How Berlin's Futuristic Airport Became a $6B Embarrassment - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-07-23/how-berlin-s-futuristic-airport-became-a-6-billion-embarrassment <comment><USER2> They seem to completely miss the story about Imtech's involvement that broke this week which sheds some lights on this catastrophe and is a tale of corruption: [http://www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber- verzo...](http://www.zeit.de/2015/29/imtech-flughafen-berlin-ber- verzoegerung/komplettansicht)

Unfortunately I'm unable to find an English-language article on that at all. There is only this Imtech response: [http://imtech.com/EN/corporate/Newsroom/Highlights/Imtech- re...](http://imtech.com/EN/corporate/Newsroom/Highlights/Imtech-response-to- media-attention-on-16-July-2015-about-legacy-issues.html)

<comment><USER3> Can you provide an English summary?

<comment><USER2> I try but don't hold me accountable for any inaccuracies.

At the moment three public prosecutors independently investigate that companies practices which is rare in Germany: 1) A gigantic adventure park in Poland which was never supposed to be built 2) A cartel which allowed them to build two power plants 3) Falsification of balance sheets.

Imtech is responsible for parts of the airport's construction – including the two parts which created most problems: the smoke extractor and the cabling. As the airport was close to be finished, opening date just days away, Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects.

Similar things happened a few years earlier: When the planning agency went bankrupt and it was known that due to regulatory changes the plans needed to be fixed they nonetheless went on to built the (now obsolete) parts – knowing they will be the company that will be called to fix it again. Additionally the work was done sloppily: Among the quoted examples were control boxes build too close together that you couldn't open their doors.

What was really important for the company was that all invoices should be paid by the end of 2012 to include them in that years balance sheet – while delaying paying their workers until January. As time was running out they resorted to a bribe: In December 2012 an employee of Imtech gave an employee of the Berlin airport an envelope with 150 000 € at the side of the highway. Airport employees spend overtime during the christmas holidays so that all payments of 65 Mio. € could be processed.

The article then goes on the describe the involvement of top management which indicate that this is done systematically. They also describe the two other projects from above. They also suggest that these projects look like a Ponzi scheme: A project's loss is paid by doing even crazier projects.

<comment><USER4> "Imtech send fraudulent invoices they knew nobody would double-check. This is a practice that seems really common with such projects."

Yeah, this is a bit too typical and happens in the USA also. If you ever have to deal with building something, check every invoice as if it was from Snidely Whiplash.

<comment><USER2> The article specially mentions a one-page invoice with items like "overhead costs" and "disturbances while building" amounting to millions – billed at a time where they still had 5000 other invoices to check.

<comment><USER4> That would be the time to try to slip something through. Also, its not like the accounting department knowns what the invoices mean. This is why a lot of places require work orders / purchase orders to match each invoice. No WO or PO #, no pay invoice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "Professor, let me understand this," Loge said. "You are talking about > having 800 people wearing orange vests, sitting on camping stools, holding > thermoses filled with coffee, and shouting into their cell phones, 'Open the > fire door'?" Loge refused the airport an operating license. Schwarz stood up > and walked out without another word.

Easily the best part of the article.

<comment><USER6> I got a good chuckle out of the sentence:

"Then they turned to the fire prevention system. Smoke now channels upward through chimneys, in accordance with the laws of physics."

<comment><USER7> Yeah, some politician got some "duh, stupid engineers" points out of that sentence. Completely ignoring the fact that the original design also pulled smoke down and was considered to be fine. Since these systems are active and suck the smoke out up or down doesn't matter all that much.

<comment><USER8> From the third paragraph: "Smoke evacuation canals designed to suck out smoke and replace it with fresh air failed to do either. In an actual fire, the inspectors determined, the main smoke vent might well implode." Assuming the inspectors were correct, the original design, at least as implemented, didn't work.

While the "in accordance with the laws of physics" may be overly catty, a bit of searching around suggests that smoke evacuation dampers are generally placed on the ceiling, and it's not unreasonable to think that's because, well, smoke rises, isn't it?

<comment><USER7> AFAIK the smoke was pulled in at the ceiling of the floors. And then sent downwards and vented out somewhere on the side instead of on top of the building.

The original design was never tested, because the building as originally designed never existed.

 _Each addition ordered up by Schwarz required shifting passenger flows through the terminal. That meant rebuilding walls, exits, emergency lights, ventilation systems, windows, elevators, and staircases. At one point, in 2009, outside controllers urged Schwarz and his engineering chief to shut down construction for half a year to give the architects and contractors time to coordinate efforts._

That never happened, so there never was a complete design for the changed building, and the fire system wasn't properly replanned for the new situation. Which lead to issues like the collapsing pipes: They fitted stronger fans, but no-one realized that the pipes can't hold the higher pressure difference.

<comment><USER9> IDKSAS, but wouldn't a system like this (electrically powered venting) be prone to failure in an actual fire? If power fails with side/down venting, the smoke would have no where to go.

<comment><USER10> It does sound like a situation where "excessive cleverness" is being applied to an engineering problem, where a simple/robust/passive/failsafe solution may be available.

<comment><USER11> Having owned several German sports cars, I must say that "excessive cleverness" just might be a German trademark. When compared to the Corvette, the only American sports car I had, excessive, and largely unnecessary cleverness is very much prevalent in german designs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is a joke in my country (Poland) about every little town needing:

-an airport

-an aquapark

-a huge sport stadion

All of them as a way to transfer some state/town money to political cronies. The sad part is that some of those make sense as an infrastructure improvement (most doesn't though, at least here) so it's easier to sell the idea to people. The way the business is done is to just pay 30%-50% more than it should cost and pocket the difference.

<comment><USER13> That's for the Amateurs, Professionals do a whole World Cup

<comment><USER14> And to get into the hall of fame, you do an Olympics.

<comment><USER15> Look no further than the $2.5 billion debacle that is the new Tokyo Olympic stadium.

A rather lavish expenditure for a country that is deep in debt.

<comment><USER16> Another example among many: Greece hosting the 2004 Olympics turned out not to be a great financial decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is exactly what you expect to happen when you're redesigning the building in the middle of construction. If the project manager can't say no then it's pretty much guaranteed to be a disaster.

On the plus side, it seems like they've finally found someone competent to fix the mess and move the project forward.

<comment><USER18> What I don't quite get is that the problem keeping things from being fixed seems to be entirely related to the fire system.

Meanwhile all the other issues like heavy equipment breaking tiles... none of that seems to be slowing it from opening.

So how did all the other systems wind up being more or less ready?

<comment><USER7> The fire system was the thing that forced them to admit the delays and has gotten the biggest publicity, because failing the fire certification forbids them from doing anything except construction work. I don't think anyone had (or even has now) a clue if the other things actually were completely ready. Stuff like power lines in the wrong cable channels makes one suspect they weren't...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I last visited Berlin, I heard a joke about the airport's problems that I thought was very funny:

"Niemand hat die Absicht, einen Flughafen zu errichten!"

('Nobody has the intention to build an airport!')

Context: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall#Construction_begin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall#Construction_begins.2C_1961)

<comment><USER20> The other popular joke, after all these years and billions spent: "Let's just move Berlin to a functioning airport"

<comment><USER10> My favorite Berlin airport joke:

"Did you hear about the new grammar reform? It includes a new tense, Futur III, to allow us to speak of the completion of Berlin/Brandenburg airport."

[http://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur- iii...](http://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-iii- eingefuhrt-um.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> But is it only BER? As mentioned int the article - what about Stuttgart 21 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21)) etc.?

It is possible that these sites exist as new financial "loopholes", transferring tax-money from the government to private contractors without much oversight.

<comment><USER22> The complexity of that project is extremely high. My cousin is a civil engineer in Stuttgart, and he showed me a cross-sectional diagram of the affected area and the number of considerations seemed intractably high to me.

But more generally, these kinds of megaprojects go over budget in nearly every part of the world -- especially when tunneling is involved. Here in the United States, two examples are Boston's "Big Dig" and Seattle's viaduct replacement.

<comment><USER23> In the interests of being pedantic, and local pride: Seattle's viaduct replacement isn't over budget-- _yet_.

It's extremely likely to go over budget, but don't count the chickens before they've hatched. The last budget review came to the conclusion that it's still possible to finish the project as budgeted and scheduled.

