Leaked email from United Airlines CEO blames passenger for violent removal - <AUTHOR> http://resistancereport.com/class-war/united-airlines-ceo-blames-passenger/ <comment><USER2> This e-mail illustrates the complete imbalance of the "contract" of carriage between passenger and airline, which is compounded by the Federal Aviation Regulations that give the crew ultimate power even when there's no safety risk[0].

The CEO states that the flight was 'fully boarded' and then later that it was decided to 'deny boarding' to four passengers.

So was it fully boarded or not? It doesn't really matter, the airline can change its language as it sees fit, to achieve its desired business objective and the customer has no recourse.

I'm an aviation enthusiast but I don't fly commercial airlines any more for this reason amongst others.

[0] Because when there's no safety risk they can just escalate until the customer becomes aggravated, and then there's a safety risk.

<comment><USER3> What is the alternative to commercial airlines for someone who isn't crazy rich?

<comment><USER4> High speed rail would kill off a lot of shorter routes, but it just doesn't work in the US for some reason.

When I was in the UK, I took the Virgin Rail from London to Manchester. The additional room and ability to walk around made it so much better than a flight. I would have paid more. The time difference was negligible once you count all the extra screening time for airports.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't work because it's crazy expensive to build tracks, and not cost effective unless you have massive density.

Airlines are better, not just because planes are faster, but because of flexibility. You can find a space somewhere and build a new airport, or add a new runway to an existing airport and use less than one thousandth the land the rail line will require. The planes you fly to one destination can suddenly be switched to fly to almost any another destination, in a day.

Yea, the comfort of trains is better, but thats about it.

<comment><USER6> It's not just about the comfort of seating in a train. It's about not having to queue for 1h at security, being abused by TLA officers, queue again, getting checked, queue again, getting checked, etc. Flying today feels like going to jail.

<comment><USER7> If you have as much commercial pressure in trains as you do in flights, then I'm sure you will be asked to do the same sort of checks, and standing in queues. This happens because flights are an easy target (due to high costs, visibility and more favored view in the public eye). If we had someone attacking train lines because they carried a lot of people, you would have correspondingly sever safety regulations too.

<comment><USER4> I feel like a lot of the security for flights is basically theater now. 9/11 worked because the passengers believed they were being hijacked, and had a reasonable chance of surviving. Most of the procedure is chasing terrorist strategy that isn't going to be used. They've already switched tactics (laptop bombs, for example), and our current approach isn't helping much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they had just increased the compensation passengers would have voluntarily given up their seat, everyone has their price. It didn't even need to be money, free flights, upgrades, it costs them next to nothing, especially when you consider this is still running in the media days later. Everyone hates to hear they overbook flights so you'd think when they get bitten United would take some of the savings made overbooking and spend it when it doesn't work out. At the end of the day I have a sneaking suspicion they'll still be ahead.

<comment><USER9> I believe this is capped at a maximum of $1300. From [1]:

        If it's more than two hours (four hours for international
        flights), or if the airline does not offer alternate
        flights, the compensation is 400 percent of your one-way
        fare, with a $1300 maximum.

[1] [http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2014-09-04/bumped-due- to-o...](http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2014-09-04/bumped-due-to- overbooking-airlines-owe-you-money-not-vouchers)

<comment><USER10> Isn't that their legal obligation though? Certainly they could have offered more considering everyone was seated already, they had the crew for a future flight to transport on time, and everyone was initially unwilling.

I think it's the timing that made things so difficult for them. If they asked me at the gate I'd be willing to take $400 plus flight comps. If it's when I'm already seated on the plane though (and reports said the man taken off was seated and buckled in already), my price goes way up.

One would think that since the crew dropped the ball by pulling people this late they would offer more money to make those guys volunteer happily.

<comment><USER7> The video that was circulating online showed all the passengers seated and buckled up, and the one guy being forcibly ousted from his seat. So yeah...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't anyone with an ounce of PR sense work at this company? No one is impressed by the legal technicalities. No one cares that the internal policies were followed.

If they want to get out ahead of this they need to understand and come to grips with the fact that they are well nigh universally perceived to have been in the wrong.

<comment><USER4> United is somewhat famous, even in the generally unfriendly airline industry, for being ham-handed around PR and customer relations.

See [http://untied.com](http://untied.com), a parody/complaint site.

<comment><USER12> Oddly enough, the actual United website still praises their CEO for winning a PR award.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is what happens when you normalize violence, you focus on the blaming and legal stuff instead and you get people like this CEO but no one is reacting to the fact that a human being has been knocked out, dragged out like an animal for something he didn't have to give up. He had a legitimate reason not to give up his seat, he had patients he needed to see the next day. The airline CANNOT act like the computer is right all the time (they said for randomizing the seats to give up) and they should've been humans to understand and pick someone else or increase their incentives.

Remember, the flight was NOT overbooked. They said they needed to get their four employees to a different state, so they wanted four people off the plane. This is all spinning by the airline, listen to the specifics.

I don't care whose fault it was, there was absolutely no need for that violence in the first place, the escalation was not justified in any situations. The protocol needs to be changed, that's what people need to start asking for. Change the policy to include exemptions such as doctors or others (firefighters, cops, etc), increase the incentives and so on.

The airline should've done its job correctly by informing their customers BEFORE boarding the plane and upping the incentives until it gets their goal. The customers should not be forced to give up what they paid before because the airline screwed up.

I could care less that overbooking is a common thing. The society should not be about protecting the profits of the companies, they should be promoting the humanity and moving it further. This is a huge regression by allowing the companies to have more power.

<comment><USER14> > He had a legitimate reason not to give up his seat

This is true until an officer of the law asked him to get off the plane. Argument time happens before that, and after that in court. But at that point, you're being ordered off a plane by a law enforcement officer. When you don't comply there's only one way for it to proceed at that point.

> The airline CANNOT act like the computer is right all the time

It was the police officers who were right when they ordered the man off the plane.

<comment><USER13> The airline called the cops to enforce its rights; the cops could've ordered everyone off the plane to de-escalate the situation peacefully, which should've be done in the first place due to the space constraint in there causing safety concerns. What if the guy wanted to fight? Other customers could've gotten hurt. I've been in that situation before the cops ordered everyone to disperse first.

They could've listen and ask if anyone else would be willing to give up their seat for the doctor.

There are many options and based on the videos and what the other passengers said, the airline nor the cops gone through all of them before escalating the situation like this.

Sorry, the cops were in the wrong as well. They may have all the laws on their side I'm sure but if we treat cops as right all the time, we normalize their behaviors as acceptable as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure they could have avoided this whole situation by offering the first 4 persons of the airplane, a 1000$ CASH. Instead, their policy is to risk incidents like this, for one simple reason: because they can.

This is what happens when you get monopolies. Come on people, I thought we learned from the ISP monopolies already. Whenever you have limited or No choice: like monopolies, no good can come from it. I'm not surprised by this at all. And, I wouldn't be surprised if we see large increases in air fares above inflation, in coming years, as airlines consolidate their monopolistic powers. It won't be too long untill they're competing with Comcast and At&t for worst customer service.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love how they say he was advised that he was "denied boarding." Here's a tip: If I'm in a seat, you've already let me board. And if you planned poorly then that isn't my problem.

Unlike any other industry of which I am aware, airlines are unbelievably skilled at making their problems their customers problems and then not apologizing for it.

<comment><USER5> 10,000 flights a day, 365 days a year, sometimes the most improbable things happen.

And once you are in your seat, doesn't mean you can't be asked to leave.

[http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne- county/201...](http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne- county/2017/02/06/detroit-metro-passenger-taken-plane/97552370/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The fact that the airline technically didn't do anything illegal here really speaks to the lack of consumer protection laws in this country.

<comment><USER5> Airlines overbook because people don't show up for flights.

Overbooking means airlines can offer passengers refundable tickets.

Occasionally they get it wrong and have too many people show up. So they offer compensation to get people to voluntarily give up seats. If they can't get people to voluntarily give up seats they have the right to pick who to deny service to (but by law have to pay specific compensation to).

It's a system that works well. It keeps planes as full as possible. It keeps fares as low as possible.

I'm not sure it should change based on one guy who decided he was too important to accept being bumped.

<comment><USER18> >Airlines overbook because people don't show up for flights.

That's false. They overbook because it makes them more money and for some reason people just accept it. Pretty much no other industry could get away with doing that to its customers.

Imagine the shit storm that would have unveiled if some random movie theatre sold 110% of its seats for the midnight premier of Star Wars VII and subsequently physically removed people from their seats because their employees also wanted to see the movie and they sold too many tickets.

<comment><USER19> Hotels do this all the time. They book over 100% occupancy and usually someone cancels at the last minute and there's no problem. If everyone shows up they bump one of the people on the lowest rate. They give them a room at a comparable hotel nearby and some sort of other compensation. Most price- sensitive guests are okay with this trade because they're getting something for free.

They don't have fiascos like this because they aren't foolish enough to let them into the room before removing them. Unsurprisingly, kicking a guest out of a room/plane has a much higher risk of escalation than not letting them in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ignoring the physical assault, this sounds about par for United customer support...

I've been avoiding United for years, but a few years ago, a few friends wanted to be picked up at the airport after United flights. Over 50% of them bought tickets for flights that didn't exist, and were instead consolidated onto other, later, flights.

Airlines should have to pay large multiples of ticket prices (in cash) to passengers that encounter a schedule change or overbooking. As the overbookings increase, the refunds should grow exponentially. (2x if 0.1% are bumped, 4x if 0.2, then 8x, 16x, etc).

