Ask HN: Life advice for 25yo Web Dev, single, no debt, $30k/£20k savings - <AUTHOR> If you were a 25yo Web Developer (Full-stack Dev), single, no debt and had $30k/£20k savings, what would you do?
Please bear the following in mind:

  - I am based in the UK
  - I did not go to College/University
  - I am self-taught
  - From the age of 16-20 when I was learning
  I didn't party a lot or go out much
  - From the age of 20-25 I was in a
  long term relationship
  - I have been a tech co-founder of a company
  which grew to $7m/£4m turnover at its peak
  - From the age of 20-25 I was working 60-70 hours
  per week, both in employed jobs and
  growing the company I was a co-founder of
  - I have no debts
  - I have a core group of friends who I see perhaps
  once per week but they are slowly getting into relationships
  - I am currently freelancing for the company I was
  a co-founder of (I sold my shares)
  but I am working from home
 Sometimes I look around and I am grateful for the way everything has turned out. Having said that, I can't help but feel I have missed out. I never had my "party days", never travelled and I am working and living out of a apartment in the UK, which with my line of work, could in theory be anywhere in the world.
Some weeks go by and the only people I see are my family members, 1 or 2 friends and I may go out on the odd date now and again. My friends no longer want to go out to bars and clubs because they all did this when they were younger.
Part of me would love to put all of my belongings in storage, take my laptop and freelance from around the world.
My monthly outgoings are $2,500/£1,500 for rent and bills (I live on my own) and this is covered by my freelance work (8 hours per WEEK) so I barely have to touch my savings.
I want to meet more people, make more friends, meet more girls, have fun, come across exciting work opportunities, etc but I am not doing this right now.
What would YOU do? <comment><USER2> Do something that has nothing to do with any of this.

True story from my first week an university. I was a typical bright, nerdy guy away from home for the first significant amount of time. I decided that I had to do _something_ to force me to not stay in my room and it had to be something that was going to get me to meet people unlike me.

So I looked around and went for something well outside my comfort zone: ballroom dancing. I had no idea how to dance at all, but you can learn to dance and you dance with women. Also, all the other people there were in a similar situation (some had danced before) but most were doing it to try something new.

I don't know what's going to work for you, but there's something out there.

<comment><USER3> I spent a lot of time hanging out at a salsa dancing club. It was a great way to 1) do something not nerdy 2) meet a lot of women, and 3) get a small sense of what said women are like in short order. You can tell a lot about someone by how they dance and react and behave. I also found it fun. Also, it's enough of an acquired skill that not just anyone can walk in and be good right away, but not so hard that you have to spend years getting any good.

<comment><USER4> Not sure I agree with the last part - it took me 2 years of weekly salsa lessons to get comfortable on a dancefloor

Having said that, I can't recommend dancing highly enough, it's added an enormous amount of joy to my life. Programming scratches an intellectual kind of itch for me, but dancing scratches a much deeper one

<comment><USER3> Depends on the kind of place you frequent. The one I went to was perfect in that some people there were very good, but most were average, and people were there to have fun and meet others, not to show off, mostly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not too late to have your "party days". I am 28, I have 2 children, a mortgage and a full time job (as well as freelancing on the side). At the beginning of May I ended my 12 year relationship (manipulative, emotionally abusive ex) and jumped head first into a proper social life for the first time EVER. If I can do this whilst juggling being a lone parent / working 2 jobs / etc you have no excuses. :)

So go out to bars and have fun (who says you have to go with friends?!), date more, travel, take a class, swim in the ocean, jump from a plane, write a bucket list and do it all! Whatever, just make sure you seize life and get on with it.

Oh, but before you do all that, let me know how you manage to make enough to cover your bills in 8 hours so that I can jack in the full time job and spend more time with my kids ;)

<comment><USER6> How? He's had a successful startup under his belt and he's also a programmer, companies pay a lot for that type of experience (I know because I'm doing that right now, I also got bought out).

<comment><USER5> The last line of my comment was tongue in cheek, sorry if the ";)" didn't make that clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can never go wrong with travel. It will expand your mind, take you out of your comfort zone, and change you as a person.

I like to travel slow. At least one month in each place. That gives me enough time to rent a place for a month, with is cheaper, and to really get to know some people.

Don't bother doing freelancing until you have to. But if there's a side project that you'd like to work on, do work on that!

I've been spending 3 months in Cape Verde, loving it. After that don't know where i'm going. Indonesia maybe?

Travel travel travel, travel as much as you can! :)

<comment><USER8> I'm curious to know how do you find places to rent for a month.

<comment><USER9> Airbnb, Flipkey, VRBO, Homeaway are all short term/vacation rental sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Use couchsurfing and go travel. It's free, but you also get to meet some amazing people.

Try online dating. Tinder/okcupid. Meet some younger girls who still like to go out and party.

Take up active hobbies that force you to be around other people. Yoga, indoor rock climbing, dancing is another good one.

Try meetup.com to meet new friends and activity partners.

If you have the freedom to travel, why are you staying in your apartment!? You can settle down when you're old and grey. Get out and explore the world.

<comment><USER11> This. Is good advice. Take it from a grey guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _What would YOU do?_

Stop thinking about myself and start thinking about others.

Find someone who needs help. Help them. Repeat.

Before you know it, instances will become classes and you'll have more important things to do than you could have ever imagined.

And a real nice byproduct will be that you will have addressed your original issue far better than you could have by focusing on yourself.

<comment><USER13> Generation X and Y had a easy childhood and learnt to be egocentric and only think about themselves. Even philanthropic initiatives are only masks to feed their ego and personal development. Ex: voluntourism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_travel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_travel)

Disclaimer: I'm in the frontier between these two generations. I was taught to be like this.

I wish I wish I could be like you advise. I can listen my father words in your words. By the way I read your book, great ideas there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm 32, and last week I got a puppy. She is adorable and I love her dearly, but now my free time has been completely wiped out (don't worry, it'll come back eventually). During this week I've had a lot of time to reflect on what I liked doing, what I should have been doing, and what I was doing. I think if you want inspiration for how to spend your time, try doing something for a week that completely eliminates it. Try fostering a puppy! After 3 sleepless days you'll have elaborate fantasies of how you could have spent all that freedom.

I'm totally not projecting, I swear! ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> Get outside your comfort zone and disconnect yourself from the tech world.

I was in a similar situation, except I did not have that much money at the time. My wife and I sold everything that we have, bought a caravan and a car to tow it. Travel the east cost of Australia. Did jobs like cucumber picking, laboring for house building, fishing at the local beach for our daily meals etc. It was tough going with my wife as we learn about each other that we did not know before (the situation forces it). At the end my wife and I were closer, and we were much more rounder as a person.

</comment><comment><USER16> At 25 I would already have blown all my savings on basically not working partying and traveling. Actually that's pretty much what I did..

But I crafted that lifestyle for myself specifically after having a pretty lonely miserable time living in my home city. Shortly after school I was in a sort of similar situation living alone, working in tech, not making new friends, spending weekends with family, not meeting girls etc. I knew some friends who moved to LA, so I disposed of everything I owned and moved out there. I completely stepped out of my comfort zone and lived with a bunch of guys in a fratty situation in Hollywood as it was becoming colonized by hipsters. New friends, parties, women all this stuff I was isolated from back home just became my lifestyle all of a sudden. I bounced around road tripping, went to Hong Kong randomly. Its something that really changed the tempo of my life in a way I would never pass up.

I probably set myself back a lot financially and career-wise. I lived in the bay area for a time, I got bored and moved back to LA to party. I turned down tons of business opportunities. Do I regret it? Not really. I'm not rich today at all but I met my wife during that time, all of my best friends. I learned how to balance freelance and life so I have ample free time while still paying the bills.

So basically do something that makes you happy. Get out of your comfort zone. Put yourself in the places you'll have the opportunity to make the most out of socially. Reinvent yourself. Its worth it.

Just don't blow all your money.

</comment><comment><USER17> Go travel the world while freelancing before you get in another serious relationship. You only live once and a whole world is out there you haven't even experienced.

If you goto backpacker destinations you'll meet tons of people your age, from all over the world, looking to go on adventures and have fun. Most of these places are relatively cheap compared to the UK/US, have existing communities of freelancers and you get to experience another culture/way of life.

For the last 1.5 years I've been living in Thailand doing freelance work. The quality of life, people I've met and life experiences far outweight even my best years back home. I'm 30 now and I look back and wish I would have made the leap to go abroad at 25.

The other big benefit is that you can save a lot of money with little effort. I try to not work more than 4 hours a day and still save more money than when I was working full time in the US. Plus the lifestyle I can live in Thailand is amazing in comparison to the US. 1 monthof living frugally back home (Seattle) is what I would spend living it up for 3-4 months in Thailand.

<comment><USER18> I found expat community in Bangkok shady. Whereabouts are you based?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > What would YOU do?

First of all, relax! you are only 25 you have all your life in front of you. The best years in your life are about to come.

In your case I will travel for a couple of months on your own. Go to asia, south america... you'll have a lot of new experiences and get to meet some people.

Also you can practice an sport or get a new hobby like playing an instrument, you have a lot of free time and you'll meet new people.

</comment><comment><USER20> What would I do? Well, at your age I was a tech geek climbing the learning curve, albeit sans your entrepreneurial skills, but for what it's worth....

