A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/07/business/qantas-airbus-a380/index.html <comment><USER3> I totally understand why big aircraft (A380, 747, etc) are disappearing commercially but I will miss them. Flying in a larger aircraft makes one feel less like cargo, in particularly for airlines that offer places to stretch your legs (e.g. "bar" seating, showers, staircases, etc).

I was always kind of secretly hoping large blimps would return. And we'd get to choose between 7 hours in a tiny metal tube with the seat-back of the person in front resting on your knees, or 24 hours on a slow blimp with a bed, the ability to walk around, and social areas. Kind of like a cruise ship in the sky.

An A380 feels kind of like Concord in that it really touched the imagination. I still hope to have a shower at 40,000 feet before they're retired completely.

<comment><USER4> I love the A380 as an aerospace enthusiast, but absolutely despise it as a passenger. In my experience (with Lufthansa), the boarding process is chaotic and takes forever, the seat pitch is minimal in economy, and never have I felt more like cattle than when sharing the situation with 700 other passengers.

I'm curious how your experience as a passenger sounds so different from mine.

<comment><USER5> For long hauls I'd _always_ recommend to upgrade to Premium Economy. It's not quite first class, but it's much better than regular economy imho.

<comment><USER6> Really? I've flown both Premium Economy and Economy (>10 flights each I believe) for Delta, as well as both on a few other carriers, and I've never noticed a difference that was worth more than $20 in my mind. (Most of these were long-haul.) If it's free or very cheap, then sure, but it's such a small benefit that I've been on flights where I didn't even notice I was in Premium Economy until I stood up at the end of the flight.

<comment><USER7> "Premium Economy" seems to be a Virgin Atlantic thing and is basically their business class. It includes much larger seats, premium in-flight entertainment, nicer toilets, and a much better food and drink selection. The section on the aircraft I've flown on is also much smaller (50 seats?) and curtained off from the unwashed masses.

Agreed that a lot of airlines off an "economy plus" which is basically slightly faster boarding and slightly more legroom and that this isn't worth paying the extra for.

<comment><USER8> > "Premium Economy" seems to be a Virgin Atlantic thing and is basically their > business class.

Neither of these statements is true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's an interesting aircraft and nice to fly in, but commercially it was the wrong plane with the wrong technology at the wrong time.

Boeing got some flack at the time when they canceled their own superjumbo plans but history now shows they were spot on shifting their focus to the 787 and getting a head start on the efficient midsize long range jet market.

<comment><USER10> >but commercially it was the wrong plane with the wrong technology at the wrong time.

I think the consensus is that it is the right plane, right technology at the wrong time (it missed the 747-era, and too early for a future when 4-engine jumbo-jets may make a comeback).

<comment><USER9> It was built with 'old' technology when it was designed. For example aluminum when new designers were using composites.

Airbus bet on a bigger airplane built with traditional techniques while Boeing bet on a smaller airplane made with new techniques.

<comment><USER11> That's not completely true: the A380 is using composite extensively, more so than any aircraft built before (A330/340 or Boeing 777), although less than either Boeing 787 or A350. The problem of the A380 really boils down to one thing: it's too big.

Other than its size, the A380 is still surprisingly efficient despite engines that are largely outdated (compared to 787/A350 engines). But double deckers are very efficient by design, so maybe it's not that surprising. I think the only airliners more efficient currently flying (in terms of fuel per passenger, with normalized density/layout) are the A350-1000 and 787-10 (though one could argue the latter is more of a mid-range aircraft, so not directly comparable). The 777-9 will also beat it. Even more surprising when realizing that the A380 is in fact a shrink: there was supposed to be an even bigger (longer) version, so it's overbuilt (read: overweight) for its size.

But empty seats (or seats sold at very high discount, or a low seat count because the airline knows it's not going to sell that many tickets to begin with) don't make it economically viable on most routes out there. Besides Emirates only British Airways seems very happy with them. Even the 777-9 is starting to feel like it's too big, with very few airlines ordering it. Even the smaller A350-1000 is not raking in orders...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got upgraded from business class to first class on an Emirates A380 flight from Dubai to London a couple of years ago. Showering mid-flight was an experience I'd never forget! Especially, the gauge in the shower which goes down while the water's running (Lasted about 8 minutes, IIRC) :)

<comment><USER13> There is (was?) a A380 flight with Emirates from Dubai via Bangkok to Hong Kong, and back, and you could buy tix for that last segment BKK–HKG for about 200 USD, or 300 USD business, or 400 USD first.

Cheapest way to get a shower at 35k feet (without miles wizardry), I'd think! (And who doesn't want to shower on a 2 hour flight... :-)

<comment><USER14> If you buy a First-class ticket, don't just enjoy the parts of the flight itself, but also the optimizations around it. With my first-class flight from Dubai to Munich it was impressively efficient:

I got picked up at my Hotel in Dubai, in a car with WiFi where I could have worked, until the Driver dropped me at the first-class gate. No queues, friendly staff, dropped my luggage and went through security within 5 minutes of leaving the car. Went straight to the lounge, where I got drinks and could have worked some more, until I got picked up for boarding. First class is the last to board, to minimize waiting time in the airplane. Same idea goes on arrival: First class leaves first. I got straight to passport control before the 500 people from the lower deck were able to form a queue there. When I was done, my luggage was already waiting for me, picked it up and met my driver to get me home - again all within probably 5 minutes of leaving the plane. This first class flight really was designed to enable the traveler to be most efficient with their time.

That the luggage was ready was most impressive to me. At least Emirates marked the luggage, and probably loaded it in a way that first&business luggage gets out first, and fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the less obvious concerns about the retiring of the A380 would be the write down of all the infrastructure that Airbus invested in to be able to build these planes. It does seem like the "future of flight" is efficient, smaller, twin jets rather than these 'super tankers' of the sky.

One of the interesting tours you can go on in Everett WA is the Boeing 'Future of Flight' tour where you see the building where they are now building 777 and 787's but were originally building 747s. The adaptations to handle the smaller aircraft are pretty creative but the costs larger tooling is just written off. On a program that lived as long as the 747 has that isn't a big deal, but when you've only made 20% of the planes you expected to make? I would think that has to hurt your profitability.

<comment><USER16> It took a long time for the 747 to reach break-even, but after that every one sold was a huge infusion of cash to Boeing. The 747 was an enormous bet-the- company gamble, and it paid off enormously.

<comment><USER15> I think you sort of have to plan for it to be like that. If you tried to pay for all the tooling on the sales of the first 100 you would likely price yourself out of the market. So somewhere an analyst has to say, "Our lowest predicted lifetime volume is <a>, our expected volume is <b>, and our exceeds volume would be <c>." and then look at how much per plane to charge to pay off the tooling.

It sounds from the press coverage that Airbus is coming in below even their lowest forecast lifetime volume, which my just be exaggeration on the press' part, but if true it means some write downs are in Airbus' future.

<comment><USER17> I would not suggest pricing things in this way. The analysts should look at what competing products cost, and where is ours unique and what advantage does it give the airline. Convert that advantage over competing products to a dollar amount. Add that to the price of the competing product. Subtract some so you always win when the customer does their own cost/benefit analysis.

If you price your products based on your costs, you're either losing profit- margin or sales (sales, because you're making the wrong thing at the wrong price).

<comment><USER15> I like your description but it has challenges in the implementation when hardware is involved, especially manufactured hardware.

To reason about pricing in a hardware world, I find it helpful to think of dollars as a stream of units coming in for each sale, and a stream of units going out when I am buying parts and assembling things. Then one can start from time 0 (the initial start point), run the math over a period of time, and then at the end compare how much money you have. If we think of the money supply at time zero to be M0, and the money supply at the end to be M1, we can make some initial statements like this:

If M0 > M1 then we have lost money over the time period.

If M0 == M1 then we have neither gained nor lost money (but we may have acquired things that have some value so is isn't necessarily bad)

If M0 < M1 then we have gained money in addition to anything else we may have acquired over that time period.

When building new hardware, there are four kinds of costs we might consider. One is salaries, benefits, and office space for people who are designing that hardware. The next is anything that we have to pay for _once_ but can reuse during the manufacturing process (we will call that our non-recurring expense or NRE). The third is the cost to by the parts that go into one of our widgets. The final cost is the wear and tear on our equipment used to build the widgets, we know that once those things wear out we will have to replace them if we want to keep making widgets!

Now we can analyze the "life cycle" of our product. In phase 1, we look at are first the money we pay out in salaries and NRE to get ready to make widgets. Since there is no money coming in at that time, it all comes out of savings (or the M0 starting value). We will call that the startup cost or $S.

In phase 1, each widget we sell nets us some dollars (revenue yay!). We have to pay for parts (boo hoo), and we incur wear and tear on our equipment and we will label those $C and $D. The time it takes for your equipment to wear out is a guess, it could be 5 years it could be 20 years, but we need to guess what it is. This will be our first guess where we probably don't know the exact value. Remember it is the money we have to replace all the gear (we know that cost) but we have to guess how much the _time_ it will take to wear out. Given our time guess we will divide the cost by the time and that will give us cost per unit time. The other thing we have flexibility on in phase 1 is the price we sell our widgets for, we want to do all the pricing exercises that you mention, but before we do those, we ll will take the cost of parts that go into a widget (call it $C), the time it takes to make a widget, and the price we want to sell a widget for $P. This slightly more complicated math lets us write out a formula for money gained, or lost like this:

       $M = ($P - $C) / time to make - $D.

