I am an edge case - <AUTHOR> http://briancarper.net/blog/546/i-am-an-edge-case

<comment><USER3> The nice thing about living in Hong Kong is that most of these stupid edge cases have been sanded out of the system already. Probably because they doesn't just affect immigrants, but "local" people too (the 10% of the population who emigrated in the 80s, but kept their flats and bank accounts cuz they're intending to come back sometime). I've never had a problem with foreign mailing addresses, or my name being too long for the input field (like in Korea where they give you 4 characters max), or needing a citizen's ID number to complete transactions (you can use your passport number for literally everything from government forms down to supermarket loyalty cards), or any of that nonsense.

It's always a rude reminder of "normal" to deal with businesses and government bureaux in other countries. Like "another Brian" said in the blog's comments, the third world isn't even the worst in this regard, cuz at least there you can rely on personal relationships, or at worst bribes. It's the less efficient countries of the first world, where clerks generally won't take bribes and don't care who your friend's daddy is, but will go through their triplicate forms at the speed they please (and make a series of blocking calls to you to clarify each piece of information when you don't fit into their check boxes), and close the office at 4 PM, client be damned.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ok, how's this for an edge case...

I'm a Canadian citizen who was born and lived in UK all his life who lives and works (legally) in the US for 4 years on a non-resident TN visa,

I'm not allowed to be considered even a temporary resident in the US despite the fact I've lived here for 4 years, oh but _I am_ considered resident for tax purposes (ie I pay tax here and do a US tax return - but no other residency benefits).

When I arrive back in the country I have to say on my landing card that I'm temporally visiting the US and that I'm a resident of the United Kingdom. However, I don't pass the "residency test" of the UK as I've not lived there for 4 years. Technically I'm not resident of any country, which is kinda unsettling. And I'm 'temporally visiting the US' in that I drive out of the airport in the car that I own here and drive home to my apartment where I live with all my furniture and all my stuff in it.

US Immigration finds it difficult to accept that I am a Canadian citizen (and have Canadian passport) yet I've never lived in Canada nor do I have a Canadian SSN nor do I have an address in Canada nor have I filed a tax return there (my father is Canadian but I was born in UK).

I can't get any loans in the US as I don't have residency (although I don't really want a loan) and I can't buy property in the US, although I do have a US credit rating (I have a US SSN) and I managed to get a US credit card by already having an Amex when I lived abroad, and they carried the relationship over to US card (and started to add up my credit score against it).

I believe I traverse a lot of terms and conditions for things like insurance because I'm not a resident and end up being considered in the same category as an illegal immigrant - where the companies want to take their money and turn a blind eye to lack of documentation. Except that I am in the US legally and do have documentation, I'm just not a resident.

The visa I am on has no route to Green Card and so I will be in this limbo status indefinitely.

<comment><USER5> _US Immigration finds it difficult to accept that I am a Canadian citizen (and have Canadian passport) yet I've never lived in Canada nor do I have a Canadian SSN nor do I have an address in Canada nor have I filed a tax return there (my father is Canadian but I was born in UK)._

There's an easy fix for that. Get a Social Insurance Number and file a tax return. As a non-resident with no Canadian-source income, your tax return should take less than 5 minutes to fill out, and you won't owe any taxes.

<comment><USER4> Yeah but why should I do that? I have no business (in the personal, administrative sense of the word) in Canada.

<comment><USER5> It would make US immigration happier with you. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an American living in France, I can sympathize. Dealing with the bureaucracy here for any reason is a nightmare.

One piece of advice for those in this situation: get the best American Express card that you can qualify for. It doesn't solve all your problems, but there are many cases where it magically just works. One example is ordering things online: AmEx is much more flexible about the shipping/billing address not matching up, and as a result I can often use it with a shipping _and_ billing address from France with no problems.

In addition, their customer service is fantastic, and they can often give you good advice or help you out when you get stuck in these situations.

<comment><USER3> My favourite Amex customer service story is closely related to this expat edge-case theme.

I was flying back to Hong Kong from a business trip in Japan. I'm a citizen of a third country, but live in HK. The Japan Airlines desk agent, and her manager, refused to issue me a boarding pass, because I didn't have a "re- entry permit" for Hong Kong. Japan and many other major countries have this concept for non-citizens, so I'm guessing whoever wrote the Japan Airlines "avoid Fooland Immigration Department fining us to pay for deporting our Barlandese passenger, for all values of Foo and Bar" checklist explained it badly and made it sound like a _universal_ requirement or something. But in Hong Kong, there's no such thing as a re-entry permit --- they give you one visa, stamp it "Journey completed" when you arrive, and then let you come and go as you please.*

This was in the days before WiFi in airports, so I couldn't just surf to gov.hk and show her the page that says "no re-entry visa required". And it was a Friday night so I couldn't phone the consulate either. At my wit's end, I called Amex --- my employer had paid for the ticket with an Amex card. Their customer service guy commiserated with me for a bit, and said he'd make a phone call. After a bit of a wait, a Cathay Pacific (major Hong Kong airline) manager showed up with a copy of the Hong Kong immigration regulations. Brilliant and creative solution --- and it forcefully demonstrated to me the value of filling customer-facing positions with creative and talented people rather than checklist-wielding drones who you don't screen as carefully as your "core function" staff.

* Years later, the HK gov't changed the wording; now it's a tiny bit clearer that you don't need a re-entry permit:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:n5y5QqS...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:n5y5QqSqxSIJ:gia.info.gov.hk/general/200609/07/P200609070201_0201_18951.doc&cd=1&hl=zh- TW&ct=clnk&gl=hk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of the comments are just wrong:

> You have to live at least 6 months in the UK to open a bank account or apply > for a credit card.

I moved to the UK and this was not the case. It was difficult to open a bank account but not because you need to live here 6 months but because the banks require all sorts of identification which you normally don't have as a recent immigrant (stuff like proof of address).

</comment><comment><USER8> The worst thing was when I moved from the US to Canada one year, and from Canada to the US the next. Both years I had to file tax returns in both countries, and various amounts had to be prorated based on the number of days of the year that I was a Canadian resident. And my Canadian wages had to be converted to USD based on the exchange rates from each day I received a paycheck....

And yeah, none of my US banks or credit card companies could handle my Canadian address on their web sites.

<comment><USER9> Moving from NYC to CA involves a bunch of state tax bullshit. Each state is so broke they have insanely aggressive collection policies, and acc. to my accountant they can end up both claiming > 11% of your income based on overlapping residency rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On a similar note, I made a payment to my creditcard back home(from China) using SWIFT method of international payments(it's an interbank payment system).

On the form there is a section to leave a mesasge or comment for the reciever. My credit cards co told me to put only my CC No. with no spaces or nothing else.

Told my wife all this (wrote it down) and she went to make the payment (she's Chinese, it's just easier that she does this kind of thing, from a paperwork efficiency point of view.

So of coarse she also puts my name after the card number. The next week I call the company, they can't find the payment, dissapeared into their system. POOF, gone. Will be spending the next few weeks making international calls to chase that one up.

They're system is sooooo brittle.

</comment><comment><USER11> The one thing that I didn't hear which I expected to was confusion about whether forms should be month/day/year or day/month/year. Being a Canadian living in the USA, I never remember which is which in which place, and just want to use the ISO standard YYYY-MM-DD instead.

<comment><USER12> Monday: Mon(th)da(y)y(ear) Doesn't get much worse for a mnemonic, but works for me.

<comment><USER13> That doesn't help the original post: he doesn't remember which is for the US and which is for Canada.

<comment><USER14> How about this?

Monday is the 'merican mnemonic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The friendly folk at H&R Block had no idea how to handle my situation."

I was shocked when I went to H&R block, and all they did was type data into the software on the screen in front of them. I realized I could do that myself, and have used TurboTax since, which has worked well for me needs. (I'm sure if I had more complex need, a real tax accountant would be important, but I don't think there is any case where H&R Block is the right choice.)

</comment><comment><USER5> _No credit_

Not as much of a problem as you think it is. Canadian companies can pull US credit reports -- like your bank did -- and do so on a regular basis. Not so regular that every car salesman will know how to do it; but any large company will have figured out how to handle this, even if not everybody at the company knows that it's possible.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great post. By the way, I have the answer to this:

> No credit

I had the same problem because I avoided credit cards when I was younger because I thought it was a bad habit, and I was self-employed so I couldn't verify any salary. It meant I had no credit and I got rejected for low end credit cards - a yucky cycle. Eventually a smart bank manager I knew gave me a plan to fix this:

I went into the bank and got a "secured loan" - what you'll do is deposit about $1000 into the bank (or whatever amount you want) and get a CD for it that you can't touch. It'll pay something like 2% in today's climate. Then you get a loan secured by that CD for something like 2.4% - seriously, the interest rate on a secured loan is very low because the bank has your CD sitting there and you can't get it... there's virtually no risk.

Okay, now, have your loan set to auto pay so you don't have to worry about it. You'll get 12 "paid on time" records in the next year and it'll cost you very little. Actually, it's a little better than that even, because it's a different kind of credit from a credit card. Credit cards are "revolving", this sort of loan is something else... so it'll permanently boost your credit a little bit for the next 7 years until it falls off your record.