[http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2015/04/23/ber...](http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2015/04/23/bertha- project-expert-review-report/26222949/)

<comment><USER24> >The last budget review came to the conclusion that it's still possible to finish the project as budgeted and scheduled.

They should open a betting market on these types of lines. I'd love to see the fair odds. I'd take out a second mortgage if I could bet "This project will go over budget" if it was even odds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am a german living in Berlin - and let me tell you, I feel deeply ashamed. Not because I am german, but because I have the impression that a lot of people involved, especially our once-so-admired former mayor Klaus Wowereit, are obsessed with money, and got caught in a swamp of corruption and were misleading the public.

A year ago or so, it turned out that the folks responsible for all the mess (none of the board of course) we not to be found, because they were supporting a system were a subcontractor could hire another subcontractor and so forth, making it impossible for anyone to get a grip on what is going on. And that is not what I would expect from a billion dollar project run by some of the most trusted politicians and executives in our country.

I flew home from Budapest a couple of weeks ago, and I was surprised to see that we were using the actual airstrip of BER. The flight was supposed to go to SXF (Berlin Schönefeld), but instead we landed on the new airstrip, driving by the not-yet-finished new airport. Can anyone tell me why?

There's more to it though - starting with corruption [1] and going all the way to REBULDING the whole thing [2].

I'll stop here now - but I hope that there will be a lot more of critique towards those who made this a completely embarassing desaster.

[sorry guys, links are in german. I'll try to find english ones] [1] [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/berlin-schoenefeld- korrupt...](http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/berlin-schoenefeld-korruption- am-flughafen-ber-die-akte-imtech/11464662.html) [2] [http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/acht-milliarden- euro-b...](http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/acht-milliarden-euro- baukosten-fuer-flughafen-ber-erwartet-12873893.html)

<comment><USER2> > I was surprised to see that we were using the actual airstrip of BER. The > flight was supposed to go to SXF (Berlin Schönefeld), but instead we landed > on the new airstrip, driving by the not-yet-finished new airport. Can anyone > tell me why?

They repurposed the south airstrip of SXF as the north airstrip of BER. As the north airstrip of SXF was dismantled for a highway this is the only remaining airstrip at SXF. For BER they built another additional one.

Here's a map: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Karte- _F...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Karte- _Flughafen_Berlin-Schönefeld_SXF.png)

<comment><USER25> I wasn't aware of that - but did they increase the number of planes starting and landing on SXF? It wasn't until a couple of months ago since they started taxi'ing around the building, or am I wrong?

<comment><USER26> I visited Berlin in 2012, and I remember taxiing near the BER terminal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you're in a position to hand out $5B of other people's money, do you think some people _might_ want to bribe you to get it?

What if you can only hand out $1M? Will someone still want to bribe you? -Of course, but he'll be a "smaller player" then.

All public spending involves _some_ sort of "corruption" [1] because it's always other people's money being spent, and there's always someone in charge of spending it.

If you could pay $10 to get $100, wouldn't you do it? A bribe is an _investment_ , and the tax money received in exchange is the ROI.

[1] I put "corruption" in quotes because it's just the system working as intended. If the system were actually corrupted, it would somehow start working for the masses' benefit instead.

Think about it. How do _you_ benefit from someone else spending your money _for you_? Your money serves a means towards an end for whoever spends it, meaning he will be trying to benefit from spending it.

<comment><USER28> > If you could pay $10 to get $100, wouldn't you do it?

Certainly not, if the $10 is a bribe. Would you?

> A bribe is an investment...

No, it is a criminal offence, in most places. And for good reason. Corruption does horrible things to the economy.

<comment><USER27> > _Certainly not, if the $10 is a bribe. Would you?_

Probably not, even if only because I'm not the kind of person who'd even get into a position to bribe someone for personal gain.

But there's this thing called "psychopaths", and _they do_ seek out bribing opportunities and they don't have any problem whatsoever with paying bribes too.

> _No, it is a criminal offence, in most places. And for good reason._

Sure, but the people _taking_ the bribes are part of the organization that's supposed to punish people for taking bribes (i.e. "criminal offenses"). See a problem there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "At the very moment Merkel and her allies are hectoring the Greeks about their profligacy, the airport's cost, borne by taxpayers, has tripled to €5.4 billion."

So, which country does Germany want to borrow money from in order to cover the wasteful spending?

<comment><USER29> German EUR bonds have the second lowest yields globally, with Switzerland being the leader. Also their ratings are higher than f. eg. the US bonds. So the German government does not really have to worry about borrowing money.

<comment><USER30> Japan's are lower than Germany's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Jean-Philipe As somebody from Berlin, I'm always happy when my hometown is on HN! Makes me feel proud.

<comment><USER31> Yep, the proud feeling about Berlin's grandiose track record when it comes to corruption and incompetence in major construction projects.

<comment><USER32> Aside from the airport, I don't think Berlin is worse than any other major city. There are huge construction debacles for various reasons everywhere.

<comment><USER31> No, there's been a concentration of construction-related scandals with corruption, bribery, etc. in Berlin over the last 40 to 50 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I realize that higher standards of fire and other safety measures make these systems more complicated, but you would think that with all the technology we have today for planning, engineering, communication, documentation, modeling and simulation - that these types of fiascos would become rarer and rarer.

I wonder if anyone has looked at large scale projects like these over the last 100 years and determined what implications (if any) technology has had in reducing these issues.

<comment><USER34> We have a lot of powerful software for building design these days, Autodesk's Revit suite being the big one. But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better.

There are some classes of problems that it definitely helps solve, like keeping the structural engineer and HVAC engineer from design conflicts where a beam and a duct go through each other. But everything needs to be done yesterday, so I'm not surprised that problems that can't be automatically identified are able to slip through.

> "The people responsible for technical oversight were saying, 'We cannot do > this within this amount of time,' and Schwarz would answer, 'I don't care,' > " he says.

Pretty much sums it up.

EDIT: There's no excuse for the exposed high voltage wiring alongside the low voltage alarm systems though, that sounds like a contractor screwed up. I don't know the German electrical code, but generally in the US anything over 60V is classified as "class 1" wiring and it goes in a conduit. Typically this is a grounded metal tube so that you can't accidentally pound a nail through it, and if anything shorts to the conduit there's a safe path to ground until overcurrent protection trips.

And if for some reason you have lower voltage "class 2" wiring running in the same conduit, those wires (and whatever else they split off to) are now considered class 1, even if they're only low current 24V signal wires or similar. They can no longer leave conduit and go anywhere else, on the off chance that it shorts to the line voltage wires it's sharing conduit with.

<comment><USER35> _But as in software development, better tools just ends up meaning that clients demand things faster and cheaper, rather than better._

Exact same thing in the arts field - not all clients of course, and I can't think of a recent equivalent to a fiasco of this scale, but the general trend is that clients feel when the cost of technology goes down so should other costs.

<comment><USER34> Swear to god, I've had inquiries come in that sat dead for _years_ and suddenly it's "Please revise. I need the updated version tomorrow."

Since email is 1000 times faster than shipping drawings back and forth, that means _everything_ I do takes 1000th the time that it used to. Apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One of the current running gags in Germany :) Simply make a reference to that airport and something that will never work and you are good to go.

Edit: one of my favorite articles on that topic (German) [http://www.der- postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-iii...](http://www.der- postillon.com/2012/08/neue-zeitform-futur-iii-eingefuhrt-um.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> Building an airport always is. Often it takes more money and a few decades to appreciate it. D/FW airport was a nightmare when it was built but it's pretty nice today. Denver's airport had tons of issues as well.

Then again this seems on a much higher level of disaster, but should be familiar to anyone building large government software systems.

<comment><USER38> Denver still has the issue that it's a 20 mile drive from downtown out of some misguided belief that the city was just going to instantly grow out to it.

<comment><USER39> When you build an airport near the city, it becomes impossible to expand. San Diego is a good example of this, a single-runway airport that's surrounded by the bay, I-5, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, and a residential neighborhood. It's running near capacity and impossible to expand. There's simply nowhere to go.

<comment><USER40> They can expand into the water, adding an extra East-West strip.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Artificial_island_air...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Artificial_island_airports)

<comment><USER39> Ordinarily yes, but the bay might not be wide enough to fill in part of it, especially when you're trying to fit aircraft carriers through it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This reminds me of the immer funny David Zuelke explaining the difference between "North Germany" and "South Germany" to a group of non-Germans. It was at an after-phpDay drink a few years ago.

