Ask HN: How Should I Discuss Work Expectations with New Employer - <AUTHOR> I started a new backend software development position a little over a month ago with a small startup (just two full-time devs and a few other random code contributors).  During the interview process, I explicitly asked about work expectations and got a fairly typical answer (40-45 hrs. per week with a very rare "fire-fight" thrown in).
A month into the job, I notice the ambiguity of that statement more and more.  The deadlines I've been given are insanely unrealistic, I've been writing code almost non-stop for almost 10 hours per day over the last week or so, and it's really starting to impact other aspects of my life. We're not really doing any kind of code review or reflection on the work that we do. I'm working on a project that is badly needed to ship, and we're currently not using any software development process around it, agile or otherwise.  When I asked if we could implement more structure and discussion around these expectations, I was basically told we don't have time.
I like the company and the people, I find them quite easy to get along with.  But I'm concerned about my workload and the seemingly endless pressure to deliver so soon into my time here.
How can I frame a conversation around these concerns in a positive light with my management, without sounding like I'm complaining? <comment><USER2> You need to decide what works for you and then make that happen. Hear me out.

Small Startup with 2 devs is never going to be able to create too much structure around things. Forget agile. Client needs a fix. Forget process. We need to ship something now. So that is the nature of the beast.

BUT, you still need to set some boundaries. You can talk to your boss and say "I totally understand that my time is valuable and we don't have a lot of room at this time due to a small team, but I cannot be available after <insert your time> PM."

As an alternative, you could work out a flexible schedule if possible as well. They need you to code 10 hours a day ? Ok, then you will code for 5 hours in the morning, then not be available for a while and then be back in evening from home may be to code a bit more.

Overall, if you like the company and people, try to work it out with them because most small shops have this issue. I run one so I know exactly what you mean.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a negotiation process.

1\. Decide what you will do if they refuse to change things (the jargon for this is "Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement"). Personally I would start looking for new job if negotiation failed, but you need to decide for yourself.

2\. Figure out _why_ the long hours are happening, i.e. what the management goals and decisions are that are driving long hours.

3\. Do some prep research on why long hours are counter-productive (e.g. read [http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons](http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons)).

4\. Try to come up with alternative plan that will meet management goals while still being sane workweek. E.g. "we need product shipped, but features A and B are essential, X and Y are nice-to-have. Let's do A and B, ship, see what market says and then think about X and Y."

5\. Go talk to them about it, presenting arguments why current way of doing things is bad for _their_ goals ("long hours reduce output") and your plan is good for _their_ goals (e.g. "we can ship product on time, with the features that really matter").

(See also [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/18/productive- programme...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/18/productive-programmer/) and [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/.](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/08/25/the-01x-programmer/.))

</comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like a typical scenario

\- software developer position in 2017 = Micro-managed and treated like resource

\- no creativity, just productivity

\- small startup where you own %0.1 of the company while the CEO and CTO get %99.9

It's hard to change something that look fairly reasonable. I'd simply look for a larger organization that offers a much better work/life balance if this is what you really want.

</comment><comment><USER5> > When I asked if we could implement more structure and discussion around > these expectations, I was basically told we don't have time.

There is a subtle art to managing-up, that is managing the boss. Start the conversation by asking him how he thinks things are going. Share your concern that the team may not be using it's time effectively. Pitch the idea again to try Agile Methods as an experiment to work more efficiently. He may have limited experience or poor exposure to working in true Agile environments.

This HBR piece on Embracing Agile is a solid suggested read > [https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing-agile](https://hbr.org/2016/05/embracing- agile)

Finally, start making 6pm your COB time, just close-up. Say "Gotta run, have a good night!" And Go!

<comment><USER3> Just going home at a certain hour is a good approach, but it still leaves the problem of impossible deadlines. So it's a good thing to combine with some level of explaining to management "this isn't going to work."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reality is: these guys are early stage, and they need to do whatever it takes to ship and find their feet. They cannot afford to __work less as a team __\- it will not slow down.

So, 2 options:

IF you believe in the team _and_ the market _and_ are convinced that this is worth slogging for 2-3 years, then negotiate a better equity deal. Tell them you want all in and are willing to work your ass off, but you need more upside than just an "engineer cut". If the company hasn't raised money yet you're equivalent to a founder. Make a deal.

IF not, i.e if you don't believe in them 100% or are not in a position to work your ass off, then quit. Find a job that offers good salary and work life balance. A growth stage startup, or a large company if you're up for it...

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. For a small start-up, this seems to be the norm. I'd be very surprised to find a company if that size with "normal" working hours, unless perhaps they're already profitable and have a secure market lead.

2\. You don't actually need a lot of progress when you only have a couple of devs. Process is a compensation mechanism to deal with the complexity of large teams and / or mature products. A really great product leader on a v1 product can effectively run things with nothing more than a burndown list.

3\. Depending on where you are in your career, this may be normal. It generally takes newer devs a longer amount of time to get ramped up when starting something new.

<comment><USER3> I've worked for two startups where I was able to negotiate <40 hour workweeks. Definitely much harder to find, but there are some small companies that understand that working long hours doesn't increase output.</comment></comment>


Starship Prototype Unveiled - <AUTHOR> https://www.space.com/elon-musk-unveils-spacex-starship-2019-update.html <comment><USER3> 380s for ISP for the Raptor vacuum engine seems durn good, considering the tradeoffs between hydrogen and methane.

The most efficient engines we've flown, the RL-10 [0] (used on the Delta IV and Atlas rockets as part of the Centaur Upper Stage) and the RS-25 [1], (the Space Shuttle Main Engine) get around 450-460s for their specific impulse. These engines use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The issue with liquid hydrogen is twofold: it is not very dense, and to keep it from boiling away in liquid form, it needs to be _really_ cold. So you need huge, insulated tanks to store it. Hydrogen is everywhere, but it's kind of a pain to use as rocket fuel.

Merlin Vacuum [2], which is currently used on the Falcon vehicles gets 311s. The RD-0110 [3], used on the Soyuz gets 326s. These use RP-1, which is highly refined kerosene. It's super easy to work with. On earth. Where we have 200 years of infrastructure in place to support using hydrocarbons. It takes that infrastructure to refine it into a form that rocket engines can use without gunking up the works with unburnt carbon and other particulate crap.

Raptor uses methane, which is kind of like a jack of all trades between density, efficiency, ease of processing, storage, and ease of use in engines. This is basically how SpaceX seems to operate: rather than optimizing a single part of the system (like trying to get the most efficient engine), they try to optimize from a systems level. I don't really know much more than that, because there hasn't really been a lot of stuff for civilians to read on methane engines. This is kind of the cutting edge of the second golden age of space exploration. This freaking rules, what a time to be alive.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL10](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RL10)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine_family)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_\(rocket_engine_family\))

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0110](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-0110)

<comment><USER4> Here's a Wired article about the raptor engine - it's "a full-flow staged combustion engine, only the third engine in history to employ this technique ... The previous two attempts at such an engine, one in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and another in the US in the early 2000s, never made it beyond testing."

[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spacex-raptor-engine- starshi...](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/spacex-raptor-engine-starship)

<comment><USER5> And if you want to get a lot more detail on what makes a "full flow staged combustion engine" so special, this article from Everyday Astronaut goes into some amazing detail on this and many other engines.

[https://everydayastronaut.com/raptor- engine/](https://everydayastronaut.com/raptor-engine/)

<comment><USER6> This was AMaZING. Exactly the kind of content I want to consume on HN

<comment><USER7> This guy is amazing. Look out for his interview with Elon Musk that should be released in the next 24 hours on his YT channel [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uKrU_WqJ1R2HMTY3LIx5Q/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6uKrU_WqJ1R2HMTY3LIx5Q/videos)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am so amazed by the genius of making it out of steel. It's just so completely counter intuitive but has accelerated their progress so much.

If they told you the stats of the material, better strength at cryo tempertures meaning mass reduction, higher melting point meaning minimal heat shielding and great thermal conductivity it would be easy to imagine it was some new super composite. Then your head explodes when they tell you it's 2% the cost of what they were using before and it's so easy to work with they don't even need a factory they can just weld it in a field.

Imo Elon is starting to get into contention for greatest engineer of all time.

<comment><USER9> I know there are 1000 of them 100x smarter than me at all of this, but I have my doubts that the specs for "cold rolled" stainless will hold up after tens of re-entries, as it is effectively being tempered over and over.

