Living a double life: being a parent at an early stage startup - <AUTHOR> http://alyssaaldersley.com/living-a-double-life-being-a-parent-at-an-early-stage-startup/ <comment><USER2> Bootstrapping 2 kids and a startup for the last 3 1/2yrs. Definitely two jobs.

This is what made a difference for me between chaos and depressive thoughts to happiness and success: Alway Be Present.

When you spend time with the kids, be present and have a good time. That means no checking email, no thinking about the future, no thinking about the past. Be with them, as they know and feel when you're physically present but not mentally. This is good for everyone; spending no-guilt time with your kids will reenergize you and make you a better (smarter even!) person.

When you are working, be present too. If you are pretending to work but thinking you should be with your kids, drop everything and go play with them. What will make your life miserable is trying to work while feeling guilty for being a bad parent. You won't get anything useful done, and you won't be a good parent either.

Also, when you hang out with the kids, make it also a fun time for yourself. Get out of the house, do fun stuff, be a kid with them. You'll be killing two birds with one stone.

VCs reading here might not like this: companies are disposable and kids will be with you for all your life. Chose wisely where you want to make the bulk of your mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another 30yo with 2 kids reporting in - Unfortunately I don't think that there are any easy answers. Sure you can tweak your schedule (work on the train!) and there are always a few things you can cut (Turn off the TV!). However increasingly I'm accept two things:

1 - Whatever is happening, just go with it. Sometimes the kids are going to be sick, or its a great day for playing, or your in a super productive space with your business. I've found that I really just need to allow myself permission to do what needs doing at the moment, without feeling guilty about what I had planned to be doing.

2 - All those super important things you HAVE to finish. It probably won't matter if they don't get done. E-mails left un-answered. Dishes left in the sink. After a few years of this, I'm starting to realise that the world doesn't actually come to a screaming halt. I think the true trick is realising what is really important and what you can leave out for later.

It's funny but I think having kids has taught me these two things, which should apply very well to the startup world. It's kind of ironic that the 'stereotypical' startup founder is young, without kids. There are a lot of lessons to be learnt from children, and I think the maturity that has come with having kids has been a great help for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a (29yo) dad to 2 young girls, working 12-16 hour days on my own startup for the past few months, and I'd say I struggle with some of the same issues as the author. Staying a part of my kids' lives is still critically important, but it's insanely hard to balance the two, even with my wife being at home full-time.

Even though they are not old enough to realize it yet, my kids were the ones who inspired me to start something, and they are still my biggest inspiration. When they're older, I want them to look back and be proud of the (albeit tiny) dent that their dad made in the universe.

I really do hope that the concentrated effort now will lead to much more shared time and adventures down the road.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh man, where do I start. I had my first kid when I was 21, to say it was unplanned is an understatement, but marriage soon followed and things have really worked out the last 6 years luckily. I now have 2 kids and I'm 27, I'm also a single income for my family. I've been working on my Bootstrapped Startup with four others guys for two years, while it does get painful sometimes what I end up doing the most to handle everything is put off sleep. I probably get 4-6 hours during the week and try to make up for it by getting 8-10 on the weekends, but that rarely works with children (It's hard to be mad when two little kids jump on your head to wake you up because they want to play). We have big updates coming in the future that will hopefully take the site into the limelight, but until then it's a daily struggle and I love it.

<comment><USER6> > try to make up for it by getting 8-10 on the weekends, but that rarely works > with children (It's hard to be mad when two little kids jump on your head to > wake you up because they want to play).

Are my parents the only ones that locked their door at night? My brother and I couldn't wake them in the morning, because we couldn't get in. We learned at a very early age to entertain ourselves until Mom and Dad got up.

I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, I'm just saying that it seems like no one thinks of this solution. :)

I see this complaint quite often about the kids being bothersome in the morning and when I tell people about the "door lock" it seems to blow their mind.

<comment><USER7> Not locking the door but had the discussion with the kids.

Also if you read your kids stories (and I highly recommend it) and you include a generous helping of stories about kids who are independent and loving it (Little Britches, the Boxcar Kids, etc) they too will look forward to being independent. All three of my kids got a checking account when they were 5 (USAA is great for this), they were doing their own laundry by the time they were 10 and making their own lunches. By the time they reached 13 we started a program where each night one person was responsible for dinner that night for all five of us, didn't matter what it was, just had to be reasonably nutritious. Spaghetti? Pretty easy. Mac-n-Cheese, whitesauce with cheeses and some boiled noodles. Croque Madam? Ham sandwhiches with an egg. Steamed vegetables? straight forward. Etc. The goal of my wife and I was that our kids when they hit 18 needed to be able to manage a checkbook, cook their own meals economically, and manage their own laundry/hygiene. When they went off to college that was going to be expected after all.

The benefit to the parents is of course that the kids require less "time critical" time (its really handy to be able to say, "I'm going to be late, you're on your own for dinner." and to know that they will be able to make themselves a nice dinner.) And to not worry about whether or not they have a healthy lunch for school or clean clothes to wear.

By the time they are 18 they pretty self sufficient and that is a huge win. The trick is realizing that kids are much more capable than we often give them credit for, and they feel better about themselves when they feel they are in control of their own lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> See a lot of parents posting here about their success in raising children while working at a startup.

But I have a question that will sound condescending no matter how I phrase it: How many of you are developers vs product managers, business people, designers etc?

The reason I ask is because development is _hard_. It takes time to figure things out, and it's difficult to half-ass your way out of something when the clock hits 6pm without it coming back to get you the next morning.

<comment><USER9> Development is not that hard, really.

<comment><USER10> Depends on what you're doing. Saying "development is *" is way too broad. It's like saying "construction is easy," because you left off the qualifier, "I build sub-divisions for a living." Obviously building cookie-cutter houses in sub-divisions for a living is different than building suspension bridges or skyscrapers.

<comment><USER9> Fair enough - work that falls under the umbrella term "development" does have a wide range of technical difficulty.

What I was objecting to was the implication that the GP made that people with kids must be one of those "businessy hangers-on" because development itself is too difficult to balance with family. The vast majority of development is not that demanding - most developers are not building the equivalent of suspension bridges, and even if they are, it's not impossible to leave at 6pm most of the time unless something critical is down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a parent whose startup and child are the same age, it's difficult.

But that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER12> this is not a comment on being a parent, working on a start up, or the difficulty of either or both. It is about how poor word choice was used to make an enticing title, hearing 'living a double life' i think that most people see that as two separate or two lives secret from one another. Is this just me? I googled it and as I skimmed the top stories it was all about secret lives.</comment>


What is this kind of spam trying to do? - <AUTHOR>

The contact form on my website receives some spam occasionally.
It's always a meaningless jumble of urls. It is always of this type (I've replaced the meaningless jumble with some of my own in case the urls are valid):
ty8769  <a href="http://iduqfhuerhferif.com/">iduqfhuerhferif</a>, [url=http://powjrjie.com/]powjrjie[/url], [link=http://oproprktt.com/]oproprktt[/link], http://pesdukiqwro.com/ <comment><USER2> What the other posters said. I would add that if this is disruptive you could try using a visually hidden field with a special value. If the field gets tampered with, you can flag it as likely spam. This works because the bot just traverses the dom and fills in fields that look like comment boxes (textareas) with spam.

