Show HN: Hacker Dig – Digging Ideas from Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://hackerdig.com/ <comment><USER2> Is it really really necessary to have that captcha?? Lending brain power to the worlds biggest advertising and spy operation is a turn off. Besides it sucks to sit there and click endless images of traffic lights, cars, busses and store fronts...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, but I need to protect mail server.

Captcha doesn't send ideas data to google as the ideas are not part of the submit form.

But totally agree with you.

Todo: change captcha to a local php solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> To help me get started, I wouldn't mind seeing an example of what the start of an idea-mining session looks like with this interface. I've never done anything like this so I could use some inspiration for how to use such a tool.

<comment><AUTHOR> The inspiration is on the left side. It can be a title or something in the summary or comments. When something sparks an idea, click to create a new note about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know what "dig" means in the context of this app and therefore I don't understand the purpose of the app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dig is like in "idea digging" or "vinyl crate digging".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice! Kudos for also making it open source. Direct link: [https://github.com/giekaton/hacker-dig](https://github.com/giekaton/hacker- dig)

</comment><comment><USER6> Who adds the summaries?

Asking since the first one I looked at was just weird, something about core dump percentages or...dunno?

<comment><AUTHOR> Summaries are extracted with Aylien API, free plan. Sometimes they can be a bit random or missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> this is great and open source, what is the idea behind it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, click on "More details..." link to learn more about Hacker Dig.

Also try clicking on the eye icon and comments to show/hide summaries and comments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> great work, and a nice PWA example. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER9> Simply, Great!!</comment>


It's not just someone else's computer - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jonstodle.com/its-not-just-someone-elses-computer/ <comment><USER2> In my neck of the woods the phrase "the cloud is just someone else's computer" is used by server admins, network engineers, et al. to downplay the significance of the paradigm shift associated with cloud computing in an attempt to slow down its adoption and therefore save their jobs.</comment>


On Perks - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@byrnehobart/every-day-companies-around-the-world-execute-a-low-risk-high-return-arbitrage-they-buy-the-time-9be6e1c1d486 <comment><USER2> In the Netherlands, meals and other benefits provided by the employer are taxed into oblivion after a certain amount. It makes a lot of financial sense to just give your employees more money here and let them buy their own stuff after income tax. The way it works is that a company can spend 1.2% of the yearly income on the employee in terms of coffee, company retreats, free lunches, whatever they please, but over that you pay a huge tax rate which make the expense slightly higher than an employee buying it themselves after income tax. Some things are exempt from this, such as free fruit.

In practice this means that the cheaper things, such as coffee and tea are usually free (at least in offices with white collar workers) and the more expensive things such as dinner are usually not employer provided. Company provided lunch does exist, and seems to be on the rise, but due to the spartan nature of Dutch lunch, companies are usually able to squeeze that in the 1.2% given that the yearly salaries are high enough. It seems to me that all of this is quite a nice compromise between employers running your life and you thus being limited in your choices, while still offering free coffee and the like.

Edit: misremembered the amount, changed 1.8 to 1.2%

<comment><USER3> > spartan nature of Dutch lunch

I just ran some numbers. The average salary of Dutch Software Engineer is €42,993[1]. 1.2% of €42,993 = €516.

There are 261 weekdays in a year; subtract 30 holiday/vacation days from that, you get 221 working days.

€516 / 221 = €2.23

 _Can lunch be a mere €2.23 (US$2.50) in the Netherlands?_

My employer delivers free lunch to all its employees _everyday_ as well ( via a service called [https://www.servedbystadium.com/](https://www.servedbystadium.com/) ), but the cost of this is typically around $15-$20 per meal.

(I estimate my employer has allocated about $4000/year per employee for the free lunch. That's around 2% to 3% of the salary of most of our software engineers, but salaries on average are about 3 times[2] in the U.S. compared to the Netherlands.)

[1] [https://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/S...](https://www.payscale.com/research/NL/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary)

[2] [https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer- salary](https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary)

<comment><USER2> I think €2.23 is a little on the light side, but not unrealistic, considering that a Dutch lunch mostly consists of cheap sliced bread with some form of stuff spread out on it, mostly Gouda cheese, or any of the sweet stuff like the traditional chocolaty sprinkles: hagelslag. I talked to the guy that buys the lunch at our office, and his estimate is anywhere between €2.50 and €3.50 per person a day, but he did not have hard numbers. For Dutch standards, our lunch is considered quite luxurious.

Then again, I'm not exactly sure what part of that is just lower prices in supermarkets. As a student I routinely could cook dinner for under €2.50 per person, although nowadays I'm averaging more like €4 pp, with rising prices and me cooking for a smaller group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article talks about free food. But the most bizarre perk is how health insurance is linked to one's employer. Whatever system we have in 20 years, pretty much anything will be better than this one.

<comment><USER5> In Switzerland, health insurance is still expensive and obligatory (which is bad), but can only be paid from after-tax money, which is good and delivers at least some market pressure to the system.

In the US, how do freelancers and individual consultants even work?

<comment><USER6> The obligatory part is the good part. In the Netherlands it is obligatory and costs are lower than in the US.

<comment><USER5> No, the obligatory part leads to less competition, less market pressure, and therefore costs spiral. Our costs are almost on par with the US, and raise every year.

<comment><USER7> How does the obligation to buy insurance cause there to be less competition? If someone doesn't have to have insurance, wouldn't the pool of possible customers be smaller?

I agree with you on the cost comparison side - I've lived in both places and find the systems quite similar in many respects outside of costs.

I think one key difference between the Swiss / American model and that of other western EU countries is the cost of billing and processing. In the US a full third of the cost of care is this part of the system, something that doesn't need to happen when there is a single universal payer for all care.

<comment><USER5> We don't have a singe payer healthcare here, there are many insurance companies.

Obligatory insurance destroys competition (and insurance companies are lobbying hard to support it), because obligatory customer is a perfect customer — you can be as bad as you wish to them, and they still won't leave you. With multi-payer insurance, they can still leave to other company (but it still enables bad behavior in the insurance industry in general). With single- payer, no such luck, you are at the complete mercy of the single-paying entity.

<comment><USER8> I think you may be misunderstanding "single-payer". That term refers to there being a single entity paying for the care (generally speaking, this is the government), vs the US system which is multi-payer (you pay part of it, public or private health insurance pays another).

In a single-payer system, there can still be many healthcare _providers_ , and the single entity doing the paying is incentivized to push aggressively for low prices from providers, because that keeps their own overhead low. Likewise, they're incentivized to keep their premiums low, because when you're the government, if people think you're screwing up their healthcare they vote you out of office.

As an example of this in the US, take the Medicare system, which can negotiation super aggressively on pricing from healthcare providers because a provider who lands a contract for Medicare knows they have a massive pool of humans to provide care (and thus receive payment) for/from.

<comment><USER5> I believe understand it right. What _motivation_ this single entity will have to always have the best customers interests in mind? What will prevent it from being sloppy, or even corrupted and colluding with healthcare providers?

<comment><USER8> What stops any group of people from being sloppy or corrupted?

I called out the things that keep single-payer systems in check in my original comment, which you've replied to: pressure from constituents keeps premiums low (in the same way that the government is pressured to keep taxes low by their electorate), and they're incentivized to negotiate low rates with providers because it improves their ability to keep premiums low without having them be lower than expenses.

That said: the US's current privatized system is sloppy and corrupt in a multitude of ways, because their incentive structure includes turning a profit, _and_ they can't negotiate costs as hard as a single-payer system can, because their pool of customers is smaller. So we've got the worst combination of traits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Article misses an important point. Free food is a benefit, and ERISA requires all employees get the same benefits. If you have a company with lots of low paid workers, it doesn't work financially. Silicon Valley firms mostly contract out low wage jobs (janitorial, security) partially for this reason.

<comment><USER10> This is very interesting to hear. In Germany, we don't have a law as such, and the employees of the company I work for that work less than 40 hours per week have to pay for food at the cafeteria, while those who do get it for free. If I understand ERISA correctly, that would be illegal in the US.

<comment><USER11> In Germany, free lunch is a taxable income. It might explain the difference between full and part time employees. How does it look like in your payslip?

<comment><USER12> It's not as simple as that. The employer can support lunch up to a set limit by day (I think currently 6.40 EUR, but I might be wrong on the exact number per day) and depending on the exact way things are laid out, the reminder is taxed flat at 25% and not subject to social security. It's actually one of the best perks that an employer can give (the others are paying for a transport ticket, or a bike). It provides real value, everyone has to eat and not paying for lunch translates into real money unlike a flipper table.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Free lunch, though, is not where the action is: the economics of free food > are driven by free dinner. Lunch just amortizes the fixed cost of food prep > facilities.

The Google SF office had lunch, but not dinner, for 10 years. Dinner is a fairly recent offering.

