The relationship between social media use and well-being - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-the-more-you-use-facebook-the-worse-you-feel <comment><USER2> I feel the 'social media is bad for you' thing, but for different reasons.

I mean, I don't really understand the 'feeling inadequate because of my cousin's baby pictures' thing. I mean, I am happy for them, but that isn't the life I want, so I don't feel bad that I don't have it. Alternately, I could be less jealous than most people, but let's run with the more realistic first reason.

For me, the problem with social media is a fundamental lack of self control; I get into 'someone is wrong on the internet' discussions, and for me, those are the 'addictive but not pleasant' aspects of social media. For me, a conversation is not fun if we aren't arguing in good faith ; if we can't acknowledge one another's good points and rhetorical flourishes, it is just not fun, and I end up feeling frustrated and rejected. The unhealthy part is that I feel the discussion is unfinished, and walking away takes a tremendous act of will, and even then, my mind keeps coming back to the conversation.

I hope it is just a matter of practice; I mostly have left other mediums with these sorts of unfufilling conversations, or at least learned to restrain myself from participating in the most obviously unproductive conversations.

I think the big difference with social media is largely cultural; lots of people are there who lack a background in early internet culture or academic culture, and our shared vocabulary doesn't run much past "you are wrong " and there isn't the social pressure to be civil like we have here, or to be smart, like there was in the heyday of kuro5hin.

<comment><USER3> > lots of people are there who lack a background in early internet culture or > academic culture

I think this hits it. Many (most?) people just aren't used to having people disagree with them. Let alone voice those disagreements and be expected to defend their beliefs and explain _why_ they think they're right.

For many people the way they think is correct, just _is_ correct. It's not something that needs defending or even investigating. It's just how things are.

Perhaps the problem is fundamentally how many different people social media exposes us to. And maybe if you weren't exposed to that in your formative years, it's a hard thing to get used to.

<comment><USER4> Framing that difference as a "lack" the other person has, may be right, but creates a sense of superiority over that person which also seems wrong, for certain people that are aware of their differences (they may not be "lacking" anything").

Some people are emotivists ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotivism)), which means that for them preferences _are_ moral positions in themselves, not just reasons _about_ the morality of preferences.

it is "… the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling."

In other words, emotivism holds that there can be no way of rationally justifying one's claims about controversial issues.

I think this view describes a great many number of people; though it's true that academia, STEM, and rational enlightenment thinking tends to filter it out or select against it.

<comment><USER3> TIL! I've never heard of emotivism before.

And I don't think that's what I was pointing towards. My comment is about the idea that people aren't used to having their beliefs investigated or challenged. No matter what the basis is for their existence.

It's more a lack in their environment than in themselves I think. You can't get used to defending your beliefs until you're exposed to people and ideas that challenge them.

I mean it's fine if your defense is "That's what feels right". But it's not fine if your response to "I think you're wrong" is to think you're being attacked and it makes you feel superbad.

<comment><USER4> sure, though I think emotivism is pertinent here, for example

> "I think you're wrong" is to think you're being attacked

This is exactly what the emotivist thinks because challenging an idea means challenging a preference which is directly challenging the moral character of the individual. There is no ability to discuss things in a detached way for them; this seems to check out anecdotally.

Is that "not fine?" \- I certainly don't like it, and I don't think it's fine for people i choose to interact with, but my first step is to understand it, if only because there are so many people like this. Folks will continue to act like this despite my desire to see the opposite behavior, so it's good to be prepared and not self-deceive what other people are really like.

> My comment is about the idea that people aren't used to having their beliefs > investigated or challenged.

I think I get where you're coming from. someone people not used to something could be said to having a deficiency in dealing with that situation and presumably with more experience they would change their behavior.

But I think there may be a slight difference in what I was saying, which includes some overlap with your point, but also allows for people who are quite familiar with being challenged, but yet immediately disapprove of such behavior anyways, due to the explanations above.

<comment><USER5> Having an opinion or idea doesn't make it correct or worthy of attention by other people.

If I come across someone who really thinks that way, they get dismissed and I lose 100% of any shred of respect I may have had for that person.

I don't care if that's considered closed minded, the mindset is wrong, fullstop, and it's obvious to anyone with a modicum of thinking skills.

The idea you've described here can be true _sometimes_ depending on the subject matter, but it is not nearly true all the time, and if someone is unable to recognize that, then I cannot trust anything they say, and it's not worth the mental or emotional energy to engage them.

<comment><USER4> > Having an opinion or idea doesn't make it correct or worthy of attention by > other people.

Very well, but I don't believe that is what I described or claimed.

<comment><USER5> I didn't mean to imply that you did, my point is that someone being being "an emotivist" isn't understandable, and it doesnt' mean the people around them should be inclusive of such an outlook on life.

<comment><USER4> Ok, I didn't say that such people should be accepted, description is not prescription.

<comment><USER5> yep, no argument there, I was just weighing in with my (admittedly strong) opinionon the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I came to the same conclusion a few years ago, when I delete my social accounts like Facebook. They only show you the best slices of individual lives, all day, every day. When compared to your life, it makes it look like you're doing nothing with your life. That it's completely boring, while all of these people are living these amazing adventures everyday. Combine that with all of the vitriol comments plaguing all of these sites, and it's easy to see why someone would think less of themselves. It's good to be social, but these networks are not the answer.

<comment><USER7> >They only show you the best slices of individual lives, all day, every day. When compared to your life, it makes it look like you're doing nothing with your life.

Exactly. You end up judging your interior by others' exterior. They show you a highly edited version of their life, made to impress everyone else. You're doing nothing but constantly chasing a phantom life you can never have, because no one else really has it either.

<comment><USER8> So many people complain about this, and I just don't get it. Maybe if I'm not part of the solution, I'm part of the problem?

When I'm stuck at my desk and I see someone posting vacation pictures from Spain, I say "man, that looks nice, I wish I was there!" And that's it. Maybe it makes me think about where I want to go next, but it doesn't send me into some existential crisis.

I wonder if there are personality types more prone to being affected by stuff like this? If anything, I'd think _I_ would -- certainly prone to depression, particularly in my younger years. But I just don't care. I wonder why that is, and what is different among people who are affected by these things differently.

<comment><USER9> The entire idea is that the effect is subconscious. Sure, seeing one person post vacation pictures from Spain won't affect you then and there, but over time as everyone posts awesome pictures you will inevitably _feel_ that something must be lacking in or wrong with _your_ life.

<comment><USER8> I don't know. I see all of these people complaining about these effects, and it simply doesn't bother me in the same way (not to say it couldn't possibly have a subconscious effect).

But I feel as if it caused the same effect in me as it causes in others, I'd be talking about how I'm going to "take a break" from $socialnetwork for a month, and how much better I feel, and so on. But I don't. It's just a tool. I use it and enjoy it. If I didn't, I wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 100% confirm. I quit FB after being on it for a decade and I'm significantly happier.

More productive at work. Significantly less angry.

The big one is that I'm making much more of a point to spend time with people who actually live near me rather than chatting it up with my friends from college.

I think people take for granted how much of a motivator a little bit of loneliness can be.

<comment><USER11> > The big one is that I'm making much more of a point to spend time with > people who actually live near me rather than chatting it up with my friends > from college.

[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail- end.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html)

"It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I'm now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We're in the tail end.

It's a similar story with my two sisters. After living in a house with them for 10 and 13 years respectively, I now live across the country from both of them and spend maybe 15 days with each of them a year. Hopefully, that leaves us with about 15% of our total hangout time left.

The same often goes for old friends. In high school, I sat around playing hearts with the same four guys about five days a week. In four years, we probably racked up 700 group hangouts. Now, scattered around the country with totally different lives and schedules, the five of us are in the same room at the same time probably 10 days each decade. The group is in its final 7%.

So what do we do with this information?

Setting aside my secret hope that technological advances will let me live to 700, I see three takeaways here:

1) Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.

2) Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.

3) Quality time matters. If you're in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you're with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious."

<comment><USER12> Incredibly poignant and insightful post. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just for some balance but I don't understand the hate for Facebook, I use it fairly often and it's been a positive impact for me. I use it occasionally to connect with people I've just met, see what friends are up to, send messages to meet up and keep in contact with people out of the country. I've connected to people I otherwise wouldn't have through it, got closer to people I know through it and met up with people because of it. I'm completely aware that people only share the best slices of their life on it and it doesn't depress me.

I think if you let Facebook consume your life and it somehow impacts you a lot you need to think about why that is and not blame Facebook. You could get equally obsessed with hackernews comparing yourself to other users and clamouring for upvotes.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28093386)

> We investigated the associations of Facebook activity and real-world social > network activity with self-reported physical health, self-reported mental > health, self-reported life satisfaction, and body mass index. Our results > showed that overall, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with > well-being. For example, a 1-standard-deviation increase in "likes clicked" > (clicking "like" on someone else's content), "links clicked" (clicking a > link to another site or article), or "status updates" (updating one's own > Facebook status) was associated with a decrease of 5%-8% of a standard > deviation in self-reported mental health.

So it's not a causal link then? If it's not there's surely many reasons why having low well-being would make you spend more time on social networks (e.g. you'd go out less so have more time to spend on social networks)?