</comment><comment><USER3> They're list building by submitting to random forms . Then they go back and try to see if the comment when through the form and shows up as a comment on the website. If it does, then they know they can spam that website in the future.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a bot who thinks is posting news comments which will appear in the web page.</comment>


Which language&OS to pick in this context? - <AUTHOR>

I'not a skilled developer,but i know to program,or simply scripting.At the moment i started a team to create a startup for creating a game. The game will be an MMO(and all the stuff related to this kind of games)running in the browser with 3D graphics,so the main language will be JS+Libraries. The problem comes out about which language to pick to do the server-side and which OS will keep on feet the entire platform. What are your suggestions? <comment><AUTHOR> I probably won't develop/code (others will do)so don't mind about learning things. I thought will be the best choice GOlang instead of NodeJS cause it's native and have better support than NodeJS for "multithreading".Am i wrong?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> as OS i think the best choice would be CentOS 6/7 Ubuntu i don't think is good as server,cause it's usually full of s __t and the "random" broken apt-get it's a pain in the a __. Arch it 's too bleding-edge. *BSD i don't know nothing about. Windows...no.

</comment><comment><USER2> If you already know js, I would suggest Node.js, due its easier learning curve. OS: Ubuntu or any linux distro you like.

<comment><AUTHOR> I probably won't develop/code (others will do)so don't mind about learning things. I thought will be the best choice GOlang instead of NodeJS cause it's native and have better support than NodeJS for "multithreading".Am i wrong?</comment></comment>


CourseTalk: Reviews for Udacity, Coursera, and edX - <AUTHOR> http://coursetalk.org/

<comment><USER2> Things I like: \- the sign up form was really easy, which is good \- I like the star rating / comment combination, as it allows people to give details \- the ability to rank the difficulty of a course is nice (I'm assuming you have plans to somehow display this data once you have enough of it seeded) \- the ability to filter courses by tag is good (though who is deciding the tags?)

Things that could be improved: \- the Sign In With Twitter didn't work for me, I got an error \- I'd like to see a more detailed rating system (like rating the course on several criteria - 3 stars for material, 5 stars for instructor responsiveness, etc) \- I think the ability to up-vote or down-vote reviews would be nice \- The comment section should be more helpful in writing a review (suggest things the reviewer should talk about)

The value in this type of system is around the quality of the feedback. To that end, you need to make it a priority to get quality reviews from users. Having suggestions of what the user should write about, weighting reviews by up-votes, etc. are just ways to increase the quality of the reviews you receive. Things like "Nice course." aren't going to be helpful to anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are totally right about the quality of feedback and these all seem like really good suggestions thank you. I don't know what's going on with the Twitter sign-in.. It was working yesterday. bah!

<comment><USER3> Twitter deprecated an oauth endpoint yesterday, so I'd check the URLs that you're attempting to hit. We ran into this yesterday, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please let me know if you have suggestions for the site, thanks.

<comment><USER4> It would also be good with a "Was this review helpful"-button a la Amazon, so the reviews can be ordered according to helpfulness.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Was thinking to take a few features from Amazon :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks nice, I was looking into this courses so this might help.

Just one suggestion, I know you might want to expand using social media, but those buttons up there really annoy me. Can you put them at the bottom of the page or somewhere else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I had a tough time making those look pretty. Removed for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do I redirect to coursetalk.org when I go to lunchtree.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> haha.. yes, well LunchTree was a previous project that is not currently active.. I'm not sure why it is forwarding.. I must have done that at some point.

<comment><USER6> You must have configured iptables or reverse proxy wrongly.</comment></comment></comment>


Navy Contractors Feud over Who Pays for Fixes to Troubled $13B Warship - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-04/navy-contractors-feud-over-paying-for-troubled-carrier-s-fixes <comment><USER2> reminded movie - Pentagon Wars (1998)</comment>


Cockpit voice recorder of Lion Air jet depicts pilots' frantic search for fix - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-crash-exclusive/exclusive-cockpit-voice-recorder-of-doomed-lion-air-jet-depicts-pilots-frantic-search-for-fix-sources-idUSKCN1R10FB <comment><USER2> This appears to answer the question of why, given that there is a "memory item" for dealing with runaway trim that would have helped, it wasn't followed by the crew:

> "They didn't seem to know the trim was moving down," the third source said. > "They thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they > talked about."

If this is true, not only did the pilots not realize the trim was the cause of the dive and try to fix it, it seems that they didn't even realize the trim wheel was moving.

"Runaway trim" would be something they trained for, but has a presentation so vastly different (of a visibly spinning trim wheel causing quick descent) as to not be recognizably the same emergency to these pilots.

Of course, this crew had no way of knowing that there was a system on the plane that could slowly make erroneous trim changes over a long period with autopilot off, and it makes sense that they might miss it happening while focusing on their stall alerts and speeds and trying to come up with an explanation and also trying to retain control.

<comment><USER3> Was the trim wheel not visibly spinning out of their control? Simply because the symptoms are different should mean that stopping it via taking manual control is a recurring option.

<comment><USER4> The Lion Air directive has instructions on page 41 of their preliminary report that include:

5\. If the runaway continues after the autopilot is disengaged:

       STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches (both)  ... CUTOUT
       If the runaway continues:
          Stabilizer trim wheel  .... *Grasp and hold*

This may be an overabundance of caution, or to cover other runaway events, but it reads like "you may need to physically fight the computer even when it has been disabled". Not exactly heartening.

EDIT: A comment below points out haptic feedback to disengage as a reason to grab-and-hold.

[https://reports.aviation- safety.net/2018/20181029-0_B38M_PK-...](https://reports.aviation- safety.net/2018/20181029-0_B38M_PK-LQP_PRELIMINARY.pdf)

<comment><USER5> That's incorrect, these have haptic feedback, once you grasp it, it's not going to fight you. It looks for resistance and if it sees the resistance it doesn't continue.

<comment><USER6> Really? Here's a video of someone doing it, and it certainly looks like it tries to fight you (and the trim motor continues running) but there's a clutch that starts slipping:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The previous flight had exactly the same issue. This is what that pilot wrote in the logs;

 _After parking, the PIC informed the engineer about the aircraft problem and entered IAS (Indicated Air Speed) and ALT (altitude) Disagree and FEEL DIFF PRESS (Feel Differential Pressure) light problem on the Aircraft Flight Maintenance Log (AFML).

The PIC also reported the flight condition through the electronic reporting system of the company A-SHOR. The event was reported as follows:

Airspeed unreliable and ALT disagree shown after takeoff, _STS also running to the wrong direction _, suspected because of speed difference, identified that CAPT instrument was unreliable and handover control to FO. Continue NNC of Airspeed Unreliable and ALT disagree. Decide to continue flying to CGK at FL280, landed safely runway 25L._

STS is the speed trim system. The pilot didn't explicitly note that they set STAB TRIM to CUT OUT to correct the problem, perhaps because he thought it was obvious?

But then reading the log of the previous flight;

 _After three automatic AND trim occurrences, the SIC commented that the control column was too heavy to hold back.

At 14:25:46 UTC, the PIC declared "PAN PAN" to the Denpasar Approach controller due to instrument failure and requested to maintain runway heading.

At 14:28:28 UTC, the PIC moved the STAB TRIM switches to CUT OUT. The PIC re- engaged the STAB TRIM switches to NORMAL, but almost immediately the problem re-appeared. The PIC then moved the STAB TRIM switches back to CUT OUT and continued with manual trim without auto-pilot until the end of the flight._

This implies it took almost three minutes for the previous crew to figure out the STAB TRIM needed to be CUT OUT after finding the trim is so wrong that they can't hold the stick back.

Clearly this is not a _memory item_ for these pilots.

[1] - [https://reports.aviation- safety.net/2018/20181029-0_B38M_PK-...](https://reports.aviation- safety.net/2018/20181029-0_B38M_PK-LQP_PRELIMINARY.pdf)

<comment><USER8> MCAS problems weren't a memory item for any pilot, the memory item is Runaway Stabilizer and exhibits different behaviour to MCAS.