If they didn't change their behavior, United would have to pay out its market cap in a matter of days, which is exactly what they deserve for systematically abusing customers for at least a decade.

<comment><USER4> Jimmy Kimmel pointed out the main reason why they get away with this.

 _"The next time we book a flight, it doesn't matter if it's United or Delta or American, if one of those flights is a dollar less than the other one, that's the one we'll pick. They know this. That's why we're stuck with them."_

I don't understand the dynamics of how it ended up this way. Air travel used to be a luxury, and had fairly high margins. The race to the bottom has inspired a lot of terrible practice...unbundling things like "baggage fees", pushing load factors beyond what's reasonable, increasingly smaller seats, etc.

<comment><USER21> One word: deregulation.

It's been a very sharp double-edged sword: on the one hand, it gave us effective competitors like Southwest and jetBlue forcing the "legacy" carriers to compete on price and routes, enabling far more people to be able to fly. On the other, it caused the legacy carriers compete on price, not service (the only thing they could really compete on before deregulation).

Personally, I fly Southwest and jetBlue when I'm in the US, but to get there, I end up on Delta/KLM/Air France. The prices are usually around what the legacy carriers are, but they have pretty much maintained the level of service they started with (Southwest famously never had meal service, only packets of peanuts). I think because they never got into the habit of cutting back a little bit each year, they haven't gotten into the same downward spiral the legacy carriers seem to have.

<comment><USER22> Deregulation is the reason the middle class can afford to fly at all. Pre- deregulation, a Boston-LA flight would be $500 in 1978 dollars.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, but pre-deregulation there were plenty of seats for employees and dependents to fly and airlines were making money. Airlines didn't have to have police with rubber hoses beat randomly selected passengers until they could be dragged off the plane. Source: dad was a middle-class airline employee during this period. I flew on his pass. Could not wear tights, though. I am currently a middle-class schmuck. Don't fly because I'd rather stab myself in the eye..and, oh, can't afford to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone explain how this was an "oversales" situation since the plane was actually fully booked and not over sold, and with that how United's action didn't violate the law.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-250](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/part-250)

[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?packageI...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/pagedetails.action?packageId=CFR-2001-title14-vol4&granuleId=CFR-2001-title14-vol4-sec250-2a&collectionCode=CFR&browsePath=Title+14%2FChapter+II%2FSubchapter+A%2FPart+250%2FSection+250.2a&collapse=true&fromBrowse=true)

<comment><USER25> It simply wasn't - until United's crew members came on board. And United put prioritize employees over its boarded customers (if there are going to bump passengers out, they should never issue boarding pass in the first place).

<comment><USER24> Reading the law, it seems very much like prioritizing employees over passengers is actually illegal.

<comment><USER26> I don't actually think so. Prioritising employees may very well be essential to the continued or optimal operation of your airline.

For example, getting person A to a city so they can crew in place of a sick employee, where otherwise we would have a plane with no pilot.

<comment><USER24> > Prioritising employees may very well be essential to the continued or > optimal operation of your airline

But that doesn't seem to be legal. It wasn't an oversold flight and the rule is "In the event of an oversold flight, every carrier shall ensure that the smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space on that flight are denied boarding involuntarily."

The airline didn't do that because ensuring the "smallest practicable number of persons holding confirmed reserved space" would mean the non-flight employees get bumped not the passengers.

<comment><USER26> Their claim is that rules for what happens to passengers in the case of an oversold flight shouldn't apply, because this flight wasn't oversold and incorrectly boarded.

Instead, employees never count towards overselling in the flight, but if their aren't enough employee-only seats, they'll take a customer seat instead.

Regardless, this is all a civil matter, and in civil matters you do not have the right to physically fight with staff or the police because you aren't getting your way. Instead, you go to court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Relevant info: [https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly- rights](https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/fly-rights)

Short version: if bumped, you're legally entitled to a cash payout equal to 2x fare cost.

<comment><USER28> 4x up to $1350 if the delay is more than 4 hours, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I seriously can't understand what kind of mental gymnastics this airline management is doing in order to justify in their heads that this is just fine.

Even if the law is on their side, they still overbooked the plane by themselves, they still let everyone check in, they still let everyone in onboard and they still forcibly removed some random paying passenger just because someone on their staff wanted/needed (anyone can clarify this part?) to board.

Here is an idea for United (your HR department can contact me, I'm available to hire for 50% of your CEO and I easily come up with much better ideas):

1 - you just have to simply get the attention of the passengers on the plane (if you can be a bit smart and do it OUTSIDE the plane it's even better).

2- keep increasing the compensation you give one (or the needed) of them in order for them to catch a later flight.

Sooner or later someone would just accept the compensation. Also, that compensation wouldn't be anything special anyway since you have a plane full of people competing for it. The passenger would be happy, United would get what it wanted and you wouldn't have this media shitstorm in your hands.

Yes... it's really _that_ simple United (again, tell your HR department I'm available for hire).

<comment><USER5> They should have increased compensation. I'm wondering if they have a company limit of $800.

The reason this happened is they had another crew that missed their flight and needed to get to Lousville in time or another plane load of passengers would be stuck on the tarmac.

<comment><USER23> I've read somewhere (can't find the link now) that the subject aircrew was from an associate airline (United Express--different operator than United who also operates regional jets for American and others, so not even technically their own employee. Other plane would not have been stuck on the tarmac. The crew had to get to Louisville that night to meet crew rest requirements. So that flight could have been cancelled/delayed hours in advance if no crew was available to fly it. The owners of that crew had other methods available to get that crew to Louisville, UA did not have to accommodate them on a fully booked flight, and in fact could not legally do so. I personally think there must have been some hanky-panky going on between members of the two flight crews. I can't think of any other reason UA would bend over backwards to fuck this up so badly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I feel the current system of overbooking and how it is "regulated" is backwards, and airlines should rethink. Perhaps they could do some sort of an auction without a maximum. It is their problem after all, and a market mechanism seems a reasonable way to deal with this. Sometimes this would mean someone who does not care as much will gladly take $150 as compensation. Other cases might lead to much higher numbers.

The next bit will probably not make me particularly popular, seeing most of the reactions to this debacle, but here goes.

The airplane itself is not a suitable place for any form of protest. No ifs, buts or anything else.

Once the flight personnel asks you to leave the airplane, you leave. Take the fight outside of the airplane, in court or wherever or however you deem appropriate. But not on the plane. Your work/patients/personal tragedy is in no way relevant. If you disagree with the service offered, don't use it. Vote with your feet and your wallet. Don't claim you have no alternatives or whatever. Society does not owe you your preferred lifestyle in any way.

If this guy refused to leave after he was asked to do so, according to the rules het agreed by upon entering an agreement, and I would be delayed by the ensuing situation, I would even consider pursuing some form of legal action towards him.

Having said all that, I do feel the way commercial air travel is organised these days is beyond ridiculous. I therefore avoid it whenever and however I can. If more people did that, it would have changed by now. People don't, so it doesn't. Because most just feel entitled to whatever they feel entitled to, without any basis. Fuck them.

Oh, and screw airlines too.

<comment><USER31> The problem with your logic is giving private companies complete rights over your physical person once you enter their plane will (and does as shown by the incident) lead to abuse for profit.

There was no security issue, there was no emergency, there was no legitimate reason to remove this person from the plane. The abuse and physical harm of a passenger was done entirely in the name of saving a few dollars by not sending their staff on another flight.

This was wrong and it was an abuse of the security personal to enforce their monetary needs.

Separately, the security personal should be fired -- for also being utterly unprofessional, unable to read the scenario, and reacting with unnecessary force.

<comment><USER5> The plane couldn't leave until this person left. So there was a plane full of people who couldn't leave because of this jerk.

And he wasn't abused. He was told to leave multiple times by airline crew as well as security. He refused every time and forced security to drag him out. Whereupon he accidentally hit his face on an arm rest.

It's not abuse for profit. We all benefit from cheaper refundable fares from the overbooking system. We also benefit from having our flights not be canceled when the air crew isn't able to show up on time.

<comment><USER31> The plane absolutely could have left, entirely full of ticketed passengers. United held the plane to force this scenario -- since they wanted to replace ticketed paid passengers with their own staff to fly for free.

<comment><USER32> A pilot will not leave if they have a passenger on board who refuses to follow instructions by the crew. If you feel like you are treated unjustly (which might very well be the case here), take the fight off the plane.

<comment><USER31> Really? Would a plane not leave if the crew requested you remove your clothes and fly naked? Would it not leave if they forced you to fight another passenger?

There was no safety issue, and the crew only has power over you in the event of an issue of safety. There was no such issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Rough. I can see where he's coming from though. This was a private email to employees, and in that context he definitely needs to be a cheerleader for them.

Overbookings are industry standard, and they called security for someone who wouldn't leave. "Correct" protocol.

I think what most likely happened is the security guard that has been placed on leave did his job very poorly. As soon as he hit the passenger his coworkers probably thought "Uh oh. We need to just get him out of here before this gets worse. Because this is not what's supposed to happen."

It's obvious to us though that calling security is a way to make ALL your customers unhappy, and should be avoided at whatever cost. They should have just kept raising their offer for passenger's seats, that would be the better protocol.

<comment><USER34> If you are the CEO of a public company, you know anything you write at all@<your_company> is, most likely, public record.

