Pentagon: Trillion-Dollar Jet on Brink of Budgetary Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/f35-budget-disaster/ <comment><USER2> We could have been landing on mars for what that cost to develop.

Meanwhile the enemy is low budget suicidal terrorists that this or the TSA can't stop.

<comment><USER3> Actually, the way to fight terrorism is to destroy states that condone it and/or look the other way, as well as any major terrorist infrastructure therein (e.g. schools, training camps, stockpiles).

And the _right_ way to do _that_ , is by painting a bright "thou shalt not cross" line in the sand, and then enforcing it (if necessary) with overwhelming airborne superiority.

As opposed to a massive ground invasion and occupation, which has clearly been shown to be self-sacrificial and counterproductive.

\-----

To respond in one place to the most common responses I'm getting:

It's fairly obvious in day-to-day life that and military history that (1) you don't appease or tolerate bullies; (2) you don't try to "reason" with the enemy. What I'm saying is a straightforward application of this, and what you're all saying is a straightforward denial of it.

<comment><USER4> What?

The way to fight terrorism is to provide an environment where people not want to be terrorists. Terrorism requires no state sponsored infrastructure. Bombing places to hell doesn't stop the spread of hopelessness, of desperation, of taking comfort in extremism.

Note: Using the "anti-establishment guerrilla fighters" definition of terrorism, not "causing terror". That's a whole other bag of bagels.

<comment><USER3> _The way to fight terrorism is to provide an environment where people not want to be terrorists._

That's a strategy of altruism and failure.

<comment><USER5> The Arab Spring has probably done more to fight terrorism than any war.

<comment><USER6> Don't you think its a bit early for such a claim? Who knows where Libya and Egypt will be in 5-10 years from now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hope it doesn't cut off the oxygen to the pilot when it detects a leak, or possibly at random times, like the F-22

[http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/22-raptors-suffer-apparent- oxy...](http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/22-raptors-suffer-apparent-oxygen- problems/story?id=15357696#.T2tN-GJSTDk)

"Though they acknowledged the oxygen failure, Air Force investigators said the crash was Haney's fault for being too distracted by not being able to breathe and failing to either reduce altitude and take off his oxygen mask or to activate the emergency backup oxygen system."

<comment><USER8> Really? Who faults someone else for being distracted by an inability to breathe? I know that they're trained for high-stress situations but when it's the fault of the equipment in the first place, own up to it.

<comment><USER9> It's not a finding of legal fault. It's a statement about whether or not things need to change in the aircraft design. The oxygen system (presumably, obviously I didn't design it) isn't inherently redundant. If it fails (because Stuff Always Breaks) there are existing procedures the pilots are presumably trained on. The article lists two: an emergency backup (probably a second tank in the cockpit?) and the old standby of "dive to lower altitudes so you don't need oxygen, dummy". The finding was that these options would have been sufficient if they were used, so the design of the aircraft isn't deficient.

Obviously the software bug should still be fixed, and probably pilot training needs to be updated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While the per-unit cost of an F-35 is quite high now (they've only built 60+) the comparative cost to the F-22 which was seen as expensive and too exotic will be lower in the long term.

While budget overruns are painful, the idea behind standardizing our fighter jets between the forces, thereby reducing costs is a wise move.

I always thought of the F-22 as a hand-built race car, while these F-35 are Porsche's that can be mass produced, are just as "fast" and will be more reliable due to the standardization.

Also deploying cheap drones are only possible when you dominate the skies with these expensive, complex, man-powered jets.

<comment><USER11> The thing about drones is you can build them cheaply enough that it cost the enemy more to shoot them down than it costs to build more of them. Instead the military has decided to simply make fighter planes that don't need pilots but that's a separate issue.

<comment><USER12> Source? I'm not sure you could get a drone up and running for smaller than a multiple of the price of a surface-to-air missile.

<comment><USER11> Edit: I don't work with such things, but posting the first version of this felt unwise so I cut a few things.

Stinger's cost ~38k and are not guaranteed to work so multiply that by the probability of failure.

You can buy drone control system can cost below 1,500$ ex: <http://www.micropilot.com/products-mp1028g.htm>, granted there are good reasons to buy / build something far more expensive but we are looking at low cost baseline. After that it's a question of range and payload for 10,000$ you can get an RC jet that can do 200 mph and carry a camcorder for surveillance. Call it 15k for a fairly respectable surveillance aircraft. As to being able to fight back just add a spike.

PS: Now figure out what you can do with say 10 billion$ aka 600,000 of these things. Worse yet that's just an opening, they are cheap enough that you have plenty of budget for other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm really looking forward to the "Mythical Man-Month"-type book that comes out of this disaster. But since it's the government and likely "Top Secret", we'll learn absolutely nothing from this. $1T and no "lessons learned". Our (USA) tax dollars at work, folks.

<comment><USER14> The US Air Force design program is laughably bad - it would be more so if it wasn't our tax dollars being pissed away.

The same thing happened in the past to the B-1 and B-2 bomber projects, which cost $200m and $700m per unit respectively. Massive scope creep leads to huge unit cost inflation, followed by a reduction in number of units ordered to keep total cost below the Congressional mandate for the project. The low number of total units ordered leads to an increase in maintenance cost per unit, which eventually leads to shortening the plane's lifespan (too expensive to maintain, each airframe receives double the hours it was intended to endure).

Compare the F22 (at 150m) to the F16 (at 10m). Aside from the stealth capability, this jet is not 10x better than the F16.

<comment><USER15> While I agree with your overall point, the cost of a new F-16 these days is more like 40-60 million USD, not 10 million.

The cheapest 'good' 4th-generation fighter is the Saab Gripen, which was designed in a single country to intentionally-limited specs, but even those cost 30 million USD a pop for the standard C & D models and even more for the NG units under development.

To some extent modern fighter aircraft are inherently expensive as a result of all the technology that has to be crammed inside them. They're multi-role networked flying systems these days.

In essence that's part of what has derailed the F-35. Technological advances have allowed for the extensive use of software to create capabilities that just could not have existed before now, such as the ability to see 'through' the plane, an extremely high level of sensor fusion and integrated systems, etc. But massive software projects are inherently risky and can fail massively if not managed very carefully. They've been doing things with software in the F-35 that have never been done before in this context, which only increased the risk.

Also do not underestimate the costs of redesigns following the theft of F-35 design information by China from both Lockheed-Martin and Pentagon computers. I doubt that's the sole cause of the cost overruns, but it definitely hasn't helped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Obviously lines of code is a poor metric, but wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code>) would suggest it is not as complicated as:

Linux kernel 2.6.35 13.5 million lines of code

Windows Server 2003 50 MLOC

Mac OS X 10.4 86 MLOC

Debian 5.0 324 MLOC

<EDIT>

And alternatively:

"if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code":

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this- car-r...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on- code)

<comment><USER17> Yes, but this code is low-level, life-threatening on crash, hard real-time, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Could the F35 choice of C++ be the problem or heavy use of OOP?

It appears they have struggling with the complexity of their software implementation. It might just be their requirements but I wonder if it is similar to Ericsson's massive failure with their AXE-N project. No one knows exactly why that software project became too complex but it has been speculated that:

"One particular problem area identified is the system's software , especially for using extreme attention to object orientation (which at the time was the golden hammer ) in both computer programs as databases , [8] which can be difficult to combine with parallel programming, and that they chose to develop and make use of largely new, completely untested methods."

Ericsson attempted to heavily use OOP for the AXE-N, might that be the cause of the failure? The failure spawned the Erlang (functional language, with strict evaluation, single assignment) project which went on to be a massive success in their next product.

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsv.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAXE-N&act=url)

</comment><comment><USER19> The reference to one trillion dollars in the headline is accurate, but lacks context that makes it a bit sensationalist. The article elaborates the cost as "an estimated $1 trillion to develop, purchase and support through 2050". Or about $25 billion a year. Whether that's pricey or a bargain depends on how many aircraft are purchased and supported; TFA states that the "Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are counting on buying as many as 2,500 F-35s", which would be $10 million per craft per year for the next four decades.

This is not to say the thing isn't an overpriced, failing project. If the GAO's analysis and predictions cited in the article are correct, it sounds pretty bad. In particular, it's hard to imagine that four decades from now, the US armed forces would want to still be using early 21st-century aircraft.

<comment><USER20> You are omitting the time value of money which can make a huge difference in such a large time frame. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What realistic scanario has the following characteristic:

We are fighting against an enemy for which fourth generation fight planes are inadequate and said enemy does not have nuclear armed ICBMs?

Meanwhile the Air Force is bent on taking out of service the one type of aircraft that is most useful to actual, likely war-fighting - the CAS planes. The AC-130 was originally designed in the 60s and troops still cheer when it arrives over the battlefield.

The boys that run the fighter jet mafia consider such "bus driving" planes beneath them, so we instead of upgrading the A, C and perhaps B lines we have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars buying the kind of F line toys they prefer to play with.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was following the (at the time) YF-22 and the proposed JSF when I was a kid. I'm now 28. These things take so long to build and there are so many hands in the pot that they can't help, but be ridiculously complex.

Talk about changing requirements during development. Imagine working on a software project that took 20 years to develop.

Add that to the fact that any large military project has to be spread out over as many congressional districts to keep as many congressman happy as possible.

</comment><comment><USER23> what is the primary language for fighter jet software?