I had no credit. Got a secured loan like this. 3 months later, was able to get a crappy credit card from Capital One, very low limit, high interest, no benefits. Just charged some small purchases to it and paid in full each month. After a perfect year between the secured loan and the Capital One card, was able to get an AMEX gold card with no limit on which was important because I was having business-related payments that'd sometimes be a lot in a short period of time. Also wound up getting two free one way international flights from the points from the card. So yeah - secured loan is the way to go. The difference you pay between the CD's interest rate and your loan interest rate is well worth it to have credit.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, when I first moved to the US the bank offered me a "secured credit card" deal whereby I would lend them my money for no interest and they would lend some of it back to me at some nonzero rate. I told them that they could go fuck themselves, and if they wanted proof of my creditworthiness they can damn well phone up my bank in my home country and ask them about me.

Four and a half years later I still have no US credit cards and no US credit rating. I haven't really found a need for it, though locals occasionally look shocked at the idea.

<comment><USER16> > Four and a half years later I still have no US credit cards and no US credit > rating. I haven't really found a need for it, though locals occasionally > look shocked at the idea.

This might turn out to be very penny wise and pound foolish. Sooner or later you might want to buy a property to live in or for investment reasons, and oftentimes you'll only realize you want to buy a place six months or a year before you want to buy. That's not long enough to build a good credit rating to get a decent mortgage - you're very possibly throwing away thousands of dollars of your future money to save yourself... like $20 now.

And you don't pay interest on a credit card unless you carry a balance - <USER2> in full each month. I only spent $150 on a credit card once because it had excellent benefits and I got $600 of free airfare from that card. I've paid $0 in fees or carrying a balance besides that in my life, aside from that $20 for a secured loan. Why not build a credit score? - there's no real downside, it doesn't take long to do, and might make a big difference for you later.

<comment><USER18> Just curious, no pun intended: Why is it so difficult to get a credit card in the U.S., the land of credit cards itself and, for what I've read, where credit card applications seem to virtually pour in all the time among junk mail?

Credit cards in Finland are the third payment option: debit cards and cash are the two most important ways to pay. But you can get a credit card quite easily, and you will definitely get one if you have regular income.

I got my first credit card when I was maybe 20 or 21. The reason was that I was going to a vacation abroad and didn't want to carry loads of cash with me. I just walked into my bank and asked for one; as soon as I told them I was permanently employed and had regular income, it was no big deal. It didn't matter I had only started at this job a few months earlier and I had no existing credit record whatsoever (no loans, no credit cards, no other credit). I didn't have to proove it, just tell them my income and some other facts and sign below.

If I had been a Swedish citizen living in Finland, I think it wouldn't have been no different. You have income, a bank account and an address: that's probably it. I can easily understand if you had _bad_ credit record but not having one at all being a showstopper really puzzles me. Most people pay their credit card bills anyway so any random newcomer to the business is probably a safe bet.

<comment><USER17> The problem, I think, is that the US credit rating system is formalised. As far as I know, in most countries your creditworthiness is secret information which the banks may or may not pass among themselves. In the US it's all wrapped up in a three-digit number which anyone can access -- this means that other indications of creditworthiness tend not to be taken into account.

Come to think of it, the overreliance on the number could be another consequence of the US's obsession with race: if your bank takes anything into account _except_ the magical number then you leave yourself open to a racial discimination lawsuit.

Oh yeah, and the third problem is that most adults without credit histories seem to be illegal immigrants, who make very little money and can vanish at any time. There are so many illegal immigrants in the legal immigrants are a tiny afterthought.

<comment><USER18> This is interesting.

So, just guessing, if you have no credit record, then even if you have a successful business up and running and you can prove that you do, and how much money you make, and that you have an established life with no intentions to take a hike to Mexico next week, the banks may be forced to ignore all that and rely on the credit rating only?

And the illegal immigrant who _is_ planning to scam the banks could do this money deposit thing mentioned to build up credit rating out of nowhere, wait a little, then apply for credit cards, max them out, and leave?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I once had to visit a doctor in Japan. Everything went fine until they went to print me a prescription and tried to enter my name. After explaining that no, I can't provide my name in kanji they went ahead with it in English.

My name broke the layout of the form on their screen and when the prescription was printed only the first half was shown because the rest ran off the side of the paper.

I guess they don't get many foreigners showing up at the local family doctors clinic.

</comment><comment><USER20> No need to quote chequing and cheque. Them words is real.

Gotta love how Americans go against the grain by changing spellings, dropping letters, etc. Then they try to spin it like everyone _else_ is odd for spelling it differently. We're on to you! ;-)

<comment><USER21> "go against the grain"

Right now on the front page there's a linguistics article stating that it was the British-English that diverged more, not the American version.

So, let's talk who 'changed' when you drop received pronunciation.

<comment><USER22> While 'going against the grain' might not be the correct way to phrase it, you have to reali[sz]e that the entire rest of the English speaking world spells things like that. England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. . .

As far as the divergence in spelling is concerned that's almost entirely due to Noah Webster who purposefully spelled things in a more Germanic way because he found the English spellings with the French influences to be distasteful.(1)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue_Backed_Spelle...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue_Backed_Speller)

<comment><USER23> It doesn't go against most of your point, but the reali[sz]e example in particular isn't Webster's fault or an example of U.S. divergence--- it used to be spelled -ize in the UK too, and didn't really shift completely until the past few decades. It's still the form preferred by the Oxford English Dictionary: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling>

On the others, there's a bit more of a continuum than everyone using the British spellings, though I'll agree the Commonwealth probably tilts towards more similarity with the UK than with the US. But Canadian spelling, especially, aligns with U.S. usage in a lot of respects: it generally uses -ize rather than -ise endings ("realize", not "realise"), and sides with the Americans on a lot of specific one-off differences ("tire", not "tyre"), though it sides with the U.K. spellings on -our vs. -or ("colour", not "color").

<comment><USER24> That depends entirely on whether you were educated before the Canadian Press Manual of Style declared "ize" to be their preference. They weren't nearly as successful with the or/our thing, but folks of my vintage or older almost always use "ise" while kids (from my perspective, thirty-somethings are "kids") only slightly favour "ize" -- and that's probably just to get rid of the damned squiggles from the spell-checker. (The rule of thumb is derived from exercice/exercise -- the noun form ends in "ice", a noun, the verb in "ise", which contains "is". I believe we Canadians are the only bunch who actually used the "ice" spelling to any degree, and it was primarily in the context of exercices at the ends of textbook chapters, which one duly carried out in an "exercice book" -- call it a notebook if you aren't a fifty-ish -year-old Canadian.) There has yet to be created an app that ships with a proper Canadian English spelling dictionary -- I have a text file that contains nothing but words that get flagged by either US or UK English dictionaries but are, and have been, standard Canadian spellings. Open it in the current nightmare app with the best-fit dictionary (US, UK, Canadian or generic English) and blindly click "add" till the prompt finally goes away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I ran into stuff like this all the time when I lived in Japan. Governments and businesses have a long time to go before they catch up with the realities of globalization.</comment>


Crypto Museum - <AUTHOR> http://www.cryptomuseum.com/index.htm <comment><USER2> Btw, the US National Cryptologic Museum is well worth a stop if you're ever near Fort Meade, MD. I stopped in on a weekday morning and got a hour-long personal tour by a very knowledgeable ex-NSA guide. [https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/](https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/)

</comment><comment><USER3> They should do the world a favor and put PKCS#1v1.5 in here.

</comment><comment><USER4> They should expand this museum. I want to virtually walk down The Hall of Shame. That KL-7 sim looks like a cool idea. I don't see any source though. Might be fun to create other ones, but browser-based.

[http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/usa/kl7/index.htm#sim](http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/usa/kl7/index.htm#sim)</comment>


Ask HN: When data is code, what is the meaning of a config script? - <AUTHOR>

As someone going from statically typed, compiled languages to a dynamic language, I'm in a philosophical quandary:  when your language is sufficiently flexible to allow you to write your configuration settings files for the application in the same language as the application itself is written in, what does that mean?  Is it even meaningful to consider your configuration data as distinct from your code?
I'm writing a game engine in a combination of C++ and the dynamic language Io.  (http://iolanguage.com/)  Some of the operational code of the engine will be written in Io scripts, while all of the configuration settings will be in Io scripts.  (No need to invent a special text file format when Io's terse syntax makes it just as easy to specify settings data directly as Io code.)
It seems strangely arbitrary to make a distinction between the Io scripts that describe operational components of the engine, and the scripts that describe lists of settings.  After all, they are both in the same, Turing-complete language.  When I am writing my configuration settings, should I just pretend the language has less features than it does, restricting my Io code in the configuration scripts to just setting name-value pairs?
On the other hand you could go completely the opposite way and hardcode all the values in the scripts that comprise operational code.  While this sounds like a recipe for a mess, it would satisfy our minimum goal for scripting the game engine, which is that we want to be able to change settings without recompiling the C++ code.  It would certainly be simpler by some measure.  Although you might be editing a settings value while it is surrounded by other very important code!
We don't have to go to either extreme, but when the data itself is also represented in code, there's no longer any imposed limits on the difference between configuration files and code files.  Where would you place the distinction? <comment><USER2> Well, as long as you are the only one editing them, it doesn't make a difference where you put the limit between code and data. This changes once you release though. Configuration files are meant to be user-edited as part of standard functionality, program code is not. Your users expect nothing major to break if there is a syntax error in the config file. Does that make your entire program crash with an undecipherable (to someone unfamiliar with the language or programming in general) error? You want to be as robust as possible when reading user-editable files, and directly executing them as code could cause problems. There is also the security and stability issue associated with encouraging users to enter code into a config file. Do think about it. This, to me, is the main reason for treating data as separate from code. You have to be robust about parsing data, your compiler has to be robust about parsing code.