"They were just following protocol" is the new "Befehl ist Befehl" \- also known as Nurember defense [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders)

The fact that a defenceless man has left a plane covered in blood should give everyone pause. They followed orders is a very poor response.

<comment><USER33> My comment was not meant to suggest that what happened was right.

My comment was meant to suggest that anger at the CEO for supporting his employees, who only called security, and didn't beat the guy up themselves, is misplaced. UA screwed up, but the email wasn't what went wrong.

The UA employees followed protocol by calling security. Protocols are generally in place for a reason, and they can be reworked. I don't think comparing overbooking to German soldiers entering a plea against war crimes is a good analogy.

<comment><USER34> We can argue what "be a cheerleader for them[employees]" means. If I were a United employee, I'd not be impressed by my employer. I'd feel ashamed of being part of an organization that has managed to escalate a logistical problem (because that's what we are talking about) into violence. I'd like to be proud of my employer and, today, I'd not feel great knowing my company is ok with beating up a harmless man. I'd seriously question the ethics and core value of my employer. As an employee, I'd like to know that /something/ went wrong in that situation - and we do not stand for violence. Frankly, that would cheer me up.

As comparing overbooking to German soldiers - the Nuremberg defense, despite originated from Nazi's trial, refers today to any account where "I was just following orders". It refers to /any/ situation where someone claims unaccountability because "it is the protocol". This is exactly the case. If the protocol accounts for beating up a passenger, are the employees unaccountable just because "that's what the manual says"? No, they are not. They are human beings and they could say "fuck the protocol". There are a million other ways to handle a logistical problem without the use of violence.

<comment><USER33> Ironic. I agree with your sentiment but find the opposite conclusion.

If I were a United employee I would also not be impressed. UA is now instantly associated with violence.

You want to know that something went wrong and that UA doesn't stand for violence, as most other employees would.

But that's what the letter's saying...

He says it right here:

He was approached a few more times after that in order to gain his compliance to come off the aircraft, and each time he refused and became more and more disruptive and belligerent. Our agents were left with no choice but to call Chicago Aviation Security Officers to assist in removing the customer from the flight. He repeatedly declined to leave. Chicago Aviation Security Officers were unable to gain his co-operation and physically removed him from the flight as he continued to resist - running back onto the aircraft in defiance of both our crew and security officials.

It's very clear to me that UA did not condone or suggest the violence against the passenger. The CEO's description of the events makes it clear to employees that this situation escalated out of control after they passed it off to security.

Just because you can apply it doesn't mean you should. You really need to define what protocol they have that you hate so much. The guard that attacked the passenger was placed on leave. Suggesting the violence wasn't protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> While I'm sure it's possible an employee forwarded this email without official authorization, it is unlikely this email was written without the expectation that it would eventually make its way into the press. IOW, it's been written with the public as its ultimate audience, I wouldn't assume that it has anything that the CEO didn't want the world to know.

</comment><comment><USER36> As it turns out the explanations are completely false, as in, not based on facts:

a. It wasn't overbooked. It was apparently exactly 100% booked and filled. Four paying customers were replaced by four non-paying crew. That is not an overbook situation, so United's entire rule 25 in the contract of carriage doesn't apply.

b. The removed customer didn't violate a single listed reason under rule 21 of the contract of carriage. Where else in the contract is passenger removal permitted?

c. Even if it were an overbooking, the airline's contract only says boarding can be denied. It doesn't say anything about rescinding an authorization to board, i.e. changing their mind.

What's going on here, are unwritten rules that they just made up out of thin air, convinced the police they exist, and got the police to do their dirty work. That rule is "upon refusal to comply with a polite request, the airline will petition an ignorant police force to (violently) remove the passenger from the plane."

This perverted, uncivilized, unwritten rule needs to be challenged. I hope this passenger takes them to court without settling. It needs to become part of the public record. If he settles, the details will get buried behind a non- disclosure agreement, and we won't actually learn that it's the airline who violated their own contract of carriage, and the police almost certainly broke the law not just their policies, in physically removing this person from the plane.

And unfortunately most of the media has spread false information by saying that the airline can have a person thrown off a plane for pretty much any reason, which is only true if you agree. If you look at the written contract, removal in this case is not supportable, even with a very vivid imagination.

</comment><comment><USER37> I just wish people would stop repeating that this was an overbooking issue, it wasn't. Customers were being forced off the plane to allow employees on after the fact. That has nothing to do with overbooking.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't matter. Airline can remove anyone they want from a flight for any reason. They had to get another air crew to louisville or another flight would be stuck on the tarmac full of passengers.

<comment><USER37> It absolutely matters. One is an incorrect statement and the other isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Overbooking is an indefensible practice. You sell a service that you knowingly have no intention to provide to people who base their travel plans on that expectation. This is like playing Russian roulette with your customers. No sympathy for United.

<comment><USER24> How is this an over sold (overbook) situation? The flight was not overbooked. It was United that added employees that shouldn't have and I'm more and more convinced they did it illegally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Airlines are the worst.

<comment><USER39> What most people (and the news) don't seem to realise is that airlines are the worst because of market forces. There is very little brand loyalty in general for airlines so small changes in prices have a large difference and they've found the there just isn't a large market for a better airline with significantly higher cost.

<comment><USER40> For recreational travelers I am inclined to agree with you. Yet for business travels, which are the backbone of most airlines, they are very brand loyal. They will contort their schedule and deaden their pain threshold to no ends to fly their preferred airline. Also price isn't a key driving decision for them, if one airline is $100 less on a given flight but the more expensive flight is still "in policy" they will go with the more expense flight on their preferred carrier.

I am a weekly business travel as are all my peers so this is purely my observations from 15+ years of frequent business travel.

<comment><USER39> That's true and it would be interesting to see an airline catering more to them but that's not the case for the majority of consumers and it would be unlikely that an airline could fill a plane if a seat cost much more. The trend in airlines currently is actually providing cheaper and less services

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Seriously, next time this happens how about raising the compensation for someone willing to take the later flight.

The Aircrew could announce on the PA that "we're very sorry that the fligth will be be delayed but we're overbooked and still looking for X ppl willing to take the next flight. We're offering a X $ compensation for your trouble."

Then you just increase X until you will find people willing to take the deal.

Idiots.

<comment><USER5> They went up to $800 and got no takers. $800 is what United has to pay for involuntarily bumping someone. So clearly United company policy is to not pay anything above that (other airlines will). This is what bit them in the ass here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> United used to only break guitars

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

Now they break passengers, too.

</comment><comment><USER43> This whole situation reads like a playbook for how to have to resign from a CEO position.

<comment><USER25> Or the UAL's board should remove and "re-accommodate" somewhere outside of UAL's leadership team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's time to finally have an air passenger bill of rights as law!

</comment><comment> tuna-piano How to fix this problem:

1\. Hand out prefilled in vouchers/checks to all the passengers with the amount filled in, which become valid when redeemed at the counter. There's an irrational human thing that people hate losing something they have more than they like gaining something[1], so helping to feel like they are losing the $800 voucher by not redeeming it would be more beneficial. I imagine that having the (fake) voucher/check in their hand would increase voluntary rates by a lot (and lower the compensation the airlines would need to pay), while only increasing some paper printing costs.

\--- Other ideas \---

1b. Add in language during ticket purchase saying "To keep prices low, bla bla bla, 1 in 20,000 passengers may be unable to fly. Purchase protection from this event for $1". The passengers that don't purchase that protection would then be eligible for denied boarding, but at least they had more of a choice. Although, it still feels like "guaranteed seat" should just be included by default when you purchase a ticket (as I type this, it feels insane that "guaranteed seat" would be an upsell... but that seems to be the case).

1c. Offer more in compensation to passengers (obvious). This is not like eminent domain, where you need 100% of people in a given area to agree to something. You only need 4/100 passengers to agree to something, it truly can work like an auction.

\--- Other thoughts \---

1\. Everyone is blaming United for this event, but is there a different US airline who this event couldn't have happened to? They all have involuntary boardings, and presumably if you choose not to go peacefully, the airline will involve law enforcement. The only reason people leave peacefully when they don't want to is because they know the airline has the ultimate physical control.

2\. Jimmy Kimmel mentioned it, but you just cannot imagine this happening in any other industry. Being kicked out of a restaurant table after being seated, being kicked out of a hotel room just checked into, etc.

3\. The management of United seems completely out of touch with sentiment and reality, given their statements. Using the word "re-accomodate" in a three sentence statement seems like a symptom of a larger problem... it should have been obvious how people would react to that. I believe they are so deep into their philosophy of "this is how the industry works" that they have lost sense of the bigger customer picture. It's really as simple as: He bought a confirmed ticket with real money->boarded the plane->told ticket is no longer valid and kicked off. No amount of industry financial rationalization will change that.

4\. This is still a rare issue, only about 1 in 15,000 flyers in the US is involuntarily denied boarding[2]. That said, United has 5x the rate as Delta, so this problem is not inherently terrible everywhere in the industry. Worth noting that this flight was operated by Republic, not United.

\--Citations--

[1] [https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-buyers-and-sellers-inherently- di...](https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-buyers-and-sellers-inherently-disagree-on- what-things-are-worth)

[2][http://6331-presscdn-0-25.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp- content/u...](http://6331-presscdn-0-25.pagely.netdna-cdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2016_12_26-B6DBs.jpg)

</comment><comment> benji-york I honestly don't understand the outrage. A person was legally required to do something he didn't want to do, he refused to relent and escalated the situation. The passenger is the only person I see as having done anything wrong here.

