German solar and wind are triple the cost of French nuclear, last half as long - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/11/france-spent-less-on-nuclear-to-get-about-double-what-germany-gets-from-renewables.html <comment><USER2> No one knows the actual cost of French Nuclear. France has yet to dismantle one of its end of life reactor.

Everyone know that the provisioned costs don't make sense. It was pointed by the national court of auditors in 2012 and 2014 [1] and again in a report from the national assembly in 2017 [2]. We are not even taking about puny mistakes. Even the actualisation ratio used is garbage.

[1] [https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/201405...](https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/20140527_rapport_cout_production_electricite_nucleaire.pdf)

[2] [http://www2.assemblee- nationale.fr/documents/notice/14/rap-i...](http://www2.assemblee- nationale.fr/documents/notice/14/rap-info/i4428/\(index\)/depots)

<comment><USER3> This is true but people tend to forget one thing: decommissioning doesn't necessarily means dismantling. Dismantling is a tough challenge (mainly because of the civil engineering part btw, which becomes difficult to manage when you add the constraints from nuclear: "What do you mean when you say we can't use dynamite? oO") but it's only a legal obligation not an absolute one. With government support to change the law, EDF could just unload the fuel (price is well known, they do it all the time), and pickle the primary circuit in place (the price is also known, they did it a few times already) and now you have a place where all contamination (which comes from neutronic activation) is trapped inside the structure (Co60 in the rebar of the structure mostly) and the biggest risk is asbestos… (like your nearest decommissionined building in your neighborhood, even houses).

This option leaves you with a few ugly buildings in the middle of nowhere, but the cost unbeatable (even way less than decommissioning thousands of wind turbines).

<comment><USER4> > This option leaves you with a few ugly buildings in the middle of nowhere, > but the cost unbeatable (even way less than decommissioning thousands of > wind turbines).

Aren't you forgetting something? Buildings slowly deteriorate, even if not used. So now you have to maintain the disused reactor, for ... how long exactly?

(Amendment: wind, rain, sunlight, rodents, ... idiots with power tools ... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident) )

<comment><USER3> > Buildings slowly deteriorate, even if not used. So now you have to maintain > the disused reactor, for ... how long exactly?

And here comes radioactive decays to the rescue! Half-life of Co60 is a little bit more than 5 years, for instance. The important thing to consider is that dangerous radioactive materials are also the ones with the shortest half-life (because the same number of atoms emits more radiation per second), so as long as you took out the fuel[1] you don't have anything really dangerous for too long. It could still be a problem when decommissioning (because you spill everything out in a short time and you have workers just nearby) but if you let the building just decay slowly, you don't have issues.

[1]: the fuel is a bit special, because it has long half-life but it's still dangerous for two reasons. 1) it's alpha emitters, the worst kind of radioactive substance. 2) the concentration is enormous.

<comment><USER4> Co-60 isn't the only side product though. A quick Google search yields me [https://mitnse.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/radiation_npp_07....](https://mitnse.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/radiation_npp_07.pdf) which lists:

Krypton-85 Beta/Gamma 10 years

Strontium-90 Beta 28 years

Iodine-131 Beta/Gamma 8 days

Cesium-137 Beta/Gamma 30 years

Carbon-14 Beta 5770 years

Zinc-65 Beta/Gamma 245 days

Cobalt-60 Beta/Gamma 5 years

Iron-59 Beta/Gamma 45 days

Tritium Beta 12 years

I'm also not sure where you got the idea that alpha emitters are the worst kind of radioactive substance; alpha radiation is easily shielded.

On the other hand, sure, just leaving the reactor there for 50 years may be part of a cost effective solution. [https://www.dndkm.org/DOEKMDocuments/BestPractices/26-EFCOG%...](https://www.dndkm.org/DOEKMDocuments/BestPractices/26-EFCOG%20Best%20Practice%20-%20SRS%20P%20and%20R%20Reactor%20Basins%20ISD%20Final.pdf) (linked from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_decommissioning)) claims a 71% reduction in decomissioning costs. However, this includes neither fuel waste disposal costs nor future costs for full dismantling at some point.

<comment><USER5> Alpha radiation is easily shielded from external exposure, but for that exact reason it's also the most damaging; gamma radiation, for instance, will mostly pass right through you, while alphas will deposit all of their energy right into your cells. They're shielded by your dead skin, but if you _ingest_ or _inhale_ them, then there's no dead skin to protect you, and all that radiation goes straight into your cells.

In fact, according to the weighting system that converts joules of energy absorbed (Grays) to severity of radiation dose (Seiverts), a joule of alpha radiation is _20 times worse_ than a joule of X-rays, beta radiation, or gamma rays.

And it's _ingestion or inhalation_ that we're worried about from environmental contamination; not that the environment itself would become so radioactive, Fallout-style, that you'd take rads just from standing around - but that radioactive dust from demolition might get into the air, or that contaminants might leak into the groundwater.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but - context. We're talking about leaving a disused reactor around in some type of safe manner. Ideally it won't be leaking... but some radioactive material is still in it. Aren't the beta & gamma radiators more dangerous, even as far as irradiating other parts of the structure itself is considered?

<comment><USER5> Neither beta nor gamma radiation will "activate" other parts of the structure to make them radioactive themselves; only neutron radiation (which can convert stable isotopes into unstable isotopes with more neutrons in them) can do that.

Nor will they weaken the structure.

So as long as people don't enter the reactor without proper precautions, there's really no reason to worry about radiation inside it. And this problem can be solved pretty well with a fence and warning signs.

<comment><USER3> > So as long as people don't enter the reactor without proper precautions, > there's really no reason to worry about radiation inside it. And this > problem can be solved pretty well with a fence and warning signs.

The buildings being designed as a bunker also helps. Just add a single guardian and his dog just to be sure nobody is actively trying to break through the concrete walls and you're good to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a major flaw in the argument of this article. They calculate what Germany has payed in the past decades, including the very early phase of solar+wind development. You can of course compare any number of things, whether it makes sense or not.

But for the question how to proceed with future energy it's completely irrelevant what solar+wind costed in 2005. We only care what it costs now and in the future. "Solar was super expensive in 2005, so we shouldn't build cheap solar in 2019" is not a useful or logical argument.

The key thing about the german renewable subsidies (and a few other countries, but particularly for solar it was mostly germany) is that they brought wind+solar from being overly expensive exotic technologies to cheap mass technologies.

<comment><USER7> However nuclear is calculated at true cost, solar and wind is not.

And nuclear is also calculated in the past plus its been underdeveloped the last 30 years.

Backup energy for wind and solar is not included wich have to be either coal, gas, oil or nuclear to compensate for the low capacity factor wind and solar which is at 20-40 compared to nuclear which is at 90.

So even if wind and solar were cheaper it only provides at the will of the weather.

I would love to se a proper non-partisan calculation where everything gets calculated in.

<comment><USER8> How exactly is the insurance that nuclear gets for catastrophic events priced in? You know, the insurance that no private insurer is willing to offer, so what's going to happen is the nuclear operating company declares bankruptcy and the tax payer pays for the cleanup.

<comment><USER7> The operating company is insured and pays for the cleanup.

<comment><USER9> Insured by whom? You need to understand how insurance companies operate: They gather data, they calculate the risk vs. the cost of paying out, they add a markup - that's your price. There is not enough data to do this with catastrophic nuclear accidents.

<comment><USER7> I understand how they work and I have done work both for insurance companies and re-insurers, nuclear power plants are insured a little different.

Here are some facts on how it works.

 _" Currently, owners of nuclear power plants pay premiums for $375 million in private liability coverage for each nuclear reactor they own. If there is an incident at a nuclear plant, and the $375 million in coverage is not sufficient, the owner's coverage is supplemented by the second layer of protection, which is supplied by the nuclear power industry as a whole. Under the Price-Anderson Act, all reactor owners are committed to paying their share of any damages that exceed the incident reactor owner's first-tier limit of $375 million—up to $111.9 million per reactor. Since are currently 104 reactors in operation, the amount that would be available in the industry pool to pay claims totals $12.6 billion (2011). "_

It works because nuclear accidents are extremely rare and less dangerous than wind and solar let alone coal, oil and gas.

[https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear- accid...](https://www.iii.org/article/insurance-coverage-nuclear-accidents)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, this reminds me that I read this article half a year ago and forgot... my point is that it's not sufficient as the Fukushima Daiichi accident cost a lot more than $12.6 billion, let me just lazily link to my old comment on that: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014159)

<comment><USER7> But what's the point though? Three Mile Island was fully paid by the insurance.

With regards to Fukushima the powerplant didn't kill anyone, the tsunami, on the other hand, did and of course, the public needs to pay for as it was force majure not the actual nuclear power plant that created the disaster.

And Tjernobyl was in a country which didn't have any private ownership so of course the public paid for it.

What other cases can you come up with where insurance didn't cover it?

It's pretty important to get things into proper perspectives here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Germany basically started the shift to renewable energy. As a result, theirs is probably amongst the most expensive solar/wind build outs ever.

Solar and wind energy costs have dropped exponentially since a decade ago, to the point where even if the author is correct about the German costs being 3 times more expensive than the French costs, wind and solar will be cheaper than nuclear today, since their costs have reduced dramatically in the last decade. Utility scale solar, for example, is about 90% cheaper today than it was in 2009 when Germany started building out the bulk of its solar energy infrastructure.