<comment><USER24> It seems to be Java: _"Software providing essential JSF capability has grown in size and complexity, and is taking longer to complete than expected,"_

Just kidding. Don't stone me.

<comment><USER25> It's all relative. As hackers, you can't even imagine what its like to code for the govt (I used to work for navair). Even the most corporate java programmer would find the govt program ugly and overly-complex.

<comment><USER24> Oh, I've worked for the military sector, with those huge NATO specification books. Also with JSF, the Java thing that happens to share TLA, but in another job. Honestly, I'm not sure which one was worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here is Canada our government is insisting they are going to buy some F-35 jets.

People have complained other than its complexity the single engine is bad if you are over the Arctic and the engine fails, most modern Canadian jets have dual engines.

<comment><USER3> _People have complained other than its complexity the single engine is bad if you are over the Arctic and the engine fails, most modern Canadian jets have dual engines._

I wonder if the F-35 has a particularly reliable engine.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure but if it's a vertical take-off and land (VTOL) it must be pretty durable.

Found this gem on Wikipedia under Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II

Canada had previous experience with a high-accident rate with the single- engine Lockheed CF-104 Starfighter with many accidents related to engine failures. Defence Minister Peter MacKay, when asked what would happen if the F-35's single engine fails in the Far North, stated "It won't"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like the F-35 is the SAP of fighter jets

</comment><comment><USER28> FYI: The eurofighter has about 1.2 million LoC (but they use other languages too) and is written in the same programming language (Ada). They have about 500 coders working on it. Impressive..

</comment><comment><USER29> I hate when companies under bid projects and then the public wonders why its so much over budget.

Government contractors do this all the time. They underbid, and then 1 year later, ask the government for more cash because they are soo far in and know the government will do it.

Government contract work is sooo lucrative too. Most of that initial investment into Lockhead probably just went to pay salaries of the higher ups and did no actual work.

Sorry for Ranting.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have never quite understood why so many powers (the United States, Canada, Japan, etc) have lined up to try and buy F-35s. Every plausible enemy our countries could square off against have extremely old technology (or no technology to speak of). In fact, I would be prepared to argue that slightly updated F-15s are superior to anything that any plausible enemy could attack us with.

Am I wrong? If so, help me understand why!!

<comment><USER31> I concur. IMO all the US needs to do is upgrade/update its F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 fleet to stay ahead of potential enemies for several years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> While certainly not cheap, the B2 was brought in under time and under budget. I also think we got our monies worth out of it in the several wars it has been used in. Source; the project manager. Disclaimer: he's my brother---we are both a little biased :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Kill it. We don't have the money. All those alternatives that other countries are looking at are alternatives for us (US) as well.

<comment><USER34> some basic math...1 trillion over 40 years is about 25 billion a year....US budget in 2012 was 3.796 trillion FOR THE YEAR....so that is 0.6% of the budget. I think we can all agree that it is certainly militarily advantageous to have air superiority keeping in mind that it is mainly for the wars we dont fight and will never fight rather than our current conflicts.

Also these articles fail to mention the planes that will be retired over the next 40 years that the JSF will replace. Lots of costs savings that arent included.

Military superiority is supported by practical every political base including libertarians. Large, complex aircraft cost a ton to produce. Is there waste? Sure but some of the waste is due to our own democratic political system. Easy to cast all blame on greedy govt contractors.

<comment><USER33> We could replace those planes with cheaper alternatives.

The total program cost may be a small part of the budget, but our economy would do better if we spent that money on things we can use, not things that sit in a hangar and suck up money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Brink? How is this not a budgetary disaster already?

What 'technology' costed a trillion dollars to develop? Certainly not going to the moon.</comment>


Ask YC: How would you go about teaching a child? - <AUTHOR>

More specifically, I want to teach my little brother some programming. He is 9 years old, pretty intelligent for his age, ie does really well in math  at his grade level, reads at a much higher level than his grade. I opened up the python repl for him and showed him how to do basic arithmetic and some for loops and he seemed to understand, but I think it would be beneficial to start with something much simpler. The short solution would be to start off teaching him html, that way he can easily get a webpage up and see results happening on the internet. Then move on to either javascript or python and show him some simple dynamic stuff. The harder/longer solution would be to start working on a very simple language. Something like logo but with a web lib. I was tempted to start teaching him scheme because I myself am trying to get decent at scheme and am starting to understand macros and all that jazz, but am worried that by not seeing quick results on the internet he would lose interest. The main problem is that shared hosting providers usually do not have scheme setup to where you can run a web application. I don't really want to have to go through a bunch of hacks to get it to work either. So my idea is, and this would be a learning experience for me as well, to create a very simple scheme like language to teach a child web programming. I was thinking it would compile down to python, because almost all shared hosting providers have python installed. I have no idea what I am doing, but like I said it would be both a challenge for me, and something that would be beneficial for my little brother to learn programming concepts with. Thoughts? Suggestions? Would people be willing to help with a project like this? <comment><USER2> I opine that Python should be sufficiently simple for this purpose.

If you really want to show him Scheme web apps, you can run the PLT Scheme web server locally, and make Scheme web applications with that. Not o'er the net, but I would like to think it'd be sufficient at this stage.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought about that. But would probably stick to python. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Myriad's Lawyers Want to Patent the Periodic Table - <AUTHOR> http://www.synthesis.cc/2011/04/myriads-lawyers-want-to-patent-the-periodic-table.html

<comment><USER2> The title is rather misleading, as their claims are that individual elements should be patentable, and not the concept of the periodic table itself.

<comment> steve-howard Furthermore, the judge said that if you follow Myriad's logic, elements should be patentable, and the lawyer basically agreed. Rather than "Myriad wants to patent the periodic table," the real issue here is "if you buy their bad logic, you can patent just about anything you find."</comment></comment>


A high quality hand curated react resources collections - <AUTHOR> https://react-index.com/ <comment><USER2> This is what I was looking. Bookmarked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Bookmarked too!</comment></comment>


Buy your very own satellite - <AUTHOR> https://www.axelspace.com/en/solution_/yours/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps I'm missing it, but I see nothing about costs in here, or the cost of communicating with the satellite. Further, a microsat probably wouldn't have enough functionality beyond basic science and communication.</comment>


Ask HN: Best service to spin up a simple landing page? - <AUTHOR> I wonder if you guys know a good service to launch a very simple landing page. 1 Logo + 1 Text + 1 field to collect emails. <comment><USER2> I'd suggest an s3 bucket to hold the page and images, which does a post to either a lambda function to store the data, or even something like a google forms submission to put it all in an excel file</comment>


Our firmware is baked into your machine and we are watching you right now - <AUTHOR> https://www.absolute.com/en/about/persistence <comment><USER2> Giving submissions provocative, outrageous titles may be great for getting attention, but it breaks both the rules of this site and its culture. We take submission privileges away from accounts that do this, so please don't do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a 2014 analysis by Kaspersky of this rootkit: [https://securelist.com/analysis/publications/58278/absolute-...](https://securelist.com/analysis/publications/58278/absolute- computrace-revisited/)

Here's Absolute Software's reply: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/kaspersky_computrace...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/17/kaspersky_computrace/)

The Kaspersky post focuses on the PC BIOS rootkit, these days they seem to have added "support" for smartphones and tablets, though it seems as far as Android is concerned, only Samsung is along for the ride.

</comment><comment><USER4> Microsoft and Samsung (Android) are on the "compatibility" list, Apple is not. Sounds about right.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.absolute.com/en/partners/oem/apple](https://www.absolute.com/en/partners/oem/apple)

<comment><USER4> Apple is not on the compatibility list. I am pretty sure Apple is not a "partner" like the link URL suggests. The web page only says they deliver App Store calibre solutions. That is a different sport than firmware "solutions".

<comment><USER6> The MTM solution is not deployed via the App Store.

<comment><USER4> The MTM solution is probably distributed via the "enterprise" Apple Configurator.

[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/C...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/DistributingEnterpriseProgramApps/DistributingEnterpriseProgramApps.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this helpful reading: [https://blog.coresecurity.com/2009/08/11/the- bios-embedded-a...](https://blog.coresecurity.com/2009/08/11/the-bios- embedded-anti-theft-persistant-agent-that-couldnt-response-handling-the- ostrich-defense/)

</comment><comment><USER8> >Remotely invoke security commands to limit damage and protect data during a security incident

Gleefully awaiting the day when this is exploited by an attacker.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always wondered how much cheaper the devices would be without such hardware functionality being built in. Surely a good portion of the cost is offset to the consumer for stuff they'd arguably not buy otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this legal? Serious question.</comment>


Oral History of Adele Goldberg [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGNiH85PLVg <comment><USER2> How did I miss this?</comment>


Tesla loses battery technology director Kurt Kelty - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-01/tesla-s-long-time-battery-technology-director-kelty-departs <comment><USER2> It seems like maybe it was his time to move on. With Panasonic now making the batteries (GIG Factory) and most likely doing all the R&D going forward, his departure doesn't surprise me.</comment>


GitHub Desktop 2.3 removes obstacles to help you be more productive - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/2020-01-29-github-desktop-2-3-removes-obstacles-to-help-you-be-more-productive/ <comment><USER2> > Now when you recommend GitHub Desktop to a budding developer, they'll be > able to avoid common pitfalls when starting and they won't need to worry > about the difference between a cloned repository and a forked repository.