<comment><USER14> free lunch is also good economically though, without free lunch most employees spend 1+ hours outside the company.

With free lunch, most employee spend less than 25 minutes eating, then going back directly to work.

<comment><USER13> I definitely understand why they do it; just providing a counterpoint to "they only lunch so they can dinner."

That's been the exact opposite of my experience. It was an uphill battle to get dinner at Google, so there were plenty of nights where the reason I left was "I have to get home before my food options close."

<comment><USER15> There are relatively few people actually getting dinner at my office, even though it is offered four days a week. Perhaps an order of magnitude fewer than those getting lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just started a new job that offers the breakfast/lunch/dinner perks. There are several aspects to it.

Retention:

* obviously, if the competition doesn't offer lunch, you want to go there

* obviously, if the competition offers lunch and your company doesn't, you will want to leave the company

* building a community starts with breaking bread. If you can get friendships and relationships to form via this mechanism then you will have a stronger retention, stronger ties between coworkers, etc.

cross-pollinating:

* grabbing lunch with someone else in the company is easier

Team:

* go grab lunch with coworkers to know what they're working on

* free lunch = better moral for the team

* you save time looking for lunch, so you can spend more time eating with your coworker

* since you all eat at the same place you randomly bump into coworkers, you often eat with them, etc.

Life outside of work:

* you can go earlier at work since they serve breakfast

* if you can bring food home, you don't have to lose time meal prep'ing and can spend more time doing other things

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm not sure, if it's really the free part. I had free food at a previous employer and loved it, but a company cafeteria with high-quality food, fast service and acceptable prices serves the same purpose. And every single company cafeteria I ate in so far had same or better quality food with more options. The important thing is that there is an easily available place for good food.

Big corps in Germany (and probably all around the world) usually offer that, while small companies for obvious reasons cannot afford it.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _At a minimum, it saves a little bit of search time and wait time. If you > were going to work until 10, dinner that takes five minutes rather than > thirty still saves you five minutes._

Am I the only one who doesn't understand this math? Isn't 30 - 5 = 25?

</comment><comment><USER19> If it stops people eating lunch at their desk, I'm all for it. I've started timing my lunches to coincide with some people near me so I don't have to experience them eating lunch at their desks.

<comment><USER20> <shudder> eating at desks must stop

<comment><USER21> Why? Genuinely curious. Couldn't care less if people near me eat at their desks.

<comment><USER22> Because some people have to work with complete barbarians who chomp with their mouth open whole Granny Smith apples, whole bell peppers and whole celery sticks without cutting them up, as if to deliberately annoy everyone in the vicinity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I disagree with pretty much everything in this article. I've never been happier than when I worked for a company that provided free, daily, healthy lunches. We were never coerced into working through dinner.

Now I have to food prep dinner and lunch. I'm making 4x the portions just so we each have enough to eat for leftovers. I spend way more of my personal time cooking and doing groceries and not with my family or working on my projects. Food waste has skyrocketed since everything is bought in bulk, and sometimes not all of it gets used. It's created way more dishes too, in meal prep and tupperwares.

Sometimes we ate out the night before, or there are just no leftovers. I can either get unhealthy fast food, wait an hour to get served at a healthy place, or spend even more of my limited personal time preparing a meal for the next day.

<comment><USER24> I'm curious. It seems like the before after in this situation seems to have more to do with not having a family / having a family, than working somewhere that has food perks / doesn't have food perks.

Unless the the corporation is paying for your entire families food budget, prep, cleaning etc, I think what you have just described is exactly the point of the article: being single and having all (or most) household chores done for you is really attractive and great, having a family and needing to do this yourself for multiple people sucks and is hard.

Ergo, these perks prolong the time spent single and enjoying the perks.

<comment><USER23> We both lost cafeteria breakfast/lunch when we got new jobs after moving.

Making dinner used to be really easy, just grab some fresh ingredients on the way home and throw together something small and healthy.

Now it's a whole performance. We're constantly trying to make bulk meals, and store the rest for breakfast/lunch. We've gone from preparing 2 servings of food per day to 6 or more. We needed to buy larger kitchen appliances and equipment just to cook/store it all. There are 3x more groceries (We shop on foot and bought one of those little carts) and 3x more dishes. It doesn't seem like much but I've lost at least 30 mins a day, but probably a lot more on average. The food I am eating is, on average, less healthy, less diverse, and less tasty (I am no professional chef).

This article just seemed to resolve to a point that free lunch was a corporate tool to discourage "family formation", and I ultimately disagree. I think a lot of working parents would love to not have to worry about preparing their own lunch meal on top of their families.

I just don't see the connection of "free food == single life", and the article doesn't really establish one. At worst I'd still end up with the same amount of time, and at best it has given me _more_ free time to spend with my family.

<comment><USER25> I'm unfamiliar with life in America, but why don't you just eat at a cheap no- frills restaurant instead of buying groceries and spending time to cook all of that food? Are those restaurants not available within walking distance, or too expensive, or don't have good salads / fish / meat / whatever?

<comment><USER26> Cheap no-frills restaurants are typically unhealthy in America. Think Mcdonalds. Also being a bit of a drive is not an issue.

Most of the US doesn't have a dining out culture like in some other parts of the world, like Singapore, Vietnam etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The tax position of benefits varies by country. Australia, for example, has the Fringe Benefits Tax, which is a tax on benefits levied on the _employer_ at the highest marginal tax rate.

Unsurprisingly, Australian workplaces are miserly. At my last job before moving to the US, there was a hot water dispenser installed in the staff room. But we, the employees, had to buy for coffee, tea, sugar and milk ourselves. It was achieved on an honour system, with a little container where you would throw in some cash from time to time.

<comment><USER28> Food and drinks are not FBT'd in Australia.

> Food and/or drink provided to, and consumed by, current employees on your > business premises on a working day are exempt property benefits

[https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?DocID=SAV%2FFBTGEMP...](https://www.ato.gov.au/law/view/document?DocID=SAV%2FFBTGEMP%2F00015)

There are plenty of companies in Australia with very good benefits, like Atlassian and Canva.

<comment><USER27> I guess they were the regular sort of misers, then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I used to work in a company that gave free food and I'd choose that even if they offered to pay me 15 dollars per meal (B, L, D) for every weekday instead. There is just such a massive emotional value to having free food all around the office. It was a sad sad day when I left that job.

<comment><USER30> I think this is exactly one of the points the article makes: free food makes employees stick around longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> My most memorable experiences at Google were perks like the invited talks (I got to have a very long chat with author of the Moose Wood Cookbook Molly Katzen and a short chat about Reddit dropping Common Lisp with Alexis Ohanian) and the interesting food at 28 cafes. The work was OK, I just did one specific thing - not much freedom, but my main great memories were the perks.

Another great perk was the invited chefs from local restaurants who would be guest chefs, and they would be available to talk with.</comment>


Japanese Teenage Boy Improved Ruby 1.9 Performance By Up To 63% - <AUTHOR> http://yokolet.blogspot.com/2009/11/japanese-teenage-boy-improved-ruby-19.html <comment><USER2> This is like me taking my son hunting, holding the gun for him and having him pull the trigger for the kill.

His mentor was Koichi Sasada...he wrote YARV!

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great to get kids involved. But it's not like he walked in off the street, "saw the matrix" and then committed a patch.

I can already sense the razzing coming from the Python camp! :)

<comment><USER3> Can you somehow prove that Koichi made the solution SOOO obvious that even a teenager could have made the fix?

From what little I've read, it seems to me that this kid is pretty smart and has made a very generous contribution to the Ruby community.

<comment><USER4> I would have been plenty impressed if the article was framed like that, without the hype. As you say, the kid has made a great contribution at a young age. No need to dress up a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He improved the performance of _a few specific methods_. Not of Ruby in general.

Google translation of the article referenced in the article: [http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Fjibun.atmarkit.co.jp%2Fljibun01%2Frensai%2Fgenius%2F05%2F01.html&sl=ja&tl=en&history_state0=) (mostly funny to read, as the translation is quite wacky)

(Bablefish chokes on the site)

<comment><USER6> The methods he improved the perf of were in string, array, and struct. I think that counts as "globally improves performance", there are very few non-trivial methods that won't benefit.

<comment><USER7> but they won't improve performance as much. AND the 63% figure was very misleading anyway since that's the best case, and average is only 8%.

So basically, if your program does nothing but call those methods in such a way that it satisfies the best case improvement, it just got 63% faster at doing nothing.

If your program does nothing but call those methods with the average case, it just got 8% faster at doing nothing.

If your program uses anything else, it's probably only faster by a small fraction of that 8%.

<comment><USER8> >..the 63% figure was very misleading anyway since that's the best case...

