Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8 - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/garneau-boeing-ethiopia-crash-1.5054234 <comment><USER2> The discussion has moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19381931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19381931), since there is new information.

</comment><comment><USER3> And then there was one.

I do wonder if we can halt and revert the deterioration of the Civil Service before the whole "civilization is two days worth of food and water" scenario arrives. If it does, I think it'll be through something that generates a disproportionate amount of fear and anxiety in people resulting in a significant impact to the economy in a sector where middle to upper class folks are heavily exposed to.

I think back to the government shutdown earlier last year, ended because 10 air traffic controllers couldn't come to work at LaGuardia, resulting in a domino effect of backlogged air traffic across airport hubs and airspace restrictions (including for private jets), resulting in POTUS making nice with House Speaker a few hours later.

So if you're concerned because Boeing's CEO is a Mar-A-Lago member with direct access to POTUS (who wants his club fees), and the Secretary of Transportation is the Senate Majority Leader's wife who is also lobbied by Boeing, and the FAA hasn't had an official administrator for two months, and the FAA can't approve safety fixes by Boeing due to government shutdowns, and aircraft manufacturing consolidation means Boeing is "too big to fail", I would just say "we" do have more power than we think.

<comment><USER4> The problem, I think, is there's no established protocol in this situation. Congress leaves entirely too much decision making up to the executive branch. How hard is it to write a law such as "If the same (public) commercial model plane crashes with fatalities more than once in an 18 month period, that model plane shall be grounded indefinitely until a root cause is established and mitigated"

This would have some interesting knock-on effects such as maybe airlines would value diversity in the fleets just a little bit more.

<comment><USER5> > How hard is it to write a law such as "If the same (public) commercial model > plane crashes with fatalities more than once in an 18 month period, that > model plane shall be grounded indefinitely until a root cause is established > and mitigated"

The problem is if you write a law like that, then even if the FAA still _otherwise_ nominally retains its existing power, the mere fact of the "2 in 18-months" rule in statute will have an effect of _discouraging_ groundings with less than two crashes, or with 2 crashes more than 18-months apart. So, unless Congress is going to _replace_ the FAA's decision making role and manage the details of response to each incident, which I think we can all agree would be a disaster itself, its probably not a good idea.

EDIT: Which is why Congress' role of _executive oversight and accountability_ is as important as its role of writing legislation; sometimes there is no good safeguard available through more statutory rules, the best you can do is assure competence and dedication in the executive and apply consequences if there are shortfalls.

<comment><USER4> > will have an effect of discouraging groundings with less than two crashes, > or with 2 crashes more than 18-months apart.

I don't see why this is necessarily the case. Clearly, there should be some established baseline to prevent regulatory capture by the industry.

> Which is why Congress' role of executive oversight and accountability is as > important as its role of writing legislation

I think it's fair to say that object executive oversight has gone completely out the window in the last 20 years or so.

<comment><USER5> > I don't see why this is necessarily the case.

It is not _necessarily_ the case in the sense of logical implication. Its just _almost certainly_ the case, in the way in which laws effect implementing behavior in the real world.

Legislation which is mindful only of logical implication and not practical implication is a good way to screw things up.

> I think it's fair to say that object executive oversight has gone completely > out the window in the last 20 years or so.

It is, and that's a problem that should be fixed. Asking Congress to micromanage by legislation rather than fixing the problems with executive oversight is not a solution, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having read many commments on HN and elsewhere since the crash, I know I'm in the minority here when I say this but to me it seems like the US airlines and FAA are following their procedures, the same procedures that make the US airlines the safest in the world, while the rest of the world is, I don't quite want to use the word panicking, but at least giving into pressure from people who aren't aviation safety experts.

I don't think it's a simple as saying the US airlines and FAA are simply being greedy and placing profit over safety. The obvious easy thing to do from a PR perspective is to ground the planes. That they aren't doing so in the face of immense pressure tells me that they base their decision on facts and procedure, not what-ifs and public scrutiny.

Let the downvotes begin.

<comment><USER7> The level of certainty required for an action changes depending on the downside risk of action vs inaction. For example, if I am 20% certain that you have a pulmonary embolism, the correct action is to start treatment immediately; the risks of treatment are low relative the harm of waiting for further testing.

The FAA and NTSB are rightly very conservative and cautious with respect to approving new designs, since the risk of premature approval is high and the harm of waiting a bit longer for more information is low. But this is the opposite scenario - the risk of grounding planes is operational inconvenience, versus the harm of another plane crash.

The correct move here is to act even if they think the certainty is low.

<comment><USER6> > the risk of grounding planes is operational inconvenience

Is it possible there is a safety risk to grounding the 737 Max that outweighs the risk of allowing it to fly?

<comment><USER8> Yes, if the alternative is even less safe. This is important when the alternative might be driving, as driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous. Safety measures that annoy people too much can end up with a net loss of life because of this.

If there are other airliners that can be put into service to take up the slack, though, they're very unlikely to be more dangerous.

<comment><USER9> By the way, the difference between the safety factors of driving and flying are not quite so straightforward. This is one of my favorite charts, which shows that per-mile, flying is safer, but per-journey, driving is safer (which makes some sense, since flying journeys are much longer, but 80% of accidents happen in the 5 minutes during takeoff/landing, so really in some sense, takeoff and landing are more dangerous than driving to work).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comparisons)

Also, note the final entry in that table: Space Shuttle. Per-kilometer, it's hardly that much more dangerous than driving. But per Journey....

<comment><USER8> Those numbers are for the UK in the 1990s. Commercial aviation is much safer today.

The fatality rate per journey for US airlines over the last ten years is approximately 0.14 per billion journeys, several hundred times better than the number from your link. (Roughly 700 million journeys per year on average, one fatality during that period.)

Cars have gotten safer too, but not nearly as much.

<comment><USER10> Is there a point at which the statistics are too muddy to be useful? We have had 1 fatality in the last ten years, but in the last 10 years, 1 month, and 1 day we have had 51 fatalities.

<comment><USER8> Definitely! If you take the fatalities for the last ten years and convert that to a risk estimate, the result will have gigantic error bars. We can be confident that the real risk is greater than zero, and it's pretty clear that it's small, but the exact number is pretty much impossible to know.

The farther back you look, the less noise you get in your data, but you also incorporate data that's less and less relevant to the current environment. Ten years seems like a decent cutoff, although it is a cutoff that happens to have had a wild swing recently.

My original point still stands if you want to take the data back a bit further: even if you include Colgan, the resulting number is _way_ below the 117 per billion listed on that Wikipedia page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They claim this is based on new "validated" satellite tracking data they received this morning showing similar altitude fluctuations to the Lion Air crash. Somehow every internet forum had this figured out within hours of the crash using public flight tracker data. I find it worrying that it took them so long to come to the obvious conclusion for lack of "validation" of widely known information, and that it took so long to validate this information given the potential risk to every passenger every time one of those planes takes off in the meantime.

It seems clear that safety is being weighed against level of disruption, which may be justified, but they haven't been transparent about this calculation.

<comment><USER12> Canada is extremely tightly tied to the US economy, and the US government is still taking Boeing's side on this.

I wish this didn't have to be about politics.

<comment><USER13> > US government is still taking Boeing's side on this

It's all fun and games until a Max 8 nosedives on US soil

<comment><USER14> It'll still be fun and games. It's just that the game will be "CYA".

<comment><USER15> The game has been "CYA" for a few days ago. Grounding the aircraft without information about the second crash is fundamentally a CYA exercise. It might be the right action to take but until we have the information we need to see if we are right or wrong it is a CYA exercise. Just because it's CYA doesn't mean it's wrong. Just because you turn out to be right later doesn't mean you didn't initially do it to CYA.

<comment><USER16> CYA generally refers to avoiding responsibility rather than a precautionary approach - one covers one's own ass (protects one's interests) while leaving everyone else exposed to risk.

The EU has grounded the Max 8s, accepting the disruption to commerce and inconvenience to travelers up front as the cost of avoiding an unlikely but potentially catastrophic accident. It's possible that if this were an Airbus instead of a Boeing plane that the situation might be reversed, but I'm inclined to think they would actually take the same action in that circumstance because EU regulatory culture is rooted in a precautionary rather than a palliative approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If this Reddit comment is true it's pretty damning. [https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/b08h03/737_max_mega...](https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/b08h03/737_max_mega_thread/eidycdx/)

Claims intermittent fluctuations in AoA can activate the MCAS. So no need for the AoA indicator to be faulty then, means the risk of falsa MCAS intervention higher than previously believed.