<comment><USER14> > ... I don't understand the hate for Facebook ...

I suspect that any hate of facebook has a fair bit to do with the fact that it is 1) pervasive, 2) a fairly closed system, and 3) comes with a lot of strings attached. The fact that it's a closed system is really the crux of the issue, everything else just kind of accentuates the problem. Here's an example of why facebook's existence is annoying

My local climbing gym, for example, has a website, but instead of posting information there, they post most of their updates (like competition dates) on Facebook. Without having a facebook account (and regularly checking it!) there's no way to keep up-to-date on these postings. Now, if you create a facebook account, there's no good way to tell people "don't send me messages here, just email me", so now you have to keep an eye on your facebook messages, otherwise your friends will get annoyed that you're ignoring them. Facebook doesn't implement IMAP or anything though, so your also stuck going to their website regularly, or install their software on your phone and saying goodbye to your once-long battery life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Overall, our results showed that, while real-world social networks were positively associated with overall well-being, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with overall well-being."

This is not a surprise. I quit Facebook specifically because of the endless stream of "my life is amazing" posts of people beig happy without any balance. Reminds me of those awful Christmas letters people send round about how wonderful their entire year had been and how _amazing_ their children are.

<comment><USER8> Serious question: Would you prefer to not receive those Christmas letters? Or is it more tolerable because it's only once a year, so the benefit of staying in touch is greater than the cost of the annoyance of the letter itself?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Only on internet forums like this I see people claiming about quitting facebook and so on.

I don't see the signs in the real world.

Having said that I too almost never used it from the beginning. I didn't need so many years to figure out why I'm not going to like it. I was on it in the early days just as a techy interested in internet technology then I gave it up and never looked back.

Mind you it has become only more socially costly to not be on it. A few times I tempted to get back in again at least in a limited capacity (just having a basic profile so people can message me if needed). But didn't.

I have also heard harsh comments and so on.

Like one person said (not directly to me) ... "what do you mean?!! don't you have any friends?".

More than anything what I find annoying is this expectation from the society that every person in the world must subject themselves to the invasion of Facebook for their convenience and amusement.

I don't go around ordering everyone must eat at my favorite Pizza joint. Why should the people be pressured to some private social network?

If it was more like email that isn't owned by any one entity I would be more understanding.

<comment><USER17> > If it was more like email that isn't owned by any one entity I would be more > understanding.

Definitely. If it operated in a Manner similar to Mastodon then FB would be a lot more tempting to use for the limited purposes I feel I need access. All I would like to use it for is to get an RSS feed of news from various clubs and to be able to reply to such posts (e.g. to confirm that I'll attend an event they've advertised). Unfortunately, FB disabled the RSS feed some time ago and to use rss-bridge ([https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss- bridge](https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge)) requires configuring proxies or trying to solve captchas. Even browsing the public page for an event will shove login boxes or random captchas in my face, and the more it is rammed down my throat the more I wish to avoid it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I removed the FB app from my phone and have the willpower not to use a browser to check it. Stopped short of deactivating my account so that I can still get the occasional message on Messenger.

After the insanely contentious, toxic US election and cry of grief and fear from the left over the results, I got so burnt out with getting on FB and seeing so many reasons to be angry and afraid. Cut myself off completely and after a short time I completely forgot about it. The urge to check FB is totally gone, I feel like I'm missing nothing. It was a great decision, only wish I had made it sooner.

<comment><USER19> you can deactivate your profile (i.e. You can't log on facebook) without deactivating your messenger account. I did this and chat normally from messenger.com, but can't log on facebook.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sometime in the next few yrs or so (if not already), I suspect we'll see many research papers related to social media and suicide rates. Furthermore, it'll be interesting in cross examining this data with cultural views ie. Western culture vs. Asian culture where social media has really taken off.

</comment><comment> castle-bravo facebook's business is advertising, and the more time people spend on facebook, the more valuable facebook's ad space is. If depressed people spend more time on facebook instead of getting out, then it's in facebook's interest to have their product make people depressed. If angry people spend more time writing rants on facebook, then it's in facebook's interest to make people angry. I may be confusing causation with correlation, but I am willing to bet that the reason facebook's product has repeatedly been shown to cause harm is because the harm is good for facebook, not by accident of design.

The article linked below describes some of the anti-features that make slack addictive. I have no reason to believe that slack and facebook are not aware of the addictive power of their products and do not cynically designin their products to enhance their addictive potential. [https://medium.com/@satyavh/the-real-reason- slack](https://medium.com/@satyavh/the-real-reason-slack)

<comment><USER21> I wonder how many of these design decisions were actually made consciously, and how many are just the result of things like blind A/B testing.

If your scientific test shows you that feature set A has better user retention than feature set B, you don't need to worry yourself over why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've definitely noticed this myself. Friends that I've known to be depressed almost always posted very frequently on Facebook and those that had some negative life event occur almost always seemed to post way more than usual in the following months. It got to the point that back when I used FB, I would make a point of asking old friends how they were doing when I noticed an uptick in their posting habits.

</comment><comment><USER23> For me, Facebook is the new yellow pages telephone book that contains all addresses to people I may want to contact. That's about it. I do not see any other value in Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER24> My use case is going to be in a minority, but I find Facebook vital for keeping in touch with friends and especially family back home.

I was thinking about ditching the platform before making a rather abrupt decision to move to the other side of the world for a couple of years. That couple of years has turned in to 5 and counting, and it's really come in to its own.

I've got a fairly heavily curated feed after I stopped following a bunch of people and pages, so I don't really feel like anything is being shoved in my face any more than other places I frequent online.

It works. It's asynchronous so the timezone difference doesn't get in the way, while still being a heap more useful than email. It definitely maintains connections that I'd struggle to keep otherwise. Now, will I keep it once I return home? There's a good question.

</comment><comment><USER25> I know that it's easy to rag on Facebook specifically but it should be noted that this effect most likely exists in all forms of media where the user is able to compare their lives to someone else's. Even while using this site I doubt I'm immune to finding someone who's accomplished something cool while I'm still hacking away on the same thing from last month or whatever.

It's just seems better for my health to live my life instead of seeing someone else live their's. Hell, maybe some day my accomplishments will make someone else feel bad about their lack of any. I mean, even Caesar cried when he read about Alexander's conquests.

</comment><comment><USER26> Social media is a game, just like MMORPG's are games, and slot gambling is a game, or call of duty is a game. For some reason a large chunk of society has been convinced that social media is the "real" game and more normative than all other games.

Overplaying any game is bad for the mental health of the player. Relatedly, a game becomes unhealthy whenever the game becomes the center of the player's life. This applies equally to WoW, Civilization, Facebook, or Twitter, or any other game.

So, social media is a game that can be fun to play, but it shouldn't be a component of the player's identity.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand the appeal of FB; we have other means to be connected with the people we care about. I've never understood the appeal of broadcasting yourself to the entire planet either... it's bizarre.

</comment><comment><USER28> I strongly feel that social media must become a pull based model instead of a push based model - so like RSS where I subscribe. On the client side, we should use simple machine learning and filtering to show content that is truly useful to us (I love to know what is happening is my sister's life).

The current setup of giving info to a company and that company pushing all sort of crap on me is not for me. Granted they could do the machine learning on their side but these for-profit ad driven corporations do not have the users best interest in mind. They just want to get us hooked.

Ghost can have this feature!

<comment><USER29> I'm with you- I love RSS and hate Facebook's news feed. Unfortunately, that is one of the biggest reasons why the masses chose Facebook over Twitter.

> Facebook, meanwhile, continued to add to the variety of posts available to > their algorithmically generated feed. Yes, the early adopters who had gone > to the trouble to tune their feed complained, but the real beneficiaries > were users who didn't want to go to the trouble of making sure they saw > something interesting — whether related to friends and family or not — > whenever they visited Facebook. And, starting in 2009, those users had even > less motivation to get Twitter working: Facebook was good enough.

[https://stratechery.com/2016/how-facebook-squashed- twitter/](https://stratechery.com/2016/how-facebook-squashed-twitter/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ironically, I find the only internet interactions that stress me out is not FB or twitter its when i post on hacker news (like this:)) I think mostly because i care and also people here can be very confrontational.

<comment><USER19> When I use facebook, I get angry at the stupidity of people. On HN I feel humbled because of how smart people are here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I quit Facebook because it warped my perception of others gratification, making it appear instantly achieved for everyone and everything but me.

The cumulative impact of a constant feed of this was incredibly demotivating.

</comment><comment><USER32> I can certainly agree with the study abstract and most posts here, but would add a twist: social media use is depressing, but falling out of touch with faraway friends is even more depressing. I've been on and off FB over the years, and what I've found is that the only thing worse than being on FB is not being on FB. There are many people I'd just never talk to if I didn't use FB, and I do think the connection is something I'd miss -- with some of them.

It's even worse when you're struggling through serious financial problems and/or a divorce, or some event like that. Nobody really wants to be your friend, and nobody wants to hear about it.

Online:

(a) One is more likely to find others in the same boat sooner or later, although those people are also more likely to have turned into embittered cranks/ideologues. But at least it's someone.