<comment><USER3> The most convenient way to have config files is to have a sensible default value for everything. So as much as possible the program should run in spite of config errors. If that is not possible, then the diagnostics need to be very explicit.

Any code, e.g. startup scripts should be ideally in a separate file. In the *NIX tradition these are usually of the form .foorc where 'foo' is the name of the app, and the '.' hides the file from normal directory listings. Ideally, it would be nice to pre-parse such startup code and only execute if it is syntactically correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Several Lisp applications have config files that are just Lisp files run at start-up. Emacs is an example. You can (and people do) put absolutely any code in there. There's no need to restrict it to just setting variables.

So what's the difference between a config file and code? Config files aren't compiled (so no need to rebuild when you change them) and they are intended to be modified by the user, while other code isn't.</comment>


Ask HN: Do enterprises actually use the 'contact for pricing' buttons? - <AUTHOR> Every saas has an enterprise plan now with no pricing listed and a 'contact for pricing' button underneath. Do enterprises actually use these buttons? Are they effective? <comment><USER2> In my experience, these can get some use, but if you're doing a serious volume of enterprise sales they are mainly through other means. In particular:

* Outbound cold calls and emails (annoying and boring but it works once you nail the pitch)

* Ad campaigns leading to targeted landing pages (i.e. How MegaBank saved $50M on Ledger Compliance using FooTech -- fill out this form to download whitepaper, and also we'll call you)

* Content marketing (now that you've learned about X, see how X would work in your organization)

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember reading somewhere that you can drive sales to the enterprise or 'contact for pricing' levels by labeling the other levels 'Hobby' 'Small Project' 'Enterprise' or whatever. Even if the enterprise only needs a hobby level they'll pick the more expensive one to avoid having Hobby on an expense sheet.

Can't remember where I read that, might have been a blog post somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes they do. For our SaaS app I would say the contact / request information buttons are used 50-50 to sales outreach for enterprise customers.</comment>


NYT: They're Working on Their Own, Just Side by Side - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/business/businessspecial2/20cowork.html?ex=1361163600&en=8b327e7ccfd2f790&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER3> I like the idea, but I have rather odd habbits when I'm writing. I don't think many people can stand listening to one album 4 times while I'm completely zoned out from the music and haven't noticed it's stuck on loop in iTunes. I think the worst was when my girlfriend sent me a song, by the time I looked back into iTunes it said it had played 17 times, which was just about an hour.

So I'll probably just go with the age old, convert a bedroom into an in-house office and do my socialising after hours.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. It's a nice option to have though, for a change of scenery and networking. Especially for those of us who live in NYC, our home offices are most likely significantly smaller than in other cities. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried a co-working site a couple times. It beats sitting in Starbucks or the local coffee shop (with free AC outlets and wi-fi) with a bunch of strangers - instead you are with your peers. And in a co-working space you don't feel like you have to subsidize your stay with strategically timed-out coffee purchases. Also, a nice thing is you can go out to lunch and leave your laptop there (it's secure). The 'can you watch my laptop' when you have to use the bathroom in a Starbucks-type environment (too much coffee subsidization) is always a little sketchy and feels imposing.

The weird thing about co-working is that it's like study hall - because other people are working - you feel the pressure to work as well - to not slack - <USER2> maybe not study hall but cram session before finals in a college library. So even though the music may be playing loud in the background, there isn't really a lot of networking going on - everyone's busy with their own gig. So you might actually get more interaction in an office setting - in my experience there's not a lot of small talk. Just queries like 'Dave - can you help me debug this [XHTML layout]?'

As a corporate worker bee programmer, I admire yet just got sorta jealous at the co-workers there who make a good living designing Wordpress/XHTML/Drupal (e.g. non-nitty gritty technical) sites for businesses.

Co-working is a powerful idea (like unionizing indie developers). I think it depends on the work style/personality of the individual. E.g. if you twitter multiple times daily, you're probably a good candidate.</comment>


Don't fool yourself with A/B testing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.whatclinic.com/2010/09/don%E2%80%99t-fool-yourself-with-ab-testing.html

<comment><USER2> This grain of salt article about A/B testing is smart. Specifically, this is something that I learned too:

"Do user testing. Get people in and ask them to use your product. You're going to get a lot more information a lot faster and have a higher degree of confidence in the results."

Expanding on this, I think that it's important not just to rally a group of your friends or other webheads. The closer that you can get to assembling a group of target users, the better.

On ecommerce sites with a checkout, one of my favorite tricks is to send a manual e-mail to a handful of people who have become customers. Clear and simple, I say that I'd like to talk to them about the checkout process, mention that there will be 3-5 other customers on the conference call and offer them a significant coupon (25% +free shipping or something) to participate. During the call, I talk to them about their shopping experience and show them a revision or two of different designs. I ask them to (fake) buy a product using the revisions. The feedback (especially with early designs) is consistently some of the most valuable I receive and it's surprising how much of a positive effect talking to people has. With one phone call asking for feedback, you often gain a repeat customer.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you don't understand how A/B testing works, and are unwilling to read the clear explanation on the dashboard telling you that your results are not significant, your problem is in your chair, not with A/B testing.

</comment><comment><USER4> The blog reads don't do A/B tests for "small changes". On the contrary I actually think A/B tests over large number of users work great for small changes than user testing with a small set.

Many users cannot articulate the benefit of the small change, eye tracking or getting mental map of what the user thinks is very hard, with small set of users concluding something might be so skewed a decision.

Additionally the blog is misguiding >> After 11,000 tests and 400 conversions it clearly showed that the instructions made a 30% difference.

Below are the actual A/B test numbers from the blog:

Original: 193/5943 => 3.24%

Combination 1: 236/6058 => 3.89%

1\. quoting this as 30% improvement is wrong. Google only said if you use combination 1 you would see 20% higher leads.

2\. Since the difference between the conversion numbers is not very high one has to run it for a very long time and even on the first instance combination1 was no better than original.

Given 1 & 2 Google did mark the results as inconclusive telling us not to be fooled.

Edit: rephrased

</comment><comment><USER5> A crucial element left out of the discussion with A/B testing is the importance of user segmenting.

You'll see drastic swings by the day of the week, male / female users, traffic sources, entrance paths, browser, region, etc.

A/B tests can be terribly misleading without awareness of such factors.

A simple illustration of this is eMail response rates which show that Sunday's are far and away the best day to get people's attention (highest aggregate open / click rate by 20% over worst day of week).

But inversly we've found through the experience of managing thousands of tests that while opens & clicks are high, purchase conversion rates are on the low end of the scale.

Just food for thought - it's absolutely positively rolling up your sleeves and deep diving into the data and segmenting tests or at least being aware of external influences before you take your results to the bank.

[http://www.mailermailer.com/resources/metrics/daily- rates.rw...](http://www.mailermailer.com/resources/metrics/daily-rates.rwp)

[http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/personalizing- your-...](http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/personalizing-your-email- subjects-can-drop-your-conversion-rate/)

<comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_paradox>

<comment><USER5> Had not seen that thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Beyond Black Box Management - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/04/21/beyond-black-box-management/ <comment><USER2> Email can be self-managed. A popular productivity technique that Cal has recommended himself is batching: setting aside a fixed time to take care of a task like email, rather than haphazardly context switching to email throughout the day.

Why does an organization need to enforce what can be taught and incentivized on an individual level by offering higher productivity (and thus higher compensation/gratification in the black box model)? Don't artificially inflate your theory, Cal! It's interesting and useful as-is.

<comment><USER3> It might not need to be enforced, but it should probably be encouraged or at least advertised as permissible. There's a horrifyingly large number of workplaces where not responding up to a non-urgent email / IM within an hour or so will trigger follow-up calls or queries to a manager.

<comment><USER4> A little reversal from the manager's perspective...

Isn't it the team's productivity the manager's responsibility. And if one player is not playing the game so to speak (holding / blocking a flow of information for an hour even if it is non-urgent) then shouldnt they follow up? Maybe not after one time... But, it seems the right thing to do from the manager's perspective?

<comment><USER5> I understand your perspective, but it's, I believe, short-sighted.

First, it's generally a management failure if there's routinely questions to be answered or information requested that needs to be answered within an hour. Whether that's a planning failure, or a documentation failure, or whatever it may be, that underlying problem should be addressed because...

Knowledge workers benefit greatly from being able to enter a state of deep concentration. When I'm interrupted while I'm working, it's going to take time for me to get back into the state of mind I was in before the interruption. Cal Newport (the author of the post) has written a lot about this with his "Deep Work" material. Yesterday, for example, I was interrupted 3 times while trying to watch a 15 minute video related to a problem I was trying to solve; how well do you think I absorbed that material compared to being able to learn it uninterrupted? When I'm debugging a tricky problem, it's very likely that I have a _pile_ of conscious and subconscious thoughts going on in my head; if I have to switch and answer an email (or have my manager come and ask me a question), all of that context evaporates and I have to start over.