That is actually in units of dollars per unit time, but we can set the variables and solve for $P to find out at what price we don't lose money while in Phase 1, _if_ we can sell enough units per unit time.

Now we have enough things we can write some interesting reasoning about this. If we sell our units so that they only cover the cost of production. Then at the end we will end up with (M0 - $S) we'll have less money overall because our startup costs are not recovered, but we will have a design that of a widget. If the time period is less than the life time of our factory tools, we will still have a factory that can make widgets.

We can also solve for a price and number of widgets, that is equal to $D (assumming $M is zero you can move $D to the left hand side and see that $P - $C / time has to equal $D. That tells us the minimum rate, of widget manufacture and sales we need to keep up with the cost of wearing out our factory.

Now lets throw a wrench into the mix. Lets say you didn't do any of this, instead you just stuck your M0 money in a fund somewhere making 5% guaranteed compounded annual interest. If you do that, you can come up with a number for M1 (the ending balance of money) based on time.

Now after all of that, you can compare making widgets at a variable price $P and reason about if you make more or less money over a time period $T than you would make just sitting there with the money in an investment fund doing "nothing"[1].

What I like to keep in mind when doing this sort of exercise, either on an idea I have or when someone is telling me about theirs, is to evaluate if there is a price $P where, at the end of a period of time, you have more money than if you just sat on it. That extra money will fund additional ideas, having less than I started with means if I do it long enough I have to go back to work for someone else to trade my time and expertise for more money.

The amount someone is willing to pay for your widget that is greater than the number where you end up with exactly as much money as you would have if you did nothing, that is the "value proposition" for your idea. That is how much "value" it has, over and above just investing in a fund. But, as you recognize, you can just charge anything for a product, you want to charge just a bit less, or have way more perceived value than the competitor's product. If the number you get when you plug that price in to the above equations doesn't leave you with the same or more money than the 'do nothing' choice, then you need to look at the cost equation and figure out if there is some way to lower costs so that it does. On the other hand, if the prices you can charge are easily competitive and you still make more money than the do nothing option? Then you need to figure out how to protect the advantage you discovered so that you can make that money for a period of time before competitors copy you.

And of course it is all different for software only products. But that is a much longer note.

[1] Yes the funds are invested in companies that are doing things but "you" are not doing anything with your money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My direct flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt on a Lufthansa A380 (in premium economy) is a delight. I go out of my way to get that flight on that plane. Room to stretch out and walk around makes such a difference. But I don't know what the economics behind planes like this is - maybe it's not so great an experience for the airlines as it is for passengers.

<comment><USER19> I've had the luck of doing this flight in 1st class a few times. It is bar- none the best flying experience I've ever had. There is little to no sound pollution up that far. They have closets instead of overhead bins, so you have tall ceilings that really open up the space. The bathrooms are huge. No showers, but huge. It is the only flight experience where I've gotten off the plane feeling more rested than when I got on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not an aviation nerd, but had a local one explain a particular A380 issue to me. About once a month the main daily SYD/MEL to LAX routes had to turn around and it was pretty much always the Rolls Royce engine (one of two engine manufacturers for redundancy). And then it started happening on the other engine as well. Can't confirm the frequency, but when I was talking to a Qantas crew member about this over a year ago he nodded and said they won't be purchasing any new A380s. He said he felt they were bought for the marketing "me too" reason more than anything else.

EDIT: That being said I loved the A380, I frequently flew premium economy intl. on it and even if you could wrangle the small (something like 20 row?) economy section upstairs it felt less like cattle class.

<comment><USER21> That doesn't sound right (well, Qantas _did_ have RR engine trouble, as did all RR engined A380s) as all A380 fleets have four of the same type/manufacturer of engine (RR or GE, depending on the airline) and it will be common across all the planes in the fleet. It doesn't make sense to have to double up on maintenance costs, equipment and engineering staff with two types, plus the added risk of a GE bolt/whatever accidentally fitted to a RR engine causing an accident...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am not giving up on the A380 yet! :) While it might be more profitable for the airlines to use the large 2-engined planes on more direct routes, air traffic is still increasing. Yet, most international airports already are operating at their capacity. So I wonder when the point is reached, where it is no longer possible to add more flights to increase the passenger count. Then, larger airplanes would be needed.

<comment><USER23> At that point the A380 will be a 30-40 year old design, and won't be competitive anymore.

<comment><USER24> I think aviation probably has a huge time-to-market compared to almost every other technology field; the B-52 first flew in 1952 and is scheduled to be decommissioned around 2050 (!)

Aircraft bought today will be in service for at least several decades; it wouldn't be profitable for airlines to dump cash into them otherwise.

<comment><USER23> A380 development started in earnest in 2000, it first flew in 2005. It seems reasonable that we could have a jumbo jet designed in 2035 fly in 2040.

The B52 is still flying, but a bomber doesn't need to be economical to operate like an airliner has to. The US military can't be said to have a limited fuel budget.

Sure, airliners operate for decades, but when they're bought they're state of the art. The A380 isn't economical to operate now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think Airbus can survive this. The other aircraft are selling well. If they have to write down sunk cost it won't sink the company. Boeing has basically had to walk from the 747 and even the presidential flight will be using otherwise available shells (I believe)

QANTAS didn't survey its passengers to make this decision. Had they asked the recurring business flyer, I suspect the signal would have been different, even if the economic decision was to walk.

I am a frequent QANTAS passenger. I know from all my experiences and peers discussions, we prefer the 380 over almost any shell QANTAS flies.

I flew the original QANTAS 747 longhauls. They were fine for their day. They are significantly behind the ball compared to the 380 experience. The 350 will be a fine plane. the 787 is a compromised experience in the air.

(btw, it is QANTAS not Quantas: Its an Acronym)

<comment><USER26> (It doesn't seem like it's an acronym anymore: [http://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/history/global/en](http://www.qantas.com/travel/airlines/history/global/en))

<comment><USER25> Yea. Looks like you're right. they prefer the Qantas branding, so I'm in the junkheap of history.

I'll try and learn to use Qantas not QANTAS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Is there a market" has always been a big question for very large aircraft. The C-5A flew in 1968, and there was talk of a civilian model. But nobody wanted a commercial aircraft that big.

<comment><USER28> The problem is wingspan; those planes are difficult in the terminal area, the wingspan on a 380 is at the maximum limit for many airports. So unless airports get rebuilt, those large wingspan airplanes are going to be limited compared to the smaller options. It's a 262 ft wingspan. The C5 Galaxy is 223 ft; a Galaxy would "fit" fine at most airports, but the 380 is cutting it very close. An Antonov has a 290ft wingspan which would make it impossible to use as a normal passenger plane (although they're very popular in Houston for shipping oilfield equipment.) The 380 is a fun plane, but it's of limited usefulness beyond passenger load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When you increase the size of an aircraft, you reduce the discomfort associated with weather conditions. If the occupancy rate is good, you also increase fuel efficiency. To have good occupancy rate, you need to organize and to have many airports supporting big aircrafts. This is only political and Boeing is a very strong political influencer to harm competition. Like for Concorde, when Boeing fails on technical, they use political tricks.

<comment><USER30> "If the occupancy rate is good, you also increase fuel efficiency" is only true if all else is equal. In this case, it's not: the hop from 2-engine to 4-engine hurts fuel efficiency and adds to cost/complexity of the aircraft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very sad, having flown the A380 many times and it even once saved my life due to it's masterfully engineered airframe and systems (uncontained engine explosion, the only accident A380 ever had). It seems we aren't able to build anything great or unique anymore without it failing in the market (Concorde, A380). More cattle class mediocraty flying on 737s from the 60s and 3-3-3 seating 787s etc

<comment><USER32> Boom and others are trying to re-enter the supersonic space with smaller jets.

The main problem with Concorde was that it couldn't fill up seats at the ticket prices being charged, and transatlantic subsonic flights were both more comfortable at the equivalent ticket price, and at the flying time sweet spot of 6-8 hours, which is long enough to just sleep and wake up in the morning.

Had SSTs come of age in the '80s and had a range closer to 6000nm, then they probably would've taken off for transpacific flights. 6000nm from HNL gets you to pretty much all of East Asia, Singapore, and the entirety of North America.

<comment><USER33> The accidents didn't help either, right? I like the idea of Boom, but would much prefer the engineering from either Airbus or Boeing.

I think all this talk "MVP" and startups so often in the same sentence over nearly a decade now makes me worried that Boom won't have enough resources to achieve anything less than an exceptional job with regards to safety.

And my life isn't worth risking to save a few hours of travel time by putting it in the hands of a startup.

<comment><USER32> The FAA doesn't hand out flight certifications like candy. I wouldn't be worried too much.

Concorde's only fatal accident was a result of running over debris that punctured the fuel tank and burst a tire, so it wasn't necessarily any issue with the plane itself. Conveniently enough, this also happened near the EOL of the plane, right before a recession and 9/11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've found DJ's Aviation channel on YouTube to be a good source of information on this type of stuff. He has a new video on this subject [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzvT71flRII&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzvT71flRII&t=0s)

</comment><comment><USER35> I flew on an Air France A380 from CDG to SFO a few months ago seated in premium economy. It was an outstanding flight, comfortable and pleasant. I would choose to fly on an A380 over most of the other long distance aircraft, given the choice.