Divorce IRL is a very lonely experience; just when you are most psychologically vulnerable and could really use a friend, you become radioactive. Double if you're a bootstrapped entrepreneur, since your already existing problems have just leapt from "minor-league brush fire" to "apocalyptic conflagration seen from low orbit".

(b) While, one's not going to post much about these types of issues on social media in general, it allows you to keep conforming with your wider circle. You can keep on riding this carousel of wide-eyed, facile, optimistic communication on trivial or theoretical topics. It's much harder IRL, where it's harder to conceal that actually, real talk, things are really, really shitty.

<comment><USER33> The real thing with not having FB and connecting with friends is FB chat. A lot of people don't use any other IM service except for FB chat.

<comment><USER32> Indeed. Outside the US, WhatsApp is often the gold standard, but in the US, FB Messenger seems to be the standard messenger of most ordinary portals, notwithstanding the teens and 18-24s off in Snapchat/Kik/whatever land.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I was reluctant when I removed my fb account about six months ago but it felt like it was what I needed as it intruded on what I really wanted to focus my time and energy on.

A few weeks in I was amazed at how I did not miss the social network at all and surprised that the contacts that previously only contactef me on fb now wrote email and text messages.

<comment><USER35> Same here. Deleted account just before end of 2014 (facebook changed their data policy). We did it with couple of friends and were amazed by the effect. After two weeks we realized we all feel better and we never needed fb. None of us came back (just more our friends left).

Really the only pain for me were fb events. In my country fb events are the most important calendar to the point that many of the venues/places put events just on fb. The problem is that i organize events from time to time and its impossible without account. Its also getting pretty hard to make fake account (they require copy of ID for new accounts now).

The events are even more pain because they dont have api. Its on purpose. Venues for example cant have automated posting of events from their site. You have to make events in the fb ui. They are read only so people started opposite aproach, they post ebents on fb and consume them in their site. Its limiting and just againts everything internet used to be about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anecdotally, I completely fall in this category. I had a Facebook account from 2006-2010. Never missed it in the last 6 years. I don't really use other social networks either (HN counts?), email & phone is generally more than enough for me.

However, also anecdotally, my mom and brother seem to thrive on it. It's a part of their daily ritual, and the few times they've decided to get rid of Facebook, they claim (and seem) to be missing a part of their identity. They don't live "amazing" lives, and most posts are pretty ordinary.

>5,208 adults from a national longitudinal panel maintained by the Gallup organization

So, anecdotally, I do think that there is a subsection of the population for which this this a positive influence. Or they've found a way to use it positively. It may help to study narrower bands of populations to determine if this holds true across the board.

</comment><comment><USER37> Deleted mine a few months ago, and I do think I feel better.

Only regret is that I probably can't get hired by Facebook now... :-)

<comment><USER38> Didn't get the job but I interviewed with FB a couple years ago. Flew me out to the Bay for a day of whiteboarding.

Haven't had an actual FB account in 4 or 5 years. I'm sure they were aware but to their credit no one ever asked me about it.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't be surprised if nobody looked or noticed. Perhaps they're a big enough organization to check on this stuff, but the average interviewer has better stuff to do, and likely doesn't care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> >These results then may be relevant for other forms of social media.

Does this mean they only studied Facebook, or did they look at other social media networks as well? It seems to me that it is the former, but I'm not sure. I imagine different networks would have different effects based on the way people use them.

<comment><USER40> Facebook only based on my reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Being overly obsessed with the social experience of the internet in general is detrimental to one's well-being, in my opinion.

You can't live a full life if you spend most of your time interacting with people on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, FourChan, Instagram, etc. It's just not the social experience we evolved to enjoy.

Also there's the danger that you're being subtly manipulated by the moderators or programmers of such sites, or the wider community. Are these 'people' you talk to really real? You can never know for sure.

In the end, if you want a quality social experience, you have to get out of your basement and enjoy the company of people in real life.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think my experience and satisfaction with Facebook has steadily decreased in a linear relationship with how many friends I have on my friends list. My guess is because:

1) the more friends I add, the more likely I am to add _that_ guy on Facebook. The guy who always posts very annoying political posts, or the guy who posts very smug+condescending posts.

2) I find myself comparing with my friends, especially when they post pics of them on vacation or news of some promotion.

3) I spend too much time worrying about how to curate posts and post stuff that a. impresses people and b. doesn't offend anyone.

I probably just care too much what others think, but that's my 2c.

<comment><USER43> I think it is simpler than that - we like most people because we really don't know them that well, and the inverse si true as well.

We all have quirks that other people might find distasteful. As an easy jump off point, the pr0n habits of people vary wildly, and I'd wager if everyone knew what someone was into... The more you know about many people, the more chance there is that a part you uniquely find distasteful will emerge.

On top of that, the modern world in general, and SM specifically, has melded the public world, the private world and, most annoying of all, the inner world into a single, undifferentiated miasma. All these posts I see of people who can't work with Trump voters, or the religious right, or gay people or whatever shows how this melding causes real problems, even if it alleviates others.

We now know too much about people, and that isn't a universal positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Shouldn't we be more critical about the methodology? For example, it's not clear to me how it proves that the correlation is due to causation.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am curious what's the point of being connected all the time? It's a question I've been asking myself since the U.S. election. So I can have access to a bunch of garbage people post on the Internet? So I can chat people quickly?

There's like a handful of truly useful things on the Internet. Most of the useless things though take up 90% of time on it.

I'm failing to see the value at this point.

<comment><USER46> I never played WoW because I was afraid of how far I'd fall into an addiction. Having read "Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked," I was rather relieved to read game developers who have said they have willingly abstained from WoW for the same reasons. Even device- makers and tech leaders are cautious about introducing their own devices to their children.

The book, along with others like Hooked, remind me that we have to be very careful about the technology we use on a day to day basis, because it effects our brains in a way we might not want it too. Our brain and willpower is being tested against the skills of thousands of incredibly smart and talented designers, developers, product managers, et al.

Having chosen to abstain from apps like Facebook or social media websites, I don't feel like I lost anything. If anything, I've regained more time and mental space for things like getting deeper in my career. I'm not a luddite, as I am still a big believer in the productivity and information gains via the internet and computers. But our attention is a resource that a lot of companies want. And yet, I only feel like it's more recently that we've begun to question whether the benefits these companies give to us is worth the change in ourselves.

Because of mindfulness, I have recognized the need to distract myself (via Twitter, Reddit, E-mail, Whatsapp) is sometimes a symptom of not wanting to deal with something that is hard or uncomfortable (e.g. paperwork, making a decision, etc.).

Yet we know that become deep at something we care about, we truly do need focused time (Deep Work by Cal Newport is a worthwhile read). So I think it's really in our best interest to only choose apps that provide a lot of benefits with only marginal drawbacks to our mind, and to be very careful about how often we use them.

<comment><USER47> Game developer here who abstained from WoW and pretty much all MMOs or Free2Play shenanigans.

Although I happily put plenty of hours into single player RPGs (currently Persona 5 and Breath of the Wild). But those have an ending, and they don't require me to schedule my life around them in order to play them.

In fact they let me drop in and out of them very quickly, since they suspend and I don't have to connect to any networks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> My mental health improved dramatically when I deactivated facebook. I use instagram and Twitter sparingly these days. For some reason, I am unable to use facebook sparingly. When I am active, it is the first thing I check in the morning. I only use facebook after writing exams and deactivate as soon as I register for a new semester.

</comment><comment><USER49> I deactivated my facebook account and deleted my whatsapp account a little over a month ago and with the amount of free time i got, I decided against the use of instagram as well.

This article makes me feel not so antisocial anymore, thank you! :D

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm curious: Which aspects of Facebook cause this? Do other social networks, like Insta or Twitter, exhibit this behavior?

In a way, this and studies like it are damning to Facebook's core mission to connect everyone in the world.

<comment><USER51> This is just my speculation, but I think the utility of facebook declined when external linking took over user created posts on facebook. I don't go to facebook because I want to know how my friends feel about political news; I go to facebook because I want to know what they are up to. I think Instagram and Snapchat got this right, because even though you can regram something or paste a screenshot, that's not the default way to interact with the platform.

I would check facebook a lot more often if they had an option to hide all external links / images. I know there are browser plugins that enable this but they're not on mobile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> If anyone here is feeling like they spend too much time on Social Media, I recently made Space a set of apps to help with that.

[http://youjustneedspace.com](http://youjustneedspace.com)

</comment><comment><USER53> I have quit facebook for most part, use messenger to sometime send messages to friends, it opened up lot's of free time. I still use Instagram, but that is so much more manageable and less invasive.

</comment><comment> surrey-fringe Interesting how much of an echo chamber HN is wrt social media use. I certainly agree, but most people I know would tell us that it's great for keeping in touch and organizing events.

<comment><USER19> It certainly is, but I think it's a nice contrast to have in comparison with your day to day friends that are not hackers and wouldn't understand why you left facebook. You just should have in mind that the average HN user is pretty far from the average person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Looks like this might be effect related to social apps which are used as a log to brag about your awesome life. Should be less of an issue with Twitter and maybe Snapchat.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Time to put together a study on the relationship between HN use and well- being!