So, yes, from the manager's perspective it seems like a good choice, but it's very likely going to be highly disruptive to the person being asked.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Yo Developers API - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@YoAppStatus/yo-developers-api-e7f2f0ec5c3c/

<comment><AUTHOR> Yo Hackathon [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/yo- hackathon-2-letters-2-hours-...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/yo- hackathon-2-letters-2-hours-ready-set-yo-tickets-12071296573)

<comment><USER2> "Both prizes will be in the form $2,500 for the winners."

Wait, what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> can't wait for bubble burst. YO.

<comment><USER4> You simply don't understand that context-based communication is the future. Polyword apps are dead, it's inevitable.</comment></comment>


Performance Testing Firefox OS with Raptor - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/06/performance-testing-firefox-os-with-raptor/

<comment><USER2> In our research of proper statistical measurements for testing launch times of applications, we found that 95th percentile worked reasonably well for regression detection and noise reduction, in many circumstances.</comment>


3D printed tourniquet: Day 2 of Gaza field trials ends badly - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@trklou/3d-printed-tourniquet-day-2-of-gaza-field-trials-ends-badly-may-14-970b3f291e7?! <comment><USER2> surreal in the worst way</comment>


The long lost formula for start-up success. - <AUTHOR> http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/08/30/the-long-lost-formula-for-start-up-success-no-really/

<comment><USER2> Steve blank's blog is a virtual treasure trove of these insights. www.steveblank.com

Eric Reis takes Blank's CD model and extends it into actual product development...where the discussion is much less "Why?" and more "How?" www.startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com

You can also get Steve's book on Cafe Press and Amazon. (can't get it at B&N or Borders) <http://www.cafepress.com/kandsranch> <http://bit.ly/1m4R1S>

<comment><USER3> I second the above recommendations. Read these blogs religiously and prepare to have your mind blown.

You can also join the lean startup circle on Google Groups, and watch this Steve Blank video: <http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2056>

Four Steps To Epiphany (Steve Blank's self-published book) will teach you something new every paragraph. Buy it. The only complaint is that the publishing is cheap, and your highlighter marks will show through the thin paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent article. Good summary, good links. I'll be passing that link to people when they come on the HN IRC channel telling us they have a "great idea" that they can't tell us.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Finally, friends don't count as respondents. By some quirk in the human psyche we would rather see our friends waste their time and money, rather than to tell them the truth!"

I love my useless friends =)

<comment><USER6> Your friends hate to see you disillusioned, so they let you perpetuate the self-illusion that what you're proposing in your project will work. You best friends are the ones who disillusion you.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I got that. What I meant was that although that makes them useless for my project, I love them for it at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most important lesson I've learned is there are no "awesome ideas". Every idea is merely a hypothesis that must be proven true or false.</comment>


Docker in 10 Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://smalldata.tech/blog/2019/06/08/docker-in-10-minutes <comment><USER2> One thing that can be helpful to know is that docker has extensive command completion facilities to find or discover commands.</comment>


Show HN: Popup library inspired by Medium and PopClip - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/djyde/WebClip <comment><USER2> Some issues or uglyness (not sure if medium solves this) - [http://i.imgur.com/RUiTyCy.png](http://i.imgur.com/RUiTyCy.png)

Is it possible to install some killswitch? I find this type of plugin very annoying.</comment>


Switch to another language in the middle of a project? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
My friends and I have been developing a website in PHP on weekends for almost a year now. From what I have read, PHP is not as good as Python or Ruby. I am wondering if we should switch to one of the two. If so, what's the best way to switch?
If not, I am also thinking about implementing a PHP framework. We have been developing without a framework. Do you think we should? Doesn't the implementation mean rewriting the code? <comment><USER2> I find python a lot more enjoyable/productive than PHP, but unless you're having major problems with your current code, it seems like porting it would just be a lot of extra work.

I would guess it mostly depends on how much code you have written now (if most of your time has been design/planning, then it might be worth it), and whether or not the people you work with have experience with python/ruby.

Whichever way you go, learning python (or ruby, I suppose) will serve you well in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It's quiet a lot of code now. And, my friends are not familiar with python/ruby.

Thank you for your advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> finish your project in PHP, throw it up, start making money. Then in your spare time if you feel like it, switch to another language. Or if you are starting to have some performance issues.

If you are going to change your language every time some new language gets hyped you'll never finish.

<comment><USER4> I'm with Vaskel, plus I'd chime in that if you switch now you totally are never going to get it done. You should eventually switch to a php framework, but only after you've finished what you've got now and have proven your idea viable and workable.

Your experiencing a fairly common mid-project crisis. It's almost exactly like a mid-life crisis. You're at the point that you can see the end coming and are wondering if you haven't totally fucked yourself up to this point. You see all the things you could have done better or differently. The key at that point is to try to refocus on the finish line and get yourselves there. Take notes on your mistakes, but always move forward.

Plus you've already sunk a year into it, why set yourself back?

Remember a shitty solution to a problem is better than no solution at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe that in the book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month> ), Fred Brooks suggests that you "build one to throw away". I don't recall him suggesting that you change programming language.

If you are having performance problems or you code has become spaghetti and your team is most comfortable with the current language then you could start again in the same language. This has the advantage that you could use good sections of the current implementation with the least effort.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want to implement a web framework, keep in mind that it will be a slow and iterative process. And don't expect to create it in a vacuum (1. make super great framework 2. use it). It will be more like, you notice some patterns of repetition in the code of your existing project(s), and then you devise a way to factor that into a library. Try to implement your web framework as libraries instead of a monolithic pile of spaghetti. There are tons of design decisions you'll have to take and it's better if you can use different parts of the web framework (and perhaps write new ones) for different projects. At first your web framework will be pretty specific to your project, and you'll hit walls whenever you want to go in a direction you hadn't thought of yet. You'll see what is truly general and what's really project/section/page-specific once you have a good corpus of samples.

That's how it goes for my slowly-evolving will-release-it-someday-when- it's-ready CL web framework anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've heard the suggestion to use Cake PHP as intermediate step from frameworkless (or "custom framework") PHP, to Rails/Django. Basically it will result in organizing your code by model/view/controller, so the structure will be more similar to what you would have in a Ruby or Python framework.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's tried this approach.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was in almost the same situation as you, and I decided, for the very reasonable reasons explained in the other responses, to stay with PHP.

In summary:

\- I know PHP, don't know Rails

\- I could be a victim of the "grass is greener" effect

\- I'm already too far into the project to make such a drastic change

\- I made the decision to use PHP in the first place - I'd look like an idiot for making such a big mistake (even to just myself and my business partner) And so on.

All very good reasons, and I still think my decision was highly defensible, and I stand by it.

However, it was a mistake - the deadly kind. There's no telling what could have happened if I'd switched to Rails at the time (I had a _strong_ hunch that Rails was way better). But here's what happened:

\- Turns out we weren't so far into the project after all (a typical mistake) - it was another 8 months before we released

\- I've since learned Rails, and reckon I could probably have redone the whole site in less time than that with Rails (probably 3-5 months with better functionality as a result)

\- PHP and the framework I used (custom) were not adequate for our long-term aims. The viscosity ( [http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/12/01/comparing- pieces-of...](http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/12/01/comparing-pieces-of- string-part-1/) ) of the whole thing increased to the point where after we finally went live, making further changes was too expensive/difficult/error- prone to be worth our while

Basically, this decision killed this product that I spent about a year working on.

I still stand by it, but I've learned from my mistake. I even wrote an article about it (though I didn't mention this specific product, the argument applies): [http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/01/22/fundamental- mistake...](http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/01/22/fundamental-mistakes/)

What would I have done differently? How about take a 2 week break and give Rails a really good try to see how well I liked it and if it was just an impression. I would then probably have made the decision to switch, and I believe it would have been the right one. I suggest you do the same with your product. Building a product that's painful to evolve is a deadlier mistake than wasting a bit of work. Also, it's not all wasted - you've still learnt about the business domain.

Anyway, good luck!

Daniel

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the answer kind of depends on the nature of the project.

Re-writing something you have now in another language/framework can be (in addition to fun) a great way to learn the new language/framework. If this is just a fun project, well, cool - best of luck to you. If this is a business, something that you'd like to start making money (or at least getting press) from, then maybe the delay will hurt you more than the fun will help you.

In my case, the website was the online component of a small university department. I inherited a PHP codebase that worked, but that I really didn't like, and opted to re-write it in Python/Django. I'm really happy with the decision: I think it was a great way to learn the framework, and the result is a lot better than the PHP site that it replaced, but I don't think I would have done it if I hadn't had a working PHP site to placate students while I was working on it.

Good luck with whatever route you choose to go.

</comment><comment><USER10> The answer depends on the purpose of the project. If you're building something to make money, you should not spend the time now to switch languages unless your NEW language has some library or feature which your current project simply cannot work without. However, if this is a learning exercise only or just a fun project, there would be no harm in spending the time to explore both the Python and Ruby options.

The key to your decision here should be how much time and effort it would require to duplicate a feature you want to use in your existing system as compared to what comes out of the box with either a new language or an existing PHP framework. If it's a pain to do and the functionality is critical to your project's success, then you should port. Otherwise, I'd recommend you keep doing what you're doing.

</comment><comment><USER11> Very big mistake if you are serious about bussiness. Django and Ruby are very tough to find cheap programmers for, but there is no shortage of cheap PHP programmers. Expect a language change to throw you back 3 months or more.

And there are many PHP frameworks, don't implement a new one.