</comment><comment><USER36> I can't help think ETOPS are going too far. One day a big twin will fly from Sydney to Santiago and develop double engine trouble and the 3-4 engine minimum will be mandated again.

</comment><comment><USER37> It is sad it seems to be dying - from a "wow that can fly" point of view - <USER2> at this point it looks like the a380 was the wrong bet :-/

<comment><USER38> An Emirates A380 flies over my house on it's way to IAD most mornings as I'm walking to work.

It really is an amazing sight. It absolutely dwarves everything else in the sky.

<comment><USER39> With one flying over my house right now I don't believe they are heading for the boneyard any time soon. For London Heathrow there is no better plane for the operator with not that many slots.

Nowadays there are budget airlines using budget airports with very long taxi rides to somewhere useful. You can't argue with price. Yet right now we are in an age of cheap oil that facilitates this. Had we not had the taps fully open and the fuel taxed then maybe the A380 would be king and it be hard to justify the budget flight model.

Brexit really is not helping the A380 cause. The wings are made in a part of England that was changed to be Wales so that an EU development grant could be obtained. In the post-Brexit world where nobody in power cares about jobs it is likely that Airbus rationalise production and give the formerly United Kingdom the heave-ho. They can make all the A380's the world really needs and call it a day in Blighty.

<comment><USER40> > part of England that was changed to be Wales so that an EU development grant > could be obtained.

Is that true? I see the border was last changed in 1972, but that's well before the EU and regional development funding was thought about.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England%E2%80%93Wales_border](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England%E2%80%93Wales_border)

<comment><USER39> I can't remember the Tory Brexiteer that signed it off, but it is essentially the Wirral, as in Merseyside, not Wales as we know it. Sadly I am out of touch with politics these days to have the recall of what went on as it was a while ago when I paid attention to these things. There was a fiddle there though and it wasn't way back in the 1970's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have the pleasure of a nice view overlooking Copenhagen Airport. It's at a far enough distance that most airliners kind of disappear when doing their final approach, and an A380 showing up really puts the size differences on display. It looks like a huge whale or cruise ship floating over the landscape.

</comment><comment><USER25> How much of the problem is Rolls-Royce over promising and under delivering?

</comment><comment><USER42> In hindsight, it's telling that even the biggest A380 operator didn't actually buy the plane themselves - they leased it through various special-purpose vehicles which were then sliced into various investment portfolios. Goldman Sachs is one investment bank that set up some of the structures for this - [https://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/G...](https://www.goldmansachs.com/s/2012annual/assets/downloads/GS_AR12_Client_Stories.pdf)

<comment><USER43> Isn't this kind of financial engineering SOP for all sorts of large assets since decades?

<comment><USER42> Except that the issuer of the security is the lessor in this case, not the airline. The airline can just give the plane back to Doric after the 12-year lease period (which ends in 2020-2021 for the first batch of aircraft), and let Doric deal with the investors.

This is in contrast to, say, recent deals by United Airlines Inc, where the airline (or its related party, such as its parent holding company United Continental Holdings Inc) was the entity issuing the security.

<comment><USER44> Is it possible to short these securities?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The A380 and 747 are both remarkable aircraft, but I love my direct flights to all major cities within 1000 miles, and many beyond that. Electric airliners are likely to bring this ratio into even more profound focus, offering direct flights to thousands of smaller cities you didn't know you wanted to go to, until it takes 30 minutes to fly instead of 3 hours to drive. And with so many airports linking up mass transit, the air travel network is almost an extension of public transit. If you're like me and fly with TSA-Pre, showing up at the airport 10 minutes ahead of gate call can become a regular and reliable thing. Good times ahead!

For those of you in the Bay Area, this is like having a cheap ticket to fly to South Lake Tahoe, or commuting from Santa Rosa to San Jose. Operators like Surf Air might become commonplace. And the A380 and 747 had to die as airliners came to realize this is the future.

<comment><USER46> >Electric airliners are likely to bring this ratio into even more profound focus, offering direct flights to thousands of smaller cities you didn't know you wanted to go to

(All) electric airliners are unlikely to exist commercially without a fundamental breakthrough in energy storage technology. Even hybrid-electric systems are only barely viable as a research area right now, and they are decades away from commercial production.

I'm a researcher in this field, and I wish I could say otherwise, but the rosy picture you paint is unlikely to be reality at least within the next 3-4 decades.

<comment><USER47> Are artificial fuels (i.e. hydrogen or something we can make from hydrogen) going to be viable for flying within a reasonable timeframe?

Whilst I expect that short-haul flights will be replaced by high-speed trains we're still going to need planes for intercontinental travel.

EasyJet are hoping to have electric planes covering the London-Amsterdam route in 2030: [https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/1039041/flights- ea...](https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/1039041/flights-easyjet- electric-plane-london-amsterdam-2030).

<comment><USER48> > Are artificial fuels (i.e. hydrogen or something we can make from hydrogen)

There is no difference between a synthesized fuel and one pumped from the group - it's the same molecules. What matters is your energy source to _make_ the synthesized fuel.

In any case hydrogen is a particularly bad fuel for airplanes. The best fuel is actually the one we already use.

<comment><USER47> By artificial fuels I mean ones created by us using renewable energy. If we can create something similar to current fuels from a renewable source then that would be fantastic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mobile 3D group video chat with spatial audio for friends and events - <AUTHOR> https://www.movement.fm/spaces <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN!

I created the new Movement app to be an immersive video conferencing/chat platform that more closely resembles how we interact with each other in the real world. We just launched our open beta and I wanted to share!

Features:

1\. 3D and spatial audio

You can move around in 3D spaces and hear people who can close to you more than those who are far away just like real life. With zoom and others you were limited to one conversation but with Movement you can have multiple!

2\. Create a virtual room and pick from one of our room types.

Make a club room, a conference room or a villa room! We support up to 17 people in a room right now but are working to soon support 100+

3\. Discover other rooms and meet you people.

You can actually go into other peoples rooms (if they allow it to be public)

Excited to share! Feedback welcomed! The UI isn't perfect but we're working on it haha.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm interested in how spatial audio might change the dynamic vs. a standard video chat. There's a mix of being public and private within the same space like in in-person events.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great time for an app like this! Seeing as we're going to be in this new world for at least another year, I can't wait to try this out with friends on the weekends!

</comment><comment><USER4> Loved it. I can keep up to date with all my people but with spatial audio. Better than anything on the market.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. Seems like perfect timing with everything that's going on.

</comment><comment><USER6> Super dope, would be great for DJs today.

</comment><comment><USER7> Dope product!!!

</comment><comment><USER8> Love the idea!</comment>


CHAT BOTS – An Untold Story of the Computing Industry - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@maulikmmodi94/chat-bots-an-untold-story-of-computing-industry-and-growing-future-to-next-big-thing-689269439486#.suouxybje <comment><AUTHOR> Open to suggestions and discussions</comment>


Windows Phone Developers: Just Let It Go - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/user-camp/windows-phone-developers-just-let-it-go-f5a0f37a9e44 <comment><USER2> I'm an ex hobbyist Windows Phone developer and I have no plan to port any of my applications to UWP.

First because I don't like Windows 10 itself: its UI, the Store, the builtin ads, the forced updates, the invasive telemetry. Should the LTSB edition be available to anyone I would use it, but the Pro edition is a no go.

Secondly because I don't like the closeness of UWP. Silverlight was a good platform in my opinion because its runs apps out-of-browser on various editions of Windows _and_ Mac OS. UWP apps on the other side doesn't even run on the most deployed edition of Windows!

Finally because I didn't have enough trust in Microsoft on the consumer side. Since the launch of WP7 Microsoft consistently breaks its promises and the expectations of its users and developers base. It doesn't motivate me to invest time to learn APIs and a framework that will be ditched for another one in a few years for no obvious reason.

However I still like a lot C# and F#. I'm building & experimenting with Xamarin for front-end applications. MonoGame is portable solution for games but there is no portable UI framework for application. And the investment in UWP is in the total opposite direction of providing or supporting from Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> «Secondly because I don't like the closeness of UWP. Silverlight was a good platform in my opinion because its runs apps out-of-browser on various editions of Windows and Mac OS. UWP apps on the other side doesn't even run on the most deployed edition of Windows!»

If it helps, Microsoft's Xamarin team announced macOS, Linux, and WPF (Windows 7+) support for Xamarin.Forms (expanding it to full desktop support beyond just Android and iOS mobile support). Admittedly, Xamarin.Forms is a subset of the full UWP, but it hopefully should with XAML Standard 1.0 alignment converge to be more of a proper subset of UWP than Silverlight ever was for WPF.

These enhancements to Xamarin.Forms and the development of the XAML Standard 1.0 are all in open source development on GitHub.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "the Store is booming on the desktop...The half-billion desktop Windows 10 users are eventually going to turn in to a half-billion desktop Store users, and it's going to happen faster than anyone thinks"

This seems remarkably optimistic and entirely at odds with Microsoft's history with this sort of initiative.