<comment><USER18> I'd bet against that rumor with 50 to 1 odds.

If there really was such a memo going around Boeing that would certainly be leaked. The leaker would probably due so publicly as well, as they would literally save lives and easily be free from retribution.

<comment><USER19> I don't know. Leaking dieselgate would arguably have saved more lives yet it took 6 years to surface.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This goes beyond aircraft at the moment. The NTSB and America in general used to lead. Now it seems the world is going to get on without them.

<comment><USER21> The US Government is sadly conflicted. FAA claiming there is "no evidence" of this aircraft having a systemic flaw. Meanwhile:

Boeing brought $70B into Washington State's economy in one year.

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos- economic-...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeingrsquos-economic- impact-on-state-estimated-at-70b/)

Boeing is a major defense contractor, providing transportation, weapons, and other supplies to the US Military.

<comment><USER22> From what I understand about the issue so far, the systemic flaw is not in the aircraft, but in the training of the pilots. Or the lack thereof. Boeing wanted the 737 MAX to be considered just another 737 that didn't require any new training, but there are apparently significant changes compared to other 737 models that leave pilots feeling ill-prepared.

<comment><USER23> My understanding is that the Boeing 737 max jet is unstable. Instead of redesigning a new plane from the ground up, Boeing placed the larger engines forward and upward on the wings. Boeing then tried to issue a "software patch" on a bad hardware design. Boeing came up with an automated system to seize control of the aircraft in the event that the flight became unstable and neglected to inform pilots of this new automated system. Although not confirmed, it appears that both crashes may be the result of pilots wrestling with the plane's automated system, which they knew little about and may have been faulty

<comment><USER24> You are discounting the possibility of software controlling an aerodynamically unstable airplane safely. This has been happening for decades (see X-29, B-2, etc)

<comment><USER25> Sure, but those pilots knew they were flying that kind of aerodynamically unstable airplane ahead of time. These pilots apparently were thinking "this is just a 737".

<comment><USER22> Exactly. The plane might well be perfectly safe in properly trained hands, but it seems rather obvious by now that it doesn't fly the same as a regular 737.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thd FAA + NTSB need to do something. They need to investigate and review past investigations and come out with their findings, they can't just say "we don't believe it". Even if they are right, the right thing to do is thoroughly review past incidents and issue a finding.

<comment><USER27> I have no idea whether the correct default position should be to ground or not to ground these planes.

But it's clear that the investigation is in-progress and their statement was not "we don't believe it" but "Thus far, our review ... provides no basis to order grounding the aircraft ... Nor have other civil aviation authorities provided data to us that would warrant action."

> Even if they are right, the right thing to do is thoroughly review past > incidents and issue a finding.

Isn't that precisely what they're doing now? Also from the FAA's statement: "... if any issues affecting the continued airworthiness of the aircraft are identified, the FAA will take immediate and appropriate action."

<comment><USER26> I agree that the NTSB doesn't hesitate to make a call. What I'm saying is that in this case, a special case in that two aircraft have had similar crashes and pilots seem to indicate an issue, should prompt the NTSB + FAA to issue conservative guidance on this, i.e. be super cautious on the side of safety when there appears to be uncertainty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The FAA hasn't had a confirmed director since the last one's term expired in January of 2018. I wonder what effect that has on their decision making.

</comment><comment><USER29> Gotta ask, when's the time to buy Boeing stock? It's like all these things happen, stock gets dumped quickly, but it's not like this hurts the overall value of the company.

Anyone have other examples of events like this taking down a big company's stock price for a limited time, but not affecting it overall?

<comment><USER30> this would absolutely hurt the overall value of the company

<comment><USER31> You would think so, but this graphic says otherwise

[https://i.imgur.com/ir65AOr.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ir65AOr.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And then there were none:

[https://edition.cnn.com/world/live- news/boeing-737-max-8-eth...](https://edition.cnn.com/world/live- news/boeing-737-max-8-ethiopia-airlines-crash/index.html)

<comment><USER16> Let's ignore this new information and just carry on our existing arguments - it's the only appropriate thing to do without a general regulatory theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The "new information" part is just for face saving.

<comment><USER34> The meeting with the Civil Aviation Experts Panel was literally yesterday.

It's unnecessary to cast a cynical light on everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> From a November 29, 2018 story - Southwest airlines were activating a factory- installed option on delivered aircraft to "guard against any erroneous sensor data that may activate the jet's controversial stall protection system..."

[https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest- airlines...](https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines-is- adding-new-angle-of-attack-indicators-to-its-737-max-fleet/)

The article notes that the airline has opted for an upgraded avionics suite that low-cost airlines have, for the most part, forgone.

</comment><comment><USER36> The right thing is to ground the plane. It's just one plane out of many. It doesn't matter if nothing is wrong with the plane. Until they have clear answers it's better to not take any risks with people's lives!. At this point it's even better for Boeing from every perspective. The plane cannot leave the US and most of US passengers avoid flying it anyway. I'm sure airline crews are also very unhappy that they need to fly it. I wouldn't be surprised if some US airlines would ground it if the FAA doesn't.

</comment><comment> r-s Since its a ban on all Canadian airspace, will this effect American flights which pass over Canada? I imagine quite a few flights cross over the southern part of Ontario.

<comment><USER37> If it were just southern Ontario that would be one thing. Every flight from the US west coast to Europe spends half (from SEA) to a third (from SFO or LAX) of its flight time in Canadian airspace. However all such flights would likely already be affected due to the widespread European bans. I have no idea if any of those routes were served by 737 Max 8s.

<comment><USER38> 2/3 of the fleet was reported grounded before Canada joined. I doubt many 737s pass Canada on their way to Europe but I found this:

> When it comes to riskier transatlantic and trans-continental routes, > Boeing's new narrowbody 737-Max and Airbus's A320neo family can now be > employed due to tremendous leaps in engine reliability and fuel efficiency. > That has resulted in a considerable expansion of long-haul routes utilizing > narrowbody airliners.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/08/16/transa...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/08/16/transatlantic- in-a-737-the-new-trend-of-narrowbody-airliners-flying-long-haul-infographic/)

<comment><USER39> That's ETOPS. Engines Turn Or People Swim

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Minister is saying that he faced no pressure from US or Boeing.

<comment><USER40> We need a _Pants on Fire_ emoji. Or maybe a _Pinocchio Nose_.

<comment> shaki-dora This lazy cynicism makes absolutely no sense considering the very decision being discussed here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Let's say these planes should have never been certified. What's the financial damage to Boeing?

<comment><USER42> 737 Max is their biggest order backlog. However, there's a lack of competition to Boeing (Airbus bowed out) so its stock has gone up and up. Not sure what will happen if 737 Max is sent back to the drawing board.

<comment><USER43> Lack of competition? The A320neo (which has 6,501 orders) is what caused Boeing to update the 737 into the 737 Max. Boeing wanted to build a whole new plane which would have taken years, but Airbus released the neo and would have gobbled up orders now. What are you thinking Airbus bowed out of?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can someone chime in on the following-- One possible lead in cause has to do with either software or sensors related to Angle of Attack (AOT).

For such an intermittent bug in a safety-critical application, how do you even begin fixing it when reproducibility might be a 1 in 500,000 likelihood? (Obviously I'm not in software testing, but I'm curious how one approaches this problem.)

<comment><USER45> "Metamorphic testing of driverless cars" is a very related article involving software testing and sensor problems for safety-critical autonomous vehicles. The article is available here:

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3241979](http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3241979)

and a free copy is here:

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331289445_Metamorph...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331289445_Metamorphic_testing_of_driverless_cars)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Weylp, now the US has done it:

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/13/world/boeing-max-8-flights- su...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/13/world/boeing-max-8-flights-suspended- intl/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER47> It's very possible the "new information" may be what WSJ just reported: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/pilot-of-crashed-ethiopian- airl...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/pilot-of-crashed-ethiopian-airlines-jet- reported-flight-control-problems-11552473593)

 _tldr - The pilot had reported flight-control problems and wanted to return to the airport_

<comment><USER48> Non-paywall: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/13/ethiopian- airl...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/13/ethiopian-airlines- pilot-reported-flight-control-problems-before-crash)

> The airline is planning to send the 737 Max 8 plane's flight data recorder > to Europe rather than the US for analysis, he said.