Which is exactly what I took "up to 63%" to mean. I don't see that as misleading. If a drug administration company was listing off the side effects of a new over-the-counter drug and mentioned fatality rates we're on average, 2%, but failed to mention that the worst-case scenarios (where the patients were Hispanic females over the age 35) had a 80% fatality rate, would you also consider that misleading? Of course you would.

So why is citing the extremes of a positive considered misleading, while citing extremes of a negative is almost expected?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Japanese people were surprised about the news since he made that in his age."

As opposed to most other people, who were not surprised at all?

I agree though, the title implies that he improved all of Ruby's performance... even though it was just several methods. Still cool that he got into this kind of project at a young age, but it's not like he re-wrote a bunch of algorithms or something....

<comment><USER10> "His mentor was Koichi Sasada (ko1)."

That's the guy who wrote YARV. So it's not too surprising that ko1 would point him in the right direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The title, which _is_ from the original article is a bit misleading, no?

 _The performances of the methods he worked have been bumped up 63% in maximum, 8% in average. His patches were applied to Ruby trunk in Oct. 5 this year._

I'm not knocking the kid's contribution, but the title oversells it a bit, implying that the kid improved Ruby 1.9's overall performance, which apparently isn't the case.

<comment><USER12> That they were using and contributing to an open source project for study was more surprising to me than the details of this improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Being smart and attentive to detail are not related to age. So I'm not much surprised. Lucky for FLOSS and Ruby communities, one more new and bright guy came in.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well done, but why wasn't the compiler doing this automatically?

<comment><USER15> It takes a very sophisticated compiler to know that rubyobj->isString will always be true when the ruby interpreter is evaluating a constant string.

<comment><USER16> isString is the cheapest method out there, it just tests a tag bit in the pointer. Pretty much an AND followed by a branch.

<comment><USER17> ... except for setting up the function call, and all that jazz.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Salvador Dali's Script for the Marx Brothers - <AUTHOR> https://dangerousminds.net/comments/when_dali_met_harpo_read_salvador_dalis_script_for_the_marx_brothers <comment><USER2> "The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." – Salvador Dali

<comment><USER3> My favourite quote was:

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

I guess buying diary of a genius as a young teenager set me on a bad path.

<comment><USER4> And considering Dali's artistic abilities at six [1], it's no wonder he got a big ego.

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

<comment><USER3> My daughter is 6, I've been drawing unicorns with her today. I thought she was doing well! This is incredible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's nice to see such mutual respect between people operating in such seemingly different styles.

<comment><USER6> Just wait til you discover he invented the Chupa Chups logo

<comment><USER7> Which fits stylistically with the animated scenes in Vertigo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some justification for his anagrammatic nickname: avida dollars

</comment><comment><USER9> > the quick witty repartee of his brother Groucho

That's what I enjoyed. Not the harp and piano playing, nor the physical gags.

<comment><USER10> I think some of the physical gags were pretty clever and had merit beyond slap-stick humor. The "mirror" scene form Duck Soup comes to mind.</comment></comment>


Google Drive – How do I stop others from sharing files with me? - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/drive/thread/3708017?hl=en <comment><USER2> Related to this bug, some time ago I started getting spam on my Google Calendar. Not sure if Google ever fixed it, but basically Google would automatically add events to your calendar when you got an invite in your email. Honestly, it's a nice feature; saves a couple clicks every time I get an invite. The bug is that it applied even if the email was spam. There was no workaround, other than disabling the feature completely. Quite a pain. And yes, just like this bug, you'd get lovely "eat my pussy" events popping up on your calendar and reminders.

Thanks Google, you're the best /s

<comment><USER3> It's used not just by spammers, but by sales reps, too.

Dell recently did this to about half a dozen people on my team. 'Q2 Budget Review', which sounds official, but is really a Dell rep trying to sell you junk that magically pops up on your calendar _even if you mark their message as spam_.

Dirty way to get by executive assistants, too.

<comment><USER4> > Dell recently did this to about half a dozen people on my team. 'Q2 Budget > Review',

If you put this shit on my calendar, I will never purchase a product from you. I will additionally, at my own discretion, use it as proof that you have had a data breach and are unable to keep your accounts safe since no real company would really do this on purpose.

<comment> o-__-o For every one person who vows to never purchase their product, 10 others become useful leads.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but for every person I tell that they had a data breach causing them to phish their customers through calendar, I can poison 50 people in each organization, then they can poison 50 and so forth... let's call it exponential growth of the DELL-20 coronavirus.

<comment><USER5> And each of those 10 successes tells 50,

Don't you get it?! They wouldn't do it if it didn't work, and you are vastly outnumbered. It's not right, it's bloody annoying, but it's there and it's not going away.

Google needs to fix the root problem, so that the spammy behaviour is not possible.

<comment><USER6> I'm not claiming that you're wrong because I don't have any data to the contrary, but "They wouldn't do it if it didn't work" isn't a strong argument. It's only true assuming rational actors and perfect information.

It is quite possible that the successes are more visible than the failures and thus it _seems_ like it works. Or it "works" for the sales rep because he gets more leads and thus a bigger bonus, while hurting the company - but the company hasn't figured that out yet. Or it works in the short term but isn't worth the reputation damage in the long term.

Of course it's also possible that it just works, just pointing out that reality shows that people and companies often do things that are just stupid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Keep getting spam shared on an account I don't use much, but keep getting > notifications. Not fun when my 9 yo son is on my phone and a notification > pops up that someone shared "eat my pussy baby". Google needs to address > this.

Oh. That's bad.

<comment><USER8> Oh god. I got COMPLETELY derailed by this last month. My girlfriend's son was using my tablet (which is logged on my main Google account) and recently I was being victim of this, and suddenly he asked me "what's a bussy?"

I never logged my account out of an device so fast. Google needs to fix this crap.

<comment><USER9> Did you tell him? Lots of good music from De bussy

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

<comment><USER10> Classic parenting strategy here. Connect & Redirect. Well played.

<comment><USER11> But one day they will remember the event and think "Dad, You sly dog..."

<comment><USER12> And then they'll respect you all the more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The mods on the support forums who make it sound like basic functionality missing from their product is your own fault for not submitting some kind of ticket deserve the gaslighting prize of the year for each of the last 5 years.

They don't even have an option to show you how much space folders take up, when they charge you based on space usage.

[https://support.google.com/drive/thread/3970069?hl=en](https://support.google.com/drive/thread/3970069?hl=en)

<comment><USER14> Google support forums are terrible. Every time there is a missing feature (I usually find it in Google Spreadsheet) or a bug, the corresponding entry in the support forum would be answered with some pretext of why said feature will never be supported.

<comment><USER15> This is off topic but it reminds me, every time I look for some Windows 10 problem, it mostly leads to some Microsoft forum (answers.microsoft.com). In there however, the questions systematically get answered by a billion "MSFT specialist consultants #not working for MSFT", and it always weirds me out. Are these people there for self promotion, for the thrill of it or is it MSFT that has some reward system for third parties to participate? I know helpful strangers is nothing new to the internet, I guess I'm just weirded out because there's never an official answer on MSFT's official forum and these sorts of questions are not really the sort of "playful" puzzles one might encounter helping strangers on SO/Reddit/Discord.

<comment><USER16> It's the same on the Apple discussion boards. You won't ever get an official answer, only a guess of an answer from somebody with no more knowledge than yourself.

HP is the same, but occasionally you will get an employee answer, but it will be just as useless.

My assumption is all the big tech companies don't want to give support away for free when you should be paying for a support contract for it.

And yes, there is for some unknown reason, a legion of people who will give this fake support for free for internet points.

<comment><USER17> Maybe Apple consumer forums, but I've had amazing support from the developer forums. Especially Quinn "the Eskimo" ... saves my butt every 6 months it seems, and isn't the least bit offended when my questions relate to an opaque electron code signing issue. Seriously, bless this person for doing the "lord's work."

<comment><USER18> He's been doing it since the late 90s too... I still remember getting an answer from him regarding a dusty corner of the Mac OS 8 internet config API when I was trying to bulk provision Macs for campus internet access in 1998. It was all mailing lists then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My adventures last week:

Question: We have a G Suite Enterprise account. We used to share documents with a contractor. They no longer contract with us. How do we remove that contractor from every shared document.

Answer 1: Run this report to get a list of every document shared with them. Manually visit each document and un-share it.

Answer 2: Our API docs are at...

FFS, Google. I really don't think this is that unusual of a request. I refuse to believe that we're the first company ever that wanted to remove people from our Google Drive. Why do you make it so difficult?

<comment><USER20> It's recommended (and much easier) to share access to a folder instead of individual files. You can also use Google Groups instead of adding individual users. Google Team/Shared Drives has finally started to improve permissions and includes sharing with external emails as well.

Otherwise it's better to use something like Box.com which is actually designed for enterprise-level features including complex access controls and user management.