In other words, with no other differences, simply the drop in prices of wind and solar means that wind/solar built out today would be about 2-3 times cheaper than France's nuclear buildout.

Of course, other things have indeed changed since France started building out its nuclear infrastructure. Primarily, nuclear's negative learning curve has kicked in to the point that even after adjusting for inflation, nuclear today is far more expensive than nuclear when France built out the bulk of its nuclear energy.

Finally, Germany is not even close to the best candidates for solar and wind energy, whereas France is one of the best candidates for nuclear (by definition, it's one of 10 or so possible candidates, and any new state is likely to be worse at nuclear than France was).

<comment><USER11> Solar and wind require a huge geographic footprint to generate significant energy. Because of this constraint, the cost of wind and solar is almost entirely opportunity cost, not the mere accounting cost of producing an extra panel/turbine. The basic problem is twofold: First, as you keep adding solar/wind capacity, you inevitably get diminishing returns from worse wind/sunshine conditions, so additional installation is less productive. (Think about solar panels in valleys or windmills in low-wind areas.) Second, as wind and solar cannibalize land area to provide energy, the price of that land increases substantially as other uses are displaced. For example, let's say that a country had to displace 40% of its productive arable land in order to install wind & solar. Then the price of its farmland would skyrocket as the country continued to deploy wind & solar. In both cases, solar and wind become much more expensive per deployed panel than simply the cost per panel, which is indeed pretty inexpensive. FWIW, the article attempts to make this point, but it frankly isn't very well written, and so the point is a bit hard to understand.

As to your point about countries situated for nuclear vs wind+solar, what do you mean? Do you have any metrics? If I were to guess, wind and solar are extremely sensitive to the geography of a country (including physical and political-economic); I'd guess nuclear is mildly sensitive to political geography. Splitting the atom is not significantly harder in Indonesia or Peru than it is in France. The fact that much of French land area is rural might make nuclear marginally more useful there than in a place like e.g. Germany or the UK, with several major cities dotted across the relatively densely populated landscape. (Based on this inference, I'd imagine that the US, China, Canada and Russia would be the top four countries for nuclear, and Monaco or Luxembourg might be the worst?)

<comment><USER12> We have a lot of unused land that could be filled with solar panels: rooftops. Until every suitable roof is plastered with them, I don't think that we have a land issue. Similarly for wind, the problem is not that we don't have the land, the problem is NIMBYs that don't want turbines to "ruin their view".

<comment><USER13> Off-shore wind farms haven't so much of a geographical footprint problem, and their efficiency is neat.

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

<comment><USER14> Off-shore wind farm have a geographical footprint, especially in area with heavy ship traffic

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nuclear lives or dies by Project Management and some countries just suck at it. When you need a reactor, it's a controversial big-ticket item/government project. Countries with strong central planning can handle that (France and China).

In UK our government can't build a train line without fucking it up[1]. If we had open-source Fusion reactors tomorrow, they would commission it, then cancel it, then privatise it, then find out it was built upside-down. There would be a chain of 15 contractors involved and they would all be suing each- other. Then the taxpayer would cover the cost anyway.

We really need SMRs [small modular reactors]. Those would be ~100 ton devices built at a factory, and all quality controls would be done there. They are subject to normal market mechanisms. Nuclear would become more like solar and wind. When you need them, you just buy them, get them delivered and follow instructions to install them.

You don't need to create a 20-year old political football for party politics.

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/27ab2f5c-a976-11e9-984c-fac8325aa...](https://www.ft.com/content/27ab2f5c-a976-11e9-984c-fac8325aaa04)

</comment><comment><USER16> Strange that the article is not talking about the latest french reactor Flamanville 3. This EPR reactor is already 10 years late and will cost more than 13b€ For 160MW. And this just for construction cost and not for running/dismantling it.

Then I wonder what practical exemple would support that after 15 years a solar PV installation has to be rebuilt.

<comment><USER17> It's the first of its generation and is quite a failure on many aspects. It's not representative of all the nuclear reactors in France, far from it. Thus it is quite insignificant.

<comment><USER18> > It's the first of its generation and is quite a failure on many aspects. > It's not representative of all the nuclear reactors in France, far from it.

It's the only new one, based on designs of early 90s and earlier. The others are mostly all old and many with completely outdated designs from the 70s. Many wouldn't survive the crash of a larger airbus or boeing aircraft.

<comment><USER17> I don't judge a software on an alpha release.

<comment><USER19> It isn't software

<comment><USER17> To stay in France, it's a bit as if you said the cathedrals construction was a total failure basing your judgment on the Beauvais cathedral which also suffered of the second system effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This article is an interesting thought exercise and it makes some good points about how expensive Germany's renewable build out has been. However, these are all sunk costs and don't matter going forward. What matters is the cost today.

Also, the total terawatt hours isn't nearly as important as keeping the lights on. Nukes are great and renewables are great, but this isn't a contest to see which generates the most electricity over the course of a year, but rather we need to keeps the lights on by using the sources that make the best sense to do that at lower cost or lower co2 emissions.

<comment><USER21> > However, these are all sunk costs and don't matter going forward. What > matters is the cost today.

one of the major points from the article is that Germany's renewable build out is _not_ a one time capital cost. according to the article, the German power infrastructure is more expensive and has half the expected lifetime compared to France. unless solar and wind decrease in cost much faster than nuclear, there's no way it ends up being cheaper in the long run for Germany.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to say whether the figures quoted in the article are actually correct/complete, but if you accept them, it seems France is getting a lot more bang for its buck.

<comment><USER22> The short lifespan of renewables is deliberate and correct.

When technology is changing rapidly, optimizing for long lifespan is stupid. The long life of a nuclear reactor is an illusion now, since solar and wind are improving so fast that they would not operate their full 40+ years.

<comment><USER23> Once a new plant is already constructed, shutting it down early would only make sense if the average generation price fell below the _operating_ cost, excluding the construction and decommissioning costs which by that point are already historical costs. Solar panels could be free and not be able to match that price, because they still require land and energy storage and labor to install and maintain, so the nuclear plant would still operate the full 40+ years and have that long to amortize the construction.

<comment><USER24> I think you are not properly emphasizing the differences. A nuclear powerplant MUST run for more than 40 years. Renewable energy CAN run for more than 20 years but since costs are going down and efficiencies going up it makes more sense to upgrade your infrastructure. This is not a bug it's a feature.

<comment><USER22> This also means that when PV costs finally flatten out, there's a final cost reduction to be had from uncompressing their lifespan to the 40+ years nuclear is already counting on.

<comment><USER23> Neither of those things are true.

The reason you replace solar panels after 20 years rather than 40 is that they degrade and stop producing as much power. There is no option to run them for 40 years at their original generation capacity. The alternative is to keep using the old panels but add more panels on top of that to make up the difference. But then you still have to buy _some_ new panels and on top of that you need to use more land instead of reusing the existing land, which may not be any cheaper than reusing the existing land by replacing all of the old panels.

And the cheaper the panels get the _shorter_ their lifespan gets because the point when the generation loss from older/degraded panels exceeds the replacement cost comes sooner. It doesn't suddenly get longer when the price flattens out, it just stops getting any shorter than it already is by that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "France completed construction on 76% of its current 58 reactors at an inflation-adjusted cost of $330 billion (€290 billion). The complete buildout of the 58 reactors was less €400 billion."

Whoever managed to build plants in the past must have retired. "Flamanville is just one of three projects being built in Europe using the next-generation EPR technology. The other two are the Olkiluoto project in Finland, which is more than a decade late, and the UK's Hinkley Point, which is also delayed and mired in controversy over its high costs." [https://www.ft.com/content/877eedae-f987-11e9-a354-36acbbb0d...](https://www.ft.com/content/877eedae-f987-11e9-a354-36acbbb0d9b6?fbclid=IwAR39vkPiK- TEBF5gmzoTe5gc9r6xXez8uFpbjMPwGCfF5NOCadq4BEsYcpY)

Yes, in theory new nuclear plants could be small, modular and safe.

In practice, the biggest challenge is political rather than technical. How do you set up institutions that can deliver these projects on time and on budget?

In the time these plants have been delayed, solar prices have dropped more than 80%. By the time they're scheduled to be finished, solar should cost 50% less than today.

Germany overpaid by a lot, which is the price for building a local industry and being pioneers in a new technology. I hope it works out for them. Either way, humanity will owe them a debt for this.

<comment><USER26> I so happen to disagree, but well reasoned point. However, please abstain from using theory in that context. What you mean is a conjecture, or hypothesis. Anything substantiated by evidence is in fact a theory. Those that are not are hypotheses. In fact, theories work in practice. That's why they are theories - quantum theory, germ theory, general and special relativity theory. Etc..

<comment><USER27> Words have multiple meanings. This use of "theory" exists in all dictionaries and is well used and accepted.

Instead of trying to control language, we should encourage appropriate interpretation of context and meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Fascinating that an article with so much detailed information doesn't include a discussion of waste and the costs associated with handling and storing it safely for [checks notes] 10,000 years.