I don't claim that there aren't better ways to handle the situation, but I also don't see any wrongdoing in how this shook out.

<comment><USER45> > A person was legally required…

The law is not always just. At one point it was illegal for women to vote, for minorities to work for free, for nations to invade others, etc.

A man bought a ticket, was seated in his paid for ticket, then instructed that he didn't really purchase that seat and must leave. What makes this legal? Likely some sub-clause in the 4 point typeface on the back of the ticket? Are you ok with being forcibly evicted from your apartment because there is some sub-clause that allows the landlord to evict you if his kin/employee needs a room? That isn't allowed because that happened in our past and our laws correct that misbehaviour. Perhaps our laws need to be revised again?

<comment><USER26> > Are you ok with being forcibly evicted from your apartment because there is > some sub-clause that allows the landlord to evict you if his kin/employee > needs a room?

Yes.

Partly because my parents had that own sub-clause in their tenancy agreement and exercised it to allow _me_ to move back home when I really needed it.

It's a common sub-clause permissible in cases where the rental property is part of the primary residence. It was added because getting into a situation where your own family cannot live with you because of an existing lease is.... awkward.

People who get married and need a tenant to move out, would instead have to move out of their own houses and rent an apartment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think the video of this incident is frankly disgusting, but it's not clear without more context why the situation escalated to the degree it did. For example, UA fly another plane 3 hours 20 minutes later to the same destination (which is to say, a very reasonable and perfectly expectable delay in any situation involving air travel), why did the doc need to be on exactly that plane, and why did the UA staff also have to be on exactly that plane?

One point in favour of UA though, is that they're perfectly within their right to deny boarding for any reason whatsoever. Yes, it's completely a dick move on their part, but just because they're acting like dicks does not give a passenger the right to refuse disembarkation, it's not his aircraft.

FWIW I 100% think the passenger was mistreated regardless, just saying there aren't enough facts to pass judgement so easily

<comment><USER47> He was a Dr. going to work

<comment><USER5> He is allegedly a doctor, not a demigod. Someone else can cover his shift.

<comment><USER48> If i have an appointment to see a specialist that i've been waiting months for, another doctor can't just 'cover his shift'</comment></comment></comment></comment>


» I'm deleting my Facebook page today Calacanis.com - <AUTHOR> http://calacanis.com/2010/05/21/im-deleting-my-facebook-page-today/

<comment><USER2> Who cares?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Additionally, Facebook has become a waste of time for me. "

And writing this blog post wasn't?

</comment><comment><USER4> 9 month old news? I'm clearly missing something.

<comment><USER4> ashh yes. I was missing something. Context is everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He also officially quit blogging a couple of years ago, too. Quitters never quit.

</comment><comment><USER6> to paraphrase John C. Dvorak: the internet is a finicky group. People will leave facebook when the next-big-thing arrives.

At one time, MySpace seemed too big to fail.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised to discover that there's a jasonnation.

</comment><comment><USER8> What a Drama Queen</comment>


Ask HN: Personal Server Recommendations - <AUTHOR>

I'm moving abroad for an indeterminate amount of time, and would like to have a personal test server setup for non-commercial use - just playing around with things.  Would also like a separate personal file server with a ton of storage.
I thought about getting a physical box for a while, but this hardly seems worth it anymore.  Am currently settling around the idea of just standing up a Linode instance for the test server, but was wondering if anyone knew of additional solutions.
For the file server, the only place I know to get that much cheap storage is Amazon - definitely interested in alternatives
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=
Test Server
Reqs | Support Linux images -- SU access -- No specific hardware reqs
Usage | Standing up tools to test/play with (Phabricator, git server, Diaspora seed, etc.)
</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>=
File Server
Reqs | Support Linux images -- SU access -- Lots of storage (1 TB+) -- Immediate access to files (Glacier won't work)
Usage | Torrenting (Mostly media - nothing morally illicit, although I guess that's subjective - maybe should look at non-US hosting?) -- Long term file storage </comment><comment><USER2> I made a move around 10 years ago. My needs were simple - email and html. But where I was going was hardly internet friendly.

I may get a kicking for saying this, and it may not be your need but may fit the needs of some other HN users viewing this (shared hosting options often get criticised); I have found Dreamhost, over these 10 years, able to consistently work well for my three needs: IMAP, SSH and hosting HTML files (FTP too). They're sufficiently big to stay in business, while sufficiently small to fly under the radar of country or corporate based firewalls.

These days I have a DigitalOcean instance. Maintaining a server securely is a full time job. You seem OK with that - a lot of people may not be - so just dropping this 'droplet' in with the mix.

<comment><USER3> Dreamhost in my mind is associated with horror stories, but I've never used them.

I have a few personal VPS servers, but still do all my email, static site hosting, and DNS etc through ASmallOrange. For $50/yr I don't have to think about those three things.

<comment><USER4> My brother convinced me to move to Dreamhost a couple of years ago after giving up my Bytemark dedicated host (Atom). I haven't had cause to regret and he's been with them much longer. The unlimited hosting tariff is really good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Usually I'd recommend OVH's budget line called Kimsufi [0] but unfortunately they completely split it off the OVH brand a few months ago which means there's no support mail/ticket support any more. Just a forum [1] which two mostly absent OVH support people are supposed to deal with customer support (You don't have a private way of contacting them, you just have to post your nick handle/order number and hope they'll stumble upon it.

To get a better picture of how low budget their whole operation is: It's currently impossible to download PDF invoices. They are working on a fix since February 2014 now. [3]

They also say it'll be ready to go in 120 seconds (according to their order page), what they don't tell you is that you have to go through "verification" which takes about 3 weeks (You have to scan some documents, utility bill,...). Once you are verified you are allowed to order (It's possible to order before and then your order is stuck. But that's another story.)

I actually ordered two servers a month ago and the order is still "processing" and the other one is "processing payment" (Which is apparently a manual process).

So if you actually want storage and a decent powered server I'd suggest to look elsewhere or try their higher priced lines [2]. (Apparently they come with support).

The good thing about OVH is that they offer a lot of linux images out of the box.

[0] [http://www.kimsufi.com/en/](http://www.kimsufi.com/en/)

[1] [http://forum.kimsufi.com/](http://forum.kimsufi.com/)

[2] [http://www.soyoustart.com/en/](http://www.soyoustart.com/en/)

[3] [http://forum.kimsufi.com/showthread.php?22440-Malformated- PD...](http://forum.kimsufi.com/showthread.php?22440-Malformated-PDF-quot- facture-quot)

<comment><USER6> The support has become awful. At least, what you can see in public is. The "forum support" makes it quite transparent what to expect. Also, it makes it quite transparent with what kind of sysadmins you share your hosting location (and network infrastructure). Personally, I decided that the risk of not getting support for the duration of a whole week, and the fact that there is no SLA whatsoever, wasn't worth the price advantage. I have some friends and private projects plus my own mail setup on my server and I wasn't comfortable with the idea of staying there. Other hosters are only a tiny bit more expensive and provide better support. OVH's own so-you-start line of servers has SLA and much better support, so it isn't even needed to leave OVH (which I did nevertheless, though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Personally, I use 3 independent providers (Debian on all):

\- prgmr.com ~$10/mo US.

\- digitalocean.com ~$5/mo US.

\- binarylane.com.au ~$5/mo Australia. SSD 512MB/20GB/100GB transfer. Very nice remote "console" access; takes a couple days to remove ssh/smtp egress filtering.

The ramnode.com OpenVZ-based RAID10 SSD-Cached service might give you the extra storage you need at a good price point.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely forgot about [http://prgmr.com/](http://prgmr.com/). Thanks for bringing it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Personally, I use an OVH/Kimsufi server. 10 Euro/mo for AtomD425 CPU, 4GB Ram and 2TB HDD, 100Mbit/s, 4 IPs.

I use it as backup and online storage, to host a few small shitty websites (behind cloudflare) and used to use it as a minecraft server.

While the CPU is a lot weaker than something like digitalocean, I generally need memory and storage a lot more.

<comment><USER9> Seconded! Happy Kimsufi customer here. I have a few DigitalOcean droplets for customer sites, but after checking the stats and almost never seeing the CPU(s) spike over 50% (if that much) I bought a Kimsufi with 1TB storage and 16GB (non-ECC) RAM and it way outperforms the DO droplets' response time for static assets. I now use it as a static file server for the DO Droplets, plus personal storage.

The network speeds are great and constant, DDOS protection included as standard, and I'm on Gigabit fiber plus close to France so couldn't be happier.

The non-ECC RAM could be a problem over time, but I keep multiple redundant backups and test them regularly, so the small chance of data corruption would only be a nuisance.

Also, the next level up as far as hardware quality is the 'So You Start' range, so look at that too. Depends on your budget and proximity to their French or Canadian data centres.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use Ramnode to play around in. Cheap and they have pretty good support. Whenever I need help I just send in a ticket and they usually respond instantly, even on weekends. Also ton of flexibility with your machine. Can install any linux distro and do whatever you want on it.

<comment><USER11> Another recommendation for Ramnode, love them.

For your storage needs you might be better looking for an OVH/kimsufi deal for a cheap Atom server.

Also, haven't used their storage plans but VPSDime have large disk VPS that work out about half the cost of AWS S3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For VERY small use cases I would recommend a VPS, however because you're suggesting that you want a lot of storage then I would recommend at least a dedicated server but I would keep buying your own hardware in the back of your mind. I'll talk about this below.