Which is to say that they'll be receiving sim training for Runaway Stabilizer, learn what to expect (wheel moves continuously, hard nose down, etc), and then in real life have MCAS cause the same issue but in a substantively different way (change, delay, change, delay, etc).

Without the benefit of hindsight why not try the Memory Item: Engine Surge / Stall or Uncommanded Roll? Both of which could exhibit as an uncommanded nose down.

The reality of the situation is that some pilots immediately went straight for Runaway Stabilizer whereas others did not. That's a problem. That's a TRAINING problem. The type rating should have included additional training against the Runaway Stabilizer Memory Item for MCAS so "I've seen this before" is second nature.

<comment><USER9> > That's a problem. That's a TRAINING problem.

Isn't the root problem still related to the fact that the AoA sensors were returning wrong information and the MCAS was simply reacting to that in a dangerous and non-obvious way?

I guess the pilots should be aware of this type of system reaction but still it seems like something that should be fixed at a higher level than training (indicators, backup AoA sensors, detecting dangerous descent after trigging nose down, etc).

<comment><USER10> There's never just one cause of an airline accident. That was one of the causes, but alone it wouldn't have been sufficient. Fixing the problems at all levels is how you achieve high reliability.

<comment><USER11> Seems like it would have been sufficient to cause the crash, or are you saying that if the pilots let MCAS do its thing that the plane would not have crashed?

<comment><USER10> Crash causes:

1\. Faulty MCAS

2\. Insufficient pilot training

3\. Boeing design changes (MCAS used to be disabled automatically if the pilot applied sufficient counter-input, this feature was removed in the -MAX series, requiring the pilot to explicitly disable the system using a separate button)

Take away any 1 of those causes and the plane doesn't crash. They all had to happen at the same time for these two tragedies to occur.

<comment><USER12> >MCAS used to be disabled automatically if the pilot applied sufficient counter-input, this feature was removed in the -MAX series

What was the reasoning behind this change?

<comment><USER11> Presumably so that the pilot can be blamed for not knowing the procedure to manually disable the automatic system that is flying the plane into the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the other news, on the previous day on the same plane there was a retired pilot flying in cockpit who correctly diagnosed problem & told how to disable malfunctioning system: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an- ex...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-19/how-an-extra-man-in- cockpit-saved-a-737-max-that-later-crashed)

<comment><USER14> That's the most amazing revelation to me so far. The same plane had an identical uncontrolled-dive problem the day before, which required an emergency power cut to the improperly-engaged motor, and somehow that incident didn't ground the plane or even result in any effective advisory to the next crew.

Further, the Bloomberg story reports:

"The Indonesia safety committee report said the plane had had multiple failures on previous flights and hadn't been properly repaired."

Lots of blame to go around here.

<comment><USER15>
      The same plane had an identical uncontrolled-dive problem
      the day before, [...] and somehow that incident didn't
      ground the plane or even result in any effective advisory
      to the next crew.

This is the problem with the Boeing blame-the-pilots-for-not-switching-the- stab-trim-cutout-switches approach.

If the pilots fear near misses will be called pilot error, and they'll be called incompetent/dangerous or punished for endangering passengers, that would do a lot to discourage near miss reporting.

<comment><USER14> Not sure that follows, either theoretically or practically. Non-reporting of any observed aircraft issues puts their fellow pilots, and all other passengers, in grave risk.

A tiny shred of mutual respect for other flight crews, or for human life of passengers in general, should easily overwhelm any concern an anomaly report will harm their record.

In this case, the prior crew could've reported the problem, _and_ their successful resolution. There's little risk of an _actual malfunction requiring the emergency disengagement of normal systems_ being mislabeled "pilot error", especially when they made a proper recovery according to trained procedures.

For all I know, the crew did make this report, but the report failed to have the necessary impacts, in either grounding/fixing the plane or reminding followup crews of relevant emergency procedures. If that incident or prior failures weren't reported, or were reported but not acted upon, then the fault for that lies with some mix of the crews, the airline, and relevant regulators – in addition to any other failures by Boeing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Best book I've ever read on the root cause ("tight coupling") of accidents: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents) From its Wikipedia entry: >"Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies" is a 1984 book by Yale sociologist Charles Perrow, which provides a detailed analysis of complex systems from a sociological perspective. It was the first to "propose a framework for characterizing complex technological systems such as air traffic, marine traffic, chemical plants, dams, and especially nuclear power plants according to their riskiness." Perrow argues that multiple and unexpected failures are built into society's complex and tightly coupled systems. Such accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around.

His analysis also applies to anesthesia disasters, I learned the hard way during my 38 years in the O.R. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER17> I think this perspective on accidents needs far more emphasis.

Many accidents are unavoidable and not the result of some person failing to do some thing.

The world isn't a story, people don't have much agency, and events do not happen because people want them to.

These "narrative explanations" are mythological just-so stories that attribute the complex interaction of systems to individuals, organizations, etc. in naive agency-based ways.

<comment><USER18> This is the issue I have with the media - moreso than any particular bias, media loves to paint a narrative when, in truth, random events are more likely to blame (though in fairness this is a human flaw borne from the heuristic value of narrative). Accidents happen in complex systems - rather than burning the people involved at the stake, we should recognize the inherent complexity of safety hurtling an aluminum tube full of humans through the air at just below the speed of sound, review the accident in a calm and sober fashion, and make the necessary changes to prevent a similar accident in the future

<comment><USER19> The HN discussion of this issue is fairly revealing in that it points towards the people on this site wanting a simple explanation with a short list of people to punish, when it is more likely a long list of small details with many people who might have made relatively minor mistakes or simply not foreseen the issue in question. Working in IT (and also formerly at Boeing, so there's some crossover in experience), I find this unsurprising, as IT systems become more and more complex the answers are not "theres a bug in Vendor X's product" or "system Y was misconfigured" but a long litany of small errors, oversights or unforeseen issues that culminated in some larger issue. It does not help that many of these people are unwilling to adjust their conclusions based on emerging evidence. Fortunately in aviation there is a culture of understanding all the details of accidents, identifying all the possible improvements and implementing them. I suspect that the IT industry is on the verge of a crisis as I don't see this sort of attitude prevalent in it, which is funny because lots of the terminology and some of the techniques are common, just not the culture.

<comment><USER18> For context, I'm a licensed pilot and my father spent most of his career working at Transport Canada, basically Canada's FAA. So this is one of those topics I probably know more than the average HNer about.

What I've noticed more broadly is that there are lots of people on HN with high general intelligence who believe it automatically translates to specific domain knowledge in aviation, medicine, etc., when if quizzed they would likely know far less than they believe they do.

So when it comes to quality improvement, for example, they likely haven't spent time at a car factory, or at a Boeing plant, and understand it via bastardized analogies (i.e. Kaizen in software development really isn't the same as in manufacturing) rather than domain expertise. Deep domain expertise is difficult to obtain unless you're really immersed in an industry.

The desire to "make someone pay" when errors happen is antithetical to a culture of quality improvement. The accident report for the Lion Air incident actually paints a picture of a complex failure rather than simply being the fault of the software, but that doesn't really get reported on.

Hence my issue with the media. Inflammatory headlines and speculation cause people to believe they know more than they actually do about something, and the public pressure drives action that may be totally inappropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The thing I don't understand about that MCAS system is why it would continue to drive the nose of the plane down even when the pilot is reefing on the stick to pull up. The cruise control in my car automatically disengages when I hit the brakes, it doesn't continue to accelerate to keep the car going 60 while I am jamming on the brakes, in an emergency, I don't have time to find the off switch. Similarly, I would think that in an emergency, it should automatically disengage if the pilot pulls hard on the stick, in an emergency, the pilot doesn't have time to read the manual to find the off switch for the thing. It seems crazy to me that they wouldn't have a safety override like that.

