Boom Supersonic raises $33M to build the fastest airplane for passenger flight - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/22/boom-supersonic-raises-33m-to-build-the-fastest-airplane-for-passenger-flight/ <comment><USER2> People always seem to grossly underestimate the cost to crew-rate, and then passenger-rate vehicles. Especially with new technology, which usually involves killing people along the way. It is much, much, more expensive to develop a system to the point where you can put a fare-paying passenger on it than it is to take it to where you can reliably put a sensor package in it or even a test pilot that you expect to survive.

The cost of an uncrewed scale model isn't even noise in the cost of a full- size passenger-rated project, and its success isn't particular predictive of the actual project.

The sonic boom problem isn't trivial. You need to be able to land the vehicle near cities, because that's where the customers are. That means you have to spend a good chunk of time (maybe a long chunk of time if you have to orbit waiting to land) flying low and slow---a vehicle designed to use fuel efficiently when high and supersonic is almost by definition going to be less efficient than traditional vehicles when forced to fly in that regime. Which means it has to carry a lot of fuel, which means weight, which means ... etc.

As other commenters have noted: shaving an hour or two off of time spent at the terminal will generally be much more effective in speeding up travel. There is another city a three-hour drive from where I live, and it is faster for me to drive there than fly. And replacing the aircraft with a missile wouldn't change that.

<comment><USER3> Such a well written summary I think it should pretty much be a footnote to any of the super sonic / hyper sonic / quad-copter-automated-flying-thingy forward looking statements. I think projects like Boom are perfectly fine for rich billionaires to throw money at in their spare time, because they still run into physics and logistics.

In doing research for a project, I came across some Annual Reports for the company Sabre. Some might recognize the name, as they were an in-house tech / logistics / travel operations company for American Airlines that got spun off into its own entity years back. Point being, they have a vested interest in air travel, and over and over, the CEO was concerned and frustrated by the lack of modernization in flight systems and overall system improvements. A very consistent theme, and I can't disagree with him.

Looking at it another way, the scale of persons affected by system upgrades and improvements drastically overshadows those who would, uh, gain from supersonic travel. Just makes sense.

<comment><USER4> manned quad-copter is fine. i am sure it can be man-rated with tolerable expenses and will quite soon become a useful way of within-city transportation. supersonic passenger plane is in completely different league...

<comment><USER2> Crew-rated is radically different from passenger-rated in basic safety requirements. The problem with quad copters is that they're unstable in flight after the loss of only one engine, and lack sufficient mass in the propellors to effectively autorotate. That makes nearly any propulsion or control system failure in a crewed quad copter a probable hull-loss and crew-loss event. Even test pilots have problems with flying under those conditions. The problem isn't lifting a human to a useful height and velocity---the Romans solved that with catapults. The problem is being able to reasonably assure them that you can return them to earth safely, reliably, and sufficiently inexpensively.

<comment><USER3> My logic was more from an insurance perspective related to a point you brought up - re: transportation improvements will likely be related to population dense environments.

Looking at the quad copters I have some doubts regarding navigation and/or performance during a catastrophic failure where others might be put at risk. That's not an unreasonable concern for life and property.

As you noted, again, there are high thresholds regarding crew and passenger parameters. I think those also extend to functional operations. For commercial aviation, there is a good 50+ years of accident records and ways that companies have paid out for tragedies and whatnot. Adding in a new component - the quad copter model - is most definitely outside of the norm and I think will be viewed as high risk at first, even if there are great financial rewards to be reaped down the line pending success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This suggests engines are 50% more efficient today than in 1960, with 80% reductions in fuel per passenger seat. [1]

If advanced physical simulations could produce a wing 20% more efficient than the concorde, with engines 20% more efficient, and the weight of control, actuation systems, and cabin interiors were all reduced by 20% the gains in operating cost and range would be substantially more than 20%. Gains in aircraft are typically non-linear because they all affect each other.

It's exciting to think about what might be possible with 50 years of materials science, _computers_, simulation, electronics, and propulsion technology.

[1] [http://www.atag.org/component/downloads/downloads/59.html](http://www.atag.org/component/downloads/downloads/59.html) [pdf]

</comment><comment><USER6> The budget and timeline strike me as wildly unrealistic, and the management quotes sound absurdly sanguine.

With that said, if they can pull off a 1/3 scale prototype with current funding as they claim they can, one nice ancillary benefit would be the kick to the ass of the Lockheed Martins of the world, for whom $33mm is a rounding error when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars on next-generation aviation platforms.

</comment><comment><USER7> "How could anyone be stupid enough to fund Facebook. They'll never make money" \- HN.

"VC's never fund anything but social media apps and advertising companies" \-- HN.

"Yes of course SpaceX is going to make Musk money" \-- HN.

"Funding a supersonic plane is a stupid idea" \-- HN.

(And yes, also "$41M funding for color.com is stupid" \--HN.)

<comment><USER8> > _" VC's never fund anything but social media apps and advertising companies" > \-- HN._

Well, they also occasionally fund stupid shit like uBeam.

> _" Yes of course SpaceX is going to make Musk money" \-- HN._

Isn't it? Except that money is wisely reinvested into the Mars transportation project.

> _" Funding a supersonic plane is a stupid idea" \-- HN._

Supersonic _passenger_ plane is not a smart idea for various technical and economical reasons. I don't think that's just "HN opinion".

<comment><USER7> _Supersonic passenger plane is not a smart idea for various technical and economical reasons. I don 't think that's just "HN opinion"._

AFAIK, the technical and economic reasons boil down to: "Too expensive to build, too expensive to fly, people object to the sonic booms".

I don't know if there is a way around the sonic boom problem, but for the first two there's an "easy" fix: make it cheaper. I don't have a clue how to do that, but and I have no particular opinion on Boom, but if someone came up with a way around that "small" problem then everything else falls into place.

<comment><USER8> As far as I can tell, the argument boils down to all that you wrote, _relative to what you gain_. AFAIK a supersonic passenger plane doesn't shorten your total trip enough, compared to regular passenger planes, to create a new quality class of travel.

E.g. taking 5 hours to go to a place (2h flight + airport overhead on both sides) by a plane vs. 12+ hours by bus makes many destinations suddenly accessible to people to visit for a weekend. Except maybe on intercontinental, I don't see a supersonic passenger plane enabling another quality class of travel.

<comment><USER9> A 16 hour flight dropping to 6 hours is a very noticeable difference, the question is if the economics work out. From an energy perspective ultra high altitude flight at Mach 2+ is surprisingly efferent. Though getting up there and up to speed is pointless for D.C. to NYC or other commuter flights.

<comment><USER10> Trouble is when it's 16 hours in a relatively comfortable seat that turns into a bed overnight with a choice of departure times (even including business jets in the price brackets we're currently talking about) versus 6 hours of relative discomfort with only one flight a day, it's less clear-cut a decision. Sure, there'll be some demand for it, but you need full aircraft on a very large number of routes for it to be a viable commercial aircraft programme.

<comment><USER9> Your assuming seats cost significantly more. That's not nessisarily true as the fuel costs are offset by need 1/2 the aircraft and far less crew time etc. So, if someone is looking at say a twenty percent premium and thinking about trying to sleep in coach that's an easy choice.

<comment><USER10> I think it's absurd to assume that supersonic flight will only be a 20% premium over coach class in a conventional aircraft with 3-4x the carrying capacity doing less work against physics and subjecting its more components to less physical stress.

If the price point comparison is (more plausibly) between business class in one of several A380/777 flights, chartering a flight and leaving exactly when and where you want if there's a group or coach class in a Boom, I think the choice is rather less straightforward. I'm not saying there's no demand - obviously Concorde filled seats - but I am saying it might not be sufficient to make a viable commercial aircraft programme even without restrictions on where they can fly.

<comment><USER9> From a physics standpoint ultra high altitude supersonic flight is not that much more expensive. The problems are mostly around economies of scale, but as soon as you get something that's competitive you will expect the price to fall quite a bit. A 400 passenger super sonic jet might use 2x the fuel per flight, but when it can make twice as many flights per day that's huge from capital standpoint.

That said, the concord was much closer to a prototype than what economical supersonic aircraft will look like. But, nobody is trying to build thousands of 400 passenger supersonic aircraft which makes your comparison more realistic.

<comment><USER10> Sure, a 400 passenger supersonic jet that only used twice as much fuel per flight but operated twice as many flights per day with comparable annual capital and maintenance costs could sell tickets at similar prices to coach class in a subsonic jet (assuming no barriers to operation on the same range of routes)

But I'd imagine there's a reason that jet doesn't exist even in the realms of the most hyperbole-filled press releases of supersonic jet ventures...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's amazing that adding some kind of valet system at the airport would speed up my travel more than this kind of marvel of engineering.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. Travel speed once you're in the air is basically the last problem with air travel. Travel time to the airport, looking around for a parking space, an outdated checkin process, endless security theater. These all seem like easier fixes than making planes move faster.

Even with no other improvements, I would probably take reliable in-flight wifi over a 25% improvement in flight times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haven't they seen "why the Concorde failed" on YouTube? Who's putting up $33M for this? Sam say it ain't so.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_wuykzfFzE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_wuykzfFzE)

<comment><USER14> Could be a couple of rich people looking at Musk and experiencing "rocket envy".

<comment><USER15> There are enough rich people in the world whom have inherited wealth but don't understand the mechanics of its acquisition, amplification and retainment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The comments are remarkably negative for a can-do crowd of entrepreneurial people. Success is built on a string of multiple failures. I'm rooting for this team to succeed.