<comment><USER19> That might be true, but nowhere in the UI does it recommend that. If you want to share a file, nothing suggests you consider sharing a folder instead. And even then, we'd still have to find and disable all of the folders that had been shared with the ex-associate. That would reduce the number of items to un-share, but the fundamental problem of having no easy way to find and handle each item is still there.

Yeah, we're going to Box for everything outside our organization for exactly those reasons. If Google Drive lived up to the "enterprise" label they stick on accounts, we would stick with it. It's just not business-ready in its current form, though.

<comment><USER20> It's not a UI thing. It's a general recommendation about workflows because folders are usually easier to manage than files. Have you tried using Google Groups? Add them to a single "external associates" group and then you can just edit group membership in the future instead of managing files.

<comment><USER21> You need the ability to verify that no files are shared with them. "Adhering to a workflow" isn't sufficient.

<comment><USER20> The other person commented that the UI didn't suggest using folders over files. Why would it? That's up to your specific workflow, and using folders or groups is general advice for bigger organizations.

How you verify access is something else entirely, but the same advice helps in that case too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This can be so confusing for non-tech literate people too. My mother asked me to help her, saying she was hacked because there was porn in her Google Drive.

It can be really difficult for non-power users to even understand why this is happening or what to do to fix this.

<comment><USER23> That's more of the fault of Google Drive UI being terrible and failing to differentiate mine / shared / someone else's.

<comment><USER24> >differentiate mine / shared / someone else's

They're all Google's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tangential to this is that calendar/invite spam continues to be an issue as well. Want to trick someone into visiting a URL? Just send them a calendar invite and chances are they will click it.

<comment><USER26> What drives me crazy is that this will happen even if the email with the invite never hits your inbox and goes straight to spam. Outright insane to not patch that ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment> cbm-vic-20 Answer: find the email address of the person the product manager of Google Drive reports to, and start sharing stuff with them.

(/s: not condoning doxxing here)

<comment><USER27> LOL, you're assuming anyone gets promoted by fixing issues at Google. Wrong. You build some new shit and switch teams. Someone pitches a new project and builds from scratch. Rinse and repeat.

This particular issue happens (at least that's my recollection a few years ago) frequently enough at Google that there were memes about it internally. Not sure giving additional feedback would help.

<comment><USER28> This is so glaringly apparent as a user. I think Google makes some fantastic products, but the number of "This has to be so exceedingly easy to fix, but Google just doesn't give a damn" issues I've hit is crazy.

Here's one simple one: the number of volume steps in Android is only 16: [https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37035441](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/37035441) . This means that the difference between off and the lowest level volume can be pretty big if you're trying to be quiet, e.g. avoid waking someone in the same room. I almost wish they would just close issues with a "We don't give a shit" resolution status.

<comment><USER27> I don't think it is as simple as a singular person or a single room saying "I don't give a shit". It's a matter of prioritization. (In this particular case, even from a UX perspective alone, you could argue that increasing friction in sharing could net-net hurt the average user.)

I don't think Google (if we can anthropomorphize it at all) is blind to this general phenomenon though--it's a trade-off you have to make about what company you want to be. Is it better for you to invest resources into incremental improvements to polish the final 2% or try again and maybe make a breakthrough. You have to look it from multiple angles too: are you going to attract the most talented people giving them such gruntwork or will they quit? Is there any meaningful incremental business you could get from polishing Android (remember, polished Android is more expensive and has to compete head- on with a company whose focus is to polish and is best set up to do so). It's complicated. There's a place for multiple models.

<comment><USER29> Who cares how much talent you have if nothing works. Perhaps they have too much talent and not enough meat and potatoes.

<comment><USER27> "Nothing works" is certainly not an accurate description of the reality (It's more like 80-90% works just great). As for who cares, your colleagues certainly do (there are limits on how much "potato and meat" you can mix with talent before messing the recipe up). Also note that the companies we are talking about here are not in the technology business, they are in the empire business, so they certainly care about who gets to help control the empire and who defects to a competitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a simple option like "Allow just my contacts to share files with me". I lost so much time with all the spam and malware that is being sent to me just because my gmail account is so public ... :(

<comment><USER30> Spammers, scammers, and marketers are abusing every possible system to get eyeballs and it's moved beyond frustrating.

I've had to dump phone numbers due to SMS, voicemail, and phone call spam. My spam box on my e-mail address (not hosted at Google, but still) is littered with bogus calendar invites, fake invoices, file sharing attempts, and so on.

I'm a little surprised spammers aren't putting ad messages in fields that get logged in HTTP access logs just so admins will trip over them somehow.

<comment><USER31> They do, I have seen referred field spam, which also appears on analytics suites.

<comment><USER32> The next hot strategy is reverse-proxying an actual site to grow a domain's position in search engines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm all in on GDrive - my whole world is in there. 25 years of files.

I do notice Spam occasionally in the 'shared with me' menu - but it seems to get cleaned up.

I already have all 99% notifications turned off in apps.

Sounds like the real annoying part is getting the notification with the spammy sexual titles.

If you didn't get notifications then likely the spam detection would delete before you ever noticed it in your 'Shared with Me' menu.

Android needs to default to opt-in notifications like on IOS.

<comment><USER34> Given Google's track record this exhibits a level of faith I would find hard to muster. I really hope you still have the offline backups.

<comment><USER33> Well GSuite/Drive is a MAJOR Google product.

And they have great export via Google Takeout which I do regularly to some giant tarballs (and ironically put on my otherwise empty dropbox)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It seems Google simply abandon some of their products.

I've been living with another issue since 2011: [https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/35889152](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/35889152)

<comment><USER36> > _" 9 years with this. This is beyond absurd and stupid. The way it is done > now allows a complete stranger to fill my Firebase dashboard with 100 > projects and I'm completely helpless. WTF"_

Wow.

When people say that Google "doesn't seem to give a shit" about their users, this is what they mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> IMHO Google drive is one of the worst service of Its kind in the market. Copying, moving duplicating files is as complex and blunt as it could be. Folder duplication doesn't exist. I'm actually not surprised that sharing is still not fixed. Look at Meet. A service that only after being absolutely beaten by Zoom received some attention. They're working on bringing Plus back in the form of Currents, but you still cannot stop people from sharing file with you in Google drive...

</comment><comment><USER38> As a ______ also affected by this issue on my personal Gmail accounts, I've filed a feedback/request for this internally.

</comment><comment><USER39> I fail to be surprised anymore at the lack of what should be OBVIOUS functionality in some of the largest functionality systems.

Whenever i think I might be stupid for missing what should be obvious functionality I submit a ticket to only realize that the functionality not only doesn't exist but somehow my really basic suggestion is a "unique" or "profound" idea.

Honestly who is hiring these product managers? Who is coming up with these features? Why are what should be no-brainer obvious functionality items missing?

Is there something about product management and design I don't understand? Why is it that you can't get notifications on group calendars or background images on Google docs or lots of other things I'm forgetting now that at the time I was like "wow I can't believe you can't do that"

</comment><comment><USER40> Didn't google just make everyone jump through hoops on Youtube to ensure all content was safe for children because of COPPA? Does this violate that new law?

</comment><comment><USER41> im a google one user. & will admit only pay, because it's a steal for the price. no other service offered 100gb for $20 a year.but yeah, google software quality is quite poor. wonder, why all those engineers doing leetcode interviews can't make quality products.

<comment><USER42> I wish I could use my own domain with GOne.

I'm using GSuite for my private domain after having too much reputations / emails reaching spams issues.

Somehow it was getting worst over the years and 1+ of 10 emails were ending into spam. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The same way you get any customer service from Google: Get your post on the front page of HN. This is probably going to get fixed shockingly fast now.

<comment><USER44> Pretty sure this has hit the front page of HN before...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Love that the only way to get support from Google in 2020 is to post to HN.

<comment><USER46> From Google's point of view, it probably works as quite an effective filter. If a Google issue has made it to the HN front-page, it's probably worth looking at.

Of course, this doesn't absolve them of the matter of it being the _only_ way to get support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> little side question, whats with these support forums that almost never have real employees answering but have community 'support specialists' that never answer the question and only tell you to use the feedback forms but beg for props on their answers. I don't get it.

<comment><USER48> I've always wondered about this - who out there is simping hours of their time for Google, Microsoft etc day in day out? I guess I'm grateful for their existence when I find their 10 year old answer to some weird esoteric thing I'm doing that happens to have worked. But who are these people that are (I presume) working for free to fill in the lack of existence of Google support teams?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is it possible that someone could share files with someone that is elicit content in order to get them in trouble or to target children's accounts? Seems...like a problem.

<comment><USER50> Unless the process fails at multiple stages, no. The metadata for who owns a file is not hidden. It's pretty obvious that you get randomly shared a file from someone else. Then again, we've had cases where the process failed at multiple stages before...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I used to have everything google but have slowly moved away from their products because of this exact issue, because of a similar issue with the calendar invites, and because they just abandon their products. What's the point of releasing a brand new product and then releasing no updates? As a developer I love to try new software, but as a regular consumer I just need things to be reliable.