<comment><USER21> The same applies to the trim in a 737 and any other transport class aircraft. If you move the control column in the opposite direction of trim, the electric trim and autopilot trim will cut out. The same applies to the autopilot in all types I've flown, it disconnects if you override it manually (except for CWS mode, but that's known and expected)

I don't fly the 737, so I haven't read the aircraft specific books and systems overviews, but I expect this override behavior is very confusing in the MCAS scenario. Because any pilot would counteract a nose-down force by pulling on the yoke. The MCAS would then stop moving the trim, and the pilot would think (as would be true in any other situation) that the override worked. But MCAS didn't stop because of the override, it stops because it always does that after a few seconds and will re-activate 10 seconds later (or 20, didn't read a definitive number on this).

The confusing thing is that 95% of the unwanted trim movements are caused by the autopilot, so at this point the pilot would think the situation is under control and probably disconnect the autopilot if the movement didn't already,

The other 5% (or probably less) of unwanted trim movements are trim runaway, which is either a stuck switch (2 actually, you depress two switches at once to make it move, pressing 1 does nothing) or an electrical problem.

In both cases pulling back works and stops it. If it stays "stopped" you think autopilot and leave it disconnected. If it keeps moving continuously you think trim runaway and flip the trim cutout switches or pull the circuit breaker (this one is usually marked bright orange so you can find it quickly in planes without cutout switches)

But in the MCAS case, and without MCAS knowledge (which apparently nobody had) you would not expect it to start moving again later. You would have concluded "autopilot" of the above two scenarios, and after disconnect would think you're safe. So now when it starts moving again, your first idea is that the autopilot did not disconnect which leads to even more confusion in the cockpit.

The LionAir flight that was saved by the jumpseater got lucky in the sense that this guy was not flying, not debugging the autopilot, and did see the trim move because he has no instruments to scan and the trim is right in front of his face (in the middle between the two pilots). If you conclude that the issue is the trim, then any pilot would decide to go for the cut-out switches. It's just that concluding the trim is the issue, without knowing MCAS, under high pressure and with the wrong (autopilot) conclusion already on your mind is not very likely.

<comment><USER5> Why didn't the pilots adjust the trim manually? I don't understand how any pilot would consider increasing control pressure to be normal and not automatically respond by manually adjusting the trim.

<comment><USER22> i don't want to sound condescending but it's all there in the parent comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm trying to imagine the horror the pilots (and passengers) were feeling. Imagine your car slowly starting to shift sideways into incoming traffic, and no matter how hard you pull the steering wheel, you can't get it back. Horrifying.

<comment><USER24> This is why I refuse to listen to these things when they're released. The thought of eavesdropping in on someone's frantic hopeless fight for survival just doesn't sit right with me.

<comment><USER25> Agreed. It reminds me of the final scene of Grizzly Man, when Herzog listens to the audio recording of the bear enthusiast and his girlfriend being mauled to death. Herzog puts the headphones down, visibly shaken, and comments (paraphrasing): nobody should have to listen to that.

<comment><USER26> He actually says to the mother: Jewel, you must never listen to this.

<comment><USER27> Wasn't it the girlfriend?

<comment><USER23> The girlfriend was on location and apparently the one who turned on the camera (but did not remove the lens cap, making it an audio-only recording). She was killed and partially eaten together with Treadwell.

Edit: The tape is actually owned by Jewel Palovak who this scene is also with; She's a former girlfriend of Treadwell, not his (or his girlfriends) mother.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What I don't understand whenever I read anything related to the MCAS system is why does it not check if the plane is in a dangerous nose dive using other sensors the plane might have? Does the average plane not have a gyroscope? My sub 500 dollar phone has both a gyroscope and an inertial measurement unit (accelerometer).

<comment><USER29> Gyroscopes by themselves can not sense the orientation of a body moving through three dimensions.

<comment><USER30> What is that[0] then?

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

<comment><USER5> Attitude != Angle of Attack.

<comment><USER30> Orientation = attitude ≠ AoA

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >> On the same aircraft the evening before the crash, a captain at Lion Air's full-service sister carrier, Batik Air, was riding along in the cockpit and solved the similar flight control problems, two of the sources said. His presence on that flight, first reported by Bloomberg, was not disclosed in the preliminary report.

Like that bug that there's only one person in the company who knows about and how to fix it, but she's always working on something else? That's just awful.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is the most revelatory news for me:

 _The MAX has larger engines than previous 737s, and they are in a slightly different position. As a result, the plane has a tendency to pitch its nose up. To keep that from getting out of control if pilots flying manually aren't attentive, MCAS automatically pushes the nose down if the sensor says the nose is too high._

See: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-you-need-to-know-about- fly...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-you-need-to-know-about-flying-on-a- boeing-737-max-11552334508)

In other words, Boeing fixed a hardware flaw with software. I am no aeronautical engineer, but this seems wrong to me. The hardware needs to be correct in and of itself. The software layer should be for enhancing the capabilities of the hardware, not for fixing fundamental flaws in hardware.

<comment><USER33> Not a really a hardware flaw--a design choice/hardware compromise so that existing 737 infrastructure could be used. The low ground clearance of a 737 is one of its main selling points. It's customers have a large investment in infrastructure around this capability--Think of things like loading ramps, luggage carts, servicing vehicles, etc.

<comment><USER32> So in other words they designed it this way in order to make the 737 MAX is cheaper to operate, and therefore easier to sell. That's terrible. Boeing traded off safety for profits.

<comment><USER33> Yes cost is a factor. The alternative might not be feasible economically. I don't think the failure here was reusing the 737 design, but the downstream due diligence of implying no significant changes. I also think airline training is a factor--both Boeing for the new systems and the airliners because runaway stabilizer trim has been in the aircraft emergency checklist for over 50 years and every pilot should know it. That same procedure would have saved these planes.

<comment><USER34> > I also think airline training is a factor--both Boeing for the new systems > and the airliners because runaway stabilizer trim has been in the aircraft > emergency checklist for over 50 years and every pilot should know it. That > same procedure would have saved these planes.

While training is absolutely one (of many) factors in these crashes, it's worth noting that while the runaway stabilizer _checklist response_ would save this plane, the _symptoms_ of this runaway MCAS issue _DO NOT MATCH_ those of a "normal" runaway stabilizer as pilots train on it in simulator.

Essentially, pilots are being called upon to recall a trained response based on input which is significantly different from any that they've seen in training. Other flight logs on Lion Air prior to the crash show that even when the pilots correctly hit upon flipping the stabilizer trim cut out, it took them _minutes_ to realize that was the solution, and they only fully confirmed that when they tried turning it back on, experienced another pushover, and then cut it out for good.

Boeing's assertion that there was no need for additional simulator training for the Max series is clearly incorrect -- even in non-fatal incidents pilots have demonstrably and in multiple cases not been able to correctly recognize the MCAS runaway as a kind of Stabilizer Runaway without spending time searching for and running multiple checklists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> AvE over on youtube has some speculation about what caused these crashes, and sums it up with: This was clearly a training issue, but now everyone is talking about it and every pilot is going to have this at the top of their mind. Would I hesitate to get on a Max 8 right now? Not for a second, pardner.

It's like how right after a bad health dept report is probably one of the safest times to go to a particular restaurant.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XCU__OEftU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XCU__OEftU)

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow. This is a failure from so many parties. The pilots for not knowing the correct procedure. Boeing (who should bear the majority of the blame) for allowing sensors that are not properly redundant, purchasing sensors that appear to fault on a regular basis, not properly training, and not making sure that a problem that was well understood can never happen again, the airline for not informing the next crew of problems from previous flights, the regulators of the United States and Ethiopia for allowing these mistakes to happen.