I moved away from the big city to a small New England seacoast town and commuted to my technology job. It was an artist/writer colony and I began to meet all sorts of creative types, cranky traditional New Englanders, fishermen, artisans, and like minded others seeking alternatives to the big city.

I started going to local folk dances, I joined the local community chorus and sang with them for a year. I took modern dance and ballet classes. The dancing led me to dust off my rusty musical instruments and start jamming with friends, which led to playing music in folk dance bands, and my social life just expanded unbelievably.

Ultimately I met my life partner as well as many other friends in this community, and we now have a child who's growing up in that community as well, taking her to Scottish dances and square dances and the like, a very wholesome community for children versus the typical TV culture that I myself grew up in. By the way, I recommend raising children; it's the most challenging, satisfying, crazy, and rewarding project I've ever been involved in!

I often recommend that guys in a guys' world like technology and engineering try folk dancing or other "soft" arts that tend to attract women and cool other guys.

If you're not into dancing or such things, that's cool, and there are myriad other activities out there. Our modern civilization may have its share of problems but it also offers rich cultural opportunities that are distressingly under utilized by many young people.

Whatever you choose to do, enjoy life and know that you have many decades ahead of you to explore the world and raise a family if your path takes you in that direction. Best of luck and stay healthy!

</comment><comment><USER21> Oxford University offer an MSc in Software Engineering. It's meant to be part- time over 4 years, but occasionally people come in and decide to blitz the whole thing while being a fulltime student - you could take 1 - 4 years over it, depending on how hard you want to work, and how much fun you want to have. You don't need an undergrad degree if you have strong experience. Expect it to cost £25,000 in total. You will be a full member of the university, with student card, and membership of a college with an active social life in a city with two large universities. You'll end up with a degree, which will make working abroad much easier in the future, relive the student days you never had, and learn a bunch of interesting stuff.

Alternatively, upsticks and move to Bangkok. You'll find it easy to make friends.

I've done both, so feel free to email me (in profile) with questions about either.

</comment><comment><USER22> Travel and while you are doing it learn to scuba dive. I could barely put my head in the water without panicking when I started. There is something magical about floating and you can see down 25-40 meters below you. For example a night dive around a ship wreck or seeing all kinds of mind blowing under water wildlife!

I suppose in a non-self help way life is about living a bit outside of your comfort zone... so what are you scared of? Do that.

Make certain that the flight is one way and that you aren't just dipping your toe in like I did at the start of the year. You need to be able to flow while you are travelling (having to deal with a flat or stuff that's not tied up back home is shit) and it's really easy to meet people if you can book a highly rated hostel room. "Hello" works.

I think I've just given myself the bug again, why is it so grey outside on July 11!

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "Make certain that the flight is one way"

Be careful with this. I had to book a one way flight once but it actually worked out more expensive than booking a return. So sometimes it might just be cheaper to book the return and not use the return trip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One thing I'd say is, if you're going to go travelling don't label yourself as a hacker or entrepreneur or freelancer.

Don't prepare your intro story. "Hey, I'm Steve and I've just decided to go travelling but I'm a hacker and I had this startup and then I freelanced..." etc. Just say, "Hey, I'm Steve. Nice to meet you." The rest can come out naturally! It's good to meet people from all walks of life and by preparing all this backstory you might overwhelm people or become a caricature of yourself.

Oh, and if you _do_ go travelling, and need someone to take over your freelance work - please get in touch. I'm basically the same as you but 26 and _not_ single, not planning to pack it up and take a break just yet.

Good luck.

EDIT: And hey if you wanna get a beer some time with someone new lemme know, I live in London too.

<comment><USER24> introducing yourself using the MIT-definition of hacker is a huge mistake anyways because they'll ask you how you hack computers or something; which will lead to you having to explain the difference between the classic hacker and the MIT hacker - for 99% of people this is the most boring topic ever

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Travel.

The best age to travel is now. I had a similar amount of money due to redundancy so went and backpacked up the East coast of Australia for 4 months, sometimes on my own, and sometimes as part of organised coach tours and it was probably the 4 most important months of my life because it opened my eyes to work-life balance after being on autopilot on the school-college-uni-job route.

So put your flat stuff in storage, get a backpack and visit:

Hong Kong (because it shows you what life is like if you live to work, and you can pick up a decent SLR and lens dirt cheap there)

Vietnam (because its amazing)

Cuba (before it changes)

I can recommend Sydney for NYE; warm, strangers sharing beer and BBQ food and becoming friends. Great people.

If no one wants to go with you then use organised backpacker coach tours where needed, and you'll meet people and will make friends easily as everyone is in the same situation.

</comment><comment><USER26> All that travel advice. Sure, take it. Travel. I didn't travel a lot, 2 times 1 month with my (now) wife (Thailand/Vietnam) and some weeks pasted onto the back of conferences in the US (New Orleans/Boston/parts of California) during my PhD. I live in the Netherlands.

I also want to bring in that many of my friends/colleagues are starting serious relationships later and later in life. Some have children at the age of 38. Some find out they have a lot of trouble having children. They become very unhappy.

I wonder how many more people choose like me: Settle down with a woman you look up to, travel, yes but don't wait to long. Have kids, it is impossible to imagine the joy they bring when you don't have them.

When your kids leave the house, your are mid-fities and a lot more wealthy. I plan to take my kids around the world when they are up to it. In Thailand I met a lot of families with kids in the 6-12 range. They have a great time sitting on elephants and swimming with dolphins for a couple of dollars.

That said, nothing wrong with a bit of travel while you are still young, you might even meet your s/o along the way.

I feel a bit of regret reading all these comments, I might have traveled more knowing what I know now. But I also have to admit I feel quite some anxiety when I feel a taxi driver is going to screw me over. This will happen a lot. You have to be the kind of guy that can stand up for himself. Not too social at certain moments I'd say. Perhaps this is also what you learn when traveling longer.

I feel I should have traveled more. Not because I feel this constantly but after reading all this... But then, thinking of the travel I did, I was always happy to come home again.

Pff, trying to justify life choices because of your post while I should be working.

Better to regret things you did than things you didn't?

If you walk the footsteps of a stranger you'll learn the things you never knew you never knew.

<comment><USER27> > But I also have to admit I feel quite some anxiety when I feel a taxi driver > is going to screw me over. This will happen a lot. You have to be the kind > of guy that can stand up for himself. Not too social at certain moments I'd > say. Perhaps this is also what you learn when traveling longer.

So many times, this. I have that exact same feeling when I travel. Big, unfamiliar, cities make me really anxious. Between making travel arrangements, because I don't want to get stuck in a place that ends up being a total dump, or even making plans on what to do with my time when I reach my destination, and interacting with the local "vendors (taxi drivers, tourist-popular places, street vendors, etc).

It takes me a few days in a new place before I can get acclimated and familiar with an area before I can start to relax and enjoy myself.

I, admittedly, haven't traveled a lot and I have only been outside the US on one occasion, but even inside the US I get anxious. I get so worked up over making sure every experience is worth while, sometimes it's easy to forget that the experience, good or bad, is part of the journey and what probably makes traveling so great.

I assume it gets better with practice, and it certainly falls into the category of "Do what makes you uncomfortable."

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm hesitant to share, but it's my actual answer to _what I would do:_

Go to church, whatever your religious affiliation. My church has great, fun programs for exactly your age. It's where I met my wife and made a lot of great friends.

</comment><comment><USER29> When I was 25 I moved to London to work in another country, meet new people, have adventures ... live life. Prior to that, I was in a similar position to yourself. This was the best time of my life, and I'm glad I did it at that age. Most people wait until their midlife crisis to do those things, where it damages, or destroys, the commitments they have made.

Travelling is one of the most educational, rewarding experiences you can possibly have.

I would stash my earnings away into an investment, travel the world freelancing with my expertise, discovering new and amazing realities with which to live life.

P.S that's what I'm doing now, 20 odd years later. again.

</comment><comment><USER30> Sorry, can't help you, I haven't figured it out for myself either. A decade older, working remotely, with more savings than I know what to do with, 1-2 friends I see once in while, single, few interests or desires to speak of. All I know is that the usual suggestions here and elsewhere (travelling, dance lessons, partying, etc) don't do much if anything for me. I do get a feeling of "missing out" every now and then but it's more like "missing out whatever brain hardware/software motivates regular people enjoy things that leave me indifferent", not the remorse kind of missing out.

</comment><comment><USER31> 25 yo developer (Full stack dev), single, no debt, $15k savings. Here is what I am _not_ going to do:

\- Travel

\- Have fun

\- Meet new people

\- Get out of my comfort zone.

Instead, I am going to quit my job and research artificial intelligence full time: coursera, hacking on personal projects and hackerspaces. (And at least 1 hour of sport everyday for social/health). When my savings are blown, I'll try to get a job at numenta or vicarious. If this fails, go back to devweb for a few years, and repeat.

To all the people suggesting having fun and travelling: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl3/on_saving_the_world/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl3/on_saving_the_world/)

<comment><USER32> Wow, are you serious about this? This is pretty much what I did (am doing right now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hi, I am in a very similar situation, located in A'dam, The Netherlands, but I actually traveled a lot is one of my passions and nowadays still go clubbing.

You are in London, the best place for clubbing and a very nice base for traveling since most of the low cost flights are from and to London.

Check out Hospitality parties from Hospital Records, they come often to A'dam, also parties from RAM Records, Shogun Audio, Jungle Mania, Innovation, and others I am forgetting, this of course if you are into jungle music and drum and bass :-P

Do what you love, be original, don't worry about others trolling and be happy as you seen to be.