According to him, you can find the famous German Gründlichkeit in The South, with The North being the exact opposite. He used the Berlin airport as an example: "it was an endless failure". This was in 2011 or 2012. I wonder how strong opinionated South-Germans like him look at this today.

I think for non-Germans the difference in Gründlichkeit is probably not noticeable :)

<comment><USER42> Thank you -- I don't speak German, and have just added Gründlichkeit to the list of German words I love. It joins Fingerspitzengefühl, Fremdschämen, Weltschmertz, Sitzpinkler, and Fernweh.

I really need to learn your language.

<comment><USER43> Gemütlichkeit is another word to learn.

If you come to Germany you can take part in any conversations just knowing genau and ach so.

Genau - Exactly, I understand, I agree. Used to express agreement. Germans like to agree. Use freely in any conversation at any time. Ach so - really, I see. Can be used to express agreement, astonishment, realization, understanding, questioning depending on intonation and stress. Na - hello, how are you, hey. Can be used at any time to start or avoid a conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Bent Flyvbjerg studies these "megaprojects" and offers various explanations why a) they are being conducted in the first place despite the fact that b) they are usually any combination of over budget, behind schedule or below expectations in terms of their benefits.

Here is an interview with him on EconTalk about the subject: [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/05/bent_flyvbjerg.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/05/bent_flyvbjerg.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> Bribe the inspectors and open up on time - then somehow patch the problem later. Everyone wins. That's what they would do in a lot of places in the world.

If a German airport, with a huge budget, has 150.000 defects of which 85k are serious, then what about airports in other countries, which don't make use of the world-famous german high quality standards ?

What about airports in countries were things are solved with a bribe, a handshake and an evil smile ?

<comment><USER46> World-famous german high quality standards were a thing fifty years ago, from my experience this is often not the case any more.

<comment><USER47> No, at least not in consumer products.

But I heard, big machines and weaponry are still export hits

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> All I do is remembering EDDM, Munich's airport, which was finished on the day it was supposed to - and even better, they moved the entire technology of the old airport in a single night ([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flughafen_M%C3%BCnchen#Inbetri...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flughafen_M%C3%BCnchen#Inbetriebnahme)).

</comment><comment><USER49> I wonder what kind of austerity will be imposed on the poor Berliners for wasting so much money /s

<comment><USER50> It's a bit more complicated since the airport is a joint venture between Berlin, Brandenburg and the Federal Government which all hold roughly a third of the shares. And while it's an embarrassing waste of money the german constitution stipulates in Art. 109 Abs. 3 Satz 1 GG that starting 2016 the federal government cannot exceed 0.35% of the GDP in new debts and and starting 2020 the state governments are not allowed to take on new debts at all. So we'll have the austerity you're asking for soon enough.

<comment><USER49> Well ... enjoy the show :( Too bad that this stupidity persists so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I saw a ZDF TV docu about Berlin Airport last year. Very low-ceilinged halls and rooms means the cannot integrate gas purge and fire safety pipes and equipment. It seems so serious that an international experts in the docu suggested to rebuild parts of the airport buildings. And it seems weird that the airport will be already too small for the passenger traffic in 2017. Given that it should replace the former largest airport in the world Berlin Tempelhof and two other airports near Berlin. Several politicans have already been replaced because of scandals and multi-year delays. Shop space was already leased in ~2011 and employees already waited to begin their new work. It seems really a lot has gone wrong with BER. It would probably be cheaper to blow up the already too small buildings and build completely new ones or reactivate Tempelhof.

</comment><comment><USER52> Also the guy who designed the smoke extractor system wasn't actually an engineer. Stern broke the story last year.[1]

My German is pretty basic, but "Geschasster BER-Planer war nur technischer Zeichner ... Doch di Mauro ist kein Ingenieur, wie angenommen wurde" amounts to "Ousted BER-Planner was only a technical draftsman ... but di Mauro is not an engineer, as was thought".

[1] [German] [http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/news/stern-exklusiv- geschasst...](http://www.stern.de/wirtschaft/news/stern-exklusiv-geschasster- ber-planer-war-nur-technischer-zeichner-3184142.html)

</comment><comment><USER53> Why do airports always need to be so ambitious? Usually the simple airports are best anyway.

<comment><USER54> The worst thing about BER is that it's designed to replace Tegel, which is easily the most sensibly built major airport in Germany. Space-efficient, cheap to operate, high-throughput, built very quickly with limited resources to solve a specific problem.

<comment><USER55> Tegel has the charm of an old bus station, but efficient it is. My record was Berlin Schönhauser Allee to Munich East in 3 hours and 20 minutes. It can only get worse from there. The commute to BER alone will be at least 30-40 minutes longer.

<comment><USER54> Who gives a shit about "charm". Last year I had a connection that due to delays on the incoming flight left me with 8 minutes from the time we got shuttled into the terminal to the time my outgoing flight gate closed, and it wasn't even in the same terminal. I ran over to the other terminal, went through the insecurity controls, and made the flight, with several minutes of time to spare. I know of no other airport where something like that would be possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> More embarrassing is to build an airport with no demand and have it abandoned several years afterwards without any flights. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellón–Costa_Azahar_Airport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castellón–Costa_Azahar_Airport)

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't understand why the state funds airports. If people want airports, there is a demand, and that demand is either big enough to fund an airport and is satisfied, or it isn't because people don't want to spend that kind of money. Seems to me like something the state shouldn't be involved in.

<comment><USER55> Airports are shared infrastructure, just like roads. As such they are serving a common purpose, and don't have to make money by themselves (rather indirectly through enabling business). That's exactly where the government should be involved in. E.g. It makes more sense to have a single airport rather than several competing ones, airports shouldn't go bancrupt and be closed, and building them might require changing laws or evicting/relocating 1000s of people. These are all in the sphere of public responsibility.

<comment><USER57> There, I turned your statement around to show you how flawed your reasoning is:

The internet is a shared infrastructure, just like roads. As such it is serving a common purpose, and doesn't have to make money by itself (rather indirectly through enabling business). That's exactly where the government should be involved in. E.g. It makes more sense to have a single provider rather than several competing ones, providers shouldn't go bancrupt and be closed, and establishing them might require changing laws or evicting/relocating 1000s of people. These are all in the sphere of public responsibility.

Absolutely there should be competition, it's the main driver behind efficiency and quality!

<comment><USER58> I think you see for yourself where your example falls apart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Good to hear that the pirate party member Martin Delius is the head of the parliamentary committee leading the investigation. I'm wondering if we would be that informed if a member of another political party would be in charge, because one of the main programmatic points of the pirate party is transparency.

</comment><comment><USER60> some discussion about this a few months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9658581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9658581)

and this: [http://istderberschonfertig.de/](http://istderberschonfertig.de/)

</comment><comment><USER61> My favorite feature of BER is that they have to run ghost trains through the subway tunnel underneath the airport.

Because if nothing moves inside, no air circulates and they get a mold problem.

</comment><comment><USER62> I didn't read the article (too long and it's late) but something caught my eye.

If you keep scrolling down, you hit the next article and the URL changes. How did they do that? Kudos

<comment><USER63> It's a HTML5/JS thing - 'pushState'. If you search for that, you'll find plenty of resources explaining it in better detail than I can.

<comment><USER62> Great, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This is what happens with many software projects following crazy customers and waterfall approaches. Clearly we never speak about 6 billion, but hey, shit happens...

<comment><USER65> Can you develop a big infrastructure project using agile methodologies?

<comment><USER64> I don't know anything about building an airport, but I guess you could try something. We tried to compare software to buildings for many years, maybe in a case like this the learnings from failing software projects can be somehow useful.

<comment><USER66> I'm not sure there's any evidence that "agile," in any of its many forms, had a high success rate for very complex projects.

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth, after the original monolithic plan for the Berlin airport needed to be changed there was no other grand plan but rather small teams each independently and locally applying changes on-the-go. Let's say as we see it didn't go too well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Given our various economic and political systems, is it just not possible to build something this large and complex, and have it all ready to go on the same day (whether on time or late)?

I wonder if it would be better to build and contract these things in stages, in blocks of usefulness.

</comment><comment><USER68> I love that there's 150,000 defects, 80,000 of them considered serious.