Awesome!</comment>


Start Your Own ISP - <AUTHOR> https://startyourownisp.com/ <comment><USER2> My company Althea ([https://althea.net](https://althea.net)) is making open source router firmware that makes it easy to people to set up incentivized mesh networks in their communities. It allows routers to pay each other for bandwidth which means that everyone hosting a node earns money for the packets they forward.

This ends the incumbency problem by making bandwidth a commodity. Want a byte, buy a byte, switching to the best provider automatically. No software knowledge required, fully plug and play. (equipment still required, can't break the laws of RF. it's just regular WISP gear though)

Here's a talk I gave on exactly how the system is designed and implemented.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw)

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1izRgUr-Tm- ixnqpd7NGW...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1izRgUr-Tm- ixnqpd7NGWyiLgcAzXfPas1JmdFp25-yM)

<comment><USER3> Huh, how do you deal with the problem of law enforcement assuming that an IP is a single subscriber? Even if law enforcement believed it up front, it still is a hassle to the users now dealing with law enforcement requests.

<comment><USER4> The traffic goes out through an exit node so the only thing that a gateway's ISP sees is an encrypted tunnel.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't eliminate liability. If you're knowingly trafficking illigal content you're also liable for it. Afaik the only exceptions are when the content is being moderated .

<comment><USER6> How would you knowingly transmit illegal activity if everything is encrypted?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Start your own ISP in US - there, I fixed the title for you.

I would love to start my own ISP in my country, except that dealing with my corrupt government and corrupt bureaucracy existing here would mean I would have to have triple the cash of official investment, because here without "greasing the wheels" nothing works, and all of that is done by discretely leaving an envelope with cash on the corner of the discussion table that nobody in your presence will touch it. Also the amount of cash itself is a mind game on its own. You must discreetly research the person to see how much money they take as bribe. Too much and news about you being a newbie will spread like wild fire and all your future discussions will drain you of even more cash in discreet envelopes. Too little money and your request will get denied making you face the same person handing over another discreet envelope, and you better have at least the correct sum in there. So waste time asking for this mind game, waste cash that you'll never be able to officially report as deductible and then start implementing the points in article. Welcome to Romania ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER8> Romania has 14.3M (1) Internet users for an active population of 9.2M (2)

As the same time, about 98% of the population has mobile phone coverage (which implies some form of data access) with terminals that can be had for 0 upfront cost and ~10€ per month subscription with very large traffic allowance. Telekom (previous Romtelecom) can offer DSL services in most villages where a phone exchange is present.

Corruption or not, its probably a bad idea to start a wireless Internet provider in Romania because it already has excellent commodity connectivity virtually everywhere.

1\. [https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm](https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm) 2\. [https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-active-population- do...](https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-active-population-down-2018)

<comment><USER7> That is the situation for cities, yes. On villages is another dimension. Broadcast is almost non-existent and everybody is relying on mobile. The few that have Digi (that's the actual former Romtelecom) are a drop in a bucket. As corruption is rampart, those on villages that require constant high speed connection usually bribe some city hall workers to let them get a fiber from the city hall to their house. The big majority of people, like I said, rely on cell data by doing hot-spots with them, and that gives them most of the time 3G due to weakness of the signal. Romania has coverage over its territory, but just enough to allow you to call an ambulance or police, but to rely a country side business like a farm that sell its products over internet that's not happening. We all wait to see what happens with 5G, and see wtf is the outcome of the current trade war US/China and most importantly to see from where to get 5G equipment for infrastructure. Huwaei is currently the incontestable leader of 5G tech but with shots fired from US govt. against it, and due to Romania being in NATO and having a US military presence we can't really just say "you know what? we'll get 5G from Huwaei". On the other side we are part of EU and current movement is to kinda ignore Trump and the trade war (see EU stance vis-a-vis Iran issue) and most big telecom companies from France/Germany do have talk with Huwaei. So we, a small fish, are caught between a rock and a hard place...and we wait...and we started to fall behind.

That being said, a WISP for villages would definitely has its place in current situation.

<comment><USER8> You are rambling and the situation you are describing is nonsensical and not related to anything that is going on in Romania.

Telekom is the former Romtelecom.a quick Google search should clarify that for you.

Coverage in Romania is 98% mandated to _all_ operators by law and regularly checked ([http://www.ancom.org.ro/en/ancom-has-verified-the- coverage-o...](http://www.ancom.org.ro/en/ancom-has-verified-the-coverage-of- voice-services-in-romania-_5982))

Bribing a city Hall worker for fiber Internet connection is again made up. City halls and all other institutions in Romania are not connected to the regular Internet, the connectivity is provided by STS (Special Telecommunications Services) to a private government network. In remote villages this is provided over satellite or radio link. Regular Internet is purchased by the local authorities from local providers (as needed) and is the same service that would be available to anyone else.

If you would run a local farm, do not host your eCommerce site using the available bandwidth, do it in the cloud, that's what grown ups do.

Please provide sources for your claims and do start a WISP if you want to address the rest of the population 2-10%, spread out over a country the size of UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh hello everyone! This is my website. Not sure why it hit HN today but cool too see it here! Thanks @mahathu!

I'm not at a computer tonight I'll run through later today or tomorrow and answer questions. My contact info is on the website as well.

<comment><USER10> Do you mind sharing how you found out it was posted here today?

<comment><USER9> I'm a regular HN reader, just happened to pull up the homepage and see it.

<comment> V-eHGsd_ is brett glass of [http://bikeshed.org](http://bikeshed.org) fame still a wireless isp mucky muck?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see this post come around every once in a while, and while the idea seems alluring, the fact is if you're not in the right location and market, this kind of business will be unsustainable.

Maybe you can start your own ISP, but do not assume it will be in the same place you live. Analyze the country and find the pockets where you can thrive and grow a successful business, otherwise don't even bother. Also bring a decent amount of cash and a good credit line.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, the story is usually like this:

* People found an ISP $NEWCOMER in an area where $ESTABLISHED has bad service and high fees.

* The newcomer invests loads of money into cabling the neighbourhood with fiber (or wireless internet) and offers deals with lower fees and better connectivity than $ESTABLISHED

* In a static world everyone would switch to $NEWCOMER and they'd make a lot of money, being able to expand to other places. But executives at $ESTABLISHED aren't stupid. They invest as well and lower their prices, too, just enough to be lower than $NEWCOMER.

* $ESTABLISHED waits until $NEWCOMER runs out of money. They rise prices again. It doesn't even matter if its price reductions mean $ESTABLISHED loses money in that region. The regions where there is no newcomer bring in enough cash to pay for the few regions with (temporary) losses.

Of course even if $NEWCOMER runs out of money, someone will buy their infrastructure and offer similar services, but there are more components in the competitive moats of established ISPs like (local) government granted monopolies in exchange for providing public buildings like school with free internet, or the bundling of streaming services with internet deals. Those moats usually are wide enough that there is no avail for small ISPs to break through. That being said, if you break through the moat, it's an insanely profitable business. DTAG had to invest tons of money until they got there and now they are in the place where the big ISPs can't harm them any more and the american daughter company is now the favourite of the DTAG shareholders.

<comment><USER13> A WISP, at scale (50 users or more), should have a cost per user of about $10/m. You can oversell bandwidth considerably, more than most people realize. I've specifically seen an 80 customer wisp reporting their peak time is only 230mbps. This largely makes sense as you people streaming video is going to be your biggest usage, and that really only average 15mbps at the worse. A $1/mbit for ISP bandwidth should be doable in most areas, and since it's wireless your costs per user are actually rather low, given a good tower.

But WISPs do make the most sense in areas where there is no good alternative (only DSL or Dish).

<comment><USER14> I'd love to know where you can get a fiber circuit for $500/m. (And even if you can, then you probably can't compete with whoever's selling you that circuit anyway.) When we started we haggled considerably.. (had to sign a 20 year deal) and managed to get a 2G/10G circuit for $1,500/m. (A 1G circuit would have been $1200/m)

<comment><USER15> Some places are cheaper than others, looking at this thread especially outside US.

In Poland you can get 1Gbps connection for 200USD/month and 5Gbps for ~600USD/m

<comment><USER16> These are not fiber circuits, ie dedicated bandwidth, they are shared residential services.

<comment><USER15> Those are not shared residential services, but normal business/ISP grade connection with SLA and so on.

<comment><USER17> I guarantee it's not dedicated. it may go over a dedicated line at some point, but I'm in the layer2 business running GMPLS and shared switched traffic and you're either on GPON or some Metro Ethernet gear. you are sharing the neighborhood bandwidth on a metro switch, or you're sharing both light spectrum (GPON) AND the neighborhood bandwidth. you could have 100g but it's still shared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thank you, this is fantastic. I am working with a 100+ employee company doing highly technical engineering work in a very rural location, currently trying to run their business off of 10 MBPS. They are getting quotes exceeding $500k from most people they talk to just get any additional bandwidth to them (presumable fixed line fiber), which has resulted in this critical upgrade being put off for quite some time. This guide makes me think they could quite possibly build out their own backhaul system to a neighboring town for substantially less money. Should make my next conversation very interesting.

<comment><USER19> it's probably not wise to build your own backhaul if you're not in that business. don't know the particulars of course but most likely DIY is not the way to go.

startyourownisp is not really about that.

now if you can do a microwave or other backhaul that's great but it still sounds like something you should be able to get someone to provide for you.

<comment><USER20> he already said he could get someone to provide to him...for $500k. Why would it be unwise to build this if "he's not in the business?" isn't that literally what the above site is for?