That seems to be shocking news. Is it that they don't trust the FAA?

<comment><USER49> Also, why not both? Is the data in some... Non-copyable format? Is the physical device needed for some reason?

<comment><USER50> No, once the data is extracted it can be sent to any/everyone. One team has to be responsible for extracting the data though - it's not simply popping out an SD card and plugging it in to your MacBook like a DSLR, especially with potential damage to the device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> About time. The transport minister must've had damning evidence given the stake Canada has in 737 Max 8 continuing to operate.

</comment><comment><USER51> Is it normal for there to be this kind of obsession about a particular plane following a crash? I feel like I've never seen this before. I literally saw someone on Twitter suggesting that you print out a page of the manual and hand it to your pilot…

<comment><USER52> The obsession is because the plane is new (<2 years) and there have been two fatal crashes in the past 6 months, making it by far the most dangerous plane in the skies today.

<comment><USER53> We don't know that it's the most dangerous plane in the skies today. It may be, and some of the publicly known facts are suggestive of that but not conclusive. What we know is that its accident rate is by far the worst, but on a small enough sample size that statistical anomaly cannot be ruled out.

<comment><USER52> They continued flying after the first crash for that exact reason, even though that took the accident rate an order of magnitude above the regular 737 fleet.

After the second crash, it's not worth the risk in lives to carry on before investigations are complete.

<comment><USER53> I don't disagree. That's a separate point though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Trump says U.S. and Canada are simultaneously grounding 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft, and have been coordinating it. I'm biased so I read that as Canada did it first and dragged the U.S. into it. Nevertheless, these planes are grounded once they reach their destinations today. And boy does this hurt Southwest the most of U.S. carriers.</comment>


Why privacy settlements like Facebook's "Sponsored Stories" suit aren't working - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/09/19/why-privacy-settlements-like-facebooks-sponsored-stories-lawsuit-arent-working/

<comment><USER2> It's true. They will never work because we already know that just in regardance of the surveillance issues Facebook lies on its own Terms and Conditions that users must agree to. They can pay out whatever courts decide for whatever grievances along the way, but their practices will never change, as that would interfere with their abilities to monetize. At the end of the day, money means more than people.</comment>


In search of the perfect URL - <AUTHOR> http://www.ollysco.de/2015/09/in-search-of-perfect-url.html <comment><USER3> Xvideos uses the same technique to good effect as well. All of their videos links follow the format:

www xvideos com/videoNNNNNNN/description_of_activity_which_can_be_easily_updated (NSFW)

I wanted to mention a mystery concerning Xvideos. Here's a business that is very much in-your-face (i.e. it is not a defense contractor or an organization that wants to be discreet), but its ownership is totally unknown.

I researched it. There are literally zero articles or information about who owns it. No interviews with the founders. Nothing. I haven't been able to even figure out what country it's based in.

Somewhere out there is a very rich person whose family and friends probably don't realize that he founded a major Internet business.

Yes, a _major_ Internet business: they have several million videos (far more than competing "tube" sites), hundreds or thousands of fast servers, and an Alexa rank of 47 which is higher than imdb.com and only a couple steps below microsoft.com.

But in this age of little privacy, they've managed to be super private.

<comment><USER4> It was actually blown recently (Aug. 15th) thanks to a lawsuit:

 _Another infringement suit has been waged by the MetArt Network against a well-known online adult brand. (...) This time around the target is adult tube site XVideos.com and two related web properties (...) along with defendant owners Stephane and Malorie Pacaud of France_

[http://www.xbiz.com/news/197942](http://www.xbiz.com/news/197942)

Of course, those names could just be covers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It also means you can trick people:

[http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Quantum-Computing- Module/dp/B001...](http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Quantum-Computing- Module/dp/B00186WR92)

<comment><USER6> Amazons URL's are actually quite interesting -

        Original:
            http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Interpretation-Computer-Programs-Engineering/dp/0262510871/

        Equivalent:
            http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262510871
            http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262510871/something-else
            http://www.amazon.com/something/dp/0262510871
            http://www.amazon.com/something/dp/0262510871/something-else

It appears so long as 'dp/0262510871' is in the url (without dp/# appearing before it, but a second one after is fine) it works.

<comment><USER7> Or simply [http://amzn.com/0262510871](http://amzn.com/0262510871)

<comment><USER8> HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

This is a URL shortener that just redirects to the full URL that has same number. Easier to type but otherwise acomplishes nothing. Server with the content still needs full URL. All this shorter URL gets you is the full URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Stack overflow does this too:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32672492/python-3-5-start...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32672492/python-3-5-startswith- in-if-statement-not-working-as-intended)

Is the same as:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32672492/](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32672492/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting the author mentions making an effort to remove the numeric ID from the URL.

I love using numeric IDs in the URL, for one specific reason: perma-short- link.

[http://qz.com/365810/whats-missing-from-this-13-year-old- gir...](http://qz.com/365810/whats-missing-from-this-13-year-old-girls-iphone- home-screen/)

Becomes:

[http://qz.com/365810](http://qz.com/365810)

Which then redirects to the proper full url. Total effort: almost nil.

<comment><USER10> Not only numeric but alphanumeric IDs; they also work as a nice shorthand in communication. I've seen plenty of people referring to e.g. "video jI3i9Lq4BcX on YouTube" on sites which would otherwise censor actual URLs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> my battle-proven URL rules. important: rule 1 is more important then rule 2 to 6 added up, rule nr 2 is more important than rule 3 to 6 totaled, rule 3 is more important than 4 to 6 together, rule 4 is more important than 5 + 6, rule 5 and rule 6 are a tradeoff (it's short, not shortest possible URL).

the targeted phrase is term(s) you want to get found for (i.e.: in google search)

URL-Rule 1: unique (1 URL == 1 resource, 1 resource == 1 URL)

URL-Rule 2: permanent (they do not change, no dependencies to anything)

URL-Rule 3: manageable (measurable, 1 logic per site section, no complicated exceptions, no exceptions)

URL-Rule 4: easily scalable logic

URL-Rule 5: short

URL-Rule 6: with a variation of the targeted phrase

most common mistake, rule 6 (least important) invalidates rule 1 (most important)

i stand with these url-rules, evertime you compromise on them - or change the priority in between the url-rules, you - <USER2> company/startup/business/website/webapp - will regret it in the longterm.

about: >This is the sort of solution that I really like. The SEO folks can fiddle with the URL until the cows come home, the engineers have the luxury of a straightforward rule, and the user never sees a broken link. Is this simple structure enough to keep everybody happy?

NO

every redirect has a cost:

\- server ressources

\- (web)performance a.k.a. speed

\- long term project costs: redirects needs to be maintained (they will not) and documented (they are not)

\- added complexity (redirect complexity add up fast, more info see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8891553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8891553) )

<comment><USER5> > every redirect has a cost:

If you are actually just keying your content lookup on the ID and don't redirect the user, what's the performance problem?

And use rel=canonical so search engines do the right thing.

<comment><USER11> no

simplified google works like this

discovery (queue) -(quality check)-> crawling(optional) -QC-> indexing

google does not "follow" canonicals, but whenever google discovers (during crawling) a canonical it pushes it back to the discovery queue -> needs to crawl again -> needs to figure out indexing

canonical is an indexing directive

so basically there are two quality checks before google can actually apply the indexing directive after it has discovered the canonical during crawling. also you can never be sure when - if ever - it will fetch the canonical URL or choose to canonical it.

for small sites this is not a big an issue (you will have internal duplicate pages for google for an unknown amount of time, but at one point they will probably be canoncalized). for big sites with millions and millions of URLs this is a big issue. basically in your example is the worst case: URL rule 6 (least important) breaks rule nr 1. then why do it at all

additionally to communicate different URLs to the users (based on the way which they came to your site) which is just bad UX.

don't do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like this solution.

Essentially qz.com/122345/{anything-here} will redirect to the canonical url allowing for experimentation on the title of articles and urls.

</comment><comment><USER13> I thought this was fairly common knowledge.

Using a DB PKID is a faster lookup than a text slug and uses much less storage space in the DB.

For SEO / URL permanence reasons, the PKID is always the authoritative key while the slug can be updated to represent the current content of the URL.