<comment><USER17> It's useful to remember that it's a bunch of people that don't know the industry. They're just googling and reading Wikipedia. That doesn't mean the project will be successful. It's just that there's zero information content to most comments that are on non-software topics.

There are some things I know a little about that I haven't commented on here about, and I've seen where people are quite clearly googling and getting not the right answer but the answer that is most likely to show up on Google.

Just something useful to keep in mind.

<comment><USER18> Glad to see this viewpoint.

I work in energy and the hivemind on HN on this topic is quite subject to these fallacies. ("Solar energy can't be profitable" and "thorium is the answer" spring to mind.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish companies like this would come out and say what they are: an acqui-hire project. A single brand new passenger jet costs more than $33 million, and that's with decades of development costs being amortized. Development costs for Boeing's new 787, a conventional aircraft, came to over $30 _billion_. I will be amazed if they actually even get a working prototype aircraft flying with this amount of money.

<comment><USER20> _I will be amazed if they actually even get a working prototype aircraft flying with this amount of money._

That's not the point of this funding round. When you work on _insanely_ ambitious projects you have to do things incrementally.

This is their 3rd round - the first was $120k, the second was $2.1m. Each round enables them to do enough of the tasks that demonstrate to investors that they're capable of doing the _next_ set of tasks. I have no clue how you design a plane but I would guess the first round was entirely spent on modelling the financials and market research to see if there's even a business opportunity. The next round would be something like the _really_ broad brush ideas for how you'd make a plane like this. This round will be spent digging in to the technology itself, figuring out what capabilities you need to have in an electric plane, and finding which parts you can buy off the shelf. If Boom are successful at that then there'll be future rounds that are spent on _actual_ design and manufacturing.

By the time anything real takes off from a runway they'll probably need to have raised _billions_.

 _No one_ thinks you can design and build a plane for $120k+$2.1m+$33m.

<comment><USER21> I don't see them addressing the first and main challenge to supersonic flight: regulation

<comment><USER20> This is pure speculation on my part, but isn't most supersonic flight regulation essentially anti-competitive behaviour by the US government because Concorde wasn't an American-made aircraft? Even if that isn't true I think the main problem was the ludicrous sound levels from the engines, which an electric plane wouldn't suffer from (as much). If Boom demonstrate that they can make a working plane I imagine a lot of the red tape would just disappear.

<comment><USER22> The engines don't create the ludicrous sound; the force of an object moving through the air faster than the speed of sound creates the sonic boom. While some designs can mitigate this it doesn't seem that Boom has an answer here except for keeping the aircraft small.

<comment><USER20> New York Port Authority banned Concorde because it was too noisy on take off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The ex-aerospace engineer in me is super excited. But the realist in me fears this a decadent polluting toy for elites in a post-combustion world. Versus VR and other remote technologies which will solve many of the issues it also attempts to address it just seems like a moonshot from a bygone era.

</comment><comment><USER24> > NYC to London […] at a cost of $2,500

> cabin comforts

If they can actually deliver on those two, then they can succeed where Concorde failed (couldn't compete against first/business class given the tickets cost far too much and offered economy-esque seating).

That's a big "if", though.

</comment><comment><USER25> There's not market for this.

Passenger don't care about saving time transatlantic because the people who can afford it can now sleep in a bed in business or first.

Airlines don't want it because super sonic capable engines take way more fuel than current day engines and therefore the costs would be high.

If there was a demand for supersonic planes Boeing or Airbus would be building them already.

<comment><USER26> You're nuts. First and business class comforts are about making the best of a bad situation. At equivalent seat prices, nearly everyone would pick the more than twice as fast option.

Boom's business model relies on this, obviously, but so do their passenger- seat-mile economics. Boom claims that the per seat fuel consumption (and ultimately the ticket prices) would be same as for business class seats currently. This is possible because making a currently-seven-hour flight in three hours enables them to replace a full flat bed with a recliner seat, saving 2/3 of the floor area per passenger.

<comment><USER25> That's not what happened.

People stopped using Concorde and started using the new comforts of business class on larger albeit slower planes.

The per seat fuel consumption is perhaps optimistic on their part.

<comment><USER26> The last Concorde airframe rolled off the factory floor in 1979. It never competed with lie-flat business class seats, and it's not possible to paint the failure as passengers having voted for slower but more comfortable options. The ban on overland supersonic flights simply made Concorde a non- starter.

The comfort onboard Concorde was fine. I miss it each and every time I fly transatlantic. But with British Airways and Air France allotted just seven aircraft each, obviously it could never be a mainstream product, no matter how compelling it was from a passenger perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why are the investors pouring money into this. It is so obvious it can't work. Are they simply fooled, like those guys who invested into scientifically impossible power-over-ultrasound startup?

I know venture investment is risky, but is there any limit on how stupid VC partners can be? Can banks who lended them money, sue them?

<comment><USER27> There is a fine line between physically impossible and SpaceX'ish impossible. Don't confuse them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How have they or do they plan to overcome the limitations and inefficiencies that happen near and past the speed of sound?

</comment><comment><USER29> Cool. Looking forward to the prototype.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good frickin' luck. If Concorde couldn't survive even without accidents... it might not be a viable business. Aerion has immense resources, talent and connections and is still slowly chugging along on allegedly building the AS2, an expensive, supersonic business jet.

Might want to consider the feasibility of the real economics of jet fuel per passenger/cargo before raising a bunch of money to ignite. And also disappointing investors and losing their confidence when they ask for $5 billion more to continue development and are turned down.

<comment><USER30> Concorde ran into (a) the oil price shock of the 1970s (the price of fuel quadrupled overnight around the time manufacturing commenced), and (b) the airport security theatre of the immediate post-9/11 era (a 3 hour LHR-JFK flight is a whole lot less attractive if you add 2 hours of queuing at security checkpoints and another hour at immigration, when you can rent a seat on a bizjet for the same money and bypass both). But what killed Concorde was (c) the airframe hitting the 30 year point; it has been alleged that Airbus demanded outrageous amounts of money to keep updating its type certification for flight after that time. (Caveat: trying to find a citation for this online is ... vexing.)</comment></comment>


Console.mihai(); - <AUTHOR> http://incompleteness.me/blog/2015/02/09/console-dot-mihai/ <comment><USER2> I worked with Mihai (remotely) on the developer tools team when I first joined Mozilla about five years ago. He was one of the most incredibly passionate developers I've ever had the pleasure of working with, and he had an enormous impact on the quality of the developer tools in Firefox. If you've ever used the developer tools, chances are you've interacted with his code; he had a front and center role in the console and was one of the key reasons why Firefox developer tools went from zero to world-class in just a few short years.

This is a very sad moment for everyone. Thanks for everything you did, Mihai.

<comment><USER3> This is very sad, I was born in a different city in the same country and I remember how proud we felt about 5 yeears ago when we learnt that dev tools were being worked on by a fellow Romanian.

This article[0] is so sad it made me cry. I just cannot imagine having this kind of serenity in the face of imminent death.

RIP

[http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog/touched](http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog/touched)

<comment><USER4> Certainly makes my petty daily concerns seem infinitesimally small. Thanks for linking to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was one of the nicest pieces of writing I've seen in a great while, you clearly had huge affection for mihai.

It's strange I never knew mihai or even that he existed, I've noticed the FF developer tools and console get hugely better over time and it never occurred to me to think about who was behind that.

I have a medical condition that may well land me in a wheelchair in time to come but even that pales in comparison to EB, I get paid in the next few days and will donate to honour a man I never knew who did the thing that he loved.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been developing a free chrome extension called Hands Free for Chrome that lets you navigate Chrome using just your voice; that idea was that people with conditions like Mihai's would use it to more easily interact with the web.

However, only about 500 people use it despite that there are far more than that who could find a use for it. I'm not sure how to make it more known and get it into more people's hands. If anyone has any advice, please email me at email@example.com.

Reading articles like this just really reminds me how important accessibility tools can be for some individuals.

<comment><USER5> Contact charities and organizations that deal with groups that have people with such impairments, they mostly all have websites and newsletters.

I have syringomyelia which depending on location and severity can cause paralysis so they'd be a natural start you can find US orgs here

[http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/syringomyelia/org_syringo...](http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/syringomyelia/org_syringomyelia.htm)

British ones (I'm British) here.

[http://www.annconroytrust.org/what-we- do/education/british-s...](http://www.annconroytrust.org/what-we- do/education/british-syringomyelia-group/)

A quick friendly email and a link would probably do it, these days such groups are heavily connected internally and stuff goes around really quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember interviewing Mihai when he was joining Mozilla. It was a bit hard to understand him over the phone at first (I didn't know about the EB at the time), but he was undeniably smart and knew his stuff.

Mihai was a truly amazing person who accomplished so much despite his hard life. I'm reminded of him any time the Tron soundtrack comes up when I'm shuffling my music because Mihai one day randomly praised it on IRC. You couldn't tell how much effort Mihai had to put into every little thing day-to- day because he was every bit a member of the team.

RIP Mihai and thanks for being such an inspiring person.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for the touching post - it's always good to hear these human stories about the people who write the software we use every day.

I have a question though - the post does not mention Mihai having passed away but has a mournful tone. A commenter on the blog post said 'rest in peace'. Is Mihai retiring from development due to illness, or has he indeed passed away?

<comment><USER9> The blog post was written in February; according to a post on the Mozilla developer-tools mailing list, he died a few days ago.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.develope...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.developer- tools/0-oC_YwPq3U)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A friend of a friend has this disease. It was shocking the first time we met. She has to be covered from head to toe to help avoid injury from bumping into things. Her voice is hoarse and raw. Her fingers have worn off, down to mere nubs.