</comment><comment><USER52> Oh, I was really hoping to see a solution to this. I've been getting an increasing amount of Goole drive spam to the point where every couple hours I'm clearing away notifications for some bullshit that's been shared with me. I haven't even used google drive for like 7 or 8 years.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm not sure it makes sense to _disable_ this -- I can only imagine people forgetting they disabled it, then not understanding why they're not getting a family member's folder of photos.

And you can already remove something shared with you by going in Drive to "Shared With Me" and clicking "Remove" in the context menu for the file/folder.

Otherwise, sharing something with a Google account is no different from sending an e-mail, e-mailing a Calendar invite, etc. After all, you can't turn off receiving e-mails or calendar invites.

But, like Gmail, what Drive _should_ have is the ability to block specific sharers.

In the meantime, you can use the "Report abuse/copyright" menu item on any shared item, although I don't know if that helps. :(

<comment><USER54> > But, like Gmail, what Drive should have is the ability to block specific > sharers.

It should have the ability to only accept document shares from people in your google contacts / in your organization.

<comment><USER53> I don't think that would be super-helpful. Even if you work in a corporation, you occasionally need to receive a shared file from a customer, outsourced team, etc., even if you don't plan on it. Then, debugging why you're not receiving shared files will be frustrating.

The problem here isn't people sharing things with you, the problem is abusive spam. So anti-spam tech (like blocking which is the most basic) is the right approach here, I think.

<comment><USER55> Exactly - In my experience anyone could share their google docs to everyone under the sun, with or without notification. You don't get asked permissions to agree to have a shared file in any case.

So as long as you don't filter out the share file requests from other people, there's no need to keep the notes about "some stranger has shared this file with you". Coz you wouldn't care.

Though it's probably good practice in comms to inform someone by chat/separate email that "here's a new shared file you should be looking at."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The only reason why this hasn't been fixed is because even with this bug, people continue to keep using the product. So why bother fixing it?

The only way to get Google to respond is to stop using their products. That's the only thing that matters to them.

</comment><comment><USER57> It's amazing how spammers will use every single vector to send stuff to us. I suppose if the cost of sending it is so low they have nothing to lose even when the take up is very low.

<comment><USER58> Not only that but a new vector is like a gold rush. It's a virus infected a new host that hasn't developed an immune response.

A new vector (probably) hasn't built hardness yet against spam, like for example email with apps like Gmail filtering out most spam and SPF etc.

If you start a forum, you expect spam, and there will be tools in the forum software to deal with it. But something new that isn't a traditional place to spam may be caught off guard.

<comment><USER26> Yeah you have to assume that if a user can input anything, someone will use it to spam. Text, photos, video, audio... literally any form of user input.

<comment><USER32> I've recently started getting spam via various service providers' password reset e-mails.

"Hi _buy this pill quick and cheap from[http://here*](http://here*), you requested a password reset"

Hhhhhhrrrrgh

<comment><USER26> Oh wow that's even better than analytics referrer spam.

<comment><USER58> I suspect there are bots that go looking for forms to fill in without knowing what the context is, i.e. they'll target anything with an input tag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've never had the misfortune of having so many file sharings directed at my gmail, but if it happens to me this is what I'd do:

1) Create a filter to archive all file sharing messages + send to spam folder. You will have to check spam when you're expecting a file share later on though.

2) Turn off Gmail/GDrive notifications on your phone. I'd habitually check my mail regularly anyway. Someone wants me urgently could have a dozen other ways to ping me.

</comment><comment><USER59> I suspect the reason this stands out is that we normally think of problems in the other direction: someone is able to access something you did not share. In this case, it's being able to access something someone else shared, which AFAIK would often be unsolicited anyway, so the scenario is more like spam than anything related to security.

</comment><comment> Jap2-0 Another (similar) very irritating thing I've found with Drive is that while there is an option to remove a shared file from your drive (eg. if it's only listed because of link sharing), there are some that (seemingly at random) can't be un-shared.

</comment><comment><USER60> it's also pretty a bad user experience when you do have a shared link and you want to make a copy(in case the source is deleted), you can't copy the directory, you have to create a new directory and copy those files instead, if your shared link has quite a few sub-folders, you need spend quite a while to do that manual copy.

</comment><comment><USER61> Similar thing happens with spam calendar invites although I think Google have addressed that now.

</comment><comment><USER62> I've been pondering migrating away from Dropbox. I guess I won't migrate to Google Drive then.

<comment><USER63> Where are you migrating to?

Dropbox's new client is absolutely terrible - an in-your-face resource hog trying to upsell constantly. But from a reliability perspective, Dropbox is absolutely great as long as you don't let it trick you into enabling their automatic offloading "feature" (hello corrupt all-NUL files!).

But of the main choices, the quality/reliability ordering really is: dropbox, icloud drive, one drive, anything else and then google drive. So I'd like a good alternative to DB that is at least as good as icloud drive (which is not a high bar).

<comment><USER64> Following. I would very much like to find a cloud storage solution other than Google That could add a bit more functionality, security, and customization.

<comment><USER65> [https://owncloud.org/](https://owncloud.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> In the spirit of 2020, maybe making the problem worse will ultimately make it better?

</comment><comment><USER67> > Not fun when my 9 yo son is on my phone...

Well there's your first problem.

</comment><comment><USER68> I stop it by not using Google in any capacity.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'll tweet Jeff Dean and see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER70> I don't think people here get this is a fundamental internet spam problem not solved with a button.

Any solution to this, should work equally well with email and vice versa.

<comment><USER71> Blocking shares from outside your organization would be a fine solution for the many folks who just use Google Drive for personal storage or team coordination. Inter-organization communication isn't a primary use case the way it is with email.

<comment><USER70> It's a fair point and you are the customer.

But perhaps the way forward is, just as email pushed us ahead through massive interconnected communication, so is swapping files through massive interconnected communication. I'm sick of not being able to send digital artefacts > 25MB to people, and having corporate emails reject 15MB files.

Perhaps it's the next leap forward.

I think there's a good argument that's not the case, but I think there's an argument we should try it.

Allowing people to stop it, will kill the idea in it's tracks, so I understand why the Google Drive Team don't want to roll out a button. It's possibly a Google Drive killer, it's not what Google Drive is.</comment></comment></comment>


Access all your documents: Doo debuts Mac app after 2 years of R&D - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/02/21/access-all-your-documents-wherever-they-are-doo-debuts-os-x-app-after-two-years-of-development/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently this is what $10m dollars buys you.</comment>


How FIFA's Goal Line Technology Works - <AUTHOR> http://www.iafrikan.com/2014/06/16/goal-line-technology/

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately this article doesn't dig enough... It doesn't even mention where the cameras are placed, algorithms, technology...

It is just a reworded version of any article in any newspaper...

The wikipedia goes (just a bit) deeper, if anyone interested: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal- line_technology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal-line_technology)</comment>


Google Is Trying Too Hard (Or Not Hard Enough) to Diversify - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/technology/google-diversity-lawsuits.html <comment><USER2> > It revealed — to no one's surprise — that its staff was largely white or > Asian and decidedly male.

The US is 61% non-Hispanic white [1], while Google is 54% [2]. One can always rely on the Times to present under-representation as over-representation when it comes to whites.

Another example: "Though Apple's overall work force teeters heavily toward white men" [3], when two paragraphs before, they report Apple as 55% white - again under-represented. Fortunately they don't include US demographics in the article, hoping readers are ignorant. But when whites _are_ over-represented, suddenly they're able to report honestly [4], instead of hiding behind misleading, ambiguous language like "largely", or presenting only half of the relevant statistics.

Given their error is only ever in one direction, I'm forced to conclude the deception is deliberate.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States#Race)

[2] [https://diversity.google/annual-report/](https://diversity.google/annual- report/)

[3] [https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/apples- diversity-m...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/apples-diversity- mirrors-other-tech-companies/)

[4] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/world/australia/study- div...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/world/australia/study-diversity- multicultural.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well from what I've experienced google diversity movement (I didn't work at google, just went for an event for minorities and am in their WIT community) is shallow AF, like they still don't give a damn about human beings, but would like to call themselves diverse, because it is nice thing to do. Rachel has excellent post about diversity branding: [https://uxdesign.cc/how-diversity- branding-hurts-diversity-6...](https://uxdesign.cc/how-diversity-branding- hurts-diversity-66816cbd2d67)</comment>


Ask HN: Which is the least invasive way of tracking usage on a website? - <AUTHOR> We are launching a website early 2020 and it's time to figure out our usage tracking strategy. Given that our business model is SaaS so the obvious metric the business is interested in is conversion of advertising campaigns leading to user acquisition.
Advertising platforms (such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc.) will give us data in terms of views, click-throughs etc. and of course we will invariably have user acquisition data (it lives in our databases after all) so I wonder if we need obtrusive user tracking at all.
I'm sure I have overlooked certain aspects, thus I would like to invite your views. What is the most sensible metrics to track for in 2020 while respecting our users' privacy?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> I described a way to acquire stats in a very non invasive way here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21345185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21345185)

No third party code, only fetch() and looking at log files.