</comment><comment> jjsewell-ff When building content management systems, we've taken a approach similar to this to keep URLs constant when names of articles, posts, objects might get changed by an site admin. The first time I noticed this approach was Trello.

Here's an example trello URL: [https://trello.com/x/1234567/203-make-the- buttons-bigger](https://trello.com/x/1234567/203-make-the-buttons-bigger)

If you change the name of the card, the ID (203) stays the same, but the friendly part of the URL stays the same. When directing you to the card, the system doesn't care past the ID.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interestingly enough I think I tried the same thing when I saw a link from the same site. It is indeed a great workaround to the changing URL's dilemma.

</comment><comment><USER15> We have reversed it to be example.com/seo-go-nuts/%d/ to bring the text closer together.

<comment><USER16> The problem with that if the user chop off the last bits (e.g. Pasting in simewhere where it cannot fit) the id lost and you can't look it up. it uappens more than you would think. It's important to have it early.

<comment><USER17> We use this scheme as well. If only the last part with the ID is cut off and you keep the slug text unique, you can still redirect to the correct article.

<comment><USER16> Then you don't need the ID at all :) because you use the slug

<comment><USER17> I want the slug to be able to change and I'd prefer not to have to keep track of every variation ever assigned to that piece of content.

<comment><USER16> if you go with /id/slug, you can redirect anything that is not exactly the same as the current, so any older links would still work because no matter what the slug was, you can redirect because the ID doesn't change.

<comment><USER17> right, same as /slug/id

<comment><USER16> no :D /id/slug is safer</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: BlogBooks, creates ebooks from WordPress or Blogger - <AUTHOR> http://blogbooks.contraterrene.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got a (limited) number of promo codes. If anyone wants to try it out, drop me a line, first come, first served. Email in profile.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's Long March to China - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602493/mark-zuckerbergs-long-march-to-china/ <comment><USER2> Zuckerberg only cares about himself and how much money he can pocket. He once told his employees to read a novel written by the president of China, which was filled with complete propaganda.

Facebook should be about the freedom of information, not controlling dissent and outing activists.

I wish we had a tech company owner that actually cared about their users instead of finding out more ways to exploit them.</comment>


People are asking for less - <AUTHOR> http://www.davidedicillo.com/whatever/people-are-asking-for-less/ <comment><USER2> OK, here's what I got when I opened this site:

        Warning: Visiting this site may harm your computer!

        The website at www.davidedicillo.com contains elements
        from the site 126.96.36.199, which appears to host
        malware – software that can hurt your computer or
        otherwise operate without your consent. Just visiting
        a site that contains malware can infect your computer.

        For detailed information about the problems with these
        elements, visit the Google Safe Browsing diagnostic page
        for 184.108.40.206.

        Learn more about how to protect yourself from harmful
        software online.

Whether that's a genuine warning or the content of the site itself, I don't really care.

<comment><USER3> Sigh... thanks. I'm seriously thinking about switching to Wordpress.com or Tumblr, I'm sick and tired of spending my time dealing with cleaning my wordpress installation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for your CMS / marketing site? - <AUTHOR> My team build a web app, and we have our stack sorted for that - but we have a self-hosted landing page / marketing site and we want to outsource it's development and allow our non-technical staff to keep it up-to-date.
What do you use? Are there any excellent agencies / development shops that I should know about? Is there anything better than Wordpress? We could also use things like hubspot or instapage.
Virtually all our pages are static, and we don't need payment handling / e-commerce stuff. Just easy-to-update CMS, decent SEO, fast enough loading for good UX. <comment><AUTHOR> We could go the "hire-a-freelancer and self host" route, we do have the ability to do so, but maybe that is a distraction from our core development. Open to ideas.</comment>


Server Monitoring Alerts That Don't Use Nagios - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bluematador.com/posts/watchdog-custom-alerts-monitor-anything-servers-free/?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=show-hn&utm_campaign=watchdog-custom-alerts <comment><USER2> Contentless marketing piece.

BTW, you do realize that nobody trendy uses Nagios anymore, so you're late to the party by half a decade?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for the feedback, dozzie. We're glad you don't use Nagios either. We think that Watchdog is a valuable resource for the HN community, which is why we posted it on Show-HN. Unlike Nagios or any other competing server monitoring tool out there, Watchdog is completely config free and installs in about 23 seconds. We are proud to show if off and hope you would try it out. It's definitely not late by 5-6 years.</comment></comment>


Recruiter: "Use Ruby to Get Some Ladies" at Onekingslane - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/holman/status/573198011783782401 <comment><USER2> The recruiter's response: [https://twitter.com/aaronbassett/status/573228230687264769](https://twitter.com/aaronbassett/status/573228230687264769)

And One Kings Lane's response to that: [https://twitter.com/onekingslane/status/573362369826557954](https://twitter.com/onekingslane/status/573362369826557954)

<comment><USER3> Hold on, is this why this guy got fired from Github? His blog post about being fired is currently #1 on HN: [http://zachholman.com/posts/fired/](http://zachholman.com/posts/fired/)

<comment><USER2> Same guy, but notice that he's not the awful recruiter, he's _quoting_ the recruiter on twitter. (edited for reading comprehension)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe the recruiter is referring to the founders of One Kings Lake, "some ladies" named Alison Pincus and Susan Feldman.

[https://www.onekingslane.com/corporate/about_us/](https://www.onekingslane.com/corporate/about_us/)

<comment><USER5> Or maybe they're referring to the fact that the business sells home furnishings, so they might be marketing more actively to women than men.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> inb4 this gets blown out of proportion and someone's life is ruined while everyone pats themselves on the back for internet activism.

<comment><USER2> OKL already broke ties with the entire recruiting company. I think that's "in proportion" to doing the opposite of your job.

<comment><USER6> If that's where this ends then yes I agree that's a fine outcome. There have been a few stories on the front page recently though where outcomes of events like this were much more drastic.</comment></comment></comment>


Blood of world's oldest woman hints at limits of life - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25458-blood-of-worlds-oldest-woman-hints-at-limits-of-life.html#.U1kP70BOUoD <comment><USER2> For my money the nuclear DNA damage angle is actually the more interesting part of this. The research community has for some years been debating whether or not stochastic nuclear DNA damage is important in aging outside of the issue of cancer. The consensus educated assumption has long been to think of course, nuclear DNA damage should lead to loss of protein homeostasis, and is therefore a meaningful contributing cause of aging, not just of raised risk of cancer. However there is nowadays plenty of evidence to support the opposite view, that the levels of stochastic nuclear mutations seen in human tissues really don't matter over the present human life span. Other than cancer.

This would be good if it continues to hold up. The less we have to fix in order to produce a first generation of treatments that effectively treat aging - i.e. produce rejuvenation - the better. Fixing nuclear DNA damage is going to be plausible via global DNA editing technologies like CRISPR, but we're a long way from doing it for all genes to restore to a template and erase damage. Cancer therapies on the other hand are going to improve enormously in the near future as forms of narrowly targeted cell destruction take over from the present standards of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, coupled with greatly improved early detection. If you're 20-40 years away from peak cancer age in a wealthy region of the world, then I don't think your odds of dying from cancer are very large at all.

<comment><USER3> You say this as if rejuvenation would be a good thing.

Rejuvenation would further divide the poor from the rich, as the poor are unable to afford such treatment. Wealthy dynasties would continue to acquire wealth (because wealth builds more wealth), while one of the current rebalancing mechanisms (people dying without heirs) would be significantly reduced or even completely disappear.

Furthermore, we'd have even more competition over the limited amount of resources and habitable land than we have today.

Let's just hope we figure out that space thing before they ever figure out rejuvenation.

<comment><USER2> There is something about the prospect of treating aging that makes people take leave of all economic common sense.

Move your argument to 1940 and make it about the prospect for future treatments for heart disease to see how ridiculous it is to suggest that only the wealthy would have access to these medical technologies.

One of the interesting things about our age is that medicine is largely flat. Rich people can buy more time from more expensive physicians, and pay people to do their legwork and phone calls for them, and lie in pain in better- looking ward rooms, but there are very, very few forms of medical technology available to them that is unavailable to someone with a few tens of thousands of dollars and the time to make the phone calls and do the legwork.

Given that the treatments for human rejuvenation will be infusions (made up in a lab-factory in bulk, or a specialist clinical plant to order, and requiring very little attention from trained staff to administer) rather than surgeries (requiring a great deal of time from specialist staff to carry out), I think that the odds of their remaining expensive for long are minimal. Economies of scale emerge rapidly for such things.