BIG UP !!

<comment><USER34> Big up fellow drum and bass listener! I go to most drum and bass gigs in London on my own (none of my friends are into it) and always have a fantastic time and come out with a massive smile.

<comment><USER33> Big man, I drop by London once in a while if there is a massive event as well, as the WEAREFSTVL2014 for instance, here in A'dam there are plenty of GIGS and I am always there, first to get in, with my wife, or by myself if necessary. BIG UP indeed.

did I mention travel and be original? :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Are you in London? (£1500 p/m for rent and bills sounds like London to me!) There's no shortage of things to do, Meetups, groups, societies, and places to go.

You're young. So young. Don't worry about your friends not wanting to go out so much -- find new ones who do, and who are willing to take you out to bars and clubs to show you the ropes of chatting up strangers, if that's your thing.

That said, were I in your position, I'd be tempted to do the 'freelance around the world' thing. I can put you in touch with someone who's doing exactly that if you like.

<comment><USER36> I would like to travel and freelance around the world. The thing is i don't know is it sustainable model. I read this thread and think to myself how envious I am. Does freelancing mean working at odesk and such sites or what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> When I was 26yo I freelanced while traveling. I had a blast, but if I could change one thing, I would have saved money (or created passive income streams) to travel for a year without having to freelance. Why? Because you can have more fun and adventure if you're flexible with your time and if you have minimal responsibilities. Staying out until 6 AM in a Brazilian disco with 10 new friends that you've just met is a lot more fun if you don't have to be on your laptop three hours later to write code for a company in a different timezone.

</comment><comment><USER38> Try everything. Add variety to your routine. Ask yourself what you're passionate about or interested in, and get some good books on the subject. Expand your understanding of the things you care about.

You might be interested in splitting your time between a long-term investment and several short-term investments. One example would be buying a house (10-30 year investment) and at the same time developing a bunch of life skills (1-6 month investments). Or travel the world for five years and work on small projects... Mix the things you want to do, don't just settle for one thing :)

In order to meet people, make friends, lovers/partners, and do fun exciting things, you have to spread out into the world and discover/try new things you wouldn't have thought of yourself as being involved in. The one constant I find is that the people I enjoy the most I encountered by accident whilst meandering the random occurrences of meeting new people and trying new things, without any expectations.

Also consider that you're only 25, and than in 5 years you will be a different person, and in 10 years, and 15, etc. It actually doesn't matter what you do, because some aspect of you will evolve over time and your plans will change, which is normal. (For example, five years ago I wouldn't have told you that i'd become a cook or a trapeze artist, or have a long-distance relationship... but people change!)

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm in the exact same position at the moment, have a fairly substantial amount of savings which I was planning on putting towards a deposit on my first house, but after looking there isn't much around within my price range which looks like something I'd enjoy improving (absolutely love DIY!) and living in (being self employed seems to be a huge red flag for lenders!).

I am fairly happy with my life, but its just a bit boring and I guess lonely at times. Sometimes finding myself trying to make small talk with people at the gym or in a supermarket as I haven't had any face to face interaction with another human for days at a time! I did go to university and lived in shared accommodation for a number of years and had the time of my life, but since living on my own I seem to have become a bit of a recluse and not as outgoing as I once was. Doesn't help that many of my friends are in relationships/permanently skint and are not willing to go out and do things.

Two of my main clients are located in London and I work remotely from home, both of which have said they would be fine with me travelling as long as I kept within a few hours time difference. Occasionally I am required to attend meetings in London at the cost of around £100-160 for a return train ticket, flights from a european country would probably cost me the same!

My biggest problems are pushing myself to do something new and out of my comfort zone and breaking the ice with new people as I am incredibly shy at first. Oh and not forgetting I have the worst hangovers of all time lasting anything from 2-4 days! haha

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm going to be the voice of dissent here and say only go travelling if you _really_ want to (you say 'part of you' would love to go - how big a part?)

Travelling isn't for everybody. Personally I'm a homebody and I felt pressured to travel when I was younger because all the cool kids were doing it. I never enjoyed it, regret it, and would trade the experience for the money back in a heartbeat.

If you really want to get away from it all, then by all means do so and have a blast. Just do it because you want to, not because the internet tells you to.

As for what I would do, well I was in a similar situation to you when I was about two years older than you are now. I worked at a successful startup and rose through the ranks fairly rapidly, but settled at principal developer level for a number of years and never tried to make the jump into a truly senior role. If I was doing it again, I would either stay aggressive in trying to get ahead, or quit and build my own product. Sounds like you've already done the latter though.

<comment><USER41> I disagree. After I finished university, I worked as a raft guide and travelled with the seasons. Started here in Europe as that was an easy way to get in to it. It scared the shit out of me when I got a job offer in Chile, but I had told everyone about it so I had to go. I was in it for the rafting / whitewater, but the travelling came bundled with it.

I went and had the best time of my life. It really opens your eyes when you see how different cultures live. Made me a lot less shy as well.

If you really don't like it you can always come home early.

<comment><USER40> I did come home early. Still regret it.

<comment><USER41> You could go again. The thought still crosses my mind every so often, and I am nearly 40.

<comment><USER40> I also am nearly 40. I plan to take my kids on an extended jaunt round Europe when they are 10 or so, but personally I am much more likely to choose resort holidays or cruises for myself rather than extended backpacker-style adventures. It's just not for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It sounds like you already have a good idea of what to do in your second to last paragraph. Go with your gut.

What would _I_ do? Well, I _was_ in your situation 10 years ago, and I basically kept doing lots of coding for fun, learning about all sorts of tech stuff, playing video games, and _not_ generally going out, making friends, or what ordinary people might call 'having fun'. But I'm an introvert who genuinely loves being bookish, indoorsy and living on the Internet rather than in real life, so different strokes and all that ;-) If I could dick around on the Internet for the rest of my life, I'd be a very happy bunny.

Ten years on, I don't regret my decisions and I'm married with kids and doing well, although I know more than enough people who did regret not living it up in their 20s and it sounds like you might be someone who wants/needs to do that in style.. so get on with it :-)

</comment><comment><USER43> Oh jeez. This post struck way too close for comfort. I'm in a situation very similar to yours. That feeling of missing out and your friends now in relationships is quite stark .

I'm watching the comments above me like a hawk for what to do but I'm taking your post as an excuse to shake up my life. BRB - getting plane tickets.

</comment><comment><USER44> Have a real adventure.

[http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/](http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/)

The boats will be back in London in a couple of days. Go along and talk to some people who have literally just finished sailing the entire way around the world. Hear about the incredible things they've seen. The wonderful people they met and the amazing obstacles they had to overcome. Most importantly, hear about how much they feel they've developed personally.

I've spent a lot of my life travelling (which is what most people here are saying you should do). I'd highly recommend it but try to not end up travelling as a tourist (foolishly, I did for years). My top tip would be to not travel too much. Go somewhere, anywhere. Live with a local family. Learn the language. Understand the culture. Your life will forever be richer for it.

</comment><comment><USER45> A lot of people have advised to do new activities, it can be difficult to discover the best activities, and be disciplined to do them without having other people to support you.

What about your solo living situation? I'm the same age as you, except living in San Francisco in a house of 60 people. I have a roommate who is 27. If you were in this house there'd be at least 15 activities a week you could join ranging from swing dancing, to making dinner for 20, to big rides around the city, to waking up at 545am to serve food in homeless shelters. You don't need to drag yourself out of your apartment alone, you just ride with the energy of the people you live with.

Suggest you join a share-house, or even fly over to San Francisco to join a larger community (I've flown over from Australia).

</comment><comment><USER46> Oh I can actually help with this, same age range too I just hit 26, no kids etc

I think if you go travelling you'll end up repeating bad habits in each new place because you haven't changed anything about yourself.

I don't like giving advice so I'll just talk about what's worked for me :)

In the last 3 months I got to contract for Microsoft, which meant leaving my apartment and GF in London and having a place rented in Reading.

I'd intended to play a ton of games in the evenings but the internet connection there was terrible, dropped every 3 mins. I took this as an opportunity to do something else and learn a game in real life :p Plus I was a little out of shape and wanted to fix that and make some non-work friends. For me I picked Squash because it's a really demanding game of a competitive nature but it's also easy to practice on your own so I wouldn't be as embarrassed when I played with others.

I did research etc and spent just under a month in the evenings training on my own, then I joined the social squash sessions and later on the league. It's a ton of fun and when you're in friendly competition you naturally gel with peeps. You meet lots of different people too, I ended up building a site for a chem engineer who was setting up his own company.

The funny thing is not only did I make more friends through squash, but because you have something (non-nerdy, I could talk anyone's ear off about dev stuff or DOTA/Street Fighter etc but not everyone is open-minded enough to appreciate my nerdier facets :P) that you can chat about with other people you meet you find they're just generally more interested in you because passion is attractive, even in a platonic sense.

I did other things too but they aren't as pertinent to your situation, like starting to go to the gym with people I liked on my team, learning to ride a motorbike etc, all of which have made me a much more fulfilled person, all of which I wouldn't of even started doing if I hadn't of picked up that first activity.

This may sound a bit touchy feely but looking back, I think what was making me unhappy was that I didn't love myself. That sounds strange but as soon as I started improving and finding my groove everything else was a heck of a lot easier. You sound the same, you're trying to reach for something to change your circumstances and travel is an obvious first manifestation for that, but I'd suggest changing yourself first and seeing if that makes you happy.