<comment><USER29> All the nuclear waste we've ever made in the USA stacks about 3 barrels high on a single football field, about .002 square miles.

One of USA's deserts is around 190,000 square miles.

I'm sure we can find someplace to store it all.

<comment><USER30> If it is so simple, I wonder why the problem takes so much discussion to be solved...

<comment><USER17> Because of the irrational fear of nuclear.

<comment><USER31> The waste is irrationally still radiating for 10.000 years? A reactor might be safe in some sense, but the waste certainly is not.

<comment><USER32> I mean, the chemical waste from photovoltaic production is also still poison for 10,000+ years - lots of heavy metals and other nasty shit there. But we don't seem to be quite so afraid of it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Germany pushed PV ten years ago to help drive it down its experience curve. This was spectacularly successful. PV modules are now nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than they were then, and PV is delivering at a fraction of the levelized cost per kWh of new nuclear plants.

<comment><USER33> I think China played a much more important role in driving down PV module costs than Germany. Germany was one source of demand - China has amounted to about all of the supply.

Germany has an important coal industry and lobby and remains a large user of coal.

<comment><USER18> Germany invested a lot very early into technology building for mass production of efficient PV. The cheap mass production in China came later...

<comment><USER33> Actually if one looks it up (I have many times), as the Chinese industry was developing (meaning a while ago now), a large part of the key cell technology that China used came from a research group at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

There's useful research done around the world.

I think where German companies felt they might maintain a manufacturing presence was in machinery infrastructure - whether the machines that populate the factory floors that manufacture either cells of modules or machines (say, inverters) or that are used downstream of electrical production in a module.

I was last in this space some yrs ago but it's not clear to me just how much of a presence German companies have been able to keep in either.

One industry web site is here:

[https://www.pv-tech.org/](https://www.pv-tech.org/)

and if I wanted to ascertain German presence in the industry (including some aspects of research) I might look through this site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What total bullshit.

No country would commit to any new nuclear plants unless it is a cover for a weapons program. (UK)

Here is a simple test, would any privately-owned utility buy a new nuclear power plant without a government guarantee? No.

A nuclear plant if ever finished as half are abandoned takes about 20 yrs to build (eg Flamanville / Olkiluoto)

A 1G PV plant with storage with 25% utilisation would be built in a year. With a capital cost of 7%-10% of nuclear or about 1/3 adjusting for utilisation.

There are three costs for a powerplant:

1\. Capital costs - most are 20%- 30% equity and the rest debt.

2\. Fuel costs - How much is the coal, gas or other fuels used to create the power.

3\. Operations and Maintenance (O&M) - All thermal plants (solar thermal, nuclear, gas or coal etc) use high-pressure steam. The O&M on steam is about USD 20 per MW-h.

So, if you had a solar thermal plant (Ivanpah) the steam O&M is about the same price as total generation from PV.

Based on the average of Flamanville, Olkiluoto and Hinkley Point here are some reasonable guesses.

Capital Cost: USD 15 per watt (pv with storage USD 0.50)

O&M - USD 40 per MW-h (Ops 10 + steam 20 + closure 10)

Fuel - USD 10 per MW-h

<comment><USER35> Taiwan, Japan have nuclear power plants and do not have weapons programs.

<comment><USER36> Also: Belgium, Spain, Holland, Switzerland, Chehia, Sovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, and others: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Nuclear_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Nuclear_power_percentage.svg)

OP is wrong, and wrong on every sub claim.

<comment><USER37> Where do all these countries get their reactors from? I don't know about most of them, but I remember reading that Swedens was Westinghouse, and Finland is getting their latest one from France?

<comment><USER38> The majority of the Swedish reactors were designed and built by the Swedish ASEA (now ABB), but their nuclear division was sold to Westinghouse in 2000

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> But the nuclear waste lasts for thousands of years. Unless we feed the nuclear waste into breeder reactors which can utilize the waste.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste) "High-level waste"

Solar panels needs to be designed to be recycled.

</comment><comment><USER40> This just in, the cost of new green energy is more expensive than mostly amortized, entrenched nuclear power that has yet to enter it's least profitable period.

<comment><USER41> That is not what the article claim. The argument is that Germany spend more money for a solution that results in 46% green energy and 56% dirty energy than France that get 92% green energy and 8% dirty energy.

If they are correct is up to debate, and one worthy to have considered the political aspect of the claims. It is also important to note that they are defining green energy based on green house emissions. Still, if we are to have any meaningful discussion it is important to discuss the claims they make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's worth noting that Germany has less solar energy potential anywhere in their country than in any single state in the USA, including Alaska. Yet they had more solar deployed in watts than the entire USA for a long time.

<comment><USER27> Ya I was gonna 'complain' about solar being constrained by geography, but then I saw this map [https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/solarwa/pages/93/attac...](https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/solarwa/pages/93/attachments/original/1466049471/NREL- pv-map-us-germany-spain.jpg?1466049471)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> One massive differentiator that is often ignored is scalability - as in can it be scaled DOWN?

Nuclear has to be done in massive scale, which causes all sorts of problems: project complexity and cost; security; security of supply; transmission costs. Renewables are very attractive in that light.

<comment><USER44> Has human electricity consumption scaled down?

>Renewables are very attractive in that light

Yes, and only in the light. Once the sun goes down and the wind dies down, you'll have to turn off your heaters and turn off your televisions.

<comment><USER45> Yeah, which does not happen on grid scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is comparing the cost of building new power capacity in Germany to the cost of operating existing plants in France! You can't get any more spun than that.

That is, renewables are new technology and being built out rapidly. Nuclear capacity is 3-4 decades old and the build-out investment was recouped long ago. France _absolutely cannot_ build new reactors 3x cheaper than Germany can put up equivalent windmills, and to argue that is absolutely laughable. This is a ridiculous article.

<comment><USER47> It compared the cost of building the nuclear reactors in France to the cost of building Solar, Wind and biomass in Germany. It also looked at the cost and amount of energy produced from the last five years of construction in Germany. So the newer and cheaper solar and wind. 160 billion euros for 70 TWh per year. France built 400 Terawatt hours per year from 290 billion euros. France has run them for over 30 years.

China's more recent nuclear construction was also cited. $150 billion for 300 TWh per year.

80% of the world's new nuclear reactors are being built in China, India, Russia and South Korea. Those are coming in at a price of $2000-3000 per KW. A gigawatt nuclear reactor at $2-3 billion each built in 4-6 years. A gigawatt nuclear reactor can generate 8 Terawatt hours per year.

[https://www.world-nuclear.org/information- library/economic-a...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/information- library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power.aspx)

A fully amortized nuclear power plant generates power at about 2 cents per kwh. [http://www.world- nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/info/pdf/Econ...](http://www.world- nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/info/pdf/EconomicsNP.pdf)

Germany, between 2006 and 2017, increased the cost of electricity for households by 50%. (per OECD)

[http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf](http://www.oecd- nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf)

French electricity costs are just 59% of German electricity prices. France produces one-tenth the carbon pollution from electricity compared to Germany.

<comment><USER48> If nuclear plants really do generate at about 2 cents per kWh, how come the most established and respected power industry pricing analysis finds that it costs over six times that - between 12 cents and 19 cents per kWh ?[1]

Where does the 2 cents figure come from? - A website commissioned explicitly to promote nuclear power industry. Have some discernment, please.

[1] [https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of- energy-...](https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and- levelized-cost-of-storage-2019/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Nuclear plants can last 40-80+ years

French nuclear power plants will need >>$100 billion investments in the near future to keep them running.

Many of them will reach their projected life time in the coming 2020 decade. Let's see how France will replace them or keep them running. My bet is that they keep them running, because they have little chance to replace them in the 20-30 decade. For the French government, which owns most of the plants though EDF, the problem to replace them is greater than the perceived security problem.

If France would NOW start to plan (plan -> build -> operate) for additional nuclear plants, then it would take at least 15-20 years until a new one is operational.

(edit) France may want to decide in the early 20s about six new EPR 2 with 15 years construction time... Thus the current nuclear landscape has to be kept running until the end 30s.

> 80 nuclear reactors would now cost €1600 billion euros for Germany. This > would still be cheaper than the estimated costs for the solar and wind > buildout that is underway.

It's difficult to set up the renewable energy landscape in Germany, but it comes with decentralized lower-risk technologies. Stuff a less state-oriented economy can built. Germany by far has not a centralized state controlled economy like France. Thus the German Energiewende is also a way to decentralize energy production and to get away from a state controlled oligopoly for energy production - currently the electricity production is still largely controlled by four large companies which have their own regions.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_großen_Vier_(Energieversor...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_großen_Vier_\(Energieversorgung\))

For several years none of these big four companies has really invested in and supported the Energiewende - because they surely want to keep their monopoly in their region. Which is the opposite of an open market for energy production.

For 80 new nuclear power plants there is no space in a relatively densely populated country like Germany with a short coast.

The local acceptance in the population of new and large-scale nuclear is around zero. Null. Nothing. Every new nuclear will face much longer delays in court than any wind turbine ever will. Nuclear is a technology that's dead in Germany. If we look at the US, there hasn't been much progress on nuclear power plants either - even though the country is much larger, less dense populated AND has a need for nuclear technology in the military. Nuclear worked better in a centralized France which needs nuclear technology for its military or in more authoritarian countries like China where independent control does not exist.