(Infusions because these treatments will be things like delivery of engineered bacterial enzymes, gene therapies for mitochondrial DNA, drugs to break down cross-linked proteins, stem cell transplants, and so forth).

Look at stem cell transplants as the model of how the price of such therapies rapidly moves downward due to inter-regional competitive pressure for treatments of this nature.

<comment><USER4> > _Move your argument to 1940 and make it about the prospect for future > treatments for heart disease to see how ridiculous it is to suggest that > only the wealthy would have access to these medical technologies._

Actually only the wealthy have access for heart disease even know. Vast masses in developing and third world countries don't have access to such treatments.

<comment><USER5> The grandparent of your comment said:

 _> Wealthy dynasties would continue to acquire wealth (because wealth builds more wealth), while one of the current rebalancing mechanisms (people dying without heirs) would be significantly reduced or even completely disappear._

Which means that in the context of this conversation, "wealthy" means the extremely wealthy members of society (the 1%).

If you define "wealthy" as meaning anyone living in the developed world, then maybe this is true. In the context of this conversation though, medical technologies are available to broad swathes of society. In countries with socialised medical systems, heart disease treatment which is close to the forefront of medical developments is available to everyone, regardless of means.

Extreme wealth will buy you better medical treatment, but only marginally. You can afford more experienced surgeons and the latest machinery and drugs, but within 5 years that machinery drugs will be widely available.

<comment><USER6> > _the extremely wealthy members of society (the 1%)._

Not to be that guy, but if "society" is defined as "humanity", as it should be imo when it comes to human health, all of us in first world are the 1%.

Edit: "To make it into the richest 1 percent globally, all you need is an income of around $34,000, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic. The average family in the United States has more than three times the income of those living in poverty in America, and nearly 50 times that of the world's poorest. Many of America's 99 percenters, and the West's, are really 1 percenters on a global level."

[http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/we_are_all_...](http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/we_are_all_the_1_percent)

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You- ne...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You- need-34k-income-global-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html)

[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2012/03/01/the- global-1/](http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2012/03/01/the-global-1/)

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

<comment><USER5> You're distorting my meaning and trying to make this conversation thread about something that it isn't. The thread started with a discussion of healthcare advances as a means of enabling wealthy family dynasties to grow their wealth while the rest of us didn't have access to that technology. It was rightly pointed out that healthcare advances (excluding specialised labour intensive surgeries) have consistently quickly become available to the majority of people within a country.

Yes, you can always point out that elsewhere in the world people are living in extreme poverty. It's tragic, but if you try and skew every debate on inequality towards this fact you will never get anywhere. It's perfectly reasonable to have two discussions - one, to discuss the great inequalities of our global capitalist system, and a second to discuss the relative wealth equality within individual countries or countries of comparitive wealth. This comment thread was started as the second type of discussion.

<comment><USER6> Maybe I'm misreading you, but it sounds like you're saying "inequality is only important insofar as it affects me".

Advances in technology (including healthcare) are usually bankrolled by the wealthy - wealthy people and corporations. The middle class doesn't pool together a billion dollars to research drugs for heart disease. University research is funded by wealthy benefactors, grants (in turn funded by wealthy benefactors), Government money (funded by taxes, a disproportionate % paid by the wealthy) and so forth. It seems fair to me that they'd get first dibs.

We're all trying to grow our dynasties, that's why we have kids. It's not inherently evil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This part caught my interest: "Holstege says the results raise the possibility of rejuvenating ageing bodies with re-injections of stem cells saved from birth or early life. These stem cells would be substantially free of mutations and have full-length telomeres."

Makes me wonder if I should take a blood sample now (age 26) and have it frozen on the off chance that it would be of use later in life. Basically a hedge against, 50 years from now, "well we have the amazing rejuvenation technology that can replenish the fresh blood cells, but only if we have a sample of 'young' blood. Sorry everyone aged 60+."

<comment><USER8> Yep. I jumped to the exact same conclusion. I did a quick search to see what was out there and I came across this article from 2008 talking about a few such companies and how it was being discounted by many scientists as not likely to be useful: [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29stem.html?pagewan...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29stem.html?pagewanted=all)

At least a couple of the companies mentioned in that article appear to be out of business. The prices quoted back then are non-trivial for middle class Americans.

It still seems like the sort of thing that might be worth the expense. If they come up with the solution when I'm 80, but I don't have any source of young stem cells to rely on...

Same goes doubly for my kids.

<comment><USER9> This really isn't worth worrying about. I know it seems like a Pascal's wager scenario but "youth of stem cells" isn't a problem. We know how to lengthen telomeres (hTERT) and generating human iPSCs is a routine procedure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Meta: I love that lately there have been more health and biology related submissions here on HN. Dovetails nicely with YC new shift/interest, and matches one of my great personal interests.

Do other like this as well, or do people wish that HN would stay focused on software, VC, and traditional tech? Just curious. Obviously it's getting upmodded, but still curious to hear if there is another side.

<comment><USER11> Technology + medicine = huge advancement for humanity.

This really is a frontier that has yet to come to full fruition. I'm all for YC/HN spreading into biology and medicine.

Personally, it is an area I'd like to move towards in my own career. I love web development and technology, but I'd love it more if I could apply it to medicine in some way, to produce a more tangible benefit to humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Our body contains literally trillions of cells. It is absurd to think that among all these cells there will be only a few mutations. Mutations will occur in all cell types all over the body.

What I find really interesting is that the mortality distribution in Gompertz's law may be predicted using the Euler-Lotka equation. This says that the reason we die is because there is an absence of selective pressure for the individual in a species to live longer (link: [http://www.genetics.org/content/156/3/927.full.pdf](http://www.genetics.org/content/156/3/927.full.pdf))

<comment><USER13> >This says that the reason we die is because there is an absence of selective pressure for the individual in a species to live longer

Or there is a selective pressure making sure organisms don't have indefinite lifespans. You need death for a constant stream of sexual reproduction.

<comment><USER14> The longer an organism lives the more it can reproduce, the more copies of it's genes there will be. Any gene that increases (reproductive) lifespan is strongly selected for.

<comment><USER15> Not correct, though intuitive. Consider each offspring to be 50% of the genes of the parent. A parent with three children is competing with hir own genetics, and losing.

<comment><USER14> Your reasoning makes no sense. If the parent can live longer they can reproduce more and therefore propagate more of their genes.

<comment><USER15> It does. 150% (more than the parent) of the genes have teamed up with a foreign 150% of genes against the parent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Older people die from not being able to perform mitosis of vital cells ([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12573379](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12573379)) -- a decade-old observation. She is just a new, other data point.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does this mean that donating blood reduces your number of white blood cells, and hence your life?

<comment><USER18> My vague understanding is that your blood stem cells are in your bone marrow.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but the article suggests that the amount of blood they can produce is limited in your lifetime before they burn out.

So the question still stands: does donating blood mean a shorter maximum lifespan, because you can no longer replenish your own blood cells?

<comment><USER18> Hmmm, my guess would be probably not? The internet says that white blood cells only live 3-4 days. If you donate 1 of your 10 pints of blood every 8 weeks, and your body actually replaces the white blood cells immediately (instead of just being down 10% for 3-4 days), you would only be increasing white blood cell production by about 0.7%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if the technology and the knowledge will ever be at the point where "life hackers" are extracting their own stem cells, applying home-brewed telomerase, and reinjecting them. It seems like the sort of thing that a subset of HN folks would do.

<comment><USER21> I would hope not, as simply extending telomeres is a fantastic way to give yourself cancer.

<comment><USER20> It is my understanding that some forms of cancerous cells extend their own telomeres, so having stem cells with shorter telomeres is not a defense against this. In any case, wouldn't the cancer be the result of damage to the coding DNA or the intercellular environment anyway, and not a function of telomere length?

The telomeres are there to ensure that the cells with more transcription errors die first. But in the case of aging, there are no younger cells for this die-off process to prefer. Given the choice between a certainty of cancer and cells that cannot even reproduce, some people may roll the dice with cancer, and hope they can live long enough to overcome that problem as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A comment in this article about the "worn-down" telomeres in the lady's white- blood cells makes me wonder if it would be possible to study the size of white-blood telomeres in any person relative to their brain cell telomeres and predict how long someone is likely to live (given no other health problems)...