<comment><USER69> I don't know how you even count that high, unless it's through extrapolation: "this nail was pounded incorrectly and there's 10 nails in a board and 1000 boards in this area, so 10,000 defects."

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Ridiculing Spain stillborn airports.

<... and in the end Germany wins>

</comment><comment><USER71> What people have to understand, for context, is that this project is kind of a pinnacle of failure and corruption that was born and fostered in the post- unification "reconstruction" of the formerly East German territories.</comment>


Kim Dotcom Exclusive Interview 'I will fight this and win' #MustWatch - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF48PjCtW4k

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyone who is doing business on the Internet should watch this Interview. See what could be also possible to any other Entrepreneur, if laws like SOPA or ACTA become reality. how can it be possible to shut down a billion dollar company and throwing the founder into jail over night without having even one lawsuit? this is so ridiculous. the main people behind the entertainment industry and lobby eventually should be in jail for behaving like criminals and being corrupt. I'm wondering how something like this can be possible in the U.S... What a shame for the justice system in the U.S.!</comment>


What companies that are making at least $1 million a year didn't take funding? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to learn from companies that were started in the last 2 - 3 years that are making at least $1 million a year but didn't take any outside funding. <comment><USER2> You could try the Inc 5000 list:

<http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/the-full-list.html>

It's not exactly what you want, as these companies will have been in business a little longer, but you can filter the list by earnings and number of employees to see some higher-earning small businesses from recent years.

For example, there's Logik, discussed here a couple of days ago:

[http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/company- profile.html?id=2009...](http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/company- profile.html?id=200901810)

You might also try Mixergy, which has a bunch of profiles.

<comment><USER3> You sir win at being useful, I can't wait to get this list scraped in.

<comment><AUTHOR> ?

<comment><USER3> it's interesting and well structured data, but it's basically impossible to query for interesting things in the presented format...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 37Signals [Signal vs Noise blog] has a feature called "Bootstraped, Profitable, and Proud" latest is below, there is at least one more I've read.

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2385-bootstrapped- profitable-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2385-bootstrapped-profitable- proud-logik)

<comment><USER5> That one is Logik and the other one is Campaign Monitor

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2342-bootstrapped- profitable-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2342-bootstrapped-profitable- proud-campaign-monitor)

<comment><USER4> I think that the common thread for many businesses that have bootstrapped to high-profit profitability in very short order, with little startup capital is enterprise software that the founding team has either A) created and has a very good unique value proposition or B) services very well and in either case, has dedicated sales staff.

Most other businesses take a fair amount of money for either equipment or marketing. Logik talks instead about how it's first sale was around $45,000.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm amazed you weren't able to get more responses to this, but after racking my brain it took a bit to come up with one.

How about Threadless? Though I can't seem to find anything that says when they were founded, I'd guess it's about 3 years, but could be more.

37 Signals didn't taking funding until after they were already successful, and of course they've been around for more than 3 years.

<comment><USER7> threadless was founded in 2000ish. they didn't take money until around 2007ish.

37signals is about the same (time period and what not)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> and of course there are many non-funded, non-tech, startups that make that much after 2-3 years too.

<comment><USER9> I spent a few years managing a bar that grossed that much. It's not a lot of money for a business.

<comment><USER10> Are we talking about gross or net here? It isn't clear. But yes, most capital intensive ventures are going to get a big gross.

<comment><AUTHOR> Net

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Balsamiq - <http://www.balsamiq.com>

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm pretty sure PlentyOfFish.com qualifies.

<comment><USER13> They're more than three years old.</comment></comment>


Using Elasticsearch as the Primary Data Store in an ETL Pipeline - <AUTHOR> https://vlkan.com/blog/post/2018/11/14/elasticsearch-primary-data-store/ <comment><USER2> > The reason PostgreSQL results were omitted is no matter what kind of > optimization we throw at it, the benchmark always took more than 2 hours, > regardless of partitioning, whereas MongoDB and Elasticsearch took a couple > of minutes.

This seems like something was done incorrectly the comparison shouldn't be that drastic.

> Just one PostgreSQL 9.6.10 instance (shared_buffers = 128MB)

This looks way too low. The postgresql docs say a good starting point for shared_buffers is 25% of the server's memory. In this case that would be 32GB.

[https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/runtime-config- resource....](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/runtime-config- resource.html)

<comment><USER3> They set out on a 4 year journey to improve their ETL, but didn't take 1 second to change a conservative global config default. Can barely take the rest of the article seriously after a blunder like that

<comment><AUTHOR> See my response above, it was indeed a typo from my side. I am sorry to hear that it spoiled the rest of the post for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm certain I'm missing something _very_ obvious about Elasticsearch and other NoSQL data stores.

But in my brief experience with an Elasticsearch-backed web application I found it difficult to write integration tests for the portions of code that dealt with ES. Thanks to ES's "eventually consistent" nature, tests would fail intermittently because we'd be e.g. querying some data that was written to ES but hadn't been fully persisted yet. ES gives you some "flush the data to disk right now, please" commands but they're merely suggestions and cannot be relied upon.

Obviously, you want to stub/mock out as many of those actual physical database reads/writes as possible, but sometimes what you want to test _is the ES queries themselves_ and I don't know what on earth the best practice is there.

Just to reiterate, this is an issue that any non-ACID datastore would experience. I'm not criticizing them, I'm just sort of wondering how people typically solve that...

<comment><USER5> I use `refresh=True` on my insert/update/delete, which forces the writes to complete. Then all the reads work as you would expect.

<comment><AUTHOR> That still doesn't guarantee that a consecutive read is gonna get the last state.

<comment><USER6> Direct from ES documentation on the `refresh` flag: "Refresh the relevant primary and replica shards (not the whole index) immediately after the operation occurs, so that the updated document appears in search results immediately."

Do you have other information about the refresh flag because their documentation clearly states that forcing a refresh is applied to primary and replica shards meaning that it will be available for query directly after the call to refresh is made.

<comment><USER4> My experience was that this was not reliable. It was nearly always true, but not always, and tests would sporadically fail some small percentage of the time.

However, this was back in ~2015 and Elasticsearch 1.3 or something like this, which is of course a now-ancient version. Perhaps things are different now.

edit: Perhaps we were using the refresh command and not the refresh flag. It was a few years ago and I don't have access to the code any more, and my memory may be failing here. If the refresh flag works as advertised (enforces an index update and guarantees a consistent view of the data for the next query, which the command did not seem to) then that of course solves my initial problem W.R.T. writing tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Elasticsearch is at the end of an ETL pipeline, does that mean that if Elasticsearch gets corrupted you can rebuild it by re-running the pipeline?

If so I wouldn't call this a "primary data store", since durability isn't critical.

The article says:

> After drafting many blueprints, we went for a Java service backed by > Elasticsearch as the primary storage! This idea brought shivers to even the > most senior Elasticsearch consultants hired

I'll shiver if Elasticsearch corrupting irreversibly loses data, but if it can be rebuilt from another source I don't see any problems with it at all.

<comment><USER8> Agreed.

We've been running large Elasticsearch clusters as our primary search/analytics engine. While it's overall very stable, stuff does occasionally happen that requires an index rebuild. We use HBase as our primary store and index via map/reduce or Spark Batch.

As much as I love Elasticsearch, I definitely wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing it was the primary datastore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "Enough blaming the former engineer."

I was one of them. I don't work there anymore.

I believe is it not the actual situation in bol.com. If it is, I would be disappointed.

Last I remember, Bol.com has really good set of ops and dev tooling on hadoop, hbase, spark, flink etc. for scheduling, running jobs etc.

I wouldn't know why they replicated data both on hbase, elastic search etc. Having read the blog, I don't see how this fits the event sourcing pattern that bol.com was trying to implement and also, the idea of self service BI that they envisioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Debarsh! First, thanks for taking time to read such a lengthy post.

If I am not mistaken the majority of the PL/SQL glue is owned by Gert, though you might recall better. Quite some VCS history was lost while migrating from SVN to Git. ;-)

The reason we are "replicating" the entire data is to 1) determine the affected products and 2) re-execute the relevant configurations (facets, synonyms, etc.) while making retroactive changes. (For instance, say someone has changed the PL/SQL of "leeftijd" facet.) Here, the storage is required to allow querying on every field, for (1), and on id, for (2). While id-based bulk querying is (almost) supported by every ETL source, querying on every field is not. Hence, we "replicate" the sources on our side to suffice these needs. Actually, the entire point of the post was to explain this problem, but apparently it was not clear enough.