<comment><USER10> From the sounds of it steel structure can basically handle much greater temperatures routinely and also even more in rare situations that might mean retiring the ship afterward but not losing everything. In his presentation Elon says that aluminum alloy or carbon fiber structure is basically done for at 300 to 400 Celsius, well that's the temperature at which stainless steel can just begin to get conditioned by heat, it doesn't structurally 'melt' until over 1000 Celsius.

Although its a curious topic, I would have no doubt that whatever temperature cycling they design parts of the structure to go through in their "rapidly reusable" regime, the effects of "heat fatigue" or whatever to call it will have been rigorously assessed .

<comment><USER11> What do you mean by Handle?

Steel won't melt at 300-400 Celsius but "handling" those temperatures for 10 minutes will change the properties of the material, possibly by a lot, so you don't need "melting" for structural collapse (Twin Towers style).

As the GP says, if you put cold rolled steel, which has an elastic yield strength of >1500 MPa, at 300-400 Celsius, then it is only a matter of time (30-120 min) till the elastic yield strength sinks to 500 MPa or less.

So either this is a single use device, or the steel isn't reaching temperatures over 250 Celsius, or the steel isn't cold rolled but is a low strength steel instead (although that would have other problems).

<comment><USER12> Re-entry will take something on the order of 10m or less. Even the space shuttle only took 30 minutes while flying like a plane. There will be no circumstances where the ship is going to be subjected to that amount of heat for 30-120 minutes.

> or the steel isn't reaching temperatures over 250 Celsius

That might be the case. The space shuttle had an aluminum structure that would fail at 175C, and now we have 40 years of technology advancements for the heat shield.

<comment><USER10> Also I notice Cr-Steel's elastic yield strength at 400C is about 87% of its strength at room temp and I don't think it does alter significantly over these timescales at that temperature. It will be interesting to see how high it can be routinely cycled without losing its temper, but it seems to certainly provide much more overhead for safety margins as well as routine operation.

[1] [https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/young-modulus- d_773.html](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/young-modulus-d_773.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I totally understand why they've gone for that design but the welded together steel plates really make me think of the sort of thing Wallace and Gromit would build.

<comment><USER13> he addressed in presentation, from what i remember it had a lot to do with cost. Like $130k/ton with carbon vs $3k/ton with steel. He mentioned a few other factors. Also it allowed them to build outside, not sure if t that is true in production.

<comment><USER14> the material isn't the question, it's why they had to weld it together in a patchwork quilt. Elon talked about the next version would simply have rolled coils with a single seam weld (although the cylinders would have to be welded together too), which would be better structurally and cosmetically, and likely lower cost of production. Sounds like they just didn't have the rolling machines to do the job, or perhaps there was an availability issue with the specific alloy.

<comment><USER15> It will reduce the length of the welds (for the hull) quite a bit.

The number of rings is roughly 35 for Starship, with about ten vertical seams each.

For easier thinking, line the vertical seams up and you see that this gives 50m length per vertical seam from bottom to top of Starship. So there are a total of 500m for that.

35 rings with ~28m circumference add up to about 1km of seams between them.

Now if they can use rolls twice as wide and only a single vertical weld each, then that's 500m between the rings and 50m for a single vertical seam. 550m of welds there instead of 1.5m before. This should speed things up quite a lot and reduce the cost of labour.

Raptor production is the real bottleneck, though.

<comment><USER16> >Raptor production is the real bottleneck, though.

They are shooting for one per day, no? Based on the differences identified in the three hanging under the Boca Chica vehicle now, it's still in development.

<comment><USER17> They just shipped he 12th one. Definitely still in the development/ramp up process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What I loved the most was the optimistic outlook, the forward looking focus and the implicit belief that any problem will be solved and we'll advance.

This is exceedingly rare in a pessimistic world drowning in the voice of Luddites and backwards-looking preservationists.

Like always, technology solving real world problems versus politicians (professional or amateurs) creating (and never really solving) self-serving perpetual issues.

<comment><USER19> I suspect that having a sense of urgency and limited resources contributed to this phenomenal pace of development, it's in stark contrast to the glacial pace of the SLS project (Boeing/Nasa) which is much better funded.

<comment><USER20> As someone else aptly remarked - NASA is no longer a space exploration agency. It's now an employment agency. Hence the glacial pace.

<comment><USER21> NASA was never a space exploration agency; in its heyday, it was a combination thinly veiled demonstration of military capacity and thinly veiled military projects agency, but most of both of those functions were superfluous by the last decade or so of the Cold War.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I suspect that Starship will fly to space before SLS ever will. I also think Starship has a significantly higher chance of flying _at all_ than SLS.

<comment><USER23> Starship could have Falcon Heavy level of delays (which I think it will) and still beat SLS.

<comment><USER24> FH was 5 years+ behind schedule before it was built and launched. Starship already has multiple constructions going on, with multiple prototypes to test and multiple full-size vehicles planned quickly.

In 2011, FH was supposed to have "arrival at launch site" by 2H 2012. It first launched in 2018 (after arriving at launch site in 2018 not 2012). The same level of delay would mean the first Starship does not reach orbit until ~2025. That seems crazy pessimistic and would be a dramatic departure from the otherwise normal delays faced by SpaceX.

I think it's extremely unlikely that Starship would face FH-level delays. That would cancel the Starlink constellation, cede the space-internet game to others, hand the torch to BO or others working on large projects, and absolutely destroy morale at SpaceX.

I just don't see it happening.

<comment><USER25> FH is "just" 3 F9 strapped together. Doing that took them more than 5 years than planned.

Keeping that in mind, having 5 year delay on brand new design, using totally different materials, new engine, etc isn't far fetched.

<comment><USER24> There is a quote somewhere (by Elon?) saying that FH is _not_ "just" 3 F9s strapped together. A significant source of the slowdown for FH was the desire to not launch it without full reusability of all 3 stages and not to launch it without significant improvements (block 5 etc).

Starship has none of those potential delays and has already solved most of the hard problems (as evidenced by the Hopper hopping already). Starship has all of the learnings and experience that FH and F9 didn't have.

There will be delays, sure. But we won't be waiting 5+ years again for a single launch. Those days are over, and SpaceX is proving it.

Some context, I haven't read this yet: [https://www.quora.com/What-makes- SpaceXs-Falcon-Heavy-more-t...](https://www.quora.com/What-makes-SpaceXs- Falcon-Heavy-more-than-just-three-Falcon-9-rockets-strapped-together)

Edit:

> Keeping that in mind, having 5 year delay on brand new design, using totally > different materials, new engine, etc isn't far fetched.

The first full size Starship prototype is _already built_ though (within ~2 years of initial announcement? Not behind schedule basically at all, so far?). IIRC for FH it was a ~5 year delay before SpaceX even starting construction on the first parts. The difference with Starship is staggering. The pace is _dramatically_ faster, the risks are reduced up-front, and the tests are planned on a much shorter timeframe.

We would frequently go 6 months to a year and hear no news at all about FH. There is news, updates and progress available to the public on an hourly or daily basis about the Starship progress. Night and day.

<comment><USER25> Hopper shows that engine works outside of test lab. That's great, but it's far far away from showing that they solved most of the hard problems.

Experience from FH and F9 is useful, but it's a totally different type of spacecraft, with different use-cases, different materials, engines, cooling, etc. There's TONS of new stuff that they have to research, experiment, fail, try again, etc, until it's doing even 50% of what Elon promised.

<comment><USER24> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. I thought Hopper was not about Raptor tests but about VTOL as well. The FH had to wait while F9 got down the vertical landing science and engineering (though a lot of tests, explosions, delays).

StarHopper seems like it can use those learnings, and that was tested recently. The engine was already functioning on a test stand and mated to Hopper for static fires; the Hopper _hop_ itself is testing the engine, sure, but also the complex math of doing a vertical landing with a gimballing engine, etc.

The general space industry considered reusabable spacecraft that land vertically to be pretty much impossible until F9 and FH did it. But Hopper just does that casually, you don't bat an eye, you don't even comment that Hopper was testing a new rocket dynamics/physics for the math that (almost) only SpaceX has figured out.

I just don't see the pessimism here. I've been watching SpaceX for 12+ years and I don't see _any_ of the same issues plaguing them today as did in the past.

New issues, but not the same ones. The new issues have dramatically smaller turnaround time to resolve.

The days of 5-year SpaceX delays are over.

<comment><USER25> > The general space industry considered reusabable spacecraft that land > vertically to be pretty much impossible until F9 and FH did it. But Hopper > just does that casually, you don't bat an eye, you don't even comment that > Hopper was testing a new rocket dynamics/physics for the math that (almost) > only SpaceX has figured out.