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if there is a way to save some of your stem cells now, while you are are younger, just in case the technology is available when you are older.</comment>


Brain Chips: Artificial Intelligence Is All in Your Head - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/12/22/artificial-intelligence

<comment><USER2> Anyone know of specific researchers or a company actually working on #2? Is there a 510(k) pending for such a device?</comment>


Twitterfall - an essential tool for aid workers and humanitarian bloggers - <AUTHOR> http://aidworkerdaily.com/2009/01/25/twitterfall-an-essential-tool-for-aid-workers-and-humanitarian-bloggers/

<comment><USER2> I find <http://tweetgrid.com/> to be more useful. Especially when multiple keywords are being used for the same event.

<comment><USER3> Twitterfall does actually use multiple keywords when they are specified by Twitter. If you check search.twitter.com and check the queries it performs when you click on a trend - those same queries are being performed by Twitterfall.</comment></comment>


Hire this guy for love - <AUTHOR> http://mibake.co <comment><USER2> For PSD2HTML? And that round trip ticket price? Ok. Shoot me a mail. (See profile)

<comment><USER3> Didn't that YC company, Markupwand, do something like this automatically? Since they've vanished, I wonder if this problem is hard to do automatically?

Photoshop CS6 has this feature built-in, but it generates horrible css -- it reminds me of the days when people used Dreamweaver to output their html.

<comment><USER4> Doing it _correctly_ is not trivial.

Beyond the CSS layout, you typically have to cut up the assets and put them in an image sprite. An automatic service wouldn't be able to cut up images correctly if the PSD is flattened. Even with layers, overlapping layers would give the automatic service issues (or bad CSS in the end).

PSD2HTML is more art than science.

<comment><USER5> Markupwand is no longer available but (full disclosure) we've built a Photoshop plugin that does high quality conversions.

The goal is to create HTML and CSS that is identical to what a designer creates by hand.

The plugin takes any Photoshop image and return a virtually identical web page.

I say virtually identical because every browser renders text slightly differently and it would not be proper HTML/CSS to absolutely position and size text exactly to the Photoshop file. In a browser, the exact height of text will vary on each browser/OS and the proper way to write the HTML/CSS is to use static positioning and floats to position items to handle this. In this manner, if there is an image below some text, if the text wraps shorter or longer, the elements below will shrink up or expand down to preserve the design.

It also automatically supports Google fonts. You can use any Google font and it will automatically link them into the file.

It also has CSS3, IE8 and IE9 compatibility levels for your taste. The CSS3 version creates a smaller web page because it can use rounded rectangles and gradients.

Also, some designers will always prefer to code by hand but some parts are rote (e.g. specifying width/height, font size, font family, etc). We can shave off most of the conversion time by generating all the assets and a reference sheet with all the CSS styling, the x/y positions so that you can have full control over your code but still save lots of time.

We can also generate a layout sheet that contains all the elements and styling except for the positioning so you can choose to float, absolute, relative position, etc.

We also export in HAML, Slim, Jade for HTML formats and LESS, SASS, SCSS and Stylus for CSS formats.

But at its simplest, open your image, and click one button and it will generate a web version of any Photoshop image.

www.webbsy.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like how he put, at the bottom:

> This minimalist site was bought, written, and launched in under an hour!

That simple sentence accomplishes so much.

1\. It acknowledges the basic look of the site and that he is totally aware of this. i.e. If he does work for you it will not automatically just look like this basic site. Of course! (But good to clarify)

2\. Despite being super-basic, it's still a legitimate design choice ("minimalist") and he is also aware of this. i.e. He understands style, at the very least to the extent of a popular archetype.

3\. He bought the site, wrote it, and launched it. i.e. Although he is offering PSD to HTML, he may well be able to help and advise on other aspects of getting a website online so potentially could be the only guy you need to use.

4\. It all took less than an hour. i.e. Everything involved in setting up that site would have been within his $65/hour, so it gives something to work from in estimating how much hiring him [for a more complicated job] might be.

I don't think I'm reading too much into it, that one sentence seems deliberately written to imply all those things. Which, means:

5\. He can write skilfully. i.e. Communication with this guy will be pretty clear.

</comment><comment><USER7> As someone who has been in such a relationship before while on a very tight budget, I have respect for this guy. It is really hard to put up a post asking for business like this, too, I imagine.

To the OP: Good luck to you. I hope you not only find business and get your ticket but also do a great job for those who hire you. I sincerely wish you happiness and success in your relationship and your work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. That means a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hiring him for a project.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am just curious if he makes $65/hour how come he didn't save up 300 hundred ? It is just 5 hours his time.

<comment><USER10> It's a great marketing ploy.

<comment><USER11> Not sure why you were downvoted - this is a brilliant way for him to get his name out there. Before this, we never would've heard of him, and now he's at the top of HN.

<comment><USER3> Right, it also shows that simple personalized honesty is probably better than marketing stunts that portray something incredible. This reminds me of those tear-jerker google ads, like the "Dear Sophie" one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is ridiculous to me..

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey! I live in Nashville and there's plenty of work out here. With a week or two you could probably find a gig here and turn it into a business trip. Boom 30% discount come tax time!

Hell - while you're in Chattanooga stop in at [http://colab.co/](http://colab.co/). Their office is close to downtown. Find a project based out of Chattanooga and see if they'll pay for you to fly out every couple months!

</comment><comment><USER14> Definitely an effective way to get your name out there.

I'm curious how the "you pick the rate" method is working out for you? The calendar on your site [1] still shows early December - does that mean you're no longer accepting clients this way?

I'd also love to know more about "Free Dev Time" (5 hrs/night). That seems like an interesting way to explore some new projects and technology without the hassle of estimates and contracts. And because you want to convert these people into paying clients, you've got some motivation to actually finish the projects you start for them, as opposed to personal projects that seem to fall by the wayside (for me, at least).

Great work, I'm inspired! And good luck with that plane flight. Looks like you'll have plenty of new work opportunities.

[1] [http://rcodeteam.com/availability/](http://rcodeteam.com/availability/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome example of the power of personalizing a request. Funny enough, it has the same story arc (reunite with your sweetie!) as the Hipmunk explainer story video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6teBPUgz4Y8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6teBPUgz4Y8)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd be interested to hear what kind of success he has with this approach. Some would see it for what it appears to be. I assume many more would consider it unprofessional at best and begging at worst. I tried a similar approach a while back (pitching services while highlighting a personal financial need) and received overwhelmingly negative responses - around 15:1 negative to positive. Sadly, most people just don't care what you need and seem to be offended if you tell them.

</comment><comment><USER17> This makes me bitter. :/ But good luck to him nonetheless.

<comment><USER18> Why bitter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Talk about living paycheck to paycheck...

</comment><comment><USER20> Why is this on the frontpage of hacker news? This is just a terrible advertisement.

</comment><comment><USER21> Its probably easier to just set up a profile on elance and oDesk.

<comment><USER3> Sure it is, but would you have the same visibility as this? You could also say that couchsurfing.com existed long before airbnb, but airbnb is vastly more popular. Creativity comes in different forms.

Setting up a profile on oDesk means you'll be competing with all the firms in India who say they can do the same job for just under 10 cents an hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So sweet, best of luck.

I have been in just the same condition, but my ticket was just a little more expensive, and I just didn't have any time...

I would hire you if only I needed something...

</comment><comment><USER23> But...$300?

</comment><comment><USER24> > Hire this guy for love

Why 3rd person if you self-submitted this, cleverbaker?

<comment><USER25> Probably because it gets more clicks than "Hire me for love".

Seems to have worked?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER27> Michael, I might have some work for you.

Shoot me an email.

</comment><comment><USER28> That is legit. Good luck man!</comment>


Echo vision: The man who sees with sound  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227031.400-echo-vision-the-man-who-sees-with-sound.html?full=true <comment><USER2> When I was a kid, I accidentally sprayed wasp spray in my eyes, I had to wear a bandage on both eyes for a couple days and one eye for several weeks thereafter. I have distinct memories of lying in the ambulance with my eyes covered and later in the emergency room hearing the people go by. I didn't know I was practicing passive sonar at the time, but it has since become a hobby of mine to just close my eyes and see what I can ascertain about my surroundings. It's really interesting to see the things you can pick up. If I'm sitting in a hallway, I can usually guess the gender, build, and style of a person walking by. Similarly, I've taken to closing my eyes while walking home, listening to the different cars go by and using it to locate trees. I would recommend exercises like these to everyone - it really helps center you in your surroundings. You get a really good sense of how complex the world around you really is and how much you tend to tune out - either with your headphones or just selective hearing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fascinating article! I have a great uncle who was a blind marathon runner. He used a guide and I wonder how he would have done if he had learned how to echolocate.