<comment><USER8> I actually find communities like this far more depressing than your average social network. I _can_ go on the vacation my friend is on, but I cannot acquire the expertise of thousands of other brilliant professionals in every niche I see here.

<comment> castle-bravo All you can do is learn. In the immortal words of Rush: "Those who wish to be must put aside the alienation, get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I've worked on social networks for several venture backed companies, and I opted out of their use half a decade ago. Drug dealers aren't users.

I like the opium analogy. Socially acceptable as long as the East India Company is forcing it down our throats. (But at least we'll get Hong Kong out of it!)

</comment><comment><USER56> I have never been on FaceTwit. Never missed it. (either of them) I've occasionally wondered if I should. Its amusing to read both about and from people (here in comments) being happier without it.

There was a point I worried that one or both of them would become a mandatory authentication mechanism for other sites.</comment>


How We Fooled Ourselves Into Waiting Too Long To Launch - <AUTHOR> http://viniciusvacanti.com/2012/04/02/how-we-fooled-ourselves-into-delaying-our-startups-launch/

<comment><USER3> There exist many, many businesses where V1.0 of the product can be the CEO scrambling with a cell phone, Gmail, and a spreadsheet. This is especially true for business process innovation type businesses like e.g. ZeroCater (which actually started out pretty much exactly like that). After you learn exactly where the painful bits are you can code to prevent them rather than coding for problems which may not ever be experienced by any human ever.

To this day, there's a couple of things where my workflow is "SSH into the box and run commands against the Rails console" because those tasks were never common/important/etc enough to justify even an hour writing up a tool to automate them.

<comment><USER4> _[...] those tasks were never common/important/etc enough to justify even an hour writing up a tool to automate them._

I can't agree more. It took me a while to get there but in the end it's exactly what everybody should do.

As of right now I'm manually creating the accounts of new customers (has something to do with creating new database tables which is done half- automatically). Right now there is only a trickle of new customers (due to the lack of marketing) and it's not worth it (yet) to program a fully automated registration process which would require a registration form, payment processing and above mentioned account creation.

<comment><USER3> A major "aha!" moment for me was 37Signals writing "If you have a 30 day trial anyhow, launching with billing code written means you've swapped something customers actually will notice today for something they won't." I don't endorse that specific advice (because you should probably auth cards on launch day) but the kinda relentless scope-cutting it implies has been a major win for me.

<comment><USER5> We launched with billing code, but did not have code to actually do something with accounts that did not pay until they were into their 35th day of a 30 day trial (a slight estimation error, you know how software development works).

"Hey, you lucky guys, we're extending your trial period by five days! Ain't that cool?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The best way I've come up with is to think of a startup as an experiment, not as a business._

This is the key take away.

If you're doing an experiment, you're doing it to learn something and prove some hypothesis. The only thing that should delay you from launching is, "If we launch now, we won't be able to collect that data we need to test our hypothesis".

Learn and learn fast. That's it. You can't learn if you're not making contact with your customer. A 25 SLOC splash page that learns something is better than 2500 SLOC that just sit in your GitHub account.

</comment><comment><USER7> I never thought that I would be hit by launch fear. Over the past couple of years, I have conceived and finished a number of reasonably big projects - www.gambolio.com, www.musicgames.co, www.casualgirlgamer.com and www.tiki- toki.com - and for each I launched as soon as I thought the software/site was polished enough. I had no hesitation or doubt. But for some reason, with my latest project - www.peopleplotr.com - I just can't seem to launch it. It is not that I am constantly tinkering with it. I haven't touched it since it was completed a couple of months back. It's ready to be launched at a moment's notice. I even posted about it on Hacker news to get pre-launch feedback. But, for reasons I am not 100% sure of, I just can't conjure up the energy to write a few press releases and send them out to some blogs and publications.

I am not sure exactly why this is. Am I fearful of it being a failure or am I fearful of all the work I'll have to do when users start giving feedback. Perhaps it is not so much launch fear as launch fatigue.

<comment><USER8> Stop thinking and launch. There has been enough thinking on this project already it seems!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> We launched a "netflix for action sports" dvds back in 2004 and the first day we shipped all the dvds (about 30) by hand. We hand picked from inventory what each customer wanted and then made mailing labels on the laser printer, licked the envelopes and mailed them out. Once we found out that there was a rental market for action sports DVD's we built the back end to use bar coding of dvds, automated envelope printing, etc. We did build the credit card gateway upfront though, both because we were offering free 30 day trials that involved shipping customers our inventory and also because we wanted to capture the CC info for recurring billing upfront.

</comment><comment><USER10> So true. Now, if all entrepreneurs could just _stop_ reading this advice and actually _apply_ it to their projects, that would be amazing. As the article pointed out in the introduction, they knew to launch early. They were told to launch early. And they still didn't. I'm guilty of the same mistake. Why is this cognitive dissonance still haunting all of us?

<comment><USER11> Maybe if everyone did follow the advice and "launch early" then some of us would realize we really DID launch too early and the popular idea of launching early would lose some of it's appeal?

I believe there is a growing number of startups that are realizing the importance of launching with a (fairly) polished product. There's just a ton of startups now, and standing out in the crowd is becoming more difficult.

When I hear "launch early" what I personally take it to mean is "iterate based on _real_ customer feedback", with the intention being you'll minimize wasted work. But this is how you should be running your business all the time - <USER2> just at the MVP stage.

<comment><USER12> Great advice. Launch early does not mean throw crap at a wall at hope it sticks. You do still need to make something that represents at least some of the function of your initial vision. Really you should make simple version and have a soft launch (not a ton of press) and when you actually "launch" it won't matter that you were out there with a half finished product because no one knew about you anyway. don't code locked in your basement make a demo and then get out there and show it to people and get feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is an awesome post. Thank you for this. Thinking about a start-up as an experiment, not a business, until it succeeds is the biggest takeaway.

That said, there is some truth to the fact that you need to love it before you can let others see it. It has to be clear to you why you yourself want to use it. We have gone out on many launches. Alpha, Beta, and now launching to the world on 17th April.

None of those early launches stuck! Why? Because it was still a Work-In- Progress. And it felt that way to our early users. It felt like we had to make excuses when presenting the product to friends and early adopters.

<comment><USER14> These early launches are not expected to "stick" - either that, or I've just been terribly unlucky. The only value you need to extract is real-time feedback about what you got right and what you got wrong. Then you tweak it and launch again, and again, and again. And eventually, you reach "product- market fit." And then it sticks. If you're lucky.

But the early product is _not_ expected to be scalable. It just helps you avoid the problem of launching a _late_ product with all the same major flaws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We launched early, asked for money right away, and have been doing excellent ever since. Now our problem is defining what makes a 'final, out of beta, stable' version. Defining it, and then meeting it. We're constantly going 'this isn't good enough for a final release'. But hey, almost 300 paying users right now is motivation to make it better for THEM, and not for us and our imaginations of what is better. With those users who've paid for our product (when it was barely a product) tell us what they need, it's far more valuable.

<comment><USER16> Bravo! Why do you care about "final"? I can't imagine you'll stop iterating in response to customer feedback, so isn't "final" an illusion?

<comment><USER15> You're exactly right. I should restate I mean '1.0 final' so we can say we are out of beta and anyone that buys it can know they're now getting something that has no problems with it.

<comment><USER16> In my view, that's more about the "Crossing the Chasm" transition from rabid early adopters to the early mainstream market. In your shoes I'd interview various potential customers to see what each group considers must-have features, and listen carefully to any early mainstream people that have used your current version.

<comment><USER15> I know thisis a really late reply, but I wanted to say thank you for your reply and input. Really appreciate it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My approach to avoid this is to not have a development or staging server. Just a live site. That's what I work on at the beginning. It's always out there, so there are no excuses. And it keeps your focus on the user experience.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure this sounds crazy to some, but I wanted to add we do something similar.

Every commit goes live as soon as the tests pass. We do have a staging server, but it's running the same code as in production. We use it for manual putzing around (so we don't mess up production data or clutter production logs), and we eventually added feature toggles so that a feature can appear only on staging.

That means we're releasing every few hours, which a) means we get feedback as soon as possible, and b) production bugs are pretty easy to run down, because you know just where to look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I've abandoned a project because my non- tech partner constantly came up with new ideas why we couldn't launch and that we needed more features before we launched. This resulted in me being highly demotivated and frustrated.

<comment><USER18> Not to sound trite, but that sounds like a lack of planning -- in the form of a question, what's your MVP?

If you're clear on that, you point to the doc and say "how does this new idea/feature help accomplish this?" and force a specific answer.

<comment><USER4> It was all planned out and I myself had a clear path outlined but if your partner is supposed to do the marketing and PR and simply refuses to start with it, what are you going to do?

<comment><USER18> That's the other big piece of any business: buy in. You can have the best project roadmap in the world but if everyone else acts like it doesn't exist it's not very helpful!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I launched early with a paid copy of our product, and people complained about it a lot. This was good since I knew what to improve.

The best way to make people care about a product is get them to pay some money for it first.