VTVL isn't new. To do it you need ability to throttle engine and do trust vectoring - once you have that, it's "fairly" simple math and physics.

SpaceX is first company that commercialized it, and huge props for that. No one cracked economy of it before (and it's not 100% sure that spacex did - <USER2> one saw their financials).

> New issues, but not the same ones. The new issues have dramatically smaller > turnaround time to resolve.

We'll see, but I'm extremely sceptic about it. With F9/FH SpaceX did amazing but incremental improvements to current rocket technology. Starship has tons of uncharted territories.

<comment><USER26> So that quote by the CNES director of launchers praising SpaceX for pioneering supersonic retropropulsion... he's confused and SpaceX didn't do anything new?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _NASA is still waiting for SpaceX to complete the Crew Dragon spacecraft that will fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The space agency has picked SpaceX (and another company, Boeing) to provide commercial crew flights to the station._

 _While SpaceX did launch an unpiloted Crew Dragon test flight to the space station this year, a subsequent abort system test failed, leading to the destruction of the vehicle. SpaceX aims to resume abort system tests later this year ahead of the first crewed test flight._

 _NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, it seems, is not happy with the years- long delays of Crew Dragon, as well as Boeing 's Starliner spacecraft, especially after seeing SpaceX build Starship Mk1 this year ahead of its own test flight._

 _" I am looking forward to the SpaceX announcement tomorrow," Bridenstine wrote on Twitter Friday. "In the meantime, Commercial Crew is years behind schedule. NASA expects to see the same level of enthusiasm focused on the investments of the taxpayer. It's time to deliver."_

Interesting.

<comment><USER28> Here's Elons response given in a CNN interview yesterday: [https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/29/business/elon-musk- spacex...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/29/business/elon-musk-spacex-mars- starship-cost/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would love to know what the "Day-in-the-life" of a welder working on those ships would be. Did they train specifically for aerospace welding? How did they land that specific gig. Must be so inspiring to wake up and work on that.

<comment><USER30> I'd love to know the hiring process. There must be many people applying for these positions and I doubt that whiteboard welding is a thing. Or is it? :)

<comment><USER31> AFAIK it's uncommon skill, you need the steady hands of a surgeon to have a chance. Definitely not work I could do, I know that.

<comment> 52-6F-62 My dad did this kind of work in the oil industry for 30+ years as a pipe fitter. His specialty was stainless and they had to be x-ray perfect welds. He recently retired but was always very proud of his work. It took me a long time to understand why.

I wish he could have gotten into the space industry vs oil refineries. The latter is much harder on a person.

<comment><USER29> Was he prudent in maintaining good work habits? I hear the industry can be quite hard on people if they are not careful in how they work[1]

[1] [https://www.thefabricator.com/article/safety/the- invisible-r...](https://www.thefabricator.com/article/safety/the-invisible- risks-of-welding)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Ahaha absolutely. He's as square and as prudent as it gets. I mean to an extreme. My siblings have always laughed at him for it [outside of the workplace and in everyday matters where he carries those habits on].

It's hard on people regardless. And the oil industry is not known for being prudent in looking after their workers' health.

They got real pissed when he filed a workers compensation claim for a hearing aid before he retired. Thankfully he had support from his union.

And the number of stories he's told me where he was nearly killed...

I've no sympathy for the industry.

<comment><USER32> I've no sympathy for the industry.

 _puts sunglasses on_

Yeaaaahh!!!!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> 1950s Science Fiction illustrators are feeling so vindicated right now.

<comment><USER34> That was my very first thought, seeing that image: Ray Bradbury would be absolutely beaming to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The SpaceX/Musk presentation video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY)

</comment><comment><USER36> For me the biggest "wow" (and there were a lot of those) was the capacity comparison:

Currently the entire world has a launch capacity of 200-300 tons into LEO per year.

With just ten starship/booster combos, that will change to a max capacity of over a _million_ tons into LEO per year.

A factor of over a thousand. The entire current capacity (including the Falcons) at less than 0.1% of the new capacity, a mere footnote. Not even a footnote, really. And apparently they're cheap(er) to build as well. Complete game changer. And game over for everybody else in the launch business.

 _Wow_

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm surprised to hear Musk tone. He's not that friendly usually. Maybe it's because Tesla is a different business and its struggle got to him. Maybe it's because his inner child dreamt of this ship for decades..

<comment><USER38> I think it's been a good week for him. The Starship of course, but on the Tesla front they are coming up on the end of a quarter with record deliveries, shipping Smart Summon which might let them finally add the FSD revenue to the Tesla reports, etc.

<comment><USER37> In his starship talk he recalled how spacex was one failure away from bankruptcy. Crazy to imagine if spacex folded before even vertical landers..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've had to dismiss 3 popups after opening the article on mobile. This is ridiculous.

<comment><USER40> If you have ublock origin, it redirects you to a "please disable adblocking" page. Blocking scripts prevents the redirect.

<comment><USER41> Why is spacex trying to show you ads?

<comment><USER7> The submission is of a space.com article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> That was a very dense an informative presentation last night, but I think the main take away is that rapid reusability is a game changer. In fact, game- changer is probably an understatement, basically every intuition and rule-of- thumb we have about space launches and travel will have to be rethought. And this will be true even of SpaceX falls well short of meeting their stated targets (2020 orbit, 150t capability, multiple refights per day, etc.

Musk stated (I think he just did some mental napkin math at one point) that if they meet their goals, the world's launch capacity will be expanded by two orders of magnitude. How often does any new development in any field bring about two orders of extra capacity? How does this incredible capacity change how you use this thing?

First consider prices. A launch would cost fuel + support operations + amortized cost of rocket. The last two will tend towards zero as they can be increasingly automated and will be a small fixed cost. IIRC, fuel costs roughly $60-100 per kilo to LEO, a 100kg person with 100kg of supplies and life-support equipment can reasonably expect to get to LEO for $20000 in fuel costs. Ok, so you need to "rent" the rocket (you want to stay there at least a few days), pay operations, SpaceX margin, R&D etc. Even then, imagine weekend LEO launches for $50,000 in the late 2020s. That's astounding. Given millenials' propensity for "experiences", they're going to have hoards of people buying this.

But what about risk? They've been trying to launch Crew Dragon for many years and still haven't. Well, with expandable rockets, you have to establish a safety record, it takes multiple flights, it's extremely expensive, you need a new rocket for each one. With fully reusable rockets, you can literally establish a safety record for an _individual rocket_ within a matter of weeks, not years. Even launching once every three days (ie, far from their daily targets), it would take only a year to do more launches than Falcon or Arienne 5 have made in decades. Also, people are far more willing to take risks than organizations like NASA. Consider a thought experiment: SpaceX does 100 launches of Starship and establishes a safety record of 99% (1 blew up). They then start selling tickets, will people still buy, fully signing away any liability? Yes, you'll still have hoards of people lining up for a chance.

Finally, this is going to change science as well. Today, sending a 1 ton rover to the surface of Mars is a Really Big Deal. Hence, probes are made very carefully, very expensively and very very slowly. Not just design and build (it takes a decade), but operations as well (Curiosity traveled only 20km in the last 8 years). Everything is essentially super-low bandwidth. But once you know you can get a cheap ride to Mars (of anywhere else) any time, you don't have to go to such extremes. You can easily send more rovers, more radio relays, they can travel further, experiment more, take more risks and if you lose one, it's just not a big deal anymore!

<comment><USER43> SpaceX is completely changing the opportunities of getting to space. The reduction in price has been nuts.

According to NASA the space shuttle was ~$450 million per launch, or $16,364 per kg to LEO. The Delta 4 Heavy is $12,156 per kg. For some launches it's even higher- the Air Force paid $15,109 per kg for four launches.

The Falcon 9 is $62 million, or $2,719 per kg to LEO. The Falcon Heavy is $2,351 per kg when expendable or $1,411 when reused.

The BFR is supposed to have 2.5x the payload for 8% of the cost: $46 per kilogram. Even fully expendable it's $2,233 per kg. That's INSANE. It's space elevator money:

> For a space elevator, the cost varies according to the design. Bradley C. > Edwards received funding from NIAC from 2001 to 2003 to write a paper, > describing a space elevator design. In it he stated that: "The first space > elevator would reduce lift costs immediately to $100 per pound" > ($220/kg).[1]

If the BFR actually becomes reality it turns a journey to orbit into an airplane ride. A $10,000 airplane ride that will shake your fillings loose, but make no mistake: that completely changes everything about space. It makes putting satellites in orbit around Jupiter as hard as visiting the north pole. Fucking TV hosts will be able to go for a quick jaunt around the moon.