[http://wwuvikings.cstv.com/sports/c-track/spec- rel/082108aaa...](http://wwuvikings.cstv.com/sports/c-track/spec- rel/082108aaa.html)</comment>


Anything for this: The costs, benefits of life in elite sport - <AUTHOR> http://www.espn.com/espnw/voices/article/20695210/cyclist-mara-abbott-leaving-sport-dealing-eating-disorder <comment><USER2> Her story is also the story of everyone as they age, contemplating the opportunity costs and what might have been on a different trajectory. A desk jockey who basks in fluorescent light through the prime of life also asks what might have been, and if it was worth it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Extreme athleticism (and correlated risk of eating disorders) is as self- destructive as amphetamines. No one buys tickets to watch people use drugs though ;)

I wonder what the author's lifetime earnings from athletics have been though...

<comment><USER4> In the article, the author indicates an income that was close to the poverty line. It could be a one sided perspective, but I think it's safe to say it wasn't terribly lucrative.

<comment><USER5> Women's cycling is far from lucrative. They also lack a union and pay their own health insurance. Minimum salary for men at the highest level is about 30k euros per year. [http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/minimum-wage-increase-for- wo...](http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/minimum-wage-increase-for-worldtour- and-pro-continental-riders/)

<comment><USER6> The article is interesting. I worry that by watching football I'm participating in something bad for the athletes (even though they want to do it of course, for money). I guess it's true for all pro athletes, it is bad for them physically in the end.

<comment><USER7> They're also playing football for a living and not attending their 4 HIPAA and document retention guidelines training in 18 months.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tesla Is Changing the Used Car Game - <AUTHOR> https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/the-tesla-effect-how-tesla-is-changing-the-used-car-game/1096 <comment><USER2> Don't be fooled. If you buy one of these now-cheaper used luxury cars instead of an actually cheaper car, you're going to get raked over the coals in luxury car maintenance.

They tend to use oddball parts that are more expensive to get, more onerous to install, and often less reliable overall. Value cars get their reputation from more than just the initial sale price.

<comment><USER3> Not in my personal (anecdotal) experience. I bought a $65k MSRP Audi S4 for $31.5+tax, 4 years after it hit the market.

Haven't had anything go wrong in the 2 years I've owned it, just regular maintenance that I go to an independent mechanic for.

I find if you follow a few basic principles of used luxury car buying you can avoid a ton of headaches...

\- Stalk forums for the model that you want and understand all the serious problems certain model years can have. Avoid those model years, always buy the latest model year of that series (Most issues get solved by the manufacturer).

\- Do a PPI (Pre-purchase inspection), it's only ~$100.

\- Ask for previous maintenance records / repairs (Avoid cars with accidents or questionable titles).

\- Do preventative maintenance and never miss a scheduled service.

\- Fix problems immediately as they arise, don't let them get worse.

So far I've owned a fantastic sports sedan that I've wanted to own for a long time, for 50% off.

<comment><USER4> Wait until you have to replace the transmission or something else that's common in the first 10 years. $10 for an s4 transmission is way more than for a Toyota.

<comment><USER5> I've worked on cars and tractors for ages (even though I never got one myself, cars are boring, bikes are better) and have __never __had to replace a transmission. Clutch plates, yes. Crankshaft, yes. Pistons, cylinder heads, valves, cylinder linings, bearings, the works. Transmissions? Nope. Might this be one of the bigger advantages of manual transmissions which still are the norm (and probably will remain so for the remaining lifetime of internal combustion engines) in north-western Europe? Apart from synchromesh rings there are no real wearable parts in a manual transmission.

<comment><USER6> Why are you specifically mentioning north west of Europe? No one I ever met in south east of Europe ever had automatic (where I live).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a croc of an article.

> a 2018 BMW 320i lost nearly 20% of its value, dropping from $37,700 to > $30,700.* While it's true that newer vehicles typically depreciate at a > steeper rate, it's not usually that steep.

Note how they don't give a source for the claim it's not usually that steep?

Here's people talking about E-Classes losing 55% of their value in 3 years... 7 years ago: [https://forums.mbclub.co.uk/threads/depreciation.124585/](https://forums.mbclub.co.uk/threads/depreciation.124585/)

If anything their example is actually _less_ depreciation than I'd expect for a 3 series based on trends from years ago . Probably because the 320i is the base engine (non-M cars don't end up retaining that much more value as engine sizes go up). I've seen _brand new_ 1 year old non-M BMWs for more than 25% below MSRP sitting on the lot.

>At three years old, a 2016 Mercedes B-Class would ordinarily depreciate at a slower rate. For the same time period as the BMW above, though, the B-Class dropped from $18,500 to $13,250, nearly 30%.*

Do yourself a favor and google a 2016 B-class (if you don't want to bother, it's a hideous minivan that any US readers have a fair chance of probably never having seen in real life). Even amongst Mercedes's lineup it's a car that rapidly depreciates "above it's weight class".

And the 2016 B Class is now a generation behind, and from the tail end of 7 years without an update. They actually stopped selling here in the US, and in the last year they existed on our shores they sold... less than 200 units.

The lesson here is people who can afford a German luxury car aren't trying to get a hand-me-down luxury car. People who can afford one, and are frugal, are probably buying a Japanese one over a hand-me-down German one.

-

Well that and CapitalOne really wants eyeballs with that clickbait title.

Anyone else notice the text trying to get you to use their loan program to buy a car loads, _then_ a loading bar shows up before the actual article does?

<comment><USER8> I notice that. I think that it is a poorly written application. It looks like they are using AngularJS for a blog? and load the header footer instantly while the content gets pulled from a CMS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article says used luxury car prices are plummeting because so many ice luxury owners have been switching to a Tesla.

Something similar is going to be happening to the rest of the used car market pretty soon. There are a ton of low and mid-range price ev's coming out from many manufacturers in the next few years. That plus expanding charging networks plus increased government incentives mean that many of millions of ice owners will switch to bev's, and that in turn will cause the ice used car market to crash.

Does any one want to disagree? Does anyone want to argue that 10 or 20 years from now ice sales will be doing pretty much the same as they are today?

</comment><comment><USER10> > on the pre-owned _luxury_ car market

I was expecting to see something about Tesla's lease or buyback program with their "resale value guarantee" which I always found interesting and AFAIK not offered by any other manufacturers.

<comment><USER11> No longer offered. It screwed up Tesla's accounting, but was necessary because at one point Tesla couldn't offer leasing. So they passed the risk of Tesla bankruptcy onto the customer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "pre owned" = pretentious euphemism for "used"

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a CleanTechnica article on the topic [https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/06/just-as-expected- luxury...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/06/just-as-expected-luxury-gas- car-depreciation-getting-slammed-by-tesla-model-3/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Used luxury car is a quick way to lose money.

The spare parts are rare and expensive in most times

and lack of supply make you get stuck many times until the car get fixed

<comment><USER14> You must be talking about ultra luxury or something? Because the online aftermarket for BMW and Mercedes autoparts quite large.

Sure, more expensive than standard cars, but I have never heard of anyone not able to find a part immediately available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Get a Lexus and have it service at Toyota. Done.

<comment><USER16> But no free breakfast and no free rental car!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's the story:

Tesla circumvents some dinosaur regulations

It suddenly makes sense

Chrysler pays $TSLAQ to whine about it

Everyone realizes it works really well

Repeat ad vomitum.

</comment><comment><USER18> As the info of any issue of the car could be known does it help to evaluate the car value?</comment>


Show HN: Musical Markov Chain Generator - <AUTHOR> http://musikov.twinhelix.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been playing with Musical Markov Chains in the last 3 days. This is what I've made. <http://musikov.twinhelix.org/>

It takes a midi file (you upload it), and creates a markov chain represented as a directed graph.

Things it doesn't do very well: polyphony, chords (this will be in the next release), the processing queue representation is weird. I'll fix that one day. Maybe.