You're lucky, you're looking for what to do next and you have few things to stop you going in any direction. You're standing on the precipice of you becoming a more awesome person :)

</comment><comment><USER47> * Travel

* Spend your time with quality people

* Build a family

* Be generous, help others

Everything else will work itself out.

</comment><comment><USER48> Go travel round Europe whilst freelancing, no visa hassle as you're an EU citizen and travelling is definitely worth it. Either put stuff in storage and pick a list of countries to go to, or go visit a new city for a week each month I'd say.

<comment><USER49> How would you go about making sure you have consistent internet while working? Internet cafe? Rely on hotel wifi?

<comment><USER18> Hostel wifi, if that is slow then cafe wifi, and if still no luck then a local 3G sim card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> 24yo dev in London here. I moved to London ~1 year ago, not knowing anyone here, and meetup.com has been by far the best way to meet new people for me. If you want to grab a pint at some point hit me up with an e-mail! (in profile).

<comment><USER51> +1 for meetup.com great site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Similar boat, I quit my job in april to travel. So far I've been to Japan, Inner Mongolia, and Hong Kong.

I find it's a lot cheaper to rent an apartment than hotels/airbnb, but you would have to stay in one place for a month at a time, which is mostly ok for places with a good subway system.

I was planning to change to the nomadic lifestyle forever, but 3 months later it is getting to be a bit tiring. I find I miss the convenience of having a car, fast pc, and going to the gym. I may just make it more of a once a year thing.

shameless plug for my blog: [http://jack.ventures](http://jack.ventures)

<comment><USER8> Same question that I asked previously on that thread, how do you find places to rent that's not Airbnb?

(cool blog btw!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Travel. Take up something completely non-techy, like woodworking or knitting to meet people outside the tech "scene". Find a co-working place or something to do your freelance stuff from, to better mentally give a barrier between life and work. Make sure you have a good Third Place [1]. It sounds very much like you're in the opening stages of burnout here, and you really, really need to work on breaking out and making a mark on the world outside of hacker news.

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

</comment><comment><USER54> I would go to school and study for a degree in some other field (perhaps something to do with science). I don't get travel. Waste of money IMHO. You can meet people and have fun doing other stuff as well.

</comment><comment><USER55> "Part of me would love to put all of my belongings in storage, take my laptop and freelance from around the world."

It looks like you already answered your own question. This part of you is your intuition.

You are in the perfect situation to do what many people yearn to do, but are unable to because of lack of time and money, both of which you seem to have.

Go backpacking in Asia or something. Meet people, drink casually, explore the culture, and work from your laptop on the side. There are so many possibilities, and it is up to you whether or not you capitalize on them while you still can.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm also from the UK and I felt exactly as you did, at exactly your age.

As others have said, travel. Specifically, stay at youth hostels; you will meet and get to know many wonderful people from all over the world.

When you stay at a hostel, people will tell you of new and fun places to go, where you'll meet more new and interesting people, and the virtuous circle begins.

At 25 I left my contracting job and spent 4 summer months travelling Europe.

Perhaps my favourite destination -

[http://www.lakecomohostel.com/](http://www.lakecomohostel.com/)

</comment><comment><USER57> Go for it. Seriously man, why not? You're already regretting missing out on things now, you don't want to look back and regret not making this choice. If you do it and it doesnt work out, who cares? You try something else. If you cut into your savings, who cares? Try something else. Sounds like you've been in your comfort zone for a while, you're bored, you want to try something new. Why not listen to that feeling? I've been travelling and never have I ever been happier.

</comment><comment><USER58> It sounds like you already know what you want to do.

I spent two years travelling the world while freelancing. I was building iOS apps remotely for companies in the UK. You'll be amazed how far the pound will take you in developing countries.

My advice is to spend six months in each location and try to really live there. Typical backpacking didn't work for me while also working.

Suggestions: Chiang Mai, Medellin, Bali, Berlin (cheap, but not the same kind of cheap as the others in this list)

My email is in my profile if you need any tips/ideas.

</comment><comment><USER59> I'll go for a 10-20 days hike, check the gr5, gr10, gr20 in France. I'll rent a room in a piso compartido in spain for a month, centers of Madrid or Barcelona have an amazing nightlife if you'd like to party, learn some spanish there. Learn to dance salsa. Go to a windy beach to windsurf. I'll grow my network, attend some tech meetups. Never eat alone.

And if your friends are settling and you no longer have so much fun with them, never think it's too late to make new friends!

</comment><comment><USER60> 28yo Web Dev, married (with babies), no debt, corporate JOB (just over broke, one month of expenses in my bank)

"What would YOU do?"

I'd definitely go travelling. See the world. Understand culture / problems / what drives people.

Suggestion - [http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackbase](http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackbase) \- get yourself to Canary Islands (plenty of cheap RyanAir flights from the UK) and figure what to do next from there :)

</comment><comment><USER61> In your last sentence, you answered your own question. Don't ask us how you would want to live your life, after all it is YOUR life. Just live it!

We can give you as much permission as you want. But all of it won't matter unless you give yourself the permission.

Some say "just ship", in this case, "just start".

Lots of great advice in this thread. A lot of ideas on where to start. But it will be all for not if you don't let yourself start.

Good luck throwing off the bowlines! ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> I agree with jgrahamc.

Do a Bruce Wayne Gap Year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617684)

</comment><comment><USER62> Travel. You are in exactly the position I'd like to be in when I graduate (I'll be 26). Use AirBnB or hostels and go anywhere you'd like, living in a country for a month or two before moving on. Work from coffee shops or wherever you can find internet. Get in positions where you'll meet people and keep up with them with facebook, snail mail, etc. You may meet the person you wind up marrying along the way.

</comment><comment><USER63> I would advise you to start investing if you haven't already done so. Keep things simple to start with. Invest in index ETFs (similar to VTI in the US) and make sure you diversify enough. Keep some money aside for "risky" investment and always have cash available for emergencies.

If you are interested in starting another company find a mentor and start building relationships. Above all, eat healthy stay healthy.

</comment><comment><USER64> Keep cultivating ideas, building contacts, realizing dreams thru company building, building wealth while staying humble. Sounds like you are well on the way to financial independence which is the equivalency of freedom the vast majority will never know. Nothing, absolutely nothing better than being beholden to no one. Anything else is a modern equivalent of slavery.

</comment><comment><USER65> You could go to college in a country where that's free or affordable (northern Europe). You could even just go for one or two years with the intention of dropping out early. Learn a fascinating topic (not necessarily tech related), see a different country without being just a tourist. Code in your free time when not doing typical student stuff.

</comment><comment><USER66> Go traveling. Central America is cheap, beautiful, and full of other travelers (i.e. people who don't know anyone there and are therefore happy to make new friends). And if you have some work lined up before you go, you can code using hostel wifi and live like a king (a king that sleeps in a room with 6 or 7 strangers, but a king no less).

</comment><comment><USER67> Don't concern yourself with meeting "girls". Meet _women_ and let it happen organically through your journeys.

</comment><comment><USER68> My dream is living in a Latin American country (I learned Spanish) and do freelance work online for western salaries, e.g. $60 hourly. I maybe would get bored of it after 6 months, but with a European passport, you can always easily go back to Europe. I recently moved to the UK by the way, but just doing a full-time job.

</comment><comment><USER69> Fully fund your Roth IRA. Visit a financial planner. Make sure you have your plans in place for retirement. Then play.

</comment><comment><USER70> I would do what [https://twitter.com/levelsio](https://twitter.com/levelsio) is doing: Start different startups, working from cool but cheap places anywhere around the world, with a lot of travels.

</comment><comment> artumi-richard I try to do things now that I won't be able to do in the future. If you hope to have a family one day, that's going to tie you to one spot, because you'll want a support network, so you would be wise to travel now.

</comment><comment><USER71> Much of european hostel scene is full of people wanting to go out and party, most days you'll meet 5-10 new people and have a lot of fun. You can do it for a week to see what's like, I bet you'll be hooked.

<comment> k-mcgrady I second this. I'm just back from a short holiday where we spent part of it in a hostel and part in an apartment. The hostel was much more fun. New people from all over Europe arrived everyday. The hostel owner introduced us, suggested we have dinner together and then we all went out for the night. Great way to meet new people and not very awkward either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I would use this opportunity to focus on yourself, what makes you happy regardless of who else is around. People (men and women) come and go. Where do YOU want to be, what do YOU want to try out and see if you like?

</comment><comment><USER73> 24yo self-taught webdev here as well, recently relocated to the UK from Sweden and left everything back home. If you'd like to grab a beer sometime, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).

</comment><comment><USER74> Huge cliche but it amazes me how life can flip on a minor event, a chance meeting or conversation.

I think traveling accelerates the possibility of these events happening.

</comment><comment><USER75> Go and travel, I would say. Do not change places too often, it hurts productivity, 1 month is ok.

</comment><comment><USER76> Take a trip for a month, you've earned it. Go somewhere cheap and interesting.

</comment><comment><USER77> Travel.

Also take up dancing classes (salsa is a good choice) and possibly learn to paint/draw.

</comment><comment><USER78> If you can, travel. You will never regret it. And it will be harder later

</comment><comment><USER79> That's not a lot of savings. My advice would be to save more.

edit: Also, "barely have to touch my savings" means that you're net negative every month, and you're currently not doing anything special. I wouldn't do anything new that would raise my expenses.