If the BFR happens, we'll have a mars base just because it would be so cheap it's a no-brainer. Building a new ISS would be about as hard as building a new Sealab.

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

<comment><USER44> It's the dawn of the true space age.

And though Musk isn't a fan, this could even make solar power satellites economical. The monolithic designs from the 1970s would be absurdly expensive, but modern designs like SPS-Alpha get economies of scale by using lots of small identical parts that self-assemble in orbit. According to the book _The Case for Space Solar Power_ , a 2GW satellite would deliver electricity at 15 cents/kWh at pre-SpaceX launch costs. I plugged BFR's $50/kg into its cost breakdown and got 4 cents/kWh, which is pretty good for zero-carbon baseload. Ground solar is cheaper by itself, but probably not after including storage.

The basic idea is geosynchronous orbit, microwave power transmission with a phased array device that requires a reference signal from the target location, and a wire mesh collector several miles wide. Over 24 hours, a solar panel in geosynch collects 5.4 times as much light as one on Earth. At the time the book was written, the power transmission had been tested over a couple dozen miles, and was 40% efficient.

Longer-term, if we collect fuel from the moon to go from LEO to GEO, we could make it even cheaper.

<comment><USER45> Aren't there some pretty serious health and ecological problems with such large-scale microwave transmission?

<comment><USER44> Not really. Even at the intended target, it's diffuse enough not to raise body temperature much. Birds could fly through without harm. Under the antenna, there'd be very little microwaves leaking through. Aim anywhere without a homing signal and you lose the coherent beam, making it much more diffuse.

<comment><USER46> iirc, Novar Conrols/Novar Electronics out of Barberton Ohio (at the time) was testing the phased arrays using bees and their hives and what ever else got in the area. Oh, yeah, and apparently some of the engineers and the boss.

(I used to work in a lab there next to some of the equipment and one day I asked my good friend about it - he had been there for decades.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Some quotes from Elon Musk in the presentation:

"If the schedule is long it's wrong, if it's tight its right."

"The best part is no part."

"The best process is no process."

This really is different compared to how the space industry has done things in the past.

<comment><USER48> In an interview Musk said there is this strange rule that no matter what you make the schedule, it takes twice as long, so what makes the most sense is to just set it unreasonably short, and then it will take longer, but be as fast as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'd be interested to learn if advances in digital computing/controlling potentially solve most of the problems that were seemingly unsolvable in the Soviet era N1 rocket failures.

I'm assuming the inability to control and harmonise 30 rocket engines on the N1 first stage for pitch/yaw contributed significantly to the N1 failures and cancellation.

Will digital computing/control advances control for that and the 42 rocket engines on the SpaceX starships 1st stage?

Or are there other major engineering problems(such as aeronautical/mechanical) to solve as well?

<comment><USER50> Falcon Heavy managed 27 rocket engines just fine, so the N1 problems has been solved. In fact I don't think multiple rocket engines ever was a problem with the N1. Its problems were quite different.

SpaceX is able to shut down failing engines quickly, as has been demonstrated so multiple engines don't present added risk.

Vibrations from multiple engines is something they are able to model much easier with computer simulations today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm slightly reminded of Sea Dragon[1]. That is, using fairly standard steal construction has the possibility to decrease costs even if it increases the net weight of the vehicle simply because it's so much easier to work with and cheaper than minimum weight high tech alloys. Also, because both are quite big though Elon's ship isn't as huge as Sea Dragon was proposed as being.

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

</comment><comment><USER52> I just want to point out that SpaceX has not yet successfully put a human in LEO. The moon seems well beyond their technical capabilites at the moment and Mars seems like a fools dream at this point in time.

<comment><USER53> Getting anything, including humans, to LEO is the hard part though. Once they have brought crew to the ISS and have demonstrated a spaceship flying to the moon, landing and returning to earth they will have solved most of the challenges of bringing humans to the moon. And they make good progress on both fronts.

<comment><USER52> I disagree. Going to LEO vs going to the moon vs going to Mars each pose a unique set of challenges. Manned flights to the moon for instance is many times harder to achieve than putting someone in LEO. U.S, China and Russia have all achieved manned flights to LEO for decades whereas only the U.S was successfully able to put someone on the moon.

<comment><USER53> >only the U.S was successfully able to put someone on the moon

But is that because it's hard to put people on the moon or because only one country tried? (Sure, the USSR tried too, but they stopped trying before succeeding to put a large enough rocket into LEO).

There is a very unique challenge in landing on the moon, and most moon landings still fail. But that can be perfected with unmanned landings, and Space X has the unique advantage of having plenty of experience with powered landings, and not requiring a separate lander.

<comment><USER54> As you say yourself, the USSR did try and failed. The N1 failed in all four launch attempts, including destroying the launch complex. They even orbited two prototypes of their lander design. I think that counts as trying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It is going to be interesting to see what happens to SLS once SS/SH starts flying. I am guessing there is going to be big public campaign for NASA to cancel SLS and go with the SpaceX craft.

<comment><USER55> Yeah, I've been wondering about this too. In my opinion, it's been apparent for some time now that newer commercial launch providers are going to render SLS obsolete too early in its lifecycle for it to be worth the ongoing costs of continuing to develop it.

You might even argue that it's already obsolete, as despite it still potentially being the most capable rocket for some subset of missions, the per-launch costs are so high it might arguably be better to re-architect those missions to use multiple launches of a cheaper vehicle rather than launch on SLS. (You can launch _10_ reusable Falcon Heavys for the cost of a _single_ SLS launch.)

NASA/Congress has been stubbornly continuing to develop SLS despite that, but how much longer will they be able to hold out? Surely they won't be able to justify continued spending on SLS once there's another operational rocket that's both more capable in every respect, _and_ a couple orders of magnitude cheaper to operate?

So at what point will they finally give up? Are they going to wait until after Starship hops? Until after it reaches orbit? Until after it achieves in-orbit refueling? Until after it lands on the Moon? Until after it lands on the moon, with crew? When?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Is there a better site with fewer ads?

<comment><USER57> Teslarati might be slightly better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> How do they plan to get 100 tons of cargo from atop the starship down to the surface of Mars? Do you use a crane? I mean, cranes are heavy, right?

<comment><USER59> I think you're getting downvoted because of your flippant tone, but I am also curious how the cargo would get on/off the ship.

<comment><USER60> Pop open a hatch, crank out your jib crane [1], use a long steel cable to lower loads down. Pay attention to weight distribution inside starship to ensure it doesn't tip over.

[1] like this old-fashioned warehouse [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl_gdansk_zuraw_dlugiepob...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pl_gdansk_zuraw_dlugiepobrzeze2006.jpg) or the more modern style [https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/category/Jib- Cranes/Cran...](https://www.acklandsgrainger.com/en/category/Jib- Cranes/Cranes-and-Festoon-Equipment/c/10826)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you've followed the progress of Starship closely over the last months (and its progress has been stunning), you didn't hear much new stuff at the presentation. We heard there will be Starship Mk 1 through 4 before we see manned flights. I wonder what their test payloads are going to be when they go for orbit.

</comment><comment><USER61> > This is the rocket that will launch ... a handful of artists on a trip > around the moon in the 2020s.

... and so programmed to crash just like Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B?

</comment><comment><USER62> Truly this is faith in humanity boosting stuff. Great news

</comment><comment><USER63> And US mil. will get a super cheap way to deploy kinetic bombardment system with cost per rod on par with cruise missile.

</comment><comment><USER64> 'Tis a fine water tower or grain silo, but sure it is no starship, Boerish.

</comment><comment><USER65> Does it have Internet connectivity?

</comment><comment><USER66> One of the worst GDPR blocks I've encountered in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER67> Eventually the shell will be a single large roll of steel that is unrolled, bent into a tube with a seam going hotdog that is welded. It will be very strong, lighter than the current patchwork, and extremely beautiful. More similar to the renderings. Can't wait.

<comment><USER43> Definitely not hotdog (assuming that's from stem to stern). Musk wasn't totally clear when describing it, but he said mk3 would be in three months. The circumference of starship is 28.26 meters. For a single weld the entire length of the ship, the roll itself would need to be that wide.

The largest rolling mills in the world are ~4 meters wide[1]. They require backup rollers[2], ie rollers that push down the rollers that push down the rollers that push down the metal. Bending deflection increases with width^2. A 28 meter wide rolling mill does not exist AFAIK and cannot be built in three months.