So far this has been good for me to monitor which steps users were reaching into the funnel + where they left & what caused delays.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is your question asking about how to understand who's visiting your site and what their motivations are without engaging in creepy, dragnet-style tracking?

<comment><AUTHOR> We want to know which campaigns (and thus landing pages) are converting well, and which are not. So that we can invest in user acquisition in an effective manner.

Apart from that, not much else. We do not have an advertising model so we don't need intimate details of our users and visitors.

<comment><USER4> You don't need to collect everything; can just use unique landing pages, log a hit, and for signup include a specific campaign key (like "hn-spam- upvoted-190530") in the <form> and you more or less get a funnel without massive dragnets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you need to track individuals: don't record any personal data and a short keep-alive of sessions/ids of just 20 minutes.

The biggest risk is that with this you are building infrastructure to do more "malicious" tracking easily. Alternatively use logs/server sided events only I guess.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use an nginx plugin to count page hits per day, with no recording of user data, IP addresses, etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Server log files. It already works by itself, and no client-side code is involved!

</comment><comment><USER8> If you fire an event each time a page is loaded that can be helpful and basic to implement.

</comment><comment><USER9> Analyse the access logs of your web server/cache layer.

This was a solved problem 20 years ago.</comment>


Why Budget Airlines Could Soon Charge You to Use the Bathroom - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-everyone-went-to-the-bathroom-before-boarding-the-plane-ticket-prices-might-be-lower/ <comment><USER2> Airlines love shifting revenue from ticket prices onto ancillary fees. Why? Because they're not subject to the same taxation as the revenue generated by the ticket price.

"The government funds a large portion of the aviation system through a 7.5 percent tax on the price of a commercial airline ticket as well as taxes on certain kinds of aviation fuel. But the Treasury Department considers charges outside the base cost of a ticket to be exempt from that tax."

[http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/baggage-airline-fee- re...](http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/baggage-airline-fee-revenues- draw-tax-scrutiny-93073.html)

It's basic tax-avoidance. If they need to raise an extra $5 per seat, they're better off increasing the price charger per bag than they are increasing the ticket prices, and that's exactly what has been happening.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised it took so long to start doing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some fuel saving measures now studied by airlines are:

-slower speeds to save 100kg of fuel at a 2 hour flight -lower flap setting for landing, requires less thrust for the last 4 min of flight. But it requires more landing distance. -less water on the tanks for the toilets. 60kg less for 100 flights means a significa t saving. -ipads instead of 40 kilos of flight manuals for the cockpit. -taxing with only one engine (this is an old trick) -higher cruise level. -better radar control coordination. A direct vectors can save you minutes of flight. In aproach up to 10min -cleaner aircraft, to avoid drag. -adjusting the lubricating grease for the landing gear and flight controls. Excess uneccesary leaking grease means more weight. -lighter seats -lighter cabin apliances -even more important are newer aiplanes. It used to be normal seeing 20y/o+ airplanes flying in USA and Europe. Now anything older than 12 years is using 20% more fuel than newer versions. This is specially important for long haul airliners like jumbos a340, 767, 777 etc...

</comment><comment><USER5> I would rather they took the fuel based component out of the ticket price, then charged you an amount at the gate based on the total weight of everything you are bringing on the plane, including yourself. Then you can pay less by bringing less, or pay more to bring more. A gram's a gram.

<comment><USER6> That could be considered as discrimination against big tall men(not overweight). Another thing is luggage.

<comment><USER7> In order for it to be discrimination, it has to be 'unjust' \- There is nothing unjust about having larger people pay more because it costs a business more to fly them. If anything, it is unjust that smaller people have to subsidize the cost of others.

<comment><USER8> And there's nothing unjust about paying women less because they'll just quit to have babies, right? Society has decided that that's not how it works.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how this analogy fits, or what you mean about society, but there's a slight bit of difference between charging someone for direct costs, and jumping to conclusions based on fear, stereotypes, or gender.

There's also a difference between charging someone for actual expenses, and charging someone for presumed future expenses. And there's a difference between someone being charged for what they use, and someone being paid, or not, for purely indirect costs not related to their performance while on the job.

Now, if a 120 lb woman was charged twice as much as a 120 lb man to fly, your analogy might be more applicable.

<comment><USER8> Is paid maternity leave not actual expenses then?

<comment><USER9> Paid maternity leave is an actual expense, _if_ it happens. But you were talking about salary. And it is unfair and discriminatory when equally capable women are paid less than men, regardless of the reason it happens, and there are many other reasons than the probability of a woman having a child.

While those facts are true, they don't improve the quality of your analogy, the situation you're bringing up does not stack up the same way as (theoretically) charging someone per pound to fly on a plane. There might be reasons that charging by weight is discriminatory, but you're not convincing me.

<comment><USER10> > There might be reasons that charging by weight is discriminatory

Charging by X is always discriminatory (on the basis of X), the questions are whether it is morally or legally acceptable discrimination, not whether it is discrimination at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Airline executive Michael O'Leary's comments about charging you to use the bathroom were a "we're cheap" publicity stunt; no more and no less.

Sure, there's almost an infinitude of theoretically possible micro and macro optimizations that can improve airlines' profitability, especially across 133 million passengers (that's a lot of olives) but most of them aren't quite as promising as they seem. Save fuel by replacing heavyweight but durable IFE system with iPads, for instance? Bet you spend more than the actually realizable fuel savings replacing broken or stolen iPads. By my calculations you lose money if approximately 1 ticket holder in 1000 doesn't return their $250 iPad intact, based on the original article's $32.7M cost saving (25 cents per passenger) even without considering costs of actually rolling them out and phasing out the IFE in the first place. Needless to say, forcing passengers to empty their bowels before flight could have more significant effect on airlines costs and ticket sales. Even Ryanair is on a charm offensive after taking the "we're so cheap we don't care what our customers think schtick too far)

If you really want to save weight or microoptimise revenue the excess _passenger_ weight charge can has been implemented... in Samoa.

<comment><USER12> > _By my calculations you lose money if approximately 1 ticket holder in 1000 > doesn 't return their $250 iPad intact_

Why not install the iPads in the seat backs? It doesn't have to look any different than another IFE, so long as it saves on weight. I'm not sure that it would be worth the cost of retrofitting, but for a new plane it would definitely be worth looking into, provided that the upfront investment is comparable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't actually answer its own question fully. It does not list the estimated cost savings of removing a bathroom (I assume that's how they would save money but the article is incomplete) or of the weight saved by empty bladders vs. full ones. It also assumes that such removal wouldn't have any effect on longer flights, such as international ones, which are often conducted using the same planes. Even the flight listed form Boston to Denver is four and a half hours. It's unlikely that this would keep most people from using the bathroom at least once, even if they had used it before the flight. So the reasoning is flawed across the board and the article incomplete. The other numbers are quite interesting, however.

<comment><USER14> _It also assumes that such removal wouldn 't have any effect on longer flights, such as international ones, which are often conducted using the same planes._

It is important for your argument to distinguish international and inter- continental flights. I have been on international -- in the sense of crossing a border and landing in a different country -- flights operated on CRJs. But those are short 30- or 45-minute hops from somewhere in the northern US to somewhere in Canada.

The article's example aircraft is the Boeing 737-700, which can be and is used for intra-north-America (Aeromexico flies them to several US destinations, for example) international flights, intra-Europe flights, etc., but is not used for inter-continental flights, which are generally beyond its operating range.

Aside from the anomaly of BA's specially-configured A318s which fly LCY-JFK (and which can't take off fully loaded at LCY due to runway length, necessitating a fuel stop at SNN on the westbound leg), the smallest aircraft regularly operating such flights is the Boeing 757. And even it is limited in the routes it can fly, often requiring fuel stops based on wind and weather conditions; only the actual widebodies have the natural range necessary to do those routes consistently.

Also, when international-configuration aircraft are used domestically in the US, it is almost always a positioning flight for which tickets happen to be sold (i.e., a plane landed at Hub A and needs to operate a flight from Hub B, so will fly that route, or needs to get from a maintenance hub to the hub it will actually depart from for international operations), or a temporary sojourn from base for a seasonal flight (US Airways, for example, occasionally flies its A330s to Orlando to carry Disney visitors, but keeps them close enough to its international base at PHL to get them back when needed). Those aircraft also _are_ configured differently; the biggest difference from a passenger perspective is the existence of genuine business class or even three-class configuration, which is rare on domestic flights -- typically only the ultra-premium routes like JFK-LAX and JFK-SFO are operated domestic three- class.

