Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/xi-s-communists-under-pressure-as-high-prices-hit-china-workers <comment><USER2> The increase in pork prices is due to a swine fever epidemic that started in Liaoning province.[1] SCMP has a reasonably good article.

China's huge boom is starting to level off. Down from 10%/yr to 7% a year. The US is under 3%/yr. That happened to all the "Asian tigers", as they caught up to the developed world. Its a long way from a recession.

[1] [https://www.scmp.com/economy/china- economy/article/3020488/c...](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china- economy/article/3020488/chinas-pork-prices-hit-record-level-2019-due-african- swine)

<comment><USER3> The problem in China is that they're likely to get old before they get rich. China's GDP per capita is still only a quarter (or less) of Japan, Singapore or South Korea:

[https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/japan](https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/japan)

<comment><USER4> China's population is 4x that of the USA. It makes complete sense that their per capita gdp is therefore less. It should remain that way.

<comment><USER3> I was comparing to Japan, and per capita means divided by population.

<comment><USER4> I'm well aware what per capita means. China has 10x the people as Japan. Resources are finite and the earth is already burdened trying to sustain 8 billion people. China wants to improve their per capita gdp? They should reduce their population. It's not reasonable to assume 1.4 billion people should have the same standard of living as a country which kept their population reasonable.

<comment><USER5> Considering China's GDP is based on manufacturing and export, reducing the population will also result in productivity decreases, which would mean a negligible change in GDP per capita, since GDP would also fall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I expect China to clamp down harder and harder on its population as well as deflect attention from it as the economy slides to try keep the party in power. Look for the social credit system to expand even more and also more rhetoric about it all being the fault of evil foreigners.

<comment><USER7> Hate to say it but it's already happening and getting more clear day by day. I start to suspect all of this is intentional, including all of those trade war "failures".

You have a threat (The trade war with USA, well and maybe South China sea etc) and a slowing economy. Now many Chinese companies are in need of help from the CCP government, and the help is not for free.

In Zhejiang, their government want to send "Government representatives" to private firms[0] to "help" them on site. I will not be in total surprise if one day all of those companies turn themselves to "State controlled".

[0] [https://www.voachinese.com/a/China-To-Send-Officials- To-100-...](https://www.voachinese.com/a/China-To-Send-Officials- To-100-Private-Firms-20190923/5094648.html) (Chinese, but the URL already told the story)

<comment><USER8> The idea that "free enterprise" wasn't state controlled to begin with in China is a western illusion that a lot of people seem desperate to believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just another article of predicting that China is going to collapse -- these kind of articles have been popping up since 1991.

China is just another big country with a lot of problems. So is US.

Even if China is really going to collapse, what is in it for average people in the US or other countries? To prove that the democracy you believe is correct -- even if that means nearly all the people in the world will suffer from economic slowdown?

<comment><USER10> Why 1991? Surely such articles predate 1991.

I'm not sure why you think writers at Bloomberg, a Wall Street-oriented outlet, represent average people in the US.

I'm also not sure why you think anyone would want China to collapse in order to "prove democracy correct", as if to win a bet. Democracy is a means to an end. "Average people" think that in China, though many people are doing great under the current system, there are also people not doing great, average people just like them, who are being oppressed, harassed for reading banned books, punished for criticizing party officials, put into re-education labor camps, even having their organs harvested, and they want that to stop. If China stopped all that tomorrow without collapsing, most people would be ecstatic about that. But they won't, and average people believe the best way to permanently stop that kind of thing is for everyone to get a voice and a vote in their government—indeed, for a hundred flowers to bloom, or 百花齐放, if you will.

<comment><USER9> > who are being oppressed, harassed for reading banned books, punished for > criticizing party officials, put into re-education labor camps, even having > their organs harvested

Apparently I do not believe this is happening in China and you do. Maybe I am brainwashed by Chinese government or you are affected by all those western media. Anyway, Chinese government cares not so much about what western media says -- they have been saying that China is going to collapse for so many years. Instead, Chinese government on the one hand tries to solve some of the problems faced by China, on the other hand uses propaganda involving patriotism and ethnic identity to unify people within. Whether this way can work in the end is still unknown -- maybe yes, then guess fewer and fewer people will still talk about democracy is the only way to govern the world; or maybe not, then China is definitely be not better than Russia: before USSR's collapse, people are poor; after its collapse, people are still poor and only a few people benefited from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_\(economics\))

<comment><USER10> I actually was careful not to say that I believe that is happening, I said that's what "average people" think.

You asked "if China is really going to collapse, what is in it for average people in the US or other countries?", and I hoped that you were genuinely interested in understanding why there are people in the West who dislike the Chinese government. Does my explanation make sense, and convince you that it's not because they want to "prove democracy correct"?

I am also interested in what you believe is and isn't happening in China and why. The organ harvesting reports are extreme and salacious, and I can see believing the Vocational Training Centers are voluntary, but the others seem obvious and undeniable? Is it not well-known in China that the government bans certain books? Or that social media posts can be taken down on the basis of being too critical of the party?

I'm not entirely sure why you bring up shock therapy. It's true that many countries failed to or suffered when they liberalized their society alongside their economies. It's also true that many countries have done it quite successfully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Given China's population, a lack of economic growth could pose a real, pressing problem to them. China has more to lose in the trade war.

</comment><comment> d-d Whether you're browsing HN or farming wild jackabees off the grid; there is no escaping the political news machine.

<comment><USER12> It's true...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the things I learned when I took Intnl econ in college was that keeping a currency's value artificially low can boost exports, but will also put downward pressure on real wages domestically.

Maybe that's playing a role here.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a French the amount of (bad) news regarding China on American websites I browse (hn, reddit, newspapers websites...) is really disturbing compared to home. I try to think rationally but the coincidence with the trade war is hard to ignore. As an outsider it looks like nothing has changed (China is a communist country, fresh news!) but suddenly the media is all over it.

The media pattern now is so obvious every time there are geopolitical tensions to justify a conflict that it's hard to ignore (please remember Irak).

I'm not a geopolitical expert, I really like Americans (obviously, otherwise I would not be on this site), but I don't understand how nobody notice this pattern, especially here.

<comment><USER15> And any time there's an article about China, people who knows nothing about China, besides that it's ruled by the communist party, comes out of the woodwork to take a dump on China.

People look down on Trump and ridicule him endlessly when he spews bullshit about things he knows nothing about. But if you spew bullshit about China, you get lots of upvotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the political system in China collapses _everyone_ should worry. That would likely result in a global economic crash the likes of which the world has never seen.

<comment><USER17> If the alternative is China going unchecked and eating the world. I'll take the economic crash.

I grew up in poverty and I'd rather go back to poverty than live under a dystopian surveillance dictatorship.

<comment><USER18> I want to imagine the world with China as a democracy only to assure the world that xenophobia is the first thing that comes to mind when people take an anti-China stance and as a reminder that Chinese culture, their arts, the land and the people are wonderful. I am against this dystopian overwhelmingly powerful and suppressive government.

I imagine if 1989 was a turning moment for Democracy in China.

<comment><USER17> The wonderful culture and arts you're thinking about is historical. It doesn't really exist in China now. It was mostly wiped out during The Great Leap Forward, along with 30 million people give or take.

Fun fact: advanced Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners travel from China to Japan to learn. Japan preserved records of the TCM knowledge that China destroyed during the great leap.

<comment><USER19> GLF was terrible, but the west shares a shame in throwing away our intellectual and cultural pursuits. There's an argument that a very long time ago, the islamic intellectual tradition preserved enlightenment values whilst we were off doing other things. I don't know the gritty details of the argument, so I'd be the first to say I'm wrong.

<comment><USER20> I think you mean they preserved Greek and Roman knowledge, which was the basis of the Renaissance. The Enlightenment was a few hundred years later, and consisted of new ideas.

<comment> barry-cotter They didn't just preserve Greek and Roman knowledge. Averroes, Avicenna, the Mutazilites, al-Razi, Maimonides, al-Farabi and others made enormous and original contributions to philosophy, medicine, chemistry and other fields. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment would have been unrecognizably different without the contributions of the thinkers of the Islamic world.

<comment><USER17> Can you suggest some reading materials to those who want to know more about this?

<comment> barry-cotter My knowledge of this period is very shallow and mostly comes from the History of Phiosophy Without Any Gaps podcast. Lost Enlightenment is probably the best place to start.

[https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00F8MIJMQ/geneexpre...](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00F8MIJMQ/geneexpressio-20)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm Chinese and live well in China. Of course, I only represent myself. If you want to know more about China, see some Chinese travel YouTuber or come to China yourself. Instead of believing in a media publish "The Big Hack" without evidence.

I'm curious that HN is full of articles and comments that uglify China. Many Chinese developer read HN to learn and integrate into the world. Now I think Chinese understand the world more than the world understand China.

By the way, isn't this off-topic according to HN guidelines?

</comment><comment> ur-whale Paywall workaround : [http://archive.is/ErJXw](http://archive.is/ErJXw)

<comment><USER22> Or, Inspect and add new CSS rule:

p { display: block !important }

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> China's success proves that democracy is not the only way. These guys just cannot accept this simple fact. LOL

<comment><USER24> Democracy imposed on countries where the demand for it never arose organically usually ends in failure.