I also launched a free version of our product after. While this one has a lot more users and is growing exponentially, the feedback is far sparser. People care for things they pay for and that attention is great for shaping the beginning of your startup.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great article. Launching fast is always a good thing for any startup. The challenge with our startup, PayGuard, is that we are a payments processing service. Building the site is not the issue, the integration with financial institutions are. We were able to build the Alpha version of the product with all the key basic functionalities in 6 weeks but we could not test it yet to actually transfer money. We began testing the key features using dummy data.

<comment><USER21> It's good to see somebody else building a complex product. People seem to forget that not all projects can be launched overnight - if you're building a WordPress plugin then, sure, you can launch and start selling it immediately, and iterate new features thereafter. If you're building something that effectively provides access to a complex technology (algorithm, integration point, workflow, etc.) then the time-to-usefulness can be much longer.

<comment><USER20> That is why we're trying to figure out ways to test key functions that does not require integration. We are currently focusing on user experience and logic workflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is not just a software/startup problem. Every single web project / eCommerce site / anything online that requires work, should be rolling out a variation of an MVP.

I had a meeting with the brother earlier today. He runs an online wholesale business (I do all the tech stuff). I've been leaning towards launching a retail arm in our one EU country, and launching 3 new wholesale websites translated into Dutch, French, and whatever they speak in Belgium.

We decided instead to translate just the landing page 3 times into 3 languages, to set up a retail site landing page, and to run 4 Google ad campaigns for a couple of weeks, dropping a couple of hundred euro on each one - to see what happens... impressions, clicks, etc.

Here's he point. On HN, we hear non-stop about MVPs, and because of the site that's in it, it's all software or web services. But the reality is that everything that points towards an MVP being a good idea for software and web services, is also true for more traditional eCommerce and info sites.

<comment><USER4> _whatever they speak in Belgium_

Dutch and French. :-)

<comment><USER22> That doesn't help. If I listen to the 10 o'clock news in the Netherlands, do I get a choice of languages? Newspapers in two languages? Parliamentary questions and interviews in 2 languages? Seriously?

<comment><USER23> The Netherlands only has one language, Dutch. Belgium has two: the top part speaks Dutch, the bottom part French. And they don't really seem to like each other. And, yes, official things are in both languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's important to draw a line in the sand where you will launch, say, "when I get X done, we will launch". Then make sure you stick to it. If you plan well, and you know your customers, this should work.

It seems like the real problem here is just not knowing your customers. By all means you should be beta testing with your friends and anyone else you can guilt into helping you. Don't launch blind.

</comment><comment><USER25> Strange that there is still so much daily-deal stuff being worked on. Is this really fertile ground for a business? (Honest question.) Is everyone still reacting to the Groupon IPO, even though that business has all sorts of smells?

<comment><USER26> At this point, there are a couple of heavily funded daily deals sites that can afford to hire armies of sales people to literally pester their way into multiple local markets. My friends that work at one of these firms say there's about 60 devs supporting 4,000 sales people. My friends that own local restaurants constantly complain about the incessant daily deal sales reps that won't leave them alone to sign up.

These larger firms make their data available to smaller sites via APIs, allowing for firms like Yippit, Sqoot, etc to serve as aggregators. These sites then skim off the top of the deal sales, sometimes getting 50% of the commission on purchased deals.

The danger is that the larger sites that are the life blood of the system run on enormous deficits to maintain those armies of sales reps.

As DHH put it, local deals is like finding oil on the moon: a valuable resource that might ultimately prove too costly to extract.

<comment><USER27> That's quite interesting. I'm in a non-US market where deals have traditionally tended to be not that attractive, perhaps because of product import costs and perhaps because of a captive-market situation, and I'm wondering if the pestering-salesperson approach is the right one to induce more businesses to open up to the possibility of offering good deals.

We have group-buying (Groupon-style) deals, which has opened up the way somewhat, but I'm playing around with a more traditional deal-listing model that doesn't push merchants as hard. Do you think salespeople is the only way to keep merchants offering deals, for a listing model? It seems costly but also the only way to keep merchants listing deals even when the revenue outcomes of previous outings haven't been that spectacular.

I appreciate any thoughts you or anyone else might have on the issue - thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


FCC Says There Is No Analysis of the Cyberattack That Crippled Its Website - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/fcc-now-says-there-is-no-documented-analysis-of-the-cyb-1797073113 <comment><AUTHOR> Good write up of the absurdity of such a statement using public tools: [https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6odans/fcc_now_s...](https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6odans/fcc_now_says_there_is_no_documented_analysis_of/dkgxguo/)</comment>


Robots Are Eating Money Managers' Lunch - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-20/robots-are-eating-money-managers-lunch <comment><USER2> I think this will happen but the article talks about robots replacing humans because of how great they are and then mentions unimpressive results.

Maybe it's a wash but the robots win because they don't take 20 pct of profits. So they replace jobs but aren't as amazing as they tout.

Still seems that over any length of time, one should just go with index funds.

<comment><USER3> > the article talks about robots replacing humans because of how great they > are and then mentions unimpressive results

True, but Yahoo! was still dominant for a while after search engines came on the scenes. There's always some lag, but trading is a lot more like searching the web than like driving a car.

> Still seems that over any length of time, one should just go with index > funds.

Right now, those index funds are managed by humans based on indices built by humans. I reckon that they also have the potential to be cheaper when completely automated.</comment></comment>


Android fragmentation increases - <AUTHOR> http://opensignal.com/reports/2015/08/android-fragmentation/

<comment><USER2> There are several problems with this measure, and the concept of "fragmentation:"

1\. It does not account for the mitigating effect of the compatibility libraries. More apps than ever can be written for up-to-date APIs.

2\. It does not rate the importance of API changes. Pop quiz: What can you do at API level 22 that you can't do at API level 21?

3\. It doesn't address real problems in device compatibility, nor what devs should do in their test plans. If you want to confirm that many Android test plans are insufficient, just change text size on your phone and see how many apps break.

4\. It doesn't capture some serious problems like unpatched vulnerabilities in the field and inconsistent UX. Google still has work to do to get OEMs to update devices promptly and cut bloatware, but not because there are a lot of Android devices.</comment>


20 reasons to drop IE8 like it's hot - <AUTHOR> http://www.benmvp.com/2015/08/20-reasons-to-drop-ie8-like-its-hot.html

<comment><USER2> Why is the author calling Windows 7 "terrible" and of Windows 8 he merely says it "has much higher system requirements"?

To me, Windows 7 is the new XP and Windows 8 (as well as Windows Server 2012) are an abomination.</comment>


Ask HN: Is NoSQL Still the Wave? - <AUTHOR> Are NoSQL DB's like Mongo or Dynamo still popular and viable options for a database? It seemed as if a year ago everyone was advocating for them. I see less of that now, but I don't see anyone giving me a legitimate reason not to use them either. <comment><USER2> Ideally you choose a database carefully based on requirements, known and reasonably foreseeable. You should carefully consider what you gain and what you give up by choosing a non-relational database, because that probably sits at the core of the application. Don't just follow fads or worry about what seems popular at the moment.

<comment><USER3> What kind of requirements point to nosql?

<comment><USER4> High Availability, known data retrieval patterns and high volumes of read/write.

<comment><USER2> Those are buzzwords, not requirements. You can find all those terms used to describe Oracle. They don't point to a NoSQL solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It makes less sense to categorize them as NoSQL. It implicitly means 'eventual consistency' and 'no relations' depending on who you ask. Some of the 'NoSQL' databases offer some consistency features, other distributed scalable databases nowadays provide relations and strong consistency models (FaunaDB / FoundationDB / CockroachDB / Spanner) although we would be tempted to categorize thos as 'NoSQL', or 'NewSQL' (but not all of those offer SQL), these terms imho don't really make sense anymore. Some of the older 'NoSQL' databases even start to add consistency features or some form of relations. In other words, the difference between NoSQL and SQL is fading. How good a database can support certain features at scale is what matters, and that depends on the algorithms behind the database (there are many approaches). Imo, look at the algorithms not at the buzzwords such as 'NoSQL'.

There is still a need for databases that are built for scalability (and there is a growing need for those that work well together with serverless), but in many cases, there is no need to abandon consistency since new algorithms make it possible to have consistency, relations and low latency.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think that the hype has slowed down around NoSQL, much in the same way as it happens around most technologies.

There are still very solid use cases for Mongo/Couch/Dynamo/GraphQL/etc. it's just that the hype train of "use NoSQL for everything, even situations that are tailor made for row/column stores" has quieted some (there's still pockets of "OMG MAP-REDUCE ALL THE THINGS").

I think the combination of the drop in hype, along with the ability to see gains with things like PostgreSQL (and others) handling JSON blobs well has made people actually evaluate trade offs a little bit more sanely.

<comment><USER7> This is true. When pgSQL, SQLite and MySQL began to support JSON in 2015/2016 a the attractiveness of NoSQL databases - especially - of document stores seemed to diminish somehow.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't consider it too surprising; most document store type data was still most effectively backed by a structured column/row store system; and the major structured datastores implementing JSON support made it easier to use that in a single db structure instead of trying to get something like Postgres and Mongo to play together; although there are still many use cases for tiered datastores that use a combination of SQL and NoSQL system).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think generally speaking now the talk surrounding NoSQL involves the use case more often than not. And that's probabbly how it should be.