<comment><USER80> I think it depends what his goals are. Not a lot if you want to buy a house, but it's plenty if you want to travel around a bit and occasionally splurge on fine dining.

<comment><USER79> I disagree. $30K savings/$2.5K rent and bills = a year of savings, if you make sure you never, ever eat and your car never, ever breaks down.

There's something wrong with the finances of somebody who never took out student loans, has been working for 70 hours a week for five years, has only managed to save $30K, and is not having _too much fun._

Also: freelancing for a single client that you used to work for is not steady work. I've never had that relationship last more than a year and a half. Freelancer fault-tolerance requires at least two clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Don't have kids. The money will disappear, if you do.

I speak from experience.

</comment><comment><USER82> What's a good way to contact you?

</comment><comment><USER83> Travel to Cape Town, South Africa

</comment><comment><USER84> Travel and meet a girl in Thailand and stay there.

</comment><comment><USER85> Travel.

</comment><comment><USER86> sovereignman.com</comment>


An Interview Question that Actually Works - <AUTHOR> http://blog.filepicker.io/post/41215261916/an-interview-question-that-actually-works

<comment><USER2> My 2 cents: This is a horrible interview question. It tests arcane knowledge that takes about 15 seconds of googling, kind of like the varchar2 question in this blog post: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html> .

It doesn't really tell you if the interviewee can code, and it probably doesn't tell you much about how they think. Developers should be asked to write code and design systems, whether large scale services or libraries.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I read the article, expecting some sort of twist at the end, but it never came.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has to be one of the worst interview questions I've ever heard. It's mindless trivia and basically slices people into two groups: people who have had to do this before and people who haven't.

</comment><comment><USER3> Had me confused for a bit. Keeping it at the bottom is trivial. Just put it last in the html markup - right before </body>.

What you meant to say seems to be "at the bottom of the screen", which prompts more questions than answers.

Then again, maybe I'm misunderstanding your intentions entirely, since you state that your naïve solution was to use position:absolute. But then in the next paragraph, you talk about position:fixed. Was the absolute-part a typo?

<comment><AUTHOR> The position:fixed reference was a typo. Good catch!

<comment><USER3> I'm still confused though, since the linked jsFiddle uses position:absolute. Clearly that would never work - That's pretty basic html/css wisdom. I would expect position:fixed to do work though, although your post suggest that that might not be the case on all platforms. I guess I wouldn't realise that until I began testing on a broader range of devices than the normal development stack holds.

<comment><USER5> position: fixed is if you actually want the footer to always be visible, with the main body content scrolling out from under it. To my knowledge, this works across all devices.

The goal of this snippet is to have the footer always below the content, but in the event the content is shorter than the page height, the footer should still be placed at the bottom of the page.

Really Javascript isn't a terrible solution here, since it only needs to be run on load and on window resize (rare events), but the CSS is indeed nifty and worth knowing it exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Agreed with siblings stating that the question is arcane, Googleable best practices knowledge. Any time I want to find the answer to something like this, I Google it.

The author should ask themselves honestly if they ask this question just so they can quickly say, "Nope, wrong! Your answer doesn't cover [X number of unstated assumptions]." While I understand things are complex, my first answer would have been something along the lines of position: fixed; bottom: 0;. If that makes me wrong because it doesn't work on [Y smartphone] or [Z tablet], then two things need to be done to make this question worthwhile:

1\. State your assumptions and intended audience up-front.

2\. Allow the candidate to Google.

If the candidate is allowed to research and put together a comprehensive answer based on the knowledge they've gathered, that turns this question into a much more insightful one.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article made me feel like a crotchety old programmer for the first time in my career as I cringed at the use of the phrase "great engineer" to describe someone capable of discussing a markup/stylesheet problem during an interview. It's all relative, I guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the feeling all too well. Managing cross-platform frontend development has become an incredibly intricate, so much so that anyone who can bend the browser to their will deserves the "great engineer" stamp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one of the more mindboggling snippets of CSS you'll ever see. It's up there with techniques that keep two columns the same height without using Javascript or a <table> element.

I've implemented this before, but still wouldn't be able to produce it on the spot without Googling. This post encouraged me to take a deeper look.

This page goes in depth on how it works, but is still a bit confusing: <http://code.google.com/p/cleanstickyfooter/>

The craziest part is the #wrapper element, which uses a nifty hack to support old and new browsers. Old browsers don't work with css min-height, but they do allow the height property to expand. Moreover, old browsers will ignore an "important!" tag if the same property is addressed later in that selector.

It's a perfect storm of dumb luck that "min-height: 100%; height: auto important!; height: 100%;" actually manages to do what you want, for this exact scenario, in all browsers. That line looks pretty stupid to most modern css devs.

Here's an arguably cleaner approach that I believe will work for most modern browsers (I think after IE6, but could easily be mistaken). No need for the wrapper around all content, but you still need that darn "push" div. Actually now that I think about it, it might even work for older browsers if you add "height: auto important!; height: 100%;" to the body. Maybe someone can test? <http://jsfiddle.net/A3BLm/1/>

</comment><comment><USER8> This question/post highlights one of the reasons the "no karma score" here at HN is not so great (or perhaps could be improved). We, the HN community, might vote a particular answer to the top but OP/author will not necessarily know that this comment is at the top of the page for any particular reason.

In other words, let's say that @gfodor's comment ("This has to be one of the worst interview questions I've ever heard.") gets 500 upvotes. It will then get ranked first, meaning that it will be the first comment shown when the page is loaded. But that is not obvious - there are no other visual cues that confirm this information. The only way to know this is to have either looked through the source code, or to have been around and seen this question asked/answered.

So this valuable info (that 500 other HNers also thought this was a terrible question) is 100% lost to everyone. No one knows how popular it is. The OP cannot learn that his opinion is thought to be a terrible interview question.

I wish we had a better way of doing this... Maybe OP can see comment scores but no one else can? Dunno...

</comment><comment><USER9> The problem with this question is there is no way to explore a candidate's thought process. They either know it because they just so happen to have needed a sticky footer or they don't. They could guess, but like the author says the intuitive solution isn't going to be right anyway.

Also, obviously this question is biased towards front end developers.

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope the real answer isn't "Do this to create a sticky footer" but "no one wants sticky footers; they are semi-evil; here's what I'd do to persuade the customer / PHB that sticky footers are a stupid idea".

</comment><comment><USER11> Interview questions should test the thinking ability of the candidate. You should be looking to see how they solve problems. This is mindless trivia, the answer should be "by googling".

</comment><comment><USER12> OK, I'll drop the bomb, because I've enough of these propagandized half-truths about "Interview Questions"!

TL;DR: The sympathic interviewer is not qualified enough to extract results out of response, but capable of making (random) gut decision. Just like all the others who write about the same "problem scope" (hiring).

Questions and statements can provoke a think process, but is the person who provoked the think process qualified to do interviews? Let's solve the question arised from the ground up! The interviewer must have studied "Communication studies" or at least have significant knowledge in the field. Now don't underestimate that statement, even if it sounds far fetched. We already know that proper homework in Communication studies (and UX Design) was what made Apple a billion dollar company (amongst other things). The technology altough a key driver, was made by much larger companies too, without comparable success.

To put it differently: Just as a Software developer isn't qualified to do medical decisions, a Developer, CEO or other Interviewers can't decide about interviews like a communications research specialist. Let's not forget that everyone instinctively recognizes good music. But what makes music sound good? The Geometry of Music can provide accessible information using a revolutionary geometrical approach to music theory explored by Tymoczko _[1]. Now you might have an idea on how much more there is to it below the surface.

"The principal idea is that defining something as working or not may sound simple, but is of complex nature."

Don't forget that regardless what has been asked or stated, the think process including the outcome is there to reveal the qualities of the PoI. But an interviewer, even if he's a developer himself, doesn't scientifically qualify to make statements appear like wisdom[2], whereas it's just a gut decision. No matter which fix-points an interviewer chooses for job qualifiers, it will not be complete without a proper analysis and reflection of the communication process. I mean, just make the effort and take a read about Harald Lasswell and Communication studies to get a broader understanding of what is neccessary for fundamental knowledge about what is working and what is not.

No excuses if I sound like a diva, I didn't have my mars yet.

Here's what I'd answer to the question: CSS Media Queries (iPhone), CSS Expressions (IE), Basic CSS Knowledge (Positioning) and the most important thing: "Do you actually want the job and is the offer good for you?" (Self- esteem) Because coding isn't Rocket Science, applying UX to the interface would come close to that though (when done scientifically).

\--- Sources:

_ [1] Dmitri Tymoczko - A Geometry of Music : Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice; <http://www.neuroscience-of-music.se/eng7.htm> * [3] <http://i3.minus.com/ibzQzwsY4Lmh5D.png></comment>


Statement from Elon Musk - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20100415 <comment><USER2> I really am glad that SpaceX exists, and I _want_ them to be successful. To me, it represents a grand intersection of my technical interests, the dream of space travel that was instilled in me since I was a child, and my moral belief that government has no place in this (nor in many other things).

SpaceX is making progress toward _real_ commercial access to orbit. But is there any work being done by business farther out than that?

<comment><USER3> I think government space flight is a dead end, but for economic reasons foremost.