VPS: If you're suggesting hosting a few websites and a small amount of email then a VPS is fine. Prometeus is my favourite for reliability and price. However bare in mind that with a VPS you're host can look into your files whenever they like (mounting the image/device if Xen/KVM) and just entering your container if it's OpenVZ. So for sensitive data I don't recommend a VPS. Also you may be put under restrictions if you max out your CPU and memory usage for long periods of time.

Dedicated Server: This is good for large storage and if you want unrestricted CPU and memory usage. You can obviously virtualize your own servers onto this and you can also run Windows and Linux (+ OS X). This has all the benefits of having your own physical box/colocation plus you get free hardware replacements.

Own hardware: If you're happy with just relying on your network connection then you can host it at home with a small quarter rack and just put a rack mount server in there. There are some benefits with this. If you're just torrenting, hosting email and a light web server or even just for testing you can get an old server off eBay or craigslist for next-to-nothing and you have the benefits of owning the hardware and putting in as many HDDs as you like. If you're coloing then you also get a very good network connection and reliable uptime, and a public-facing IP address. Oh and having your own physical hardware is cool, and colocation is even more cool and fun to do!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have any experience with colocation, but it's incredibly interesting to me. I actually _love_ the idea of having my own hardware. I actually was searching for storage units that had network drops (couldn't find any). The noir lover in me gets off on the idea of a 5x5 storage unit with just a small 4U cabinet against the back wall.

How does one get started with colocation?

<comment><USER13> It's as simple as doing a search for 'data center near X'. Call up their sales office, and ask them how much per month for ping, power, and cooling. You may also be able to find VARs that lease out racks 1 or 2U at a time for cheap as well. Shop around, there's HUGE variance in pricing in this space. It also couldn't hurt to let the salesdroids know you're shopping for best price as well. I doubt there's a ton of wiggle room for a handful of U, but if you're talking a half rack or more they're generally willing to begrudgingly work with you on price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> File Server, way back when, when I used to torrent the main place to get a server was OVH. As far as I know that's still hotbed for that sort of server. Pretty cheap and tons of space.

Digital Ocean are pretty kickass for a test server. I moved to them from Rackspace Cloud who again are pretty kickass.

<comment><USER15> Kimsufi (which is a "budget" dedicated server brand from OVH) is great, just don't download movies/music from public trackers like thepiratebay. A few DMCAs and they'll shut you down. Private trackers are fine (not Demonoid tho, if that's still even a thing). Foreign movies/music/anime from public(-ish) trackers should be fine. I used to host a huge FTP repository that was only accessible from my university's campus network there and never had any problems. Please be aware though that Kimsufi uses really cheap hard drives (Maxtor) that have a tendency to fail under high load (torrents). I ran a ZFS mirror across multiple drives, so wasn't much of an issue for me. Just don't get a server with only one drive and no backups.

<comment><USER15> I should add that ZFS has some sort of weird IO overhead that has a tendency to quickly chew through most very cheap hard drives. If you use a different filesystem (I wouldn't), ymmv. Typical support turnaround for a failed drive at Kimsufi is around 2 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can get a VPS for the playing around stuff, but storage is very expensive. For that I would recommend to get something like a Synology/Qnap/Drobo and ask to stick it in the basement of a friend. Unless you constantly load stuff on and off it they will hardly notice that it's there.

</comment><comment><USER17> Another thumbs up for Digital Ocean. They even have a web-based terminal in case you're not at a machine that has your SSH keys. I have one of their $5/month plans and it seems faster than my old AWS micro instance.

Also, check their twitter account. They often post coupon codes.

<comment><USER18> Ditto, I've had a DO box for a few months now. I use it for hosting personal projects via GitLab, and it's been stellar. They even had a pre-configured droplet :)

<comment><USER19> Can you run GitLab on a $5 box?

<comment><USER18> I'm doing so: [http://gitlab.duncanmsmith.com/public/projects](http://gitlab.duncanmsmith.com/public/projects)

My actual site is hosted on GH Pages, so I don't need that much power to host GitLab itself - 20GB storage and 1TB transfer is more than enough for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Well, I have used Linode but then switched to Digital Ocean, since it was much cheaper and only needed a small server.

Recently I got a Cloudatcost offer which is a once in a lifetime payment, with the 50% discount offer. I got 2 servers in cloudatcost, a Developer1 and a Developer3.

<comment><USER21> Wow, I hadn't heard of CloudatCosts either, I can't find any information about managing your server, can you pick any image you want? what's the dashboard like? support for custom kernels?

<comment><USER20> The dashboard is simple, power on/ power off the server and info about the ip, root password (which you should disable anyway) and reimage.

You can choose between Debian, Ubuntu and CentOS mostly that I remember. No custom kernels that I know for now if by that you mean a custom distro image. I guess you could download or compile a kernel from sources, install it and reboot... if you screw up just reimage...

About managing your server, you have ssh access so, total freedom and you can find guides/tutorials everywhere on the internet.

<comment><USER21> Thanks, that sounds pretty much exactly what I'd expect, if this gets your recommendation (which it sounds like it does) I think I might be sold (I like the idea of pay once.). Much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yet another Digital Ocean customer. I've got nothing but good things to say about them. I also have a box on linode which have been excellent as well.

Digital Ocean does bill per hour which is a nice plus if you want to test things on different OSes for a short time.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm using Linode and Digitalocean. IMHO Linode is better (performance and support). I had physical node issues with Digitalocean. It's super cheaper but i'm not feeling comfortable.

<comment><USER24> I do the exact same thing (I haven't had issues with DO, though). Production code on Linode, staging code on DO. The Linode "premium" is worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do not forget about Backups. That can easily be the hardest part about the whole project. Sometimes a cheap second server is the easiest approach to that. Arguably, not in the same location.

</comment><comment><USER25> I myself am quite happy with DomainFactory's JiffyBox Service ([http://www.df.eu/](http://www.df.eu/)). They have recent Debian and Ubuntu images and you pay per 0.02Euros/Hour (smallest box, 3 cores 2gb ram 75gb hdd), which amounts to about 15Euros a month. They also claim not to have a traffic limit :D

PS: Just saw that their website is apparently not available in english. my bad :(

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazon EC2 offers one free year for a micro instance for first time accounts.

Otherwise, I have been quite impressed with Digital Ocean as well, cheap and FAST.

</comment><comment><USER27> I use OVH and Ubiquity for dev'ing; with servers in Europe and the US. Both very cheap and cheerful; my aim is to sync/load balance. Just looked at Cloudatcost - sounds great, I'll have to get one of those too!

I don't know about storage.

</comment><comment><USER28> OVH is always the cheapest!

Check their cheap dedicated servers "so you start":

[http://www.soyoustart.com/us/](http://www.soyoustart.com/us/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I like Prometeus.Net, they have good prices and great support. In particular, their XenPower ([http://xenpower.com/](http://xenpower.com/)) line is hard to beat.

</comment><comment><USER30> I use hetzner.de those are very affordable dedicated machines with 2TB+ and 32GB RAM for 50 euro a month.

Also no dataplan limits, and you can buy more IP addresses for 1 euro/month a piece.

</comment><comment><USER31> I use digital ocean for hosting my own website. Works pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER32> go with OVH .</comment>


In Demand  A week inside the future of journalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.cjr.org/feature/in_demand.php?page=all

<comment><USER2> _Most days there were around 270,000 story topics to choose from, typically paying between $3 and $15. In their span and dullness and fascinating particulars, they reflected a more granular portrait of twenty-first-century American interests than the trending search topics on Google or Yahoo ever will. We are not deep in wonder. We are bankrupt and considering divorce in Oklahoma. We want to know how to make money with candy stands at miniature- golf courses. We want do-it-yourself plans for an electric unicycle and for dog wheelchairs. We are curious about Hungarian customs regulations and how to use a spinal-cord monitor during scoliosis surgery. Also, please, we would like instructions on How to Set Up a Pony Ride with No Ponies._

This is the best thing I've seen on CJR in a long time.</comment>


Ask HN: Has the career path from tech journalism to VC always been so linear? - <AUTHOR>

After seeing A16Z, YC, Google Ventures and many others recently bring in writers/bloggers, I'm wondering if this has always been the case in VC or if it's more of a recent trend? <comment><USER2> I have noticed a similar trend. However, I wonder if there's more to this trend than meets the eye. I know for these examples (especially Kyle Russell, Colleen Taylor, Ryan Lawer) a big part of it is the network they have with founders and investors. Since a big part of their job is to write about startups they have a broad knowledge of the tech scene and seem to be extremely good at filtering out the noise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it not possible that they are being hired as PR/marketing members of the VCs?

I see that some tech-journos are quite good at building up their own brands and can then use that to further the interests of the portfolio companies.

They may not actually be hired as VCs and instead work in the back-office as part of marketing/operations.

I'm not sure about what the roles of these journos are, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt.

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps it is similar to hiring former IRS agents in accounting departments.

1\. Established relationships that have worth

2\. Write well about our investments for a few years, and we'll give you a spot once you've paid your dues?

3\. Able to sift through the noise?

</comment><comment><USER5> What journalists have been hired to A16Z, YC and GV?

<comment><USER6> All from TechCrunch:

A16Z: Kyle Russell

YC: Colleen Taylor

GV: MG Siegler, Leena Rao

500 Startups: Ryan Lawler</comment></comment>


New Species of Orangutan Is Rarest Great Ape - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/new-orangutan-species-sumatra-borneo-indonesia-animals/ <comment><USER2> It makes sense that there might be a lack of awareness for a subgroup that maintains a low profile.