<comment><USER19> TANSTAAFL

when you build out physical infrastructure you are guaranteed to have real world physical problems, on top of deep infra tech maintenance issues that you can't just let slide.

nothing is easy at this level.

$500k is likely cheap (but would have to see details) the main problem is that you are spending it all at once instead of capitalizing it over 20 years like the ISP is.

over the same period of time it's going to cost the same. but in all the intervening years fixing problems is going to take longer, things will be less reliable, and you have to invest in things that are not a core competency.

again, not enough details are presented so it's hard to say, but in general DIY is a bad way to go here.

<comment><USER20> meh, i disagree. If volunteers can build out networks like these which work pretty well, then I gather paid IT folks can as well. Since it has pretty low cost to start with, it could be used as a backup system until reliability issues have been worked out, and then used as primary with a fallback to the existing functional but painfully slow service they have now. Good monitoring could go a long way to making it viable. The extra money saved could then be used to pay for technology that does contribute to the companies core competency.

like you said, without details, i think the current systems admin could make this decision better than either of us arm chairing quarterbacking it. I certainly think it's viable though, when compared to operating under the poor dsl solution they currently have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My problem is that I want to do this with fiber, not Wireless, which is considerably more expensive.

If only regulatory capture wasn't a thing...

<comment><USER22> If you want help with getting the costs down for fiber builds, hit me up. Email in profile.

<comment><USER21> tbh, your profile is a little too cryptic. I'm not sure I sent to the right address...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How about building software for local mesh and municipal broadband networks instead? Why does software these days have to reside on servers 1000 miles away? Not only is this slower, but also more wasteful of energy.

 _To the downvoters: can you actually respond and explain why you are downvoting this sentiment?_

</comment><comment><USER24> Would be cool to see community-run non-profit ISPs.

<comment><USER25> Both my hometown and where I currently live have municipal broadband.

[https://osage.net/internet-services/](https://osage.net/internet-services/)

[http://centraliowabroadband.org/](http://centraliowabroadband.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of my first jobs while I was still in uni was working for a small ISP. It was really fun, we had many base stations and mostly provided wireless connectivity. However it's all okay when it's summer to go and deploy/fix antennas but when it was -20C outside and you have to climb on the roof and fix cables or mount a new antenna.. Well, at that point I understood that I need to change jobs :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Here are some talks from the guy behind that site: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4mWTQZmnI&list=PL1MwlVJloJ...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4mWTQZmnI&list=PL1MwlVJloJeyXbme61ZBzuOtxxS76R4tc)

These are very dense talks with tons of information you'll probably not need unless you're reeeally going to do it, but it's good to watch for an overview of all steps involved anyway even if you don't.

The talks are from Altheapalooza from [https://althea.net/](https://althea.net/), but they can be applied to non- Althea ISPs also (although you should consider Althea as it's great despite the shitcoinery).

<comment><USER28> Ethereum is not a shitcoin, not really sure why you felt that dig was necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> >Right now even with a very tech-forward customer base 500 customers will only rarely spike above 900 Mbps (0.9Gbps). That means that even at peak times a customer could still come on and run a speed test and get 100Mbps.

Is this still true?

</comment><comment><USER30> A thread from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394)

</comment><comment><USER31> A problem I had years ago was, I was living in an apartment that didn't even have a phone line. So I used 3G (4G was there but just not working at all) because the house Wifi was useless, in fact in the whole area this was a problem. So I started getting interested in using public Wifi (Freifunk) with a big antenna as upstream, and also provide it for the house eventually. But since then I realized that even on a normal Linux computer, configuring/routing multiple Wifi interfaces is absolutely non-trivial.

Eventually I gave up, but I bet Mesh Wifi are seriously becoming a thing in dense cities. Also some off-the-shelve routers allow 4G-USB-sticks as backup options. Fully automatizing this would be so awesome!

</comment><comment><USER32> Where are the numbers on revenue here or what point of scale shows profit. They show a spreadsheet with 10 users costing $2,800/mo to maintain and $24k upfront. How could that ever be profitable at a competitive price point?

Am I missing a link here or something?

</comment><comment><USER33> If one has their own ISP, can they pirate stuff without being caught?

<comment><USER34> You'll receive emails from copyright owners of they detect torrenting. But that doesn't mean you have to act on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394)

</comment><comment><USER36> I just want someone on the inside at comcast so I can figure out how to get their gigabit pro package, they say I'm like 200ft too far from this magical node.

</comment><comment><USER37> I always wanted to have an open access RADIUS server so that I can resell my unused Internet. I personally think this should be allowed.

<comment><USER38> The problem with this is that consumer Internet access is priced based on the assumption that it will be "bursty". Heavy users are subsidized by light users, both on a moment-to-moment basis and overall.

Reselling consumer-level Internet access to means you're taking away the users that would otherwise be subsidizing your service (because they're buying from you instead) while still expecting the local ISP to shoulder a large share of the costs for bringing your packets to their final destinations.

That issue goes away if you pay for a dedicated line (IE, explicitly contracted reserved bandwidth) to an IXP or place somewhere will sell you bulk transit, and you're paying for that too. That's fine. The problem is with expecting to make a profit by being the ISP to your whole block, based on a $100/mo GBPS fiber drop.

Not to say that the ISP mono/duopolists aren't loathesome--excessive market power is the root of... not all, but lots of socio-economic evil. The economics of telecommunications is complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm starting a WISP in the Oslo area if hackers in that area want to join forces. I could use a native Norsk speaker!

<comment><USER39> I would like to join forces and bring a Norsk speaker with me. Please contact me. MerikAtFiberhoodDotNl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is from a broadband provider perspective but this company vetro is enabling people to do lay smart fiber. This could help someone lay do a fiber plan for their local municipality [https://www.vetrofibermap.com](https://www.vetrofibermap.com)

</comment><comment><USER41> Just last week I was wishing exactly this existed. There are so many businesses where the main hurdle to get over is the basic institutional knowledge.

I wonder how cheaply it could be done for 1 customer (my parents house has terrible wireless internet and I'd like to move home and try doing a startup)

<comment><USER42> >I wonder how cheaply it could be done for 1 customer

Depends on your definition of cheap. Your biggest expenses would be monthly bill to your fiber provider, then any necessary rent for backhaul sites, then the up-front cost.

I can't say for sure the monthly cost but it would definitely be in the low four figures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> About how much money should you be prepared to spend if you were to follow this guide exactly?

<comment><USER42> About $30k up-front.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jjUYOQMuZ4cRyTv1M5X8...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jjUYOQMuZ4cRyTv1M5X8HGtrKFiW96_gNlfG8BBzRN0/edit#gid=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I found out the hardest part was finding the backbone or a provider. I am in the middle of deploying a community WISP but finding a provider besides Spectrum has been the biggest hurdle.

</comment><comment><USER45> These days on some websites you can sometimes find "One Weird Trick to Cheaper Rural Broadband" ads by Althea. The phrasing is certainly _interesting_.

@woah?

</comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone have thoughts on the viability of starting your own WISP considering Musk has already done his first launch of satellites?

</comment><comment><USER47> Get yer money pit here! Roll up...roll up!

</comment><comment><USER48> This is awesome, thanks for writing. I have no interest in starting my own ISP but still read all of it!</comment>


Why I Fast (Intermittently) - <AUTHOR> http://ethantruong.net/The-Case-for-Intermittent-Fasting.html <comment><USER2> Cool having 50$ to live some weeks makes me and my wife healthy.

Poverty rox.

So why do stats about life expectancy says the opposite? Especially in countries where people have even to fast more than I?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since you make mention of poverty and "having to fast", it seems you're conflating undernourishment with fasting.

Making a blanket statement about countries that eat less is hard to discuss meaningfully. But one example of interest may be Japan which eats less than those in the U.S. while having much greater life expectancy[1].

[1] [http://www.choicesmagazine.org/2006-4/grabbag/2006-4-12.htm](http://www.choicesmagazine.org/2006-4/grabbag/2006-4-12.htm)</comment></comment>


E.T. cartridges found in infamous Atari landfill - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/26/5656282/atari-et-landfill-new-mexico-found-cartridges <comment><USER2> This story reminds me of the B-17s used in the 1963 Steve McQueen movie "The War Lover".

3 B-17's were procured, put in flying condition, and flown to England. With some clever photography and editing, the movie makes those 3 airplanes look like a fleet. After the movie, what was to be done with the planes?

The British government wanted some large import tax on them, but the movie production budget was exhausted. They couldn't even afford to buy the gas to fly them back to the US. The movie company tried to GIVE the airplanes to a British museum, but the government still wanted their import tax, and the museums couldn't pay the tax, either.

The solution was to pour gasoline on them and burn them to the ground.

<comment><USER3> I love this story. thanks for sharing. It's a great conundrum dealing with the HMRC machine. I imagine it as a robot relying on syntax. If it doesn't get the right syntax it defaults to "You owe HMRC £xxxxxx. Please pay within 7 days." To tackle the machine I imagine creating an equal machine that will churn out replies, forever in a loop with the HMRC machine. Then I exit stage left and continue with my everyday happy life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw a funny, but also sad, bit by a comedian once. I wish I could remember his name.

" _Everything_ you've ever owned is still out there," he said. "Remember those rollerblades you used once in 1994? Those still exist. Except maybe in little pieces. Maybe in the ocean."

Maybe in 20 years someone will dig up a few of those millions of plastic Guitar Hero guitars that are now wasting away in landfills for a documentary.