<comment><AUTHOR> They don't have a great track record, but so far it seems to be working out this time - our indie apps get about one million downloads per month from the Store, and 95% of those are on desktop. If Microsoft can get more household name apps (like iTunes) into their store then I think it'll happen. Windows 10 S will help too.

<comment><USER4> Could I ask what apps they are? A million a month is a remarkable number for a store where a heavily featured app (the Fitbit app) has five reviews worldwide, and where I can't find a single app with more than triple digit reviews.

All indications right now is that the Store remains a disaster. This could be an uninformed assessment (for instance maybe reviews are not made intuitive, etc), but if there is alternative information I'd love to hear it.

The Windows desktop right now seems....stratified and solidified. People know what they run on their desktop and on the new install they install Chrome, Office, 7zip, etc, and that's it. There seems to be very little interest in discovery of new options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _You're right next door to a platform that Microsoft is pushing hard, that users actually like, and is a huge blue ocean of opportunity for indie developers — for now._

Isn't that exactly the same pitch as the one Microsoft gave these developers back in 2011-12? I don't blame them if they decide not to buy it this time around.

<comment><USER6> I think the opportunity is definitely there.

The problem is the Microsoft has been changing their mind so many times about technical things (remember silverlight? or XNA? How about hardware support for WP7.8? WP8.1? W10 before creators update?) that a lot of developers just left the platform in anger and Microsoft now has to attract new developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The attitude in this blog post is exactly the kind of attitude that drives users and developers away. Ramming the Store down desktop users throats isn't exactly customer focused.

<comment> UK-AL Most customers the store is targeted probably appreciate the store.

You are pro user, so you value freedom. Normal users want safety and convience.

<comment><USER8> As a Windows and Windows Phone user, this is my take:

Pro users and normal users both want convenience. For pro users, key shortcuts and cli serves this purpose.

Take the chrome store for example. It's light-ish and loads pretty fast. It's very easy to download, store and distribute chrome extensions.

The same cannot be said for the Windows Store. It inherits and extends every problem windows update. (Spits random errors that make no sense to normal users: error 0x239akd. The date on the machine, country setting, language setting can trigger errors.)

The store is SLOW unless you're using broadband. Microsoft has made it virtually impossible to download, store and distribute store apps.

With desktop apps, I can download the exe file on my work computer and install on my home computer - not possible with store apps.

Originally, the windows store a font 9px download link hidden at the bottom. I once downloaded a 2GB game from the store only to get home and it refused to install.

Summary: Microsoft has built several walls around their marketplace but are confused as to why people aren't rushing in.

<comment><USER3> Appx sideloading has gotten much, much better since the Windows 10 Anniversary update. Copy a signed appx file to a machine, double click, and you get a nice, simple installer dialog. As easy, if not easier (no UAC prompt, for instance), than double clicking an EXE or MSI file.

Yes, it might be nice if the Windows Store made it easier to get Appx files for apps for scenarios like "download at work and install at home".

(Though I think Microsoft's current focus is more on the side of "tell my machine at home to go ahead and download the app while I'm at work" scenarios, between Xbox already prioritizing that and some of the things they are working on with "Project Rome"/the Microsoft Graph.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm literally working on a Windows Phone 8 app this instant. I took five mins out to check HN.

I agree with the sentiment though - UWP is the way to go

<comment><AUTHOR> You're an endangered species ;) Why are you still working on a Winphone 8 app if I may ask?

<comment><USER9> Purely for my own use. My primary phone is a wp8.1 handset. I want to replace OneNote with an app that uses text files on dropbox as a datastore. That way I can write on the phone and pick it up later on the desktop like I can with one note, but also not worry about vendor lock in

OneNote had a week long outage on wp8/.1 earlier this year. MS were slow to fix because wp8 is no longer supported. In fact I believe it only got fixed because it also affected xbox logins somehow. I'm moving away from OneNote because of that, but I like my old Lumia

<comment><USER10> I've upgraded my unsupported Ativ S to Windows 10 Mobile.

<comment><USER9> how did that go?

<comment><USER10> Took long time to do it right. Camera doesn't focus and minimal brightness turns screen off (which is nearly impossible to restore). Those are the only problems thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So about UWP: Browsing the Microsoft website, I see that you can develop in C++. But can you do OpenGL apps with UWP? Or is Direct3D the only way to do 3D for the UWP platform? If it is, it kinda makes porting from Android/iOS/Linux to UWP too hard to be practical.

<comment><USER3> Looks like there is a project template for it: [http://developernote.com/2015/11/combining-opengl-and- xaml-t...](http://developernote.com/2015/11/combining-opengl-and-xaml- together-in-a-windows-store-app-uwp/)</comment></comment>


How Plume Handled Billions of Operations per Day Despite an AWS Zone Outage - <AUTHOR> https://blog.yugabyte.com/how-plume-handled-billions-of-operations-per-day-despite-an-aws-zone-outage/ <comment><USER2> if you're in eu-central-1, seems a bit weird to use PST for the timeline? edit: seems like this matches what AWS publishes. it's still weird to not use the appropriate local timezone or UTC</comment>


A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness Is Brewing in the Northeast - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/a-deadly-mosquito-borne-illness-is-brewing-in-the-northeast-d3283c71c6a0 <comment><USER2> This was a solid read and hits close to home. I lived through this last summer. I'm in Plymouth MA which is just outside the critical zone of the outbreak described in the article (we entered "moderate" risk). I remember the feeling of the EEE reports in August and subsequent personal protection actions. It all felt very similar to coronavirus. I still went in the woods but less often and doused in bug spray. This past winter 2020 was the most mild of my lifetime. I hope the EEE outbreak isn't too crazy this summer; being in nature is an important factor for me for producing good work and the only way to see safely see family & friends right now is outdoors.

</comment><comment><USER3> May: Lockdown! June: Civil unrest! July: Deadly mosquitos!

<comment><AUTHOR> No human to human spread but those who get bitten have 40% mortality. Survivors don't fare that well either since it attacks the brain.</comment></comment>


San Francisco Spends $30M Cleaning Feces, Drug Needles - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html <comment><USER2> IIRC part of this is because SF decided to switch from a needle exchange program to a needle distribution program. And nearly all of these locations are in TL, SOMA, Mission, and a few in Castro.

I imagine that our lawmakers would do something faster if these centers were moved to Pac Heights.

<comment><USER3> > I imagine that our lawmakers would do something faster if these centers were > moved to Pac Heights.

If by "do something" you mean "mandate that they be moved back to their current locations", sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I constantly hear how much money and time and resources SF spends on the homeless problem in this city.

If you're going to take a dump on the street, litter or shoot up drugs and leave your gross needle laying around, that absolutely should 100% be illegal. This doesn't have to do with being homeless, and everything to do with having bad manners without consequences for your actions.

<comment><USER5> >If you're going to take a dump on the street, litter or shoot up drugs and leave your gross needle laying around, that absolutely should 100% be illegal. This doesn't have to do with being homeless, and everything to do with having bad manners without consequences for your actions.

And now you're paying 10x as much to house them in a jail while probably increasing their chances of future illegal activity.

<comment><USER4> Who says jail time is the only way out of that?

<comment><USER6> What is the response you'd have that isn't jail time? I'm genuinely curious</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Dramatically Different World of '70s Dating Ads - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/singles-news-1970s-personal-ads-dating <comment><USER2> For perspective on what dating and marriage choice used to be like decades ago, I recommend Aziz Ansari's "Modern Romance".

I didn't expect it to be more than a joyread, but he wrote it in collaboration with a social psychology professor iirc, and went to great lengths to do first hand interviews with many people all over the world.

It is also the most comprehensive account of the multifaceted roots of Japan's "no sex problem" that I've seen in any publication.

<comment><USER3> If I had to guess, it was Eric Klinenberg.

They had a subreddit- [https://www.reddit.com/r/modernromantics/](https://www.reddit.com/r/modernromantics/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is only tangentially related but i think that the video dating services (like the vhs ones from the 80's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bomkgXeDkE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bomkgXeDkE)) might come back in the app form. like some sort of snapchat meets tinder.

<comment><USER5> > snapchat meets tinder

Now that is one unicorn idea, if there was one ;)

<comment><USER6> I'm unsure if you're joking, but in case you're not: Tinder actually had a feature remarkably like Snapchat for posting images that were visible to all of your matches. Was quite a neat feature when used for its intended purpose: I met my current girlfriend through it as she posted an excellent German beer that I was a fan of, so I sent her a message about it.

Of course, it was quite often used mostly for photos of male genitalia, according to my female friends. I assume that's why the feature was removed, which was a shame.

<comment><USER7> Should have kept it and introduced a "never publicly shared a dick pic" filter. I'd much rather services allowed people to do annoying/stupid stuff but then use the data to generate better filtering. There's a limit, however, and enabling photographic sexual assault probably crosses it.

Finally a real life application of the Hot Dog, Not a Hot Dog app from Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER8> This is literally what they ended up doing with it.

<comment><USER9> No, they removed it altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The headline reads 'Dramatically Different', but I don't see much difference, other than the medium the ads were placed in. People don't seem to be looking for that much different these days.

</comment><comment><USER11> Now it's all "sexy singles in your area are dying to meet you!" but I know deep down that it's all a lie.