Inspired by <http://xkcd.com/851/>, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4671687> and Bioinformatics, in a rather roundabout way.

Not bad for 3 days work. Technologies used: Python Django Pusher Celery Supervisord</comment>


Looking for tennis courts on aerial photos (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://ahathereitis.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-it-works.html <comment><USER2> Posted at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976385).</comment>


Ask HN: Ever had to abandon large parts of a project 6 months in? How'd it go? - <AUTHOR> I lead a team that's put a large amount of resources into a greenfield project that's considered urgent for the business.<p>6 months in and we're having endless trouble with technology choices we made early on. Have you ever faced a similar decision to either stick with or throw large parts of a project? If so what did you choose and how did it turn out? <comment><USER2> As a team lead ? The decision was made on the business side of the company and had nothing to do with the technology or our effort, we simply started development too early before any proper due diligence was made.

<comment> go-rabbit Had the same experience. On the flip side we learned a lot from our mistakes and the dev team cohesion is stronger than ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The sign of a great leader is one who is willing to stop a failed project. Learn what you can and go on.

</comment><comment><USER4> team leads don't make business decisions</comment>


Design Principles - <AUTHOR> https://principles.design/ <comment><USER2> I think I will stick with the 10 principles of Dieter Rams:

      Good design is innovative
      Good design makes a product useful
      Good design is aesthetic
      Good design makes a product understandable
      Good design is unobtrusive
      Good design is honest
      Good design is long-lasting
      Good design is thorough down to the last detail
      Good design is environmentally-friendly
      Good design is as little design as possible

<comment><USER3> I agree with the last 9, but I have my quarrels with the first one. It just begs for people to make innovative designs even though the original one worked perfectly. Like a microwave oven with dozens of buttons even though the one with two dials (power, time) and the door-opener button works 99% of the time.

<comment> martin-adams I also agree that the first (being innovative) isn't quite right. To be innovative depends on the state of innovation of what everyone else is doing. To be innovative you have to do something new, which is different from what's already been doing. So it's implying that you have to be different to have good design. I don't agree that good design has to be different.

All the rest are spot on in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> I think we can save Rams' list by stipulating the following: design is an activity. If you don't need to innovate, you don't need design, you should be following prescribed/conventional practices. The final rule underlines the sentiment: whenever you engage in design, you should only do as much of it (innovation) as you need.

Architects, for example, are always dealing with slightly unique or novel spatial circumstances, which is why they are considered designers. Building identical suburban houses from a pattern book is not design -- and it's not innovative.

I think Rams' thoughts do all make sense if seen in this light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The color hurts my eyes. The heading font sizes look out of place. I think this site needs some design principles.

<comment><USER6> Seriously, the page just copied Reclam's design used for almost every Reclam book there is:

[https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/41Ae3ah0jPL...](https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/41Ae3ah0jPL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)

<comment><USER7> I bet that for folks who are designers and get the reference his choice makes perfect sense and it might even be nice. But for me, most importantly, after loading the page it was unclear what to do. Use the menu? Scroll? I don't think it's good design for users to have to guess where the content is or what they are expected to do.

<comment><USER8> you're not a design person you wouldn't understand (LOL)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Genuine question: Is there an applicable takeaway from principles this vague?

"Tolerant: Handle errors respectfully.

Effortless: Don't make demands or place restrictions on your users.

Accommodating: Be approachable, uncluttered and give people room to manoeuvre.

Consistent: Follow standards, guidelines, conventions and best practices."

<comment><USER10> This is a great point. "Principles" should be about taking a stand about the trade-offs between two desirable things. They can then be used to help guide you when these things come into conflict. Who is trying to make a product that is intolerant, burdensome, aloof, and inconsistent?

A framework I usually use is a "this over that", where both "this" and "that" represent things generally considered "good". The Agile Manifesto contains a brilliant example of this:

\- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

\- Working software over comprehensive documentation

\- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

\- Responding to change over following a plan

Notice how everything on the right is also a "good" thing, but the manifesto is making you CHOOSE.

<comment><USER11> I've seen #1 used many times to solve the problem of "too many regressions" with "the team just needs to communicate more" or "we should set up regular meetings to deal with this issue".

It was hard to argue that those teams weren't following both the message and spirit of the agile manifesto, as individuals and interactions were plainly taking precedence over tools and processes.

It doesn't, after all, say "individuals and interactions over tools and processes, except when tools and processes make more sense".

<comment><USER12> I think the proper understanding of those principles is "when in doubt, choose this over that", and not "always choose this over that".

That said, the problem you described isn't really with the manifesto, but with people refusing to use common sense - or even more likely, with incentives within the organization being so aligned that decisionmakers benefit from making bad calls. It's something that happens surprisingly often.

<comment><USER11> >I think the proper understanding of those principles is "when in doubt, choose this over that", and not "always choose this over that".

That's exactly how the teams I worked with applied it. They were in doubt and they decided on individuals and interactions.

>That said, the problem you described isn't really with the manifesto, but with people refusing to use common sense

It absolutely _is_ a problem with the manifesto and it _isn 't_ a common sense decision.

Expending a not insignificant level of resources on automated regression testing and CI, or indeed, any other kind of tooling or process is _far_ from a common sense decision - it's a pretty delicate trade off, in fact. Some tooling is worth it, some isn't.

If the manifesto said "think carefully about tooling and recognize the delicate trade offs involved" then maybe the problem wouldn't be with the manifesto. It doesn't. It says "individuals and interactions over tools and processes". Ergo meetings > tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This feels more like corporate mission statements and unique selling propositions than 'design principles' to me, am I missing something?

<comment><USER14> It's probably the context. These examples are _mostly_ (not all) for corporate contexts, complete with highly generalized wording to reduce individual responsibility and promote selective enforcement, as opposed to design principles for democracy or managing physical disabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> These read like brand attributes to me. They are too general to be design principles. It's not clear if the interaction design principles are intended to be universal or specific to Airbnb? If the former I must call shenanigans. There are no universal design principles.

</comment><comment><USER16> Man, I like the idea, but these typos are seriously bugging me. On the main page it says "Who use them?". In Tim Berners Lee's page, it says "They look simple, [...], but the complicate what was a very clean design of elements and attributes". It's "but they complicate", right?

<comment><USER17> Both of those typos pass spell check ;) The "Who use them?" one bothered me too!

The first few words on the Tim Berners-Lee page I saw were: "Simplicity is easily to quote but often ignored in strange ways." which is another typo that passes spell check, but makes no sense as-written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's funny Asana is somehow the 2nd design principle example, as they're an utter mess.

I've used Asana on and off since it started. Because I'm an occasional user, it feels as if every time I come back to it, something seems to have changed and I lose all reference to where my tasks are.

Right now, whenever I go there every few months, I have to remember that my client's tasks are buried in a dropdown in the top right.

Worst part is, it doesn't look like a dropdown, it doesn't look like a menu, it doesn't look like a link. It's just black text saying "Overview" next to my picture.

Also, for some reason the default task list I land on is completely empty. I have no idea why. At one point I was using it for quite a lot of stuff and there are a load of unfinished tasks in it when I start clicking in categories in the right. But there is no indication anywhere on the screen of what lists might actually contain something.

It's a bloody awful design.

Their design principle no. 6:

 _Be consistent and standard, and innovate when it's worth it._

So you can have design standards all you want, but when your designers think "consistent and standard" means something completely different than your users, it turns out they're not really meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good design does not hurt your eyes ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> > Malcolm Wells, the father of underground building, wrote an article that > appeared in the "Next Whole Earth Catalog" about, among other things, this > simple and ingenious device for rating the desirability of a building. It's > a form that you fill out by rating a building or site according to a bunch > of common-sense criteria about what makes it good, healthy, and sustainable.

[http://firequery.blogspot.com/2009/05/wells- scale.html](http://firequery.blogspot.com/2009/05/wells-scale.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> I appreciate what this site is doing, however, it's missing one of the major benefits of Design Principles; they are also guidelines for evaluating a design. This is important because it creates a framework for stakeholders to understand what they are judging.

</comment><comment><USER22> Always hard to use these when they often can't be translated into day to day tradeoffs.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks like this site put more effort into the "Design" part than the "Principles".

</comment><comment><USER24> 100% of the people interviewed work @ microsoft... and that's where I stopped reading

<comment><USER25> Wrong thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15892898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15892898)</comment></comment>