<comment><USER5> I look forward to the day humans are forced to mine landfills to get previous goods.

It will be amazing when the cheapest (maybe only?) way to get <raw material> is to recycle old discarded stuff.

<comment><USER6> I always thought we would have swarms of nanobots that chewed on the landfills for a decade or so and sorted the mess into tidy piles of pure elements.

<comment><USER7> What do you then do with the nanobots?

<comment><USER8> Turn half off and have the other half chew through them, recursively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This guy is making a movie about that game: [http://cinemassacre.com/2014/03/23/avgn-movie-timeline- updat...](http://cinemassacre.com/2014/03/23/avgn-movie-timeline- updated-91913/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm both amazed and disappointed that this urban legend turned out to be true. The former because who the ____would do that in the first place? The latter because who the __ __would do that in the first place?

<comment><USER11> Well this happened back when we really didn't give a shit about the environment AND just before conspicuous consumption more or less defined the 80s.

What I'm dumbfounded by is why they didn't simply give them away? It reminds me of all the stupid YouTube videos of people who wait in line to buy the latest Apple product only to smash it in front of everyone else waiting in line...

<comment><USER12> It Is a shity game. Allowing people to play it would have been bad for the brand.

Where I work, we(someone) burns the stuff that we can't sell not cause the stuff is bad, it is done to make shore the brand does not get associated with Cheap stuff.

Brand status is important.

(I know it is somewhat insane but it is the way capitalism works)

<comment><USER11> And yet look where Atari is today..

<comment><USER12> Classical [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_caus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> there is a fantastic article about fixing bugs in the game, I am pretty sure that HN will appreciate:

[http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/](http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I actually liked the E.T. game. It was probably one of the games I played the most as a child (next to Pitfall). Pac Man, on the other hand, was terrible on the Atari.

<comment><USER15> Atari Pac-Man was terrible, but my dad loved it. My first Atari (along with that game and many others) ended up in the closet throughout the 80s. In the early 90s, while I was playing SNES with all of my high school friends, my dad pulled the Atari out of the closet to "show us kids a real game". Apparently he had grown up on arcade Pac-Man in the 70s, and found the Atari Pac-Man to be much more difficult and therefore a worthy challenge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just don't understand _why_ anyone would want to find the games. Is it just for the documentary? I'm sure there's all sorts of 'new old stock' in landfills all over the world. Stuff much more interesting than a [very] bad video game for a console very few of us still have.

I suppose it wouldn't surprise me if limited edition numbered authentic landfill ET cartridges were a sought after collectible in the near or distant future.

<comment><USER17> Microsoft. It is a convoluted PR stunt for Xbox.

[http://www.tekrevue.com/excavate-atari- landfill/](http://www.tekrevue.com/excavate-atari-landfill/)

[http://www.vg247.com/2014/04/10/microsoft-invites-you-to- att...](http://www.vg247.com/2014/04/10/microsoft-invites-you-to-attend-the- atari-landfill-excavation-on-april-26/)

Everyone, including HN, is falling for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Keith Schofield did a fun little music video about this a few years ago: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rt_3_bQVJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rt_3_bQVJU)

</comment><comment><USER19> Here's a video showing various "Easter eggs" inside the game:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUsgtNxCOOk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUsgtNxCOOk)

</comment><comment><USER20> I remember playing the game for hours and thinking that was my fault not understanding or having fun with the game... I laughed a few years ago when I read the real story.</comment>


One In Five Employees Is Highly Engaged and at Risk of Burnout (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/02/1-in-5-highly-engaged-employees-is-at-risk-of-burnout <comment><USER2> Around 10 years ago, I felt like I was burning out. I was travelling a lot (sometimes 20+ hour trips involving 3 planes, always in bloody economy...) and working stupid hours.

A few things have changed since, and I'm no longer anywhere near burnout.

I stopped travelling all the time, and I started working from home 4/5 days - less time communiting meant more sleep, and it means I get to have breakfast and lunch with my family etc.

Then I moved to a 4-day working week a couple of years ago, taking a 20% pay cut in the process.

Work-wise, it's the best thing I ever did! I spend less hours working, but somehow I don't seem to be any less productive, so my employer is actually getting a pretty good deal TBH. And I get a 3-day weekend, which means more time for family, me, and side projects.

I can understand why employers are apprehensive about remote work and 4-day weeks, but I really think they need to modernise here - a lot of them still seem to be stuck in the mindset of prioritising "bums on seats" from 9-5, rather than _productivity_ and happy employees.

<comment><USER3> I think that remote working is psychologically hard. I trust that most people can pull it off short term; long term is more difficult.

There's also the fact that most people I've known in my work need to learn to work when they graduate (I hire mostly graduates). I'd trust someone with 5 years' experience to know what is generally expected from them if they work remotely; I'd be much more concerned about a graduate. Telling them what "working" means is much harder than them breathing it daily around them at the office.

Another topic is that it can be fairly difficult to measure actual performance, and remote work takes from you several proxies. It might make you more objective - but it might make you less accurate and force you to accept lower performance due to the "benefit of the doubt".

<comment><USER4> > I think that remote working is psychologically hard. I trust that most > people can pull it off short term; long term is more difficult.

I've been full-time remote for about a year now, and I'm kind of done with it.

It was fantastic at first. I live in Boston, and my commute was about an hour and a half in every morning, and about two hours home every night. Being able to step over the dog and be at my office was (and is) awesome.

But I never see anyone anymore, and that's starting to wear on me. My wife still commutes, so we have about two hours with each other every night before we have to go to bed and do it all again the next day. If I'm not intentional about it, I'll spend 23 hours a day in my house, and while I'm not the most social person around, I think it's starting to have actual negative consequences for my life. I'm grumpier, I get sick more often, I'm tired ...

<comment><USER5> > If I'm not intentional about it, I'll spend 23 hours a day in my house

I think that's the biggest difference with remote. A lot of things that were seamless with physical presence need to be done with intentionality in a remote setup. You need an explicit time for a daily call / team catchup. You need to either make extra effort or explicitly schedule social chats between coworkers (I like inviting people to do coffee or show off some thing they're interested in). And you personally need to make a schedule that gets you out of the house (I go to coffee shops 3-ish times a week).

I've been remote for 2 years and don't plan on changing any time soon.

Granted, there's a lot of policy- or culture-level stuff that can get in the way. If the rest of you team is co-located and isn't going to remember to bring you in on conversations, remote isn't going to work. Same if your manager equates physical presence to performance.

<comment><USER6> I've been remote for almost 2 years now, and I have the same experience. It becomes even more important if you have direct reports in the office because co-workers start asking them questions that are more appropriate for you.

The other important thing for me is to keep a regular schedule when I'm "on" and then step away from the workspace when I'm "off." Avoid going into the workspace for personal projects.

Also as part of my job I make sure to stay in contact with my boss about the things that matter to him like our project plan, release dates, and anything I need from him. Deliberate, open communication is very important. I also find that keeping quality written records is critical too because it's the only way to keep everyone on the same page about what we're working on.

And yes, get up, leave the house, and go do something else during the day, every day. I personally go for runs and go to the gym in the early afternoon as a way to be outside. And I spend a lot of time with my girlfriend on weekends too. Neither of us are homebodies when we have free time so that works out very well. Even superficial interactions with other people are enough to fill the cup a little.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It can be demoralizing to step back and ask yourself if what you do at work provides real value. And when you feel pressure to perform heroics to meet an arbitrary deadline, burnout is a real possibility.

It's important make sure you're not sacrificing your wellbeing for the benefit of the company. Your physical and mental health are far too important.

<comment><USER8> "if what you do at work provides real value"

My company makes things that are, I'd argue, a net good to the world (we help make stuff more secure) - but honestly I find myself struggling more and more to care about anything that isn't addressing the climate or democratic breakdown the world faces.

Not rhetorical - genuine question: Does anyone else sit at their desk and think "but guys the ship is sinking, maybe we should worry about fixing the holes before we repaint the tennis court? guys? GUYS????"

This is my problem really, not the company's, but I'm not sure what to do.

<comment><USER9> I work for environmental nonprofits that also lobby for government intervention. This sector does not pay as well as private industry, so does not have the best people money can buy. Sure we can use your money, but truly, what we need most is extremely talented and capable people who can take those donations and change the world.

I can see clearly from the resumes on my desk that when it comes right down to it, people would rather make big sacrifices to work for a game developer than a nonprofit.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes it's not always about pay. I was in consulting, then took a salaried job at a University. It was a 10% pay cut, but to compensate for that they offered 3 additional weeks of vacation (five total).

There's always different things you can negotiate on to bring on great talent.

<comment><USER11> Been there and done that in the academic word. Had 4 weeks of vacation, and the manager refused to approve vacation time until the week of.

I started _informing_ that I'm going on vacation. And for doing interviews elsewhere, took "sick" days.

It was a horrible situation to say the least, but now I'm out of that toxic hellhole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm a freelancer and realized yesterday that I haven't had a real vacation in 8 years, but also that every one of my clients would probably say yes definitely if I told them I needed a week off. And they did, and I'm taking off next week and I have never been so excited in my life.

<comment><USER13> Europeans are like damn I haven't had a week off since March, I should organize one!

<comment> arthur-st Haha, I first chuckled at this, and then it dawned upon me that I do plan a week off in July-August, having had 2 weeks off in April. European here, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the burnout happens when you care too much and can't take it emotionally (when, inevitably, you meet some people who care less). So obviously, people who are "disengaged" are not at risk of burnout - they are managing it.