But she gets around without too much assistance. She feeds herself, using what's left of her fingers. And she doesn't complain.

When I feel sorry for myself because not everything in my life has gone the way I hoped it might, I think of her and realize I really have it pretty easy.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm the author of the blog post. I've updated it to add that Mihai died recently.

<comment><USER12> I made a small donation, and I wanted to say thank you to everyone involved.

Some years ago I stopped using Firebug. I made a brief jump to Chrome but somehow I felt more at home in Firefox, and now I no longer needed FB to do my job.

Pretty much every single workday I have entered something or other into the console. I hop around Alt-Apple-K/Apple-Shift-I/etc. I inspect my elements. I loved it when recently an event listener list popped into the DOM view. I have followed your checkboxes and your changes and it has by and large been very much for the good.

Free software makes me feel good. Mozilla Firefox is one of my favorite pieces of software and I develop against it and use it and make a living with it. Kudos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla- aurora/rev/74827b8f6...](https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla- aurora/rev/74827b8f61eb)

</comment><comment><USER14> Over a decade ago, i worked in a lab that was trying to develop a gene therapy for DEB. It's particularly tough, because you need to replace the collagen VII gene, which is pretty big:

[http://www.omim.org/entry/120120](http://www.omim.org/entry/120120)

That lab doesn't seem to have published anything since i left, but the broader project is still slowly grinding forward:

[http://www.genegraft.eu/](http://www.genegraft.eu/)

</comment><comment><USER15> My mom is an RN at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford (LPCH) and she's been working with kids who have EB and other rare genetic skin conditions for many years now.

About 5 years ago I had the chance to meet one of her patients, a young man with EB. The brutality of living/existing with this condition is striking and severe.

Imagine the driest and itchiest your skin has ever felt and multiply it by a few orders of magnitude, then apply that sensation across your entire body. That is what it is like all the time having EB. Except even worse because of the scarring that builds up over time.

Mihai sounds like an incredible individual who didn't let ANYTHING stop him from doing what he loved. What remarkable inspiration for the rest of us!

</comment><comment><USER16> My internet connection at home has been down for 3 days and I've been grumpy and proclaiming that it's the end of the world.

What the hell am I thinking - the unimaginable courage to live a full, productive life with a debilitating condition like Mihai had sure puts thing in perspective.

Thank you for teaching me a lot today.

</comment><comment><USER17> That's was touching. After reading I checked Firefox to see if console.mihai(); was indeed a method but it is not. Perhaps a small easter egg could be added so it becomes a method as a little tribute since he worked so much on making it better?

<comment><USER18> It's there on Nightly:

        console.mihai()
        > "http://incompleteness.me/blog/2015/02/09/console-dot-mihai/"

<comment><USER19> Confirmed to be on 37.0.2 as well (Regular)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those of you watching hockey recently, that's the same disease that Jonathon Pitre has, the kid who has become an honorary scout for the Ottawa Senators.

<comment><USER21> Video here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYxGtuBSgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYxGtuBSgk)

<comment><USER22> Wow, just wow. No words. Life can be so incredibly hard for some people..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Some more detail on how he managed to type despite his condition: [http://swiftkey.com/en/blog/how-swipe-typing-makes- communica...](http://swiftkey.com/en/blog/how-swipe-typing-makes- communicating-easier-for-physical-disabilities/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Thank you for the great work, Mihai!

It will be a beautiful time when people don't have to suffer like this. Medical technology can't advance quickly enough.

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

</comment><comment><USER25> I highly recommend this documentary about EB and the great life and death of Jonny Kennedy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmahlc6n9_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmahlc6n9_A)

</comment><comment><USER26> I did not know about EB.

donated to one of the organizations listed at the end of Mihai's post [http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog/thanks](http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog/thanks)

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow. Mihai's story is at once humbling and inspiring.

As a web developer who has used the fruits of his hard work in Firefox, I will remember him when I think that my job or life is difficult. I really have nothing to complain about.

</comment><comment><USER28> this is a great human story

they should add `console.mihai()` ala easter egg, and proud recognition

<comment><USER29> [http://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx- team/rev/fdcb26aac28c](http://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx- team/rev/fdcb26aac28c)

<comment><USER12> Just ran it in my console. That's really cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Să trăieşti frate.

Very moving writing. Thank you Mihai!

</comment><comment><USER31> Very inspiring person. It's unfortunate,most of us are unaware of this person.

On his blog he said ([http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog](http://mihai.sucan.ro/mihai/blog)) > We want you and others to know us by our work, our achievements,

Yes, we came to know you for your work and achievement. Great work Mihai. Thanks for your contributions to opensource world. RIP

</comment><comment><USER32> Thank you, Mihai.

</comment><comment><USER33> This humanity here is the power of Free Software. Thanks for all your involvement in any way as users and contributers.

</comment><comment><USER34> Mihai, we will remember you by what you have done and accomplished.

RIP

</comment><comment><USER35> thank you (truly); and peace be with you always.

</comment><comment><USER36> RIP Mihai.

</comment><comment><USER37> RIP. mihai</comment>


Total Covid-19 Mortality in Italy: Excess Mortality and Age Dependence - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20067074v2 <comment><AUTHOR> Full title: Total COVID-19 Mortality in Italy: Excess Mortality and Age Dependence through Time-Series Analysis.

tl;dr

estimated fatalities from excess mortality in Italy: 52,000 ± 2000. Population fatality Rate: 0.22% in Lombardia (0.57% in the most affected towns) which put a lower bound on the IFR. Infection rate probably 60-70% in the most affected towns and herd immunity should now be present.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they might be overestimating the infection rate though (but then again, they have huge error bars).

They use the PFR computed from the excess mortality (which is fine), but that includes a lot of people that have died on their home, which were more probably more likely to die (but with an unknown factor) that those that died in an hospital (whose CFR can be estimated). But they use the CFR from Princess Diamond, correcting for the age group but not for the fact that all the cases form Princess Diamond were treated in an hospital.

It is probably not a big deal as the major result of the paper is an estimation of the PFR.</comment></comment>


Interview with Audrey Tang, part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://perlhist.com/perl6/audrey-tang-1

<comment><USER2> Here's an interesting insight on how using a purely functional language (Haskell) to implement an imperative one (Perl6) helped:

> _It was helpful in that it 's much easier to reason about Perl 6 semantics, > making explicit all ambiguities in the specification, because Haskell did > not prefer one semantic over another._

It's a salient point because an interpreter built in an imperative language naturally reuses most of the host language's semantics, often without anyone noticing. This can be extremely powerful (SICP's "metacircular evaluator" is incredibly elegant), but also limiting. (Implementing anything sufficiently _unlike_ Scheme using SICP's approach was far more awkward.)</comment>


A free clone of the Age of Empires II engine - <AUTHOR> https://openage.sft.mx/ <comment><USER2> This brought back a memory I hadn't accessed in quite a while:

In highschool we had a filesharing systems that teachers "used" to upload class materials, homework, notes, etc.

In reality, about 5% of the teachers used it to host their syllabus but didn't bother to upload anything for the remainder of the year. My junior year I spent the better part of a semester building a workaround to allow students to locally install AoE via a cracked version that I torrented and brought in on a CD. We hosted the files deep into our technologically inept math teachers directory and buried ourselves during study hall to try and host complete matches in our allotted 40 minutes.

I wonder if it's still there. Even today I can still imagine the cries of "more wood please!" very distinctly.

<comment><USER3> I did something similar.

I found the "master" computer that all other computers in the computer labs at my high school were reimaged from every week. I installed Warcraft 3 on it, a week later every computer in my 5000+ student high school had Warcraft 3.

Probably why I failed my AP Java course...

<comment><USER4> Yes, Warchief?

Great game, can't recommend it enough. My grades took a hit too, but it was worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sunk a lot of my childhood into AoK. I come back to it every now and then for a bit of nostalgia.

I remember downloading the demo - a whopping ~60mb. I had to start the download in the morning, went out for a bit and prayed to god that the 56k didn't cut out or my mum didn't use the phone.

I even remember the demo had online capability on MSN. Nine year old me didn't get the point of death match. I tried building as usual in the middle of the map instead of rushing for a corner.

I remember another time me and another player decided to lay down arms and just build. That was fun. I was looking for a SimCity or Caesar III in AoE.

So much fun. I'm glad people feel the same enough to invest so much time in something like this.

<comment><USER6> Why couldn't 56k modems handle dropped connections?

<comment><USER7> Most file transfers at the time would have to start from the beginning if you dropped. This sucked when it took 10+ hours to download a file that size.

<comment><USER8> Props to my old friend, GetRight download manager

<comment><USER9> Brings me back to the days of hopping from download manager to download manager when one added undesired features, or stopped working.

I recall using flashget. Which I liked if I recall because you could have multiple connections download the same url. Which got around per connection qos. And showed you nice tiles of progress. Also supported resume, was great for the old days of slow connections :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really hope they make this work with the added files from Age of Empires 2: HD.

What a lot of folks might be unaware of is that the "HD" edition primarily did _not_ do any graphical makeovers; rather they just adapted the game to run on modern screens/OSes, use the steam workshop for mods, and most importantly, they did several expansion packs of absolutely top-notch quality.

They've almost added as many civs as were in the entire original game + all of its expansions: Magyars, Indians, Slavs, Incas, Italians, Berbers, Malians, Ethiopians, Burmese, Khmer, Malays, Vietnamese. Several of these came with completely new architectural styles.

And they did balance patches to the original stuff! It's a dream come true for an old-school AoE2 player like me.