</comment></comment><comment> old-gregg What would happen if an airline published their pricing in $/lbs? You'll know your price only after checking in your bags and getting into a plane by stepping through a scale.

First of all, would that be legal? Secondly, how would that affect the consumer behavior and the competition?

<comment><USER15> A lot of the weight on an airplane is fixed, so there would still be a fixed charge to add before weight.

I'm also sure many would avoid an airline where weighing in was required, even if that meant paying substantially more to competitors, the airlines wouldn't save enough to make up for lost business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The whole article is based on false pretense that fuel prices are highest in the known history. The fuel price have been stagnant for the past 60 years. If you use real money, i.e. gold or silver. Fuel prices, food prices, healthcare cost, etc. are all flat line price chart as long as you use real money. Once you use ever-dropping and hugely inflated USD or EUR, all prices _seem_ to rise. _Seem_ is very important here because in fact they don't rise at all. What happens is that the measure we use - USD - is collapsing in value. It's like saying cars are faster and faster, but every year lowering value of meters in 1 km. I.e. this year 1 km is equal to 1,000 meters, next year it will be equal to 980 meters, and yet next year it will be 950 meters, so on. So in 2024, 1 km can be as little as 760 meters.

A lot of economic news or developments don't make sense unless you understand that we have lived in permanent inflationary times for the past 50 years.

<comment><USER17> > The fuel price have been stagnant for the past 60 years. If you use real > money, i.e. gold or silver.

Since most people would disagree that gold and silver are real money, the burden of proof is on your side. I think an equally compelling explanation for your observations can be built from the premise that gold in particular has been inflating an speculative bubble during the same time frame of 50+ years (or more precisely, that since about the 2nd half of 20 century gold price had been recovering from a previous drop in historic prices, and that a bubble has formed around that pattern and just began to inflate about ~10 years ago).

If on the other hand you consider the fact that petrol is a finite resource, and that the challenges to build a flying device powered by either nuclear energy, solar, wind or hydro, it is very likely that tourist class aviation will be in permanent decay from now on.

I think the capacity to fly is extremely valuable, so it will be preserved by nation states for as long as possible, mainly for military purposes, but also for the rapid transportation of diplomats and other high ranking officials. And if the technical capacity of flying is preserved in any way, the upper layers of civil society will find a way to buy their ways in as well (bringing back the original meaning of the term "jet set" as a side effect). But, mark my words... the days of regular, scheduled flights for the hoi polloi are numbered.

<comment><USER18> If we didn't have cheap petrol, we'd use nuclear, solar, wind, or hydro to produce somewhat-less-cheap ethanol.

It might be twice as expensive, but most people would still be able to fly.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I agree. That's why I believe we are not going to loose the technology to fly (at least within this century), unlike many people in the peak oil scene.

However, you have to consider the economic feasibility, not just the technical one. If you follow news about airlines, you will recall that they have gone through a series of hardships, raw times and infighting between different groups of stakeholders (unions vs companies). You can write it off as random incidents, or you can understand it under the lens of increased costs and multiple competitors trying to get each a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.

I have seen during my lifetime how conditions for the passengers have deteriorated. I recall as a teenager or a young adult, boarding a plane was a wonderful experience. Now a days, they treat you like cattle, and I am not just talking about the hardships imposed by TSA screenings (though they take a fair share of the blame).

If you add two plus two, you will find that this decreased passenger comfort is tied to cost cutting measures. But why to cut costs if you can simply pass those cost to the customer and keep the quality of service up? I do not presume to know the answer, but my intuition tell me that the leadership at airline companies have run the numbers and figured out that there is some sort of inflection point in the demand curve, and an increase in prices would cause a severe drop in usage.

Instead, a less bad alternative is to cut cost, punish quality, and face a small decrease in demand, but as long as the margin remains in the black the company can keep operating, and wait for better days. My fear comes mostly for the moment when airlines run out of comforts, and begin cutting cost in critical areas of operations such as plain maintenance. Even a modest number of non-fatal incidents may shift perceptions of safety and make the bottom of the bucket fall from under the demand pool.

Now that I think about it, this is a market ripe for disruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Shitting my pants and sharing odor that with the rest of the cabin will still be free, right?</comment>


Ask HN: How did you create a website for your startup? - <AUTHOR> Did you use a website builder or built it from scratch? Can you please share some details?
1. Startup idea:
2. Website link:
3. How did you build it (specify a website builder / from scratch):
OPTIONAL:
4. 1-3 major requirements for the website:
5. 1-3 major disadvantages of the tool/way you built it: <comment><USER2> Landing page app Depends on what the idea is, you can start with a mailing list, i.e. a list of customers.</comment>


Do I need machine learning for "this"? - <AUTHOR>

and "this" being a mobile app that users use to interact with one another through an AWS hosted back-end. The back-end learns the user's behavior over time to do something meaningful. They key here is that the learning takes place only based on individual's usage patterns as opposed to usage by the masses.<p>Is machine learning suitable for this problem? If yes, then what are some basic techniques I need to understand? If not, then what is type of algorithms I need to model user behavior? Any help for this newbie? <comment><USER2> What you described is the definition of machine learning. You still haven't told us what "this" really is.

<comment><USER3> I think you to sign and NDA for that..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, you've said that "The back-end learns", so based upon that, this involves machines and 'learning', so yes. You might want to describe the problem domain some more if you want anything meaningful in response to this post.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, this would require machine learning (also, natural language processing, if you will be using the text data for learning purposes). The techniques that you need to understand depend on the problem that you are trying to solve.

</comment><comment><USER6> The answer really depends on the "something meaningful" performed by the app.</comment>


Strongly Typed Heterogeneous Collections (2004) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://okmij.org/ftp/Haskell/HList-ext.pdf <comment><USER2> The Haskell wiki's explanation is helpful, especially if you aren't incredibly Haskell savvy [https://wiki.haskell.org/Heterogenous_collections](https://wiki.haskell.org/Heterogenous_collections)

<comment><USER3> the paper is from 14 years ago... is this approach widely used within the Haskell community?

the wiki describes it as "the cleanest solution, but very advanced and a little restrictive" which sounds kind of scary

the motivation given in the paper is for database programming... it seems like if this was a winning approach there would be popular db/orm libraries using this by now - are there any?

asking as a complete outsider, a Haskell-curious Python dev

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Calling HLists "collections" is misleading. In spite of their name, HLists are actually record types. The only actual list involved is a compile-time list of component types used to form a record type.

To give a perhaps odious but relatable analogy, a form is a list of questions, but a filled form is not a list of answers - it is a record of answers to the questions in the form.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I fill out "Voluntary Self ID" forms? - <AUTHOR>

Since I am a white male does it hurt me to fill out this information?  Should I just leave it blank, or would a company hold that against me?<p>I am also putting together a more creative resume and I was thinking of including a picture, but I remember reading that some companies cannot accept  resumes with pictures and will disqualify you.  Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> By law you are not required to fill out the information and a company can not base its hiring decisions on the information even if it is provided. That also means that by law the company can not hold it against you either in making a hiring decision.

The questions are used for several purposes. First, some companies use it to determine overall demographics of the company. This benefits them if they were ever challenged on not promoting females or discriminating based on race, etc... I also believe (my HR legal requirements are rusty so I could be completely wrong here) that some states, and possibly the federal government, require employee demographic breakdown info when hiring new employees.

As for providing a resume, I would not put a photo on the resume itself unless asked specifically for it. Instead you may consider putting a link to your blog or LinkedIn profile with your photo already there. While I have never heard of a company disqualifying an applicant because of a photo on their resume, I could understand how it could be a controversial subject. Some companies may be afraid that by accepting photos they could open their liability to discrimination or EEO complaints.</comment>


Fast Rails updates through minimal dependencies - <AUTHOR> http://www.fngtps.com/2013/a-quick-note-on-minimal-dependencies-in-ruby-on-rails/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. This is kind of the opposite of the standard advice of "don't repeat yourself" and "don't reinvent the wheel". Both those pieces of advice make an awful lot of sense to me.

But this is more advice in the style of an STD prevention campaign. "You aren't just sleeping with that gem, you're sleeping with every gem that gem ever slept with." Which, admittedly the blog author isn't taking quite to abstinence advocacy levels, but also rings kind of true.

Reimplementing basic stuff across projects probably also keeps up your programming chops. The practice would help make the trivial stuff truly trivial for you.

But what worries me about this advice is that there are some things that feel like they're trivial to implement but actually have quite a few subtleties and gotchas. In a language as dynamic as Ruby, you might even end up doing something awful (like letting your xml parser run arbitrary code). If the subtle bugs are located in gems, you only need to fix the gem to fix it all.

But then again, how often do you own the gem? Even it's open source and you can fork it, the whole point of a gem is encapsulation. You shouldn't have to be thinking about its inner workings. Some gems really can carry big risks with them.

