is known as "stapling").

<comment><USER13> > If the certificate is preexisting (presumably issued before 9/19/16) it will > be trusted ONLY if the certificate is CT logged. It will know if this is the > case by looking for an SCT belonging to that certificate. The SCT will > either be embedded directly in the certificate, or provided with the > certificate during the SSL handshake (this is known as "stapling").

I doubt they'll do it this way. WoSign has only been embedding SCTs for all certificates since July and I wouldn't count on many webservers implementing SCT stapling. I expect Apple to ship a whitelist of hashes of certs that should be trusted instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting that Apple's root program is effectively anonymous– sent from a group alias and signed off as a program.

</comment><comment><USER15> The John Ringo approach, from "Citadel". A Chinese supplier cut corners on the gold plating of a contact and caused a major accident. The response:

 _" The supplier, Qua Tang Electronics, is blacklisted. Find every person associated, every member of the board, every senior officer, and blacklist any company they are associated with as well. With something like this, and the Chinese, there is no overkill. Be wildly unaimed in your fire. Nuke first, ask questions afterward. Make the pain as widespread as possible."_</comment>


Wire Recorder Project: Recovering old family recordings made on steel wire - <AUTHOR> http://www.gentweb.co.uk/wirerecorder.htm

<comment><USER2> This is really where the internet stands out. A personal site by a personal enthusiast. It's sad seeing similar stuff get stuck behind the facebook wall and disappear after a year or two. Great site and great job.

<comment><USER3> I know right. These are the kinds of sites I remember scouring the internet for before the boom.

Note: Not suggesting we need to take things back to the 90's. It was a time, it passed.

<comment><USER4> On the flip side, the people most likely to do things like this are also most likely to set up their own site somewhere and keep it running. For instance, [http://www.windytan.com/](http://www.windytan.com/) (Oona Räisänen) and [http://tronixstuff.com/](http://tronixstuff.com/) (John Boxall).

<comment><USER5> I posted these once before and seems like nobody noticed at the time:

Fred Nachbaur of the internet, one of his interesting projects:

announced on rec.audio.tubes:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.audio.tubes/swgQ...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.audio.tubes/swgQyGjCbYQ) (his early links are long dead)

Here starts one preamp discussion:

[http://www.ampage.org/homebrew.cgi?cat=sg&sb=&so=hl&page=989...](http://www.ampage.org/homebrew.cgi?cat=sg&sb=&so=hl&page=989856497IrvCfrx)

If you like, then here is the rest of that story:

[http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk](http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk)

And don't forget this:

[http://www.dogstarmusic.ca](http://www.dogstarmusic.ca)

With lost artists go lost arts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is marvelous project.

I had the opportunity to hear Marvin Camras, the inventor of magnetic recording, speak at a local Ham Club. The key idea behind recording was the idea of "bias", which was his invention. He brought a sample recording made very long ago, ant it was amazing how clear the sound was.

He had over 500 inventions during his life, most of them relating to recording.

</comment><comment><USER7> Even for more recent formats there is a need I think. For instance I struggled a lot for recovering Video8 and Hi8 tapes [1], in the end I had to buy an old camera. I think it's the kind of thing it would make a great Kickstarter project.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_mm_video_format](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_mm_video_format)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if the BBC would be interested in copies of the material?

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/contacts/bbc_collection...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/contacts/bbc_collection_donating.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER9> Compared to magnetic tape wire recording is quite robust, which is why it's not surprising they've survived over half a century. The heat resistance is one of the reasons why wire-based recorders were used for aircraft CVR/FDR - the Curie temperature of steel is far above the point where plastic/organic- based tapes would be incinerated.

I can almost imagine a page titled "Recovering old family recordings made on aluminium platters" many decades from now... and wonder if the chances of success would be nearly as good. :-)

</comment><comment><USER10> I absolutely love this kind of thing. I spent some time restoring an old 8mm projector so I could watch a few films I had found at an antique store. It felt wonderful to finally flip the switch and see the images flicker to life on my wall.

It's a shame the clips are so short, though. I'd really like to hear the rest of his great-grandfather's story.

</comment><comment><USER11> We had one of these machines when I was young - we picked it up at an auction of a deceased doctor's effects. Pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER12> The sound of the Beethoven piece is amazing.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I like the sound of old recordings, and the Grandfather was a pretty good pianist. Plenty of commercial 78s to try here...

[http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/sound/sound_search.html](http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/sound/sound_search.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is also worth checking out for folks interested in recording technology:

[http://www.otrannex.com/papertapes/](http://www.otrannex.com/papertapes/)

</comment><comment><USER15> The quality of these recordings is very good! Seems like very sturdy and long- lasting technology. Also, what kind of homemade microphone did he make?

</comment><comment><USER16> I love these function-over-form websites.