<comment><USER8> Cheap programmers are expensive. I'd rather have 1 great rails programmer than 10 cheap rails programmers. The single great programmer will be more productive than all 10 of the cheap ones, and far easier to communicate with and manage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh how apt your timing is, Jeff Atwood just wrote a nice article on his Coding Horror block titled:

"PHP Sucks, But It Doesn't Matter" (<http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001119.html>)

Why introduce regressions and headache by switching to another language that I'm guessing you don't know as well as PHP.

Jeff says it best in that article: "building a compelling application is far more important than choice of language."

Personally, I'd just keep plugging away in PHP. It isn't my favorite language, but it has yet to fail me. It is like the farmers rusty pickup truck. Not very flashy, but it gets the job done.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've said this a lot, but I can't recommend Code Igniter enough when working with PHP. Quite fast, almost feels like an entirely different "real" language with so much library support from the framework.

Even when I work with Django (being a huge Python man myself), I miss having some of the better aspects of Code Igniter (and definitely CI's user guide is stellar).

Don't switch languages mid-way unless you have a great reason. PHP blog-flak isn't a good enough reason (IMHO) unless your team is fluent in another language they can code more securely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We already use PHPTAL. Will Code Igniter work with PHPTAL?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wouldn't say PHP is not as good as Python or Ruby, it's simply different. For instance you could use a development platform/framework that lives on top of PHP that might make your life easier. You'll have the same issues with Python and Ruby and will eventually implement a framework or platform that lives on top of them.

I also recommend you check out NOLOH (shameless self plug), there will be a limited developer release at the end of this month.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd say stick with PHP for this project, and try doing the next one in Python or Ruby.

If you feel like you need a framework, slowly build it up one piece at a time as you need it. Don't re-write your whole app before you're making money. You can spend a lot of time doing that, and there are so many other things that can potentially go wrong, you don't need to add "it took us too long to get it working" to the list.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was recently halfway through a project that was going strong in PHP, but I started reading about Django and Python and decided to port everything over: turned out to be a very good decision. Django keeps my code clean and Python keeps me inspired. While PHP is a good language, I would argue that it takes more self-control to program well in it.

<comment><USER17> interesting point - when you have it majority of components ready-made for you, are you really as disciplined a programmer? im going to say "yes," on the assumption that you had the self-control to go to the hardware store and buy a hammer instead of making a set of tools to make a hammer, as the metaphor goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, I think you should start learning Python or Ruby.

Learning enough to make an informed decision (heresay doesn't count) should only take a few weekends.

After that you can decide for yourselves if it would be worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER19> We switched from PHP to phython after six months of working on the project, it has made all the difference. I would do it again 9 month or even a year into a project. Django is the best.

</comment><comment><USER20> i think you should go where your passion is.if you are board with php, you might be willing to put more hours in to another language.

you will find that the more languages you know the easier it is to switch.

i also think you should keep in mind on how you plan to progress in your company, the further you are from writing the code, the more you will want to be able to recognize a broad set of patterns.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am also contemplating a switch from php to RoR. After developing another site in RoR and loving it, php just doesn't inspire me anymore.</comment>


How Cigarettes Tax the Poor - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/how-cigarettes-tax-the-poor/ <comment><USER2> Cigarette taxes are powerfully regressive. It's completely true.

But when cigarette taxes go up, youth smoking goes down. Reductions in youth smoking mean permanent, ongoing reductions in overall cigarette consumption, as young people fail to take up the habit.

This is not a controversial assertion. Even priceonomics' cherry-picked sources primarily discuss price inelasticity in adult smokers, who have been addicted for decades.

These taxes are cruel, but necessary. It's a pigouvian tax that literally _saves lives_.

<comment><USER3> > These taxes are cruel, but necessary. It's a pigouvian tax that literally > saves lives.

And with modern technology it can only get better. For example, why not create an algorithm that scores how healthy your choices at the grocery store are and introduce the appropriate tax in the end?

We are also on the verge of being able to monitor everyone's every movement. Why not tax those who don't exercise enough?

Imagine how much the average lifespan will increase when people finally give up on outdated notions of personal freedom and irrational choices.

<comment><USER4> > finally give up on outdated notions of personal freedom and irrational > choice

Apparently the cigarette industries' attempts to associate smoking with personal freedom in advertisements have been successful in your case.

I think the health benefits by far outweigh any perceived personal freedom costs. Smoking is damaging but addictive. Too many people want to but don't manage to stop.

If higher prices help reduce smoking, I'm for higher prices.

<comment><USER3> > Apparently the cigarette industries' attempts to associate smoking with > personal freedom in advertisements have been successful in your case.

Not really, I used to smoke but I quit.

That's a straw man, and also quite patronizing. You can hold a rational ethical position without buying into the mythology of Marlboro man. The question still stands: if you accept that health benefits can outweigh personal freedom, where do you draw the line?

<comment><USER5> > if you accept that health benefits can outweigh personal freedom, where do > you draw the line?

Agreed. I hate using these terms, but the "progressive liberal agenda" that wants to make "HealthCare Free For All" will make your health choices everyone's business.

I'm not paying for your triple bypass surgery, therefor red meat is going to be taxed higher. Etc...etc... Carry it all out to it's logical conclusion and you'll see that soon enough personal freedom won't mean much in a collectivist society and there will be no line to draw.

<comment><USER6> This is when you line up an army on one side of the field that believes heart disease is exacerbated by the saturated fats, cholesterol, and sodium in red meat, and you line up the army on the other side of the field that believes that heart disease is exacerbated by sugars, simple carbohydrates, and insufficient magnesium, vitamin D, and vitamin K.

Then they converge in the middle, and methodically slaughter any chance at rationally examining the science, with their sharp blades made from laminated dollar bills.

Politics and science do not mix well. Some may not like that other people eat beef steaks. Others may not like enriched white flour or high fructose corn syrup. Some people might not like genetically modified whatevers, or artificial hormone treated this-and-thats. But I don't want my diet to be constrained on all sides by FUD and scaremongering.

Besides that, I don't believe that cigarettes are taxed heavily as a means to benefit the public health. I believe that they are taxed heavily because nicotine addicts will just pay that much for a fix. The supposed health benefit just makes it easier for other people to ignore that a consumer product is being selectively taxed at a scandalously high rate.

<comment><USER7> > _Besides that, I don 't believe that cigarettes are taxed heavily as a means > to benefit the public health. I believe that they are taxed heavily because > nicotine addicts will just pay that much for a fix. The supposed health > benefit just makes it easier for other people to ignore that a consumer > product is being selectively taxed at a scandalously high rate._

Exactly this. Cigarettes aren't being taxed out of any semblance of altruistic care for public health--that altruistic care is arguably borne out in anti- smoking laws in public places. The taxes, however, are simply a shakedown, like every other type of "sin tax" levied to collect money from people who enjoy a thing that cannot or will not be universally defended as something that is "okay" to enjoy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cigarettes, as a product when used as directed will not only harm the individual 100% of the time but will also tax the remaining non smokers. Cigarettes do not cover existential damages such as harm to nonsmokers, litter, garbage and damage to wildlife albeit through fires, avian or sea life.

See Myth 3: The Economics of Tobacco at 'The World Bank' site.

[http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTHEALTHNUT...](http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTHEALTHNUTRITIONANDPOPULATION/EXTETC/0,,contentMDK:20365226~menuPK:478891~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:376601,00.html)

<comment><USER9> s/existential damages/externalities

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The lottery taxes the poor in a very similar way. [http://metrocosm.com/could- the-lottery-be-the-largest-tax/](http://metrocosm.com/could-the-lottery-be- the-largest-tax/)

<comment><USER11> That works for most taxes on consumer products since it's fixed and not based on income.

If two people have the same exact habit it will cost them the same amount. If I have a higher income than you I'm actually paying less relative of my income than I would with a normal tax.

This is true even not considering the social aspect of it. Some of this taxes are on addictive things like drugs (tobacco, alchool) and gambling (lottery). And one social influence of addictive behaviour is poverty.

<comment><USER12> A sales tax on groceries or a sin tax on cigarettes may be regressive because poor people spend a larger portion of their income on groceries and cigarettes, true.

The lottery, however, is worse. It is actively advertising to these people, encouraging them to have hopes and dreams about a way out of their situation, but instead it just kicks them while they're down. And it's not just some soulless corporate entity doing this, no: it's the same government which purports to care about their plight, not just exploiting them but encouraging them to passively hope for unearned success, instead of pursuing goals as an independent actor or something which might actually improve their lot.

"Hey, you never know!" is a dystopian lie, a few increments worse than "A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"

<comment><USER13> Buying vs. not buying lottery tickets has very little to do with pursuing vs. not pursuing any particular goals, so I'm not sure why you frame it as a choice between the two.

Buying lottery tickets looks irrational on basis of expected value, but it is a very narrow and somewhat self-contradictory definition of rationality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not really surprised by this. Starting to smoke and continuing to smoke are bad life choices and indicate a lack of will power and long-term thinking. Yes, cigarettes are incredibly addictive and quitting is hard (I smoked for 6 years when I was a teen and young adult). The same poor life choices and lack of long-term planning also lead to a low-income existence. Not applying yourself in school because you'd rather "have fun now." Not attending college. Not eating healthy foods. Not exercising. Smoking cigarettes. The fact that these things are all related shouldn't be a mystery or revelation. Poor people smoke more because poor people make bad choices in general.