> 80 nuclear reactors would now cost €1600 billion euros for Germany.

and would take >4 decades to be rolled out. By then Germany is 90% renewable for electricity production. But with a decentralized modern grid.

France is currently struggling to build ONE new nuclear power plant: Flamanville. A technical design of the early 90s. Four times more expensive than projected and going online maybe in 2023 - with a construction start from 2007. Largely state financed and state controlled.

[http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-warns-of-added- co...](http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/EDF-warns-of-added-costs-of- Flamanville-EPR-weld-r)

<comment><USER49> If there's no space for nuclear power plants, how are you going to find space for renewables? I can't think of any renewable sources that would take less space than nuclear, especially in Europe since we're further north than the US and that makes solar take up even more space.

<comment><USER18> > If there's no space for nuclear power plants

Renewable energy production and nuclear power plants have very different space requirements.

> find space for renewables

Germany has more than 30000 wind turbines. For example here in North Germany it's planned to increase the offshore wind energy production by a factor of three in the coming decade. This offshore space is available.

<comment><USER50> > Renewable energy production and nuclear power plants have very different > space requirements.

Chiefly, that wind and solar require _much more_ of it.

<comment><USER12> You can only put nuclear power plants next to sufficiently large rivers that can provide cooling. On the other hand you can put solar panels pretty much on every roof and wind turbines in any place with sufficiently low NIMBY density and a bit of wind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _Germany's solar farms will have to be rebuilt every 15-25 years_

Why is that? Do solar panels really degrade to the point where they are unprofitable to run after 15 - 25 years?

<comment><USER52> There are multiple factors at work: There's ongoing maintenance as with everything, and you can probably accumulate its costs into it meaning "you're paying for a new one every 40 years through maintenance alone". Yield is going down over time (solar panels are sold with guarantees like "80% efficiency after 20 years"). And finally, technology is improving: replacing these 2006 solar panels in 2020 not only gives you back the base yield of a 2006 panel, but the base yield of a 2020 panel (see [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/CellPVef...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/CellPVeff%28rev191101%29.png) for a research level comparison over time. That won't translate directly into industrial use though, but the direction should be evident)

So the situation is less that is "has to be rebuilt" but that it's economical to rebuild every 20-ish years (factoring in the maintenance costs: a panel that you replaced due to physical damange 10 years in needn't be scrapped just 10 years later) rather than letting the stuff hang around for arbitrarily long times.

With a proper recycling chain that shouldn't be too bad (there's little reason why the silicon can't be purified, and the doting material be refurbished), and ongoing maintenance is a concern with all types of power plant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Without any particular rancour, this sort of thing is why the environmentalists keep experiencing a mysterious and conspiracy-like resistance to their plans. Their plans are ineffective and expensive.

France has cheaper, more technically excellent, safer and cleaner energy than Germany _for military reasons_. That is a massive egg on the face of the German environmentalists. And it turns out the people saying solar was very cheap were not being straightforward; although hopefully the march of research will prove them right in time.

My personal belief is that the people complaining about nuclear waste are struggling to tell which of two numbers is bigger - I'm happy to guess that waste from solar panels is more damaging due to the large scale they are produced at. Lead-acid battaries too.

</comment><comment><USER54> What a terrible article. We have a liberalised energy market in Europe. Therefore energy prices in this market are not that different between Germany and France. Also, the writer is missing the costs of disposal of nuclear waste.

</comment><comment><USER55> To be clear, this is cost to build and maintain. But with nuclear there's also the cost of shut down and storage. To say nothing of a nuclear accident somewhere along the line.

</comment><comment><USER56> Somewhat of a tangent: With the much longer half-lifes of heavier elements, given their decay is longer than human history, would it be the best long term solution to put them in a literal vault made of precious metals like gold or titanium? Burying them in the ground isn't working especially since the early sites were largely just cement or housed in wood supported tunnels and those are already a huge problem we can't deal with.

</comment><comment><USER57> The people who chose not to build nuclear plants are either retarded or get money from russian natural gas exporters for doing so shit decisions. Maybe both.

</comment><comment><USER58> # France (population: 66,89 million) \- 76,5% nuclear 8% non hydro renewables 10% hydro 3,7% natural gas 1,9% coal 0,4% oil \- CO2 emmisions: 124 milion tones

# Germany (population: 82,79 million) \- 34,9% renewables (hydro and non hydro) 22,5% lignite 12,9% natural gas 12,9% hard coal 11,8% nuclear 4,2% others 0,8% mineral oil \- CO2 emmisions: 725,7 milion tones

</comment><comment><USER59> What about the costs of a broken solar or wind turbine. Easy replaceable. But calculate the cost of a nuclear fallout...

</comment><comment><USER60> Does this factor for the potential cost of a disaster though, or the environmental costs of uranium mining?

</comment><comment><USER61> Thank God there are a few smart folks on HN to push back on all the mediocre pro-nucleur weak arguments and propaganda here as of late.

</comment><comment><USER62> Does this take into account the risk of making a huge part of the country uninhabitable? Please note that:

\- The average number of deaths caused by a nuclear each year is neither "risk" (for a country) nor "of making a huge part of the country uninhabitable".

\- Past accidents may have been caused by human error. Unfortunately we have run out of übermenschen that don't make errors so that doesn't help.

<comment><USER63> The worst part is, we can become as green as you can get in Germany, if our direct neighbor country France has one of their so-low-carbon nuclear plants blow up, we are just as inhabitable, for eternity.

<comment><USER64> So because you (Germans) have an irrational fear of a black swan event (there has been seven nuclear accidents with fatal outcome in the 60 years we have been nuclear [1] with a very low death toll), you instead are participating in killing off nearly 1 million ppl per year by burning coal [2]. Heck, even if you went all wind & solar the annual death toll would be higher per TWh [3].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents) [2] [https://endcoal.org/health/](https://endcoal.org/health/) [3] [https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/deaths-nuclear-energy- com...](https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/deaths-nuclear-energy-compared- other-causes)

<comment><USER62> The average number of deaths caused by a nuclear each year is neither "risk" (for a country) nor "of making a huge part of the country uninhabitable".

<comment><USER64> The acid rains we get here in northern Europe thanks to the Germans insistency with burning coal sure doesn't improve the habitability of the country either. I much rather take a minuscule risk of making my country uninhabitable than the _certainty_ of doing so (even if done slowly over time).

<comment><USER62> Since we aren't going to burn coal forever acid rain won't make any country uninhabitable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Manual Scaling - <AUTHOR> http://42floors.com/blog/manual-scaling/

<comment><USER2> We have a product for TV stations that helps them take social media (instagram, fb, twitter text and images) and show it as a part of their broadcasts. One of the most difficult parts is getting the custom design from the station into our system, because there's a huge learning hurdle if the station designer has to learn our software. So rather than build software that will a) be shitty at first, and b) create new roadblocks, we instead chose a different route which is described here: Manual scaling.

They send us a PSD, since they'd already use photoshop to create the look. We then manually convert it into our system.

It sucks because it's definitely going to become a weak point of scaling out our system, but till we hit that weak point, we keep going. We've slowly started to build out the design system just to make our lives simpler, and we imagine outsourcing this task to other people outside our company, which means hopefully once we expose it to users, the interface will be simple enough.

Just wanted to add our perspective of this. I think a lot of people don't realize what you can do by hand. The only reason why I thought of doing this is because of Aardvark.

<http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262666394>

I happened to have been working for Justin.TV and was lucky enough to record that. Otherwise, I bet I'd have been going down the "build it all first!" route.

All the other videos: [http://lanyrd.com/coverage/?domain=justin.tv&page=2&...](http://lanyrd.com/coverage/?domain=justin.tv&page=2&coverage=video)

</comment><comment><USER3> The obvious thing that is being missed is that manual 'scaling' would most probably result in higher quality data. I would consider this critical for data sensitive businesses.

One of my clients I do some consultation work for from time to time actually prefer the manual process. It allows them finer grained control to better manage the quality of data/advertisements because the majority of what they do involves graphic art. They have effectively turned manual scaling into a competitive advantage.

I sincerely doubt they will always prefer this route - but at the moment it seems like the best approach (until all their clients are computer savvy and solely work with artists and not try to make a flyer or the like themselves with Microsoft Paint).

</comment><comment><USER4> A great point not mentioned here is that if you've hit the ceiling where manual scaling no longer works...that's a good thing! That probably means you have enough resources due to successful hustling to devote to making things more efficient.</comment>


Embrace the desire to make money - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2013/7/24/embrace-desire-money <comment><USER2> _There will come a point in life where you have enough money, hopefully. At that point, you probably should start ventures that aren 't about making money (though money-making businesses are a very robust way to change the world)._

My theory is that this rarely actually happens. People rarely reach a point and think "ok, I have enough money now; I'll go work at a charity." Mostly due to the hedonic treadmill:

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

This is actually empirically testable to some degree. I recall a recent study asking millionaires if they had enough money, and most of them said something like "no, I won't feel secure until I have 10-20 mil."

<comment><USER3> I would feel secure at 600,000 post-tax for a 15 year adventure into research for bioinformatics, analytics, and embedded design.