The point is, it can happen at any objective level of environmental stress. It can also happen at any level of actual performance. The engagement relative to people you interact with is the thing it depends on, I think.

<comment><USER15> Hmm in my experience burnout has little to do with how much your peers care about their work relative to you?

For me it seems to happen because we feel that we must be emotionally invested in our work, and the toll of being 100% emotionally invested in something that is more likely than not devoid of meaning creates a "burnout" reaction.

<comment><USER16> I think burnout rarely is connected to an overly strong emotional attachment or investment in work.

This almost sounds like trying to blame the victim. There's a much simpler description: burnout happens _to_ you because of circumstances imposed by the employer.

You don't have to be emotionally invested to be deeply stressed by the prospect of getting fired, demoted or turned into a workplace pariah, and in a lot of toxic environments you are made to feel those threats are connected to whether or not you are putting in 8 hours every Saturday or responding to a permanent triage of PagerDuty alerts with no permission to invest time into fixing root causes.

Even when it doesn't manifest as implied uncompensated overtime, you can end up being expected to be a miracle worker and simultaneously given no resources, all while balancing a personal life or financial obligations that might imply you cannot easily quit jobs or move to a new place for better jobs.

In a Hanlon's Razor sense, I'd say burnout is almost always about toxic management or executive behavior. Sometimes it's about a problematic teammate. But it's rarely _caused by_ the degree of emotional investment of the person burning out. Rather that is a symptom exacerbated by the real causes.

<comment><USER17> > burnout happens to you because of circumstances imposed by the employer.

This is often the case, but I think very often there is a lot of self- inflicted hurt there, too, with employees burning midnight oil because they convinced _themselves_ that something bad will happen to them if they do a task a day (three days, week) later.

<rant> As a personal anecdote, I have to wage real wars to prevent people who work on my projects from coming to work when they are sick. I do not know what is it -- do they want to look heroic? believe this day is super critical? but they still show up to cough and sneeze on everyone. We have unlimited sick days, stay home! <rant off>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think experience plays a role. From my own experience; what I considered high demand 10 years ago is now low demand. Such as resolving a production incident at 10am.

In my past I would switch jobs every couple years. Not due to the stress, but because I was alarmed at how the intensity of work was decreasing at a company. I equated that with slow professional growth.

Now I'm finding several opportunities for growth, but doing so with a calm mindset. Several of my colleagues don't seem calm at all. Yet the majority of us have more control over burnout and "work chaos" than we are lead to believe.

</comment><comment><USER19> >Gallup's shocking statistic that seven out of 10 U.S. employees report feeling unengaged

You have to be wildly out-of-touch with society to be shocked by the fact that most people see their job as just a thing they have to do to make money.

<comment><USER20> I can't speak for everyone but I haven't worked anywhere I thought top level management wasn't making wildly misinformed decisions out of desire to save money or (seemingly) straight-up misunderstanding of their business. A lot harder to be engaged when that's the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Whenever I read one of these HBR things on "optimal employee engagement" I feel like I'm reading some modern version of an ancient roman treatise on the care and feeding of agricultural slaves. Everyone who reads this and is trying to optimize their personal employee engagement should reconsider their life choices.

<comment><USER22> In my experience, if you can produce results, there is little restraint from modern management to exploit you to the max, there is no concern about burnout, or anything, its a daily battle to reign in demands no matter how much you produce.

From what I can understand it is taught at business school to exploit resources, you must look after yourself and push back, surprisingly hard, again in my experience. I find it abhorrent. It was the .com era when things changed, when the sharks realised the computers own the world, before that it was a bunch of happy engineers making stuff.

Even worse many managers seem to be control freaks who can't measure results, and instead insist on micromanaging everything, looking over your shoulder, continually asking for feedback, and "checking in" to see how things are going.

I've said for many years I produce results in spite of managers "helping". Software development is fairly easy I find, it does take time to produce results though, and because no one can see whats going on managers behave the way they do, there's a huge lack of trust on both sides. End of rant.

P.S. I find it easiest to behave like plumbers, they know you need them to clean up your shit, and they have to pay you, so just do what you have to to survive. I remember one guy I hired years ago to do some plumbing at a place I was renovating, kept saying he was busy, yada, yada, went up to the shops he was wandering around having an Ice cream. Medical specialists are another great example I find, they have people making outrageous demands on them, literally life and death, they make sure that people can't find them outside office hours, they are very good at looking after themselves, as they should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Assuming the work you're doing is worth while, burnout and stress are due to having (or perceiving to have) responsibility but insufficient power or authority to actually meet it. Working hard does not lead to burnout. Working hard but being unable to achieve expected results does. Taking time off rarely helps, because that impossible to meet responsibility is still hanging over you.

Classic example is school teachers in US public schools. They have enormous responsibility with the children, but rarely have power or authority. Instead, they are essentially drones in a big machine.

<comment><USER24> > They have enormous responsibility with the children

Could you elaborate on that? I always thought that there are rules and procedures for everything so the teachers are fine and covered.

<comment><USER25> Not the OP, but I think that's exactly what he meant. They have the responsibility to educate the future generations and yet have barely any leeway about how to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _Managers and HR leaders can help employees by dialing down the demands they're placing on people – ensuring that employee goals are realistic and rebalancing the workloads of employees who, by virtue of being particularly skilled or productive, have been saddled with too much. They can also try to increase the resources available to employees; this includes not only material resources such as time and money, but intangible resources such as empathy and friendship in the workplace, and letting employees disengage from work when they're not working. By avoiding emailing people after hours, setting a norm that evenings and weekends are work-free, and encouraging a regular lunch break in the middle of the day, leaders can make sure they're sending a consistent message that balance matters._

Key point. In my experience, the high-productivity, high-engagement becoming the new baseline, and then the organization requesting the 120% of that, and repeat every six weeks, is the true killer.

<comment><USER27> > 120% of that, and repeat every six weeks, is the true killer.

This is what I try to get through to people - if you consistently deliver at 100%, that becomes the baseline and you'll be expected to stretch ever further with little to no extra incentive or support.

Throughout my career I've always held back some level of skill, efficiency, or drive that I can break out as and when required on very particular projects. In the end, it's better for the company as I'm less likely to flame out.

Obviously a lot of companies still operate on visibility and presenteeism over outcomes where it makes it harder, but take the damn lunch break now or you'll never be taking it.

<comment><USER26> I've only recently learnt to step on the breaks to avoid the baseline reset. It's heart breaking to know you're not tapping your whole potential. Before that, every task, every project done, was an invitation to take on the next issue, non stop. People get used to piggyback on that. Pareto distribution is real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I often see folks say that schools should teach finance management from a young age.

Well, they also ought to teach time management, emotion management, energy management, people management.

It's just a basic life skill, keeping things in balance. Extremeness in an area can often be disastrous, it might also come with high reward, but very few people know how to be highly engaged and yet sort of keep other parts of their life balanced.

<comment><USER29> Don't they?

School is one of the more difficult environments for time management: students have half a dozen (or more) different bosses, all of whom reguarly impose hard deadlines, and have a tendency of imposing major deadlines at a simmilar time to each other.

The social environment is probably one of the most diverse that many people will see in their entire lifetimes (not nessasarily along racial lines), with some of the most difficult to deal with people (children) many will face in their lifetime.

Granted, schools often take a trial by fire approach to these lessons (I should know, I burned out during highschool), but I don't see how you can get through school without learning them.

<comment><USER30> There is a difference between teaching some skill and imposing stress on people who lack that skill. To illustrate this, Think about the difference between giving an 8-year-old swimming lessons and tossing an 8-year-old off the side of a boat.

<comment><USER31> Imposing a problem is one way of teaching a solution - it may not be the best way, or a way that you like, but it is a way.

<comment><USER30> No, its one way of motivating a student to re-invent (and thereby learn) or to apply (and thereby learn) a solution. But if the student doesn't ever get the solution, they don't ever learn it.

It is possible for someone to face a problem for decades, to care* deeply about it, for others to succeed at it, and for them to not know how to find a workable answer. For me, happens for "obvious" problems like "how do I learn to how to estimate how long software takes to write?" or "How do I write a first draft of a letter to a friend?" where the answer people have is "just do it" or "just do it and multiply by 2".

———

* By "care" about it, I mean feel the emotion of wanting a solution. Some people define "care" such that if someone fails at something it means they didn't care about it. I'm not using that definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I believe it. Currently the rest of my team and I are close to burnout. Our boss is a workaholic who is controlling and rare to give any praise. The company is financially successful, but the average employee only lasts 1-2 years.

For some reason I thought I could stick it out, but I'm trying to make it to the end of the year and then take a break to refocus.

Money only gets you so far - at some point people need a supportive work environment and a sense of ownership at their job.

</comment><comment><USER33> Burnout in IT can be like boiling a frog. One can get involved in larger and larger projects, then architecture, and then find themselves part of an on- call group that tries to keep production systems running. Pretty soon one is working excessive hours monitoring systems, driving projects, and also responding to production issues 24x7.

If it happens gradually enough, working twelve hours a day and being called repeatedly during evenings and weekends can feel normal. The high cost on one's health, social life, and family life can be extreme and quite dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've had moments in my life where I was working 10+ hours per day, and was pretty productive, but those streaks didn't last more than a couple of weeks and then my energy plummeted. Also I was a freelancer so I was sprint-based and could stop for a couple of days or weeks quite frequently between projects.