Inspection of the skeleton for specific details, and genetic tests prove that while interbreeding is possible, this other group was separated by geography for generations. That's not something that would be immediately obvious by unaided observation.

Their vocalization is different, but a detail like that would be quickly challenged, if put forward as proof on its own.

It's interesting that these subtleties permit the identification of a distinct species. I would have thought deeper, more obvious difference would be required, but I guess this level of taxonomy is mostly just for the sake of utility, when examining specimens.

<comment><USER3> > I would have thought deeper, more obvious difference would be required

What you are witnessing is a small skirmish between the Lumpers and the Splitters [1].

The really interesting thing to me, is that basically everyone in Academia is a Splitter these days except when talking about humans, where everyone suddenly converts to Lumpers.

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

<comment><USER4> That's because being a Splitter brings more status, citations, and a better career.

Academia doesn't value negative results ('we spent years and tons of money on this, but it looks like there's only one species' or 'we found another few homo erectus bone fragments') as high as positive ones ('a new species of great ape' or 'the first evidence for a missing link')

There likely also is bias in what appears in the press. That will affect a layman's perception of the distribution between Lumpers and Splitters.

(For human languages, governments often push towards splitting. "A language is a dialect with an army")

<comment><USER5> > (For human languages, governments often push towards splitting. "A language > is a dialect with an army")

Goes both ways. Nationalists often push towards lumping language varieties spoken inside the country (e.g. calling Low German "German" and not a variety of Dutch); sometimes they also split with the variety spoken in another country (calling Dutch "Dutch" and not a variety of German).

Note: I don't mean to imply anything about the current governments of Germany or the Netherlands, but more about the time around the formation of Dutch and German national identities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It isn't "newly discovered." Even the article title doesn't say that. It is a new species, as in "newly recategorized as a separate species." Big difference, and the title on HN is essentially clickbait.

<comment><USER7> Ok, changed back.</comment></comment>


Mind the Nurture Gap - <AUTHOR> https://blog.saleswhale.com/mind-the-nurture-gap <comment><AUTHOR> I am a software engineer who learnt how to love sales and marketing.

A few months ago, I decided to reach out personally to a few "stale leads" in our database to audit our processes, and manually check if our automation systems were functioning normally.

I got more than a handful of emails responding with replies like -

"Yes, I reached out in April as the team was interested in Saleswhale. But we didn't hear back from your sales team. That said, the team couldn't wait to implement a solution, and have went with another similar vendor."

Which was alarming, to say the least.

So, I wrote a short article chronicling our struggles with the "nurture gap", and how we eventually solved this problem.. with engineering ;)</comment>


Texas Instruments to close two Dallas-area factories - <AUTHOR> https://www.dallasnews.com/business/local-companies/2020/01/22/texas-instruments-to-close-two-dallas-area-factories-in-the-next-three-to-five-years/ <comment><USER2> What is TI's percentage of revenue from chips manufactured in third party fabs (TSMC, ASMC, ...)? Are these jobs really relocating to elsewhere in Texas, it moving to China/Taiwan?

<comment><USER3> > What is TI's percentage of revenue from chips manufactured in third party > fabs (TSMC, ASMC, ...)?

As far as I know, 0%. There might be some legacy stuff from National, though.

> Are these jobs really relocating to elsewhere in Texas, it moving to > China/Taiwan?

Are you saying TI is lying? They explicitly said anyone retained would go to another North Texas fab. Based on the stated closing window I'd wager that at least one of the fab closings will coincide with the opening of the new Richardson fab.

Also, TI owns fabs in China, so if anything moved there it would still be in- house.</comment></comment>


DVD-R discs with 160+ years lifespan - <AUTHOR> http://www.datatresordisc.eu/by-product-dtd.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe this deserves some attention. This is a company based in Czech Republic (Europe) which manufactures and sells DVD-R discs based on metal- ceramic recording layers for long term data storage and archival use. The product was tested by laboratories in Switzerland and guaranteed lifespan is 160 years. Among other things the disk should withstand (as they claim) 15 minutes in boiling water or putting in a freezer. One disk costs about 3€/4$.

They have terribly looking website, but none the less, the product seems very interesting. Notable is that Czech Government uses this technology as part of their backup solution. I discovered it accidently, but I thing it may be interesting in context of recent discussion about backup solutions with regard to Amazon Glacier etc.

(I am not affiliated with the company in any way.)

</comment><comment><USER2> 160 years falls somewhat short of "forever"; as for the claims: how do you test for a 160 year lifespan, and more importantly: how will you read this in 160 years, assuming it _is_ still readable? I have 25-year-old 9" floppy disks, but I have no way to read them - no drives, and even if I scavenged one online, no computers with a compatible interface.

Even though it's an impressive claim, unless they can somehow provide a 160-year lifespan _drive_ , I'm less than impressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems there is some kind of ECMA testing for this, they had the disk at 80 degrees Celsius and 80 % humidity for equivalent of 160 years at normal conditions. Dont ask me more, this is all there was to it in this article: [czech] [http://technet.idnes.cz/cesi-jako-jedini-na-svete-vyrabi- dvd...](http://technet.idnes.cz/cesi-jako-jedini-na-svete-vyrabi-dvd-disky- ktere-vas-dvakrat- preziji-11j-/tec_reportaze.aspx?c=A110502_120308_tec_reportaze_nyv)

You make a good point with the reader problem.

<comment><USER2> Moreover, _data_ compatibility gets hard - who can read EBCDIC-encoded data nowadays? Or even a keybcs2-encoded file written in the T602 editor (a format fifteen years old - and already completely obsolete)?</comment></comment></comment>


WA Senate passes bill to create a European-style consumer-data privacy law - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/senate-passes-bill-to-create-a-european-style-consumer-data-privacy-law-in-washington/ <comment><AUTHOR> In the article, "Senate Bill 5376" hyperlink, opens a short 6 pages PDF entitled "Senate Bill report" that has a summary of the proposed law on page 3 and 4,

The threshold of 100,000 users is interesting, since it's probably to protect startups from too heavy regulation, but not clear if that is 100k DAU or just 100k registered users.

I wonder if other US states have similar laws already, and if they don't, would WA state put itself at risk of seeing fewer startups/small online businesses grow due to burden of regulation and the potential fines?</comment>


Livestreaming Google Chrome Announcement @ 10:30 Pacific - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/googlechrome

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure bets - <USER2> (<http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/p/cloudprint.html>), Chrome App Store (<https://chrome.google.com/webstore/>)

Likely - Chrome OS alpha/beta release (<http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os>)

Speculative - Chrome netbook or tablet released with hardware partner, free or subsidized 'test drive' of Chrome notebooks

<comment><AUTHOR> Watching it live ...

Chrome Browser:

1\. Google Instant baked into the Chrome omnibox -- type one character, favorite page loads

2\. Very fast PDF reader baked into the browser -- can load 1,990 page PDF in less than a second

3\. Hardware (GPU) graphics accelaration in the browser

4\. Chrome beta was V8 engine had 16x better Javascript performance ... today adding 'Crankshaft' to V8, will be 100x faster than IE from 2 years ago (<http://blog.chromium.org/2010/12/new-crankshaft-for-v8.html>)

5\. Sync bookmarks, themes, extensions across machines

6\. Security sandboxing pioneered by Chrome is extended to plugins like Flash and PDF

Chrome Web Store

1\. Helps users find apps, allows developers to get paid; rich interactive apps from NPR, Sports Illustrated, New York Times HTML5 app

2\. Games from EA in Javascript + HTML5 instead of Flash

3\. 120 million regular Chrome users will make this the biggest app store in the world

Chrome OS

1\. "Nothing but the web" -- browser running as close to the hardware as possible

2\. Fast boot, suspend with instant resume, reconnects to network subsecond

3\. "Friends let friends log in" -- share your notebook with other people and preserve everyone's privacy

4\. Offline Google Docs, games, apps -- resync automatically when reconnected

5\. Cloud print (<http://code.google.com/apis/cloudprint/docs/overview.html>)

6\. Partnered with Verizon for pay-as-you-go mobile data

7\. All data on the disk is encrypted by default

8\. Partnered with Citrix for 'Remoting' -- demoed running Excel, SAP, CAD/CAM hosted in the datacenter right in the browser

9\. Notebook pilot program! Jailbreaking built-in!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Real-time Wiki - <AUTHOR> http://document.ly

<comment><USER2> This would be very popular indeed if a WYSIWYG editor was used instead of a markup language.

There has been study after study showing how the wiki markup syntax is a hurdle to participation on wikipedia, to the point where wikipedia is now finally, after 12 years, working on a wysiwyg editor: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/21/jimmy-wales-on-new- editing-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/21/jimmy-wales-on-new-editing- platform-this-is-epically-important/)

There are so many free and open source wysiwyg editors that can be easily plugged into a site: aloha, tinymce, ckeditor, etc.

<comment><USER3> We really need to get people out of the habit of using WYSIWYG editors.

<comment><USER4> This is a very naive view of reality. WYSIWYG editors are superior in almost every way for almost all users. I used to force markdown on people too, but WYSIWYG is really a killer feature for most users. It requires far less learning, the features are more discoverable, it's quicker to edit even after they manage to become proficient with markdown, and there is no mental translation from what they're editing to what it's going to look like. But also other features that you might not immediately think of are very important, such as the ability to copy-paste from their existing word processor documents and preserve markup. Editing rich text with a plain text editor rather than a rich text editor is to most people like editing your photos with a hex editor instead of Photoshop is to you: not the right tool for the job, unpleasant, slow, requires learning, requires mental translation, and can't easily copy paste from existing material.