<comment><USER11> It's on sale on Steam for $4 for those interested in picking it up again. Also a good time to buy gift copies for friends. Interestingly, there's now a pro scene around the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh, I wonder if they'll ever make a version of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. That was made using the Age of Empires II engine. I loved that game and regret that it doesn't work on Linux.

<comment><USER13> I've definitely successfully played it on linux with Wine. I don't remember how exactly I configured it, but there exist blogs that make it look like it isn't difficult: [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/01/running-star-wars- galactic-...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2015/01/running-star-wars-galactic- battlegrounds-on-linux/)

<comment><USER14> Their LAN support was broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830652](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830652)

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't game a lot, but I enjoy the occasional AoE II. I first got into it with a CD version of Conquerors on an old iBook G3, and now I run the HD version using Crossover.

I drew a real-world map of Taiwan for AoE II using Peter Olson's map maker [1].

I'd like to recreate the history of the island and make a video, using AoE II HD to stage some battle scenes. For example, Koxinga's pirates burning the Dutch fort in Tainan. I've already written the script of the 5-minute video, which should be YouTube-ready.

The trouble is, making that scene would need multiplayer, which requires Steam. The non-HD version wouldn't look as good.

Would OpenAge be a better platform for trying to make this video? I'm not much of a movie producer, just a programmer geek who'd like to do this as a hobby project. I actually thought of the idea about a year ago, but never followed it up because I've been too busy trying to find a job.

[1] [https://github.com/peterolson/AOE2-Real-Map- Creator](https://github.com/peterolson/AOE2-Real-Map-Creator)

</comment><comment><USER17> Age of Empires II is the best PC video game of all time

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember high school (circa 2013) my friends and I would spend ages on teamspeak LAN servers playing our pirated copies of AoE II. We jumped through a lot of hoops to play that game.

<comment><USER19> There was no crack required per se. You could share the CD around.

<comment><USER20> That implies that GP had one legit copy to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks awesome. Has anyone here played it?

I was playing a free version of Civ1 the other day and the nostalgia took over my body for a whole weekend.

<comment><USER22> What was the free version of Civ1?

<comment><USER23> Freeciv I think?

<comment><USER24> Nope, it seems to mimic Civ2.

<comment><USER25> It has rule sets for both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Still play this game on Voobly every now and then. Land Nomad map, 4v4. Rating: 16xx

A few stories:

\- Still remember the day we went to the store and picked up AoE gold in like '98. First game I played was as Byzantines. Still remember the first enemy trebuchet launch with its immense range: "wtf is that and where is it coming from??"

\- my brother and I were both into it. It was so addictive but we only had one computer and had to buy the game 3 times b/c we (I?) broke the CDs when we'd fight over it lol

\- lots of hiding from my mum playing it at night in living room. Had to be quick to shut the monitor off and hide during dangerous moments.

\- Most memorable recorded game was the 3v3 Yucatán between Arch_Koven, L_Clan_Rami, Arch_Vile vs. L_Clan_Bender, L_Clan_Ugnis and Korean (?). Mongol, Celt, Persian vs mongol Spain and ?? An epic that Gilgamesh would be proud of.

\- favorite games vs computer were tiny map, 8 player on hard. Scenarios were enthralling too

\- worst part, like the PC Gamer review said, was the opening cinematic

</comment><comment><USER27> There is going to be a 5 minutes lightning talk tomorrow at 11:50 UTC by one of the developers: [https://c3lt.de/35c3/schedule/](https://c3lt.de/35c3/schedule/)

Held in Hall Borg: [https://streaming.media.ccc.de/35c3/hallb](https://streaming.media.ccc.de/35c3/hallb)

<comment><USER27> The recording is not available yet but they put their own talk up already: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPlxPXoIUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPlxPXoIUQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does this differentiate itself from 0ad?

<comment><USER29> In literally every possible way.

<comment><USER30> Here are ways in which they're not different:

* Both use C++

* Both multi-platform

* Both open source

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> AOE2 is much worse than AOE1, which is simpler, but requires more fast reaction on tactics. The gameplay is always fast, interesting to play and watch. A remake of AOE1 is much more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER32> I still play aoe in form of cba on game ranger

</comment><comment> n-gate PSA: AoE2 HD is on sale on steam right now for super cheap.</comment>


Hands-on: Firefox Mobile's new Android tablet interface - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/09/hands-on-firefox-mobiles-new-android-tablet-interface.ars <comment><USER2> I have one major problem with Firefox for Mobile - it hijacks swipe left/right events and libraries like jQuery Mobile can not detect swiping.

Other than that I think it is great that there is a good alternative to the stock Android browser.

<comment><USER3> interesting problem. Have you filed a bug about swipe events?

The tablet UI doesn't rely on sideways swipes like the phone UI does: I would be interested to find out how it works with swipe events. Is there a test page I can try?

Posted from Firefox Mobile nightly!

<comment><USER2> The bug is fixed in the Firefox Mobile nightly for Android. Here is some jQuery Mobile demo for detecting swipe events: [http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2011/3/26/Another- ex...](http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2011/3/26/Another-experiment- in-jQuery-Mobile-swipe-navigation)

I though the article is about Firefox Mobile, bit it was for Firefox Mobile tablet interface. I then went to Android Market and downloaded Firefox Beta, which turns out still has this bug. Then downloaded Firefox Mobile Nightly (for Android ) and it turns out they fixed it. But there is new one, which I think is related to the fixed bug - they always show the tabs on the left.

And yes, I now have Android tablet with three Firefox browsers installed.</comment></comment></comment>


Build Wars: Gulp vs. Grunt - <AUTHOR> http://markdalgleish.github.io/presentation-build-wars-gulp-vs-grunt/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a fan of presentations where every other slide is an animated gif. I think it detracts from the presentation.

Also, this might be an old slide. The spec this was referring to appears to be dead: [https://github.com/node-task/spec/wiki](https://github.com/node- task/spec/wiki)

</comment><comment><USER3> It does however spell out the right conclusion: a) it doesn't have to be a replacement and b) configuration vs code.

Btw there's also brunch ([http://brunch.io](http://brunch.io)) that you might want to check out. That one really does need only minimal configuration.

I wrote an article about all three not too long ago: [http://blog.toggl.com/2014/03/grunt-vs-gulp-vs- brunch/](http://blog.toggl.com/2014/03/grunt-vs-gulp-vs-brunch/)

</comment><comment><USER4> For some reason, when I try to load the page, all the slides flash past, and I'm left with just the image of the author at the end.

Edit: On Mac Chrome 37.0.2062.124, for what that's worth.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find any build automation tool to be a hassle. Tools like Gulp and Grunt remind me strongly of Visual Studio and C++, something I hope not to have to see on my screen.

I find using system calls to be much easier. Node.js has a really powerful API that most people seem not to want to use, rather then want someone to write a plugin to do their tasks for them. I understand being lazy is good in programming but build plugin is just overengineering in my limited experience.

<comment><USER6> The thing with Gulp is that it can just be a simple wrapper to your node system calls. I use it just as a task runner to lessc files together, or run a browserify script, etc. It also really takes some pain away from piping data to different handlers.</comment></comment>


Teleportation on the command line - <AUTHOR> http://thecakeisalie.in/blog/2014/01/11/teleportation-on-the-commandline/

<comment><USER2> It looks like no one has posted what, in my opinion, is the most powerful of the "jump" programs: fasd.

My workflow for getting around is just to type "z <fragment of directory name>" and I almost always end up where I want. If I just want to edit a file, not a project, I do vim `f <filename fragment>` and likewise get the file I want typically.

The readme makes it pretty clear how awesome it is and I've stuck with it after using autojump, z, and others.

[https://github.com/clvv/fasd](https://github.com/clvv/fasd)

<comment><USER3> Second this recommendation. fasd works extremely well, and better than z and autojump for my usage. I use it all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just use auto jump

[https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump](https://github.com/joelthelion/autojump)

<comment><USER5> lighter (non python) alternative to autojump [https://github.com/rupa/z](https://github.com/rupa/z)

<comment><USER6> Since I discovered `z` I haven't typed in cd, except for changing into $HOME quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Nobody types an entire URL like [https://example.com/example- > page?input=sample&another-input=...](https://example.com/example- > page?input=sample&another-input=2). We bookmark it and give it a keyword > like ex or something. From then, we just type ex and hit return to access > the website.

I don't wanna sound negative, but just being realistic.

I don't rely on bookmarks primarily. I rely on "most frequently visited gets auto-completed first" and fuzzy search of Chrome Omnibox. If I do bookmark something, it's to indicate to the algorithm "I care about this, make it easier to fuzzy find it later".

But it's a good step in the right direction, good job!

Edit: From the description, it sounds like autojump does something close.

<comment><USER8> You should try out fish[1], one of the features that makes it great is that it does exactly what the chrome omnibox does, just with commands. It shows what it will complete after you press ^F and it is a lot of times correct.

It also has lots of other features, like tab completion that tells you what the options of commands do. So reading the manpages or typing -h is generally not needed.

If you do try it, also try one of the themes of oh-my-fish[2], most of them have a git thing that lets you know if you have uncommitted stuff and on what branch you are.

[1] [http://fishshell.com/](http://fishshell.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/bpinto/oh-my-fish](https://github.com/bpinto/oh-my- fish)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not just use the CDPATH variable in your shell? If the directory is one you go to frequently, add it to CDPATH, then just cd to it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm quite happy with [https://github.com/huyng/bashmarks](https://github.com/huyng/bashmarks)

Also, the built-in pushd and popd commands are enough sometimes.

<comment> vezzy-fnord _Also, the built-in pushd and popd commands are enough sometimes._

I came here to say this. A small wrapper around these commands would make for a sufficient script.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting scripts are being posted in the comments, really neat tricks guys.