During this 15 year break, I could easily notch away at the big circle of knowledge, generate side income, write books/tutorials and contribute to companies/individuals in software aspects.

I would also be able to work at night. I have a reversed circadian rhythm. I spend most of my nights getting 2-4 hours of sleep and murmuring about math and programming during the other 4-6 hours. A typical job schedule holds back my productivity.

My happiness is defined by obtaining/spreading knowledge. 40,000 (post-tax) a year is more than enough to maintain a household of three, take vacations, and stay on top of technology.

<comment><USER4> Sorry for OT

That doesnt sound healthy, you should reverse your reversed circadian rhythm. I dont buy that this is given to you and you cant change it. When i get up at 6 a couple of days in the row its hard at first but after a while it wake up at 6 without an alarm (provided i go to bet early enough). If i stay awake until 2 all the time, i wont get up before 9. Thats a habit and you can change it.

<comment><USER5> Why assume he's being irresponsible ? People generally have more knowledge about themselves than a random observer on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not about money, it's about power. And I mean 'power' in the full sense of the word: the autonomy, money and status/connections to do what you want - whether that's changing the world, giving your family a good life (relative to their peers), or dating a supermodel.

Money is just a proxy.

Power is also just a proxy to happiness [0]. The power to make yourself happy.

Concrete actions combine to give us access to abstract values which we position towards our purpose of reaching our favourite abstract concept "happiness."

We often seek happiness as an end. But good advice might be to "Invest in lines, not dots."

[0] We assume that if we can change things quickly we will be able to keep up with our hedonic treadmills. (The reality is that this won't work without control over our minds, since our desires can also upgrade quickly.)

<comment><USER7> And as a proxy to happiness, the buying power of the dollar varies from one person to the next.

I agree with the author's advice, accepting that it was directed towards entrepreneurs. However, it's also perfectly fine to _not_ desire more money than you already have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's hard to take an article seriously that has so many fallacies.

For example, lifestyle is a choice. Whether you're bootstrapping your own start-up, or working as a highly paid employee, you freely choose how to spend your money. Lifestyle inflation may be real, but it's almost entirely avoidable. It's a matter of discipline.

Secondly, the article is comparing the risk of losing an _investment_ vs. the risk of losing a _source of income_. Very different things. If you invest countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars in a failed start-up, that is gone. Hundreds of thousand of dollars in opportunity cost down the drain. If you lose your job, what do you really lose? No, you get to keep all the money you earned so far, and chances are, you're even getting a nice severance package. And you go out and find another job within a few months at the most. Where's the "risk"? You're not putting anything on the line.

I'm not saying that being employed is superior to starting your own business. It's just that this sounds more like self-justification, presenting a skewed picture.

</comment><comment><USER9> > the kinds of jobs that pay well also have a tendency to require complete > focus. They consume your attention, your life.

That's probably true at the seven-digit level, but most of my tech friends who are in finance work no more than a 9 hour day, 5 days a week. The only exception is Citadel, though this situation may be characteristic of the Chicago finance industry rather than NY, London, or Singapore.

Several of my friends made the shift to that industry partially for the money but mainly to get off of the long hours and travel of consulting gigs, the gaming industry, and small companies.

<comment><USER10> From banks I have worked in, I would say that is true 95% of the time, but if there is a time crunch (EG due to client commitments, regulatory deadline) they will expect you to work all the hours there are to deliver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great post.

Before changing the world, change the world inside you and directly around you.

One of the things that gets missed in "making money" is how a sliver of tech talent can solve such huge problems for the average person.

PG hit the nail on the head in encouraging everyone to simply solving problems the average non-tech person has, whom are the majority. Solving your own problems has merit if your problems aren't rare, or can be a financial engine.

It's an opportunity to grow beyond where too many techs are today... they simply don't see how many people are so passionate about what they do that they are willing to do the most unreasonable thing: calculate, track, and manage things by pen and paper, or whatever they can get in a spreadsheet.

To me, when I see someone do something by hand, manually, because they're so passionate to get it done, or have no choice, it's a mirror to me. How the hell do my talents add value if others are stuck with what they're doing because no one is giving them any attention?

Instead, we have techs justify what they're doing to be something grand and great to "make it up", or some how make life more worthwhile?

Maybe, part of this is from an preference to relate to a keyboard instead of relating to others. Maybe its a part of maturity and starting to see one's self as part of a bigger whole. The need for an ability to shift lenses is critical, because hiding behind a keyboard is not ok anymore, the world has arrived on our doorsteps asking to solve problems with tech.

Software can either make people's lives much harder or easier. Being on the right side of the equation, even if it's giving up a few hours a week just to solve anyone's problems with a script will uncover more opportunities for creating value (read: the right ones will be dying to pay you something to keep your attention).

Ironically perhaps, most of all, is the fact that having a financial engine lets you drive and pursue more of the things you want with your time and by being able to pay for the time of others.

<comment><USER12> This is so true. Also, if you can solve a problem for one such customer in a reasonably sized niche you can earn recurring revenue by selling the same solution over and over again. And reasonably sized is probably much smaller than most people imagine.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely. Almost any small business will pay $1-200/month (often more!) for anything that saves or makes them $500-2000/month in money. The key is being able to communicate and help them find and define the problem that can do this.

Walking into any small business and saying "If I could save or make you anywhere between $500 and $2000 a month, would you be interested?" without a problem identified to solve finds more opportunities than anyone can imagine.

The #1 cost in any business is labour, if you save people time, and create a business case of how many hours literally are saved per week, and how many dollars are printed.

Learning to add and create value, however is at the root of not being able to make money, and understanding one's own value, genuinely and bringing that to a conversation is something that's always worth working on.

<comment><USER13> I think we focus on tech and consumers startup because of sample bias. We ourselves are techies; journalists at large are general consumers and so over- report things they are familiar with.

But most of the flows of money in the world are actually between businesses as they progressively transform products en route to the final consumer. And businesses are, in some ways, much easier to sell to.

Not an original idea. I got it from reading Hayek: [http://chester.id.au/2013/01/05/on-selling-to- consumers/](http://chester.id.au/2013/01/05/on-selling-to-consumers/)

<comment><USER11> Very few thoughts or ideas are ultimately original :)

One thing that struck me from what you said is that its up to techs to learn to relate to the rest of the world trying to make their lives easier with tech, and for the most part, are ending up working for technology, instead of technology working for them.

<comment><USER13> Oh yes. Every non-tech job I've ever had is _riddled_ with inconvenience, drudgery, pointless paperwork. The information revolution has barely even begun.

The best part of my current contracting work is that while it isn't HN- glamorous, I save real people I talk to real hours of horrible tedium by automating away busywork. It also pays pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I want to make a lot of money, and I'm not even slightly embarrassed by that. Why would I be? This is my life, and my dreams are at stake, and - last time I checked - you only get one shot (one life) at living your dreams.

I'm not killing myself working 7 days a week, balancing a startup and a regular job, spending almost my every waking hour working in some fashion, forgoing vacations, a social life, a girlfriend, partying, etc. - all just for my health. In fact, my health is most likely suffering from this lifestyle.

But when I look at the potential: building a profitable, growing company that could give me the financial freedom to live the rest of my life more "on my own terms"... having the freedom to travel to exotic locations, have fun adventures, engage in projects that just plain interest me (as opposed to having to be motivated by financial returns), etc... that makes it all seem worthwhile.

 _It 's not about money, it's about power. And I mean 'power' in the full sense of the word: the autonomy, money and status/connections to do what you want - whether that's changing the world, giving your family a good life (relative to their peers)_

It's basically what lhnz says: It's not really the money per-se that matters, it's the freedom that having plenty of money allows you, that matters. I'm not out to own a yacht, a private jet, or 7 mansions in 6 countries or anything... I don't need to be Larry Ellison rich, but I'd like to get to "FU money" level.

That's not my only reason for trying to build a startup, but it's definitely one of them.

 _or dating a supermodel_

I like the way you think! Preferably a 6' tall, redheaded supermodel with a Scottish accent. :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> In general, a great point - it's something I should have thought about more, earlier when I was more of a head-in-the-clouds aspiring hacker.

One detail, though:

> somehow, many if not most people working in these high-wage jobs don't > accumulate all that much money.

This sounds plausible, but I'd prefer to see it backed up by statistics.

<comment><USER16> I don't have a bookmark unfortunately, but I read first hand a couple of years ago a study mentioning that employees did spend more and more as their wages went up (ultimately leading to golden handcuffs).

<comment><USER17> It's called _lifestyle inflation_.

<comment><USER16> Great, thanks - I never saw that term before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reading this I think I might qualify as the archetype referred to in the article. I spent 15 years working in investment banking IT - which obviously doesn't pay anything like the traders/senior management, but still probably 4 or 5 times more than might be average in London. Five years ago I felt this was a huge amount, but amazingly it's still only just enough to have a flat (not a house) in London. Like the OP said, I didn't really save a lot - a lot went into equity for a flat. I decided at 36 to just give the 'startup thing' a go a few month ago, and made [http://www.fabfabbers.com](http://www.fabfabbers.com) \- but while I don't think what I've made is all that great, for me its been much more of a formative experience. Seeing really for the first time what it's like not to have a job to go to every day, what it's like to people to have zero respect for what you're doing, what it's like trying to focus on a product rather than just being a techy. In summary, I'm with the OP on this - I think making money is a decent aim - not least because if people are willing to part with money for your product or service, then in many ways that's an undeniable indication that what you're providing is worthwhile (unless you're a power company ;-)

<comment><USER10> Good luck - looks really cool.