For your remarks on event sourcing and BI, I am a little bit puzzled. I will need some elaboration on these remarks. We do have event sourcing on our side (that is how we can replay in case of need) and BI is not really interested in ETL data. Maybe I misunderstood you?

I am also confused by how you relate scheduling/running PL/SQL jobs via Hadoop, Spark, Flink, etc. Did you see the link to Redwood Explorer I shared in the post?

<comment><USER10> I am not Debarsh, and I am not a data engineer, but isn't the purpose of ETL for transforming data into a more accessible/palatable form for BI?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bol has plenty of other ETL pipelines for BI. What I meant is the data cooked for search is not (much) of interest to BI, yet. Though we do have other means to feed BI for search-relevant content.

<comment><USER9> To all fairness, you are right about oracle stuff ingrained in bol.com, however, I am not sure if I should go in detail, but the whole thing used to be like - Maintain event states with "versions" table and then run hadoop, spark jobs on them, and snapshot the latest computed state to oracle so that they could run BI on it.

But I understand now what you actually mean. I wouldn't call it ETL, as ETL is more about prepping the data for BI and not cooking data for search.

yea, I remember they used to have redwood for scheduling PL/SQL queries but I think majority of ETL jobs for BI were in hadoop/spark/flink.

Having said all these, I think it is quite some neat and cool engineering work, I hope you guys are successful implementing the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ES is currently the main data store for zagat.com which ends up being a sink from a data pipeline and more or less being used as Key-Value store on the query side. It has worked OK for our current use case, but definitely came with some pain points. Primary key fetches were way too slow for what we needed especially with some in-memory joins happening and we ended up sticking a cache in front of ES to satisfy our performance reqs.

We had a tight deadline on implementation (3 months to extract from Google) and chose ES in order to satisfy a kv store as well as TF-IDF corpus search.

<comment><USER7> If it's a sink from a data pipeline then presumably it's not your primary point-of-truth data store because if Elasticsearch gets corrupted you can rebuild it from the rest of the pipeline?

<comment><USER11> Yep, it's a bit more symbiotic than that unfortunately, but in general most of the data can be restored from an upstream source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is elasticsearch really the primary data store if they can replay events to reconstruct the data in elasticsearch?

It sounds like the primary data store would be the stream of events.

</comment><comment><USER13> ... If your primary data store should be Elasticsearch. Nice write up of everything, though, for sure.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would love to do/see similar benchmarks on Postgres using more performant setups. Like someone else said, the disparity is downright shocking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please see my reply to "someone else" you mentioned. If there is anything else you think I might have mistaken to employ during benchmarks, I am all ears.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, I saw your reply. To be honest, I was mostly fishing for the possibility of finding a dataset with which I could perform the test myself.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What ideas do you have for creating the ideal CAPTCHA? - <AUTHOR>

CAPTCHA - Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
An ideal CAPTCHA would have the following:

   1. Human Verification - Only be able to completed by humans
   2. Additional Use     - Example: reCAPTCHA
 Human verification has to include something that can be done easily and universally by all humans (including disabled people), but be impossible for any machine to do. An additional use is simply a bonus, as it converts the time spent on the CAPTCHA into something useful.
We have a lot of different CAPTCHA's out there already and the most common one is reCAPTCHA. However, we should think outside the box in order to leverage other skill sets that we have that computers don't.
Personally, I find this area very interesting with many possibilities. What do you think?
Examples:

   http://www.google.com/recaptcha
   http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-05-03-n58.html
   http://www.arraystudio.com/as-workshop/the-captcha-alternatives.html
   http://www.evengrounds.com/developers/alternatives-to-captcha
   http://onlineaspect.com/2010/07/02/why-you-should-never-use-a-captcha/
 <comment><USER2> Microsoft Research has a project asking users to identify images of cats and dogs. It's supposedly harder for computers to solve compared to traditional CAPTCHA mechanisms.

Link: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/asir...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/asirra/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The coolest one I've seen (I forget where, unfortunately) presented the user with two faces and asked them to pick the more attractive one.

</comment><comment><USER4> Voight-Kampff.</comment>


Product Hunt Launch got us over 300 Tweets in 48hrs - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/tech/elink-2 <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Guys! Happy to give you any insight... Feel free to ask any questions here! We've launched other products before and have growth hacked our way to 200K+ users over time, but PH was one of the best ways to gain initial traction beyond our beta testers, be written about in the press (internationally), go virally on social media and gain amazing return users. We'll be hanging out here and answering any questions you may have.

</comment><comment><USER2> I know the founders, cool site and they are iterating quickly.

I have a few lists with them that I share on social media once in a while.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great tool for keeping track of web links, I'm really enjoying using it!

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome tool!

</comment><comment><USER5> pretty sweet! will check it out!</comment>


Why Half a Degree of Global Warming Is a Big Deal - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-report-half-degree.html <comment><USER2> IMHO its high time for a Global Warming temp scale (Dear Al Gore, I said it first !) People don't get it when the degree shift needed is so tiny for such catastrophic effects. We need to magnify it by 100 or maybe even a 1000! So 2 degrees temp change is like GW200. Maybe the message will hit home better ?

<comment><USER3> A metric I've thought about is, how much extra energy is circulating in earths systems per degree of temp change? 2 degrees does not sound like a lot but when you think of how vast the earth is that's a lot of extra energy in the oceans and atmosphere. It would be an interesting metric to track.

<comment><USER4> One website tracked Hiroshima bombs worth of heat (4 per second). It was perhaps tasteless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> News agencies need to stop reporting global warming temperatures in Celsius for US audiences. A single Fahrenheit degree is 5/9 of a Celsius degree! US audiences do not have an intuition about Celsius, so giving changes in that unit of measurement is worthless.

<comment><USER6> they should use Kelvin, it's neutral

<comment><USER7> But Celsius and Kelvin have the same unit of measure; they're only offsetted by 273 degrees.

<comment><USER6> yes I tried to sneak in °C via °K :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok. The Earth is warming and all this bad stuff will happen. Why is government the solution? The USA withdrew from the Paris Accord and also had the biggest diminishment of greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 of all Accord members. We did so by market forces which push for efficiency.

The way to solve global warming is to support market forces pushing for efficiency, not government force that supports inefficiency.

<comment><USER9> Individuals don't care about efficiency, they care about price. This is partially why the government had to step in to create labor laws. Unless they're directly impacted by it right now, the average consumer does not care. The American meat industry is downright terrible in some cases, and people are buying more meat than ever.

If you halved the price of the iPhone by introducing slave labor in some faraway land, you would still sell a boatload of iPhones.

This is one of the ways that I believe government should intervene because individuals are very bad at deciding based on long-term impacts.

<comment><USER8> Individuals do care about efficiency, because they care about paying less in their electric bill.

How did the USA lower emissions the _most_ in 2017 while also withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord? Because efficiency is increasing across the board and people are buying more efficient devices.

If you produced lab-grown meat that was undistinguishable and utilized energy more efficiently, then it would be less expensive and people would buy it.

<comment><USER9> Individuals only care about efficiency if it impacts price.

There are numerous examples of people paying more for things in the long term because they're less expensive immediately. Entire industries are built on this. Again, humans aren't particularly good at forecasting long-term decisions.

Additionally, The VAST majority of emission decrease in the past 10 years in the US has been due to moving from coal to shale gas, not because of individual purchasing decisions. It's iterative movement that was caused by a combination of market forces and government regulations, not one or the other on its own (and the current administration is actually reversing many regulations that promoted shale gas over coal).

Renewables still don't even touch the impacts of moving from coal to shale gas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Dire consequences of Global Warming have been forecast since the first earth day in 1970:

 _" Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s."_

 _— Paul Ehrlich_

 _" The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age."_

 _— Kenneth Watt_

The fact is, we've had 70+ temperature swings in the last 4,500 years, including 2 since 1970. It's odd we talk about catastrophic things happening when the earth warms, but what about the dire consequences when it starts to cool again?