I quit freelancing about 4 years ago and have been working full time for a company. I've learned the hard way this is actually a marathon and making sprints is quite unhealthy. The pile of work on your desk never ends and the only healthy long term strategy is to chew at it slowly. I now have 5 hours of productive time at the most.

</comment><comment><USER35> So it just seem like Pareto principle example. 20% of employees making 80% of effort. I don't know if it is fixable. All I think is folks in that 20% will keep changing when Companies/HR/Employees make noise about this. One reason is because 'highly engaged employees' may not be highly productive employees.

Just yesterday at my workplace one dev spent whole day to set up Eclipse workspace for a basic Microservice project. It was about 10 min job. Now that person claims to be junior developer not a total novice and I see no reason to doubt that. But setting up similar projects has been explained and demoed in great detail at least couple times in last few weeks. Still anytime something changes he can spend days to do most trivial things. I would think this person would simply burnout if task is given with a end date. It doesn't matter how generous is the deadline.

<comment><USER36> > So it just seem like Pareto principle example. 20% of employees making 80% > of effort. I don't know if it is fixable. All I think is folks in that 20% > will keep changing when Companies/HR/Employees make noise about this.

This actually sounds like it could make for a great system, in the sense that you still maintain the original quality and quantity of output, but you still get to avoid the burnout of that 20% completely, because after some time, it will be somebody else's "turn" to do more heavy-lifting. Obvious problems here are that 1) company/team structures in industry don't seem conducive to this, 2) skill levels are unequal, so to maintain the quality of the 20%, one would need to plan carefully to account for this -- but, it also seems like a good way to help lower skilled workers rise to meet higher standards -- and 3) hinted at before, this needs to be institutionalized in a tangible way, and that seems to require a difficult form of team member assessment/introspection that managers may not be capable of facilitating.

Wrt point 2 above, I've heard from sources I trust (but would have to bug them for specific sources on this) the following phenomenon has been observed in education: when you remove top performing students from sections of a course -- say, to join an honors section of that course -- the non-honors version of that course has a void for high-performance students. Interestingly, this void is often filled by the mid-tier students who would have typically performed at B/C level, and now some of them will rise to perform at an A level. It would be fascinating to find observations of this in the industrial setting as well. If I find a source for this, I'll update my comment.

<comment><USER37> So regarding your point 2 I have, at the very least anecdotally, seen this happen in practice. I work in a tech startup and as such we have a lot of highly talented engineers sitting in the top spots throughout the engineering org. We have recently had the case where some of these top engineers have shifted focus and we as a company watched as the engineers beneath them rose to the occasion.

This is definitely a phenomenon that can happen, but it has a dark side that I feel is rarely accounted for. While you want to have senior talent and empower your engineers to grow, you also need to have junior/mid level engineers to support them. All to often the reason you have 20% of the employees making 80% of the effort is because they have no supporting infrastructure to help them with their jobs, or they are powerless to leverage the other employees for help without interacting with, sometimes multiple, management levels.

When we started to expand the engineering org it became readily apparent what we needed wasn't more senior talent, but more, for lack of a better word, grunts to help with the mundane tasks that the senior engineers shouldn't be working on. This same thing happens in most other organizations outside of software development as well. Essentially one way to ensure that you don't have your engineers burn out, is to ensure they have a team they can fall back on completely outside of management. I personally appreciate getting recognition from my manager and the higher ups at the company I work at. However I appreciate the team I can rely on far more. I think generally HR/Managers should get out of the way more often, and instead of directly acting make it easier for teams to help/support each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I had a job running a tech department on a small company. It was my first management job and I wanted to make a success out it.

The company was pretty dysfunctional and I took it upon myself to pretty much do everything, so much so that I was working 12 hour days (This is work time, minus breaks, measured with an app) so my day would start at ~ 06:30 and finish ~ 21:00.

I have never been quite so miserable in my life and I was making so many mistakes that it was unreal. I also picked up a very bad habit of doing things quickly and 90% there as that was better than not doing them at all and to do them properly would take too long. It's been close to a year now and I still find myself falling in the turn things around quickly and sacrifice quality trap, even when there is no rush at all for it. I hope I get rid of this bad habit soon

</comment><comment><USER16> So many comments are speaking about burnout as a result of lack of managing emotional investment in work. This blows my mind because I've never seen or heard of burnout manifesting this way in real life, not a single time.

Burnout _happens to you_ and does not originate inside you. A manager or executive _burns employees out_ not employees "letting themselves" become burned out.

Turning it around and acting like it's intrinsic to the employee is harmful victim blaming. It's like blaming someone with symptoms of clinical depression for not "managing their emotions."

I feel very discouraged by this because I don't think we'll make progress helping people heal from and avoid burnout unless we recognize that it is caused by the wider sociological issues of toxic management & executive behavior.

<comment><USER39> Who is victim blaming? We talk about emotional investment because it's something that is actually under your control to change, unlike your manager or "wider sociological issues"

<comment><USER16> Exactly. Trying to turn it around like the issue is due to the agency (hence blaming) the victim, when really it's not down to that person's agency at all, rather something they are subjected to through no choice of their own.

Your comment in fact is one of the worst forms of victim blaming, and you may not be aware that you're even doing it: justifying victim blaming as though it is some sort of justified focus on "what you can do" when the problem should not be made to be about that or justified as such.

<comment><USER39> I am not blaming anyone, I don't care whose fault it is. I am focusing on what an individual can do because focusing on anything else is a waste of time.

<comment><USER16> Focusing on what the individual can do _is_ a tacit form of victim-blaming in many situations. For many types of victims, drawing attention to remedies that rely on that person's agency, rather than wider remedies predicated on greater social responsibility to fix the underlying problem, is a tacit way of putting the onus on a class of victims to "deal with it" and to view whatever type of abuse was inflicted on them as if it is their own private burden, instead of being _everyone's_ burden to fix.

In other words, changing the conversation to be about "what you can do" tacitly reinforces the stance that it's nobody else's problem to fix, which is precisely blaming the victim for being in the situation (e.g. "if you want things to be different, it's on yourself to do it").

You may not be consciously aware that your behavior is tacitly blaming victims, but nonetheless it still absolutely is.

<comment><USER39> If "drawing attention to remedies that rely on [one's] agency" is victim blaming, then I'm all for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've definitely burned out before. Working crazy hours for low pay in hopes of showing my worth and earning more. It kept it up for a few years but eventually broke pretty hard.

I have to say though I am pretty thankful for all of that. It allowed me to reevaluate what was important to me and really think about what I wanted to do. I ended up switching industries all together and I finally don't hate life any more.

</comment><comment><USER41> It is interesting how they talk about HR.

In my experience HR organizations are mostly there as a sort of risk management for the company, everything / anything else tends to feel like just sort of HR resume fodder / token programs / company cheerleading.

<comment><USER42> This meme gets repeated on HN quite frequently but a good HR department can help a lot with engagement across the company. Sure, they can't solve specific team problems but if they work as a channel for employees to be heard and upper management trusts them, they can be a positive force.

<comment><USER43> The interests of HR are opposed to the interest of the worker 9 times out of 10. There is no way to reconcile this fact.

<comment><USER44> I wrote a long rant but deleted it because it was so personal. But I cannot agree more that HR is not on your side.

<comment><USER45> This very much depends on the culture of the company. I've experienced toxic HR, indifferent HR, incompetent HR and awesomely helpful HR. It depends on the people in the HR team and the people on the exec team.

HR is a really hard job too, very hard to do well and very stressful. Most people never get to see this as it's part of their job that they can't talk about most things they are having to deal with.

Bad HR is a nightmare, good HR can make a massive difference to a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Ooh I actually hit this early on in my career. I cared a lot about stuff to the extent that I'd give up going to shows to do work. Well, that was _entirely wrong_. Nobody wanted that of me.

I learnt then that giving that much of a shit only mattered if I were building something for myself. So, for the things I care about, I'll give that much of a damn, but for someone else, they're not getting that.

The mistake I made was that I invested more into that thing than the owners themselves. That's so foolish. Why? They don't want that from you.

</comment><comment><USER47> We all here would agree with the 80/20 rule. Try explaining that to management and/or HR. It would seem to be beyond their abilities of comprehension.

Sure they will provide lip service; however, the moment you try to have an authentic discussion (backed up with evidence mind you) around ways to assuage potential burn-out due to constant on-the-job heroics...good luck is all I can say.

I have unfortunately come to realize that those that have perfected the art of looking busy and/or professional slackers seem to get a free pass.

Frustrating indeed.

</comment><comment><USER48> TBH in the tech industry I would expect this to be more than 20%

</comment><comment><USER49> The toil for me is feeling like your stuck in a rut pushing out release after release, this is more apparent in Agile when your working on a service, and not a product that will be released to the world with high hopes of groundbreaking success in your industry and then passed onto devops. While I know I am making a contribution, from a week to week perspective it's easy to be disconnected from all the real 'good' I do.

</comment><comment><USER50> The other 4 are reading news on HN

<comment><USER51> 2 of which are correctly using the unlimited vacation policy because none of that matters after the company folds

<comment><USER52> 2/5 work for a company they think is going to fold?

<comment><USER51> Doesn't matter what they think

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> That site was really hard to read. Small and narrow fonts with a strange font face.