<comment><USER5> It is comparable to the difference between digital cameras and film cameras. I see results sooner.

Sure, I can take good film pictures if I know the lighting conditions, shutter settings, business about f-stops but being able to see how you failed sooner is a big plus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Got past over-quota issue and gave google permissions, but Chrome OSX shows nothing when you login.

JS console shows:

        Uncaught ReferenceError: goog is not defined socket.js:43

        Uncaught Error: Load timeout for modules: text!templates/context_menu.html require.js:26

<http://requirejs.org/docs/errors.html#timeout>

<comment><AUTHOR> Try refreshing... It's a non-optimized version so it doesn't always load right.

<comment><USER6> Same issue (3 hours later) but now I can't even load the page to logout :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you explain how this is different / better than Google Docs? I can't tell from the home page.

<comment><AUTHOR> If Google docs is an alternative to Word, then this is an alternative to Sharepoint.

As opposed to collaborative document authoring, collaborative knowledge management allows things like collaborative document arrangement, a better permission system, links between documents, better searchability and more.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. Google Docs suffers a lot from discoverability and, while you can collaboratively edit on it, it feels too much like a locked down blob of content and so suffers from a lot of the same problems that Word suffers from (in my experience with it at least): it's hard to know when it's changed; when someone updates it, you get an email; when someone writes something, they have to "share" it with with you before you know it exists; WYSIWYG is a terrible way of editing content.

I'm not sure how many of these problems this solves, but Wikis in general solve many of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this going to be freeium? I really recommend putting a pricing page up even if you don't know what the pricing will be, just to make it clear... hard to even try something (and I want to b/c it looks very useful) without knowing that important detail.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very neat! I have thought quite a bit about how to make wikis easier to work with, but I don't know if I'll need to anymore because you pretty much nailed it! Real-time markdown editing is a great idea.

A few things:

* Making an ordered list right after an unordered one and vice versa doesn't render properly.

* New pages always become children of the first page, and I don't know how to turn them into root pages or make them in the first place.

* Signing out doesn't work.

* Clicking away while editing a page title doesn't save it.

* Public links and history are on top of my wishlist for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh man -- this __almost __fits a perfectly for me. I just wish that reStructured text was supported, but I could live with markdown. Yeah, I'm old-school.

It would be awesome if this service supported dropbox and stored all files there -- using a simple directory structure. This would allow me to edit my files using VIM during the day, and I'd have a super easy search UI.

I currently keep daily notes on dropbox using rst files (one per day) -- so this would fit my workflow perfectly.

<comment><AUTHOR> reStructured text will be eventually supported if people will like document.ly's workflow scheme.

The service should support Dropbox eventually, but the structure of the documents is kind of a problem to arrange as a set of files and folders.

<comment><USER11> Hmm - why would the document structure difficult to map to a filesystem structure? Just map every document type to a folder, and the contents of the documents to individual files in the folder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I signed out of the application it didn't forward me to a logged-out verification page or give me a model that tells me I've signed out. It kind of just hung there without letting me edit anymore. When I sign out I like a very robust verification that tells me I've signed out. It looks great regardless.

</comment><comment><USER13> Over Quota

This application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixing. Strange, I was supposed to get a Google start-up package, apparently that doesn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been seeing demos of this sort of thing since 2003 and yet no real-time collaborative editor has actually caught on. Does anyone have any intuition as to why? I'm baffled - it sounds like a good idea to me.

</comment><comment><USER15> The export feature would be really awesome if it could handle larger documents!

Also, sharing a document with someone else seems to throw an exception when they try to sign in...

</comment><comment><USER16> Finally, the real-time Markdown wiki I've been waiting for. Love it.

What's the business model? I would be sad to see this acquihired and disappear in a puff of smoke.

<comment><AUTHOR> A SaaS freemium model for large teams, and server deployment for large organizations (non-cloud solution).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I get an exception in Opera:

        Uncaught exception: document.body is not defined -- do not create socket from script in <head>.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did not check it on Opera. Will check. Thanks!

In any case, it doesn't load well because it loads a lot of Javascript asynchronously (no production version yet). Just refresh it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there some Open Source solution in the similar spirit as document.ly? Would love this, but has to be running inside the company only.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will provide a hosted solution someday.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, that would be great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also see Etherpad, ShareJS and Hackpad

</comment><comment><USER20> Small nitpick that may affect your search results - your meta tag description is "Bootsrap theme".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love how you improved over bootstrap to create nice and very aesthetically pleasing design.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very cool design and concept. I loved how you used Bootstrap for this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Also the site is apparently "temporarily over quota".

<comment><AUTHOR> Please wait a few minutes, it'll take a few minutes to re-activate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How might this compare with HackPad?

<comment><AUTHOR> The concept isn't much different, but the permission model is. document.ly is very similar to Asana and Trello (allowing every user to participate in multiple projects and inviting anyone in the world to view and edit any document), while Hackpad aims for a standard B2B marketing strategy.</comment></comment>


Who cares if someone hacks my driveway camera? - <AUTHOR> http://sobersecurity.blogspot.com/2016/11/who-cares-if-someone-hacks-my-driveway.html <comment><USER2> >who cares if I'm leaking a small amount toxic chemicals into the environment. It's not very much.

Snowflakes, you can't fine one that will take blame for the avalanche.

</comment><comment><USER3> "4\. Send spam" is moot point. Any email originating from your home's IP will be marked as spam automatically by the major email players and there is very highly possibility that will never reach an inbox.

The biggest problem, in my opinion, is the DDoS attacks.

<comment><USER4> ddos and not browsing one of FBI finest kiddie porn of the week websites?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hacker news for science - <AUTHOR> https://www.peers.science <comment><AUTHOR> I saw this post a few weeks ago someone wanted to have something similar to hacker news but for science related topics.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14734664](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14734664)

I took it upon myself to see how long it would take for me to build the hacker news website.

The stack: \- Scala/ Akka Http \-- ScalaJS / Autowire / Bookpickle \-- Kalium / Salting / Scrypt \-- Bootstrap \- Google GCE \-- Kubernetes / Docker \-- Load balancer \-- Ingress controller/ nginx \-- Let's encrypt SSL

Image size: \- OpenJDK ~ 100mb \- Kalium ~ 150mb \- App ~ 50mb

In all, it took 6 days to complete. The application logic only took 2 days; the longest part was cascading the comments correctly with minimal passes. 2 days was setting up different environments like sbt revolver for html development, docker-compose sbt for integration testing, docker (whisk) unit testing. And 2 days was playing with GCE settings like setting up nameservers, handling naked domain, container-registry, kubernetes/ helm configs.

The features are bare minimum. You can submit posts preprend with "review:" if you want to others to review your manuscript, and "publish:" for showing new papers that have been published. For now post are listed by most recent and comments are ranked by points.

Disclaimer: links are taken from hacker news.

<comment><USER2> This is really really cool man. I'm actually working on something similar for curating learning guides and how to resources (it'll replace the splashpage at www.learnsearch.xyz by the end of the day :) )</comment></comment>


Norwegian government tax portal security scandal - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2162411/norwegian-government-tax-portal-logs-users-kenneth

<comment><USER2> I really hope this change how our politicians view computer applications and electronic data. Last year, they decided to implement the data retention directive (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive>), arguing that the odds of a security hole was close to zero due because "technology development" has removed those holes.

<comment><USER3> > that the odds of a security hole was close to zero due because "technology > development" has removed those holes.

I really wish there were a legally sanctioned way to remove the authority to make meaningful decisions ever again from people who make decisions with that astronomical level of stupidity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is very misleading. They neglected to mention that in Norway your taxes are public information. The tax list is published in the newspapers and online. Anyone can see what everybody else earned and paid in taxes.

Update: 2011 Norwegian Tax List <http://skattelister.no/skatt/>

<comment><USER5> That does not change the fact that Altinn (the website) is a portal for over 700 forms, ranging from changing your home address, signing student loan contracts and applying for social services.

Taxes aren't everything and I really do not care if people see how much money I make, but when something like this happens this easily (this is not the first case of problems with Altinn, although not so severe before) you begin to worry, is accepting the lowest bidding contractor really is the best option for a website that holds the information for nearly every citizen of Norway the best idea?

But on the other hand if the website was run by the private sector the company would have faced bankruptcy a long time ago and we would all be filing our taxes on paper :-/

I do not know what is worse, I would prefer they at least separated different systems so that we did not have a SSO solution for everything. I would much rather have one for taxes, one for forms and documents and one for whatever else, separated by the level of severity if they were to be broken into, or in the case something like this were to happen.

<comment><USER4> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Practical example of a famous quote

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.

\-- Phil Karlton

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, he's not quite right. There are actually _two_ hard things in CS: cache invalidation, naming, and fencepost errors.

<comment><USER6> And regex

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've used Altinn in the past and it's was fantastic. I'd take my chances of being a "Kenneth" than deal with the IRS.

This news may sound sour, but Norway is still light years ahead of anywhere else.

</comment><comment><USER9> The most outragous thing is not the cache/session error, but the fact that they've spent over 170 million USD on a broken system that can't even handle a couple of hundred thousands of users a day.

</comment><comment><USER10> From what I have read from other sources, the actual forms were not available. It was also not possible to perform any actions as this user.