<comment><USER15> I'd imagine depression also plays a huge role.

"Why stop? You are going to die anyway. And don't you deserve to die? You are smoking after all. No point in stopping now. Not like your life was ever going to go anywhere."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sugar and foods with processes carbohydrates strongly correlates to diabetes in children. So where's the sugar and process foods taxes? It'd save lives.

<comment><USER17> Really poor people benefit from processed, calorie dense, vitamin-enriched food because it's the cheapest way to get fed. The harmful effects barely affect them because they cant afford to over-eat the stuff. So a processed food tax would be more harmful to the poor than a cigarette tax which, though burdensome, saves a lot of their lives. Food is good except its consumed in excess. Cigarettes are bad, period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't seem so unjust to me, as long as the government is efficient.

It seems to me that taxes are beneficial to poor people, as government spending benefits the poor the most. At least that's the theory.

Or they can directly redistribute the cigarette tax money to the poor.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anti-smoking campaigns were offensive and tiring in the 80s. And whoever brought up pigouvian taxation needs a swift slap upside the head.

<comment><USER20> Would you rather the ads try and sell you detergents and cars?

The most recent ads by the Truth campaign are great. I'm a very sporadic smoker of pipes and cigars, but those commercials about cutting off the source of money for tobacco companies by going after non-cigarette tobacco really got my attention. If I buy another ounce of tobacco this year I'm going to at least put on my hipster hat and procure some tobacco that isn't produced by some massive multinational company with very questionable ethics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> We have two separate problems:

1\. Poverty.

2\. Addiction to a substance and delivery mechanism poisonous to both the user and those around them.

Taxes are among the methods to reduce the prevalence of the latter, as well as to capture negative externalities of their sale. No reason to reduce those.

Addressing poverty and inequality generally, however, would be a Good Thing.

</comment><comment><USER22> If revenue from that tax on an individual is exceeded by the increased healthcare costs then it's more like an insurance premium.

</comment><comment><USER23> Of course, and almost no-one cares. Smokers in 2016 are like blacks in 1900: they're the pariahs everyone loves to hate. Smoking is banned from buildings; it's not even an option in many places to allow it. Smokers are scorned and looked down upon. Historical dramas whitewash smokers out (or make sure that the villains smoke while the heroes don't); smoking is literally photoshopped out of historical photos.

</comment><comment><USER24> Who do people still smoke? It's been know to cause cancer for 50+ years and is expensive. It's not like the education isn't there (I've seen anti-smoking ads on TV for the past 10 years and at the theater before seeing a movie).

Just like alcohol, it seems to be people that willingly want to be taxed.

I don't see it as a problem.

<comment><USER25> > Why do people still smoke?

They're addicted.

<comment><USER26> Wrong question... Why do people continue to _start_ smoking?

I grew up in the US in the 80s and 90s, where we were bombarded with anti- smoking ads, the health effects were well known, and the prices were high.

It blows my mind that I have peers who smoke. They would have seen the same ads, had the same facts available, and mostly come from similar backgrounds (middle-class).

<comment><USER27> > where we were bombarded with anti-smoking ads

You've answered your own question: rebellion.

That was the main reason I was sneaking cigs in the alley after school.

<comment><USER28> True. And maybe more generally, there can't be pro or anti ads (same with good or bad ads).

Just ads, ads and ads. That generates a tobacco culture with smokers and non- smokers, but both just saw ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Quite smoking please! Good for your health and wallet

</comment><comment><USER30> Why is it objectionable to tax the poor?

<comment><USER31> It's not taxing the poor in general that's bad. It's when the tax has a disproportionate impact on the poor compared to the rich. They're regressive and generally considered bad because when designing a tax to pay for say a welfare project that is supposed to benefit the poor taxing them to pay for it is counter intuitive.

I'm split on this tax though since it's a sin tax so on one hand it doesn't really work to tax someone who isn't a smoker but on the other it's not working so why increase the burden on the poor unless it's preventing new smokers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> They get it back in social medicine.

</comment><comment><USER33> EVERYTHING taxes the poor.

<comment><USER34> You're right that it's expensive to be poor, but I think you misunderstand what "___ taxes the poor" means. It means that there is a _disproportionate_ tax burden on people with less income, otherwise called a regressive tax[1].

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So, not only smoking is not something that people need to do to survive, but people also have an option to roll their own cigarettes to save money. And yet, these authors decided to use a phrase "cigarettes tax", when "tax" is usually something that you don't have a choice whether to spend money on something or not.

Medications tax the sick that need them. Cigarettes sure as hell don't tax smokers.

(And yes, I smoke myself).

</comment><comment><USER36> > In the United States, and nearly every other country, smoking is more common > among the less wealthy and less educated. In the United States, 26.3% of > people in poverty smoke compared to 15.2% for the rest of the population. > College graduates are almost a third as likely to smoke as those who did not > attend college. Because of this difference in smoking prevalence, Americans > from the bottom third in household income spend nearly twenty times more on > cigarettes as a proportion of their income than those from the top third.

What a strange statistic! It's conflating the difference in cigarette spend and the difference in the incomes of top and bottom thirds to give us a meaningless number.

<comment><USER37> "Spend" as a noun is my second least favorite corporatist word next to "ask" as a noun. I automatically assume (unfairly) that the speaker is over educated in some useless way and compensates to appear smarter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> They tax the stupid. A lot of people of lower intellect tend to be poorer (not all, obviously).</comment>


How the Survivor Bias Distorts Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-survivor-bias-distorts-reality/ <comment><USER2> By necessity, entrepreneurs are self-delusional.

Most are easily intelligent enough to realize how long their odds really are. Furthermore, they have the intellect to appreciate the true effort they have to make before they reach financial payback.

Any reasonable person with the math skills to visualize risk vs. reward will usually walk away --but not the quintessential entrepreneur.

This is not a flattering trait. For this reason, it is rarely, if ever, associated with successful entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER3> Entrepreneurs != startup founders.

A successful developer, for example, starting their consultancy/agency has a high chance of building a successful venture.

<comment><USER4> Small companies as in 5-50 people can be really stable and proffitable. Ramp up in good times, lay off in bad etc. the trick is to proffitably get there a soon as possible. Being a 1 person consulting shop is much more of a grind and has less upside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A good reminder about calculating statistics and making accurate predictions.

When analyzing why a group of objects (usually very small, like successful companies) have a certain trait, it is not enough to find something all these objects had in common and say that it was the reason. At bare minimum, you have to look at all the rest of objects and confirm that they did not have that thing in common too. And even that would not be enough. After finding something ONLY these objects of interest have in common, you should test the prediction on new objects whose outcome is not yet known and confirm the accuracy.

It sounds really simple, but sometimes even scientific paper writers can't resist urge to release "finding" that has hidden flaws like that.

<comment><USER6> "Recent survey of Swiss centenarians found that 83.4% drank at least one large glass of red wine per day, 86.7% included some form of light exercise in their daily routine, and 99.7% were dead."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The probability that an _average_ entrepreneur succeeds might indeed be assessed fairly by observing that only one entrepreneur in a hundred ever reaches the 1% of wealth or impact.

But this assessment itself seems to suffer from a bias of another sort--the notion that entrepreneurial risk is uniformly distributed over the population of entrepreneurs. Actually, there will be some startups whose risk will be much lower than that of the "average" emerging company (due to the fact that their venture idea satisfies some market need, discovered either by genuine insight/ingenuity or by luck).

It is the belief--however appropriate--that one's own venture falls within this enlightened category of diminished risk that propels founders to pursue their ventures in the face of such an aggregate track record.

<comment><USER8> I recall from some other study, that while "idea" start-ups are basically a lottery, businesses which are working towards a product with apparent benefits, an apparent market, and an apparent R&D road-map actually have an impressively high success rate. Even if a bigger company beats you to the punch, you can ride on their coattails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Job seeker: "Your company's employment test is stupid."

Employer: "Clearly it isn't stupid because every awesome person we have employed has passed that test. In fact, the test is awesome and is the _reason_ we have managed to build such an awesome team."

<comment><USER10> _Job seeker: "Your company's employment test is stupid."_

From the article: "Instead, Smith says, Collins should have started with a list of companies at the beginning of the test period and then used 'plausible criteria to select eleven companies predicted to do better than the rest. These criteria must be applied in an objective way, without peeking at how the companies did over the next forty years. It is not fair or meaningful to predict which companies will do well after looking at which companies did well! Those are not predictions, just history.'"

In the actual research on company hiring procedures, the correct research procedure is used by giving tests BEFORE job seekers are hired, and then seeing how they do as workers over time. Industrial and organizational (I/O) psychologists have been doing this kind of research for about a century, in countries all over the world, testing hundreds of thousands of workers in numerous job categories in hundreds of workplaces in dozens of countries. Hiring job-seekers based on work-sample tests and tests of the job-seekers' cognitive ability reliably improves worker performance over the long term. There is a FAQ on this topic[1] with links to the research literature you can read for more details.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> re stock market: A common (and expensive) fallacy of beginners who think they can beat the market with clever technical tricks is analyzing all of the publicly-traded companies' history and divining patterns in trading and such. This ignores, of course, the countless companies that have gone out of business completely or have otherwise been de-listed from the exchanges.

In analyzing these trends, you're biased by looking only at the companies that have done well enough to be on the current list. In this way it's particularly insidious, because you're omitting the very data that might save you from betting on a company that might be delisted.