</comment><comment><USER54> you don't realize it until it's already happening

<comment><USER55> depends, what do healed burnout patient think ? can they sense things coming earlier ? attuned from experience ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Holy crap, I need to email this link both to my old boss, and to my likely new boss with whom I'm negotiating salary right now!

</comment><comment><USER57> ..and for each burned out one there is another X to take their place, for the good of the company.

</comment><comment><USER58> Exactly the market my startup is targeting: [https://metacortex.me/](https://metacortex.me/)

Turns out "burn out" (turnover) is by far the largest single cost to employers. It adds huge overhead per employee and dramatically reduces a companies profitability if they can't keep a low turnover.

</comment><comment><USER59> In this case you need a highly motivated situational captain on your floor, always on the ball, first in, last out, always pointing and delegating, and rewarding only the highest of achievers. Situational Captain, every organisation needs one.

</comment><comment><USER60> Happy Friday. Eat Arby's.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's called a sociopath where I'm from...

<comment><USER61> I know what you mean, people that over-engage themselves to the point that they can't manage their own workload end up creating a toxic work environment and taking it out on their coworkers. In my experience when those people leave the organization morale and retention goes up for everyone else.

The point at which someone becomes 'over-engaged' is highly individualized but based on my experience it is highly associated with people that are deliberately working their way up the management ladder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> i'd argue that more often than not "the highly engaged and at risk of burn out" person is full of illusions while the other 4 have been around the block and dont give a %rap anymore.

<comment><USER42> That's clearly a false dichotomy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I take their point, but there is always going to be somebody that is hungry to make an impact and reap the rewards. It even sounds crazy to think of my job in the context of "how can I sustain this for years/decades". The whole point of hustling is to level up and do something hopefully more interesting or at the least more lucrative. Most workaholics that I have known were perfectly aware of what they were doing and burnout was not even a factor worth considering.</comment>


We're all just creatures of habit - <AUTHOR> http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/scientists-make-it-official-people-are-so-predictable/19364257

<comment><USER2> I bet if you tracked our internet habits you would come to similar conclusions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not only my commute but once I'm at work you can say the same things for most of what I do on my computer. Personally I think there is so much potential for this idea of getting rid of the general purpose workstation/computer. Instead why not use statistics that watch what I do with my computer then "grow" an os/environment that only does those things using the bare minimum UI?

Then once I need to step outside of my normal routine I have to dynamically load modules that get my system close to a stock windows or ubuntu system.

</comment><comment><USER4> Physicist Albert-László Barabási - TedxDanubia talks about Predictability and Entropy ( 27jan2010 Budapest )

( need Silverlight technology for play .. ) [http://myshowroom.tv/show/49efb25b-732a-4af9-abe5-f99d7c56b5...](http://myshowroom.tv/show/49efb25b-732a-4af9-abe5-f99d7c56b594)

very nice animation at 3:00

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 93% is great! but this would have been ~100% in pre-automobile era. And would keep falling as we become more and more mobile. Humans may be creatures of habit but not humanity.

<comment><USER5> It'd be interesting to see the data comparing urban and sub/ex-urban habits.

I'd guess that urbanites are less predictable _. But it would be really neat to see to what degree that holds true and how much (or if) it actually diverges from their suburban counterparts.

_ (Given the increased density of destinations, increased discoverability of destinations, more efficient and numerous methods of transit and lower travel times, I'd expect they would go more different places more often.)

<comment><USER6> When I lived in Oslo me and my wife would go walking all over the place and take different and often random trips. Back in the states we don't have a sidewalk in suburbia (one bike trail near by which is the only place we walk) and have to drive so when we drive it is usually to the same places. So I would say I am much more predictable now then I was before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This data is incomplete; have we considered that the truly randomly mobile people might well, perhaps even as a consequence of their random personality:

1: not have/carry/use_frequently a cell phone?

2: travel to locations outside of cell tower range?</comment>


What did Stack Overflow do to endanger itself? - <AUTHOR> http://joelbryan.posterous.com/what-did-stack-overflow-do-to-endanger-itself

<comment><USER2> I didn't know whether to believe you or not, until I looked at the traffic from compete.com:

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/stackoverflow.com/>

It does look like their traffic has plateaued and is perhaps trending down.

</comment><comment><USER3> The grammar on that post makes it borderline unreadable in places.

"I'll cite an example, Friendster, what did they do that people are closing their accounts and flocking on Facebook. "

<comment><USER4> His first language is obviously not English. For anyone whose first language is, I don't think it's that hard to get the message. Cut him some slack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I call BS, you can ask questions without being logged in. Second of all is it really that hard to make a fake account somewhere. Third use a openid provider like myopenid it allows you to setup as many different persona name\birthday\email combinations as you want.</comment>


All About the Eyes - <AUTHOR> http://www.miamiwebdesignpro.com/blog/uncategorized/all-about-the-eyes/

<comment><AUTHOR> she will be missed :(</comment>


DeepMind Builds Neural Networks That Spontaneously Replay Past Experiences - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/recreating-imagination-deepmind-builds-neural-networks-that-spontaneously-replay-past-experiences-9b57a9c08316 <comment><USER2> Learning new sequences by analogy seems super valuable, but I'm not sure experience replay in RL is the best way to apply it. Experience replay in their 2015 Atari paper is basically a hack to overcome catastrophic forgetting and extreme sample inefficiency, which are two problems neural network architectures have that we may very well overcome in a more principled way eventually.

What I mean by that is that, while being able to replay experiences is super valuable, and humans do it, we don't replay experiences 50 to 100 times as often as we actually experience things the way reinforcement learning algorithms do. There's something else going on there

Edit: having read the abstract of the paper now, I'm less sure the paper itself is talking about RL-style experience replay, that may have just been the author of the post connecting the two ideas.</comment>


I made a Chrome extension that shows Reddit gifs in WebM format (gfycat) - <AUTHOR>

It's my first Chrome extension. I would love some feedback — whatever you have!<p>https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reddit-gfycat/jolmbfapckpelnpfdobdmoeimkmfkecb <comment><USER2> What are the benefits of doing this?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have a slow connection, WebM can be significantly faster. For example, I was on a vacation and the internet was slow as heck. WebM was a much smaller filesize.</comment></comment>


Microsoft to open its own stores. - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamespot.com/news/6204667.html

<comment><USER2> It's been said before: Microsoft's Apple (or Google) envy will be the end of them.

This seems like a misadventure waiting to happen. I feel like Microsoft strategy is a blunt object that they hurl at anything their competitors touch. It's almost a little painful to watch. You kind of want to lean over and whisper in Microsoft's ear, "You're too old to be wearing that."

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this could work out really well for microsoft. They have tons of advanced technology that would really bolster their public image if it were showcased in a nice way. I'm thinking surface, photosynth, seadragon, hand writing recongition, etc...

<comment><USER4> So basically showcasing a bunch of technology they aren't making money off of in hopes they will buy other products while they visit? I think most people buy Windows and Word because its standard not because the technology impresses them.

As for improving the public images, is the mainstream consumer persuaded by a companies ability to be on the cutting edge or the ability to satisfy their current needs effectively?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can see how this seems to be a bad idea but executed correctly this can be a success for Microsoft and this also means that they probably shouldn't just copy Apple's concept.

What kind of Products does MS offer? Computer Accessories, MP3 Players, Game Consoles, Software and lots of advanced technology (and probably more...). The question now is how to ideally showcase this assortment. For the Accessories, the Music Players and the Game Consoles this is pretty easy even though it might be hard to find a concept that integrates the different crowds those products are aimed at. It gets more difficult with the advanced technology and software.

For the advanced technology (e.g. Photosynth, Surface etc.) I would propose a kind of show case where you let people play around with the products and enable them to find out what you, as a company, are capable of. For the Software I would propose a kind of shop in shop concept. I would partner with Hardware Manufacturers like HP and Dell and let them showcase their computers in a way that is probably similar to the way Apple does in its shops.

I really think this could work out even though it for sure isn't an easy endeavor.

</comment><comment><USER6> Before you start fantasizing that maybe MS is going to get creative and storm onto the scene with AppleStore 2.0...

Note that the VP for Retail Sales Stores will be David Porter. Article notes, "Porter spent 25 years with retail giant Wal-Mart."

Yet MS says the stores will aim "to transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience." Transformers, indeed.

<comment><USER7> So he spent 25 years running an insanely profitable data-driven company.. and thats bad? For Microsoft, I mean.

<comment><USER8> It's not what he's good at that's bad for Microsoft. Microsoft stores will need to be more than data-driven: they'll need creative inspiration if they're going to help rebuild the brand, and that's a very different task from running Wal-Mart, even the entertainment division. It's not clear that Porter would know how to pull this off. Especially since he spent 25 years with Wal-Mart. This doesn't suggest a breadth of experience with retail experiences.

Incidentally, there used to be a Microsoft store at the Metreon in San Francisco. It was fairly swanky, but it didn't make me think any more highly of the brand or their products.

<comment><USER9> I agree with your points about Wal-Mart not translating to creative marketing, but something many news agencies are missing out on in reporting this is that he used to work for Wal-Mart but is actually leaving Dreamworks, where he worked in global product distribution. So he has at least had exposure to creative content marketing. Hopefully that helps, at least in terms of recognizing creativity if not in producing it.

<comment><USER10> And Dreamworks just tries to copy Pixar films. Where's the creativity again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's about time...If they decorate their stores half as well as they decorate their offices, they will be neat.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why?</comment>