</comment><comment><USER17> Could anyone explain how do these wires work and how can they hold audio of this quality?

<comment><USER16> It's basically the fore-runner of the tape recorder. The fields used are much higher strength (as is the wire speed), the steel wire used was processed to make it easy to magnetize.

There is nothing 'special' about it, it's just the same principle as magnetizing a needle with an electromagnet only you move the needle as you go and you alternate the current in the electromagnet with the sound you wish to record.

Then later when you move the wire past the head it will induce an electric current which you can amplify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Why on earth would you transcode the recordings to mp3 -_- Flac is perfectly capable of decent compression and won't permanently damage these historical recordings.

<comment><USER18> 2:1 is hardly what I'd call "good compression" for audio. At reasonable bit rates, MP3 is sonically transparent, except for the region above 15 kHz which is almost certainly not of interest in these recordings. This is the conclusion you get from doing actual scientific studies that compare the audio fidelity of different encodings, although if you have some data that uses human subjects which shows otherwise, I'd be glad to look at it. 8:1 or better is probably fine for recordings like this.

<comment><USER19> I thought that mp3 was not transparent at any bitrate for certain percussive sounds? There certainly are several other lossy formats which are though (e.g. AAC, vorbis, opus, musepak).</comment></comment></comment>


Request to all web start-ups: Please don't make my profile public by default - <AUTHOR>

It's pretty simple: I want the google search results on my name to be clean and I don't want your lousy profile profile page as the top most link for my name (I am not very famous, you see :) ).
It has happened so many times: I am curious about a certain product, say rate-my-shoes.com, sign up on their website and with in a few weeks, they are the 3rd or 4th result in Google when I look up my name, saying "Rate Seshadri's shoes here!".
Then I have to go back and look for some advanced setting where I disable search engine listing of my profile, or even delete the account completely if I don't find the option to disable my public profile or don't like the product enough.
So, please, please don't make my profile available to search engines by default or at least ask me if I want to do so ! <comment><USER2> Why don't use the juice and link back to your territory if possible? Even if links are nofollowed, it might just help a person or two to find you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, putting links back to your homepage helps, and these days it shows up as the first result with my name. But still, I want the other results to be relevant: such as my papers, any press we have got etc., not some random product I have tried long time ago and never even liked it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Alas, I think the SEO benefits are going to outweigh courtesy on this one, in many cases.

<comment><USER4> Actually I don't think so. Profile pages aren't going to rank for anything meaningful and are usually thin on content. Having thousands of thin content pages being indexed sends a bad quality signal to Google.</comment></comment>


Dropbox stops supporting non-ext4 and ecryptfs Linux systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Syncing-and-uploads/Dropbox-client-warns-me-that-it-ll-stop-syncing-in-Nov-why/td-p/290058 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17732912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17732912)</comment>


What the healthcare bill means for small businesses - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2010/03/22/what-the-healthcare-bill-means-for-small-businesses/

<comment><USER2> Seriously, with no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, no raising of rates if you get sick, and no lifetime maximums - how are "insurance" rates not going to rise?

This smells like a "let's bankrupt all the private insurers" and then let government swoop in and finally nationalize the rest of the healthcare system to fill the void.

<comment><USER3> Theoretically the insurance rates won't rise because the healthy young people who aren't buying insurance now will be forced to do so legally. With a lower risk pool, the insurer would hopefully be able to keep rates stable.

<comment><USER2> How many healthy uninsured young people do you really think there is?

I hear 36 million total uninsured getting thrown around.

Let's say 15% are healthy, young, & gainfully employed (able to afford premiums), but until now - health insurance "scofflaws".

Do you really think these 5.4M people offset uncapped, unrestricted benefits of the other 300+ Million people?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Change the rules and people will behave accordingly. The most obvious effect I foresee is that employers who can't afford insurance will try to avoid growing to have 50 employees. This isn't because the employer is evil, it's because that one extra employee will cost salary + $40k in penalties, and probably get him labelled as an exploiter of the working class. That should do wonders for the economy.

<comment><USER5> It'll be interesting to see whether the negative impact of employers trying to stay below 50 FTE employees is offset by the positive impact of people feeling more free to start or join small businesses that don't yet offer health coverage because they don't have to worry about pre-existing conditions when obtaining individual coverage. It's not an obvious calculation either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 50 employees isn't that special of a number, because you also have to have 30 of those employees buy subsidized health insurance from the state marketplace. Even then you only pay the 2k penalty for each person above that.

If you have 80 employees and 40 get the subsidy your total penalty is 20k. If your annual payroll is $4,000,000, $50k per employee, this is .5% of your payroll</comment>


Macaroons are better than cookies - <AUTHOR> http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/05/16/macaroons-are-better-than-cookies/

<comment><AUTHOR> Code here: [https://github.com/rescrv/libmacaroons](https://github.com/rescrv/libmacaroons)</comment>