I don't feel like I have answers to these questions right now. Just worth thinking about.

<comment><USER3> This is going to sound extreme, but I did measure it. Roughly 30% of my time was spent just managing dependency updates for quite some time. That, to me, felt absurdly high. But, the problem was transitive dependencies and their changing APIs.

E.g., the redis-rb gem decided it was going to change its API. I guess that's fine, but I didn't use the redis-rb gem directly anywhere in my code. I did use a half dozen libraries that used redis-rb, half of which that immediately switched to the new API, half of which did not. The kicker was the new gem also had a hard requirement on a brand new version of redis, so you couldn't update the gem without also updating redis. So, naturally, not all gems wanted to update to the new gem immediately.

This was a manufactured situation that was 100% avoidable. Semantic versioning doesn't help at all in this case. Namespacing your API does. But, that aside, I now found myself having to submit pull requests for libs using redis-rb when I had never used the gem myself. I certainly didn't save any time and the whole thing felt like a gigantic waste of effort.

More recently, I went through this when multi_json changed its API.

And the other common situation is gemspec's inability to say gem Y provides the API for gem X or to override version numbers you know to work (much like maven allows). So, a lot of problems that should be simple to solve become matters of wrangling multiple parties to agree on compromises.

Since actively pruning my dependency graph and only very selectively growing it, my time spent managing dependencies is mostly negligible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We've been doing the same for the past year or so at Mogotest and the results have been great. To build on the points in the articles:

\- Exceedingly few gems provide any semblance of a human-readable changelog and even fewer care about targeting multiple APIs at once. Assuming you don't just blindly update your entire Gemfile at once, you're going to end up spending much more time than is reasonable to determine whether you should upgrade that gem you just pulled in.

\- There's a huge stigma against libraries ever being "done." So, they keep adding new features or coming up with better APIs. You're going to end up having to go along for the ride.

\- Rails doesn't have much of an API per se or at least not one that's likely to survive a major upgrade in tact. After the Rails 2.3 -> 3.0 upgrade, we just flat out avoid anything that's a "rails plugin." I suspect our 3.2 -> 4.0 upgrade will go much smoother this time around.

\- If you target multiple rubies, it becomes much, much easier with a slimmer dependency graph.

At the end of the day, a lot of this is just the general debate of building it vs using a library that any language or environment has. But I think some of the cultural aspects of Ruby amplify the debate as it's just a much faster moving target, which may be at odds with stable apps.

<comment><USER4> This comment is gold, you nailed the issues that really hit ruby harder than most other languages. Minimizing dependencies in ruby land is an excellent mitigator for the effect of rapidly changing APIs, allowing you to at least approach having the best of both worlds: the latest APIs on the libraries you use heavily and avoiding dependency hell with incidental requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Basically, whenever you decide to use a 3rd party library, you should be prepared to maintain it at some point.

</comment><comment><USER6> For faster updates in the future, you may want to use this in your Gemfile for the coming weeks:

gem "rails", "~> 3.2.11"

See <http://gembundler.com/v1.2/gemfile.html> for the meaning of ~>.

Also, I think that "having a good test coverage" is quickly becoming more interesting that plainly "avoiding breaking stuff" or "adding new features faster": it's also being able to quickly answer to security threats, either via official gem updates and despite regressions (<https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/8832>), or via quick work-arounds.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's always good to use Vagrant (or any other method to be quickly able to refresh the dev environment) and routinely do destroy/up. This is for me so far the best precaution to keep the application light on dependencies.

<comment><USER8> I wholeheartedly agree, it's actually something I wanted to write about. A maintainable application should be up and running with a seeded database in a few commands; i.e.: gem install bundler && ./script/install.

<comment><USER9> That's fine if it's a ToDo list app. But if your app integrates with other services applications... it needs those running as well.

The more services/external dependencies you cram into single commands... the more maintenance (of that cramming) is required.

<comment><USER8> That just means you have to try a bit harder (;

I agree that it's not always possible to set up everything automatically but with a shared encrypted filesystem, good instructions, and tools like Foreman you can go a long way.

In case something can't be set up automatically we usually have a clear README and the initializer prints a note about where to find instructions about getting it running.

Maintaining the install script isn't much more painful then setting up it by hand, especially if you make sure the script is 'reentrant'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: Let my PSD go? - <AUTHOR>

What is your take on design companies who will not give you the layered file? Is there ever a legitimate reason beyond CONTROL?<p>...after a recent experience I will never again let a designer hold me hostage by not turning over the PSD... <comment><USER2> A similar question would be: What is your take on programming companies that won't give you the source code on projects that you paid for?

There _are_ legitimate business reasons to do these things but if you want to avoid the situation, make sure to have it clearly stated before the project begins that you expect to have full rights to the source files. Even better, include it in the contract. Or have it written up clearly and agreed to in an email before the project starts.

And if you ever have a wedding, the same thing applies for your wedding video or wedding photos. Work it out ahead of time that you will actually own the raw video or photo files.

And don't be surprised if the prices that you're quoted go up when you ask for these things. Often, contractors will quote low prices knowing that they will make more money in the long run from followup work. It's not _wrong_ for contractors to do that, but it feels dishonest when it's not clearly explained ahead of time exactly what you're getting when you pay for contract work.

<comment><USER3> _What is your take on programming companies that won't give you the source code on projects that you paid for?_

A software company that won't turn over the source is going to resell/reuse that code. Your analogy implies that a design firm will reuse/resell the PSD and it's hardly a reusable item.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It depends entirely on the contract.

For example, in photography, the photographer keeps the negatives (or .NEF files these days). What you get is the finished product - colour balanced, retouched, cropped, and probably actually only 5-10% of what was shot. That's what you're paying for, the final images. If you're the bride, then the photographer's business model is to give you a good price on shooting your wedding and make money on reprints. If you're an ad agency, the photographer licenses you the image for this campaign for this much time, because the business model is that that image will end up in a stock portfolio in a few years.

If you get the originals, and exclusive rights in perpetuity, then expect to pay a premium for it. It's up to you if you actually need them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think is this sort of common practice, most contracts will state that the designer gets first dibs on redesign and this is one way they can protect that.

I think this might be more common for flash stuff and the designer keeping the fla and giving the swf away(obviously).

Next time you should clearly state that you want the psd's at the end, but be aware you most likely have to pay more, because the person is giving you the source.

<comment><USER3> I've done about 10 design projects and handing the PSD was (a) specified in the deal from the outset, and (b) I don't think there would have been a problem getting the PSD even if it wasn't in the "contract". Maybe "You can't have the PSD" is standard for big firms but it hasn't been the norm for small, 1-2 time projects that I've done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't commission a piece of software without stipulating that I receive the full source code. It's the same for design, with me.

For the record, I think that the standard wedding photographer scheme is sleazy.

My data belongs to _me_.

</comment><comment><USER7> If it's not in a contract, it's only out of good faith that they do so. Some shops are willing to give them to you but the price makes it tough.</comment>


The Wall Street Journal Dartboard Contest (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.investorhome.com/darts.htm <comment><USER2> What was even more fun was that the old finance.yahoo.com page (which I still miss) would let you create a number of portfolios which you could then track and measure. I made a tech portfolio, energy portfolio, and consumables (low $ retail) portfolio. You could compete in their contest by submitting a portfolio and having it 'ride the charts' and be ranked right up there along other choices.

Way more fun than anything Zynga has ever published as far as I am concerned.

<comment><USER3> What's even more fun is going to a water park.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sure I'm overlooking something, but if its possible to beat the market by actively trading stocks, how come a vehicle like this doesn't exist?:

I'll give you $100,000 of mine to invest. I'll pay you $7,000 up front to manage it. You can invest the money however you want to.

In exchange I want: \- The ability to get out whenever I want (within 3 months of request) \- An APR on my $100k principal of 1% over the S&P 500

For example, if I stay in for 10 years and the S&P 500 appreciates by 10% (259,374), you owe me an 11% rate of return (283,942). This gives me a "true" return of 10.25% or 0.25% guaranteed over the market. If the market plummets and has a rate of return of -20%; you owe me -19%. Simple.

If the market is easy to beat, all you have to do is take my $100k, invest it in actively-managed mutual funds (the 7k can cover the fees) and keep the spread. Yet nothing like this exists. Why?

<comment><USER5> To turn it around, would you even invest in some fund that offered this vehicle?

They would probably lose money and you would not get the promised money back.

It would be a risky investment, especially since the upside is small. Chicken and egg problem.

<comment><USER6> _It would be a risky investment..._

And there goes the "0.25% over the market", given that risk has an expense. We then have the answer: tiny investor upside doesn't overcome the risk, and high risk/low reward on the brokerage side means no one would offer it, and no one would buy it even if they did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_fund](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_fund)</comment>