The west has a biased perspective on this issue, but the idea of democracy is not innate to vast majority of the world</comment></comment>


Social Engineering a Free Dinner at Outback Steakhouse on Valentine's Day - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/baconflavoring/status/1096176398442684417 <comment><USER2> This is crazy because I grew up with a friend that did this exact scheme every year at a nearby Applebee's after we hit our late teens. He once even got the waitress's phone number.</comment>


United Nations to Adopt Asteroid Defense Plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=un-asteroid-defense-plan <comment><USER2> The United Nations is not a world government. Please keep repeating this until it sinks in.

It's a treaty organization designed to prevent another world war. As such, it's worked kinda sorta okay. Not great, but you could argue that it worked, so that's something. It's also provided somewhat of a permanent diplomatic forum, that's pretty good too.

There are a lot of technical reasons why the UN is not a world government and can never be. The biggest is that there is no representation of the actual people being governed there. Because it's a treaty organization, it just has the representation of the world governments. Unfortunately, we live in a world where your government's interests and your own do not always align very well at all. It's also bound by treaties. Treaties have a tendency to be interpreted all sorts of ways by the various parties involved. The more parties, the more room for interpretation there is.

There's also no feedback loop for the possibility that they might do something wrong. There's no independent judiciary, there's no rule of law.

I could go on, but it should be obvious. The UN isn't a world government. Folks can pretend that it is, and the UN itself can labor under the illusion that it is, but structurally it isn't made to be one.

So sure, let WHO do it's thing and let various nations pitch in to put those little blue helmets on guys to try to prevent conflict. Lots of good things for the UN to do that kind of fall under the "treaty org to prevent future world wars". But asteroid defense? Not even close. Not unless there's a chance the Russians might start lobbing asteroids at the US or something.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure why, if the WHO falls under the UN's mandate, that asteroid defense wouldn't. They're both collective efforts to monitor and combat things that aren't human.

Moreover, there are obvious military applications for certain asteroid defense techniques. For example, if the U.S. was planning a Bruce Willis-style nukes- in-space approach to deflecting an asteroid, I guarantee the Russians would care (and vice versa).

<comment><USER2> I think there are a lot of things the UN ends up doing simply because it provides a somewhat permanent diplomatic forum for nations of the world. That's fine.

I'm not saying that the UN _won 't_ end up handling asteroid defense, or various other world-government-ish things. I'm saying it wasn't _designed to do so_. Big difference.

I don't know how far you stretch the intent and structure before something breaks. If I had to bet, that's a long way away. But still, people should be aware of what's going on. The results you get from UN programs are not always going to be what you expect, and there's good reasons for that.

Or to put differently, if the UN evolves into doing something for everybody, it stands a significant risk of losing focus on its initial mission. Over the next few decades, the organization could easily become a destabilizing force in the world instead of a stabilizing one.

There's no corrective action to tell the UN that it's a victim of scope creep, so they could decide to try to do dang near anything, whether it's a good idea, whether the tools exist, whether it's just some half-baked crackpot idea, or whether it's just an elaborate bribery scheme. There's no feedback loop -- one of my initial points. Anything you can imagine, you can imagine the UN doing. That's not a recipe for a healthy future for the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >International Asteroid Warning Group" for member nations to share information about potentially hazardous space rocks. If astronomers detect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth, the U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

I suggest the "U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space" be immediately renamed to the "Civil Coordinated Committee on Peaceful Outer Space" (AKA C3POs.)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a bit ridiculous, knowing that the UN is already mostly incapable of dealing with any kind of serious humanity threat such as conflicts killing tons of unarmed civilians, now who seriously expects them to have anything robust in place to protect the whole planet?

Besides, it does not matter if "NASA has not been appointed" to deal with this - the day we notice a large object, it's pretty obvious one country or organization, somewhere, is going to try something about it if it means human race survival. There's no need for the UN at that level.

Moreover, the article mentions colliding a spacecraft with an asteroid to deflect is orbit, but this is actually not very efficient. There has already been other propositions such as orbiting a small spacecraft _around_ a large asteroid to deflect its orbit in a much more effective way over time.

<comment><USER6> "knowing that the UN is already mostly incapable of dealing with any kind of serious humanity threat such as conflicts killing tons of unarmed civilians"

This is an example of what is known as "false-consensus bias" \- you believe people agree with you (without any evidence that they do) because you believe in your own argument so strongly.

At least until a couple of years ago, the approval rating of the UN was pretty good globally, especially in places they act directly - [http://www.gallup.com/poll/147854/gets-approval- disapproval-...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/147854/gets-approval-disapproval- worldwide.aspx)

<comment><USER7> There was no implied consensus in what you quote. It wasn't even about approval or people's opinions of the UN. I think you read this statement as something like "everyone believes that the UN is mostly incapable" (which would be about popular opinion) rather than "the UN is mostly incapable" (which can be measured, in this case, by reduction of deaths after the UN gets involved (or lack thereof, if that's the case)).

<comment><USER8> The following bit -- "now who seriously expects" \-- makes clear the author's intent. The expected answer is "no one", in conflict with reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> See also: Ed Lu's excellent Long Now seminar. [http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jun/18/anthropocene- astron...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jun/18/anthropocene-astronomy- thwarting-dangerous-asteroids-begins-finding-them/)

Short version: Stopping an asteroid is more about early detection than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is how the International Fleet begins. First asteroids, next Buggers.

<comment><USER11> I was more thinking about the opening of "Rendezvous with Rama":

"Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. On 30 June 1908, Moscow escaped destruction by three hours and four thousand kilometres - a margin invisibly small by the standards of the universe. Again, on 12 February 1947, yet another Russian city had a still narrower escape, when the second great meteorite of the twentieth century detonated less than four hundred kilometres from Vladivostok, with an explosion rivalling that of the newly invented uranium bomb.

In those days, there was nothing that men could do to protect themselves against the lst random shots in the cosmic bombardment that had once scarred the face of the Moon. The meteorites of 1908 and 1947 had struck uninhabited wilderness; but by the end of the twety-first century there was no region left on Earth that could be safely used for celestial target practice. The human race had spread from pole to pole and so, inevitably, at 09.46 GMT on the morning of 11 September, in the exceptionally beautiful summer fo the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the sun, and as it moved across the heavens - at first in utter silence - it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.

Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussion so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones."

<comment><USER12> Rama and "Hammer of the Gods" both were evoked for me during the Chelyabinsk event. Another world-shattering celestial event that could have altered human history if only it's million year journey had been off by just a few seconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Finally! It always frustrated me that this threat was never taken very serious, even though it could wipe out humanity.

<comment><USER14> Considering the fact that in billions of years of evolution only a few meteors have caused mass extinctions I have always been confident that we will not just happen to live in a time when one of the big ones hit. Human civilization has only existed for a very short time and I think it really would be like winning the lottery to get hit by a civilization ending meteor even in the next 10,000 years (although I'm no expert in the topic, simply looking at Earth's past).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting to do a thought experiment on what it would have been like if humanity had known that the Russian meteor was coming a few months in advance. maybe they would have said there is a 20 percent chance of it coming down and causing major death and destruction. governments would have invested millions in trying to stop it. will smith would have been sent up in a rocket to stop it. everyone would have had big parties and said their last goodbyes.

<comment><USER16> Couple months? You could maybe track it and predict a large impact zone, and evacuate if needed. No chance to move it; nobody has a rocket that can be ready in that timeframe, much less a vehicle to intercept and move the rock. And even if you could, it was such a small rock that it's probably cheaper to let it hit and replace everything on the ground. For launch alone: F9 is $54M, Proton $72M, and SLS $1.5B (should it ever exist). There's not much the Chelyabinsk could have hit that would cost as much as trying to stop it. Even pretty big rocks have to get lucky to cause much damage, as sparse as development is, but since you can't tell where exactly they will hit until quite late, it may be better to move any sufficiently large Earth-interceptor to avoid the possibility of an unlucky hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apparently, a few reporters were able to lay their hands on some early sketches of what the system may look like, which had previously been under wraps due to the obvious potential for offensive warfare, rather than just asteroid defense:

[http://bit.ly/VmUtoj](http://bit.ly/VmUtoj)

Edit: I guess you had to be born before 1980 to get it.

<comment><USER18> I'm early 80's, while I get the cheek ;) I can't see that working on a serious level.

Neil de Grasse Tyson has a great view on this problem [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaW4Ol3_M1o)

Edit: And more detail on methods that may actually work... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ReuLZ2quc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-ReuLZ2quc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm all for private solutions. Leave my money in my pockets.

If there are no solutions, so what? face it like a man. If you're so scared to die, then you'll donate YOUR own money.

Not mine.

<comment><USER20> Private solutions? You think that Asteroid defence has a business plan? How would a private solution generate a profit?

<comment><USER21> private != profit.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. But given the enormous expense involved in constructing a private Asteroid defence system, what would the motivation be for the private organisation(s) involved?