[1]: [https://www.aleris.com/company/rolled- products/](https://www.aleris.com/company/rolled-products/)

[2]: [http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/metallurgy/types-of- rollin...](http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/metallurgy/types-of-rolling- mills-metallurgy/95337)

<comment><USER67> Wow what an incredibly substantive comment. I remember pretty clearly he said that there would be a single seam weld. Maybe I'm remembering wrong. Or maybe they'll seam weld multiple rolls into a really wide roll and the only weld required to turn the final roll into the shell is that final hotdog weld.

<comment><USER68> I think the idea's to go like a Pringles can, with a spiraling single seam.

<comment><USER43> _maybe_ , but that's also pretty unlikely. For reference here's where musk talks about it: [https://youtu.be/sOpMrVnjYeY?t=3156](https://youtu.be/sOpMrVnjYeY?t=3156)

No real indication he means a spiral.

There are a _lot_ of problems with a spiral. Thin sheets of steel, even hot rolled, are very affected by the rolling process. There's also the weld line going up in a spiral. That will cause uneven heat diffusion and expansion, which is a recipe for disaster given that the skin will be cold enough to liquify helium on one side and boiling hot on the other. Then red hot during reentry. Straight lines don't have the same problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nokia's price for exclusivity - <AUTHOR> http://www.asymco.com/2012/10/22/nokias-price-for-exclusivity/ <comment><USER2> It always surprised me that Nokia made such a public announcement that they would be killing an existing product line that was selling fairly well (at a solid profit from what I understand).

While switching from Symbian to WP7 may have been a good idea, to publicly announce that you're dumping the platform of your best selling phones seems like a pretty big blunder.

Yahoo's approach seems better to me. I'm sure that Marissa has a game plan for products that they'll EOL and directions that'll change but they're keeping it close the vest to not shake things up publicly too much.

<comment><USER3> I agree this will be studied like the Osborne Executive gets studied in business schools. I've seen these sorts of transitions managed in different ways, they all have their risks. Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful), Apple II to Macintosh (successful), Emulex Storage to Networking (not successful), IBM Mainframes to software consulting (successful). It is a tricky tricky thing to do, to take your company's most profitable product and build a replacement inside its market internally.

<comment><USER4> _Commodore-64 to Commodore Amiga (unsuccessful)_

Except every kid I knew when I grew up swapped their Commodore 64 (which they had) for an Amiga 500. The Amiga was widely successful and ahead of everything else at the time, at least within the consumer price-point.

What killed Commodore was that they got complacent, lazy and slept on their laurels.

When the PC finally overtook the Amiga (much like Nokia, RIM being overtaken now, etc) it took too much time until they realized what was happening, and when they did, it was too late. They had no products to offer which could match the competition, and slowly, but surely they went into bankruptcy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Page seems to be down. Anyone have a mirror?

<comment><USER6> The best mirror I could find (nyud.net and Google let me down): [http://substancedigital.com/2012/10/21/nokias-price-for- excl...](http://substancedigital.com/2012/10/21/nokias-price-for-exclusivity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this is also why providers can price the Lumia 920 so aggressively at $149 with a 2 year contract (iPhone and the Galaxy III are both $199 at the least). I'm curious what price point they can buy the phones at...

<comment><USER8> See now this is an example of how US cell phone consumers have been successfully brainwashed. A $50 difference on the subsidized cost of a handset is not "aggressive" discounting; it's inconsequential.

Chances are you'll be paying $60-100/month for 24 months when you take out any smartphone service (or less if you go with T-Mobile or Sprint). Assuming $80 that's:

        $199 + 24 * $80 = $2119

vs

        $149 + 24 * $80 = $2069

which is less than a 3% discount. Now the service obviously costs something and you may not have it for 24 months (which probably means you're paying an ETF anyway) but that should definitely be how the consumer looks at it: would you rather pay $2119 for an iPhone and service or $2069 for a Lumia and service?

Even worse, I see people who will pay $2119 for the iPhone 5 and $2019 for the iPhone 4. It makes no sense.

Here's another way of looking at it: that $199 iPhone 5 costs ~$650 unsubsidized. Your ETF is (IIRC) $350 (-$10/month on the contract). If you terminate immediately you've paid $200 + $350 + probably $80 so basically full price anyway. If you do so after a year you pay $200 + $230 + whatever you've spent on service. $430 from $650 means they've discounted the phone $220 for you but you've also spent $960 on service.

To compare: when I got my iPhone 4 in Australia the 64G model was A$1000 at the time (the exchange rate was at the time a lot worse than it is now). Also, that includes tax (10% GST). Instead I bought the phone on a Telstra Business 24 month contract which was $50/month and $299 for the phone with a $100 store voucher (from JB Hifi), so $199 + $50 * 24 = $1399 - $1000 retail cost means I really only paid $400 for 2 years of service or alternatively the phone was discounted $800. Either way _that_ is "aggressive" discounting.

Seriously, cell phones are an utter ripoff in the US. It still astounds me how expensive it is.

Oh and in the US you pay to receive calls. Not true in Australia and most of Europe that I'm aware of (certainly not the UK, Germany or Switzerland).

<comment><USER9> You are absolutely correct about everything. Two additional points:

1\. While the brainwashing is there, and is very effective, the major carriers (AT&T, Verizon) will make you pay the same monthly charge whether you bought a "subsidized" phone from them or not. So instead of subsidized phone vs. unsubsidized phone (the way you have it in most of the world), what you have in the US is sucker-with-a-lower-price-tag ($200), vs. sucker-with-a-higher- price-tag (e.g. $650 if bought from Apple) - your service cost will be the same (with the exception that if you brought your own phone, you won't pay an ETF if you leave early).

2\. Yes, it is exclusively in the US that you pay for incoming - and that's for historical reasons. Unlike essentially everywhere else, there is no special area code for mobile, so you can't tell if you're calling a mobile phone, so -- back in the days when calls to mobile cost more everywhere -- there was no other way to handle this. But the US public has gotten used to it, so no company is thinking of changing that - people here think its normal to pay for a received text message (SMS) as well...

Mobile phone service in the US is a ripoff, but it will not change because the public is not aware that is the case, and congress is bought and paid for.

<comment><USER10> I could never work out why people in the US were so resistant to buying their phones from a 3rd party.

Are you saying that carriers don't offer any 'SIM-only' packages? i.e. You can't ask for a contract without a free phone?

If so - is there a workaround? If I went for a package with the cheapest possible dumb-phone, how much would I save?

For comparison I'm on a $28/month package with Virgin that I can cancel at any time (1 months notice) and has unlimited data and SMS. No phone included. This is a particularly good deal but even before this there were similar deals but with a data cap.

<comment><USER9> > Are you saying that carriers don't offer any 'SIM-only' packages? i.e. You > can't ask for a contract without a free phone?

You can; but at AT&T and Verizon, it's not cheaper than if you do get a phone, so everyone gets a phone. And for quite a few people, T-Mobile and Sprint are unacceptable (coverage, technology).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Asymco.com site seems to have had a hiccup. Text, but no charts, at the Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m1lNim-...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m1lNim- lyJsJ:www.asymco.com/2012/10/22/nokias-price-for- exclusivity/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a)

</comment><comment><USER12> Er... this is now giving a 404?</comment>


Saudi Arabia's Great Run Seems Headed for Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-04/saudis-faces-cheap-oil-social-liberalization-climate-change <comment><USER2> The birthrate dropping is a good thing. This happens to countries that are seeing rising levels in education and security. The Saudi's are not poor or uneducated; great.

It does create a big baby boom problem. They have a big generation that is going to grow old relatively healthy (unlike earlier generations) and wealthy. They are going to be dependent on a new generation that is much smaller and currently struggling with unemployment. So, the good news is that there should be plenty to do for these people when their parents retire. The bad news of course is that at point the saudi's will have some economic issues of having to produce more with less people, while facing issues with their oil revenue dropping.

Other issues that are affecting them are the fact that their cities are becoming inhabitable due to rising temperatures. Regular temperatures above 50 degrees are not very sustainable. They are apparently already planning to create some new cities to address this.

The political situation is of course the big topic. The royal family's power is rooted in oil money. As that dries up, the geo-political landscape in the region will start shifting. There's no shortage of countries in the region with similar issues and competing agendas to address their issues. E.g. Iran and Saudi Arabia is a war waiting to happen. The proxy wars have been going on for decades with the US and Europe having played no small role in the history of both countries. Weapon exports to the Saudi's and other countries in the region are substantial.