One thing I'd like to add, if you're like me and don't want to install too much "extra" stuff on your machines: Bash has native commands called pushd and popd[0]. They work as a stack, pushd will push the current directory onto the stack and jump to the new target, then you're free to move around, do whatever you want and then call popd to pop the latest directory from the stack.

I find these very useful, especially if I'm on a machine without additional installed software and just want to do my thing effortlessly.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushd_and_popd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushd_and_popd)

<comment><USER12> For a one-level undo there's always

      cd -

Passing a single dash as a parameter to cd takes you back to $OLDPWD and each invocation of cd sets OLDPWD to the directory you were in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use a similar method, which I based on a previous HN post:

[https://github.com/akerl/dotfiles/blob/master/.bundles/marks](https://github.com/akerl/dotfiles/blob/master/.bundles/marks)

I'm addicted to one/two-letter aliases, and between that and ZSH completion ([https://github.com/akerl/dotfiles/blob/master/.completions/_...](https://github.com/akerl/dotfiles/blob/master/.completions/_marks)), the mark functions get me super-simple bookmarks

I also wish people would stop providing "curl this into .bashrc" as the primarily installation method. That's a really bad habit to get into, especially with a file like .bashrc. It's a bit less risky than piping the curl into bash, but still not a great plan.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't get it. Why not just use aliases?

alias <name>='cd path/to/<name>'

Then you can just type: $ <name>

You can even set up an alias to add a new alias -> alias ea='vim ~/bash/alias'

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice. This quick and dirty trick has been in my .bashrc forever and I still use it:

        function md(){
            pwd > /tmp/md_tmp

        function gomd(){
            cd `cat /tmp/md_tmp`

so `md` marks the current directory and `gomd`go to the marked directory. Unlike bash builtins like pushd and popd, it uses the file system to store the marked directory so you can pop up a new terminal and just do gomd. (you can't with pushd/popd since the bash processes of the old and the new terminal are not related)

Edit: I see that your script uses links, I'll check this out.

</comment><comment><USER16> Some time ago I put my directory changing tools up on GitHub at [https://github.com/mattflower/bashcd](https://github.com/mattflower/bashcd)

In addition to the bookmarking style capabilities other people have already mentioned it also includes integration with the locate database, the mac spotlight/mds database, and the plain old find command. It can switch to a sub directory containing a particular file. It also supports bash completion.

</comment><comment><USER17> With zsh, you could just do w/c/p/w/s<TAB>

</comment><comment><USER18> I made a tool a year ago to do the same thing, Metis: [https://github.com/srcoley/metis](https://github.com/srcoley/metis)

I like a solution that goes where ever your dotfiles go, instead of having to install a fuzzy search on each system.

Metis will list all of your currently saved Metis aliases as well, just by typing "metis". You can also tell Metis which dotfile you want to save your aliases.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why not just use a symlink?

        ln -s ~/super/long/nested/directory/name ~/short

If you don't want to dump them in your home directory, just make a directory with a single-letter name for your links:

        ln -s ~/super/long/nested/directory/name ~/l/short

<comment><USER20> Personally I do something similar. I set up an alias in .zshrc from project names to commands. This allows me to do things like source environments as well.

        alias proj="cd /this/that/foo/projects/myproject/ && source .hsenv/bin/activate"

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well I though it was nice, but the script if quite buggy! works well when cleaned up

</comment><comment><USER22> Thanks - all of the alternatives look interesting but this one seems to be the shortest of them, and since "mark" installed after a simple cut & paste into my profile, I'll try it out for a while.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is sort of why I always just put everything in a shell script. Creating a text file with .sh extension is not that difficult, and I almost never use the command line interactively. Plus I use a GUI and just mount folders I need to browse. It boggles the mind how so many people still equate "Linux==Command Line Hacking". I actually had a boss once who said to me: "If you don't use the command line that much why do you use Linux instead of Windows?" You see, in his mind Linux was all about the command line. Yeah maybe in 1990 it was, but nowadays it's a normal OS like any other.

</comment><comment><USER24> I enjoy posts like this because it brings out timtowtdi: pushd, cdpath, ln and aliases

</comment><comment><USER25> Does any flavor of this functionality exist for Windows command prompt?

<comment><USER26> Windows makes this a little easier than bash does.

batch scripts in windows behave like scripts on unix do when you source them. That means that you can write a batch script called "foo.bat" with the contents of "cd \whatever\directory\you\please" and it will change your current directory when run.

From there, it would not be difficult to write a batch script that in turn wrote batch scripts like "foo.bat" above.

With bash, you would have to create functions or aliases to get the same effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Did anybody try the script in ZSH?

<comment> a-b [https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my- zsh/blob/master/plugin...](https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my- zsh/blob/master/plugins/fasd/fasd.plugin.zsh)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Tab works for me.</comment>


1100 free icon as a web-font - <AUTHOR> https://iconscout.com/unicons <comment><USER2> Horrible popup. Unusable on my One Plus 5.</comment>


Huawei Surprises Millions of Users with Stunning Google Alternative - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/04/26/huawei-surprises-millions-of-users-with-stunning-google-alternative/#37810e255b06 <comment><USER2> Here Maps has nothing to do with Huawei..I don't see how a single nav app 'surprises millions of users' about Huawei's desire to be free from Google, and further, while I like Here Maps, it is most certainly not 'stunning'.

</comment><comment><USER3> How much did this article cost Huawei to have Forbes write. Nothing in this map app is by huawei. Crapvertising in print form.

</comment><comment><USER4> Been seeing increasing instances of a Huawei crawler user agent in my sites' logs. Huawei Search coming soon?

<comment><USER5> Maybe. This article is from Feb. 29, 2020. They identified a url that was accessible via web but it looks to be down. I didn't dig deeper.

[https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-search-mobile/](https://www.xda- developers.com/huawei-search-mobile/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The situation is probably very different in US but in EU Huawei managed to get most of the must to have apps (banks, government services) into their store.

I don't particularly like Huawei as a company but their hardware looks really nice and if they can give Google some competition on software side everyone will benefit.

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://archive.is/7BONT](http://archive.is/7BONT)

</comment><comment><USER8> Does it have Street view?

Does it have business opening hours or the little indicator how busy a business is right now live?

<comment><USER6> Here was a Nokia product and back when they were in charge it was actually significantly better than Google maps.

It did not have all the bells and whistles but what it did it did really good. It was simply a well-thought product unlike Googles throw-in-everything-and- see-what-sticks Maps.</comment></comment>


A Code Red: Network Edition - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/inside-a-code-red-network-edition/ <comment> Pick-A-Hill2019 I find it hilarious/annoying when authors put the TLDR; at the END of an article (or post-mortem write-up in this instance). Since HN is a diverse community (see Tabs vs. Spaces, Vim vs. Vi etc) I decided to take a look around the interwebz to see if others tended to stick the TLDR; at the beginning or the end of something and found this [1]

TLDR; Sometimes it can go _here_.

" How Do You Use TLDR? Generally speaking, you should only use TLDR when summarizing a piece of text, whether you're the author or commenter. Using the phrase TLDR without offering a useful summary for the content can come off as intentionally rude (but of course, that may be your intention). When using TLDR as a commenter, your job is very simple. Provide a useful summary that other readers can understand or leave a snarky "TLDR" and come off as rude or childish. When using TLDR as an author, your job is a little more complicated. Placing a TLDR-summary at the beginning of an article or email can save the reader's time or serve as a quick introduction, but it can also give the reader a reason to skip the details of your text. A TLDR-summary at the end of a long text is sometimes more desirable, as it allows you to sum up all of the details that the reader is digesting. But in some situations, this use can feel a bit sarcastic. It's as if the author is acknowledging that their own wall of text can adequately be understood in a single sentence. As for professional or scholarly use, it just depends on the context. As a rule of thumb, don't throw around TLDR anywhere you wouldn't say LOL. But if you really want to use TLDR in a professional environment (it's big among programmers, marketers, and writers), consider saying "TL;DR" instead. It looks fancier than the basic TLDR, and it's accepted as a word by Webster's Dictionary. So, TLDR: TLDR is a useful way to summarize details and speed up communication. Use it when it feels right, and try to avoid sounding rude."

TLDR; Or it can go _here_.

[1] [https://www.howtogeek.com/435266/what-does-tldr-mean-and- how...](https://www.howtogeek.com/435266/what-does-tldr-mean-and-how-do-you- use-it/)</comment>


German Kindergarten Campouts Test Helicopter Parents (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/german-kindergarten-campouts-test-helicopter-parents-1451338940 <comment><USER2> Brush up your German and see this recent report of a day in a Waldkindergarten... Kindergarten in the forest - which is a popular concept in Germany.

[http://www.ardmediathek.de/tv/Landesschau-Baden- Württemberg/...](http://www.ardmediathek.de/tv/Landesschau-Baden- Württemberg/Ein-Tag-im-Waldkindergarten/SWR-Baden- Württemberg/Video?bcastId=250286&documentId=47325508)

The video speaks for itself: It shows a day in the Waldkindergarten of the Sonnenkinder, the 'sun children'. A woman from Canada has her son for the second day there. Another father reports that his son made problems at home and here is busy at any weather. When every child arrived, they walk 20 minutes together to the Waldtheater - the Forest Theater - the green living room. The first group made fire, already - a daily ritual. They also get something to do with various tools. One of the youngest is 2 y 9m and has somebody looking after him. The small children see it as a magical place. It's not allowed to harm the nature. At the end of the day every child has made its own personal experience, they walk back together and are looking forward to the next day in the forest.