<comment><USER21> i don't know. Living to see another day? And long before the threat of impact - feeling good about contributing to something positive for the Earth? I don't understand this obsession with the neoliberal idea that money is the sole driving motivation for everyone in the world - and I'm worried that it's going to be a self-fulfilling model.

Just FYI, there already is a private foundation that is trying to do this very thing:

[http://b612foundation.org/](http://b612foundation.org/)

<comment><USER8> Then I'll do nothing, because I know I'll get the benefit of someone else spending their own money to save me, no matter what I do. But certainly I'll not expend my own money or effort to save the world, because I definitely don't want to spend it saving you and your ilk.

<comment><USER21> thankfully, not everyone on this planet is as morally bankrupt as you, nor does charity require full participation of the populace to function adequately.

<comment><USER8> On the contrary, it is my morality that makes me content with a cosmic death sentence for any race to commit the crime of endorsing your intensely evil version of morality.

If your views are to prevail, I eagerly await the universe's judgement, sentence, and punishment, for the human race is irredeemable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Please, close the UN.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure they are going to send a strongly worded letter to those Aliens just a few month after they have arrive. Just about in time as they are right now only a few month away from condemning the Obama administration for the NSA spy program.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice way to allocate money extracted from taxpayers. Asteroids almost never visibly hit Earth, it's impossible to seriously protect yourself when it hits you or your neighbor, and it will sure take hundreds of billions of dollars to build some space equipment to "deflect" asteroids. It's way more profitable than the war with mythical terror.

Suggestion for UN, Obama or pretty much any government: go with your awesome idea on Kickstarter and spend your donations on presentation, video, blueprints, prototypes etc. If people like it, they'll send you money to implement it. If they don't, then please shove your rifles down your totalitarian ass instead of pointing them at the peaceful citizens.

Edit: downvoters are invited to explain how exactly UN earns money. Who has the freedom to give or not give money to UN based on its performance and where does this money come from?

<comment><USER25> I didn't down vote you. Nor do I think people are down voting you because of what you said in your edit (about where the UN gets their money).

I think you're being down voted because you said Asteroids almost never visibly hit Earth. It might be true as far as extinction events, but when (not IF) it does happen and it's the right size we'll all vanish.

IMO it's prudent to at least have these discussions and have something in place. If the UN is capable of the undertaking is a different story.</comment></comment>


If Everyone Hates Spirit Airlines, How Is It Making So Much Money? - <AUTHOR> https://marker.medium.com/if-everyone-hates-spirit-airlines-how-is-it-making-so-much-money-8c7d13472352 <comment><USER2> Because people purchasing airfare prioritize price over service.

Money quote: "Businesses that look at what people say," [Ben Baldanza, Spirit CEO] argues, "don't do as well as businesses that look at what people actually do."

<comment><USER3> Sure, but often "it's so cheap" leads to brand satisfaction despite lousy quality. I know people who really like Walmart and Dollar Tree.

<comment><USER4> I know a lot of people who love Spirit. They find ways to avoid the fees and just want low prices

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love spirit. If I can save $50 on a flight that would normally cost $200, that means I can visit my girlfriend 4 times instead of 3 for the same price. I'm not particularly tall so there's no change in comfort for me. I wish they had more routes though, been handing a good percentage of my annual salary to delta.

<comment><USER6> I'm assuming you travel super light, then?

Because Spirit's baggage fees are so high that it'll more than make up the difference in ticket prices. One reason why I prefer Southwest so much is because I can get both my carry-ons _and_ two checked bags with the ticket price... which is _still_ lower than any of the legacy carriers.

(which is a reason why I'm going to be so upset when the MAX is put back in service and I won't be able to fly Southwest anymore)

<comment><USER7> What are you really doing with two carry-ons and two checked bags?

If I'm staying for less than 4 days I can fit everything I need in one backpack. With a backpack and a carry-on I can bring everything I'd want for weeks.

<comment><USER6> For me, it breaks down like this:

* My purse counts as a carryon. I don't go anywhere without it.

* My other carryon is my backpack, which contains my electronics. I have my Surface, my headphones (which are very large padded cup models... I have sensitive ears and can't wear earbuds or small hard things), and a variety of chargers and spare batteries. I intend to use at least some of these on the flight itself. And I also stuff the side pockets with snacks for me to munch on during the flight (usually red/yellow stuffed Twizzlers).

* I have a suitcase for my clothing. I don't really like wearing the same clothes every day, so yes I pack multiple changes of clothes.

* I have a duffel bag for all my toiletries. Makeup, shampoo & conditioner, hand cream (I tend to travel in late fall/winter, and the cold fucks up the skin on the backs of my hands for some reason), shaving equipment, pads, flat iron, etc. Some of these _can 't_ go into a carryon because of bullshit TSA rules.

And on one of the trips I made last year, I also brought a number of toys for my niece and nephews (three kids, two toys for each kid, and not all of them were terribly small), which I had to basically play Tetris with to get them to fit in my luggage. I think they ended up being distributed between my backpack, suitcase, and duffel bag.

<comment><USER7> I usually fit in a backpack.

* Eight shirts (4 undershirts, 4 overshirts)

* 4 boxer-briefs

* 4 pairs of socks

* 1 toiletry kit

* 1 laptop or tablet depending on the nature of the trip

* 1 phone charger

* 1 tablet/laptop charger

* 1 medium sized book for the plane/airport

On my person I carry a wallet, car/house keys, airpods, and cellphone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Because of low income people who need to get places and are used to being treated poorly. Sometimes you have no choice.

</comment><comment><USER9> Spirit has been mostly fine but you should price in the cost of eventually getting stranded by them in the flight cost. I've flown them at least a dozen times and been stranded once where the next flight would be 4 days later so I had to suck it up and buy a flight back on Southwest.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, here are the key bits:

> Branding experts are forever telling us that this scenario simply isn't > possible; eventually a negative popular image will crush your business. If > that's the case, how do we explain Spirit?

> Sure, there were lots of complaints, but Spirit consistently delivered on > its low-cost promise, and that's why customers kept coming. "Businesses that > look at what people say," he argues, "don't do as well as businesses that > look at what people actually do."

As for why Spirit is an easy punch-line, I think a lot of it is the name. There's not much to go on with American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, United, etc., but _Spirit_ sets up such a contrast between the name (noble, eternal, incorporeal!) and the experience (no-frills, optimized for cost, and extremely corporeal!). It's nice irony.

</comment><comment><USER11> What a senseless question. You could ask the same thing about Walmart or dollar stores, or why most people watch YouTube with ads. Just because I feel it's the best move to save money by using your services doesn't mean I don't also feel your service sucks.

<comment><USER10> If it's unnecessary and you consume it (YouTube with ads), doesn't this imply that it doesn't suck?

Dollar Store, sure, sometimes people need to buy cheap food. But using YouTube is optional.

<comment><USER12> > If it's unnecessary and you consume it (YouTube with ads), doesn't this > imply that it doesn't suck?

in the common parlance, it is possible for something to "suck" and still be a good value. in my opinion, the experience of shopping at walmart sucks. I have a hard time finding things, I have a hard time finding employees to help me find things, and the thing itself is usually of poor quality. and when it's time to pay, I'll probably be waiting for one of the two cashiers to ring up two full carts worth of items for the person in front of me. as much as I hate it, I still go there if I need to buy a bunch of stuff where I don't care about quality.

if something is free, it only needs to provide an infinitesimal amount of positive utility to be a good value. I also hate google play music, but it's the best of several bad options to play music for free in my car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People HATE that they have to pay for every additional service, but LOVE the original low (and overall lower) price.

When they travel only nickel-and-diming is visible.

But then, when they plan a new trip, they remember that overall it was not so bad and apparently decide it was worth it.

<comment><USER14> There is a fix for this. Charge the max services fee on top of ticket price and credit back for services not used. Didn't bring a check-in? Here is $50. Not gonna eat? Keep this $20. Suddenly now they are not nickel-and-diming. They are handing out money.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure the psychology works out that way. price sensitive customers probably don't want to let you hold onto an extra $75 of their cash from the time they make the reservation until they actually fly.

<comment><USER15> Time value of money of a $200 plane ticket at federal funds rate (for half a year) is like what, $1.5?

<comment><USER12> it's not about the lost opportunity to make an investment so much as tightening the margin for stuff like paying rent, utilities, and credit card bills. $75 isn't enough to make or break my budget, but it's still a lot to have tied up over a service I'm planning not to use. if you're the type of person to aggressively optimize travel for price, it could be a meaningful sum.

<comment><USER13> Plus it is well established that we are less price-sensitive once the money left our pocket.

Most people would end up using more services. Hence even instinctively feels like a much worse deal even if tying up that money would not impact them directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My most recent Spirit flight was $200 cheaper than any other airline. I have a bag that's the exact personal item dimensions, and generally pack very light as it is, so the restrictions don't affect me at all. And honestly, I think largely because no one can recline, the seats are not that uncomfortable. I've been on more uncomfortable British Airways flights (they still fly some extremely old 747s on their North American routes).

So I save $200 to be slightly more uncomfortable for 2 hours, on a piece of my journey that simply has to happen. No one flies just for fun, people have somewhere they're trying to be.