A Swelling Volume Of Scientific Papers Now Forecasting Global Cooling In The Coming Decades:

[http://notrickszone.com/2017/04/10/a-swelling-volume-of- scie...](http://notrickszone.com/2017/04/10/a-swelling-volume-of-scientific- papers-now-forecasting-global-cooling-in-the-coming-decades/)

<comment><USER10> What you see here is a common argumentative tactic by climate change deniers: "Scientists have been hysterical about global cooling in the past and that has not happened. Therefore claims about climate change in general are not to be believed."

I refer you to the wikipedia article on global cooling for reference. Especially take into consideration the line chart at the very top.

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

With regards to the Paul Ehrlich quote I would add that he is not actually talking about climate change at all but overpopulation.

<comment> at-fates-hands > "Scientists have been hysterical about global cooling in the past and that > has not happened. Therefore claims about climate change in general are not > to be believed."

a. Not a climate denier

b. I never said anything like you are referring to. I never inferred that since its cooling, climate change shouldn't be believed.

c. What I AM saying is the earth's temperature has swung in both directions in a fairly cyclical manner for thousands of years before heavy industry. The earth's temperature warmed when there weren't ANY humans on the planet.

Even going back some 1.2 milion years, scientists still are not sure what caused the change:

 _" The Mid Pleistocene Transition is a most important and enigmatic time interval in the more recent climate history of our planet," says Fischer. Earth's climate naturally varies between times of warming and periods of extreme cooling (ice ages) over thousands of years. Before the transition, the period of variation was about 41 thousand years while afterwards it became 100 thousand years. "The reason for this change is not known."_

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131105081228.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131105081228.htm)

I would also add the Clean Air Act has done a ton to improve the US and the amount of pollution they contribute.

[https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress- cleaning...](https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/progress-cleaning-air- and-improving-peoples-health#pollution)

We as a country can do a lot, but what about other developing countries? What are they doing to help reduce pollution and greehouse gases? If we're doing all we can, and other countries aren't following suit, then our gains become minimal and the march towards this catastrophe will continue, unabated.

<comment><USER11> It's pretty easy to find scientific papers that make the claim that solar variation is likely to make a small difference compared to human cause climate change.

> Any reduction in global mean near-surface temperature due to a future > decline in solar activity is likely to be a small fraction of projected > anthropogenic warming. - [Ineson, S.et al. Regional climate impacts of a > possible future grand solar minimum - > [https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535)]

> We as a country can do a lot, but what about other developing countries?

It's a difficuly question, lead by example? Change anyway, because the more time we have to develop countermeasures the smaller the magnitude of the problem will peak at? I don't know, but waiting for all countries to fall into line isn't going to work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there an online community for Hackers (in the YC sense)? - <AUTHOR>

First, my definition for "hack" is something like this:
A method or process that allows people to navigate a system more efficiently.
So, "hacker" would be a person who makes a habit of thinking about and implementing those hacks.
Is anyone aware of a community, specifically geared toward that kind of hacker, anywhere on the interwebz? The actual content of the hacking could be anything (tech, cars, bikes, writing papers, whatever).
If there isn't really, can anyone think of a cool name for one? If it doesn't exist, I think it would be cool to set up. <comment><USER2> The various Stack Exchanges?

<comment><AUTHOR> So, the difference that I see between Stack Exchange sites and what I'm talking about is that each Stack Exchange site is based around one content area. Within that topic, you have people of all mastery levels interacting and problem-solving. Many of those questions/answers are simple, many are obscure and complex, and many are what I would be looking for.

I think the difference between any question & answer and what I would consider a "hack" is that it would be a somewhat common problem with a consistent way of solving it very easily that many people might not figure out.

I'm thinking of creating a community, very much like a Stack Exchange site, but NOT based on a certain topic (programming, cooking, etc.). Instead it would be based on the idea of sharing these "hacks" from any topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You're here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yes, Hacker News does target those same people. I suppose I was wondering if any other forum or Q&A style sites were targeting the same market segment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think any community of sufficiently bright folks with a common interest will tend to fit your description. I've belonged to a few such forums over the years. However, I'm more into the 'overthrow the existing system' form of hacking. Not exactly the way to win friends and all that (which has led to me leaving some of those communities, not always, er, voluntarily).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for replying!

I agree that any community of smart people with a common interest will have some hackers, but I would think that the goal of that community is to master the common interest, and not "hacking" itself. For example, I assume that the goal of a community based on road bicycles would be to become extremely knowledgeable and handy with those road bikes, and not necessarily to become proficient in the versatile art of "hacking."

I think you bring up a great point though! Clearly identifying the common interest around which a community is built is a prerequisite to getting the smart, motivated people to work hard to make the community successful.

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> I have repeatedly seen such communities become places where folks ask totally unrelated questions because the community itself is such a good source of awesome ideas and info that they prefer to ask there, where it is "off topic", rather than asking some other board they belong to where it is "on topic" because the quality of answers is generally so superior. So I think that it depends in part on how it is moderated. I think it is really difficult to intentionally create a community with the kind of goal you describe. There are lots of challenges in terms of trying to find a common theme to bring like- minded individuals together without so narrowly defining it as to put a straight-jacket on the conversation. Quite a lot of the forums I have belonged to wrestle with such issues.

An example I can think of, which might not make sense to you, is that "gifted homeschooling" groups tend to be ripe, when handled right, for the kind of atmosphere you describe. But then you cannot discuss "just anything" -- some folks will be very sensitive about what topics get brought up and parents are inherently more conservative than other groups. I think this is true because "gifted homeschoolers" are frequently dealing with 2xE kids -- kids who have issues and just don't fit in -- yet the emphasis is on two positives rather than on the handicaps and other negatives. It's tough to package a community for dealing with serious issues without it becoming a place that reinforces the negative self-image that is typically bound up in such problems. I think the idea itself of "gifted homeschooling" forums is a neat hack that gets around that issue. So far, I feel I have failed to adequately replicate it in trying to reach out to others in a positive way for various serious problems. :-/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, good point. Moderation would be super important, which means that it needs a very actionable definition of what classifies as a "hack" and what does not. It might also need a little of structure in the way the information is presented to act as a proactive guard against off-topic posts. I definitely agree with what you're saying about not defining it too narrowly, but of course it needs to be defined.

Interesting example about gifted homeschooling. Serving the community and being mindful of their interests, for sure, can make or break a community.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pointless Job Requirements - <AUTHOR> https://adrianhoward.com/posts/pointless-job-requirements/ <comment><USER2> This has been going on forever. The most prominent example that I think of is when developers would see postings for 10+ years Java experience at a time when Java wasn't even 10 years old. It's the same sort of thing that the author is describing.

Most companies have an idea of what they want in a candidate, but a lot of it quickly turns into a wishlist. As long as you approach it like that, you'll be more inclined to apply and thus more likely to land a job.

Chances are, nobody seeing a given job post with these wishlist items will fit the requirements perfectly. If the employer really wants to fill the role, they will pick the strongest candidate from the application pool. (And generally, they want to fill the role because candidate searching isn't exactly cheap for most companies.)</comment>


London police charge man with terrorism over use of encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/london-police-charge-man-with-terrorism-over-use-of-encryption/ <comment><USER2> Alternative sources:

[http://www.businessinsider.com.au/samata-ullah-charged- helpi...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/samata-ullah-charged-helping-isis- usb-stick-cufflinks-2016-10)

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/04/man- arrested...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/04/man-arrested-on- cardiff-street-to-face-six-terror-charges)

[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east- wales-37561088](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-37561088)

Not much specific information on the what and why, but this isn't a scenario of 'guy uses ssl therefore is terrorist' as the first article leads me to believe.

<comment><USER3> Quick google search for his name and surname says he's linked to ISIS:

A man arrested by police on a Cardiff street has been charged with carrying instructions on guided missiles and a computer storage device disguised as a cufflink in pursuit of Islamic State's campaign of terrorism. Samata Ullah, 33, who was arrested last month.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/04/man- arrested...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/oct/04/man-arrested-on- cardiff-street-to-face-six-terror-charges)

<comment><USER4> The first case is always legitimate.