<comment><USER3> They're also very popular in Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia.

Description in English: [http://denmark.dk/en/meet-the-danes/forest- preschools](http://denmark.dk/en/meet-the-danes/forest-preschools)

And a small documentary: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkiij9dJfcw)

An equally significant difference for me, coming from the UK, is that there are _men_ working in childcare. My window overlooks a street where a lot of nursery and primary school groups walk past on their way to the park, and my guess is half the adults are men. I was 9 years old in England when I first had a male teacher.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see that hanging out in the forest and building fires etc, would definitely attract me (as a guy) more towards childcare than having to be bored indoors all year.

<comment> King-Aaron This is why I think there is strong value in preserving organisations such as the Scouts and Girl Guides. Kids should definitely have these experiences - both boys and girls.

I'm a bit biased, as I was in the scouts for 17 years... In Australia that was Joey Scouts, Cub Scouts, Scouts, Venturer Scouts and Rovers. Theres a group for basically every age.

I feel that years of predatory leaders may have irreversibly damaged the reputation of the organisation though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In rule-bound Germany, growing up is surprisingly rule-free.

"Rule-bound" Germany is a common stereotype in the US (and admittedly Germans love ,,Ordnung'') but the US feels far more rule driven.

My son (now adult) grew up back and forth in both the US and Germany. As a very small kid (knowing nothing of politics) he once referred to Germany "the land of freedom" because in the US people were always telling him what _not_ to do.

I had him in a German school in the US for a while. The US parents complained a lot about how dangerous things were (e.g. kindergarteners with access to hammers, nails, hot glue guns and the like).

<comment><USER5> Age-appropriate hammers, nails, and hot glue guns I hope? Maybe I'm going to become a helicopter parent, but there are hot glue guns I'd want my kindergartener handling, and hot glue guns I wouldn't. Like the difference between a 15w hobby soldering iron, and a 260w heavy duty soldering iron! :)

<comment><USER4> > Age-appropriate hammers, nails, and hot glue guns I hope?

What's age-appropriate? The nails were too big to swallow and the hot glue guns the kind they sell at CVS. The kids cut and poked themselves and learned to be careful.

At summer camp when he was 8 he learned to weld, braise and solder. 12 kids aged 8-10, one instructor. I saw a photo one parent took: instructor helping kid hammer something on an anvil; behind his back a couple of kids kneeling and welding.

Another story I love: when he was 12, my son and his friends found bottle of vodka in the schoolyard. Being 12 year old boys they did the obvious: filled on of the kids' sneakers with the vodka and set fire to it in the schoolyard. Apparently the math teacher walked by and called out "Boys! Class is in 5 minutes!"

<comment><USER6> > Another story I love: when he was 12, my son and his friends found bottle of > vodka in the schoolyard. Being 12 year old boys they did the obvious: filled > on of the kids' sneakers with the vodka and set fire to it in the > schoolyard. Apparently the math teacher walked by and called out "Boys! > Class is in 5 minutes!"

I thought the obvious would be that they drank it :D

<comment><USER7> for twelve year olds it just tastes foul.

<comment><USER8> Which is just another way to show your group how tough you are. By consumption, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome.

When I was in second grade, my mom dropped us off for summer camp at a ranch in South Texas. I remember crying and clinging onto her, trying to talk her out of it but she left us anyway and I'm glad she did. We spent the next two weeks riding horses and playing in a muddy swamp and doing leather crafts. When she came back to pick us up, we probably cried twice as hard because we didn't want to leave. The next summer, we stayed for three terms (six weeks).

I hope that this German idea takes root here and an anti-helicopter trend starts in the US. I do everything to raise my two young sons (2 and 5 years) in an environment where they're allowed to take risks but it's tough because this attitude is shared by so few of their friends' parents, even here in deeply red small-town Kansas.

EDIT: Just remembered about the sweet outdoor preschool on Vashon Island in Washington State. Check this out: [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/outdoor-preschool-...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/outdoor- preschool-takes-root-on-vashon-island/)

<comment><USER10> I have a feeling it will be a generational thing. It's anecdotal, but I grew up with helicopter parents and have talked to many others who did as well, I've yet to hear anyone speak positively about the experience. Mostly we all got to adulthood and discovered how laughably unprepared we were for basic life tasks. The more successful ones confront it in college and move on, the less successful ones stay in college and promote "safe spaces" to prolong the coddling.

<comment><USER11> > the less successful ones stay in college and promote "safe spaces" to > prolong the coddling.

This is not in any way what a safe space is - stop promoting this completely inaccurate meme to further your own personal viewpoint. It has absolutely nothing to do with being unprepared for "real-life" or some other such nonsense. In fact I'm so confused why you would even bring up such a non- related topic, you must have quite the talent for shifting conversations to your favor.

"In educational institutions, safe space (or safe-space), safer space, and positive space are terms that, as originally intended, were used to indicate that a teacher, educational institution, or student body did not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech, thereby creating a safe place for all LGBT students."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe- space)

(Just to be clear, I have no intention of derailing this thread into the merits of safe spaces - this probably ain't the space. I just felt it was necessary to call out.)

<comment><USER12> I have upvoted you to cancel the downvotes, since it is right that we see the counter-view about safe-spaces.

But in case you are wondering about the downvotes, it is because you have done the opposite of convince anyone. The tone of your comment seems like over- reaction and is just going to confirm the priors of anyone who doesn't see things your way.

<comment><USER11> I was not attempting to convince anyone. The above poster claimed that safe spaces were meant to "prolong the coddling" of childhood, yet this directly contradicts the history of creation and specified intention of safe spaces. There is no opinion and thus no "counter-view" to be had about what led to their creation and their creators' intentions as those are facts.

Now one is free to have the opinion that safe spaces stifle discussion, or prevent ideas from being addressed or some other such things - those are all opinions and all views that can have their nuances. But safe spaces were never created to prolong some sense of childhood comfort or safety - like I said, that idea is just a popular meme of the alt-right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Don't forget many German parents still engage in helicopter parenting, too. But it is frowned upon by the majority. I for one, as a 6 year old in 1989, was allowed to travel by bike to the next village alone or with friends. I was buying bread at the bakery (about 1km away) and the way home from school as a first grader sometimes took an hour because we were playing at a small river nearby. All without phones. Luckily, I still see really small children walk to school without parents evry day.

<comment><USER14> "Still" might be the wrong word here. Helicopter parenting is more an issue for the post 2000 years and was never this extreme before.

Considering public transportation, good infrastructure to schools or kindergartens was not really available in the 1980s in many German cities.

E.g. my school was a 6km walk with no busses or trains going there and cars not being a thing affordable by the working class. Nobody batted an eye back then.

Today parents drive their kids to school for 1km. That's just wrong.

<comment><USER15> > cars not being a thing affordable by the working class

Are you shure you're not talking about the 50s but the 80s?

<comment><USER16> Maybe they are refering to the east

<comment><AUTHOR> In the East it wasn't about affordability in price, but about rationing. You had to wait 18 years for a new car at the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's annoying is that as someone who did have a rather free-range childhood, people don't get that there actually were good reasons for people to be helicopter. You let the kids go off and play with others for hours alone, right; but then you find out later that while they did, an older teen was molesting them, or introducing them to porn. You let your kids play and roughhouse, cool; but back then you'd often have your kid chip a tooth or bust their collarbone, or they'd be blacking each others eyes or fighting after school. You'd give them the freedom to be alone, and then they'd be in front of you with the cops by them, because they were throwing rocks at windows.

People need to stop knee-jerk reacting to things and understand trends often happen in context to previous happenings. The helicopter movement arose after we realized in the 70s and 80s that free-range childhood often led to some really dangerous things happening to kids, that unsupervised time actually helped cover up things like sexual abuse or violence. It isn't just millenials being millenial or something.

<comment><USER18> Do you have a reference about changes in the amount of molestation, busted collarbones, after-school fights, or porn viewing happening to kids now vs. 40 years ago?

Even if there are such changes, it seems unclear to me that they can be attributed to kids playing outside unsupervised.

But my understanding is that most child molestation is by trusted adults known to the family (or family members), most kids nowadays (certainly by age 12 or 14) have plenty of access to porn (probably much easier than in the past), kids still fight during and after school, and injury rates aren't especially changed. I could be wrong about though, I haven't looked up precise figures.

Just making up a list of scary sounding hypothetical situations and anecdotes isn't the best way to judge risk.

The biggest causes of death for children in the US are cancer, car collisions, drowning, gun homicides, and suicide. If we want to make life safer for children we should be focusing on reducing car use and using traffic engineering to slow cars down (ideally <20 miles/hour) in populated areas, pay more attention to home swimming pools, get rid of guns to the extent possible, and figure out what in the society is making teenagers so unhappy they would want to kill themselves (maybe has something to do with their lack of autonomy).

<comment><USER17> I don't think anyone really collected that data to compare. I know most of those happened to me, when I was unsupervised, and others I knew. It would make a good project for an academic to collate the data through interviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Came across a slightly related article earlier today when searching about other stuff: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey- par...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents- leave-those-kids-alone/358631/)

A bit too long, but it's making a point of the importance for the "unsafe" plays that modern kids are denied. It claims this is leading to drop in creativity and can lead to increase with mental problems.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sounds similar to the Scouts. In my country I don't think they accept 4-year- olds, but from 6 they do go camping for a few days without their parents. And at least until four years ago, cellphones were not allowed.

<comment><USER21> Scouting in The Netherlands includes this, Jong Nederland (Catholic Dutch Youth movement) as well [1]. Source: my anecdotal experience in 90s plus [1] (Dutch entry). Don't remember cellphone policies. It was the 90s...