<comment><USER3> > They are apparently already planning to create some new cities to address > this.

Unless they plan to build them somewhere else, I doubt that'll help. Large swathes of the middle east will become completely uninhabitable, quite possibly during our lifetime.

<comment><USER4> They're planning on building dome cities.

[https://www.popsci.com/united-arab-emirates-mars-city- pictur...](https://www.popsci.com/united-arab-emirates-mars-city-pictures)

<comment><USER3> The article says it's a pilot project for Mars habitats. Though let's assume they were to convert this project to actual domed cities in SA; with a population of 30+ millions I'm pretty sure the majority of people would be left outside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, if we take a look at Venezuela's situation, in which a system that worked well enough when oil was >$100/barrel becomes disastrous after the price drops, and we apply that scenario to Saudi Arabia, it looks pretty frightening. SA is far more central to world society (e.g. its role in the world religion of Islam, its role in OPEC) than Venezuela.

Perhaps the world should have done more to help Venezuela, but we at least had the option of ignoring it (or worse). When (not if) SA goes the way of Venezuela, it will be a far messier situation for the rest of us, and I don't think we are even thinking about it, much less preparing.

<comment><USER6> Many Muslims, particularly those outside the Gulf, are looking towards KSA less for religious guidance. Islamic scholars that are allowed to operate by KSA have been shown time and again to be hypocritical and have little to no dignity. Their judgements and positions change with the whims of the king and crown prince, which lends little to their credibility. The remaining scholars that decide to stick to their principles end up in prison.

For me personally, the only unique thing that KSA has that you can't find elsewhere is Mecca.

<comment><USER7> This is true. The general public the world over is realizing that the Saudi scholars are "regulated" by the Saudi government...ergo the foreign powers that keep the ruling family propped up.

They have zero credibility. Mecca and Medina are an exception to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In last 10-15 years, I have seen countless such articles about Saudi Arabia's troubled horizon. The Country has very deep connection with rest of Muslim World - they can hold 'brotherly' Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Egypt hooked on to Oil and Petroleum and can rely on these 'brotherly' countries to get access to their agricultural lands and can create massive 'alliances' with rest of Muslim World at their whim (case in point: Saudi-created and Saudi-led grand military alliance with Muslim Countries).

While I support Humanity's move away from fossil fuels, let's not kid ourselves -- Muslim World (which represents 2+ billion people) as well as China and India are in no rush to give up Fossil fuels. What we see now (drop in oil prices, oversupply) may get corrected over time as the poorer Muslim Nations like Pakistan and Central Africa region stabilizes and industrializes thus softening the blow from any dip in business with West.

As for social development across Saudi Arabia -- this is nothing new. Back in 1960s/1970s, Saudi Government had a modernizing phase where they bought Television and media to the masses. Universities were opened and Education was encouraged. Ever since then, Saudi men AND women have been sent to West and other places for their studies. This modernizing phase is just part 2.

You have to understand something about Saudis, Emiratis, Kuwaitis, Qataris, etc. Average citizen in these Countries may have good amounts of wealth and may get exposed to secular culture, however, at heart, their population is very much conservative and strong supports their Royal Family. Case in Point UAE: Flush with Wealth and relatively liberal -- but local population still appears conservative and prefers to live in their own social circles.

This (GCC) region is part of World where up until the Grand/great-Grand parents of current generation lived in desperate poverty since beginning of time and the society still remembers those harsh times very, very clearly -- given those circumstances and where they are now (almost First world type of living standards), any population of Human beings would be, very, very satisfied by their leadership.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't a meaningful study of Saudi Arabia include the house of Saud?

Anecdotals suggest the House of Saud itself has exploded in size.

Supposedly at a rate far greater that House of Saud's revenue streams.

Petrodollar recycling programs often in the form of western arms contracts are a way for the House of Saud and insiders to "clip the ticket" on big dollar contracts.

The multidecade Al Yamamah contract worth tens of billions with UK defence industry saw a corruption investigation stopped as a "matter of nationa, security" due to Saudi pressure.

In commerce, financial reporting often includes "same store sales" for retail and restaurants.

I wonder if "average Saudi Prince kickback/revenue generated" would be a valid metric?

I suspect kickback revenue per member of the House of Saud has been in the decline.

</comment><comment><USER10> It talks about youth unemployment, but also says the birthrate has crashed from 6 children/woman to 2.

Surely 1 would solve the other?

Edit: So according to wikipedia, these are the age distributions:

0-14 years: 25.74%

15-24 years: 15.58%

25-54 years: 49.88%

55-64 years: 5.48%

65 years and over: 3.32%

This suggests to me about the right amount of young adults, not too many, with potential issues in 10ish years time.

Note that "upto 37%" of the population are immigrants, I assume they disproportionately fall into the 25-54 age range, and that that immigration could be controlled to some extent if needed.

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

<comment><USER11> 0-14 years: 14.39% (male 724,904 /female 671,524)

15-24 years: 7.64% (male 408,376 /female 332,986)

25-54 years: 70.45% (male 5,297,201 /female 1,537,300)

55-64 years: 6.05% (male 499,579 /female 87,037)

65 years and over: 1.47% (male 106,739 /female 35,669) (2018 est.)

[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/attachments/images/large/AE_popgraph.bmp?1538604982)

Source: [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/ae.html)

<comment><USER12> How did their Male/Female ratio get so far out of whack? Especially in the 25+ range!

<comment><USER13> migrant labour

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Forgive the naivety, but after a certain point doesn't cash just make more cash, and didn't the Saudis hit that a long time ago?

I figured they got rich on oil, but could now stay rich through investment.

<comment><USER15> Your thinking of Norway's approach where the state uses oil to reinvest and pay for future generations.

Saudi is trying to do this by spinning off part of Aramco in to public ownership and by stealing wealth from top officials. realistically they should have started 30 years ago.

<comment><USER16> Or their investment in SoftBank.

It's got to be pretty weird to work for or in a WeWork and know what sort of regime you are sustaining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Fertility dropped from 3.8 kids to less than 2 in 10 years, or am I reading the chart wrong? Did they put a gov official in each bedroom to lower birthrate or what?

Birthrate of 4-6 is unsustainable (unless, maybe, they're Canada with all that land and resources) but above 2 is needed. Someone needs to work in 25 years and pay social security so old people get theirs.

Looks like stormy seas ahead. They can open the spigot for a while but unless the tank keeps refilling (oil prices might not cooperate) it will run dry.

<comment><USER18> The earlier we stop the crap about "we _have_ to be above replacement rates" (because of outdated pension models) the better

<comment><USER19> You could argue replacement rates are not just about pensions, but continuing your society and culture with people that look like you.

<comment><USER20> What a vain and outdated way of thinking.

<comment><USER17> Vain might be called wanting to have your own kids too, but I disagree

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know the fiscal breakeven here?

Aka the price of oil at which the Saudi sovereign is cash flow positive?

</comment><comment><USER22> This article gets a critical point wrong. The absolute worst thing that could happen to Saudi Arabia is that they continue to have a high birth and population expansion rate.

The source of their biggest threat in regards to social unrest, is that they can't afford to placate their massive population expansion since ~1980. Their population has tripled since roughly 1982 and they have no traditional economy to support that what-so-ever, it's all oil dependent. The worst thing that could happen is that you double that population again rapidly, against a relatively static output of oil and while having still not developed a traditional economy to support the new population.

It's a pretty simple equation. N oil production divided between Z population. Every year that goes by that their population increases and their oil production doesn't keep up, that oil money gets thinner per capita. Boosting the population doesn't boost their economy much (such that doing so enables them to better provide for an aging population), as they have practically no conventional economy.

That's fundamentally why their budget requirement for the price of oil just keeps going up. It's at least ~$80 per barrel now that they need to balance the budget [1], so it's nearing a state of becoming permanently impossible to fulfill their budget demands. Soon it'll be $90, then $100.

They've increased their population by 1/4 in roughly the past decade. That's far too fast of a population expansion rate based on the structure of their economy. What they actually need is population contraction, desperately.

That oil economy is now trapped in hell with US shale production always acting as a price & supply counter that makes it impossible for Saudi to gain ground. The EIA output estimate for the US for 2018 as recently as three years ago was roughly two million barrels per day of production lower than what it actually turned out to be. In one form or another, that's largely coming out of the pocket of OPEC+ (OPEC + Russia). US shale supply will never stop pressing against the price & supply of oil and the US is rapidly ramping up its export capabilities. If the Saudis cut to firm prices, US supply takes it up and takes their price gains away (which may take months or years to fill out depending on the macro situation).