<comment><USER37> We should look at the root cause, which is Boeing installing much more powerful engines on an old frame that wasn't designed for it. They haven't properly done it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The book "Aviation Psychology: Practice and Research" by Klaus-Martin Goeters is an eye opener on the problems that the architects of complex control systems that interface with humans must take into account.

And the kind of problem that MCAS exhibited is clearly explained in the book.

The book doesn't talk only about control system design, but also about training, hiring, etc.

</comment><comment><USER39> Again we are seeing a more systematic issue that commercial pilots don't have stick and rudder skills. Automation has taken over 95% of the job. They push the throttles up to take off power, pull back on the stick, and then punch the auto-pilot and sit back and enjoy the ride. Then they don't fly or input anything into flying until landing where they again fly the plane for the last 3-5 minutes of the flight. I would be interested to see the experience level/age of the pilots. As I think the retiring generation of pilot was much more equipped to deal with this type of issue. Then the new generation of pilot. I included an article lamenting this decreased skill we are seeing. It's refering to the Miracle on the Hudson. But I think it applies here as well. [1]

[1][https://nymag.com/news/features/53788/index1.html](https://nymag.com/news/features/53788/index1.html)

<comment><USER40> This is rather inflammatory at best, and pretty derogatory to the vast majority of pilots who spend upwards of $100,000 to gain the skills necessary for an ATPL, spending anywhere from 1000-2500 hours flying aircraft older than yourself using technology that predates WW2, and even WW1 in some cases. Stick and rudder skills is all you have to get through the first 100 or so hours of your flying career.

What you're seeing is a consequence of companies willing to skimp on training and certifications, pressuring authorities and manufacturers to find workarounds, and keeping the folks actually flying the thing in the dark about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why is it kept in a water-filled box in the image on the news article?

Feels freaky like it is a living animal kept alive in an aquarium.

edit> [https://www.quora.com/Why-are-black-boxes-put-into-water- aft...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-black-boxes-put-into-water-after-they- are-rescued-from-the-accident-site)

<comment><USER42> once it has been submerged taking it back out of the water will cause it to rust in the air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> >The manufacturer has said there is a documented procedure to handle the situation. A different crew on the same plane the evening before encountered the same problem but solved it after running through three checklists, according to the November report.

They shouldn't have to do this routinely.

<comment><USER33> Agree, if the AoA sensor had been properly maintained and/or the MCAS was able to better handle a faulty sensor this could be mitigated.

Also pilots should be made aware of the characteristics of the resulting mode of stabilizer trim runaway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't get one thing -- why didn't the Lion Air pilots just shut off the Autopilot and take manual control of the aircraft?

<comment><USER44> This problem specifically only manifests when the autopilot is off. It's designed to prevent the pilots from stalling out the airplane without realizing it, which only happens in manual flight. Enabling the autopilot cuts out MCAS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm becoming most curious about these AoA sensors. What is going on with them? Is there a problem in the manufacturing process?

<comment><USER33> I believe it was installed incorrectly and poorly maintained by the airline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Where can we listen to the recording??

</comment><comment><USER47> Airline by Michael Crichton played out in real.

<comment><USER48> *Airframe. I miss Crichton...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How did the pilots not think about trim controls... This is BASIC piloting. If you are experiencing pressure on the control stick you adjust trim. How were the pilots this inept?

<comment><USER49> It's Indonesian and this particular budget airline locally has been famous for having many issues. But it's cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> One of the factors that has been quickly glossed over is the low level of experience of some of the pilots in both the Indonesian and Ethopian accidents. In the USA, due to much higher levels of experience pilots have been correcting for the MCAS actions effectively and complaining about it to NASA (in order to avoid being branded as whistle-blowers by their airlines).

<comment><USER51> How would it even be possible for US pilots to sustainably have "much higher levels of experience"? Do non-US pilots fly only two days a week? Do they all die before age 40?

This stereotype of dingy third-world airlines with incompetent, untrained pilots borders on racism. At the very least, one should notice that flying the world's newest airliner in significant numbers is incompatible with one's preconceptions.

<comment><USER52> The first officer in Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was confirmed to have 350 flight hours, which is much lower then the US standard for the large carriers.

Southwest Airlines, for example requires:

> Flight Experience: 2,500 hours total or 1,500 hours Turbine total. > Additionally, a minimum of 1,000 hours in Turbine aircraft as the Pilot in > Command* is preferred. Southwest considers only Pilot time in fixed-wing > aircraft. This specifically excludes simulator, WSO, RIO, FE, NAV, EWO, etc. > "Other Time" will not be considered.

[https://swa.pilotcredentials.com/index.php?a=qualifications](https://swa.pilotcredentials.com/index.php?a=qualifications)

Delta requires:

> Minimum of 1,500 hours of total documented flight time.

> Minimum of 1,000 hours of fixed wing turboprop or turbofan time.

> 90% of the flight time logged in powered lift category aircraft (e.g. AV-8B, > F-35B, and V-22) will be credited to the Delta Air Lines 1,000 hour fixed > wing turboprop/turbofan requirement.

> Minimum of 250 hours PIC in an aircraft categorized as an airplane.

> The flight time logged in a powered lift category aircraft cannot be > credited towards PIC aircraft time in accordance with 14 C.F.R. 61.159.

> Minimum of 50 hours of fixed wing multi-engine time.

[https://www.deltajobs.net/pilot_qualifications.htm](https://www.deltajobs.net/pilot_qualifications.htm)

United requires:

> Minimum of 1,000 hours of fixed-wing turbine time

[https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/company/career/pilot.ht...](https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/company/career/pilot.html)

The European carriers, on the other hand, do not have such strict requirements.

<comment><USER53> These are all _pilot_ qualifications. The _first officer_ was new and had ~200 flight hours. The _pilot /captain_ had over 8000 flight hours. [0]

Look at Ethiopian Airlines own job postings![1]

       >Qualifications:
     Must hold a current and valid JAA/FAA or ICAO ATPL/CPL
        A current 777 type rating
        Minimum Flight time
            *3500 hours* jet time
            *2500 hours* Pilot in command on jet aircraft
            Command time in excess of 500 hours on 777

[0][https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/corporate/media/media- rela...](https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/corporate/media/media- relations/press-release/detail/1080)

[1][https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/corporate/careers/vacancy](https://www.ethiopianairlines.com/corporate/careers/vacancy)

<comment><USER52> Is this clear enough?

[https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsI...](https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=14838)

These are the minimum FAA requirements. Major airlines have higher requirements, while regionals have lower requirements.

The US is unique because flying is far more affordable and common, especially when compared to the alternative of going to a university, even a reasonable state school.

<comment><USER53> They only introduced that rule in 2013 as your link states, and it doesn't seem like most other places bother with such high requirements.[0]

"On Ethiopian flight 302, the first officer may have had just 200 hours, but the captain, a 29-year old career Ethiopian Airlines pilot, had a very respectable 8,000 hours under his belt. There's no indication, at this point in the investigation, that crew experience may have been a factor in the accident."

I still don't see why you are harping on the experience angle when there seems to be much more evidence that the weird Boeing "secret" anti-stall system(MCAS) seems to be in play, since Boeing is trying to come up with an update for it...Also the general maintenance issues that seems to have occurred before at least one of the flights where the same issue was noted and/or the faulty sensors were ignored by groundcrew.

[0][https://thepointsguy.com/news/how-much-experience-do- pilots-...](https://thepointsguy.com/news/how-much-experience-do-pilots-need/)

And FTA this thread is about:

"French air accident investigation agency BEA said on Tuesday the flight data recorder in the Ethiopian crash that killed 157 people showed "clear similarities" to the Lion Air disaster. Since the Lion Air crash, Boeing has been pursuing a software upgrade to change how much authority is given to the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, a new anti-stall system developed for the 737 MAX.