<comment><USER17> > And honestly, I think largely because no one can recline, the seats are not > that uncomfortable.

This. As far as I'm concerned, non-reclinable seats in economy are a FEATURE: I lose more comfort from the seat in front of me reclining, than I gain from my seat reclining.

</comment></comment><comment> crooked-v A key thing to keep in mind with air travel customers is that it's nigh- impossible to effectively search and filter on anything past price and _maybe_ number of free bags. Thus, you get people buying seats with no leg room... because travel search sites lump everything together, and without researching every single flight in the list, there's no way to actually see how much leg room there is in advance.

<comment><USER18> There's no guarantee for the type of aircraft that will service your flight. You can check the schedule, but an Ops team may switch out if any operational exception (bad weather, equipment malfunction) occurs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because noone wants to pay. We are still flying the same speed as we did fifty years ago. Imagine for a second that you could fly from London to Sydney in ten hours (that's the Concorde speed on a route over Panama City so that almost all of the flight is over a sea to avoid any problems with sonic booms) but a ticket would be 15 000 dollars. Noone developed that plane.

</comment><comment><USER20> Its not like a lot of airlines have good reputations flying out of the same places as Spirit. For a certain type of travel (one carryon, not super long flight), its actually ok. They suck but the lower price compensates for the difference in suck between them and some of the others.

They're the burner phone of airlines.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd take spirit on a short trip where I need only a small carry on. I just don't generally need flights that fit that scenario, especially on the east coast where I prefer the comfort and ease of Amtrak. I hate airports.

I wish this country had high speed rail.

<comment><USER22> If your small carry on is larger than 18x14x8 inches, it's an additional ~$35 to ~$60, depending on when/where you pay. This is how they make their money.

<comment><USER23> Even with this rule, it is generally cheaper than commercial flights from other carriers, except (in my experience) for extremely low price United flights that have the same stipulation.

<comment><USER22> Oh, yes...should have mentioned the 28" seat pitch. That's the other way they make money. Other airlines have 30"-32" in their economy seats.

<comment><USER24> This can't be a significant factor. The seats per plane allowed by pitch difference is about 11% (at maximum using 28" vs 32") seats in a two-aisle plane.

Spirit base fares are often less than half what a United or even Southwest are charging for same route.

<comment><USER22> 11% more seats is a pretty big deal in a low margin business.

Comparing base fares is hard when the product is so different, and Spirit isn't uniformly half the cost either. Say it's uniformly 20 to 30 percent lower. Seat pitch and bag fees (carry-on/checked) might account for most of that. Also see things like refundability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Because _" Everyone hates Spirit Airlines"_ obviously isn't true, despite the impression the author may have gotten from mass media and social media, neither of which are representative of the full population.

If you have a gut feeling ( _' everybody hates Spirit'_) and hard facts ( _' Spirit is profitable and has loads of customers'_) that seem to contradict each other, maybe _just maybe_ you should consider the possibility that your gut feeling is just flat wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: What advertising works on you? - <AUTHOR>

Over the past five years I have possibly clicked on about ten contextual advertisement, mostly for my own amusement (e.g., seeing how relevant the ad was).  The only online advertisements that were even close to being effective on me were the ads for Bing, Evony, and Mail-Chimp (I like the latter's 60s-esque "lets get social" ad).
Of course, advertising on the internet works on some demographics, but what about the HN demographic?  What types of advertisements have worked on you?  And why?  What are some important principles regarding advertising to the more learned crowd? <comment><USER3> One thing that people tend to underestimate is exactly how much advertising does affect them, even though many seem to adamantly claim it does not.

Effective advertising doesn't always = click throughs and action. But also in terms of name recognition and branding. Every "impression" is just that. Is GoDaddy the best domain registrar? No... but you likely know they are a registrar.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ads from The Deck, Fusion Ads, Yoggrt, and other similar ad networks actually get my attention and clicks because they always have ads from quality services and companies. I even find myself peeking at The Deck ads just to see what new app/product/service is being advertised. When ads can actually be useful and informative, that's when they're really, really great.

That and affiliate ads. What person in the HN crowd hasn't given (MT) a thought after seeing all the high-profile sites recommending it?

</comment><comment><USER5> I almost never see ads on the net (ABP for the win), so my reply relates to television/billboard/newspaper ads:

Consciously, very often in a _negative_ way: Some ads make me less likely to buy or even consider the advertised brand/product. These include obviously fraudulent e.g. Enzyte (not that I needed, but if I ever did, I would never consider), to the we-assume-you're-an-idiot-and-have-short-term-memory ones like Ditech, and includes the we're-trying-hard-to-exploit-your-thought- processes-but-are-incompetent-at-it ones like Sprint's.

If an ad is smart, I'm more likely to be interested in the product e.g., Sony's '80s Trinitron 5 second genius ad: A man stands by a turned off Trinitron and says "This is the new Sony Black Trinitron. But I can't show you how good it is. Not with this one" (and knocks on the screen of the TV you're watching from the inside)

I think 99.9% of the advertising I see leaves no impression at all, though.

I can't measure my unconscious response (duh), but I suspect it's nearly non existent -- I have so few brand name items that it's unlikely to have had much effect.

</comment><comment><USER6> A lot, I bet. Not sure if you're referring to web ads, or ads in general - <USER2> either way, you'll be effected by them more than you'd care to believe. Whilst you might not be clicking on ads, they will, subconsciously, be creating brand-awareness.

Have you ever watched Derren Brown's show? The human mind is incredibly susceptible to suggestion. The purchasing decisions you make in just about all aspects of your life will to some extent be determined by the advertising you have been exposed to. Ads create mind-share. When you next need a product or service, the provider that is likely to be the first you think of is likely to be the one to whom's ads you have recently been exposed - knowingly or otherwise.

Edit: we are, as Douglas Adams parodied with his Electric Monk, believing machines.

</comment><comment><USER7> Every television food/restaurant ad I've ever seen.

I've never eaten at Red Lobster but oh MAN do I want to. That half lobster, flames lapping up and engulfing it, charry grill lines, being dipped in fake yellow butter.... mmm...

And Olive Garden. I have been and think its awful. But every time I see the commercial I want to go back. It just looks so good and tickles my brain in exactly the right ways.

I know that eating at these places will leave my disappointed, but somehow the rich visual imagery (planned by food stylists, not chefs...) just appeals to me on some visceral level that short-circuits the rational mind in me.

Lucky for me there's not "order now" button on my TV thats hooked up to a credit card.

</comment><comment><USER8> I find that if the advert is non-intrusive, blends in with the design of the site that I'm reading and is relevant to what I'm looking for then I'm more likely to click an ad. Even more so if there's a discount offered.

Probably the biggest example is Amazon affiliate links. The other day I was looking for a new Bicycle pump, so I looked at different bicycle pumps online and visited a random blog where the author bitched about bicycle pump problems they had, then talked about a pump they bought that solved the problem. Sure enough, at the end of the post was a link to Amazon for the same model, so off I clicked.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are many types of advertising that work on me, none have convinced me to buy a certain product, but i have learned of a companies existance I otherwise would have never learned about. I know that xobni exists and spells inbox backwards, due to massive radio/sky advertising campaigns in seattle.

I think the only internet advertising that has made an impression on me are Hulu/etc video advertisements (basically tv commercials, but generally more relevant to me). I can't think of any standard internet advertising (banner ads, google ads, etc) which has made an impression on me.

</comment><comment><USER10> I can only think of one ad that I've responded to - a Reddit ad for the game Minethings. There are two reasons that I think I took the time to click on it: the Reddit ads appear like a normal post, but are at the top of the page and clearly labeled as advertisements, and for some inexplicable reason Reddit makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I've ignored countless advertisement, I have no idea why I'd be intrigued by the Minethings ad, but I've been playing Minethings ever since ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> Ads that solve a problem and target the solution vs. ads that are all marketing mojo. Anything that has "best" "award winning" etc. I dont react to, but an ad that addresses a solution directly, often in a humorous "I understand what you need" kinda way I tend to respond to more, this is regardless if it is contextual or not. If a company is creative with this approach I tend to remember the product.

</comment><comment><USER12> Old Spice's campaign with "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like", particularly the personalized videos that he made for random people on YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, and others: <http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/old-spice-gu/>

It's the only ad campaign that has made me go out and buy a product basely only on that ad campaign.

</comment><comment><USER13> Google search ads is one of the only ones I respond to, and mostly when I'm searching for a specific product or product type.

</comment><comment><USER14> Something that's getting my attention lately is contextual and selectively targeted ads, but not in a good way. It's creepy to be pitched on something you looked at on Amazon, or something obliquely related to your interests constantly.

Ads like those will drive me to install ad blockers, which I've never before bothered with.

</comment><comment><USER15> For online advertising, I generally (semi consciously, semi unconsciously) judge by "if this link came to me from a search engine, from a friend, or from a site I read [like HN], would I want to click it?"