Saudi will expand their population by another 12-15% in the next decade, against this disastrous economic scenario. The outcome is obvious, they won't be able to placate the burgeoning population and over time it'll rip the kingdom apart.

If you cut their population in half right now, they'd struggle to build a traditional economy big enough to put under it in time before there's an oil crisis in the kingdom. As it is, they appear doomed to an inevitable civil war or revolt of some sort.

[1] [https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest- ne...](https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest- news/oil/121818-saudi-arabia-needs-84-b-oil-price-to-balance-2019-budget- analysts-warn)

<comment><USER23> You are right in that the article doesn't discuss what is going on with not just U.S. shale oil but also how U.S. oil can be sold on the global market rather than be exclusively for the domestic market as used to be the case.

For Saudi Arabia the deal with America is that the House of Saud get to stay in power in exchange for the oil, it is that simple. If there is this 'uprising' that you speak of then it will be Uncle Sam's job to put it down.

The original deal goes back to the time when Britain was supposed to have Iran and the U.S was supposed to have Saudi Arabia. On the back of this deal the Saudi 'Royal Family' have built some myth of entitlement to the throne and being a proper 'royal family'. It is an illusion, there is no legitimacy there. So long as they wear the 'traditional' outfits and keep the 'traditional' laws nobody is going to see that the emperor has no clothes.

I don't get the impression that there is any type of organisation against this so-called 'royal family' with a class of people clued up as to how to live in a non-feudal society. They are far from socialist, mere serfs in an offshoot of empire, relatively rich because that is where the oil comes from. They never had industrial capitalism, they went straight from sand and a bit of tourism revenue to the monster of finance capitalism, trickledown economics and everything that the IMF demands. Because of the oil they do get a few empty gifts from the system such as cheap petrol.

For decades those dollars have flowed back to the West in arms sales. To an extent this clawing back of the money has also happened with luxury goods too. So the serf-grade workers of Saudi Arabia are doubly screwed, when this imaginary 'uprising' happens and they impose a government that 'shares the wealth' they will find it has all been spent on underground aircraft hangars and bits of paper that are allegedly investments in the Western stock market.

My favourite fact regarding oil is how it all went wrong in the 1970's with the oil crisis. What only a careful reading of the Wikipedia article tells you is that the US increased grain prices 300% to pay for Vietnam. This was bad news for the OPEC countries, places like Iran had kind of got used to affordable wheat. This wheat had kind of covered the U.S. balance of payments for oil imports before Vietnam, so it had been a happy arrangement. Our history tells the 1970's oil crisis very differently, forgetting the wheat price hikes.

As the article states the government can make quite a few concessions, e.g. women driving, allowing people to go to the theatre, that sort of thing. They can buy off those that might resent how things are going by these concessions yet still keep a tight grip on the deal which is essentially oil for arms and food.

<comment><USER22> > For Saudi Arabia the deal with America is that the House of Saud get to stay > in power in exchange for the oil, it is that simple. If there is this > 'uprising' that you speak of then it will be Uncle Sam's job to put it down.

That certainly used to be the deal. The US no longer has any need of OPEC oil. The US got 3.3 million barrels per day from OPEC in 2017, down from 4.2m in 2012. I haven't seen the last two months of data for 2018, but I believe that fell below 3m per day for 2018. That will drop by another million barrels per day over the next few years.

US oil production is estimated to climb to 16-18 million barrels per day over the next eight to ten years give or take. OPEC now stands in the way of the US maximizing its oil position and the value of its enormous production.

The US will benefit from destroying Saudi Arabia at some point. US global hegemony (courtesy of energy production) is increased if you permanently decimate Saudi Arabian oil production. All the countries that need Saudi Arabia's oil, including China, will find themselves into an economically compromised position and require US oil to fill the demand.

Between now and the switch to all-electric vehicles globally (20-30 years), the US is _economically_ best served to deplete as much of its oil as possible.

If you're a nefarious US looking to increase your power, the only question would be the ideal time to pull the trigger and collapse them. You boost US production from 12m barrels per day, to 18m, and slash Saudi down by six plus million by turning their country into a war zone.

18m barrels per day times $85 oil = $1.53 trillion

Versus today's 12m barrels per day at $50 oil = $600 billion

Over ten years, that value gap is reasonably $8 to $10 trillion. How much are Exxon and Chevron (2 of the 3 largest holders of acreage in the Permian) worth under that 18m * $85 scenario?

Or push it a notch further: 2029, 20m barrels per day at $100 oil (equivalent to maybe ~$60 in 2004, a tolerable inflation adjusted level). $2 trillion per year, the size of Italy's whole economy. It would pour a bonanza of epic proportions into the domestic US economy. I don't believe either 18m or 20m barrels per day of US production can co-exist in the next eight to ten years with Saudi Arabia's ~10-11m production (much less their desire/fantasy for more production at a higher price to keep up with their budget).

Simple question: what will the US do to realize that value potential? It'll certainly not be concerned about the collapse of Saudi Arabia, putting it mildly. Cynically or not, there's a popular opinion about what the US is willing to do as it pertains to oil; what then will it do for its own, massive, direct benefit re oil? That benefit scenario is several fold better than just ensuring oil supply from overseas as in the past. The days of (non- Canadian) foreign oil being a strategic critical are nearly over, which means the US allegiance to the Saudi deal is running out. Everyone knows how willing the US is to flip such an allegiance when it's convenient, there's no scenario where the US will feel bound to continue with that after it no longer serves the US interests.

<comment><USER24> That doesn't really make much sense. As the biggest global consumers of oil, US businesses and the economy in general benefit more from cheap oil than from expensive oil. Furthermore a Saudi in chaos can't act as a regional counter to Iran and pro-Iranian forces in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. A civil war in the kingdom would undo decades of American power broking and defense alliance building in the region and leave it wide open to exploitation by America's rivals. Bear in mind SA and the gulf states have huge Shia populations.

<comment><USER22> Does anybody here think the US doesn't operate by special interest lobbying?

At 16m-20m barrels per day, the interests served by that much oil production at $85-$100 prices, is pretty clear.

The US economy can easily tolerate $85-$100 oil circa 2029. Inflation adjust that back 25 years to 2004, you get maybe in the realm of $50-$60 oil. The US will be less oil dependent in 2029 than it is today or in 2004, continuing its existing trend line of a lot more economic output without a corresponding increase in oil consumption.

$10-$15 billion in annual arms purchases from Saudi Arabia is meaningless against $1.5-$2 trillion in annual domestic oil production in my scenario. They'll just bump the US military budget to offset the difference.

Your last section, describing how the US needs Saudi as a regional counter and stabilizing agent, assumes the US acts with particular long-term rational behavior in its pursuits. When have you ever seen that be the case in the post WW2 era? It's rare. We wouldn't be in the situation we are now with Iraq, Syria, Iran, et al. if the US behaved the way your theory proposes. The scenario one would expect based on the last 70 years of US behavior, is instigated chaos (whether originally intentional or not).

Exxon and Chevron (not to mention a dozen other relevant oil companies) are far richer and more politically powerful than Lockheed Martin.

<comment><USER24> So when it suits your pre-conceived ideas the US acts predictably in support of establishment interests, but when it doesn't the US acts irrationally against it's own interests. If it's irrational, how can you predict anything about it's behaviour?

<comment><USER22> I think the central issue is that the US is highly susceptible to special interest lobbying. Yes, I believe you can take that bet to the bank. We see it every day in Washington and across most segments of the system (from security to various industries to domestic and foreign policy).

There's no conflict between that and the routinely chaotic and irrational foreign policy of the US. They can both exist side by side. Some of the foreign policy irrationality is in fact caused by domestic lobbying, we've seen that throughout post-agrarian US history where the US Government intervenes in foreign affairs on behalf of powerful domestic commercial interests. A further cause of that foreign policy irrationality is at least in part due to administration changes over time, with which agendas change. Adminstrations change, domestic lobbying continues. If you need to think long- term, and you change plans every four to eight years or similar, you're inevitably going to get chaos and wild unintended outcomes. Consider all the plan changes from Bush to Obama to Trump in Afghanistan. I'm not arguing that their goal is necessarily chaos, rather, it's the inevitable product of the approach.

I'm not arguing that acting on behalf of domestic oil interests that might want to see Saudi's output hampered, is rational. Indeed, that might very well be another ideal example of irrational, dangerous behavior that could cause more instability. When trillions of dollars are at stake, one thing you can assume is lobbying toward the dollars will be involved.