<comment><USER12> Why "deep down"? Seems to be a pretty obvious lie.

<comment><USER13> you want to believe it on the surface?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fascinating profile. The newspaper this article talks about is basically an analog, extremely inefficient version of Craigslist.</comment>


Ask HN: Recurring payment profile, PayPal sandbox, not billing? - <AUTHOR>

I've got a ticket logged with PayPal currently, and I've seen reference in 2011 to a similar issue, but does anyone use the CreateRecurringPaymentsProfile with Express Checkout in the Sandbox and see it not billing?
I've got a recurring profile setup (and can see it in both the seller and buyer accounts in the sandbox OK) but the "next billing date" is set to 2 days ago (when I created it, the same as the start date of the profile) but the billing hasn't gone through (ie I can't see the funds either gone from the buyer or into the seller accounts)
I'm not using IPN (relying on periodic polling of the PayPal API to check the status of the subscription) but if I can't mimic the entire subscription process and check the periodic billing is working, I can't guarantee that everything's doing what it should - anyone using PayPal in a similar way and have any advice? <comment><USER2> I did that a couple of years ago, and I had no "issues" with the Sandbox.

I remember that, in Sandbox, for testing purposes, 1 day == 1 minute

Also, sometimes, things didn't work. One thing that sometimes fixed that, was to login in the Sandbox and delete and create new accounts.

I'll see if I can find my code and be more helpful. Write an email if you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've not had any response from PayPal yet, but checking the sandbox accounts it actually billed this morning (18-Jan-2013) when it had the first bill date of 15-Jan-2013 - I think as long as I know it will bill (albeit a few days after the actual bill date) it'll be fine, thanks!</comment></comment>


Should You Require a Credit Card Upfront for a Free Trial? - <AUTHOR> http://www.saasfoundry.io/blog/should-you-require-a-credit-card-upfront-for-a-free-trial/

<comment><USER2> Individual conversion rate isn't the whole story, either. There are people like me (and I suspect many others here) who will play with just about anything that looks interesting, whether we have an actual long-term interest or not. Asking for a credit card up front will lose most of those people. No big deal, you think? Well, those people also tend to be the ones who tell their friends about your new site, and whose friends trust them to make such recommendations.

<comment><USER3> I like that they did use real #s in addition to polemics. You're right in that they didn't capture influencers. It would be good to see metrics on that too. I do know that I refuse to try anything requiring a credit card # - I wind up forgetting too often. But my data point is just an anecdote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, unless I really, really, really need whatever service you're offering, I close the window if any of the following are requested: 'phone number; credit card; "secure" password; social network logon.

<comment><USER5> Add "Full Name" to that list.

You're not getting my damn name unless there's a _really_ good reason for it. I don't want to give you my first and last name to upload some funny cat pictures or whatever.

[http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real- na...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html)

[http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my- su...](http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-survey-of- suspended-google-accounts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We are having this very same debate internally now at [https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com)

I'm thinking that individual users should be put on a free trial without the CC being asked up front. However, group plans that will be paid for by IT managers will be CC up front.

The reasoning behind this is that by asking for the CC up front from managers, we will 1) make them value the service more 2) retain more of them as customers.

What do you think?

<comment><AUTHOR> In most cases it doesn't make sense to artificially lower your signup rates like that, except if your onboarding process is very costly. If that's the case then your focus should be on lowering these costs, or focus on better acquisition (you're spending marketing dollars attracting the wrong crowd), and not on shooting yourself in the foot by adding unnecessary friction.

Putting a CC up front doesn't make your prospects value the service more, it gives them a higher barrier to cross in terms of trust. You need a well- recognized brand to be able to make it work IMO. Some people are just not comfortable giving their credit card if they don't know you.

Also, check the references I quote in the blog post, according to the studies conducted by Totango, requiring a CC upfront results in lower end-to-end conversion rates.

Check also [http://www.quora.com/Conversion-Optimization/In-what- scenari...](http://www.quora.com/Conversion-Optimization/In-what-scenarios-is- it-more-effective-to-require-a-credit-card-up-front-from-users-when-signing- up-for-a-trial-account) , there are good answers that elaborate on this.

<comment><USER7> FWIW, I measured the very same 0.6% conversion rate for upfront CC on [https://www.wisecashhq.com](https://www.wisecashhq.com).

I will instead to a test for a week or two, without CC info, but with an in- person onboard when possible (unless overloaded), and most likely share that back on HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing Thibaut :-)

What do you mean by "in-person onboard"? Chat assistance? Welcome call?

<comment><USER7> I currently offer a "one-hour free cash flow coaching session" via ScreenHero or Skype etc.

What I do in that hour largely depends on the newcomer: sometimes it will be more on the features themselves (when the user is already cash flow proficient), most of the time I underline the benefits that are not necessarily obvious and require "education" (eg: mastering cash flow translates into ability to reduce your work load, make time to build a saas product, reduce pressure, schedule purchases, take holidays, realize that you could work less - or more etc).

I can also finetune depending on the country of the new user, understand their real underlying needs etc.

I've also started a newsletter/blog to "educate" people (I don't like that world too much) [https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog](https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog) and it works decently, because some mention the blog during the coaching session.

So this is what I do so far :-)

I'm working more at "optimizing the funnel" than looking for coverage, because I'm in the learning phase.

It turns out that those "coaching sessions" bring a lot of value not only to the new WiseCash user, but as well for me, in terms of customer development, understanding the needs, and figuring out what I will say on my homepage later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Update: this has been fixed, so I 'm happy now. :-)_

I utterly _hate_ , _loathe_ and _despise_ the scrolling and keyboard hijacking on this article. (Yes, I really do feel that strongly about it.)

I pressed Space and what happened? I got taken an entire page down, rather than not quite an entire page.

So I pressed Shift+Space to go back up and what happened? I got taken _another_ page down, rather than back to the top.

So I pressed Ctrl+PageUp to go to the previous tab so that I could report these issues and what happened? I got taken one page up instead.

Scrolling with my laptop's trackpad isn't working smoothly at all, and quite unpleasantly. Ditto with the arrow keys. The whole experience, in fact.

 _Please_ remove this behaviour and let browsers do what their users expect.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, sorry about that.

I'm using a wordpress theme that probably does a bit too much of this and I hadn't realized (I just launched the blog a couple of days ago). I've tracked down and removed the scrolling effect already and will look into other unintended hijacking.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for fixing it. Now it acts as it should and I'm happy once more :-). (It might be worth while passing such feedback as mine on to the author of the theme.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome.

Yes, especially considering it's one of the best-selling themes on theme forest :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should also consider the possibility that your potential customer _does not have_ a CC. Here in Germany, that applies to quite a lot of people (sry, I have no numbers).

<comment><USER10> Even more so across eastern Europe. But then, if you only offer CC payments, there's no point in having a trial for users that can never become paying customers, is there?

<comment><USER9> Absolutely, but shouldn't the response to that be "I guess we better offer more payment options" instead of "let's ignore all CC-less people"?

Besides, a free trial might even be incentive enough for someone to get a CC just so they can use your app! I know it was for me when I found something I couldn't pay for otherwise.

<comment><USER11> There's ~1.5 billion credit cards out there. By definition, every startup is going to ignore pretty large segments of the addressable market (e.g. people who only speak languages not familiar to the starting team). Starting with an addressable market of 1.5 billion is not a bad thing.

Payments are complex and can be extremely localized. This is IMHO not a battle for an early-stage startup to fight. Credit cards are as close as there is to a de facto international standard; go with those to start.

Also -- in my experience, people without CCs reach out and ask for alternate arrangements if they want your service. This is an appropriate time to make sure that e.g. companies that require a complex PO process are spending enough to make it worth your time.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the comment

> _Starting with an addressable market of 1.5 billion is not a bad thing._

(On the other hand, that means ignoring, what, 3 billion adults? But of course you're right, it's unfeasible to cover every available form of payment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> @toumhi Please turn off your inertia scrolling. I am on a Mac and inertia scrolling is already activated, but it is much smarter so that if I stop scrolling but keep my fingers on the trackpad then it doesn't use inertia scrolling. The scrolling on saasfoundry.io however just keeps going. Very annoying.

EDIT: toumhi contacted me by email and has now fixed the issue :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I sent you an email. Not sure what's wrong here. You just scroll once and go to the bottom of the document then? Maybe some hyperactive css rules?

EDIT: OK, should be fixed now. There was a nicescroll jquery plugin in there, which was providing extra scrolling. Thanks for the heads up!

<comment><USER12> Thank you toumhi for fixing this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is a dark pattern that actually works. You sign up for a free trial with a CC where they promise you can cancel anytime. Your plan is to cancel before the trial is over but you forget it and start paying. It happens to me all the time.

<comment><USER14> It "works" in the sense that you get a couple of months of payments in exchange for the customer thinking you are scummy. If you want to be scummy, it seems like there are more direct ways to get people's money.

<comment><USER15> What are these more direct ways?

<comment><USER14> Just scam them directly, is what I mean. Instead of building a product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First, every site will get a completely different result. Keep in mind that just dropping in a cc requirement into your a sign up process created around frictionless trials will probably fail. To get a person's payment details, you need to do more work upfront. You can't have 2 second landing page->signup for people who have never heard of you before. They won't give you a CC just to find out what you do.