</comment><comment><USER16> Groupon

</comment><comment><USER17> The internet has ads?</comment>


Why I don't care about Lance Armstrong - <AUTHOR> http://stephencorwin.com/blog/?p=94

<comment><USER2> The fact he cheated is only a minor part of the real story I think. He bullied his team mates into being complicit in his cheating, he ruined the lives of the likes of Betsy Andreu, Paul Kimmage, David Walsh, and anyone else who dared question him, and he is still tactically lying to protect his friends in the UCI. Interview showed what a sociopath he is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well said, and I have to agree. Doping on the Tour de France was and I think still is the norm. Lance just went a step further and prevented other riders from getting the same excellent juice he was.

<comment><USER2> He did the opposite in fact, bullying his team mates on USPS into doping as well</comment></comment>


This military tech could finally help self driving cars master snow - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/08/how-self-driving-cars-could-use-mine-detecting-tech-to-see-the-road/ <comment><USER2> From the article, "Yes, this requires pre-mapping, but so does lidar. And WaveSense says that remapping should be far less frequent as conditions under the road are less subject to change than they are above ground."

I don't know that I agree with this statement given that this technology is meant to operate specifically in cold weather climates. I live in Montana, which is, of course, rather cold in the winter. We get frost heaving every spring when temperatures begin to rise. Frost heaving is caused by the formation of ice lenses in the soil below the road. Ice lenses form when water is drawn via capillary action to the same level as frost depth. The water then freezes. Frozen water acts like a solid and can them draw more water in via further capillary action thus increasing the size of the lenses. The ground penetrating radar will be able to see these lenses.

In an urban environment, this will likely be less of an issue. However, in a rural setting where there is less built environment to reference, it may cause some issues.

I am sure those working on this technology have though of these issues and will be able to filter out the noise that subsurface water/ice will create. I just feel it is disingenuous to think that the subsurface world is static.

Ultimately, more sensors using different detection methods will help to improve the operation of autonomous vehicles.

Edit: added a few words to clarify a thought.</comment>


Blink-182's Tom DeLonge tries to sell Vampire Weekend a social network - <AUTHOR> http://www.kempa.com/2010/01/04/absolutely-surreal-excerpt-from-a-new-yorker-profile-of-vampire-weekend/ <comment><USER2> The way I see it, this is just an entrepreneur being very passionate about his product, and some too-cool-for-school kids make jokes about it.

I submitted the (full) source article to HN a couple of hours ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1034444>

<comment><USER3> The journo's point wasn't about the pitch, the site itself or a "too cool for school" reaction from VW, it's about the band staring their own future in the face.

Blink-182 was a massively (far more so than VW) successful act, yet one of the members of the band is now hawking a web site instead of making music. It's an anecdote about the state of the industry and how that affects those currently caught in the machine.

[I can't imagine why he would even pitch to the artists in the first place; for an act of that size, that's the management, label and booking agent's territory.]

<comment><USER4> I think 'successful act' should be changed to 'profitable act'.

<comment><USER3> How do you define success in the music industry?

To me it means the following things: making a career out of playing music (even just for the short term), being profitable both for yourself and your label/team, being heard by a large amount of people (this includes touring and sales) and getting mainstream radio/tv play. And managing to make more than one record that gets at least a 50% positive critical response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really like that he termed a website an "operating system." It's funny to see what kind of weird stuff comes out of the mind of rock stars only surrounded with yes men.

<comment><USER6> People refer to Facebook as an "operating system":

<http://www.redherring.com/Home/23046>

or

<http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+operating+system>

<comment><USER7> Maybe my experience has been skewed, but every person I know that has referred to an entity as a web operating system has been full of shit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All I can say is good on him for having a go, no matter how awkward it seemed.

Being successful means being willing to look like a weirdo from time to time. I'm not seeing the smarmy reporter types achieving too much beyond saying nasty things about someone who's actually trying.

<comment><USER9> I can only imagine how difficult it is to pitch a product to someone who isn't there to listen to a pitch while being filmed by two separate crews. It would be really hard not to look like a dildo.

We've known for over a decade now since Napster that artists would need / could get other revenue from online to make up for declining music sales.

It's cool that Tom is actually trying to participate in the changes rather than just bitch about the state of the industry as 999/1000 of them do.

<comment><USER10> _I can only imagine how difficult it is to pitch a product to someone who isn't there to listen to a pitch while being filmed by two separate crews. It would be really hard not to look like a dildo._

Which, to some people, would indicate that this might not be an appropriate time to pitch.

Sometimes, pitching has negative value. Looking like a dorky salesman on video is anti-marketing for a rock and roll related project, and cannot be good for the project. It makes it look like just another "big business cashing in on little guys" swindle, with the older bands now being on the side of big business.

There is a right time to be a salesman. This wasn't it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Regardless of DeLonge's bad pitch and VW's reaction, niche website tools are a good business. That's what we do and we do well. Don't forget, that's #29 on YC's startup ideas.

In a way, I see a lot of similarities to our industry (professional photography). Both are creative industries that have been quite disrupted by various technologies. Just about every well-known, experienced photographer sells training material, photoshop actions, holds workshops at $1k a seat, or lends their name to technology companies in exchange for money and/or free services.

I imagine DeLonge isn't much different. I just hope he wasn't suckered into investing his own money into someone else's idea. I also don't blame DeLonge for pitching to VW (but I admit, the circumstances seemed awkward). In niches like this, the more well-known bands you can get using your startup's product the better. Heck, I would have offered it to them for free. But, then again, I'm also a big VW fan.

</comment><comment><USER12> I had a band in the 80's. Never famous except locally. We played the same clubs as They Might Be Giants.

In the 90's I had a startup that got some buzz. TMBG came and pitched us for tour support. There was lots of "remember the good old times?" which frankly was bs, we had some common fans but never really hung out or anything.

Bands are weird.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is the network he was plugging: <http://modlife.com/>

There are a lot of other sites in this space and I can't say this one stands out as being particularly impressive.

<comment><USER14> Wow - that looks like Myspace 1.5. And not in a good way - this site is confusing.

<comment><USER15> Looks about like what you'd imagine for something probably mostly guided by non technology types, they are trying to be a content site similar to myspace.

I think for a site like this your much more likely to be successful if you can be the only network people use. Most users of a site like this would probably still have say a facebook. A myspace with good tech would have achieved this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ok some I'm a member of modlife.com specifically the angels and airwaves site. And I have to say it is the perfect site for a dedicated fan, who enjoys social networking online. It is a site for people to have a more intimate look into the band members lives. We also get to hear insider news, have access to presale tickets, get to participate in private sound check parties and get VIP status at shows, we usually have live chat or webcam at least once a day with one of the members, etc. I enjoy the site very much, because I am a loyal fan.

I dont think people should hate on the site, because it is cool that the guy who used to sing about sex with dogs is trying to adapt to the changing times. It a shame more bands won't have such an open mind.

</comment><comment><USER17> They showed up to interview him, as a west-coast artist, and instead walked into a (rather sad) pitch for a music publishing network. It would be atone to going to a party and seeing an agent and trying the agent pester them to switch record labels or something. It was awkward because it was Tom DeLonge who they respected too much to say 'what the fuck' half way through.

How can anyone see this as them being 'too-cool-for-school'?

</comment><comment><USER18> I caught this story on AbsolutePunk this morning. Sounded terribly awkward, but for every entrepreneurial success pitch there is sure to be one of these.

</comment><comment><USER19> If anyone can get the rest of the article up I'd like to read it.</comment>


One tool to compress all your CSS/HTML/JS/PHP-template files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Eyjafjallajokull/wecomp Wecomp is a tool build to make compressing sources easy and painless. It will pack and compress all js/css files. It will compress html/php-templates and also handle embedded css/js tags. <comment><USER2> I have been reading you site not able to figure it out what it is, Is this a kind of CDN, If not how we can use this for our blog and website.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a python script, you will need to download code, or clone git repository to get it. Then run "python wecomp.py -h" to get some info about how to use it.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: Email setup for multiple accounts - <AUTHOR>

I've ended up with a lot of email accounts.
1. My public Yahoo one that I've used for years.
2. 2 or 3 Google Hosted (non-Gmail accounts).
3. A Gmail account that I don't use as a public account, but as a Google Account quite a bit.
4. A MobileMe account (for iPhone Push).
5. Couple of temporary accounts that I use/used when traveling.
I was using the Gmail account as the aggregator, picking up the other accounts via POP. There are a few problems with this: Number one by far is that Google do not poll the accounts often enough - it's up to an hour and I'm constantly manually refreshing to get the mails I want. There is also the lack of iPhone push.
I've tried forwarding, but it quickly ends up being a mess of mails everywhere - or I simply lack the system to keep it tidy.
In all cases I end up with multiple Junk mail folders that I need to manually check occasionally.
I won't even get onto Calendars, because that's even more of a mess. Integration is getting better, but it's a long way from being complete.
Is there any nifty solution out there for this? Do others out there hit the same issues? <comment><USER2> I use Thunderbird with five accounts. The only problem is you have to get into an action/archive/delete mindset for your inbox or it soon becomes unwieldy.

</comment><comment><USER3> On OSX I use an app called MailPlane to manage all my gmail accounts(hosts and gmail). Not sure about the other accounts though. Maybe Thunderbird?