Plenty of situations out there where I hear about people using SQL and NoSQL nearly hand in hand depending on what you need to do.

I think the hype has quieted and they're just another tool as they should be.

</comment><comment><USER9> Still the wave? More like the endless summer: IMS remains an IBM program product, as it has been since 1969, though the license fee has gone up a bit.

There have been, and will continue to be, many ways to store and retrieve data without row-column relations or SQL. As others have noted, the key is to understand the application requirements, and to use the right tool for the job.</comment>


French researcher claims to have found Covid-19 cure - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JamesTodaroMD/status/1240274548165169157 <comment><USER2> 100% excluding the 6 patients that had problems. From the article:

> _Six hydroxychloroquine-treated patients were lost in follow-up during the > survey because of early cessation of treatment. Reasons are as follows: > three patients were transferred to intensive care unit, including one > transferred on day2 post-inclusion who was PCR-positive on day1, one > transferred on day3 post-inclusion who was PCR-positive on days1-2 and one > transferred on day4 post-inclusion who was PCR positive on day1 and day3; > one patient died on day3 post inclusion and was PCR-negative on day2; one > patient decided to leave the hospital on day3 post-inclusion and was PCR- > negative on days1-2; finally, one patient stopped the treatment on day3 > post-inclusion because of nausea and was PCR-positive on days1-2-3._

They lost 6 patients in the treatment group, but none in the control group.

> _None of the control patients was lost in follow-up._

And it is not a randomized control group

> _Untreated patients from another center and cases refusing the protocol were > included as negative controls_</comment>


Rackspace lays off 200 locals in company-wide cuts - <AUTHOR> https://therivardreport.com/rackspace-lays-off-200-locals-in-companywide-cuts/ <comment><USER2> This is another in a series of layoffs over the last year or two. They've tried to keep them relatively quiet.

They've reimagined the company as providing support on third-party platforms, namely AWS and Azure, instead of focusing on building, selling and supporting their own offerings. That model requires significantly fewer employees. That change, coupled with the buyout, means that there's no surprise in seeing layoffs at Rackspace, and there are likely more to come.

I'm a former Racker.

<comment><USER3> Private equality bought Rackspace out. Layoffs are part of that playbook. They basically pump cash in to grow sales, while cutting costs, so they can chop it up and sell it off for a multiple of what they paid for it.

<comment><USER4> So why aren't the sellers before PE and buyers after PE aware of the fact that no value is being added by PE in the interim, and hence sell cheaply and overpay?

Why is it so obvious to you, but not these other people? How does this charade perpetuate? Maybe there _is_ value in there somewhere?

<comment><USER5> People selling to PE can usually see the writing on the wall, so they're eager to leave with whatever cash they can still get. That makes for low prices.

Buyers always think that they have some insight about the business that can materialise some yet-unrealised potential. You've probably done it yourself a few times, "if only Company X did this and that, instead of what they're doing now -- they'd make loads!". Everyone knows PE don't know how to run businesses beyond the basics, so buyers will always see untapped potential. That makes for high prices.

<comment><USER6> Why aren't the sellers and buyers meeting directly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My last Rackspace experience was awful. We signed with them because they said they had the ability to mitigate DDOS attacks. A competitor of ours was trying to push os of out business with downtime.

We told them the strength of the DDOS attacks and they said they could mitigate it. We signed a contract, got DDOS and we were null routed by them. I got to talk to one of their techs and they said they couldn't actually mitigate DDOS attacks of that strength. He told us to use DDOS Arrest which worked. So they lied about their ability to mitigate DDOS and were stuck with this expensive 2 year contract.

Then a month later our site went down for 48 hours, and it was because they had a dead router in their internal network, but they insisted nothing was wrong and I had to debug the issue myself to get them to find the issue.

</comment><comment><USER8> My last experience with Rackspace was I think emblematic of their new direction.

They got into doing AWS consulting and sold the startup I was working for an AWS setup that was about 100x too large and overengineered for their static site.

Prior, I had used them for a number of projects and always found them to be professional and helpful. I think the old Rackspace is gone.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately, ain't no money in little "projects".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those wondering - "locals" here means people working at Rackspace headquarters at Windcrest, TX.

<comment><USER11> Maybe more like San Antonio, Texas. Does Windcrest even have 200 people? :)

<comment><USER12> Well, Windcrest is a subset of San Antonio, Texas. Which happens to be where the Castle (corp HQ) is located.

<comment><USER2> Being incredibly pedantic here, but it's actually not. San Antonio almost entirely surrounds Windcrest, but Windcrest is a separate city. There are a few places like this in San Antonio. The city chose not to incorporate these areas.

I know this because I worked at Rackspace, and one of the larger means of income for the city of Windcrest is semi-bogus traffic tickets given to people coming and going from Rackspace headquarters.

<comment><USER13> I love false pedantry. Windcrest is part of the San Antonio Metropolitan Survey Area:

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

<comment><USER14> I can't tell if you're trying to troll here, but the comment you're replying to said Windcrest is a separate city (it is, with a Mayor and City Council, per [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcrest,_Texas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcrest,_Texas)), and you reply that it's part of the San Antonio MSA, which is true but not what was being discussed.

I didn't ever live in or near San Antonio (or Windcrest!), but I did live in Austin and Houston so I am familiar with the Texas phenomenon of cities entirely or almost entirely surrounded by much larger cities. For instance, near Houston there's Bellaire and West University Place.

<comment><USER13> Not trolling.

The comment being replied to said "Well, Windcrest is a subset of San Antonio, Texas." Not "the city of San Antonio, Texas." Both officially and unofficially, San Antonio is the name of not just an incorporated city, but of the metropolitan area of which it's the largest city. When you say that the metro area, as opposed to the city, was "not what was being discussed," that was an assumption the comment I replied to was making. But nowhere is that said in the comment that started this thread.

The principle of charity ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)) "requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation." The interpretation of the statement being replied to that makes it true is "Well, Windcrest is a subset of the San Antonio, Texas metro area." The "pedantic" comment I was replying to ignored that possible interpretation in favor of an interpretation that made the comment false. But why not interpret the comment in such a way that it's true, given that there's a very common way of reading that (San Antonio the metro area) where it's so?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apparently the weekend weather man was correct. :)

RS will do really well as a services business, lots of fortune business that need to migrate to software-defined infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER16> I just hope this doesn't eventually mothball the RHEL/Centos IUS repo.

[http://ius.io](http://ius.io)

Which, while not officially supported by Rackspace, was started there, is sponsored by, and is currently maintained by them.

</comment><comment><USER17> We're using Rackspace Cloud Files. If they ever end up shutting down or something, what are our alternatives? We mainly use Rackspace Cloud Files CDN to deliver assets to our clients (JS, CSS, images).

<comment><USER18> Fellow RS Cloud Files customer here.

We're moving a lot of files over to Google Cloud Storage (Nearline) as well as full backups to Coldline storage.

Nearline storage is 1/10 the cost of cloud files. Lifecycle policy is very handy for automatic file rotation. Command line is slick.

Rsync was a total lifesaver in the migration. Moved 4TB of files over 26 ish hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Funny that AWS support is a growing business for them.

We actually gave up managed bare metal hosting with another provider for AWS a few years ago, when we found that AWS's automated infrastructure had reached a point wherein self-management was a viable option at a much lower cost.

Granted, our installation is straightforward, but overall, it seems AWS would reduce the need for managed services.

<comment><USER5> _> our installation is straightforward_

Speaking from an enterprise point of view, that makes all the difference. A lot of companies will have mishmashes of different systems with one-off setups that are not worth the effort of automating.

The main selling point of AWS, from an enterprise perspective, is to shift costs in the right balance-sheet column, lower build times, and lower headcount because you can cut the hardware boys. Everything else (automation etc) is entirely optional and only worth the effort in some particular circumstances.

<comment><USER20> It's always worth it to automate, just adjust your timeframe and internalize the admin cost. As someone who has done it both ways, let me assure you --you don't want had crafted bespoke servers. You want generic and repeatable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> All this hiring and firing makes me think that the economy should err towards gigs rather than FT employment.

i.e. Full-time work is only full-time until it ends, but the ending is inadequately spelled out on the side of management, so it becomes an ongoing expense drag, leading to diminishing returns.

Multiply this by the number of employees, layoffs seem inevitable.

<comment><USER22> "All this hiring and firing makes me think that the economy should err towards gigs rather than FT employment."

The danger of this (to the employees) is a recession creating another 2009-like economy, where the best one could hope for is a contract gig of more than a couple of months. People tend to forget how disposably they can be treated during hard times.

<comment><USER21> Good point. Although, I tend to think the timespan of contracts, whether employment or temporary, are of little moment if the employer were to fall on hard times. If they don't have the cash, termination is going to happen either way.

What might work is automated Just-in-Time contracting, with minimal agency cost and lead-times, and with automation providing the stability of full-time employment. LinkedIn 2.0 essentially (fyi: this doesn't exist, I just made it up)

<comment><USER23> Gigster?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Rackspace has been defeated.