Credit card frost has two big advantages:

1- It's easier to optimize. The conversion process is simpler and more controlled. With a fricitonless trial, improving your process of herding people into a free trial can be like pulling on a string, it gets shorter on the other end. You signed up more unengaged/uninterested people, so your trial->payment rates are lower. Obviously, this is only an advantage if you put a lot of effort into the optimization.

2- It takes advantage of some human psychological tendencies. (a) Once they make the credit card details commitment, they are much more likely to thoroughly try out the app. (2) Entering CC details is like paying for something. They get the positive psychological effect of a purchase. When people buy something they want to justify and reenforce their decision, to themselves and to others. They are yours to lose at this point. If you do a good job on #1, you will have gotten this advantage at a discount, because the friction can be much lower than _actually_ paying. They are yours to lose at this point.

There is no canon here. There are lots of advantages and disadvantages to each strategy that apply in different measures to each case.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why Free Plans Don't Work [2010]

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613852) [114 comments]

A lot of lifestyle entrepreneurs have recommended getting the card for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER15> What about this? 1 day free trial without credit card, with 29 additional free days when you enter it.

<comment><USER18> Desk.com had a variety of this (you got a free 30 days no matter cc or not) then could continue to use the free plan if you entered your CC. They had a bunch of a la carte features that they hoped to make easy to upsell to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It depends on the service; if it can be used for malicious purposes (hosting, emailing spam etc) or it carries a liability then definitively ask for a credit card.

</comment><comment><USER20> How about doing it in 3 stages: 1\. Brief free trial (1-2 days) with no CC required. 2\. Next, your typical 30 day free trial, but require a CC. 3\. Paid service.

</comment><comment><USER21> Anecdotal evidence vs Anecdotal evidence. I guess its a matter of picking your preference.</comment>


DHS warns of 'strong concerns' that Chinese-made drones are stealing data - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/20/politics/dhs-chinese-drone-warning/index.html <comment><USER2> This is a reminder that DJI left an S3 bucket exposed nearly two years ago, containing sensitive customer information like flight logs and PII. Oh, and they also had the wildcard SSL private key for dji.com sitting in a public repo for four years.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/16/dji_private_keys_le...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/16/dji_private_keys_left_github/)

</comment><comment><USER3> DJI released an update to enable private mode. They should turn it on by default or ask the user to choose during the initial setup.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The United States government has strong concerns about any technology product that takes American data into the territory of an authoritarian state that permits its intelligence services to have unfettered access to that data or otherwise abuses that access,"

Oh the hypocrisy. Not saying it's unwarranted, just humorous to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am sorry, how is this different from Google recording my location data?

Is the fact that servers are in China automatically make it malicious? What is they moved them to Switzerland?

<comment><USER6> I don't see why every claim about a Chinese company must come with a "but X company is just as bad" comparison. Consumers need to be informed about risks to their privacy. Moralizing about who is the worst offender transforms the discussion away from privacy education.

<comment><USER5> Well, let's turn that around. Why is this automatically malicious just because the company is Chinese?

(Yes, I agree that China does some horrible stuff, but let's not forget Facebook and CA were neither Chinese)

<comment><USER6> It's malicious all on its own. Any entity handling your data poorly and collecting more than strictly necessary poses a risk to you.

Where this gets fuzzy is when you get into the identities of the perpetrator and the victim. Are you a Uighar in China? Well, then China is clearly a pressing threat to you. Are you a Muslim in Burma? Perhaps then China is not very much of a threat. What if you're an American in the US military? What if you're from a hostile country, but traveling to the US? Etc ... People don't always map this risk out in a way that I believe is sensible. Many Americans are worried about using Google, and are much more comfortable with China spying on them than Google. Is this a valid concern? I think it depends on who you are and what you believe about either entity. But, that's sort of the point. The "is X company/country" evil?" discussion can be a bit fruitless, subjective, and politically divisive.

A much more useful conversation for everyone is "Entity X collects the following kinds of data, and shares it with the following parties." In this scenario, a disagreement about who is the real political evil is not necessary. The more this information is made available, the more disparate groups can protect ourselves.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Most Meetings Should Be Held Without Chairs - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/meetings.html <comment><USER2> I've been subjected to meetings without chairs. The problem is, there are some people for whom standing is not much of a burden and they go on and on. So, I was forced to stand there at this daily mandatory meeting while people talked about stuff that was not relevant to the work I was doing for 30 minutes.

If you want to have a standing meeting, that's fine, and it can be good-- but I think the rule should be no meetings can ever be mandatory, and anyone can leave any meeting at anytime. If the person calling the meeting doesn't have an agenda compelling enough to get people to show up, then the meeting shouldn't happen anyway.

I will no longer stand (literally) for mandatory meetings. (Which is, just another of the daily things I am thankful for about being my own boss.)

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. Some people don't seem to care about standing up and can talk for hours.

I personally think the best meetings are where I can keep working at my PC while I listen in on the meeting conversation. This way I reach the end of the meeting having kept abreast of other developments and also fixed some bugs at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IIRC, you said that the Viaweb programmers didn't have meetings; they all pretty much were on the same page and knew what needed to be done. The company did have board meetings, though, so it sounds like something you'd do re: business more than re: development at an early stage.</comment>


Running R jobs quickly on many machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2016/01/running-r-jobs-quickly-on-many-machines/ <comment><AUTHOR> R tends to fall back to a socket/ssh RPC model for parallel computation. This may seem crude- but it is very easy to configure letting one get started very quickly. This article is part of a short series showing how to use these facilities.</comment>


Invent This Product - <AUTHOR> http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/08/invent-this-pro.html

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a really good idea, actually. Even without the GPS tagging, you could input your travel itinerary and, based on that, build the scrapbook using the date/time stamps on the picture.

Dangit. Now my mind will be occupied by this while I facilitate my next meeting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am really looking forward to when GPS is included in most point-n-click cameras. This idea is brilliant, but nothing compared to what can happen when you look at what might happen.

<comment><USER4> I think GPS receivers (order-of-magnitude: $50?) are still quite a bit more expensive than, say, Bluetooth ($5?) or even Wifi ($10?).

It'd be easier to convince people to get a camera with BT/Wifi, and then have it silently ask your phone's GPS where you are. You could sell it as a fairly cheap way to offload photos without a cable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the .NET Rocks episode I mentioned in my other comment, Scott Stanfield mentioned a small, headless GPS receiver that you can attach to your camera. It has software that matches timestamps on pictures to the GPS location history and tags each picture with coordinates. It's a slick way to solve the problem while keeping your existing camera.

</comment><comment><USER6> If the iPhone had a better built-in camera, I could totally see this happening with iPhoto. I guess the credit card thing is pretty easy to do if your bank allows statement export as XML or CSV (mine does).

</comment><comment><USER7> OurDoings already auto-organizes by date, but don't expect an animated car moving along a map any time soon. The first GPS-related feature I'm likely to implement will be a privacy option that removes GPS info if the coordinates fall within a certain range (presumably near your house.)

<comment><USER5> Scott Stanfield talked about this on .NET Rocks (<http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=348>) and said that GPS readings aren't precise enough to worry about such fine-grained location. All of the pictures at home would show up as a cloud 100m in diameter centered on your house, not at their actual precise location.

That whole podcast is a good discussion about the intersection of software, tech, and photography.

<comment><USER7> Most people who would worry about the privacy of their home's location would worry about a 100m diameter approximation of their home's location.

<comment><USER5> Oh, duh. That makes much more sense now. :)

Good idea to include that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the fun in that product? Half the fun is having the vacation and then the other half is telling the stories later and arguing with your friends/family over how it _really_ happened.

I do like the GPS camera idea, I could imagine that as an integrated Flip-like product.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would totally use something that used facial recognition to automatically tag all my facebook or flickr photos with my friends names/profiles.

Anyone here with facial recognition experience care to chime in?

<comment><USER10> It seems like there wouldn't be a lot of room for false positives in what you're suggesting. Assuming that the pictures aren't all passport photos (face-on, high resolution, uniform lighting), there would be a lot of hand- holding required on the part of the user to get high accuracy on the matches.

You could make the user interaction straightforward, with some iterative attempt at matching face A with profile picture B (if the user nixes the match, the program would note that and try again), but that's still non- trivial. I don't know that it'd be worth the trouble.

<comment><USER9> I'm imagining the interaction to be a little like a bayesian spam filter-- a training period, followed by occasional corrections.

The UX is key, as you indicated-- imagine a nice tight grid of matches for one person (each cropped to just the face area), and you can click each picture to toggle yes/no, with perhaps some more advanced interaction possible for algorithm-specific training (indicating angle, or eye position, or a sunglasses yes/no toggle).

<comment><USER10> It's actually pretty straightforward to detect a face; most mid-range digital cameras can do it nowadays. The problem is that even if you tell the program that face A is not face B, all you've done is given it a very small hint in a VERY big problem space. The human brain is hard-wired to detect faces (newborn babies prefer to look at pictures of human faces rather than colorful shapes), which I think makes it feel like an easier problem than it actually is.