NASA can only take a politically-bounded slice of a fixed size tax pie. It spends the money it was allocated and comes back with empty hands. Unless the USA is in a military-driven space race with a superpower rival, it's going to get the crumbs and it has no way of getting more than that. Success does not breed success, only photo-ops. If the photo-ops get stale, success can breed apathy and abandonment.

A commercial space company comes back from each successful flight _with more money than it set out_. It causes the economy to grow, actually increasing the size of the pie, and the slice it gets is investment-bounded. Success will bring more investment. There is no political upper limit on how high it can scale.

An interplanetary culture is going to require utterly enormous amounts of wealth by modern standards - only commerce has the potential to create that much wealth.

<comment><USER4> I just hope we can get started with the asteroid mining for rare earth metals before we run out of the rare earth metals to build computers that will get us there.

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much delta-V it would take to push a metallic asteroid onto the Interplanetary Transport Network? The mountain could come to Mohammed.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a slightly more pessimistic outlook on SpaceX, but I'll admit that I'm slightly biased.

My dad has worked on the Delta, Atlas, and Titan rockets close to 30 years. These rockets are expensive (an order of magnitude more than SpaceX), but they can do one thing that SpaceX can't: guarantee success. If you had to put up sensitive cargo (commercial or military) that costs on the order of $100 million (and sometimes much much more), would you entrust a fledgling company with its sparse mission success record or the more established company with proven success? And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one that had a severe failure within the past few years, or one that has been operating as engineered for the past 20-30 years?

Rocket launching doesn't go by the typical startup mantra. Mistakes are very real, very expensive, and have much more human impact.

SpaceX seems more to me like fast food: their efficiency is awe-inspiring, but I worry at what significant cost?

<comment><USER6> There are more than 10x as many people who can pay $1M for a launch than there are who can pay $10M.

We've seen this before many times before.

[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of- complex...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex- business-models/) Auspex vs Network Appliance, (early) Ford vs all the luxury car makers, and so on.

> And if you were to hop on a rocket, would you pick the one that had a severe > failure within the past few years, or one that has been operating as > engineered for the past 20-30 years?

Except that that's not the choice that I have. My choice is between going up on a rocket with a 5% chance of failure or not going at all.

Yes, there are folks who won't take that 5% chance, but there are a lot that will.

<comment><USER5> Well, I think the failure rate is somewhere around 60% not 5% (I think out of the 5 Falcon 1 launches, only 2 succeeded). But over time, that figure will go down dramatically as they perfect their model (hopefully). Anyways, if you really wanted to catch a flight to space there are other options. It's reported that you can buy a seat on the Russian Soyuz which is very reliable. If you want to go for lower earth orbit, then those distances are easier and cheaper to reach, and I believe there are other commercial craft right now.

One thing that is often overlooked is that I think current aerospace companies have regulated profit margins if they do business with the government. So they don't have the incentive to make cheaper space craft even if they thought it would be a good idea. I'm not sure if SpaceX are subject to those same laws and regulations. But it would be a tragedy if they were able to operate with lower standards.

<comment><USER7> On SpaceX's failure rate, I think I should point out that it was the first 3 that failed, and have learned from each failure. There are too few launches to do statistics on, but it doesn't seem to me that we can infer from past events that the 6th launch has a 60% failure rate.

Cost plus doesn't seem to be helping the situation, but the fact that so much of American space technology is ITAR-controlled seems to be far more detrimental. For those that don't know, ITAR[1] effectively prevents critical spacecraft components from being exported to non-US persons, and even the technical details must be kept secret. All this means is that other countries design and build their own components (including software) from scratch, and American companies can't even compete with them in non-US markets.

ITAR is a major hassle, but the consequences are too severe for any company or individual to try to take matters into their own hands (i.e. release ITAR stuff anyways). There needs to be legislation to fix this.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITAR>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The operational efficiency and profitability of SpaceX is extraordinary. Listen to Elon and you'll see where the trends are heading.

<comment><USER9> Do you have any more detail on the operational efficiency or profitability of Spacex? I read your comment before the article; which didn't provide much detail on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Despite Musk's obvious vested interest, he's spot on here. The achievements of Musk at SpaceX, John Carmack at Armadillo and Burt Rutan at Scaled are impressive enough on their own merits. Consider that all 3 companies combined are spending a tiny fraction of what was being thrown at Orion and there's no contest.

The big aerospace companies seem to have lost their way - look at the Joint Strike Fighter or 787 debacles for example. Massive delays and cost overruns made sense under NASA's "cost plus" funding model. They need to get back to the "internal startup" philosophy exemplified by Skunkworks. Competitive commercial funding is the best way to get there.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was slightly hopeful as I looked into their careers section. There are 99 open jobs apparently, which is great! And I'm just graduating with a BS in mechanical engineering, and they need interns doing tedious tasks as much as any other company right?

But of course, due to government regulations, they only hire US citizens and permanent residents. Unfortunately, that rules me out of even the slightest chance. Oh well..

</comment><comment><USER12> This is from today (Apr 15). The linked article doesn't have a date but the list of press releases does.

</comment><comment><USER13> The U.S. space program is a source of tremendous prestige to the U.S. government. People whose plans depend on the U.S. government's voluntarily letting private companies take over leadership of parts of the space enterprise should be aware of the strength of the government's need for prestige. (Prestige helps maintain moral legitimacy, which is necessary in the long term for the continued ability of exercise power.)

<comment><USER14> Wow, 50 _more_ billions was needed to develop Ares?!

If USA is in dire need of prestige that doesn't come from its industry, why not put more money(+) into research to eradicate diseases of the world's poor, like malaria? Oh wait, an industrialist is already doing that...

Why not e.g. give a few billions to DARPA for energy and health research? The USA should get both prestige and real jobs from that.

(+) Say, a tenth of the money earned from the cost difference between Ares and the private alternatives being built now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I don't disagree with canceling the current tactical plan ("let's build Ares/Orion"), I wish he hadn't canceled the current vision ("let's return to the Moon/go to Mars"). Maybe the two were inextricably linked, but seems like whatever efficiency we gain through privatization could just as easily be squandered by a NASA stumbling around without a purpose or motivation.

The counterpoint to this seems to be this:

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand- challenges-2...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/13/grand- challenges-21st-century-your-ideas-welcome)

...which is a call for the next "Moon landing" scale project for the US to back. So at least at some level they're aware that these sorts of visions are needed, and (possibly quite correctly) the Moon return and Mars landing wasn't it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Summary: Orion wasn't going to work, so it's good Obama canceled it. He's looking forward to private industry solving all the problems while NASA works on interplanetary stuff. He thinks the president's upcoming speech about space is going to be important, so to stay tuned for it.

<comment><USER5> It's interesting that after so many years they are actually going back to the old capsule design. I guess people are starting to realize that the Space Shuttle program may not have been actually worth it when you consider Saturn V's near 100% mission success and the fact that the Space Shuttle had two catastrophic failures.

<comment><USER17> The Space Shuttle program has had 130 launches. The crew died twice. That's a failure rate of around 1.5%. The Apollo program had 11 launches and no loss of life... as long as you don't count the three astronauts who died on the ground in the Apollo 1 fire.

Assuming the same failure rate of 1.5%: (1 - 0.015)^11 = 0.84. That means that if the Apollo program was just as (un)safe as the Space Shuttle program, we would have an 83% chance of seeing no loss of life in the Apollo missions.

The Apollo program had the advantage of using big dumb boosters with no reusable parts, but the Space Shuttle program got to use newer materials and better engineering techniques. I'd estimate both were about equally unsafe. A 1% chance of death is way too high for any sort of civilian transportation. A simpler design (capsule + big dumb booster) with modern engineering and materials would be much safer than both.

<comment><USER5> You make some interesting points. I'm not sure what the failure rate would have been if the Apollo program were allowed to continue with the same design (albeit better materials and engineering), but its probably incorrect to assume it would be the same for the two craft because they are fairly different designs and have different physics (i.e Shuttle rocking back and forth before launch is due to its "piggybacking").

However the two most significant design changes that would have reflected far different failure rates are: 1) Change in fuel type and 2) Presence of an abort sequence.

1) In the Apollo design, the rocket was liquid propelled, thus it could have been shut off (theoretically) at any point in the launch sequence. The Space Shuttle by contrast has Solid Rocket Boosters, which once lit, do not turn off.

2) The Apollo rocket had an escape rocket mounted to the capsule that could have been fired and brought the crew to safety in the event that 1) did not occur. The Space Shuttle by contrast cannot enter into an abort sequence until those SRB's are done firing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obama's speech sounds very interesting - I don't suppose it's being streamed anywhere?

EDIT: Found it - <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36569092#36569092>

<comment><USER19> Did anything important come out of the talk - can anyone summarize who watched it?

<comment><USER7> I watched it, and you should, too. It was a great speech.