</comment><comment><USER4> I have 4 things I need to check:

1\. My personal MobileMe account

2\. My master gmail account that has mailed forwarded from:

a. My work Gmail b. My web-contact Gmail (also for signups and throwaway) c. My former personal Gmail that I'm replacing with MobileMe

3\. My Yahoo Mail accounts only for PayPal/Ebay because of the ability to use folders

I use Fluid to capsulize the Gmail windows and I have never ever bothered with Thunderbird or Outlook.

Gmail's IMAP forwarding is always pretty fast for me. I then just change the mailfrom to the email it was forwarded from and I haven't logged into those separate Gmail accounts since last year.

My one gripe is just that there's not enough colors for the tags.

My calendar setup is Gcal but I'm trying to get it synced to iCal. I've been using BusySync on Mac for the past 20 days and will be paying for it because it essentially solves the headache of syncing both ways so that my iPhone is always updated but I can manage it on my computer.

<comment><USER5> Your Gcalendar setup is insane. Just curious: why are you replacing your personal gmail with mobileme?

<comment><USER4> I managed to get a very valuable name at me.com and I like Mail over Gmail. Push plus iPhone makes it a lot better.

I have literally used up every single color in Gcal. However, I only see about 6 to 8 events per day. The colors are usually used for stuff I want to keep track off, when my domain names expire, school, birthdays, art showings, work, YC, parties, political events, holidays, and etc.

As I rely more on the software the more data I put into it. Maybe I should just stop caring... Or just use one color... but I have like OCD or something.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Strategy for changing your primary email? - <AUTHOR> Hi there!
For reasons (mostly that the domain I'm using isn't really appropriate anymore), I'm considering changing my primary email address.
If you were wanting to change your primary email what would your strategy be?
Ideally:
- All emails hit your new inbox - All logins that require email are using your new email address
How would you ensure you haven't missed anything?
Would you ever decommission your old inbox?
I'm not sure if I'm missing anything else here.
Thanks in advance for any input! <comment><USER2> Forward $old to $new

Setup a filter in $new email that labels all mail received on the $old address, so you know where you need to update your email address

Keep this until you don't have any more emails coming in with that $old label for ... however long you're comfortable, 6 months, 1 year, forever. Unless there's a reason you need to decommission the $old one, I'd just leave it there

</comment><comment><USER3> > How would you ensure you haven't missed anything?

This probably isn't of much help now, but adding accounts as they are created to a list, like a password manager, helps to ensure you don't miss any in situations like this.

<comment><USER4> True though I'd also keep in mind the countless blogs and newsletters which, personally - I don't store in my password manager. The ones that update infrequently would be annoying to lose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quite some time ago, I needed to do a big cleanup of email aliases (I have 500+) and various

My approach was to use IMAP integration with my provider to copy all the emails down to my laptop.

I then used VBA in Outlook to create a list of source email addresses and counts - then I could update places using those emails.

In your case, i'd do something similar.

Analyse your existing emails to get a list of emails by source address (or domain).

Use that list to figure out what places you need to get updated.

Then (per Sydney1's suggestion) - forward old emails to the new address. Preferably tag it somehow so you know that it means there are other places that need to be updated.

<comment><USER6> > __ _create a list of source email addresses and counts_ __

WhyTF isnt this an actual out-of-the-box dashboard on every single email client??

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I did this a while ago for my own and my wife's email and ten years ago I changed from .nl to .com for the domainname which is effectively the same thing :-) For both it's forward and forget, I changed some services to reflect the mail change, most I didn't bother. After 5 maybe 6 years no e-mail came through the old address anymore. So if you have the time and the couple of $$ to keep it up it's a minor issue, it's self cleaning to a large extent.

</comment><comment><USER8> Setting up automated forwarding would cover your "ideal" needs. That way you can gradually change your logins and make sure that all email sent to old & new addresses end up in one inbox.

</comment><comment><USER9> Slowly move all your stuff (user acc around the net) to new domain/email and once 1 year passes with no new emails to your old mailbox, trash it.

</comment><comment><USER10> if i were moving my primary to a gmail account, i'd setup the "send mail as" thing to receive all the email in your new account, set-up a filter to automatically label it as such, and then set a super strong password w/ 2FA on your previous acct.</comment>


Why stackoverflow sucks - <AUTHOR> https://sergworks.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/why-stackoverflow-sucks/ <comment><USER2> A question is read by hundreds of users and written only by one. Is spending some time on preparing that question for future readers too much to ask? Respect your readers :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree,but for above post. Looks like someone asked a basic (looked like homework) question, which attracted someone to answer him. Later the question marked as homework and a year later it was removed! I don't think thats right attitude by SO. You can see lot of closed questions as 'off-topic' has more than 1 answer. SO need to find a solution to this problem. Whenever I see valid question down-voted, I used to upvote or mark it as favorite. Surely they need to review their moderators and their behaviour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please add 2012 to title

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, Looks like I can't edit this now, there is no option.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Python or Go? - <AUTHOR> I have a strong background (8 years) in PHP development with Drupal and other misc frameworks/components. I'm a comaintainer for a system called Aegir, which is a free software control panel for managing large fleets of Drupal sites. Aegir is currently written in all PHP, including a daemon for running background tasks (which is not a good thing).
We're in the process of re-architecting Aegir to be a frontend + simplified API for Kubernetes or other prerolled container management systems (Flynn, Deis, etc). Our goal is to create a superset of what Aegir supports.
Anyway, we determined very quickly that PHP is not a very good language for the majority of what we're building. We've narrowed down the alternatives to Python or Go, and we're wondering if there's any strong, technical reason to go with one or the other for systems/container orchestration type work. <comment><USER2> First of all php, go or Python are all valid choices. You can shoot in the foot with all of them. Personally I prefer Python, but worked a bit on go. I personally will recommend Python given its rich library set helping you secure your api's end points. Doing same in go is pretty convoluted with more lines of code, although you get performance, but that's good for consumer facing part. For software like control panel Python is a very good choice. In general Python is better where you need a decent 3rd party library support with concise, clean and readable code. Go is a good choice when you need performance and scale although Python can do it as shown by Instagram and Google itself but it requires clever programming and a lot of cruft. For systems/containers they build there code in go but still needs to integrate with c code of kernel. So the code is complex and since your tool is focusing only on control panel part I feel Python is a way to go.

<comment><USER3> "Python given its rich library set helping you secure your api's end points. Doing same in go is pretty convoluted with more lines of code"

Is there any way you can elaborate on your experience that brought you to this conclusion?

I am rather curious, as Go has the same middleware concept that django has to add in security, session, and token information to an http call.

<comment><USER2> Try building a production rest api using flask, with encryption, authentication and authorization backed in, taking care of internationalization and localization. See for yourself how many lines of code you will need and obviously see which one is more readable and cleaner. Do the same with go and you will know what I'm talking about. Go is good for its own use case for solving Google scale problems which requires additional efforts and time. Python is very approachable from the beginning. Moreover the wealth of documentation and help makes it so much easier when you hit a roadblock. You will need twice the amount of time to do the same in go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Currently doing a fair bit of both Python and Go. Python: A decent packaging system. Lots of packages. A debugger!

       Go:
         Go-routines and channels are quick, easy to use concurrency.
         Compiles down to single distributable binary.
         Lousy packaging.
         Debugger somewhere between primitive and none.

In Go we're consistently writing more lines of code than in Python, fighting to get third-party package versioning correct, and reverting to Printf as primary debugging technique.

On the other hand, Go's general binary distribution is much simpler, running the compiler is like running lint on your code, concurrency is relatively easy.

At the moment, we're moving from a primarily Python environment to an environment to where we use Python for all user-facing web applications and Go for web service APIs. Your milage may vary.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its not clear to me why you think "PHP is not a very good language for the majority of what we're building". In my opinion, you should have a strong reason for rewriting an application.

A good answer strongly depends on that. Here are some thoughts:

1) If it is for style and maintenance reasons, then Python with one of the frameworks (Flask is very easy to get started) would be a good start.

2) If performance is a reason, then see if you can separate out a portion of your PHP code to call the Go service. You can use message queues as a bridge between the services for better scalability.

For most applications pure Python will not hurt. Python is very productive to develop. If you need to scale in the future, you can identify bottlenecks and rewrite them.

</comment><comment><USER3> What issue do you think that your going to avoid with python that you have with PHP?

On Golang:

1\. There are a bunch of good frameworks out there for you to bootstrap with \-- if you pick one realize its going to have shortcomings \-- if you don't pick one and you think your going to use the standard library + tools like gorilla and alice, your going to end up doing a lot more work than you expect. \-- a lot of the info on this front is stale, look for the context package on the google blog to see how the thinking is evolving (and its pretty rational)

2\. There are parts of Go that look great on the surface, and work for "small programs" but if your building in the large they are going to be lacking. Logging is the example that comes to mind, and a lot of the "solutions" are just coming up short at the moment. Profiling on OSx being broken is another (and this isn't the fault of the GO, but rather apple.