That being said, don't let me stop you from trying. It would definitely be a cool (and very saleable) bit of tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've done this with a few of my hikes (just the GPS->photo stuff) by cross- correlating based on timestamp. It's not that hard: <http://technomancy.us/92>

</comment><comment><USER12> "The GPS from your camera would provide the approximate location"

I thought GPS had great accuracy?

</comment><comment><USER13> The day my family tries to make me watch a detailed replay of their vacation to Buttfuck, Ohio on google maps is the day I burn all my technology and try to live with the Amish.

Giving this to the people who actually use it is like giving a drum kit to the kid of a friend. Everyone is going to hate it but the person using it. Never mind what dilbert dude wants, who wants to be constantly asked to look at crap like that? Isn't their enough distracting debris in our lives.

Invent something to solve a real problem.</comment>


"Either Come to the Valley or Stay Home and Play with the Losers" - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/11/euro-entrepreneurs-either-come-to-the-valley-or-stay-home-and-play-with-the-losers/

<comment><USER2> TechCrunch has become even more of a link bait generator of late.

</comment><comment><USER3> same elitist attitude drove me back home

</comment><comment><USER4> "But with the decline of Silicon Valley and the rise of emerging markets..."

Did I miss a newsletter or something? Our imminent downfall wasn't covered at the last meeting.</comment>


Top 10 Ways to Communicate - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I'm compiling a list of the world's most popular ways we talk with each other. Here's what I've got so far:<p>1. Cell Phone 2. Texting 3. Email 4. Postal Mail 5. TV 6. Skype 7. Twittering 8. Instant Messaging 9. Blogging 10. Fax <comment><USER2> Nonverbal ~ body language, sign language, print media ~ books, newspapers, etc, DVDs, music, radio, Morse code, land line phones, semaphore, visible light communication ~ the list goes on I think I've even heard of people communicating with whistles and clicks.

<comment><USER3> like this? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan_languages> I only remember it from the movie 'The Gods Must be Crazy' that took place among Bushman Tribes

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Well for personal communication I use Instant Messages, email and a phone (land line and cell). But my day job is to communicate to the public thru our website.</comment>


The state of web typography today, available techniques with their pros and cons - <AUTHOR> http://vitobotta.com/web-typography-techniques-usability-performance-seo-security/ <comment><USER2> Why is this split into _7 pages_? I could understand maybe splitting it up into 3 pages to get more pageviews, but this is just going to irritate of every single one of their readers. Not to mention that the article fails to address the very significant issue of font rendering, and how bad it can be on Windows without ClearType enabled or special hinting larger font sizes (which is resolved in IE9 and Firefox 4, neither of which are released yet).

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe me, I don't like pagination either - and I really mean it, but I thought that a single page or fewer pages would be too long to read, and I also thought it would be easier to organise the information in distinct sections.

Next time I will reduce the number of pages though, if feedbacks like yours suggest that I do so :)

As for the font rendering issues, I did mention -although briefly- the <https://github.com/MichaelvanLaar/Webfont-Load-Enhancer> library, as a possible solution to improve the web font experience on Windows. Did you mean this or something else?

Thanks a lot for your feedback ;)

<comment><USER3> I think Sephr is referring to the fact that many fonts look absolutely terrible on versions of Windows that don't have font smoothing enabled, namely XP. We almost threw out using custom fonts after we saw what our website looked like in XP.

I wrote up an article not too long ago about how we worked around this, which I feel weird mentioning because I just posted this on another thread like two days ago, but oh well:

[http://dev.codio.com/graceful-degradation-for-non-web- standa...](http://dev.codio.com/graceful-degradation-for-non-web-standard-fon)

<comment><USER2> I was referring to that, _and_ the inadequate font smoothing at large font sizes even with ClearType on. It was fixed in Windows 7, but no browsers except for IE9 use the new text writing API that takes advantage of the better smoothing. I have edited my comment to be a little less ambiguous.

<comment><AUTHOR> Uhm, weird, I meant to reply to you but for some reason the reply link which I could see and use now didn't show up before (?)

<comment><USER4> There's a progressive delay in showing the "reply" button on longer threads. This is meant to prevent long flamewars (and it certainly seems to help).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks apu, that makes sense. I am kind of new around here, so I hadn't noticed that yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just to be honest: the design of the site makes me want to ignore whatever advice it might contain. It doesn't really scream "I know a lot about great looking typography, layout, or web design."

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope you read the post anyway despite the looks of my blog :D and if you are available for hire to redesign it and make it prettier, and won't cost me a fortune, let me know! :)

At the very beginning of the post, before anything else, I said that I am not a designer but a _developer_. I even admitted that "I may sometimes struggle to choose two colors that fit well together" ! :)

I actually explained that I have written the post on usability, SEO, performance and security aspects of techniques for web typography currently available; I do believe that many "designers", instead, often just care about the looks of what they do, while completely ignoring the issues mentioned in the post. Either because they don't care, or more likely because many, if not most, "designers" just lack for what I can see the kind of basic technical knowledge on usability/accessibility, SEO, performance, and security required to even understand those issues. I don't think that being able to make a stunning layout out of a PSD makes anybody, say, a "complete" designer.

As for the purely aesthetic aspects of the techniques I've mentioned, or of anything related to web design in general, I haven't even touched them, because I wouldn't have much to say.

So I am sad that the very basic layout of my blog has perhaps distracted you -and possibly others- from the contents of that post. I should perhaps get a designer to make a proper custom template for me so to avoid this in the future, since I plan on writing more on "non-aesthetic" aspects of web design :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to both for the clarification. I will take a chance to test this more in detail with a couple of virtual machines (since I use Mac) perhaps tomorrow or as soon as I have some time; does the library I liked here and in the post solve the issue? I admit I tested it quickly (say 5 minutes or less) with Windows VMs, but at that time everything looked OK to me using that library, since the custom web fonts were disabled (and replaced with the closest similar web-safe fonts) on for example Windows XP with Clear Type switched off so avoid the bad rendering in those conditions.</comment>


Ask Emacs to do anything and it will do - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/RFhay0n7JJo <comment><USER2> I use emacs all day every day, and I'm not sure what was going on in these screen captures. What keys were being pressed? Which window had the point? What were the letters s d l r for? What was trying to be accomplished?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your comment. You can find more detail on the video in the github repository: [https://github.com/tonyaldon/inside- emacs](https://github.com/tonyaldon/inside-emacs). 1\. You can see the keys being pressed in the mode-line (I'm using keycast). 2\. The window that holds the point is the window that have the mode-line green. 3\. The letter s d l r are used to select the window to be scrolled. It's a custom command that leverage the ace-window package. See my github repository (inside-emacs), there is the code. 4\. I just play with emacs and share some stuff I like with it. 5\. If you have any other question about the video tell me. I do my best to improve each new one with the comment I received. Watch the new one: [https://youtu.be/96jn5A73-oQ](https://youtu.be/96jn5A73-oQ)</comment></comment>


GPT-3 and Arithmetic - <AUTHOR> https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/620663843893493761/bpe-blues <comment><USER2> The article is talking about something called BPE but it's not defined anywhere. Chasing links I see it's about tokenization and how it's "weird".

> BPE tries to be efficient, so it doesn't waste token slots on spaces if it > doesn't have to. A word is almost always preceded by a space, so instead of > representing " example text" as four tokens (space, "example," space, > "text"), it represents it as two:

> [(' Example', 17934), (' text', 2420)]

Apparently this is a problem because when feeding prompts to the system you will get different results.

> So far, seems innocuous, right? But what if you're feeding a prompt into > GPT-2? Unless you're hip to this particular issue, you'll probably type in > something like

> "Example text"

> which becomes

> [('Example', 16281), (' text', 2420)]

> Compare this to the one above. Yes – instead of token #17934, with the > preceding space, I've unwittingly fed in token #16281, without a preceding > space.

Maybe someone should figure out how to write a neural network for tokenizing text in a more natural way since it seems like the tokenizer is hand crafted and is essentially a hyperparameter that can not be optimized with gradient descent.</comment>


Ask HN: Where to move within US? - <AUTHOR> Tired of living in the Expensive East Coast and specifically NJ. Everything is so expensive while the infrastructure is so shitty.
My wife and I have been contemplating moving to a different state within US and would love to get your opinions. We have 2 toddlers but really no other huge requirement.
We have looked at Texas, Florida and even Georgia. Warmer weather, not much snow and low taxes. What else ?
Note: We have lived in HongKong when we had no kids and absolutely loved it. But with kids in equation, we want to stay within the US for now. <comment><USER2> A lot of people are moving to Austin, Portland, Seattle, and Denver/Boulder. No state income tax in Austin or Seattle, no sales tax in Portland. Home prices are rising in all of these areas, but are a bargain compared to the Bay Area or NYC. And you can still see a show, go to great restaurants, meet interesting people, find a good job, and have a livable amount of space for a family.

A place where you can get a cheap, large home, and pay no state income tax is Vancouver, Washington. The city itself isn't very interesting, but you are across the bridge from Portland, where there is a lot of great food and drink, and you can shop with no sales tax. You will rarely see snow, but you will see a lot of clouds/drizzle for much of the year, which can take its toll.

Austin has a lot of tech jobs and is sunny for much of the year, but brutally hot for at least 3-4 months if you aren't used to it. It's a fun place to live.

If you want more of a small nature town feel, you could try Bend, Oregon or Boulder, Colorado.