<comment><USER5> You still have your rights, even if you are accused of being in isis or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previously on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12676758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12676758)

Here's a sample charge from the police press release [0]

 _Preparation for terrorism. Between 31 December 2015 and 22 September 2016 Samata Ullah, with the intention of assisting another or others to commit acts of terrorism, engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to his intention namely, by researching an encryption programme, developing an encrypted version of his blog site and publishing the instructions around the use of programme on his blog site. Contrary to section 5 Terrorism Act 2006 [1]._

Here's the Act [1] :

 _A person commits an offence if, with the intention of— (a)committing acts of terrorism, or (b)assisting another to commit such acts, he engages in any conduct in preparation for giving effect to his intention._

In this case encryption is the _conduct_. It is not the conduct which gives rise to the offence, it's the _intent_. The actual nature of the conduct is legally irrelevant. He could just as easily have been charged with the same offence for literally any conduct if the intent was to assist in terrorism. Procuring vehicles, preparing lunch, giving a pedicure.

Lawyer in TFA seems to indicate that the met went on some kind of fishing expedition in the accused's browsing history, but a read through the linked press release [0] tells a different story :

 _Count 1: Membership of a proscribed organisation. On or before 22 September 2016 Samata Ullah belonged or professed to belong to a proscribed organisation namely ISIS (Daesh). Contrary to section 11 Terrorism Act 2000.

Count 2: Terrorist Training. Between 31 December 2015 and 22 September 2016 Samata Ullah provided instruction or training in the use of encryption programmes, and at the time he provided the instruction or training, he knew that a person receiving it intended to use the skills in which he is being instructed or trained for or in connection with the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism or for assisting the commission or preparation by others of such acts._

 _Count 4: Directing terrorism. Between 1 December 2015 and 22 September 2016 Samata Ullah directed the activities of an organisation which is concerned in the commission of acts of terrorism. Contrary to section 56 Terrorism Act 2000._

I would have thought those - if sufficiently evidenced - would be enough to establish intent [2], which is what kicks in Section 5.

So he wasn't charged 'because encryption' he was charged 'because terrorism'.

Please note that I'm not making (here) any argument for or against S5, just pointing out that the reporting of this case is misleading as to the legal reasoning.

[0] [http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-charged-with-terror- offen...](http://news.met.police.uk/news/man-charged-with-terror- offences-189511)

[1] [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/11/section/5](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/11/section/5)

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

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER7> >Please note that I'm not making (here) any argument for or against S5

Sounds like you are, sounds like you are making a very Pro S5 argument

<comment><USER8> No, I don't think that's accurate. I'm glad the parent posted that as I was about to do a similar write up and they saved me a good couple minutes, but the headlines as provided are a bit of a jump - as I'm not a UK citizen I had to read up on the Terrorism Act of 2006, and so far the counts listed on the Metropolitan Police's are well within accord with the Act as the parent described.

Pointing out the logic isn't the same as supporting it. Quite the contrary, if we can't understand how the logic of the people who are doing bad things works, we can only treat symptoms, which doesn't get us very far. The parent post was accurate that other conditions were a requirement before a count from section 5 could be applied, and that it wasn't just a case of a person switching to HTTPS or downloading the Tor browser that caused this.

I think it's pretty easy for anyone to understand why the S5 is overreaching, but it's important to accurately report why it's happening and how. I openly argue against this (having just heard about it), but on the basis that seemingly benign acts become criminal offenses. I find that ultimately it leads to absurd scenarios where punishments are given for otherwise benign acts - the idea of "_____ which is used in terrorism" just seems silly to me, as it can be applied to virtually anything and anyone without any clear understandings or definitions as to why it's applied as such.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Picked up by Revk who's been banging on about the ludicrousness of banning encryption for a while now: [http://www.revk.uk/2016/10/next-it-will-be- burning-books.htm...](http://www.revk.uk/2016/10/next-it-will-be-burning- books.html)

<comment><USER10> Pretty sure Theresa May can be arrested under exactly the same charges.

That's the thing with these people. Its not just idiocy, it's malicious intent. They really do think Orwells 1984 was a handbook not a warning.

<comment><USER11> You'd have to provide evidence that Theresa May has been planning terrorism. Using encryption itself is not illegal, only using it to prepare for or aid an act of terrorism.

Which is stupid of course. S5 is pernicious and unjust overreach, but let's criticize it on factual grounds not misleading exaggeration.

Regarding the 'being suspicious makes you a criminal' clause of the act, it's horribly worded and is in serious need to revision, but the commenter on the blog saying it can't override presumption of innocence until proven guilty is correct. This provision of the law would never get past any competent court. It's a nasty, horrible law but is hardly the end of all justice in Britain.

<comment><USER7> >>You'd have to provide evidence that Theresa May has been planning terrorism.

the problem with that is defining terrorism. Since the government defines what legally constitutes terrorism they exclude themselves from being perpetrators of said activity.

However under the technical definition of Terrorism, which is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims." I can make a case that almost every nation state on the planet is guilty of terrorism in some fashion. Leaders of those nation states are then terrorists.

Most people however give a break to using violence if it is "legal" under the laws of a nation, they associate terrorism with the illegal use of violence, instead of the actual definition which is ANY use of violence legal or not "in the pursuit of political aims."

<comment> maze-le Under this definition, protesters hurling stones are terrorists. Not that I am a fan of idiots throwing objects during a demonstration, but I think nobody would reasonably accuse them of terrorism...

<comment><USER7> That would depend on the circumstances around the stone throwing and the goals of person(s) throwing the stones.

In some instances yes it would be terrorism. Terrorism does not have to involve massive loss of life, or even be life threatening.

People today seem to believe terrorism is only when Brown people blow themselves up in a Town Square, or when someone goes on a Mass Shooting rampage under the guise of a religion.

Terrorism can take many forms, and is more rampant then people want to acknowledge. People today only want to focus on Islamic terrorism, and exclude almost all other forms as they seem to be more socially acceptable often because they are legal</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dropbox — How to get multiples instances on unix systems - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.dropbox.com/TipsAndTricks/MultipleInstancesOnUnix <comment><USER2> This may be extremely useful until they sort out the sharing feature. At the moment, if someone who's upgraded shares a folder with you, that folder uses space in your own account. This is not very practical, because 2G gets used up fairly quickly.</comment>


Building Highly Available Systems In Erlang - <AUTHOR> http://qconlondon.com/dl/qcon-london-2012/slides/JoeArmstrong_BuildingHighlyAvailableSystemsInErlang.pdf

<comment><USER2> This seems like one of Armstrong's best slide decks. He seems to present the same talk repeatedly though.</comment>


Show HN: Pi Book – π to 1M digits in a book - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1730922597/ <comment><USER2> I get this is probably sort of done as a "hey neat" type thing, but it could've actually been a useful thing if they'd added a running nth digit indicator in the margins so you could actually use it as a reference. Then you could use it to answer things like "What is the 102,993th digit of pi?"

<comment><USER3> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spigot_algorithm](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spigot_algorithm)</comment></comment>


Survey for Dissertation: Web Analytics in the Cloud for Large Scale Websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XGFCLW5

<comment><AUTHOR> I am an undergraduate student in my final year at university. I am undertaking a dissertation to look at developing an open source web analytics package for large scale websites.

I want to understand how individuals, companies and organisations feel about their web analytics software, the security and privacy of the data collected through web analytics and if their is a demand for an open source web analytics designed for large scale websites, such as the BBC, Reuters, Hacker News, etc.

Thank you for your time!</comment>


The Unreality of Time - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreality_of_Time <comment><USER2> McTaggart's objection to the B-series sounds equally applicable to space. As I understand it, B-series conceptions of time consider it essentially another dimension. The summary of McTaggart's objection could be rephrased:

> [spacial dimensions] involves change, but because [north-south] > relationships never change (e.g. [Atlanta] is always [South of New York]), > [geometry] must be an inadequate account of [space].

<comment><USER2> Then again, McTaggart was an idealist, so he might actually try to lodge that sort of objection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thomas Metzinger studying phenomena of neural correlates wrote "The Ego Tunnel". After reading his book I realised that perceived time and space and perception itself are just complicated models, run on our wetware, and these are result of evolution by abaptation, including culture as factor. So there is no 'time'. But for convenience, we can assume that it is. Otherwise who shall buy watches?

</comment><comment><USER4> If time is an illusion, what explains the illusion? What's the illusion made of? How can I get more of it, or lose it?

Sure, there are time-dilation effects in special and general relativity, but those are theories that explicitly mention time and timelike dimensions. Time, in those theories, is not at all an illusion.