A friend of mine left IB to found this: [http://trotify.com/](http://trotify.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always been surprised to see people mention they want to start by changing the world.

Such a mission is probably on top of the Maslow's hierarchy [1]. Starting first by making sure you can sustain your family seems more natural to me!

Now I know that people went broke and miserable and also changed the world, but being happy feels like a achievement, too :-)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs)

<comment><USER7> Horses for courses, I suppose. "Changing the world" is just what some people want to do, even at the risk of poverty and misery.

Maslow's hierarchy was never supposed to be a prescriptive account of how we _ought_ to live.

<comment><USER16> I do plan to change the world, actually. I'm only taking baby steps to it :-)

I don't take the hierarchy as prescriptive either, I just noticed that it matched, mostly, my baby steps to change the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do people actually say that "A startup's purpose should be to change the world for the better in a meaningful way"?

That's ridiculous, and symbolizes what's wrong with the current startup culture. Fine, go ahead and change the world for the better, but a startup is a business and the primary goal of a business is to turn a profit. If you can combine profit and world-changing, that's great, but don't forget the priorities. If that doesn't fit you, start a charity instead.

<comment><USER20> If someone has changing the world as their primary goal, and they decide that a startup is the best path toward that goal, I don't really understand why they shouldn't do that? To me a startup is an amoral vehicle for achieving its founder's ends, so if they want to have changing the world as priority number one, and are satisfied with just breaking even, that is up to them (and similarly if turning a profit is top priority).

Of course if it doesn't at least break even eventually, a startup is not really a useful tool for achieving anything.

<comment><USER19> To you, yes, but to the law and perhaps more importantly – to the relevant tax agency, a business is meant for turning a profit.

If the founders aren't interested in turning a profit, a charity will serve them better.

<comment><USER20> IANAL, but as far as I understand a company director only has a 'duty to promote the success of the company' in the UK [1]. I think it is similar in the US. 'Success of the company' doesn't strictly have to mean making a profit, if the shareholders don't want it to.

[1] [http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2013/01/07/companies- do-n...](http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2013/01/07/companies-do-not-have- a-legal-duty-to-maximise-profit-or-to-avoid-tax/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great post. It's one thing to want to 'make a difference' but the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs set out to make their business as financially valuable as possible which is why exit strategies are crucial and prevalent.

There really is nothing wrong with being money driven. Ultimately, it's hard for your business/startup/company/corporation to make any significant difference to anything if they aren't established as a financially valuable organisation.

</comment><comment><USER12> I find the crowd that pooh-poohs lifestyle businesses while working for someone else particularly amusing. You are much more likely to accumulate real wealth with a lifestyle business that you own than you are working for someone else.

<comment><USER4> While true, its not given that you will ever exceed earnings of a reasonably well paying job.

<comment><USER12> Sure, it is completely reasonable to stay in a well paying job to avoid the risk of losing money (and sanity since if you only make the same money in your own business you'll likely be much more stressed.) To be clear, I'm not criticizing anyone who makes that choice. I made that choice for a long time since I have a family to support. But I didn't make fun of entrepreneurs who weren't trying to boil the ocean. I've always found those who do that a source of amusement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having been raised in a community in Los Angeles with extremely affluent people, I am highly skeptical of this article. From my experience, money leads to malaise and depression, and isn't a great end goal. There are plenty of miserable rich people -- and why? Because it isn't a good goal. You'll always strive to be richer.

I think there are enough people striving to be rich in this world, and not enough people working to make it better. This is especially true of engineers. I find that most people I find trying to save the world are activists, while as an engineer, I know I can change the world in a very immediate and practical way. I'm fine with making a good $100k salary, I don't need to make $100 million to be happy. There's something to be said for a healthy balance between making a good salary, and doing something worth while. There are enough entrepreneurs just trying to get their social app to be sold to Google or Yahoo or Facebook. There are DEFINITELY not enough Engineers without Borders.

</comment><comment><USER23> 95% of the people I've worked with or met in startups aren't financially better after the process. But most did leverage the experience to find better jobs/careers...

As for money there are various sums of riches that lead to various life scenarios. At 6 million, I could take a few years off, switch careers and "retire" with a careful eye to expenses. At 10 million, no real job necessary beyond hobbies. At 40 million, I could really invest in projects I believe in and make big differences in many peoples lives. (I currently do assist people and contribute time and resources to various communities, but having serious capital would allow for economy of scale...)

All said, I don't want money, I want the security and the leverage to do good for myself and others. No bling or bottle popping wanted...

</comment><comment><USER24> I _literally_ went through the realisation that this is exactly what is wrong with me - about 5 days ago. Since then i've done some hard work in changing how I feel about money, and what money means to my life.

I don't know if I'm there yet. If anyone has any advice for me, I'm all ears.

<comment><USER25> Anyone who says they are not in it for the money is lying. The underlying goal is always money, few admit it. If they truly wanted to do something not for the money, they'd be in their garage carving figurines not spending every breath maintaining a (probably) already dead startup.

<comment><USER16> I personally really don't care about the money (no lying, I swear).

I care, though, about the fact that money brings me time, and as such more freedom to do whatever I like.

I do not know where you took that from...

Most of the people (EU-based) I know that are bootstrapping their own (profitable, not dead) startup or service seem to be minded similarly, too.

I just make sure I have enough money to not have to think about money, so it actually gets out of the way.

<comment><USER26> _I personally really don 't care about the money (no lying, I swear).

I care, though, about the fact that money brings me time, and as such more freedom to do whatever I like._

These two statements are contradictory. The whole point of having it is that it is stored value that can provide you with the things you actually need; time, in your case.

<comment><USER16> I don't see it contradictory since my freedom and time is not solely brought by money; money is just one ingredient (in the middle of knowledge, confidence, etc etc).

Similarly, I don't care much about H alone, but I definitely enjoy H2O!

<comment><USER25> Yes your freedom and time is _solely_ brought by money, and because money is a representation of value, anything you do of value for someone else effectively buys you the means to freedom and more time which is exactly what you are doing to afford yourself the freedom of not caring about money.

However, if you did not have money, you would either:

a) Be comfortable living the most basic lifestyle humanly possible.

b) Be working so you can afford yourself the lifestyle you want.

Clearly, you are not in group A since you have a more than comfortable lifestyle, so it's B. You did contradict yourself.

<comment><USER16> Your first sentence is an opinion stated as a fact, which I disagree with. But I don't consider that stating something demonstrates it.

Later you divide the whole humanity in A, B (and C). I certainly do not consider this is correct, and believe there are many more cases to be considered.

I cannot see what could possibly go wrong, going from here, in terms of deciding that people contradict themselves, logic, etc!

Feel free to consider I contradict myself - I certainly do not agree.

<comment><USER25> Why did you reply if you're not going to further discuss? Thanks for crossing your arms and walking away.

<comment><USER16> I replied to state my disagreement and end my participation to the conversation politely, nothing more.

To which you replied (but edited later):

        Okay thanks for pointing out exactly how I typed my
        paragraph. Did you offer any sort of rebuttal? No. Stop
        being a baby.

This is obviously going nowhere - so yes I'm leaving the discussion.

I'm now back to my regular schedule, arms uncrossed (I rarely cross them, mind you), actually. Have a nice end of day (sincerely).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > There will come a point in life where you have enough money, hopefully.

But if you're like most of my friends you'll also have two kids and a mortgage. At that point your appetite to take risks is reduced because it's not just about you any more.

On the whole though I'd agree. The risk/reward profile of startups is pretty different to that of employment in a high paying industry. And I would be willing to bet that on average employment returns are higher than startup returns.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh, I'm very much embracing this desire. The real problem is convincing other people to share my enthusiasm.

</comment><comment><USER29> I totally agree that wanting to make money to provide a better life for yourself and family is very laudable. However, the article didn't mention the greatest creator of wealth in the world, which is compound interest and time. You don't have to do something big to have big money. Consistently saving over decades is how most people achieve financial security. For more than just security, the standard way to get rich is to start your own business. Even a small business, if it succeeds and lasts five years, should be a cash cow for life. The richest guy I know runs a single dog kennel, for example.

</comment><comment><USER30> Compare yourself to the rest of the world, and you already have made lots of money. Congratulations! Now you can relax and just enjoy your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but I can't agree with that attitude, at least not from a motivational perspective. With that view, why bother coming down from the trees in the first place?

The mindset you describe is good to make yourself happy, and useful in that context, but useless to make your life better (by any metric).

I believe one can be both happy and have the ambition to continually make the world a better place through one's achievements.

<comment><USER30> Happiness, fulfillment, and a 'better life' are all different concepts [though not mutually exclusive]. It's also all completely subjective, so whatever works for you is correct.

I have no idea why we came down from the trees. It's quite nice up there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is it just me, or am I missing the point of this article. I have yet to meet a person that is embarrassed to make money. Everyone wants and needs to make money, because without that fundamental goal, nothing else in the business or venture is possible.