The users were sent to his profile page and was restricted to that page. The only sensitive information that was displayed was his name and social security number (which is bad enough in my opinion)

</comment><comment><USER11> I read another place that there were around 400 000 who tried to enter the system, but anyway. They implemented a "queue", where you had to manually refresh the browser to be able to log in. The whole thing is just crazy, the government has used above 170 million USD to create a system that don't support hits at level similar to not so popular sites. 400 000 views is a ridiculous small amount.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that they have fairly normal visit rates all year, and when the tax reports get sent out they have the entire population of Norway (in reality less) trying to visit the website at the same time.

It wouldn't be financially beneficial to have a website that supports 2-3 million concurrent users on a permanent basis when they only see such numbers within a limited timespan.

I do however think that for 170 million USD they could afford to do so, that is a ridiculous sum of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How would you prevent this?

<comment><USER13> Well you could start with not letting Accenture do the development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It was really funny that the major norwegian newsite vg.no published a screen shot of the bad page when they broke the story, with the guys "ssn" (they have something else there) and full name. Somebody must have pointed it out because later they blurred it out. Kenneth is getting his 15 minutes of fame out of this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Little Bobby Tables apparently has a norwegian cousin</comment>


National Radio Quiet Zone [US] - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Quiet_Zone <comment><USER2> Recent related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11748474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11748474)</comment>


Ask HN: Renting out subdomains - <AUTHOR> I bought a domain several months ago only to use its subdomain (the domain name is my last name), and I was thinking to rent out the unused hostname/subdomain to people who also had the same last name. Is there any risk to the domain? I'm afraid if they make illegal website using the subdomain, then the domain will be taken down as well, is it true? Thank you for your time. <comment><USER2> You can just rent them an email account email@example.com, I suspect that's what most people want anyways (especially non-techies).</comment>


Do Not Use Sha256crypt / Sha512crypt – They're Dangerous - <AUTHOR> https://pthree.org/2018/05/23/do-not-use-sha256crypt-sha512crypt-theyre-dangerous/ <comment><USER2> If you needed another reason to disable remote password authentication, maybe this remote DoS will do it...</comment>


2 Hours With GarageBand for iPad - A Review and a Demo - <AUTHOR> http://rob.by/2011/garageband-has-found-its-interface

<comment><USER2> My impression of GarageBand on the iPad 1 is that it's pretty laggy. But I might have a more demanding test environment.

      * pull up a drum kit.
      * give iPad to 18mo old
      * he bangs on iPad like a chimpanzee. That ain't working.
      * take away iPad
      * drum kit keeps playing for 20 seconds or more with no input.
      * he yells for a minute or more to get it back

But overall, its totally worth the $5.

<comment><USER3> I'll have to try that experiment with my 15 month old. He's spent a lot of time on the keyboard, and he and I played with the sampler, but I didn't have him try the drums.

I didn't notice any lag, but maybe that's because my son can't stop himself from making the app go away: the home button is too irresistible. Someone needs to come out with a slip case that makes the home button unreachable.

<comment><USER4> I would buy that in a heartbeat.

My two year old loves too watch movies and look at pictures on the iPad but can't help herself from pushing the Home button. The iPad would be great for car trips with the right case - and the home button is the biggest issue.

Something tells me there is a big market for kid-friendly iPad accessories...

<comment><USER5> Maybe I'm overestimating the learning capacity of two-year-olds, but isn't that something you'd learn after a few times?

<comment><USER2> Oh, but buttons are fun. Especially ones that you push and things happen. The home screen is fun. The search screen is fun.

(and the big grey button on the ups in daddy's office is fun too. makes beeping noises.)

There should be a way to enable kid mode, and use the switch to disable the home button for a while. At least till he figured that out.

<comment><USER6> sounds like someone needs to make an app for kids that just lets them hit buttons

<comment><USER7> _clicks triangle_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _GarageBand for iPad is the most complete and capable all-in-one music creation package available anywhere._

Not sure exactly what he means by "all-in-one" but if an app running on a distinct, general purpose device counts I'd take Ableton Live on a Macbook over this a million times over. There are certainly some appealing things about this but it's still a toy compared to the alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Two points:

1) I was referring to portable all-in-one units like the Boss Micro BR, Tascam field recorders, etc. Maybe I should have been more explicit about this.

2) Ableton is great for recording and processing, but for creating virtual instruments without external hardware, I'd prefer the iPad interface.

<comment><USER8> I agree about preferring the iPad to something like a Boss Micro.

What do you mean by "creating virtual instruments"? Do you mean presenting a virtual instrument interface on screen? If so, I do think the touch surface has some real advantages over a mouse.

I'm still not sold on virtual keyboards and drum surfaces on touch screens though. So far I haven't seen one I'd prefer to a real midi keyboard and drum pads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I mean I prefer creating virtual instruments on the screen with the touch interface as opposed to using a mouse and/or keyboard. Definitely agree that MIDI keyboards are preferable to on-screen keyboards, but I do a lot of songwriting on-the-go so it's not always practical for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The chords sound a lot like what you used to hear from Elliott Smith.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thank you. Elliott is a musical idol of mine so this is one of the nicest compliments I could receive.

<comment><USER10> I also enjoyed your two hours of work, and noted the Elliott Smith influences. Keep it up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting, however Apple's intake level implementation must be solely pegged to the input box from Apogee. The standalone app works great for sketching, playing and people making background noise for videos, but any type of advanced use requires hardwired inputs. It's definitely a different idea for a "pro" upgrade, compared to the typical digital unlock.

I wonder if we'll see the mythical "Asteroid" project rise again.

On a side note, this will be great for my AV nerd descendants, I used to run a media lab and we always wanted to move the people on GarageBand elsewhere to keep the place quiet.

<comment><USER12> I have a theory that Asteroid was actually the Apogee Duet. It's essentially what Asteroid was thought to be (a Firewire breakout box with integration built into Apple's software) and was released in roughly the right time frame.

<http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/duet.php>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds great. I like the song. Amazing progress from needing a professional studio to record music a few decades ago to being able to do it on a comic- book sized pad. I'm not sure I see big cost/performance advantages to an amateur musician of using this arrangement ($700) versus a basic dedicated or pc-based recording setup (maybe $1500-$2500) considering the other costs (instruments) that come into play. Convenience, maybe, in terms of being able to record outdoors, while traveling, etc., but how feasible are those scenarios anyways?

</comment><comment><USER14> I did something like this, though much less serious:

[http://blog.miazmatic.com/post/3799771400/i-decided-to- test-...](http://blog.miazmatic.com/post/3799771400/i-decided-to-test-drive- garageband-for-ipad-by)

<comment><USER15> Bump the pain away!!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very impressive (the recording/song). I actually have a Boss Micro BR, and while it's superb in many ways - lots of great effects, good built-in microphone, much capacity for layering and fiddling - it sadly does not see much use. It's just to much hassle to prat about with the interface when you're used to iPhones and the like. In fact I have a simple 8-track recorder app for the iPad called Mini Studio or something that sees more use. I suppose it helps that I've always got the iPad out for other purposes, though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice modal dialog:

 _jPlayer 2.0.0 : id='jquery_jplayer_1' : Error! No solution can be found by jPlayer in this browser. Neither HTML nor Flash can be used. Review the jPlayer options: support and supplied. Context: {solution:'html, flash', supplied:'mp3'}_

I'm using Firefox 4 without Flash plugin on Win7. Both VLC and QuickTime browser plugins are installed, so the site can throw any audio file at me that it wants. Too bad that it doesn't even attempt to do so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, there's a direct download link at the top you can use if the HTML5 player isn't working for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> fun and a great replacement for writing on the go, but I think porting something like Ableton Live to the iPad is more suited to the form factor.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. If anything, none of these sequencers make sense to me as iPad apps. The small form factor combined with the inherent imprecision of a touch interface makes all the fiddly detail work that full-fledged sequencing requires extremely tedious.

Tablets make a lot more sense to me as control surfaces and novel instruments, not as DAW alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seems like 2 minutes of intense webserver usage killed his review?

 _edit_ the page finally loaded.. and I'm amazed by the sound quality of the recordings! Seems like the iPad can be a great 'on the road' sampler! Does anyone have experience with recording quality on other (tablet) devices?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, had to restart the web server just as this was crawling up the front page. Bad timing but should be fixed for good now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is that "Optimizing Performance" message the bouncing of an untouched track to an audio file instead of rendering it in real-time?

Most software packages have that "lock track" function.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point - it happened mostly when shuffling things around so that would make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a guitarist, this is going to get a hell of a lot more interesting when Apogee's Jam is released at the end of the month (As is seen in the iPad 2's GB video).

<comment><USER22> I looked at the Apogee One way back but thought it was a little pricey still, and this Jam at $99 isn't cheap either. Are you getting genuine quality or is it like getting golden HDMI cables?

<comment><AUTHOR> Apogee has a good reputation in the music industry, and this is a product where manufacturing quality matters a great deal. Unlike HDMI cables, the 1/4" adapter must perform analog-digital conversion. This is a lossy, signal- altering process, so you want to use the highest quality converter available.

<comment><USER23> There is a price performance tradeoff at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Like pretty much every other music program, I played with it for 5 minutes and probably will never touch it again.

<comment><USER24> Hey, this wasn't a criticism, it is just a fact. Do any non-musicians really use these beyond the initial playing stage? GarageBand in iLife on OS X was the same way.

<comment><USER25> They do serve some purpose in encouraging non-musicans to dig deeper. I think the first time you record your own music and are reasonably happy with the output it's a huge confidence booster.</comment></comment></comment>