3\. Your going to have a very different workflow with go than you do with a python or PHP. This same would hold true if you moved from PHP to C or java. The distinction is that C and Java have a LARGE toolchain to support your transition, here again Go is lacking.

All that having been said, I would choose Golang over Python or PHP for what your trying to do. Your going to pay a large tax upfront (in both ramp up and real time development costs) for something that (potentially if you don't screw it up) is much more maintainable in the long run.

<comment><AUTHOR> PHP is _horrible_ at long running processes, among other things. We regularly run out of file descriptors and memory usage is a big issue too. The "solution" is for the process to kill itself every couple minutes and restart with a clean slate. It's a gigantic hack. A long running process on Python, OTOH, is less of a problem.

More generally, it becomes pretty clear when you're using a tool for something it's not really meant to do. PHP is an okay programming language/runtime, but there are other tools that would do some of these jobs better, hence our interest in Go and Python.

<comment><USER3> Python is "less of a problem" but you still may hit that wall. You can do "stupid stuff" in any language and have that same outcome, php just gives more rope than the rest!

Recently, on a short term contract, I had to deal with a lot of PHP code that was running in a similar manner. I ended up using golang, to monitor the queue and spin up Goroutines that executed the PHP code ONCE. Between the concurrency, and php back in "one and done" mode the problem was "solved" and the internal team happily took over finishing the porting to pure Golang. Its a great example of Go "in the small" and it really does shine.

Go "in the large" is a whole other matter. You should read the following (in this order)

[http://thenewstack.io/a-survey-of-5-go-web- frameworks/](http://thenewstack.io/a-survey-of-5-go-web-frameworks/) <<< Im a user of gorilla/mux gorilla/context and alice for middleware chains. Gorilla/context and alice are not mentioned by this article, but the lament a the end about the concept of context being lacking in golang is spot on.

[https://blog.golang.org/context](https://blog.golang.org/context) <<< but this would be better for context however its does not mix with the current HTTP server (no ones solution does)... its from the go team but there isn't a lot of indication on how to use it and be future proof

[https://joeshaw.org/net-context-and-http-handler/](https://joeshaw.org/net- context-and-http-handler/) <<< explains the context package well

[https://github.com/remind101/pkg](https://github.com/remind101/pkg) <<< has wrappers for getting net/context into gorilla and alice..

The end result is non of the GO web support is what I would call "great" yet. However it isn't stopping me from building with them. Look at the tradeoffs your going to have to make, be smart about how you couple your business logic to your server/framework, as your framework will quickly become a hard dependency. If your careful in that implementation, this [http://blog.golang.org/introducing-gofix](http://blog.golang.org/introducing- gofix) might be a way to back out one of those dependency if your unhappy.

The tooling to help you root out an issues exists and you should know its there and how to use it: [http://blog.golang.org/profiling-go- programs](http://blog.golang.org/profiling-go-programs) [http://saml.rilspace.org/profiling-and-creating-call- graphs-...](http://saml.rilspace.org/profiling-and-creating-call-graphs-for- go-programs-with-go-tool-pprof) [https://deferpanic.com/blog/compile-time- code-weaving-in-go/](https://deferpanic.com/blog/compile-time-code-weaving-in- go/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we definitely won't be writing a web app in Go. We can just build it with Drupal and it'll be fine. Most of what we'd use Python or Go for are small services that handle one thing that run in their own container. [https://github.com/progrium/gitreceive](https://github.com/progrium/gitreceive) is a good example of the kind of services that we'll be building (we didn't build gitreceive, obviously, and we probably won't re-implement it because it's already pretty good. Just wanted to give an example)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If your server needed to scale high (say with scores of provisioning events per minute, or especially low latency), Go's lighter weight would be a selling point. But orchestration is about coordination, often of dissimilar things; that means dealing with different APIs, end-points, and subsystems. I've found Python to be quite good at such tasks. Its higher level nature and well- developed Web frameworks (e.g. Flask, Tornado) seem a good fit.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've done a lot of work in both Go and Python recently - using httprouter and flask, respectively. Python libraries are a lot more mature. But in bigger projects, debugging in Python can be incredibly painful. I think it comes down to the fact that Python is a really complex language. On the other hand, Go is so simple. (And you may hate it for this, at some points.) Sometimes, I find it more helpful to think of Go as a higher-level C rather than a Python competitor. The syntax is easy and familiar when you get started, but I think you will miss a lot of the Go beauty if you are looking for a "faster Python".

tldr; Go is not Python, but it is still beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER8> Depending on your target date and algorithms needed, I would say stick with PHP as your front end and move your backend to either a Go based service or a Python one.

The single binary feature of Go makes deployment really easy. And the standard library has everything you need to do an API. I chose the gin framework in my case with the standard html/template. The front end uses knockoutjs.

If you need some specialized library like machine learning or natural language processing, I would choose Python as there are many great libraries out there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Go is a compiled language and is easily used in a cross-compiled situation. The executables are single image with no dependencies on external libraries.

Python is interpreted and deployment requires a large-ish runtime environment as well as making decisions about v2 vs v3. You can use virtualenv to address these and related issues.

Personally, I like Go, but keep ending up using Python and JavaScript far more often.

</comment><comment><USER10> Go is a clear winner IF you don't want to have difficulty dealing with asynchronous functions and synchronous functions. In Python (and JavaScript and other single threaded languages) asynchronous functions can use synchronous functions, but not the other way around. Synchronous functions that expect output from asynch functions will end up with weird bugs, or might not even be able to get output, since asynch functions often hand their outcomes to callbacks within the function. So everything that requires an asynchronous operation ends up getting infected with the coding style required to handle asychronicity; you're forced to code everything that needs an asynch op using promises, callbacks, etc.

Go, being multi-threaded, and being designed to be usable by teams with a broad range of skill, eliminates the need to worry about asynch vs. synch code.

See this article explaining the problem with Async functions. "What Color is your function?" [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color- is-y...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your- function/)

Quote from the article:—————————————————————————

Go is the language that does this most beautifully in my opinion. As soon as you do any IO operation, it just parks that goroutine and resumes any other ones that aren't blocked on IO.

If you look at the IO operations in the standard library, they seem synchronous. In other words, they just do work and then return a result when they are done. But it's not that they're synchronous in the sense that it would mean in JavaScript. Other Go code can run while one of these operations is pending. It's that Go has eliminated the distinction between synchronous and asynchronous code.

Concurrency in Go is a facet of how you choose to model your program, and not a color seared into each function in the standard library. This means all of the pain of the five rules I mentioned above is completely and totally eliminated.

So, the next time you start telling me about some new hot language and how awesome its concurrency story is because it has asynchronous APIs, now you'll know why I start grinding my teeth. Because it means you're right back to red functions and blue ones.

—————————————————————————

If you do not have to worry about asynchronicity, then this advantage may not mean as much to you, and Python's larger user base and libraries may be a compelling advantage. But if you do, not having your world of functions divided into two "colors" is a huge advantage.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would say go has far easier primitives to be a tool for orchestration. I myself have worked with both languages.

</comment><comment> enahs-sf go. The concurrency primatives are great. Start doing multi-threaded things in python and watch your computer run out of memory very quickly.

</comment><comment><USER12> I actually had to make a decision on the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

Golang is probably the better programming language. The main reason for this is its statically typed, and the type system is dead simple.

If I want rock solid code in Python, I have to write tests and isinstance checks everywhere. You begin to feel like making your reinventing the wheel just to get type safety.

Golang on the other hand won't let you compile of the code is wrong. In various ways the linter is more strict than pep8.

I also love how they kept struct. It leaves the impression your working with bare metal. The idioms for goosing, like Python, become intuitive and set in.

The issue that made be give up golang is the libraries are a joke. I'm talking dead simple things like orm and logging alone rule it out for anything serious.

You also begin to miss things like REPL, Python prompt toolkit, nummy, Ipython, etc. Django and sqlalchemy are things you'd kiss.

Golang is a better programming language, but it's way too green. You'd be reinventing the wheel constantly,

<comment><USER3> I will 2nd that native logging in GO is awful (and most of the packages for logging are pretty bad too). For me logging was missing basic levels, and any sort of contextual capability.

I would like to know what issues you had with it, as I'm in the middle of building out my own replacement logging package

<comment><USER12> > I would like to know what issues you had with it,

Specifically, I wanted "logging" from python; leveled logging handlers, with colors (like colorama) and per-module level permissions.

> as I'm in the middle of building out my own replacement logging package

None of the alternatives did exactly what was needed. And this extended other modules as well. It turned out we would be maintaining forks of all these projects.

If you haven't already, [https://github.com/avelino/awesome- go#logging](https://github.com/avelino/awesome-go#logging) is a good resource.

If the original poster / you do decide to go with golang I wish you the best. It's a great programming language - but you're time spent reinventing the wheel will outweigh golangs benefits over python.

And it's kind of a shame. The benefits of the static type checking, concurrency, compile times, testing, etc.

I can tell you, in every category - at the present moment - golang's available libraries fall short to what you get in python. Not golangs fault, it's just want maturity gives you.

Even things like asserts in python, (assert is even a builtin in python, no need to import unittest!) is non-existant in golang. It's not a "bad" thing.