</comment><comment><USER32> Semantics matter here. I really wish the title of this was "Embrace the desire to be successful," because with success usually comes money, although I think the distinction is important. One is qualitative, one is quantitative.

</comment><comment><USER33> Taking this too far can be painful. Would you rather be in a startup surrounded by mercenaries or idealists? Or someplace inbetween?

<comment><AUTHOR> You need both to have either. If your business lacks a purpose/mission, it will probably not make that much money. And if it lacks a clear and strong desire for money, it will probably not achieve any useful purpose, or at least not on any scale.

Probably worth making that point separately in a later article. Thanks for bringing it up!

<comment><USER33> That's what I was getting at. 100% mercenary doesn't work. (Or at least it's painful to have to count on mercenaries, even if you understand their motivation) Neither does 100% blind eyed idealism. It's finding the sweet spot in the middle, which varies by company and industry.

Edit - And please keep writing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The one thing this country (I'm speaking here of the US) doesn't have any discernable lack of is massive herds of people who are desperate to make more money. Lots of it. Piles of it. Mountains of it. And right now. If there is a clear and unambiguous, nearly universal, practically uncontested value in this country it's to make more money.

That's not necessarily bad, but it often is, and frequently has both bad personal and economic consequences.

Of course it's not even clear what we're talking about since "making money" isn't really defined in the article, and the kinds of salaries that are easily within reach of, I would assert, most professional HN readers (who are programmers), are airily dismissed with the claim of heavy taxation (which are actually near historical lows), and the costs of "maintaining a certain lifestyle" which is more or less a personal choice. If you are a person living in NYC or SF and you make $125,000 a year, and are unable to max out your 401k AND save at least a grand a month, then you are making extremely poor decisions. Now, that may not be the kind of money the author has in mind, but it ain't bad, and you can lead a decent lifestyle and save at the same time without much effort.

There is, I think, some small truth to the claim that there is more talk of changing the world in SV than at, say, Lehman Brothers, but I think it's slightly naive not to see that this is often a thin tissue over the desire to make money. Not too many people go into to business and don't want to make money and a lot of it if they can. Talk of changing the world is prevalent precisely because the current software revolution makes it astoundingly more likely that you can make money AND change the world. That's certainly not true if you start a bodega and probably not true if you start a hedge fund. But in software it is. Software companies are changing the world in ways that are both trivial and profound, and some of them are even making a boatload of money at it. I don't see a lack of people who want to make money anywhere. I see a set of people who recognize that they can potentially have an outsized impact on the world and make a lot of money because software makes this massively more likely than at any time in the past.

It just seems to me that the author both assumes a problem that doesn't really exist, and proposes an answer to said problem that is presented as more sure and easier than it actually is. But anyway I think the confusion is because we shift from getting rich at the beginning to "make enough money to be comfortable" at the end, so it's slightly confused: it's not about all out self-interested greediness he tells us, except at the end it is. And the social consequences of that mindset are just conveniently ignored. In the end there just doesn't have to be strong competition between the desire to make money and the desire to also do decent things in the world. It only seems that way when one of those desires (the first one) is grossly out of whack.

<comment><USER35> I think the author is talking about a very tiny bubble of, not just Silicon Valley, but also further limited to recent grads who are still living the college life and just starting companies.

If you limit your world view to that group then I'm sure it seems like everybody is in it to change the world, and a goal of making money is not noble.

I'm not a part of that group, so I don't really see that at all. Nobody that I personally know has any problem with making money. Not that we're all chasing money either, just that there's certainly no conflicting feelings going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The "change the world" rhetoric is posturing. It's a way of saying, "I'm so secure that I don't _need_ to think about money". It's an aristocratic conceit. As an added benefit, it makes it easier to attract young, clueless talent and make it work 85-hour weeks. I know far too many people working for terrible startups on minimal wages because they "believe in the company". That's fine if you have real equity, but taking a $50,000 haircut for typical employee equity is insane.

I hope people read this and absorb the message. If you're trying to hustle or build something the odds are already against, you _can 't afford_ to ignore "the making money part". To channel Mark Suster, ring the fucking cash register.

<comment><USER32> The reason why wanting to change the world _appears to be_ an "aristocratic conceit" is that the current reward system overly rewards predictable riskless delivery over unpredictable risky innovation, meaning that it is much harder to obtain the breathing room (read: cash) on both a personal and business level to go in those "world-changing" directions.

Given that venture capital investment is one of the best (if riskiest) ways to make money, I really think it is time to throw out the accredited-investor law and open it up to everyone. This will flood the world with startup capital, allowing more breathing room for real innovation (read: world-changing) to occur.

I agree that if no bottom line is made at all, you're in trouble. I can't find the post now, but there's a great blog post out there about realizing that you have to make yourself valuable to SOMEone, SOMEhow in a way that will make them pay you, whether you like it or not...

<comment><USER13> > _This will flood the world with startup capital, allowing more breathing > room for real innovation (read: world-changing) to occur._

I wonder if this isn't over optimistic. I find it too easy to imagine that even _more_ money would upend the productive world while frantically scrambling for the next hypersocialgamified instacandygrambook.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to Blog? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on my startup for  the last few months and I've got to the point where I've got a load of things to blog about relating to work I've been doing on the startup (Mainly ruby/rails stuff).
I already have a blog, which has ~1k rss subscribers and gets about 500 uniques a day.
My question is: Should I use my current blog to write about there things and channel traffic to the startup from there, or should I start a blog for the startup and post stuff there.
Note: My app hasn't launched yet, although it should be ready to roll in a couple of months. <comment><USER2> I'd post dev stuff about your app to your personal blog, and stuff relating to the features / marketing of your app to its own blog. This way, you'll keep building the audience to your personal blog, which might come in useful if you decide to launch something else at some point in the future.

I don't think there is any problem in posting the same article to both of your blogs if it makes sense to. It depends on whether your startups blog audience would find dev articles interesting, I suppose.</comment>


US waitress was fired for posting a picture of a tip receipt on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://guardiancomment.tumblr.com/post/42024491123/chelsea-welch-the-us-waitress -who-was-fired-after <comment><USER3> The waitress's own accounting of the incident is exceptionally self serving and false. The signature as originally posted was quite legible. Her original accounting of the incident was completely fabricated because she didn't actually serve the table, though she represented herself as if she did.

For example, the customer's name, Alois, is a man's name, but the customer was actually a female with a male's first name. The waitress asserted that the customer was a man. When she later found out she was wrong she backpeddled and claimed she knew that but that she was protecting the customer's identity. However she publicly posted the customer's name and location, enabling people to track down the customer and begin threatening her.

Another detail she got wrong was claiming the customer left no tip. The customer left the tip as cash on the table, as most people in the US do, and something that most servers prefer, rather than pay it as part of the bill. The restaurant also though double charged the customer for the tip, meaning the customer ended up paying 36% rather than 18% on the bill as tip. Because the waitress had not served the table she assumed that the strike out of the tip line meant the customer left no tip at all.

In short, the waitress violated a customer's privacy, lied about the customer publicly defaming her, publicly ridiculed her religious beliefs, and instigated an internet mob riot against the customer which continues to this day in the form of threats and harassment and has caused the customer severe mental anguish. If I was an attorney in the area I would be preparing a large lawsuit against the restaurant at this time, and I would certainly prevail in court.

Her firing was completely justified and her complaining about being fired in the media and claiming herself as victim when she was the bully is absolutely outrageous.

<comment><USER4> I personally don't get whole this tip tradition - just give me the check stating the exact amount I have to pay. And give the appropriate salary to the wait{er|ress}.

<comment><USER5> Thank you.

I find the power imbalance in these situations to be very uncomfortable -- half the time in the back of my mind I'm thinking to myself this waitress has a big smile on her face because ultimately all she wants is a nice tip; the smiley front is unauthentic. Just please give the servers and waiters a proper salary and let me go on with my day.

The very idea of tipping to me is absurd and silly. What constitutes that a service be tipped anyway? Doesn't the guy who spends 30 minutes explaining to me how I should install my bathroom tiles at Home Depot deserve a tip? Or the cooks in the backhouse -- who, arguably, have much difficult work to do than servers/waiters? The immigrant dishwashers who never even get a chance to have their common dignity affirmed at any step of the way -- because they're not palatable enough in their looks and appearances to be seen by a customer? Or the Sears cashier clerk who does me the favour of looking in the back warehouse to see if the shoes I'm looking for are really not in stock -- and then calls other stores to see if they have them, when he didn't have to do any of that?

Just give them a nice salary. Don't try to guilt-trip me by bringing up how they're paid "below minimum wage".

And, to put a startup spin on my post: there should be a site that rates the ethical practices of stores/restaurants. Does the restaurant pay its dishwashers a respectable salary? If yes, I will be okay and willing to pay a little extra. If they don't: I'll happily never do business there again.

<comment><USER6> "Just give them a nice salary."

It's silly naive thinking like this...

Tips exist because they are a way for the customer to give a good server some money directly.

Unless there was a cast-iron legal guarantee that the money from the "automatic" tip goes _direct_ to all low-paid staff (servers and chefs), then I want to be able to give my money to the server direct.

<comment><USER5> > Tips exist because they are a way for the customer to give a good server > some money directly.