I don't believe there's any meaningful US Government loyalty to Saudi Arabia beyond a matter of oil convenience. Trillions of dollars at stake over time as it pertains to domestic oil production, is worth a lot more than the arms purchases from Saudi Arabia. As the US oil production figures continue to rise year after year, the powerful interests represented in that will want higher prices. Their influence increases as the production does (and Saudi's influence declines).

Saudi is set to become primarily a competitor of one of the largest, most important industries in the US. Rather than a relationship of shared security (they get system security, we get oil security), it'll become a relationship of growing animosity / tension, which we're already seeing the early beginnings of (Congress being willing to invoke its war powers to try to force an end to the US support of Saudi re Yemen; and their increasing willingness to criticize Saudi generally).

When it comes to the rest, why should the US care about Syria strategically? The US should have never been over there in the first place. The only people that want us there are the war hawks.

The next administration after Trump will yield more new chaos, as plans and agendas change. It's the inevitable consequence to being perpetually in a position of war and meddling in foreign nations. You're always there as a nation and the people controlling the meddling come and go, with each change lighting new unintended fires. I'd argue that any involvement choices made in the Middle East other than to entirely pull out of the region, are by default irrational. There's no winning or rational direction if you're doing what we're doing, only fires to constantly be put out while you're in the muck of it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Imminent "six strikes" Copyright Alert System needs antitrust scrutiny - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/op-ed-imminent-six-strikes-copyright-alert-system-needs-antitrust-scrutiny.ars <comment><USER2> There should be something like '600 strikes' policy for copyright holders. If they claim 600 times wrong, GTFO.</comment>


In Quantum Games, There's No Way to Play the Odds - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/in-quantum-games-theres-no-way-to-play-the-odds <comment><USER2> "This puts mathematicians and computer scientists in a three-birds-with-one- stone kind of situation: By proving that the tensor product and commuting operator models are equivalent, they'd simultaneously generate an algorithm for computing approximate maximum-win probabilities and also establish the truth of the Connes embedding conjecture. The achievement would win supreme plaudits across all the related fields."</comment>


Google confirms it's letting third parties scan your Gmail - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3063198/google-is-letting-third-parties-scan-your-gmail-long-after-it-stopped <comment><USER2> This article, like previous articles[1][2], is highly misleading. What it basically amounts to is that if you grant a site permission to access to your email, they can access your email. I'm sure this is a stunning fact to everyone here.

1\. [https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3035211/gmail- app-...](https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3035211/gmail-app- developers-are-reading-your-emails)

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17446459)

(Disclaimer: I work for Alphabet, but having nothing to do with Gmail, except that I'm very sad Inbox is being discontinued.)

<comment><USER3> It's frustrating when people cry wolf over topics like this with so many legitimate digital privacy and security concerns to actually report on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So there are two vectors here:

1\. Chrome extensions can pretty much do whatever they want. These should be used sparingly.

2\. OAuth tokens, which is what this post is alluding to. So if you're using an Email client on your laptop or phone there are two models for authentication:

a) Enter your username and password. You really don't have much control over what happens from this point and most people are agreed that this is generally a bad idea; or

b) Create a token that will grant access (and certain permissions) to someone who uses it. In the OAuth model you have two token types: access (short(ish) lived) and refresh (that can generate new access tokens). When a site asks you for OAuth permissions that mention anything about "offline" usage, you're really granting it a refresh token.

An access or refresh token can be revoked.

However once an app has an OAuth token there's not a whole lot stopping a malicious developer in using that token themselves for whatever purpose they like... including scanning your emails and selling that data.

So it's not so much that "Google lets third parties scan your email" as much as it's "Google lets you use third-party apps to access GMail" and the rest follows as "well, that's how computers work". It's not much different to sending someone a photo and then losing any control over its further distribution.

<comment><USER5> Chrome should really come up with some better approach to its extensions. I consider myself a relatively cautious user (definitely well above average), and more than once I've enabled an extension that, in a later moment of clarity, I turned off because of what the permissions allowed it to do.

Part of the solution might be informational: make it more clear how dangerous it is to give an extension 'control' of a domain or, as it often the case, all the pages you ever visit.

Or perhaps there are ways to make this more granular: considering that web apps are more and more powerful, limit not just on what domains an extension can operate, but limit what it can do. While I imagine this one is more challenging, if installing an extension says "this extension can READ and MODIFY stuff on <domain>, but will never send this data anywhere" could be a huge win (assuming this is possible to detect automatically).

Finally, depending on how much power an extension has, Google could be more diligent about gatekeeping (assuming they aren't already).

To give an example: I use cVim. It's permissions are: \- Read and change all your data on the websites that you visit \- Read and change your browsing history on all your signed-in - devices \- Read and change your bookmarks \- Read and modify data that you copy and paste \- Manage your downloads

I understand and accept that it needs to do these things, but it strikes me as rather important whether the plugin is allowed to GET/POST stuff too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but looking at my other plugins, this does not appear to be a specific permission.

I'd basically be happy to allow a plugin access to everything the browser has on me, provided that it can't send this data anywhere.

(and, assuming I'm wrong and this is actually a permission, clearly most of my phoning-home plugins seem to get around it using a somewhat opaque other permission to do this. probably "Read and change all your data on the websites that you visit", which sort of is correct, but shouldn't be)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Google confirms it's letting you choose to grant third parties access to your email so they can provide you services that they would try to provide you in unsupported/insecure ways if Google didn't" just doesn't have that ring I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER7> What a trash and misleading article. It's letting 3rd parties using their SDK after a given user requested being able to access your gmail. What's the problem?

News flash: Apple mail also can read my gmail, because I configured it to do so!

</comment><comment><USER8> Misleading.

If you use a 3rd party email app that adds any kind of features to your email, like, say, notifying you that a flight is coming up, then they're scanning your email. It doesn't have to be a gmail account. It could be ANY account you grant the 3rd party access to.

If they do this for free... well, you're the product.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes? I mean... Many of the third party Gmail addons rely on being able to read your inbox, for obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER10> This headline is pretty misleading. It makes it sound like they're giving access without the user's consent, but based on some other articles I could find (eg: [https://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKCN1M02P9](https://uk.mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUKKCN1M02P9)) it looks like what's really going on is that users can give access to third party Gmail add-ons. Those add-ons in turn are capable of giving access to someone else, though it is against Google's rules to do so without the user's consent.

This seems a bit like claiming "Google confirms it lets other users read your email" because the ability to forward (or even copy and paste) exists.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article is talking about 3rd party apps. If one installs such an app then is it a suprise if it reads your mails? It has to if it provides some mail related feature.

</comment><comment><USER12> Not a big fan of Google, but this has been documented very clearly in their user agreement since day one, if I'm not mistaken.

</comment><comment><USER13> Allowing a company to access your e-mail via a token is not very different than just giving them your e-mail password.

I think the article does a poor job of differentiating the fact that this has little to do with gmail, and everything to do with third-parties that are trying to access your e-mail.

Having an API is hardly something to be reprimanded over.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's not just Google, it's any e-mail provider that supports IMAP/POP.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just like any other email provider supporting POP3/IMAP.

</comment><comment><USER16> Time to finish my switch-over to fastmail, I guess. I prefer their interface, anyway.

And, yes, I realize this is pretty much a nothing burger. They lost my trust, though, and any attempts to make me believe that they have stopped and that this won't be a problem in the future are falling on deaf ears here.

<comment><USER2> If you grant somebody access to your fastmail, they can do the exact same thing. I'm not sure why this would have any bearing on your decision at all.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. It's just reminding me that I need to complete my move away from gmail for other reasons, mostly trust related.</comment></comment></comment>


As a first time startup employee, what should I know? - <AUTHOR>

If I'm going to be accepting a job offer from a startup soon, what do I need to know? I've worked my whole career in large corporations, and I'm confident of my technical skills. I'm asking more about things like how equity works, what is typical in a job offer from a startup in terms of non-monetary payment, and what should be negotiated for. Thanks for any help <comment><USER2> A great list of questions here: [http://mashable.com/2014/03/20/want-to-work- for-a-startup-10...](http://mashable.com/2014/03/20/want-to-work-for-a- startup-10-questions-to-ask-your-interviewer/)

Also see this if you get an offer: [http://venturehacks.com/articles/job- offer](http://venturehacks.com/articles/job-offer)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links, definitely helpful</comment></comment>