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a European, one of the most annoying tropes in US media is the "orientalism" laissez-faire European parenting; one day we will harness it into a source of perpetual energy.

<comment><USER23> That's quite interesting. What we repeatedly see in others is an image of ourselves, usually inverted or passed through some transform, but still an image of us. The other doesn't feel seen by this, because they aren't.

Sometimes the other accepts this mirror role because it fits with an image _they_ have of themselves and the other (i.e. you). Then you get an agreement. But it is an agreement of two distortions that happen to be compatible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> These do exist in the US. There's a good list here, although it includes some schools that aren't fully outdoor: [https://mamookids.com/blogs/journal/the- ultimate-guide-to-fo...](https://mamookids.com/blogs/journal/the-ultimate- guide-to-forest-nature-schools-in-the-us)

My girls had a great experience at their forest school. I would recommend it for many kids (but not all, of course)

</comment><comment><USER12> Can't read the post, because of the paywall, but I have witnessed (almost?) exactly this thing.

Once, when I lived in Germany, a self-inflicted SNAFU had me receiving hospitality from my neighbours, whose young daughter was camped on the living room floor, because she had not been allowed to go to her school's campout. The poor child even got evicted from there, because of me.

On the one hand I thought the parents were being a bit "helicopter". But it also seemed very natural to me. As a South Asian, I find this this is just the way parents usually behave, and always have. And indeed one of the parents in this case was also Asian (though not South Asian).

</comment><comment><USER25> One big issue for the US would be where to find kindergarten teachers that can/would want to do this as part of their job.

<comment><USER26> Why would that be? I bet this is the dream environment for a lot of educators. Are you thinking of stric job roles, safety rules etc?

<comment><USER27> Someone I know used to work in one of those places and wasn't overly happy. It's a lot of standing around in the cold, there are a lot more risks you have to watch out for, and some kids simply don't get it and are quickly bored

<comment><USER28> There are plenty of people who wouldn't mind doing that at all, and plenty more who could get used to it for the right wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This article is paywalled.

I'm not sure what the appropriate response is to that on HN. I'd probably downvote if I could downvote submissions, but flagging seems unduly harsh.

I found a Chrome extension to bypass the paywall: [https://github.com/njuljsong/wsjUnblock](https://github.com/njuljsong/wsjUnblock)

<comment><USER30> The [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) says pay-walled articles are fine.

<comment><USER26> I wish HN took a stronger stance on this. It is extremely annoying to get around paywalls on mobile / tablet, where I do 90% of my reading, and you never know before you click.

<comment><USER31> HN does make the submission source visible, so you can check that before you click. If it's a source you're not familiar with, you might still hit a paywall unexpectedly, but wsj.com (and others, like the Washington Post) come up frequently enough that you generally know before you click through.

<comment><USER32> Just flag it as paywalled. So I don't hit a paywall "unexpectedly". I'd rather not bother clicking at all.

<comment><USER23> (Edit: I think I misread what you meant by 'flagging', since on HN that word means a user clicking a "flag" link to report that a submission is bad for HN.)

If you flag stories for that reason you'll eventually lose your flagging rights. HN's policy is: paywalls with workarounds are ok, users can supply workarounds in the threads, but complaints about paywalls and paywall policies are off topic.

The paywalls suck, of course, but banning NYT, WSJ, Economist, New Yorker, and all other such publications would suck worse. I realize not everyone agrees with this, but it seems the right call to me, which doesn't mean I like it any more than you do.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

Lots more at [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywalls&sort=byDate...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20paywalls&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment) if anyone wants to read it.

<comment><USER31> Your parent may be recommending tagging such articles with [paywall] or some such as opposed to clicking "flag". It certainly could be worded better. I'd rather not see titles further cluttered, personally. The source already effectively provides that, and additional context.

<comment><USER23> On a closer reading I think you're right. Edited above. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Please append (2015) to headline.

<comment><USER23> Missed that one! Added now, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Please stop posting paywalled links

<comment><USER23> Please see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15947417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15947417). Workarounds have been posted upthread.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Curl lama.sh – sh to start a web server anywhere - <AUTHOR> https://lama.sh/ <comment><USER2> So, this just downloads a web server written in Go and runs it? Why isn't this more explicit?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly right.

However, it does the downloading/starting in a really convenient manner. I wanted something I could just quickly type into a terminal without having to browse some GitHub release page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fair warning to users, you should never ever pipe something from the web directly into a shell.

I'm sure the author here has good intentions but, this is aimed at beginners (I'll assume, doubt anyone reasonably experienced would humor this) and teaching them a terrible idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure this statements holds in this general form - it's a very good idea to be cautious what you execute, but curl | sh is not much different from running npx for example. It's difficult to know know what will actually be executed on your machine, but at least shell scripts can be inspected/audited (as compared to packages with 100 dependencies).

That said, prior to piping anything to a shell it's advisable to inspect what is about to be executed. That's why the lama.sh script is super simple, as is the code of the web server it downloads and executes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When are you dropping a cryptominer into it? ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> no plans.

(but then, what else should I say :D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not `python3 -m http.server`?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just in case you don't have Python :)

I got a tad fed up with having to remember the line for Python, Node and Ruby. This one works as long as you have bash and curl.</comment></comment>


Retailers Ready To Force Consumers To Pay 'Swipe Fee' For Using Plastic - <AUTHOR> http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/07/27/seen-at-11-retailers-ready-to-force-consumers-to-pay-swipe-fee-for-using-plastic/

<comment><USER2> A 3% fee for credit probably won't stop most people from using their cards, but it will kill rewards programs.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about debit cards?</comment>


The Conspiracy Myth - <AUTHOR> https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-conspiracy-myth/ <comment><USER2> That which is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fine article, but all the "on the other hand"-ness gets tiresome. One can't drift in the dark forever. Occam's razor, people. It works pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree that "conspiracy theory" is thrown around willy-nilly and quite too often to tarnish dissenters. It has most of the makings of a moral panic.

However, the lockdowns are not _authoritarian_. Just like when referring to the _appeal to authority_ fallacy, which is about the appeal to _illegitimate_ authority, a temporary restriction on liberties for a legitimate purpose is not authoritarian.

<comment><USER5> I would say not -all- of the lock downs are authoritarian, but -some- are. Some of the restrictions simply make no sense, and often some special interest is let off the hook while the smaller players are left in limbo or are restricted. Which in the end helps the big players, and puts the smaller ones out of business/at risk. Do I really think that that wasn't lobbied hard for? I'm not naive.

<comment><USER4> We're obviously talking about the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Might be worth posting the critique that Eisenstein was alluding to [https://medium.com/@jackadamweber/coronation-unveiled-a- crit...](https://medium.com/@jackadamweber/coronation-unveiled-a-critique-and- cure-for-charles-eisensteins-fairy-tale-pandemic-essay-c3446906a85b)

</comment><comment><USER7> Covid-19 is _a_ nasty threat and must be taken seriously.

The tinfoil hattery comes from the near-exclusive focus on the one threat at the expense of the rest of the threat spectrum.

Hence the "Newton's 3rd Law" reaction to edicts that are not popularly supported.

<comment><USER8> Nah, the tinfoil hattery is always there, in the people that demand that type of content. The creative writers of the stuff will always incorporate the latest events into their existing plotlines. Covid is a goldmine for them.

<comment><USER7> Almost seems a symbiotic relationship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Both tobacco and oil companies have been trying to undermine science generally for decades now by promoting things like "DDT is actually safe." It's well- documented. Take a minute to google it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Way too long to read so I'm gonna assume it says "government conspiracies are real, happen all the time because a conspiracy is just people working together towards some goal while keeping it a secret from other people and the only question is if your particular one is true or even remotely makes sense" and agree.

<comment><USER3> Nope, should read an article before commenting on it.</comment></comment>


Product Management- How to Choose an Industry - <AUTHOR> https://browsee.io/blog/product-management-importance-of-industry-knowledge-and-how-to-choose-an-industry/ <comment><USER2> I honestly didn't know that MBAs want to get into product.</comment>


Sticker shock: Why are glasses so expensive? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50149025n <comment><USER3> I usually end up getting my annual eye exam in December every year, and before I got LASIK this invariably meant new lenses. Usually I always had FSA money subject to a "use it or lose it" policy, too; my employer chose to opt out of giving the grace period to spend it into the following year. So I'd end up plowing that cash into new frames rather than just new lenses because I didn't really have anything else to spend it on.

I wonder how policies like the addition of FSA grace periods, and the brand new policy allowing rolling over up to $500 over to the following year's FSA plan [1], affect Luxxotica's bottom line. I imagine I can't be the only one who, through inaccurate forecasting of the upcoming year's expenses, had a bunch of cash left in my FSA account and decided to burn it on glasses.

[1] [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230384310...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303843104579170044087550508)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have two pairs of glasses, one bought from Lens Crafters years ago for over $200, and another that I bought online for less than $20 from Zenni Optical. The glasses are nearly identical in every way, the biggest difference being a slightly sturdier frame in the less expensive pair.

When I bought the first pair years ago, there were no online alternatives, and I remain convinced that the brick-and-mortar spectacle vendors, along with the drive-in optometry practices with which they are often conjoined, are racketeers.

<comment><USER5> Ok, here's a slightly different story with an online vendor. I bought a pair of prescription sunglasses online. I paid extra to have a thin lens. $250 order from a reputable merchant.

I received a pair of glasses with the lens half an inch thick. This is not an exaggeration. It was literally that thick. Return and refund? Sorry, no, when you place the order you agree that you are NOT entitled to a refund under any circumstances, merely a replacement.