Some U.S. pilots have complained they were unaware of the new system, which is mentioned in the index of the aircraft's full manual but not the text, according to a version seen by Reuters. Airlines have some discretion to customize the manuals.

The cause of the Lion Air crash has not been determined, but the preliminary report mentioned the Boeing system, a faulty, recently replaced sensor and the airline's maintenance and training."

So yeah, blame the flight crew... /s

<comment><USER52> > They only introduced that rule in 2013 as your link states

The major carriers were always stricter. The 2013 rule changed to address a problem at the regional carriers.

> and it doesn't seem like most other places bother with such high > requirements.[0]

Which I explicitly stated in my original post:

>>> The European carriers, on the other hand, do not have such strict requirements.

> I still don't see why you are harping on the experience angle

I weren't. I pointed out a specific misunderstanding in the comment I've responded to.

>>>> How would it even be possible for US pilots to sustainably have "much higher levels of experience"? Do non-US pilots fly only two days a week? Do they all die before age 40?

<comment><USER53> Fair enough. Back to the actual issue here:

"When it was rolled out, MCAS took readings from only one sensor on any given flight, leaving the system vulnerable to a single point of failure. One theory in the Lion Air crash is that MCAS was receiving faulty data from one of the sensors, prompting an unrecoverable nose dive.

In the software update that Boeing says is coming soon, MCAS will be modified to take readings from both sensors. If there is a meaningful disagreement between the readings, MCAS will be disabled."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety- fe...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features- charge.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The OSI-Model in form of a nice website - <AUTHOR> https://osi-model.com/ <comment><USER2> Great website. The title on [https://osi- model.com/data_link_layer/](https://osi-model.com/data_link_layer/) needs to be changed to "Layer 2".

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my start-up - <AUTHOR>

Flatter Me has been running for 6 months now  http://www.flattermecalls.com. I am presented with a few key challenges right now.
Sales range from women of all ages, men of all ages, corporate accounts etc...The data is so diverse and spread out that I am working at figuring out the best ways to reach such a mass audience and building a consistent traffic flow.
Currently, I am relying on word of mouth and PR. I've had success with tradional media (TV, radio, newspapers)etc...
What other methods of building awareness have worked for you?
I am negative on advertising. Should I be? Which channels have been successful for you? Any recommendations for gaining more online exposure?
Those are some questions I am facing, but please feel free to contribute any and all feedback.
Thank you!
http://www.flattermecalls.com <comment><USER2> I do not understand the demand for this service so I would have a hard time analyzing this too much.

One thing that sticks out at me, your masthead banner is a dorky guy making a dorky face holding a phone. It should be an attractive male or female (preferably one of each) making a genuinely nice smile. You want the person to look like something that average guy or girl would actually want to receive a telephone call. I would not ever want to receive a phone call from your current model for any reason.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like people don't understand it so I'll give try to give some useful advice.

Listening to the call, the first thing I think of is women in offices. Probably some of the most marginalized and unappreciated people in the workforce. Constantly buying each other cakes and going overboard for birthday celebrations. Wherever you can find that demographic (places that sell desserts, salons, etc). You have a good price point for working to middle class women of all kinds.

It's a thoughtful product so I would honestly focus on women. Online you should be able to target them at places where they can buy gifts, etc...

As HN becomes more popular I think the feed we'll get more ASK HN questions than posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is often being used in the office environment. It's a creative and fun way to send a message. That is an area I am considering putting more effort on (sold a few big companies corporate packages too). I really appreciate the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> really dislike the sample call..sorry the caller wasnt completely sure what to talk about..and was stumbling..have a nice call that the caller has prepared for properly..and one that reflect all aspects of your company..from professionalism to using the right flattery technique..not using the same words again and again...make the sample call bulletproof It will buy you your customers, invest in it more Regarding marketing, youll have to be creative in targeting specific areas such as surprise a friend, surprise your wife/husband, team building etc, researching similar areas and looking at all the data to see which kind of people are interested should help you a lot. Your collected data is your best friend

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you as per your feedback as per sample call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first thing I think of is using this to prank friends... it's like a gag gift at spencer's gifts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, many people use it because they find the idea funny. And it is fun call to get. People always laugh a lot.But there are a lot of very serious calls too. Customers see it as a different way to send a message. Like a card or telegram etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clicky: <http://www.flattermecalls.com>

</comment><comment><USER7> Feels like there's no hook. One time use, and that's it.</comment>


A stack that handles 350m file api requests per day - <AUTHOR> https://stackshare.io/uploadcare/how-uploadcare-built-a-stack-that-handles-350m-file-api-requests-per-day <comment><USER2> Very interesting that they have an image processor that uses SIMD for big performance gains. Using either SSE4 or AVX2 with [https://github.com/uploadcare/pillow- simd](https://github.com/uploadcare/pillow-simd)

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested to learn more about Pillow-SIMD, [https://blog.uploadcare.com/the-fastest-production-ready- ima...](https://blog.uploadcare.com/the-fastest-production-ready-image-resize- out-there-part-0-7c974d520ad9)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any suggestions on a good amateur telescope? - <AUTHOR> Any suggestions on a good amateur telescope for someone interested in surveying the night sky?
Asking because as a kid in 90s my dad and I tried with a couple inexpensive telescopes (I can't remember models or producers unfortunately) over the years and they turned out to be junk.
Given the interest in astronomy on HN, I thought the community may have some good suggestions. <comment><USER3> Dobsonian Telescopes have been known for their ease of use, lesser complexity and overall economy. They're cheaper than their counterparts - <USER2> telescopes. I'd recommend a telescope that's reflective, mostly because it's cheaper. If you're into astrophotography you could simply add an equatorial mount and you're good to go. I'd suggest you to look into Celestron, SkyWatcher, Orion and Meade telescops.</comment>


Node 11.0 - <AUTHOR> https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v11.0.0/ <comment><USER2> Am learning Django and am getting more familiar with HTML's, JS's, CSS's as I go along. Can someone ELI5 why I'd need nodejs/npm? From my naive understanding, I can download all dependencies as source files and place them in static or go through a CDN, no? Is the sole purpose of npm downloading the various libraries?

<comment><USER3> Node.js can be used as an alternative to Python if you want to use Javascript instead of Python. It can run as a webserver, like Python. npm is a package manager for Node.js. It manages dependencies, and dependencies of dependencies, for Node.js projects.

The JS you can put on a CDN is client-side JS. You can download the source files and host them, or use a bundler such as [https://webpack.js.org](https://webpack.js.org) to compile them into a single file.

The advantage of any package manager over downloading source files is easy of use, you don't clog up your code repository with old files, etc.

<comment><USER4> +1

In addition, since v6 [0], npm audits dependencies for security vulnerabilities, which is really useful to keep projects safe.

[0]: [https://blog.npmjs.org/post/173719309445/npm-audit- identify-...](https://blog.npmjs.org/post/173719309445/npm-audit-identify-and- fix-insecure)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How long till this gets into the Ubuntu apt repository?

Current stable is still at 8, and current is at 10 [1].

Is there a way to get this quicker?