My outlook for golang it strong - my concern is that you may drain away your runway doing what you should otherwise be doing on freetime.</comment></comment></comment>


Ipad & Velcro Marriage - <AUTHOR> http://holykaw.alltop.com/ipad-velcro-love-video

<comment><USER2> Don't actually do the car velcro mount. There's a reason every car owner's manual says to never do this - if the airbag deploys, the passenger will have the iPad embedded in their skull.

<comment><USER3> Or don't leave it there if you have a front seat passenger. Or only do it in an old car without front-seat airbags.

I am actually tempted to get one to stick on my wall now. Though I'm not sure if I trust the velcro enough.

<comment><USER4> In matters of real-world safety, hard rules like "never attach it there" are MUCH better heuristics than "don't attach it there in the wrong situation."

<comment><USER3> If you're interested in setting rules for other people to follow so you don't get sued, then yes.

If you're interested in taking care of yourself and those around you, you can usually exercise some common sense.

<comment><USER5> Ah, common sense. The silent killer. ;)

For example:

 _don't leave it there if you have a front seat passenger_

Even if you try really hard to mount the iPad such that it is precisely centered on the passenger-seat air bag -- which you probably won't do; that's awfully far away from the driver -- how sure _are_ you that an air bag deployment won't launch the thing toward the driver? Or cause a ricochet?

<comment><USER3> Not all that sure. However I do know that it's pretty low on the list of things that are likely to kill me in the event of a car crash.

If I want to optimize for the minimization of my small yet non-negligible chance of dying in a car crash I'd gain a much larger effect by trading in my current car for a Volvo rather than removing my dash-mounted iPad. I'd get an even better effect by improving my driving habits; not listening to music while driving, never _ever_ exceeding the speed limit and only driving when absolutely necessary.

But sometimes we trade off safety for convenience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's corny and silly, but as an instructional video, it's excellent. No dialog, no wasted effort, just teaching and demonstration in action. Feels like the first 40 minutes of WALL-E.

</comment><comment><USER7> Now all he needs is a velcro glove to hold the iPad comfortably with one hand.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ironic that I couldn't see the video (or that a video was there at all) on my iPad.

</comment><comment><USER9> How far off is a heads-up display? _That_ would change the game.

 _EDIT_ [http://www.microvision.com/vehicle_displays/head_up_displays...](http://www.microvision.com/vehicle_displays/head_up_displays.html) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display>

These things are expensive, but electronics get cheap fast.

</comment><comment><USER10> Now all it needs is inductive charging.</comment>


An Independence Day thought experiment - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/opinion/fourth-of-july-stephen-fry.html <comment><USER2> TLDR; Elected and unelected officials in the U.S. government, including the president, have forgotten that they're "public servants" and would be well- served by an icon that offered them frequent reminders that their role is to do the will of the people.

OPINION: The great people of England voted for Brexit - The U.S. citizens voted for Trump. Both clearly represent that the populations are looking for a seachange - I'm not sure that advice from England to the U.S. or vice-versa will contain the wisdom that both countries need.

<comment><USER3> Trump received 3 million fewer votes than his leading opponent. A series of technicalities elected Trump, not the majority of U.S. voters.

<comment><USER4> "A series of technicalities" also known as "the rules".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TLDR; America should have a monarch, who can do all the entertaining insane things Trump does without also destroying the country.

Couple of key quotes:

"Looking at 10 Downing Street and the American White House now, I wonder which nation is constitutionally most in danger of allowing a tyrant to arise."

"My modest proposal on this, America's great national holiday weekend, is that you choose an Uncle Sam or Aunt Samantha by lottery (which is all the birth of a monarch is) and give this person the powers of a constitutional sovereign, with precedence of state over the elected president. To save face, this person needn't be called a monarch — "first American" or "sovereign citizen" will do. A reality TV competition can be held to finalize all the details. Americans are awfully good at that sort of thing."

From where I stand, things are also trending in a pretty bad direction in the U.K. too... not sure the Queen really help much.

<comment><USER6> If you've ever read U.K. media you'd know that they're far worse than us in terms of political ridiculousness. Not to mention far ahead of us in creating an Orwellian surveillance state.

<comment><USER7> No, the Tories tend to be assholes, but are smarter and not as insane/blatant as the GOP. Labour... well, we'll see. Corbyn's overturned everything. The UK is a smaller country so it can consider things that just would not fly in America. The Blairites are like covert Republicans who say they're Democrats.

Yeah on the surveillance state, but the saving grace is the British tend to be a bit more incompetent in a lot of things, based on my American sensibilities. And they end up wasting money which gets things shut down. Especially government run things. All the jokes about tea breaks aren't exactly jokes either.

May has no clue at all about much of anything IT related, so they are going to have to go house to house to ensure everyone in this country isn't using a VPN. And the British tend to be obstreperous, so that means EVERY house. The only real solution is to nationalize all the ISPs and what Tory is going to vote for that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems like this post is implying that Trump is on his way to becoming a tyrant, but for all of his faults and bad manners I have a hard time viewing him as more than a temporary setback or perhaps even a wake-up call for the establishment. Why do some folks apparently perceive him to be a threat to our democracy or otherwise speak about him in such dramatic terms?

<comment><USER9> Because he seems to be actually creating an oligarchy in the USA, firing and hiring people for top administration like he sees fit in order to concentrate power around him.

<comment><USER8> This doesn't seem plausible to me; it will take him through his first term to fill a critical mass of these positions; he'll be in his way out before he gets there.

<comment><USER9> Let's hope so that he doesn't have time, but I think people are fooling themselves by thinking he will get voted out of a second mandate. If he lasts that long without an impeachment, history tells us that it's highly improbable that he loses the election for the 2nd term.

<comment><USER8> Even if he did get a second term, I have to wonder how much harm he could do. I have a hard time believing it's as bad as some people make it out to be. For all the grief our form of government gets, it is pretty robust against tyranny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This person needs a better understanding of the US Constitution. There are clear checks and balances in place. This is one of the main differences between parliamentary and the US form of branch government.

</comment><comment><USER11> Basically: The president clearly doesn't respect the people, so why not create a powerless figurehead they "have to" respect? Because obviously the UK is the model democracy everybody looks up to.

</comment><comment><USER12> To those who don't know: this is obviously written in jest. It's a bit of fun light entertainment, a fantasy.

If a humorous movie was made with this premise, would you be taking it this seriously?

</comment><comment><USER13> For a more serious intellectual argument in favor of monarchy over democracy, see "Democracy, The God That Failed" by libertarian theorist Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

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

I am neither a monarchist nor a libertarian, but the book is a good read.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here is a more straightforward argument for adopting a monarchy, which is that it may be helpful to treat the head of state as necessarily embodying dignity, but the president should be seen as just another politician.

[https://thinkprogress.org/the-case-for-a- king-717ae1eb35f5](https://thinkprogress.org/the-case-for-a-king-717ae1eb35f5)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a nutty idea. America has no king. America needs no king.

But in fairness the presidency is a powerful position and has grown more so over time. And there are other ways of doing things. In some republics, the president is a fairly minor figure, largely ceremonial. Does that work better?

<comment><USER7> Perhaps the benefit of the Trump presidency will be the average American wakes up to how non-important the President is in of itself and that the important thing is the process of politics, or the unspoken norms that Trump is demolishing, or ... something more abstract than the position and whoever is the current inhabitant. That was sort of the point of the American Revolution and all the ideals America is supposed to embody. [i.e. the progressive libtard ones, not the regressive pseudo-conservative aka almost fascist ones Trump is a symbol of]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As an American who has lived in the UK for 10 years now, I can only say: bollocks!

The fact that the Royal Family even still exists and still has significant political power is the foundation of the UK's more rigid social structure / social hierarchy than in America - figureheads like the Royal Family and the President are, first and foremost, symbols and from this, society's psychosocial framework is derived. Perhaps it is only my projections / being an American, but I get twinges that deep down, the English unconsciously still believe the Royal Family and the unelected de-facto aristocracy like David Cameron are inherently -better human beings- than the rest of the populace. [Downton Abbey was complete nonsense] America is not founded upon such a notion and the fact that even an idiot like Donald Trump can be president says something. (Yeah, something in the machinery broke down.... the dust filter?). But living here has made me appreciate aspects of America I never much was aware of back home though.

The GOP however seem to want to turn America into something like ... well, god only knows these days. They certainly believe 90% of Americans exist only for the benefit of the top 10%. Trump is their version of the Shock Doctrine and we need to take how Italy finally got rid of Berlusconi into account if we want to get rid of Trump pronto.

Stephen Fry does not understand America's symbols either. Our "Royal Family" is the Constitution and I would certainly rather have an inanimate object be that symbol (of the ideals of the society etc) than a actual human being. Otherwise the chances of personality cults etc - Chavez, Stalin, Putin... - increases. And there is a personality cult around the Queen, however benign. And ... Trump has always tried to create and rely upon a personality cult for his BS. America is falling for it, it seems.

</comment><comment><USER16> You insensitive clod! Today is Canada's birthday.

<comment><USER17> Happy hat-birthday America!</comment></comment>