After a bit of back and forth, I sent the pair back and they blamed it on the design of the frame. Ok. I told them to pick a frame where I would get a normal sized lens. So they sent me the new pair, this time it was slightly thinner, but not by much. Now there's a racket. Wasted $250 on a pair of clown glasses with no recourse.

I got a pair at my local Pearle Vision for the same price and the lens was perfectly normal and thin. Never again.

<comment><USER6> Do you mind if I ask where you spent $250 online for prescription sunglasses? Did that price include designer frames?

I got two pairs of prescription sunglasses from firmoo [1] for about $25 during a promotion. I am currently considering buying a new pair from a different merchant at a regular price of $30-$40 depending on frames, perhaps double that if I spring for polarizing lenses.

Dropping $250 for prescription sunglasses seems extremely expensive, unless you chose and value branded designer frames.

[1] [http://firmoo.com/](http://firmoo.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I just tried ordering a pair of eyeglasses from Firmoo myself. The pair of frames (with the default 1.50-index lenses) was $39. Adding on the Ultra Thin (1.67), UV and fingerprint-resistant coatings brought it up to a whopping $106.90 (better lenses cost an additional $67.90).

A comparable pair at SelectSpecs [1] cost $54.33, of which $40.75 was for the 1.67 index option.

Seems like eyeglass stores make the bulk of their revenues (unsurprisingly) from lens customisations these days.

[1] [http://selectspecs.com](http://selectspecs.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> $99 for two pair of eye glasses is what the commercials say for places like PearlVision or Lens Express.

But that's only for a very small portion of the population. "People who barely need glasses", as I call them. My contacts prescription was 9.5 and after I got poly carbonate lenses and a little tint and some anti-glare coating and scratch protection I'd be looking at $400. A friend of mine who had toric lenses spent over $550.

I kind of wonder how much the insurance companies get charged for the $99 glasses.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. I've been scraping by with my now slowly disintegrating pair of glasses that I got five years ago. The price, before sales-tax, 645 USD - <USER2> which 90 was for the frame, the rest for toric carbonate lenses with scratchproof and anti-reflex coating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm personally looking forward to ordering inexpensive glasses from Zenni so I can go back to good old CR-39. It's easily scratched, but if I can simply replace them more often then I don't have to choose proprietary "high-index" material for reasonable chromatic aberration (polycarbonate is terrible for me - large red and blue edges on everything).

Granted, "order new glasses" has been on my todo list for a while, and I haven't quite gotten around to it. I hope when I finally get around to it, Zenni isn't too busy due to this article :P

</comment><comment><USER10> I just bought a pair of eyeglasses and sunglasses last week to use out my benefits from work. My previous pair I purchased online from Coastal Contacts. Those cost my ~$175. I spent ~$600 on my eyeglasses and sunglasses at a local optometrist this week, after my insurance coverage.

This time around, it was a lot easier. The ladies there picked a bunch of frames they thought would look good on me, and had me try them on. I had both pairs picked within 30 minutes. On Coastal Contacts, I took almost a week to finally decide on a pair. Is it worth the vast difference in price? Debatable. I do like these glasses, they look a lot better. But overall, the experience was better. I'd probably do it again, but only because I can afford it. I do understand that spending ~$300 for glasses is untenable for many folks, and the online shops do a great job of fulfilling that need.

That being said, I watched this whole video, and I think that the Luxottica brand is amazing. Here's a scrappy little shop in the Italian Alps that went from a small factory in the 60s to having over $9bil in sales last year in 50+ years. Not only do they own and make several eyewear brands, they own retail stores, and they even own an insurance provider.

You can lament their monopoly all you want, but I think they're an excellent example of what hard work and tenacity can produce. Since many of us are aspiring founders, we can only hope to achieve such market dominance.

Also, that CEO handled that interview extremely well.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've tried a bunch of cheap online vendors (Zenni, Optical4Less, Goggles4U) over the years. All were acceptable and probably averaged about $40/pair total with high-index lenses, but the frames always felt cheap and occasionally I'd get a pair that give me headaches (I later learned that likely either the pupiary distance or optical center were off).

When I did have an issue, the return process was pretty tedious and annoying, so I usually just ended up eating the cost and dropping the glasses in a donation bin.

After a few years, I probably ended up spending roughly the same as if I'd gone to a local shop with the advantage of having spare glasses with the correct prescription for the first time in my life.

Recently tried Warby Parker and although they seem extravagantly priced ($95/$120) compared to the others, the quality of the frames were noticeably better and the customer service in a completely different universe. I had to return my first pair from them since the frames ended up being narrower than I expected/gave me headaches and the exchange process was incredibly quick and painless.

I will say, for anyone thinking about ordering glasses online, try your best to get your pupiary distance measured by a professional. It's not easy to get opticians to do anymore, since they know you are going to buy your glasses online but it's a difficult measurement to get yourself and being off by just a few mm can cause headaches.

[edit - got the price of WP high index lenses wrong]

<comment><USER12> Wow, I've experienced getting headaches every time that I've gotten a new pair of glasses. I never thought it would be because the pupillary distance was off. I just thought I had to adjust to the new prescription. But half of them were from a brick and mortar store so I'd expect them to get the pupillary distance right.

<comment><USER11> I think that a big change in prescriptions can cause it temporarily as well, but definitely have them re-check the prescription/PD. A surprising number of mistakes are made.

Also if you notice that your eyes aren't centered vertically in the frames, that can mean the optical center is off which can lead to headaches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I buy online as does a coworker using Zenni. My main beef is that the dimensions are nonsense resulting in glasses arriving that are comically narrow.

I also think I have gotten some lenses that were off either with blurry spots or the focal point not being in the right place. That happens with glasses from brick and mortar vendors as well. I don't think the industry standards are very high and if you complain you can't really prove anything.

<comment><USER14> Just use the $10 specials off Zenni myself, although never ran into any problems. Found it kind of bizarre anyone thinks glasses are expensive any more. Probably the same people who get contact lens exams every year instead of just ordering international.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Should be tagged AUTO-PLAYING VIDEO

Sound on webpages is evil, unless I ask for it first.

<comment><USER16> Is "evil" really the word?

<comment><USER15> Hyperbole. No, not evil. But there are exactly zero times when it is ok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I used to buy glasses on my trips to South Korea every couple years. So long as I had my prescription, I could go into a glasses store, pick from any number of stylish glasses, get my specialized lenses made (top of the line) and walk out for well under $100. I think I paid around $25-30 a couple of times. It was cheap enough that I'd buy 2 or 3 pair to take home with me.

These days, the economy of Korea has picked up enough that a pair of glasses there runs about what it costs here in the U.S. at Costco. The selection they have at Costco isn't quite as good or as stylish, but if you look in the "so expensive we keep these frame under glass in the counter" they usually have some top of the line frames for around $100. It's not 1 hour, you have to wait about a week for them to get made, but they've always come back perfect.

<comment><USER18> I've purchased at least 3 pairs over the Internet from www.eyeglassdirect.com

I've also recommended them to several family members and friends. We've each had really good experiences so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because of the insurance system, price is no longer a consideration for the buyer.

</comment><comment><USER20> I started buying from Zenni about 5 years ago. It makes me so happy that I can just buy new glasses when they get scratched. I spent my childhood trying to see through $300 scratched lenses for no reason.

</comment><comment><USER21> Why is this company not being investigated for being a monopoly. They control the entire market, price competition is an illusion.

Are the law so lax in northern Italy? At what point does the EU step in?

<comment><USER22> Being a monopoly isn't illegal. Taking unfair advantage of it can be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another reason they are so expensive, is because there are other frame manufacturers that actually make them by hand in the US, which must have high prices. eg. like the little guys: www.somnoir.com Not a luxxotica fan, but glasses items let you see, and they frame your face, (pretty valuable and aesthetically paramount) As a designer its not easy to combine form and function that operate perfectly and beautifully within the parameters of a humans face.

<comment><USER24> I wish I hadn't seen those somnoir glasses. Now I want!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Totally random observation, the 7 second Pfizer logo with no sound was a great ad. I appreciated that they did not throw an annoying preroll and was a nice segue for the full ad after the opener.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been a huge fan of Warby Parker, [http://www.warbyparker.com](http://www.warbyparker.com).

</comment><comment><USER27> Thank you, I'll have $20 glasses from China. Can't imagine I'll ever pay a ridiculous amount for a pair elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER28> I just buy online from somewhere in Asia and you can get very high quality glasses for around $150. That would cost $600 here.

</comment><comment><USER29> this is such an interesting piece... would love to see if in 10 years this tactic becomes more adopted amongst companies trying to start vertically- integrated businesses, or whether the tactic starts to receive backlash.

</comment><comment><USER30> What kind of price can you put on vision?

-What you're likely to hear from the salesman

</comment><comment><USER31> Because people have insurance that can be milked for that much?

</comment><comment><USER32> warby parker</comment>


What the 15-Hour Work Week Prophets Failed to Account For - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/what-the-15-hour-work-week-prophets-failed-to-account-for/ <comment><USER2> This article starts out OK, noting that all economists "blaime shortcomings of the individual" for why basically everyone world-wide has a 47-hour workweek. Then the author drives off a cliff of handwaving about economically out- competing everyone else by working harder, without giving any kind of argument beyond maybe middle-school economics.

Given that in the USA median adjusted wages have remained unchanged for 40 years while workers' efficiency is usually considered to have increased by maybe 50%, the article's conclusions are unwarranted. Workers have improved, economic efficiencies have been adopted, as the article correctly notes.</comment>