The best summary I can come up with: * Pres. Obama is really passionate about the space program (or at least talks like he is) * His earliest memory is waving a flag as astronauts visited Hawaii * He has a picture of Jupiter taken by the Hubble hanging in his private office * He's increasing NASA's budget * He's cutting Constellation and re-purposing Orion (2 failing programs, IMO) * He wants to see NASA to put humans farther into deep space * He wants to extend the life of the ISS by >5 years * He wants to send humans to an asteroid * He wants to send a human into a Mars orbit and back by 2030 * Next up, landing on Mars. * He's going to have a plan to give current (aka soon-to- be-former) shuttle engineers jobs by August 15. * He (or his speech writers) really like random space trivia

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't agree with Obama very much, but this was a good decision. Bush clearly created this program in a quest to have his Kennedy-to-the-moon-the-cost-be- damned moment and it needed to be killed.</comment>


You might not need a CSS framework - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2016/04/you-might-not-need-a-css-framework/ <comment><USER2> This is my default CSS 'framework' and time I put up a website:

      body {
        max-width: 40em;
        padding-left: 1em;
        padding-right: 1em;
        margin: 1em auto;
        background-color: #EEE;
        color: #444;
        line-height:1.6;
        font-size:120%;
      }

      h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
        line-height: 1.2;
      }

I think it results in a fairly nice looking site: [https://mkii.org](https://mkii.org)

Inspired by [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)</comment>


Knuth's Bank of San Serriffe - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html <comment><USER2> I love how so many of the most distinguished names in computer science have absolutely austere websites. No tricky CSS, no javascript, just raw content.

<comment><USER3> Knuth is too busy "getting to the bottom of things."

<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth>

Are you doing a deep dive or just tinkering with lots of things? Which one is the path to success?

<comment><USER4> Depends: when you "tinker with lots of things" you may end up connecting them in nontrivial ways, which is a win. But deep diving is the more usual path, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My favourite part: "... only 9 of the first 275 checks that I've sent out since the beginning of 2006 have actually been cashed. The others have apparently been cached."

Partly because it's a good pun, but also because it relies on the reader knowing how to pronounce 'cache' correctly. (I've heard talks given by presenters who say "catch," "cashay," or even "catchay.")

</comment><comment><USER6> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=348683>

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a geeky solution, but nowhere near as geeky as the original cheques for $2.56. As an update, I was expecting bitcoins or something similar.

</comment><comment><USER8> What about money orders?

<comment><USER9> I think his solution addresses the fact that people don't cash the financial instruments but keep them for posterity. Money orders are a suitable response to "...I shall do my best to find a suitable way to send money to anyone who really prefers legal tender."</comment></comment>


Counterfeit MoneyGram Money Orders being passed via Internet Scams - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloggernews.net/16093

<comment><USER2> That's a very old scam. It's also a very old article (2007!) It's still happening though.

As a rule: if you didn't initiate the transfer, it's bogus.</comment>


Ask HN: As developers are you always looking for a new database solution? - <AUTHOR>

I am wondering if most developers normally just stick with updates to their loved databases. Or if a s developers we moved to a point where performance and reliability are our metrics. <comment><USER2> No I only consider new database tech if the application really requires it - not just to paly with the new shiny.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have in mind a database that provides a simple extensive cache API that can double as a search engine.</comment>


Mealy machine - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mealy_machine

<comment><USER2> Are we just submitting random wikipedia articles now?

This isn't some weird hidden gem that has long been forgotten, nor is it some quirky, yet interesting, obsolete method that nobody knows about.

Mealy and Moore Machines are simple concepts in digital design. I've seen them in class since freshman year and in many job interviews.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the guidelines:

 _"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."_

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

To answer your question, it's not a random Wikipedia article. It's relevant to the site.

Furthermore, just because you know about something doesn't mean everyone else here does. I just found out about it myself and thought others here might find it interesting. Clearly I was wrong. So it goes. I'll just try something else.</comment></comment>


Routing History for Google ASN, is there a lolcat?? - <AUTHOR> https://stat.ripe.net/widget/routing-history#w.resource=as15562&w.starttime=2017-01-15T00%3A00%3A00&w.endtime=2017-06-23T00%3A00%3A00&show=Maxmized <comment><USER2> It's a Nyan Cat.</comment>


Out of Nowhere, Something Just Rocked Earths Magnetic Field - <AUTHOR> https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/25/weird-out-of-nowhere-something-just-rocked-earths-magnetic-field/ <comment><USER2> Since it looks like so many sensors detected this something, shouldn't we be able to localize it? For example, figure out where the Earth's magnetic field was first disturbed?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is this linked?

This guy is the science equivalent of a Holocaust denier.

[https://skepticalscience.com/Anthony_Watts_blog.htm](https://skepticalscience.com/Anthony_Watts_blog.htm)

It's a favorite source of alt-right morons who can't be bothered to read a wikipedia blurb, much less a scientific paper.</comment>


China's Economic Growth Looks Strong, Maybe Too Strong - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/china-gdp-economy-growth.html <comment><USER2> Having lived, worked and now running a B2B SaaS company there, the growth is real. Are the numbers exactly right, of course not. China is a massive, complex and not entirely transparent mesh of interests. Long story short though, there is a real middle class in China that is driving real consumer demand. This is starkly different to India, South Africa or Brazil where no real middle class exists.

Much longer thoughts on America vs. China [http://www.jonathanbrun.com/who- will-lead-the-world/](http://www.jonathanbrun.com/who-will-lead-the-world/)

<comment><USER3> China may have a middle class, but that middle class is still making a low $1000/month, even if that middle class is slightly bigger than 100M

Also, lots of Chinese local governments have confessed to faking data.

[https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id...](https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1F60I1)

[http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/18/news/economy/china- province-...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/18/news/economy/china-province- falsified-economic-data/index.html)

In addition, if you check out Anne Stevenson yang, a China expert living in China, she said the real gdp growth is only 1-2%

<comment><USER2> For example, we pay out team in Shanghai between 3000 USD and 1000 USD per month. They represent the middle class. Yes, it is less than many in the US, but it is still high enough to enjoy consumer products, travel, and invest in their future and their children's. Plus salaries are increasing 2-3% a year. Government spending on infrastructure is a huge part of GDP, but if you take the high speed trains in China you will see that every seat is sold out and they are not that cheap and if you go to a Chinese tourist location, it is packed, and tickets to enter can easily be 30-40$. This is anecdotal evidence of course, but I would recommend a trip to China - both coastal and interior - if you are so skeptical. Flights are cheap!

<comment><USER3> Oh I lived in Pudong for a while ;). I will have to disagree with you. It was also very busy for US in 2007, during the housing bubble. And it was busy for Japan in 1989, during the asset bubble. There is little reason for China to be able to escape its massive bubble right now.

<comment><USER4> China is literally following step by step where Japan was, fighting debt with more debt, until they could no longer defend it.

It's also interesting that prior to 1989, there was real fear of Japan overtaking US and it was reflected by the media and films.

If you studied Economics in university, you will realize US hegemony is far more penetrating and hard to replicate due to network effect...its self evident when the Chinese political elite send their kids away from China, along with wealth...

In my humble opinion, the American empire is probably the most efficient and anti-fragile system set in human history because it feeds off on our weakness for rare material goods. I will have to agree with Warren Buffett that the next 100+ years for America will be very good indeed for business. Majority of the network is on an English speaking framework, it's unlikely to switch to hieroglyphics and archaic Confucian values that oppressed individual freedom.

tl;dr: China won't usurp the US hegemony without surpassing its military and its transnational and intranational reach through corporatism. Soft power plays a huge role and its not something communist architectures are known for. Otherwise, American elites would be fighting to send their kids to the dreamy foggy lands of Beijing University. The US model is to provide a platform where American corporations can thrive, with money or bullets. It's a system where the value of every nation's money is backed by it's own fiat currency, guaranteeing the #1 position as long as there isn't a civil war or something like that divides the country.

The only people that believe PRC will overtake the US are Chinese folks and through Chinese diaspora that bought the line.

<comment><USER2> Japan is a pretty good place to be born. Better than many places. Talking about debt without talking about assets and ownership structure of debt is incomplete.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure many Japanese would disagree given the high rate of suicides and low reporting of happiness.

Sorry should've been more specific with my terms, debt levels that exceed assets has proven to be toxic in Japan, Korea, Ireland, Greece.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I read a while back that local governments would significantly artificially inflate their manufacturing, construction, spending, and raw materials numbers. There were dozens that seemed so far fetched they were easily spotted as fake by a professor that did little research.

When you have govt officials who are forced to increase growth and you'll look bad/fired if you don't and no authority is safeguarding this, then these actions seem fairly logical.

Interesting to see how perception is sometimes as good as reality.

<comment><USER6> This is, of course, _completely different_ from the performance figures of departments in large corporations, because... um.

<comment><USER7> The parent never implies that it is.

However, at the end of the day large corporations need to keep shareholders pleased to survive. They could lie all they want to themselves, but the shareholders would see through that and remove the bad administrators.

China has no such mechanism to ensure accountability.

<comment><USER6> I'd argue there have been plenty of examples of large corporations delivering rosy figures, until they could no longer sustain the lie.

Some years ago, I got an investment club to put some of our money in Harley- Davidson, based on numbers that hit our criteria perfectly. Too perfectly. A few months later, the CEO resigned, revised numbers came out, it became clear they'd been more or less cooking the books, and the stock tanked. This happens _a lot_. Worse, it happens with stock market darlings. Remember Enron?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's an economist from Tsinghua University named Patrick Chovanec who used to do an amazing job of documenting China's explosive growth and the many ways in which it might have been artificially inflated (easy credit, shadow banking, fudged numbers, empty skyscrapers, etc.).