</comment><comment><USER12> "For garage-dwelling entrepreneurs to crack the 1% wealth threshold in America, [...] for every wealthy start-up founder, there are 100 other entrepreneurs who end up with only a cluttered garage."

So you are saying if I become an entrepreneur, I have a 1/100 chance of being in the top 1%? Wow, that's great! Sign me up!

 _checks math_

Hey, wait a minute!

<comment><USER13> If the cluttered garage is in Silicon Valley, then convert it into an apartment and hey presto, real estate 1%-er.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> S = succeed

C = with specific characteristics

What we need is P(S | C) = P(S ^ C) / P(C), but the best sellers mentioned in the article instead address P(S ^ C)

</comment><comment><USER15> Along these lines, I'd recommend The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives [http://amzn.to/1NYgSQm](http://amzn.to/1NYgSQm)

Even very intelligent people seem to have far too many delusions about their own competence or success.

<comment><USER16> If you're going to post a referral link, at least disclose it.

<comment><USER15> Oops, just hit the copy short link on Amazon and forgot to uncheck. My bad.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any monastery-like environments for tech? - <AUTHOR> I've been looking at religious monastery design lately. They are designed to be completely free from distractions - no possessions, no members of the opposite sex, food and physical security taken care of. All you have to do is meditate and concentrate on religion and existence, without distraction.
It occurs to me that this total immersion is also perfect for training the mind in intellectual pursuits, whether it's academia or engineering. It's the kind of environment that Bill Gates started in. Something where you don't have to worry about food, shelter, or promotions.
What would be the closest thing to a tech monastery in the real world? <comment><USER2> The Oberwolfach Lunatic Asylum fits the requirements: [https://www.mfo.de/](https://www.mfo.de/)

<comment><USER3> Well... That's very nice of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't sound like a very good way to gain a deeper understand of technology. I'm not sure if you can really compare religion and spirituality with technology.

Most other developers and hackers I know, myself included, have some of their best ideas and insights when they are NOT focusing on technology or the problem at hand. Also, anecdotally, the majority of these people are not the stereotypical hollywood portrayed geeks who care about nothing other than hacking technology. They are usually well adjusted people with lives that go far beyond their work because most successful developers understand that to be good at your job also requires you to have a healthy and non-obsessive relationship with your work.

So unless you have Aspergers or something like that then this is likely to be a pretty unhealthy way to live your life. Humans require social interaction, time to unwind, physical exercise etc.

<comment><USER5> A lot of monasteries have way more social interaction, unwinding time, and exercise than most IT workplaces offer.

The month I spent in a temple was definitely like that!

I mean, where else do you have tea every evening together with dozens of diverse people?

I went jogging every other days and did weight training and yoga the other days. Every day involved hours of mostly light physical work (cooking, cleaning, some crafts, sometimes construction, etc). And the relaxation I had there was deep and rejuvenating.

The difference between monastic or temple architecture and routine, and that of offices, is really interesting... If I ever create my own office, it will be more like a temple!

(Without the religious hierarchies and faith affirmations, probably...)

<comment><USER4> That sounds pretty awesome actually. Apart from the exercise/socialising what was the main activity you did in the monastery? I'm assuming its something religious/faith based?

<comment><USER5> Whether it's religious or faith based is a kind of tricky question because it's a "Zen Buddhist" place (in rural Sweden, as it happens).

To make a long story short I'd say yeah, basically you spend the time eating, working, praying, and sleeping, except that the "praying" doesn't have a content except for something like "realizing that awareness is already inherently clear and ready", or just abiding in awake alertness without "complaining", or something like that.

There's also chanting which is more explicitly religious, but I interpret this whole religious business as being basically just memetic strategies that use this aesthetically coherent gestalt to reinforce some hard-to-describe point.

Image google for "zazen" and that's basically what's going on for hours every day, during meditation retreats _many_ hours every day (with breaks every 30 minutes or so so your knees don't implode).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can build that environment for yourself. Buy a small cabin in the woods. There are many who have done this. Check out Joey Hess' blog: [http://joeyh.name/blog/](http://joeyh.name/blog/).

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't know, an Ivory Tower?

More seriously a lot of hackers choose to go to a country like Thailand where it's cheap to live and eat and do a stint of tech there.

<comment><AUTHOR> I live in Malaysia. A lot of these places have become co-working spaces - loud, crowded, located right in the middle of a traffic jam area. Many are not free from distraction either. A lot of people in these places are paying to network, so you get accosted by networking types while running a train of thought.

Something like a university library would probably be ideal. Environment is just nice for focusing, no harrasment, good coffee, and walking/public transportation access.

<comment><USER8> Second this. I've been doing this for the last few months and it's a great place to focus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The whole point of technology is solving real-world problems. You can't separate technology from the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something like Bell Labs did a lot of great work in the past while separated from the world. A lot of research institutions do too.</comment></comment>


Finland Has Second Thoughts About Giving Free Money to Jobless People - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/business/finland-universal-basic-income.html <comment><USER2> Has been on HN several times and also commented that title is misleading. Trial only just started.</comment>


3 Biggest Mistakes When Choosing a Cofounder - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/97391/3-Biggest-Mistakes-When-Choosing-a-Cofounder.aspx

<comment><USER2> Love this article. Always good to remember that you never know what you don't know and with a cofounder, you can quickly find those things out.</comment>


SpaceX Launching Dragon Capsule to Space Station - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html

<comment><USER2> Elon just tweeted: "Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing. About to command inhibit override."

Edit: <https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/307515784610058241>

Edit 2: Follow-up tweet from him: "Holding on solar array deployment until at least two thruster pods are active"

Edit 3: Looking better! Latest tweet: "Thruster pod 3 tank pressure trending positive. Preparing to deploy solar arrays."

Edit 4: YES! "Solar array deployment successful"

<comment><USER3> Update 5:20pm EST: "Orbit raising burn successful. Dragon back on track."

Update 4:10pm EST: "Thruster pods one through four are now operating nominally. Preparing to raise orbit. All systems green."

Updates from NASA News Conference 3pm EST:

* Pods 1 and 4 are pressure nominal and thrusters active.

* Pods 2 and 3 are pressure nominal and thrusters being tested; readings are optimistic; will be turned on shortly.

* NASA requires 3 of 4 pods working to enter safe zone.

* Initial indication of root cause is blockage in oxidizer pressurization system. They fixed the problem by cycling the valves.

* No leakage or debris; all systems intact.

* No rendezvous is likely in next few days.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if my understanding is correct, but these thruster pods are used to de-orbit the spacecraft too, right? I wonder if only one module has enough juice to de-orbit the spacecraft and retrieve it intact, if they end up needing to do that.

<comment><USER3> Yes. He said they would stay up there at least a month trying to get it to work. If they return to earth they lose one of the cargo trunks that is designed to burn up in re-entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The space industry's go-to place for minute by minute updates on any launch is Spaceflight Now:

<http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/005/status.html>

Here's the last couple of updates:

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 1527 GMT (10:27 a.m. EST) "It appears that although it achieved Earth orbit, Dragon is experiencing some kind problem right now," said John Insprucker, SpaceX's Falcon 9 product manager. We'lll have to learn about the nature of what happened. According to procedure, we expect a press conference to be held a few hours from now. At that time, further info may be available."

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013 1524 GMT (10:24 a.m. EST) ANOMALY. SpaceX is reporting some type of anomaly on the Dragon spacecraft. Deployment of the solar arrays was supposed to occur at T+plus 11 minutes, 45 seconds, but on-board cameras did not show the panels unfurl as planned. SpaceX's webcast cut away from the solar array view and went to a slate.

<comment><USER6> > According to procedure, we expect a press conference to be held a few hours > from now.

How normal is this? It strikes me as odd, but I know nothing.

<comment><USER5> It's normal for any NASA mission. Your average comsat launch isn't going to get any press coverage, and the military sure isn't holding press conferences after their classified missions. But pretty much every NASA science and space station mission is going to get a lot of interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Follow #Dragon on twitter.

This is the last launch of the Falcon 9 v1.0, with the square engine configuration. The next launch is the Falcon 9 v1.1 with the Merlin 1D engines [http://en.wikipedia.oro/wiki/File:Falcon_9_v1.0_and_v1.2_eng...](http://en.wikipedia.oro/wiki/File:Falcon_9_v1.0_and_v1.2_engine.svg)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9>

<https://twitter.com/SpaceX>

NASA TV Media is LIVE: [http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts- live-spa...](http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space- tv.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> The best webcast for these launches typically comes from SpaceX itself, and can be found here:

<http://www.spacex.com/webcast/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm really, really interested in space and astrophysics, but I'm working full- time. (studied a bachelor in IT, with minimal maths and physics) A degree in astrophysics is at least 5 years, which is impossible for me.

What books / material can I study on my own to perhaps try the degree in 2 or 3 years full-time?

<comment><USER10> Depends on what you want to learn about, a degree in astrophysics or aeronautial engineering prepares you for many different possible jobs. I'm in a somewhat similar situation, maybe this will help:

(DISCLAIMER: I _am not_ an aerospace engineer by training)

Calculus:

You'll definitely need to be very comfortable with single variable calculus and vector calculus up to partial derivatives, vector calculus integrals (Green, Stokes, Gauss) will definitely help. I wouldn't learn that from a book, try MIT's OCW, there is a calculus course covering all that. Learn the basic about ODEs, and be comfortable around PDE notation.