Expect them to close/sell their cloud hosting division.

<comment><USER25> What does this bode for Openstack? Especially, given what happened at HP? :'(

<comment><USER26> It is the other way around. OpenStack is dying, we're just watching how vendors respond.

Rackspace and HP needed OpenStack to take off in order to generate demand for their public clouds. When that didn't happen HP shut down its cloud. Rackspace couldn't do that, their cloud accounted for too much of their revenue, so what we're seeing is their fallback plan.

Interesting anecdote: yesterday the OpenStack Foundation sent out an email announcing the speakers for the upcoming OpenStack summit. The subject line: "Hear from Google's VP of Cloud Platforms at OpenStack Summit Boston".

<comment><USER27> >It is the other way around. OpenStack is dying, we're just watching how vendors respond.

The idead of a bunch of giant openstack public clouds is dying, but openstack as the solution to build private clouds still seems to be going strong.

<comment><USER28> Exactly. Openstack's strength building out a private cloud infrastructure. Deploying it is still a major undertaking (wish things like fuel were more reliable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have never encountered better online support than Rackspace.

</comment><comment><USER30> "We're confident we can accomplish these reductions without any effect on the expertise and exceptional customer service we provide to our customers."

Lanham never would have missed the opportunity to drop "fanatical" in.

"The company is cutting jobs in its corporate administration and management teams."

Sounds like they are not releasing technical and customer facing talent?

</comment><comment><USER31> Less than ideal for central Texas, but given how many people AWS has been hiring this news isn't really a surprise.

<comment><USER32> I know Amazon AWS has most of their core engineering talent in Austin. The scene is small but strong, this doesn't really reflect on the hiring climate in ATX.

As a true Austinite, I never really considered San Antonio a "tech hub" or indicator of anything in tech.

<comment><USER33> Pretty sure AWS has most of their core engineering talent in Seattle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We've been with Rackspace since 1999, but I'm getting concerned about the future of the company. Can anyone recommend a comparable managed host for Windows?

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't mean this insensitively; why would I choose rackspace over aws/goog?

<comment><USER36> If you don't want to be a sysadmin.

I don't have services like Pingdom or Pager Duty for my sites. I have Rackspace. If a site goes down, they immediately attempt to recover it, acting within the account rules I set up with them. If that fails, I get a phone call from an expert and we troubleshoot together.

I once got a call that one of my servers had started sending out a high volume of email. When I took the call, Rackspace folks had already found the nasty script doing it and just needed my ok to take the site down for a few minutes to boot it.

The service is really great. But, it ends just below the application layer, and these days, that's where most of the problems show up. So I am looking at moving off of Rackspace, but I'm looking _up_ the service ladder at application-aware hosting services like WP Engine or Pantheon. As opposed to down the service ladder, to a self-service "don't call us" system like AWS or Google.

<comment><USER35> Fantastic reply - thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Speaking as a Rackspace customer, if any of these guys are Linux techs, and you're looking, hire them. With signing bonuses.

Anecdote: A couple years ago, I had one explain to me (in a way that made sense) how the battery on the raid array was probably the cause of some problems with https. And _he was right_.

Maybe not everyone there is a certified genius, but that really blew my mind. They really know hardware. I haven't talked to one who couldn't save my tail in a pinch. Rackspace might seem a bit on the expensive side, but their support is absurdly good.

<comment><USER38> So... how _was_ that battery the cause of an https problem?

<comment><USER39> Not the OP, but a guess: A lot of RAID cards will switch from writeback mode to writethrough when the battery is low, because they can't guarantee that the (battery-backed) cache will persist across a power failure. Writethrough mode makes writes significantly slower, which could cause problems higher up the stack.

<comment><USER40> Yep they will also go write through during a battery "learn cycle". The DELL PERC controllers are notorious for this. And there is poor visibility into this. You basically have to know about the awful MegaCli utility to gain any insight.

What is the learn cycle?

"The purpose of the learn cycle is to determine the condition of the battery. The learn cycle charges, fully discharges, and then recharges the battery in order to determine the condition and health of the battery. The battery full charge capacity degrades over time and a battery is deemed completely degraded when it can no longer hold a charge for 24 hours and must be replaced."

Source: [https://discuss.pivotal.io/hc/en- us/articles/204955498-FAQ-G...](https://discuss.pivotal.io/hc/en- us/articles/204955498-FAQ-Greenplum-DCA-PERC-Battery)

<comment><USER41> What kind of trash-tier reliability-increasing hardware stops working for a day every 90 days? I'm really surprised they didn't put two or three batteries into it.

<comment><USER20> All of them. You learn to disable learn cycle, most people learn that the hard way. I switched to flash backed cache for this reason (along with being sick of replacing batteries)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > _"We were very intent on preserving as many Racker positions as possible in > our customer-facing roles, and we're confident we are not going to affect > fanatical support for our customers," the spokesperson said._

What a bizarre comment! 'Fanatical'?

<comment><USER43> "Fanatical support" is a big part of their branding.

<comment><USER42> Huh, well, bizarre branding then!

<comment><USER44> could you explain what's bizarre about the branding? Do you not like the word 'fanatical'? (which just means 'filled with excessive and single-minded zeal'/'obsessively concerned with something.').

<comment><USER42> > _what 's bizarre about the branding [... 'fanatical'] which just means > 'filled with excessive and single-minded zeal'_

Branding your support 'excessive' or 'single-minded' would also be bizarre.

Fanaticism is typically taken with religious or political connotations, and derogatorily.

Cambridge [0] says:

> [informal] extremely interested in something, to a degree that someone [sic] > _people find unreasonable_

> [disapproving] holding _extreme beliefs_ that may lead to _unreasonable or violent_ behaviour: a fanatical group that has _threatened to assassinate_ doctors

Oxford [1] says:

> A person filled with _excessive and single-minded_ zeal, especially for an > _extreme religious or political cause_ : 'religious fanatics'

> ... originally described behaviour that might result from _possession by a > god or demon_ ... (Oxford [1])

(Italics mine.)

[0] - [http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fanatical](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fanatical)

[1] - [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fanatic](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/fanatic)

<comment><USER45> No more bizarre than describing someone as a "football fan", "music fan", "star trek fan", etc.

<comment><USER42> Why? That's actually a common usage.

Add '~atic' to any of those and it's sounds much more extreme; something to disapprove of.

I quoted Cambridge online dictionary above as defining it as disapproving, the same dictionary defines 'fan' exactly as you use it, and does _not_ give 'fanatic' as a synonym.

Of course it originates as an abbreviation, but the usual usage is very different.

<comment><USER46> It really doesn't, everyone knows that football fanatic is just a big fan of football. Same for any other interest. It's hyperbole but one that everyone knows is hyperbole. Strange that you think otherwise to be honest.

<comment><USER42> Well, maybe it's regional.

I have at least backed up my surprise at the use with two different dictionary citations, so it can't be that strange of a view.

<comment><USER44> It's possible your surprise is regional. Rackspace has had success with that branding (though it's ironic to discuss that in this article).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Subversion 1.7 is out - <AUTHOR> http://subversion.apache.org/news.html <comment><AUTHOR> I probably should have linked to the release notes instead, which are available here:

<http://subversion.apache.org/docs/release-notes/1.7.html>

Some big changes in 1.7 extracted from the release notes:

Working Copy Metadata Storage Improvements

A key feature of the changes introduced in Subversion 1.7 is the centralization of working copy metadata storage into a single location. Instead of a .svn directory in every directory in the working copy, Subversion 1.7 working copies have just one .svn directory—in the root of the working copy. This directory includes (among other things) an SQLite-backed database which contains all of the metadata Subversion needs for that working copy.

svn patch

Subversion 1.7 features a new subcommand called svn patch which can apply patch files in unidiff format (as produced by svn diff and other diff tools) to a working copy.

Improved HTTP protocol usage

Subversion 1.7 offers a simpler HTTP protocol variant that can be used when connecting to supported servers. This simpler protocol (sometimes referred to as HTTPv2) requires fewer client-server round trips to establish a connection, making Subversion much more performant on high-latency network connections.

<comment><USER2> I'm not trolling here, this is a genuine question:

What are the advantages of using SVN over Git? (assuming one was starting a new project and hadn't yet chosen a VCS)

<comment><USER3> One big one is that you can check out a working copy of a particular sub-path in the repository. This means you don't need the whole repo (or the repo's entire history) locally, which is necessary in workflows where build products and other giant binaries are stored in version control.

I believe this is why many people still use Subversion and Perforce, etc.

<comment><USER4> Of course, this is probably a not-so-great reason for doing so and reflects an inability to change build procedures/organizational workflows if this feature is absolutely vital.

<comment><USER5> This is actually a really cool feature. Basically, you can have one large repository to administer instead of lots of smaller ones, and you can treat any subdirectory level as a single repository.

Want to checkout all Apache Software Foundation projects?

        svn checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/

Want to work on Apache httpd?

        svn checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/

Maybe you only care about mod_proxy?

        svn checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk/modules/proxy/

Apache server becomes a subproject of the new Apache MegaOS? Just move /repos/asf/httpd/ to /repos/asf/megaos/httpd.