So: if it's an illusion, _what is the illusion made of?_

<comment><USER5> One explanation I picked up in a book some time ago was that the illusion could be explained as a series of moments (like the frames of a movie), due to the fact that each such moment contained an encoding of the previous frame (your memory) and an anticipation of future frames (your expectations) the illusion that the individual moments are connected in a linear progression emerges, much like the illusion of motion emerges from watching movie frames.

<comment><USER5> Just brain dumping here but I have this thought that maybe the universe unfolds like a grammar. You start with a description of everything that can exist according to some laws of physics, if you do this recursively, like a grammar. You would have a root node (this would be the Big Bang) from there you generate every possible state.

This would result in a tree where each node (present) is either the Big Bang or hangs of some other tree (the past) and has branches for each possible configuration (futures) to generate from that state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This 1908 paper he wrote in the journal 'Mind: A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy' is a little bit clearer on his meaning:

[http://www.ditext.com/mctaggart/time.html](http://www.ditext.com/mctaggart/time.html)

But it still comes across as a bit too much like 'woo' or maybe I just don't understand his way of explaining his idea.

From a university lecture slide note:

"His central philosophical conviction was that reality was fundamentally spiritual; and his central aim was to show this by deriving contradictions from the assumption that the material world exists"

[https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2009-10/20229/LECTURES/...](https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2009-10/20229/LECTURES/4-mctaggart.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> Written three years after Einstein's paper on special relativity, which kills the idea of an absolute order of events (if they're far enough apart in space). Would McTaggart have had knowledge of Einstein's work?

<comment><USER8> His education is in morals and logic and his conclusion in subsequent books is that everything is related by souls. I would say even if he had heard of or read about real science regarding spacetime, he wouldn't even have been able to understand it anyway. It would be like an alchemist understanding atomic numbers and nuclei, they are completely different fields.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "time" may not exist but the second law of thermodynamics does and cycles that humans observe in the second law of thermodynamics is what we usually use to measure time.

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought it's been known for a while that "time" isn't exactly a property of the Universe the same way as 3 dimensions are, but more something we use to help ourselves understand and explain the actions around us.

That is, "time" doesn't exist, but we created it.

I really wish I remembered where I read ideas such as this, but I think most of it came as a consequence of Relativity theory.

<comment><USER12> I thought general relativity actually proved that time was a fundamental dimension of our universe [1]. I'm really unsure because I have never studied general relativity, but I thought it used Reimanian geometry [2] to solve a bunch of things using 4D manifolds [3]. Is the reason you say that a consequence of relativity theory is that time isn't exactly a property of the universe because the 4 variables of spacetime are all distances [(c*t, x, y, z)] as opposed to having 3 variables being distances and one time [(t, x, y, z)]? Or is it simply because Relativity proves that time isn't universal etc ?

> That is, "time" doesn't exist, but we created it. Honnestly, I very much > like the Wikipedia introductory paragraph on time: "Time is a measure in > which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the > future, and also the measure of durations of events and the intervals > between them" [4] I think time is just a measure used when describing > dynamic systems (where past, present, and future make sense). Assume for a > moment that the Big Bang happened at t = t_BB, and assume that for all t < > t_BB, there was absolutely nothing in the universe and nothing was > happening. Would time make sense in such a pre-Big Bang universe ? I think > time is a fundamental property of a dynamic system because without it, the > said system would not be dynamic. I'm not sure however that time is a > fundamental property of the universe. Maybe of a dynamic universe ? In which > case time would be a fundamental property of our current universe, in > accordance with Einstein's theory or relativity, but not in a pre-Big Bang > universe such as the one mentioned just a few lines ago.

Finally, from the article: > McTaggart argues that time is unreal because our descriptions of time are either contradictory, circular, or insufficient I think Einstein would probably agree with him in that time is at least contradictory [5]. Although I'm not sure they would mean that in the same way. To take McTaggart's A-series argument: > Specifically, [McTaggart] argues that since every event that occurs will at one time be the future, at another time be the present, and at a third time (and forever henceforth) be past, every event exemplifies or instantiates every temporal property: futurity, presentness, and pastness. Since these properties are mutually exclusive (they cannot be co-instantiated), the A-series conception of time generates an absurdity, a contradiction. If both parts of his argument are sound, then time must just be an illusion; it has no genuine ontological status. I disagree with this logic. Notions of past, present, and future are mutually exclusive at any given time t; but events can of course go from future to present to past. It just can't be more than one at the same time. Kinda like when you're sprinting a 100m race, you can't be before, on top, and after the finish line at the same instant. But you can go from one to the other without questioning the notion of distance. The analogy is far from perfect, but that's how I see it. I may have misunderstood his argument though.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemannian_geometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemannian_geometry) [3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-manifold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-manifold) [4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time) [5] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment)

<comment><USER11> > Is the reason you say that a consequence of relativity theory is that time > isn't exactly a property of the universe because the 4 variables of > spacetime are all distances [(c*t, x, y, z)] as opposed to having 3 > variables being distances and one time [(t, x, y, z)]? Or is it simply > because Relativity proves that time isn't universal etc ?

Yes, pretty much that. The "units" of z remain constant/consistent independent of the values of x,y. However, t, cannot be thought of separately in the same way. The experience of/speed of/duration of/distance of/... of t is dependent upon the x,y,z location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> All this really shows is that our descriptions of time are inadequate, not that time is unreal. In essence, he's confusing the map with the territory. He's arguing that, because the map is inadequate, the territory must not exist.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Attacking the A-series, McTaggart argues that any event in the A-series is > past, present, and future, which is contradictory in that each of those > properties excludes the other two.

Can somebody please explain the logic used here, because I got lost here?

<comment><USER2> P1. Any given moment must be designated past, present, or future.

P2. The designations "past", "present", and "future" are a true trichotomy, such that it is impossible for any moment to _not_ have any of these designations.

P3. The designations "past", "present", and "future" are mutually exclusive; it is impossible for a moment to be in the past and the future, the future and the present, etc.

P4. According to the A-Series model of time, every moment is at some point designated future, present, and past.

C. From (P3) and (P4), via _reductio ad absurdum_ , an A-Series interpretation of time produces a contradiction.

I don't buy it because (P3) is more accurately phrased "it is impossible for a moment to be in the past and the future, the future and the present, etc. _simultaneously_ " and (P4) is better phrased "every moment is at some point designated future, present, and past, _but never simultaneously_ ", so (C) breaks down.

<comment><USER15> _The designations "past", "present", and "future" are a true trichotomy [...]_

This is at least in some sense wrong - past, present and future are no absolute things but only defined relative to the moment in time one calls present and therefore there are many pasts, presents and futures.

 _The designations "past", "present", and "future" are mutually exclusive [...]_

This in turn is only true if one is referring to the past, present and future defined relative to the same present. Today is in the future of yesterday and in the past of tomorrow.

All in all past, present and future are binary relations, not unary ones. Mystery solved.

<comment><USER2> > past, present and future are no absolute things but only defined relative to > the moment in time one calls present and therefore there are many pasts, > presents and futures.

That's basically what I meant when I said "(P3) is more accurately phrased 'it is impossible for a moment to be in the past and the future, the future and the present, etc. _simultaneously_ '".

> only true if one is referring to the past, present and future defined > relative to the same present. Today is in the future of yesterday and in the > past of tomorrow.

That's basically what I meant when I said "(P4) is better phrased 'every moment is at some point designated future, present, and past, but never _simultaneously_ '".

So yeah, I think we're on the same page :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What I don't understand is the validity of these arguments. The very language it's presented in casts doubts (at least in my mind) of its rigor. Do these arguments actually hold water?

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure how charitable I have to be here. Let's say I personally don't find any of this convincing at all, and I don't feel a single statement rises to the level of an actual argument. It's gobbledygook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What other "things" that "do not exist" everybody experiences "similarly?"

<comment><USER2> Color, probably

<comment><USER3> oh man. Color perception is pure biology. You can train neural networks in your brain for distinguishing colours. Average Japanese sees more than one hundred colours, where average British sees only "black". Not to forget tetrachromatic vision inherited by some human females.</comment></comment></comment>


Epic Privacy Browser, a secure chromium-based web browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.epicbrowser.com/ <comment><USER2> Would this prevent ISPs from being able to store your browsing metadata, as is currently being threatening to become a legal requirement in the UK?

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it open source yet?</comment>