Linear Algebra:

In some sub-disciplines such as control and signal processing you'll also need to be very comfortable with linear algebra, so that all those matrices and stuff don't get in the way when learning modern control/DSP. I definitely recommend Prof. Strang's course in OCW for this. Try to at least be comfortable with simple ODEs before starting it. Linear algebra also helps a lot with Physics.

To get more into lineal algebra maybe you can read Linear Algebra Done Right if you want to learn more about Hilbert Spaces, and then maybe Shilov for tensors... those two books should be optional...

Software:

You don't need to be fast or maybe even know how to solve complex integrals in pen and paper. Try to complement learning calculus, differential equations and linear algebra with learning Matlab/Simulink and Mathematica. I can't even find a word to emphasize how much Matlab/Simulink is used in aerospace engineering...

Dynamics:

Learn classical mechanics, lots of it. Be confortable with rigid body dynamics in 3D. This is the best reading guide I know about, oriented to game development, but also useful for simulation and control: <http://chrishecker.com/Physics_references> Code simulators, visualizations, etc... Know what rotation, nutation and precession are, when and how they happen, etc...

From that list I have read a little of Goldstein and some Symon. If you find this books too hard, don't follow the guide but instead jump directly to the Feynman lectures (if you want to read) or Physics I from OCW (Prof. Lewin course, really really good).

Physics II from OCW can also help, maybe.

Space:

Once you are not scared with simple problems from all the previous subjects and can solve them, and can understand complex ones you should have no trouble following the first chapters (about dynamics, orbital and attitude maneuvering, etc) of some classical but real space books, for example:

SMAD by Wertz, a really classical book for space engineering courses. You should really be able to read it cover to cover but its not a very specific book and more oriented torwards missions management. Sometimes it gets boring because of it lack of details. [http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Space- Dynamics-Aeronautic...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Space-Dynamics- Aeronautical-Engineering/dp/0486651134/) [http://www.amazon.com/Spacecraft- Dynamics-Control-Practical-...](http://www.amazon.com/Spacecraft-Dynamics- Control-Practical-Engineering/dp/0521787807/) [http://www.amazon.com/Modern- Spacecraft-Dynamics-Control-Mar...](http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Spacecraft- Dynamics-Control-Marshall/dp/0471457035/)

You can also browse here: <http://astrobooks.com/> and see if you find something particularly interesting. I really would like to recommend a more engaging approach and less boring books, but this is the best that I can come up with now.

After you can comfortably read the first chapters of those space books you should really choose what to focus into. Dynamics, Simulation, Finite Element Analysis, Mechanics/Thermal engineering, Signal Processing, Control... then learn the basics of that discipline and then try to apply it to space exploration or spacecraft design. Each of this disciplines would need their own reply and reading list I guess... some require more physics than rigid body dynamics, like fluid dynamics or thermodynamics, electromagnetism, etc...

Also, as usual, try to have fun but still be disciplined about reading/learning.

<comment><USER9> Wauw, thanks for all the info!

To clarify, I'd primarily would like to learn all this just for myself, not per se for a job. I'm quite happy with programming :)

Further, my main idol is Neill dG Tyson. Knowing what he knows would be a great achievement for me.

<comment><USER11> If you just want to extend your pop science knowledge, going for a degree and even most OCW courses would be overkill. I went through a bachelor's and master's in aerospace engineering, and they are not to be taken lightly; 24% of engineering students dropped out after freshman year at my university. The only book I recommend for you is Fundamentals of Astrodynamics (BMW); it's an approachable introduction orbit design/analysis that you should be able to take on knowing calculus through differential equations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And.. orbit!

edit: They made it look so easy :) edit2: "Some sort of problem"? Maybe spoke too soon...

<comment><USER13> Not so fast, seems to be a problem according to the SpaceX webcast. There is supposed to be a press conference within a few hours.

<comment><USER14> People seem to think it's an issue with the solar panels on twitter. It's looking like the solar panels didn't deploy.

<comment><USER15> As noted elsewhere the issue is with the software inhibiting the activation of the thrusters. They delayed solar panel deployment because the capsule doesn't have attitude control yet.

<comment><USER14> Oh wow, that's even worse news. Hopefully the override works.

<comment><USER15> It's better, I'd say. The chances that it's just a software or sensor problem are pretty high, and they can just issue an override.

<comment><USER14> I would think that without thrusters that it would be unable to dock with the ISS.

According to <http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/005/status.html>

        SpaceX says one thruster pod is working, and two are "preferred" to deploy solar arrays. Four thruster pods are on the Dragon spacecraft.

        "We are working to bring up the other two in order to plan the next series of burns to get to station," a SpaceX spokesperson says.

And at 11:40 EST:

        "Thruster pod 3 tank pressure trending positive. Preparing to deploy solar arrays," Musk just tweeted.

        At least two thruster pods are needed to deploy the power-generating solar arrays, which stretch 54 feet tip-to-tip.

So it's looking positive that they'll recover from this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Uh-oh - they just announced that Dragon is having problems, and there should be a press conference in about 30 min. I hope it is not major.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone else here on the Causeway for the launch?

</comment><comment><USER17> Personally, I'd rather have a Dream Chaser.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_Chaser>

<http://www.sncspace.com/ss_space_exploration.php>

<comment><USER18> Don't forget the Atlas V that goes with it! The launch base, tracking stations, engineering and ground crews. Gets a bit expensive pretty fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dragon is now in active control and out of free drift. Tweet from Musk. <http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/005/status.html>

</comment><comment><USER20> The date today is 1 Mars, 2013 (in Quebec, anyway). I tweeted this to Elon, but I guess he's pretty busy launching spacecraft. I'm so excited for this launch! The more routine these get, the better.

</comment><comment><USER21> Shucks, looks like they encountered some issue after reaching orbit.

</comment><comment><USER22> The exciting thing about all of this is the fact that this or any other private space launch won't make the front page in a few years.

</comment><comment><USER2> NASA TV just said that they will have a status update on the mission, at 11 AM Eastern time (so, ~15 minutes).

</comment><comment><USER23> Uh.... what just happened?</comment>


AboutUs is Hiring for Multiple Positions - <AUTHOR>

AboutUs (aboutus.org) is hiring for a few positions right now.
* Systems Administrator
* User Interface Designer
* User Experience Designer
For what it is worth, I found my job at AboutUs via the great "Who's Hiring?" thread here on HN.  It is a wonderful place to work.  We are a venture funded startup backed by rails, jquery, rspec, tokyo tyrant - the works.  We do about 2000 requests per minute and rank in the top 1000 websites if you ask Alexa, so your work will get plenty of attention.
See: http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs.org/Jobs
Contact: email@example.com
Feel free to contact me as well. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.aboutus.org/AboutUs.org/Jobs></comment>


Who would be willing to fly in a pilotless plane? Hardly anyone - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/who-would-be-willing-to-fly-in-a-pilotless-plane-hardly-anyone.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps reframing the question to include remote piloting for take off and landing.

Pilots are needed for small fraction of flight time, and air travel continues to boom.</comment>


Ask HN: Other news and article aggregation sources? - <AUTHOR> I have an issue.
Right now, my only sources of news and interesting information are HN and Reddit. This two party system has a lot of overlap and neither of them are unbiased.
What other sites should I check out? <comment><USER2> I've been liking Techmeme [1] recently, which presents stories with additional sources and social context from generally knowledgable people. From their about page:

> Techmeme accomplishes this [...] by linking to stories from all around the > web. Spotlighting the writings of reporters, commentators, and industry > players from across the media and industry landscape [..] sparing readers > the impossible task of monitoring an abundance of news sites, tweets, and > status updates.

[1] [https://www.techmeme.com/](https://www.techmeme.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems interesting, also very high functionality/low fluff on site.

<comment><USER3> Their 'river' is an even more minimal version, great for scanning a few times a day [https://www.techmeme.com/river](https://www.techmeme.com/river)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For financial news, I like Capital Markets News Wire and MarketWatch's News Viewer.

[http://www.cmwire.com/](http://www.cmwire.com/)

[https://www.marketwatch.com/newsviewer](https://www.marketwatch.com/newsviewer)

Click / mouseover to generate summaries.

Another trend is the Bloomberg TicToc feed. Algorithmically generated video snippets with more of a human interest bent.

[https://twitter.com/tictoc](https://twitter.com/tictoc)

I'd love to see one for all innovations and deals in the fintech space. Including crypto, digital payments. Particularly on a global scale. Lending equal time and weight to emerging markets ;)

FierceBiotech is also awesome in health / medtech

[https://www.fiercebiotech.com/](https://www.fiercebiotech.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been meaning to keep hacking on this project, but I have this site: [https://engineered.at/](https://engineered.at/) that has a ton of rss feeds fronted with an HN/Reddit style voting and commenting interface

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey this is pretty good looking!

Do keep working on it!

<comment><USER5> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/) Is pretty good

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll add this to my list!</comment></comment>


The Future of College Looks Like the Future of Retail - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/college-online-degree-blended-learning/557642/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> By retail it means online. I'm not sure that's true. Certainly in the for profit market, but there is something to be said for going to a classroom, interacting with others, and being at an academic institute. In person. It seems "online school is the future" mantra has been repeated since we got online, but we're still no where close.</comment>