 _That_ is silly. Why is waiter work so unique that it's one of the very few that requires this kind of payment? If you want to pay money directly, you can do that for cashier clerks at gas stations, clothing stores, auto service men, middlemen of all sorts in business offices, etc. etc. Why not pay them directly too then?

What I'm arguing is that the tradition of tipping is something that should not be. I would be okay with tipping in the most extraordinary of circumstances, where the worker clearly goes out of his way to provide unexpectedly superb service, but it should not be seen as necessary in other normal situations; I don't see a really good reason why it has to be any different from other jobs.

As another commenter in this thread from Sweden pointed out: it works for them. The norm is that waiters are not tipped. It seems to be working okay for them, let it work in America too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am surprised that everyone saw this from one side. I was making an argument that the "pastor" has received a lot of undue criticism all because she made ONE comment on a receipt after ONE meal. Now, her small 15 person church is receiving a bunch of scrutiny and being mocked...from papers across the globe. If the "waitress" did not POST the picture on the Internet then the pastor would have been left alone. Is it possible the waitress overreacted to the customer's one comment on tips?

It has been a while since I waited tables but we were always happy and respectable to all guests, we didn't worry about a person NOT giving tips. We were just glad for the visit. Did it ever matter? It is all about the averages, you may get a good tip at one table and a bad tip at another. You never disrespect the customer by trying to insult them online.

On religion and her being a pastor (of a 15 member church). Why should we expect rational, conscientious behavior from some random pastor? The world is shocked that she didn't want to give a tip and then made a reference a God while doing so. It is religion, I don't expect thought-out, kind behavior from religious people. Why should we? They are just people and are going to make these kind of snide comments just like anyone else.

"In light of the situation, I would like to make a statement on behalf of wait staff everywhere: We make $3.50 an hour. Most of my paychecks are less than pocket change because I have to pay taxes on the tips I make."

She knows that if you make less than the non-server minimum wage then the company is supposed to pay you the rest of the wages to meet the minimum wage rate. So, they don't entirely make less than the federal minimum wage rate. And I was a waiter, a lot of people didn't report ALL the tips that they earned to avoid the taxes. Should we make sure she is being accurate in her tax reporting?

<comment><USER8> > Why should we expect rational, conscientious behavior from some random > pastor?

Because the attitude is (like it or not) Christians are better, they are saved, and they go the extra mile to show that charity, giving, and compassion are their main attributes. When a pastor writes that stuff on the check, it comes out as very hypocritical to most people in this country.

This includes both Christians who are outraged because "she is doesn't represent us" and also atheists who see this as an example of hypocrisy.

<comment><USER7> I see it as a human acting human. There are 7 billion people, their behavior is not predetermined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe people should be more careful about what to post online, especially things that could reveal personal identities without the person's permission.

In this case the customer's signature is partially visible, which is not only considered personal but can potentially also be forged to sign for credit card receipts and legal documents.

Sure the life of a waitress is not easy but from the perspective of the restaurant owner, I think the firing was justified. If she disagrees, she can always sue for wrongful termination and let the court decide (which will cost her money that potentially cannot be recovered should she lose).

<comment><USER10> _the customer's signature is partially visible_

You're kidding, right? How could anyone possibly get any identifying information from a few squiggles at the edge of a photo--much less enough to perpetrate identity theft?

<comment><USER9> The point is not whether enough identifying information could be obtained this time, but rather the fact that she (arguably) did not really consider that when posting the image, and that she could do it again (and this time reveal enough identifying information). Had she tilted the camera a bit further down the whole signature would've been visible.

Imagine an employee in a company accidentally leaks some user data, which does not really contain personally identifying information. I don't think it's completely unjustifiable to fire this person even though no damage was done.

Of course the owners of the restaurant could've dealt with the situation a lot nicer (warning her about the potential danger instead of firing her). But I don't blame them for taking the more drastic measure that they did (not saying that I would've done the same).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Apparently it turned into a social media fracas: [http://rlstollar.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/applebees- overnigh...](http://rlstollar.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/applebees-overnight- social-media-meltdown-a-photo-essay/)

<comment><USER7> This is exactly why Applebee's fired the waitress. She wasn't fired because the customer called the store. She was fired because she was the catalyst for all of this bad publicity.

<comment><USER12> What? I thought the bad publicity was caused by Applebee's firing her, not the other way round.

<comment><USER7> As a general rule, restaurant managers at these chain stores have to respect the brand. According to Applebee's:

"Employees must honor the privacy rights of APPLEBEE's and its employees by seeking permission before writing about or displaying internal APPLEBEE'S happenings that might be " considered to be a breach of privacy and confidentiality..."

She was fired for breaching the the customer's privacy. And you don't normally do that (putting information online) because this kind of shitstorm can happen. They are probably sending a message to other employees, don't pull this kind of stuff or you lose your job. Now look at the shitstorm we have to deal with.

<comment><USER13> If she hadn't been fired, this whole thing would have been one obscure post on reddit and an outraged customer - this kind of thing happens all the time.

If there's any lesson for would-be entrepreneurs, it's about how to handle public opinion.

At this stage it really doesn't matter who was right and who was wrong (it seems clear to me both parties played a part), but Applebee's handling of this whole mess has been a study of what _not_ to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is this on Hacker News? I can't think of any relevance it has to software or entrepreneurship. This kind of thing should stay on Reddit, methinks.

I'm not going to flag it though, as it isn't spam.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen _The person who wrote the note came across an article about it, called the Applebee's location, and demanded everyone be fired — me, the server who allowed me to take the picture, the manager on duty at the time, the manager not on duty at the time, everyone. It seems I was fired not because Applebee's was represented poorly, not because I did anything illegal or against company policy, but because I embarrassed this person._

Incredible. How much money does this customer want to stiff this waitress out of? Isn't paying nothing on a mandatory tip bad enough?

<comment><USER15> While I wholeheartedly agree that the actions of the customer are absurd, I would like to point out that in the US, courts have held that a tip is not "mandatory."

<comment><USER16> Restraunts should just charge the amount that is needed to pay their waitstaff properly, instead of relying on a tip and make their prices look cheaper! A tip is supposed to be extra money given the the waitstaff for services above and beyond the call of duty.

<comment><USER7> At least for me. Waiting was the easiest job with the most reward for the least amount of work. Tax free in some cases because it was cash.

Our job was to essentially walk from one side of the restaurant to the other side of the restaurant and meet drunk hot chicks. And they give you typically 10-30 dollars cash for doing so.

Hard work is standing behind a hot grill for $5-8 a hour, 10 hours a day without the tips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "It seems I was fired not because Applebee's was represented poorly..."

Actually, that is probably why she was fired. Saying something publicly about a customer, especially in a way that could look bad for the customer, does not reflect well on the restaurant.

If you interact with customers, it's your job at risk. The customer is sometimes, but often not, risking much by being rude in one way or another. Is it fair? Maybe not. But that's unlikely to be a productive discussion.

</comment><comment><USER18> Pastor's apology: [http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/tipping-pastor- apolog...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/tipping-pastor- apologizes-687234)

      In a TSG interview, Alois Bell said that the online
      firestorm created by the receipt has left her stunned.
      "My heart is really broken," said the 37-year-old Bell.
      "I've brought embarrassment to my church and ministry."

<comment><USER7> It sucks she backed down so easily. She should have lawyered up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Our pastor showed this picture in church this morning. Didn't really get the back story and some things still don't add up:

The picture on Reddit (linked to from this link) is cropped. I seem to remember seeing the entire receipt.

Usually tips are only added automatically for large parties (>= 8) but this bill was only $34. Makes no sense. Was this just 8 people getting iced teas?

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if that sweet sweet karma was worth it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Getting fired from Applebees is the best thing that could've happened to her. That's divine intervention if I've ever seen it...

</comment><comment><USER22> Applebees PR dept should watch reservoir dogs, the problem is that no matter how right you are, you look like an asshole.

Was it inexecusable? Certainly.

Does she make $3.50 an hour? Yes.

Does anyone find that an acceptable amount to be paid in the richest nation on earth? No.

Do most people regard those that don't tip as assholes? Yes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, on the bright side, she now has all the time in the world to spend on Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think it became a problem because only Mormons paid tithe, and it became a charged comment.

<comment><USER25> Mormons are the best known example of it, but many Baptist, Pentecostal and Brethren churches do the same thing. In all of those cases, where it happens, I believe that 10% is the standard figure.

<comment><USER26> The word tithe means tenth, and it is the biblical standard of giving - <USER2> tenth of your income. However, it's not related at all to tipping a waitress a portion of your dinner bill.

<comment><USER27> Religious people that write things like that prefer rhetoric to reason. It's in the same class of statements as "no monkey in my family tree." Sounds like you've made a point but you have only made a sentence.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OkCupid sacrifices a user's privacy for virtue signaling - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/okcupid/status/898249291382345729 <comment><AUTHOR> The unethical behaviour of OkC needs to be pointed out again.

<comment><USER2> Their site their rules. Right?

I'm sure they ban bots and other undesirable folks too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it stated in their site rules that they publicly anounce your ban?

<comment><USER2> See my other reply :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't see how his privacy was sacrificed. An OkCupid profile isn't really private. Anyone who logs into the site can look at it.</comment>