I have lived in Portland, Seattle, and Austin, and spent a lot of time working in SF, so let me know if you want more specifics on anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered somewhere near Research Triangle Park in North Carolina? You've got a few mid sized cities to choose from or you can buy an acreage if that's what you're into. There are several tech companies around here as well as large universities. I haven't looked at the start up scene but I've heard there are a few startups based around here.

<comment><AUTHOR> yea that option is also viable. Thx. Will look into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Consider Atlanta. Plenty of tech companies (although less startup-oriented and more corporate; whether you see that as good or bad is something you haven't elaborated on). Everything is cheap and the infrastructure is shitty. When it threatens snow flurries a couple times a year everybody freaks out and stays in and it's really easy to get to work. Summers aren't too bad if you're used to NJ; it doesn't really get _hotter_ here but it stays hot _longer_, and everything is air-conditioned well.

</comment><comment><USER5> With two toddlers, public schools may be something worth considering. In both Florida and Georgia _all_ school districts are at the county level. [1] This means that even the best local public schools are subject to county politics in regard to funding and curriculum and staffing. Consequently, while a particular school can do some things via PTA, there isn't really fine grained local control [e.g. people can't choose to tax themselves to make school funding a priority].

On the other hand, if public schools aren't a priority, then it's a bit different, I suppose. Keep in mind that Florida has low taxes and low services. Compared with NJ, that's probably true of Georgia and Texas, too.

North Carolina is another option worth considering if you're moving south away from snow.

[1]: My recollection is that Texas has school districts at the municipal level. You can google it up to verify.

<comment><USER4> In Georgia _most_ school districts are at the county level. But in some cases a city has a school district independent of the surrounding county - often if not always this is the county seat. In the Atlanta area, at least, Atlanta, Decatur, and Marietta have separate schools from the surrounding counties. (In the case of Decatur, this fact explains a _lot_ of the higher property values there compared to adjacent unincorporated areas of DeKalb County.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Arizona gets a bad rep as super hot, but Tucson is not nearly as hot due to being slightly higher altitude. Also, the government tends to be "smaller" and less intrusive than other states such as say Illinois. I lived there 2 years when stationed at Ft Huachuca during my UAV training, loved the state and would live there again if given a chance.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Raleigh/Durham/Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina is nice: lots of tech, good weather, and salaries seem pretty good.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Cannot edit the text anymore. Just wanted to mention that I have a bootstrapped product that I run and ideally would love to stay closer to startup ecosystem. Of course, California is out of question again due to the excessive cost of living.

<comment><USER8> I would say Portland, Austin, and Seattle.

For startup ecosystem, Seattle probably has the best followed by Austin and then Portland.

For cost of living, Seattle is the most expensive. I'm not sure about Austin but Portland has been increasing the past couple years.

<comment><USER9> If Seattle is a choice and you are planning to enroll your toddlers in the public school system when they're older you might want to track what's happening with the public school teachers.

Just speaking as a parent, which probably makes me a minority in this conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Boise, ID. Very, very cheap to rent anything (whatever you're thinking for an amount that's "very cheap", cut it in half and you can probably find something nice around Boise for that amount). Groceries are pretty inexpensive, and everyone is very friendly. Cable One has 100Mbps connections for $100/mo ($75/mo for first three), and the schools are adequate if you're willing to encourage your kids to learn more and be proactive about their education on their own. It's a great place to grow up, and it's a great place to live and work. Highly recommend it.

If Boise is too small for you, pretty much anywhere in the Pacific NW is a good option. If I didn't live in Boise, I'd move to Portland.

<comment><USER11> How are employment opportunities in Boise? Only companies I'm aware of are Micron and HP.

<comment><USER10> There's a ton of smaller tech companies here. Balihoo, Clearwater Analytics, FFW, Bodybuilding.com to name a few. I've lived here all of my professional life and haven't ever had a problem finding work (either local or remote).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since you mention children, I feel obligated to say that imho as a Texan parent, Texas public schools are a travesty. Even the good school districts are hampered by the nonsense the state gov pushes down (e.g. just google "texas textbook controversy" and ... pick a year).

It's for this reason that we're looking at leaving Austin, even though it is otherwise quite a nice city, before our kids hit school age.

</comment><comment><USER13> Curious why you didn't mention your professions. That's the most important consideration.

One thing is for sure, the East Coast / NY metro does suck if you're not incredibly wealthy. Quality of life is so poor. If I can't get into an upper income bracket while here I'll be out the door soon.

</comment><comment><USER14> Don't move to Georgia (I assume when considering Georgia you meant Atlanta or suburb of Atlanta).

Pros: Low cost of living, lots of space relative to other places, people are probably friendlier than they are in NJ.

Cons: Traffic is absolutely horrendous (only LA has worse traffic), high crime (in the city--it varies by suburb), really hot and humid summers, terrible mass transit (combine that with terrible, terrible traffic...), backward politics (I'm saying that not as a conservative or liberal, but rather as an observer. In 2012, the GA Secretary of State basically openly endorsed the idea that Obama may not have been born in America...), bad schools.

The tech scene is decent thanks to Georgia Tech. But you can do better than here.

</comment><comment><USER15> I moved to Reno, NV to be near my wife's family a while back and have surprised myself by loving it. Very family friendly, small enough to get around, very good visual arts scene driven in part by burning man, decent in town research university, beautiful scenery, near the resorts at lake Tahoe, and what appears to be very good city governance.

A small but well supported startup scene exists, but is consumed by "gaming" (gambling) and medical startups. Opportunities related Tesla factory is also sucking up investment dollars. The plus side is that you are only 3.5-4h from the bay area, and there is a community of angel investors living in lake Tahoe.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can I just say: Cost of living ONLY matters if you're compensated from out of state.

A lot of people look at CoL and think "wow for the $120K I make in NYC I could live like a king in Oklahoma!" But the reality is that places with lower CoL also have lower salaries, so a $120K NYC salary might be $60K in other states, with the same job, same responsibilities, etc. It is relative.

Oregon has a lowish CoL and a low amount of snow. Ditto with Ohio. No clue on startup culture. Utah (yes, that one) seems to be an up-and-comer in terms of startup culture, and while it does get a lot of snow, they're very pro-active in clearing it which is nice.

<comment><USER4> I live in the Atlanta area. I could literally have the same job in the SF area (where I used to live) for 20% more - my company has an office in Palo Alto where there are people with the same job title and the same responsibilities. However this would _more_ than be eaten up by the increased cost of housing. Say my take-home pay is 100 arbitrary units; my housing costs about 20, leaving 80 for everything else. In the Bay Area I'd make 120 but I'd pay at least twice as much (40+) for comparable housing, leaving 80 or less for everything else (and everything else costs more there). Salaries are higher in higher-cost markets but that difference usually doesn't make up for the cost of living difference.

<comment><USER17> 20% bump is surprising, my company has an SF office and I've been told that as a rule, salaries are twice what we get in Portland. However I still feel that increase would be eaten up by housing costs.

<comment><USER4> These salaries are supposedly tied to the cost of labor in various markets, and we're a large enough company that they do a lot of surveys of economic conditions, what competitors are paying, etc. to set salary bands. But the cost of the sort of technical labor we're talking about here might vary more between SF and other markets than the general cost of labor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are some true hidden gems in the often over-looked 3rd tier Southern markets, especially in bang-for-the-buck livability...consider Asheville, NC & Franklin, TN > [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/29/9-southern-towns- yo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/29/9-southern-towns-you- nee_n_4985803.html)

<comment><USER19> Franklin/Nashville area is pretty nice. The prices are very cheap and the tech scene is emerging. The people are super friendly too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hear Tx is nice...not sure about infrastructure though. We too are looking to make a move, though we're not even in the planning stage yet.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just moved to CA, Bay area and the whole climate here is insanely healthy.

I am running 7 miles at the morning before going to work. I never did it in my life before. Ever. And I'm 51.

Then whole day just flows. I thought it's Thursday but apparently it's Friday already.

Something is in the air here. Something really good.

</comment><comment><USER22> New Orleans is wonderful this time of year. ;)

<comment><USER23> But bring a boat in case of a Katrina 2 coming in

<comment><USER24> Living on a boat is always an option on the gulf coast.</comment></comment></comment>


Apply HN: Pinpic – Photographers on Demand - <AUTHOR> Pinpic is a trusted marketplace for customers who need a photographer on demand when they are traveling. Instead of using a selfie-stick or asking a stranger, people can find the nearest photographer to them using the Pinpic "app" in any major city or tourist destination. Customers can also find a photographer within any budget and for any length of time. We're making vacation photography more accessible to a growing number of travelers from all markets around the world. Pinpic charges between 10-12% per booking from the customer.
Photographers use the Pinpic "web" platform to manage all the core aspects of their business, including invoicing, scheduling, marketing, and photo delivery in exchange for 3% service fee on booking. There are no upfront costs for photographers to join.
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/lHUiO0UmZyE
QUICK FACTS:
- Pinpic has a growing community of more than 1300 photographers, worldwide.
- Travelers will be able to book photographers on pinpic.com starting May 2016.
- Pinpic's core team is made up of 4 members, highly experienced in dev, design, photography, and travel <comment><USER2> How big is the for hire vacation photography market?</comment>