[1]: [https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian- and-u...](https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu- based-linux-distributions)

<comment><USER6> 10.x soon will get a LTS badge [1], so we can expect 10.x (not 11.x) will be added into 19.04 apt repository.

nvm is probably the easiest way to install it, but of course, you can do it manually:

1\. mkdir -p ~/apps/

2\. Download tar.gz and extract it to ~/apps/

3\. Change $PATH variable to include the bin directory

        NODEJS_DIR="node-v8.12.0-linux-x64" # Change version to appropriate
        export PATH=$PATH:${HOME}/apps/${NODEJS_DIR}/bin

4\. Validate "installation" by version check

[1]: [https://github.com/nodejs/Release#release- schedule](https://github.com/nodejs/Release#release-schedule)

Edit: There is also a snap package with nodejs - [https://nodesource.com/blog/announcing-node-js-snap-linux- us...](https://nodesource.com/blog/announcing-node-js-snap-linux-users/) but there is 12.x (edge channel) not 11.x

        snap info node

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> from what I see mostly removal of deprecated stuff, so a clean up release, which is not a bad thing. Good that TextEncoder & TextDecoder web api is now in node.js

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this somehow related to the Perl 11 announcement?</comment>


JavaScript Performance Updates in Microsoft Edge and Chakra - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2016/06/22/javascript-performance-updates-anniversary-update/ <comment><USER2> I think the biggest reason why this is important to most people isn't the performance of JS in IE/Edge, but rather for the native html/js apps. A lot of people don't realize that a lot of the new windows 10 features were written in html/js. Native components like the start menu are all html5 (one of the few things for windows desktop that I helped ship).

Curious to see if more of the UI gets converted over as performance continues to improve.

<comment><USER3> The Win10 startmenu is coded in C++ with XAML. A few months ago, the proud dev mentioned it here on HN - he mentioned he was proud how responsive the layout is. A HTML5 responsive design page would be have a more responsive layout reflow and won't fill that static.

<comment><USER4> It certainly does not feel fast at all. As far as I remember start menus were instant. Now it is not.

Much better than those monstrosity at windows 8 though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > a few recent Chakra improvements coming up in the Windows 10 Anniversary > Update

As much as I am happy about Microsoft's decision to join the evergreen movement, I'd be even happier if they did not attach browser updates to OS updates. Considering how reluctant people about updating their OS, it kind of defeats the purpose of evergreen when it takes months for people to move to a new version. For example, accroding to StatsCounter[1] Edge 13 is used on 2.5% of desktops while Edge 12 is still on 0.25%, that's like 1 in 10 users of Edge is stuck on an outdated version.

>Deferred parsing for event-handlers

Nice, though, it's funny how we have invested so much into libraries and coding practices that minimize the amount of DOM event-handlers to finally side-step the issue by deferring their parsing.

>The results below show Microsoft Edge continuing to lead both benchmarks.

For about a week until the next version of Chrome or Firefox beats the numbers and announces that they are "continuing to lead".

[1] [http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop- browser_version_partially...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop- browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201606-201606-bar)

</comment><comment><USER6> Im really happy microsoft is investing such energy, pride and desire in their web browser. Its almost a fairy tale, a company infamously creating their own standards, lagging way behind and creating whole new browsers to go along with the real product (operating system) into the bleeding edge of speed and hopefully standards.

That being said, I still wonder whats behind it. Whether its so artists and proffessionals view microsoft as a standard, so that more servers run on chakra) or an attempt to gain control of market share so they can also be a part of the info selling market. Regardless, Im happy they are on board

<comment><USER7> Google controlling a huge amount of the browser market share is a big threat to Microsoft.

Chrome defaulting to Google for searching is is huge defensive play for search in the long term. And probably a huge money maker to boot.

Google is also able to leverage the web platform for their own benefit. Witness the recent announcement about Instant Android Apps; they are selling a future where ordinary links and URLs actually lead to a proprietary native Android experience. This is only possible because they own the browser and the OS. They're kneecapping the web to compete with iOS.

<comment><USER8> How does this differ from any other file hosted on the web? I could make an address that just serves a .exe file, but people wouldn't say that Microsoft is kneecapping the web because of it.

<comment><USER7> A browser doesn't download, install and execute that file though. Check out the GIFs on their announcement[1]. They show a Google search result page linking to a URL that seemlessly takes the user to a platform specific binary.

I expect that they'll give Instant Apps higher ranking. It's what they did with Google+ profiles and AMP pages. If Google gives people better SEO by converting their pages to native apps then that's a huge carrot for businesses to move their development to this platform. And the web is going to be made a second class citizen, even in the browser.

Google wins because they have companies and consumers locked into their ecosystem. Apple and Microsoft lose because they can't run Instant Apps like they can with web apps. Consumers lose because they're locked into Android.

If Microsoft were doing this it would be viewed with skepticism and labeled "Embrace, extend, extinguish". I think that eventually we're going to realize that having a single company control the world's most popular OS, most popular browser and most popular entry point to the web is a not a good place to be in.

1\. [http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/android- insta...](http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2016/05/android-instant-apps- evolving-apps.html)

<comment><USER9> Microsoft had this since .NET Framework 2. It was called ClickOnce. It went nowhere.

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

<comment><USER10> Click once sucked and was anything but.

I use Papercut as a little SMTP server for local dev on windows which uses ClickOnce, the install + update processes are painful, even worse than Adobe Flash Builder.

I just ran it, it updated needing 2 clicks and over 4 different popups shown.

It's an invasive, noisy, ugly, tech that was put to shame by Chrome's update tech.

So it's not worth comparing.

<comment><USER11> I think you are been a little uncharitable to poor Clickonce. Clickonce came out a number of years before Chrome and at the time its simple publish model, automatic update detection, and incremental updates were light years ahead of the other clunky Window installers of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I havent heard anything more about node being ported to use chakra - I think they were targeting a pr by summer, is that still happening? Would love to see some of this performance competition on the server side as well.

Edit: looks like the pr ran into some opposition but im not sure what the final status is, ill have to read it again later when im not on mobile. [https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/4765](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/4765)

<comment><USER13> [I work on the Chakra team] So yes, for now Node-ChakraCore repo is accepted as part of the Node.js foundation and is being kept up to date with the master. We are also collaborating with several Node core members in order to carefully understand and plan the best way to bring it to the mainline. This effort is called VM Neutrality (or Multi-VM) for Node. You can find out more about this here [https://github.com/nodejs/vm](https://github.com/nodejs/vm)

<comment><USER14> I thought this had been forgotten. Great news, thank you for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I won't use Edge, since I perefer to use the same software on different platforms and Edge is Windows only.

But as a web developer, I think the Edge is awesome!

They even work on fully supporting "progressive web apps" (manifest etc.), which makes suchs apps first class citizens on Windows (Mobile) and XBox.

I'm already using this feature heavily on Android and it saved me from a bunch of native apps.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great to see MS doing this. To be honest, I'm amazed they haven't been a bigger proponent of web technologies targeted at mobile - Web Push, Service Workers, the whole Progressive Web App. It's clear they have an "app problem" on Windows Phone and this would be one way to get more developers on board.

<comment><USER9> At this point is there really a viable path to daylight for Windows Phone? I don't know a _single_ person who uses one. A few had prior versions a few years ago but all have moved to Android or iPhone by now.

<comment><USER17> It is concerning to me that WP seems to be dead in the water. I'd wadger that an essential duopoly in mobile platforms is harmful to most people. BB (had a phenomenal start and lost it) and WP (late to the party and then constantly confused once it got to the party) would nicely round out the mobile platform choices.

Honorable mentions go out to FirefoxOS (maybe as viable as WP?), Tizen (OK, maybe that will be in some cars or TVs), and Maemo/Meego/Sailfish (oh how I wish you would have been successful!).

Edit: I guess I forgot about Pocket PC. Maybe MSFT can be considered to be an early starter that lost the picture?

<comment><USER18> I think MS should open source Windows Phone OS and support more devices to get more developers interested in the OS.

<comment><USER19> How would open sourcing get people interested if there are no users?

<comment><USER18> I didn't say people. I said 'developers'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wish the same effort would be under way to improve space and time complexity of the non-JS parts of browsers. DOM, CSS, Fonts, images, and the list goes on. There's always some webpage which is super slow in one particular browser due to some CSS feature. Usually it's evident in super slow scrolling.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like how this is a blog post appears to be about 2 code commits (neither of which appear to have any tests btw).