His blog is still up, but unfortunately he switched from blogging to Tweeting in 2013 and it's been impossible to follow his train of thought since then. It's a pretty fascinating read (assuming you find dry economic posts fascinating) if you start sometime around the 2009 entries and go from there: [https://chovanec.wordpress.com/](https://chovanec.wordpress.com/)

Some of the ones I found most interesting:

Beijing's Bad Debt Bailout: Problem Solved? [https://chovanec.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/beijings-bad- debt-...](https://chovanec.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/beijings-bad-debt-bailout- problem-solved/)

Big Losses Hidden on China's Bank Balance Sheets: [https://chovanec.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/big-losses- hidden-...](https://chovanec.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/big-losses-hidden-on- chinas-bank-balance-sheets/)

Even though they're almost a decade old they still give you an interesting look into how things work in China.

<comment><USER9> My guess is that China is inflating its numbers, but even so, the growth they've had is impressive and a lot of it is real. And even with further inflation of their numbers, I don't think they will be a paper tiger with nukes, like the USSR was.

<comment><USER10> Much of it is real, China's growth has been outstanding! Then you encounter the occasional ghost mall or notice that many of the apartments in your complex are empty and wonder a bit about how much of it is real (probably a lot) and how much of it is just a bubble (probably a significant portion also).

A lot of China's GDP growth is tied up in asset growth (e.g. appreciated real estate). So if/when that bubble pops, they will take a hit. Accordingly, in the Chinese news, they talk about supporting and nurturing what they call the "real economy" as a counter to that danger.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if the ghost stuff is really indicative of a failing economy. I mean, China is about 20% of the world population, you're bound to find emptiness. We're talking about city planning on a massive scale. 220 cities of >1m people are expected by 2025. (SF at 0.8m by comparison). China has multiple cities bigger than countries like the Netherlands, multiple cities 4x bigger than Norway that was recently in the news. It has 280m (rural) internal migrants. Compare it to the US working age population of is just 200m.

The numbers are insane. In the US, we move 11x in our lifetimes of ~80y aka 13% of our population moves each year. Apply that average to China and you're looking at 170m migrants annually. And unlike US (a lot of urban to urban), in China there's a gigantic one-way rural->urban traffic, i.e., two people aren't switching urban houses and calling it 'moving', two people are leaving behind a rural home and needing an entirely newly built urban home.

How do you accommodate that many people in new homes. Do you start building homes only after they're needed? Or do you build some capacity at a surplus, to cover expected growth?

Probably the latter. It isn't much different from any company stocking surplus inventory. That's not an immediate indication of a failure of economics and a bubble.

And do you only build in existing popular cities and just try to add to the periphery, or do you build-up new cities? Probably the latter, too.

Plenty of other countries do it as well. Incheon developed very much due to overdevelopment in Seoul. Or here in the Netherlands, we now have close 0.8m people living in so called Vinexwijken. They're a development centered on a new ordinance concerning housing development between 1995 and 2005. Since 1995 our population grew by 1.6m or so, apparently half our growth went to these new locations created out of nothing. And we always have discussions about structural emptiness, big malls being built and remaining 75% empty for years. But the scale is smaller, the country is 75x smaller than China. We had issues with structural vacancy rates at a new 100k 'village', scale that up to 75x and you have a similar story. Yet the biggest ghosttown in China ia Ordos, planned for 1 million people, scaled back and built for 'only' 300k, and currently houses more than 100k and climbing. That's what is consistently called the biggest ghost town in China. For Chinese, both the size of the project as well as the timeframe (10 years of vacancy) is a rounding error.

Don't get me wrong, there's definitely an asset bubble. But we've also been saying that for who knows how many years and I feel we tend to focus too much on symbolism of the ghost town narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> By some measures China has already passed the United States:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-18/who- has-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-18/who-has-the- world-s-no-1-economy-not-the-u-s)

China, and eventually India, matching the United States will hopefully help increase R&D.

For example:

\- Solar energy prices have dropped significantly because of China's investment.

\- Nuclear energy is dead in the US but lives in China.

\- AI - China will match the US, accelerating development

\- Mass Transportation - High-speed rail, maglevs

\- Electric vehicles - China has large EV quotas and they're the largest car market.

<comment><USER10> Only in PPP, which doesn't mean much because many things are more expensive in China than the USA (housing, cars, high-end goods, schooling, ...). For an equivalent lifestyle, you often need to earn more in China than the USA, so PPP seems to be a weird metric.

\- Solar is suspected to be heavily subsidized by the government. That isn't so bad for us as long as we don't produce panels, it has led to a solar revolution in the USA as well.

\- China still hasn't done its own production nuclear plant yet. Citizens are extremely wary of the government to do it right.

\- The point here is "will" rather than "does". China keeps touting how they will beat the USA in AI by 2020 or 2030 or whatever, but it is still all aspirational. China has a lot of talent and a lot of data work with (privacy isn't much of a concern), but claiming you are going to win a race is much different from winning it.

<comment><USER13> "Citizens are extremely wary of the government to do it right." \- I don't think citizens have much say in the matter...

\- it's worth noting that along with data and talent, there is money - China's dedicated 150 billion USD to AI as part of it's 5 year plan. Meanwhile the US is considering cutting scientific research funding by as much as 15% as part of 2018 budget

<comment><USER10> > "Citizens are extremely wary of the government to do it right." \- I don't > think citizens have much say in the matter...

They actually have more say than you think. And also, the government also has a lot of its own introspection about nuclear, especially after Fukushima. Couple with the huge capital costs, and it isn't a sure thing for China.

> it's worth noting that along with data and talent, there is money - China's > dedicated 150 billion USD to AI as part of it's 5 year plan.

Much of the current advances in AI are not coming from federal funding (rather, private companies who are using it). Nor can you expect Chinese academia to soak up that much money and use it efficiently. Again, China has a chance at it, but it is far from inevitable. It is annoying to me when they talk about how their success is a sure thing, the Chinese government used to talk about how they would clean up their pollution problem by 2015 in 2010 because they were going to spend a lot of money on it....

<comment><USER13> "They actually have more say than you think" \- I disagree. China forcibly relocated over 1 million to complete the 3 gorges project. It doesn't have the best track record of reacting to citizen concerns. I think the other points you mention are more material in it's nuclear considerations.

Fair about the money and pollution. I would assume those commercial advances you mention however are mostly non-military, nor will players like Google or Apple likely soon contribute to US government/military AI research initiatives. I guess in the end the "AI race" is more like "AI olympics" in that no country will win all the events

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Documentary on this subject forthcoming -

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55892jT06aI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55892jT06aI)

<comment><USER15> The trailer sounds like typical documentary crap. I'll reserve my opinion for now.

PS: This seems to be implying that the Chinese economy is all hot air, but none of the characters in the trailer looked like Chinese. If the banks sold a nonsense China story to "mom" and "pop" investors who know nothing about China, then what makes these guys so much more knowledgeable? Also, one shit company exposes the entire Chinese economy now? Aren't there any mediocre companies in the US? This extrapolation needs a lot more explanation.

As someone who know nothing about this, whats likely is that some people in the US have way too much money in their hands and seemingly nowhere to put that. So they looked at China and pumped too much money there following a herd. To call that a conspiracy and a financial crime seems like a huge leap.

I mean the same is happening in Indian stocks which are at a stupidly high level. It's more investor stupidity than some grand conspiracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another somewhat popular or not so popular opinion is that China reports gdp numbers lower than what they actually have. I don't know what to believe but putting it out there for discussion.

<comment><USER17> Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER18> I think the OP might have been misunderstanding a thing that actually happens. Because officials are graded on whether they hit targets or not but they don't get extra points for exceeding them they have an incentive to under-report growth in good years so that a return to accurate reporting in bad years lets them still report growth. So there will be a combination of over and under- reporting of growth at different times, as was show in the graphs in the article. _How China Escaped the Poverty Trap_ goes into more detail for those interested.

<comment><USER19> ... except top-level officials are constantly shuffled between posts in different cities/provinces they have no family ties to specifically to prevent such corruption.

<comment><USER20> That only actually prevents it if:

(1) rotations are most often _exactly one_ of the periods on which goals and evaluations occur (that is, understating growth that at least meets the goal never is expected to help you by making it more likely you can plausibly claim to meet a growth goal the next period), and

(2) the rotating top-level officials have some other structursl disincentive to form a class identity and class norms (stack ranking where the top slice promotes into a national administration group and the bottom slice is demoted out of regional leadership, while the middle group remains, for instance, would do this, since everyone would have a strong incentive to make everyone else's results relatively worse; OTOH, this incentivizes an opposite kind of misreporting, so it's not really a solution.)

<comment><USER19> _some other structural disincentive_

Oh you mean like "play by the rules, have a nice life for you and your family" versus "capital punishment for you, and movement restriction and asset seizure for your family"?

<comment><USER20> Sure, if the punishment is perceived to be applied reliably and accurately.

If it's perceived to be applied in a spotty manner, according to shifting whims of the leadership as to issues of concern, and with favoritism that can see the guilty free and the innocent punished, then, no, that just incentivizes currying favor and trying to influence the leadership perception that drive where enforcement is and isn't focussed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple and Google partner on Covid-19 contact tracing technology - <AUTHOR> https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/apple-and-google-partner-covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/ <comment><USER2> Already under discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834959)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Comments moved thither.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Identical post on apple's website: [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/04/apple-and-google- part...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/04/apple-and-google-partner-on- covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/)

(Except that google links to an android api reference and apple links to an ios api reference; also google links to this slideshow [https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contac...](https://blog.google/documents/57/Overview_of_COVID-19_Contact_Tracing_Using_BLE.pdf))</comment>