See also FreeBSD repository: <http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/>

<comment><USER6> > Want to checkout all Apache Software Foundation projects? > svn checkout > <http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/>

Correction, that's all branches and all tags of all ASF projects. Not useful.

> Want to work on Apache httpd? > svn checkout > <http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/>

Again, all versions and all tags thereof.

> Maybe you only care about mod_proxy? > svn checkout > [http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk/modules/pr...](http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk/modules/proxy/)

That's just the one version.

Similarly, my project wants the latest sources under under specific branches from repositories from five different administrative domains. That's trivial in git. I can move them around freely, lock a revision of a particular repository while letting others move forward, have custom (potentially unpublished or unwelcome upstream) patches to fit into my build system or supported OSes that are tracked along with them.

Subversion has externals for this same reason. It's no excuse for poor repository management.

<comment><USER5> > Correction, that's all branches and all tags of all ASF projects. Not > useful.

Yes, I should have used the FreeBSD repository as an example, which is not organized in {trunk,branch,tags} form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know there are a lot of reasons to keep using Subversion, but I don't think there are many good reasons to start using Subversion. Git-e-up.

* SVN is no simpler than Git

* Working with a team is easier to branch and merge

* The tools and community around Git are vibrant

Go use TRAC and SVN, and then hit yourself in the face with a brick a few times, and see which you enjoy more.

<comment><USER8> Likely because I used SVN for several years (and spent a good deal of time with the excellent free online book [1]), but I find subversion significantly easier than git. Checkout, commit. That's it.

Maybe I'm in the minority.

1:<http://svnbook.red-bean.com/>

<comment><USER7> You can use Git just like SVN. Just limit yourself to these 4 commands:

* git clone

* git pull origin master

* git commit -a -m "ch ch ch ch changes"

* git push origin master

You really don't need to know any commands other than that, and if you find those too verbose, you can alias them. But then if you want the power of git branch and git merge, they are there for the using.

I used to use SVN, and at some point I took the leap and converted to Git, and I am a happy camper. As we have more and more developers working on various branches and projects, the power of Git becomes clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Free Subversion eBook:

<http://www.heronote.com/files/Subversion.htm>

</comment><comment><USER10> "Subversion 1.7 is out"

Subversion has been "out" for years now! Please move on to a DVCS as soon as you can and leave it to die a respectable death.

</comment><comment><USER11> yawn</comment>


Show HN: Crayfish, an open source, shareware newsreader - <AUTHOR> http://www.ideabyte.net/

<comment><USER2> Interesting licensing choice. So if I download and compile it myself am I still bound to the 30-trial? As my understanding of the MIT license would suggest, no if I compile it myself I'm free to do as I please.</comment>


Elon Musk and the future of spaceflight - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/05/spacex-the-apple-of-spacefligh.html <comment><USER2> It is very good to finally see the newspace ethos being distributed in the media. The loose newspace community has been saying these things for decades.

To summarize, it goes something like that:

The aim is spacefaring.

1\. We need reusable rockets 2\. We should lower cost for space 3\. Reliability follows automatically from above

4\. We must iterate reasonable size projects to progress 5\. We must tolerate failures 6\. We must build many parallel and consecutive prototypes 7\. Competition is good

Until now it's either been hobbyists or then NASA building something with billions of dollars and taking decades.

It is unlikely that a reliable, cheap and well working operational reusable rocket system will be built right on the first try, even with billions spent. Rather, you have to try different things at a reasonable scale, and then go back to design things differently. You can't know or analyze everything beforehand, what works and what doesn't. You must also be able to take risks in design. That has the potential of radical cost reductions.

All this is possible if you keep the projects small enough so that the failures don't destroy everything. With small enough steps, you enable progress.

I don't know if I write understandably. This is a perfectly sound concept but I find it very hard to make people understand that spacefaring progress is not reached by giving NASA more money and building the next big moon rocket. In fact, that would stagnate it.

<comment><USER3> I don't think commercial spaceflight will easily "tolerate" manned failures. Maybe with lots of competitors in lots of different countries.

But I did not realise the reusability cost structure quite so well as Elon's explanation - 200k on fuel, 60m on a one shot rocket.

Before that I truly thought we had no hope before a space elevator.

Call me a reluctant convert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always enjoy reading what Musk has to say.

Insufferable nitwit interviewers at New Scientist, not so much.

I am really sick of interviewers using language as a weapon and having hostile confrontational interviews with scientists and entrepreneurs, when the same interviewers and periodicals don't have the balls to even ask questions of the various criminals in society who are actually worthy of such contempt in an interview.

In particular, the interview starts with the phrase "You claim to be...". This phrasing establishes that the subject is suspected of lying. A respectful neutral question is "You have said that..." Such language use is not unintentional. It is designed to impeach the credibility of the subject in the reader's view by painting him as someone who is dishonest and can not be trusted.

<comment><USER5> That question in particular was definitely shit. I absolutely love how Musk handled it though: pointed accusatory question? Spam them with a big vocabulary and technical stuff!

Textbook response, if you know that you can put the other person out of their depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Our engine has the highest thrust to weight ratio of any engine in the world, our airframe has the best mass fraction of any rocket in the world - and our electronics are the lightest and have have the most computing power over that of any other rocket."

"The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the solar system, whether it has an atmosphere or not - and that's pretty cool. These motors can even fire supersonically which is important for Mars: in the higher altitudes of Mars the atmosphere is so thin that parachutes are completely pointless. So retro thrusters have to be able to fire when you are supersonic so they have to be very high thrust."

I've always understood SpaceX's main goal is lowered cost, followed closely by safety. It's pretty awesome that they're also cutting edge in terms of performance.

<comment><USER7> I was born on the edges of the 80s and 90s. I missed the entirety of the space race. I never even knew the enthusiasm towards space flight. Suddenly SpaceX appears and in only 10 years looks in place to eclipse NASA. They're poised to achieve far greater things than merely following NASA's footsteps. I knew they were looking forward but I didn't expect them to be considering things so far in advance.

I'm genuinely excited by space flight now. I have the new space race (fought between SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Armadillo Aerospace and all these other companies) to thank for it :)

<comment><USER8> I trust you've heard of Planetary Resources and their asteroid mining plans? (Just surprised they didn't make your list.)

<comment><USER9> I imagine that Planetary Resources may just be using someone else's launch tech, though the asteroid mining tech might be developed in-house (vs. out- sourced).

<comment><USER8> I actually expect that they'll partner with SpaceX and other launchers: one of the key things they're planning to do is to build fueling stations, which is not something I've heard that SpaceX is planning on yet.

Build the robots, ask SpaceX to put them in space, construct a station, permit SpaceX to use it to push further to Mars. It makes a lot of sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The way mr. Musk voices his mind reminds me heavily of Steve jobs. Both wanting to change the world for the better. The only difference is that Elon is an engineer as well as an entrepreneur which makes him hard to dislike.

On a side note, I'm quite glad that this is getting a lot of press. Hopefully this buzz will create a demand for jobs related to space technology. I'm 27 but I wouldn't mind working for something related to that field once there is of high demand.

</comment><comment><USER11> """The escape system's motors will allow the capsule to land anywhere in the solar system ..."""

Must. Not. Become. a Fanboi.

<comment><USER12> Yes you must. Everyone should want to be like Elon Musk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Musk says Merlin-1C has the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any (liquid fuel) rocket today. Well: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(rocket_engine)> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NK-33>

Merlin 1C is 96:1, while NK-33 is 133:1

Obviously Musk knows what he's talking about, so where's the discrepancy?

<comment><USER14> There's a documentary about the NK-33 called "The engine that came in from the cold". Pretty amazing story - the Russians had these engines hidden in a warehouse for over 20 years before the Americans found out about them and they were better than anything that had been developed in the meantime.

It's on Google video here: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5787437371570928>

<comment><USER15> Good find.

"In 2010 stockpiled NK-33 engines were successfully tested for use by the Orbital Sciences Antares light-to-medium-lift launcher."

If I'm not mistaken, isn't the Antares lifter the other lifter by Orbital that's currently in parallel production to SpaceX's (but not almost never talked about in the media)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> After Elon Musk explained that it would be too dangerous to outsource the production to China because "rocket technology is [...] considered an advanced weapons technology," I'm surprised the interviewer didn't ask about potential dangers in the privatization of advanced weapons.

<comment><USER17> I doubt that Mr. Musk considers it to be advanced weapons technology (particularly given that China already has ICBMs), but the US government sure does: <http://www.fas.org/news/ukraine/p5s1.htm> .

<comment><USER18> Cost vs impact of ballistic missiles shapes current military strategy. A good example is how China's demonstration of a high maneuverability re-entry vehicle has shifted the navy back into building more destroyers to raise the odds of interception.

From this perspective, technology that reduces the cost to lob a warhead reliably _is_ still advanced weapons technology.

But I also don't think fear should hold back progress.</comment></comment></comment>


Google acquires Everything Is The Best (Plannr included) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/google-confirms-acquisition-of-everything-is-the-best-plannr/

<comment><USER2> TC's "guess" of 6 million dollars seems excessive for what sounds like a talent acquisition. Would be curious to hear thoughts of those with more experience.</comment>