Chakra Core - It's faster than ever! /cheer

I appreciate how the PM gets support for his team though. This post may have been budget justification for happy hour.

<comment><USER22> > 2 code commits

* Squashing commits works like that.

* Only having to change a few things to achieve a performance gain is a signature of well-designed software.

* The second commit touches nearly 1Kloc.

> any tests

Performance improvements aren't supposed to result in a change of behavior (although tests can be reused for benchmarking/profiling). A large test suite[1] that covers _behavior_ already exists.

[1]: [https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/tree/master/test](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/tree/master/test)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I really wish Microsoft would be in the position of Google. They provide excellent technology (Typescript), but have no clout. Google provides atrocious train wrecks (Dart, Go), but has tremendous clout.

<comment><USER24> Dart is not atrocious. It

* has an excellent VM

* is an okayish language

* has a really well designed standard library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I now wish we had a Chakra-powered browser for macOS.

</comment><comment><USER26> Good to know Edge team is more focussed and working on different issues of IE. But Chrome is way to ahead when it comes to be developer friendly or performance or features. I am not sure I will be move away from Chrome anytime soon. Chrome extensions are way ahead. Browser sync is satisfactory in Chrome. IE needs to catch up on this as well.

</comment><comment><USER27> JavaScript is so '90! Let's see some WebAssembly benchmarks! XD</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use the Twitter (or any other social media) widget on your site? - <AUTHOR> If yes, why?
If no, why not?
Just doing some research about embeds/widgets. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I stopped using it on a blog because load times skyrocketed. It was a loooong time ago. Cannot remember when exactly.

If you are thinking about coding something similar to cross promote content and media streams think careful about how do wou affect page load times and page layout flexibility.

Also, I didn't have data about how good was for me to put that embed code in the site. It was great for twitter, who got traction, but nowadays I won put anything from a third party that doesn't give me information about the benefits I will get.

Hope this helps

</comment><comment><USER3> No. It's not 2007 anymore.</comment>


Jython 2.5.0 Final is out - <AUTHOR> http://fwierzbicki.blogspot.com/2009/06/jython-250-final-is-out.html <comment><USER2> Differences between Jython and cPython: <http://jython.sourceforge.net/docs/differences.html>

Can anyone tell me where they find it preferable to use Jython instead of cPython? Also, is there anybody running this for production?

<comment><USER3> I had really bad luck using Jython 2.5 beta 0 with django. I ran into some nasty memory leaks. It looks like other people have run into the same problem: [http://www.nabble.com/Django-Jython-memory-leak-- td20899097....](http://www.nabble.com/Django-Jython-memory-leak-- td20899097.html)

I would not recommend Jython for production uses.

<comment><USER4> Y'know, this bug report deals with running Django's test suite, which is really a worst-case scenario. The test suite loads hundreds -- even thousands -- of models into memory, and does many complicated and costly operations. It's a unit test suite, and that makes its performance characteristics relatively unrealistic.

So I wouldn't want to judge real-world performance based on the performance of the test suite.

Also, beta0 is old news at this point; I've got to imagine that the Jython folks squished all sorts of bugs between then and now. Have you given your app another try on the final?

<comment><USER5> Hey, Jacob Kaplan-Moss, you don't have time to post replies on HN. Django 1.1 is two months late, and I still see 20 open tickets. And would a status update on the Django blog kill you? Also, while you're at it, I've been hearing a lot about the GIL on reddit and HN lately, can you fix that? Thanks.

<comment><USER6> FWIW it's actually 21 tickets at the moment. Of which 18 are either documentation (10 tickets) or updated translation files (8 tickets).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a little surprised this update makes it compatible with Python 2.5. Didn't that come out in 2006?

<comment><USER6> Python 2.5 is a good baseline, since that's what a lot of distributors are shipping.

Besides, the syntactic additions made to the language in Python 2.6 are almost all meant to provide a first step toward Python 3.0, or make standard things that were available as future imports in 2.5. So you're not really missing anything there.</comment></comment>


Perchance to Dream: Science and the Future - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/perchance-to-dream-science-and-the-future

<comment><USER2> I can't help but think that the professors of the Royal Society being asked for their "wish list" today have strangely low horizons, compared to Boyle and Bacon. Yes, better detection of autism would be great, but it's not quite up there with "the recovery of youth".</comment>


Twitter Security Collapses; Obama, Fox and Britney Accounts Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_security_collapses_oba.php <comment><USER2> Apparently it was the Twitter admin help desk application that was hacked. It's been taken offline. The phishing was separate.

"It will be good for the people calling for more secure, standards based authentication on Twitter and elsewhere around the web." [from article]

"it is important to note that OAuth would not have prevented either of these attacks" [from Twitter]

I see the point for OAuth third party applications, but that's not the attack vector here. That's just free association. What more secure authentication do people want? Client certificates? Dongles?

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link on the help-desk-app angle?

One of my guesses would have been updates via SMS. I've read it's easy to forge caller ID; if it's as easy to forge an SMS origin-number, and you knew these accounts were set up to allow updates via SMS from a certain number... voila!

<comment><USER4> Here's the info on the compromised support tools:

<http://blog.twitter.com/2009/01/monday-morning-madness.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh the tiny, tiny drama!

<comment><USER6> Jokes aside, this is a huge deal for Twitter. Unless they can prove that these guys did something like get phished, their professed monetization strategy of corporate twitter accounts could run into real trouble.

<comment><USER7> it strikes me that twitter has acute technology problems. Remember the scalability problems last year? now this security issue. Friendfeed in contrast, has none of these issues.

<comment><USER8> FriendFeed has none of the issues and does not have the critical mass to draw the sort of high-profile attention the defacers were seeking. Given enough scale, FriendFeed will have its share of issues.

<comment><USER5> I can believe the "True geometric growth is hard to deal with period." argument when it comes to downtime.

But what does scale have to do with security?

<comment><USER9> More users -> more attackers -> more holes found.

<comment><USER10> Attackers can only find holes that are there to begin with.

<comment><USER9> There are always holes.

<comment><USER10> Some architectures are more resistant than others. I suppose you could break into some air gapped military computers -- if you had a nuke.

why are we even discussing this?

<comment><USER11> Or someone on your payroll on the inside.

<comment><USER10> Well that's universal. You can't exactly protect against someone who's also supposed to hold the keys to the system. Its more a feature than a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For posterity's sake, it should be noted that the Gelgamek vagina is typically 3 feet wide, not 4 feet.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_South_Park_sp...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_South_Park_species#Gelgameks)

</comment><comment><USER13> This might finally push twitter to use something like oAuth. I predict they will launch it by next week and it will be required by every third party app.

<comment><USER7> explain to me how oAuth would have prevented this? there's no indication that the attack was using a third-party app

<comment><USER14> It would not have prevented this, but by jumping on another tangentially- related bandwagon the Twitter folks probably figure that they can distract everyone from the real problem and get ahead of the curve on credentials and authentication for the third-party ecosystem that is starting to develop around twitter.

<comment><USER15> you make it sound like an episode of 'The West Wing,' I think that they will spend more time trying to solve their actual security issues than trying to distract from the problem</comment></comment></comment></comment>


No Terrorist Is a 'Lone Wolf' - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-terrorist-is-a-lone-wolf/ <comment><USER2> I believe that is true. The only real terror attack we had in recent times was a young immigrant who shot up a free speech congress. When he was burried literally thousands of 'moderate' muslims followed him to his grave, in a gesture I can only interpret as honoring his deeds.

The media portayed him as a lone wolf, even though his friends helped him with automatic weapons, bullet proof vests and knives. The friends who helped him didn't get a sentence.</comment>