Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/06/uber-self-driving-trucks-are-now-moving-cargo-for-uber-freight-customers/ <comment><USER2> For those concerned with jobs to be eliminated, it might not be as big a problem as we think for the trucking industry.

"Over the next 10 years, he said, we need to attract almost 900,000 new people to the industry.

Demographics is a big part of the problem. ATA's research arm, the American Transportation Research Institute, recently updated its demographic data on drivers and found some 57% of drivers are 45 or older. Only 4.4% are 20-24 years old, noted Rebecca Brewster, president and COO of ATRI."

[http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/drivers/news/story/2017/...](http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/drivers/news/story/2017/10/driver- shortage-could-hit-all-time-high-this-year.aspx)

In addition, there will still be much need for humans to take care of the maintenance of the trucks and manipulation of the cargo over the next couple decades. So there will likely be a significant number of truckers still employed, perhaps with increased productivity.

Also, certain other jobs will create large increases in demand for labor over the upcoming decades, in particular home care for the elderly and, if we get politics right, better & more individualized education for the young.

(A reminder) Lump of labor fallacy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy)

\---

Added in response to some comments below:

Yes, there will be challenges particularly regarding the distribution of benefits from increased productivity. The share of wealth garnered to capital holders will likely increase. People in labor force who have the skills to develop and maintain automation systems will certainly benefit. (That is why education and (re)training are crucial.) The rest may enjoy some, but probably not most, of the larger pie created by advanced technology.

However, the economic pie will be enlarged and there will be more to share. How the fruits of technology will be distributed will depend to a large extent on negotiations and politics.

<comment><USER3> Generally, the idea of stifling innovation to "preserve jobs" is harmful to society. Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, those people can pivot. It is unreasonable to hold the entire population back to continue employing those in a specific field. If we consistently did that, we'd be in the stone age and our quality of life would be far poorer. This will help future generations drastically even if it hurts us a bit.

<comment><USER4> > Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career.

Isn't it lucky we humans are so very good at predicting the future!?

When I was taking computer vision courses little more than a decade ago, self driving cars were pure science fiction. Part of me hopes software development is the next job we automate away, just so everyone in forums like this who are so impressed with their own excellent life choices can see what it's like to be on the other end of this.

<comment><USER3> > Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, > those people can pivot.

We are lucky as software engineers, but I was also making the point that if your line of work gets automated, hopefully you can pivot. This applies to everyone, and is similar to when you are no longer enjoying your field of work. Changing careers is not always an option, but let's not forget that it usually is when we talk about automating an entire industry and putting them out of work.

<comment><USER4> I'm hoping for a future where the machines do all the work required to provide everything human beings need to survive, AND where we've figured out a reasonable way to distribute resources in a world where not everyone will be able to "contribute to society" by spending huge amounts of their waking time doing something they'd not otherwise do, in exchange for tokens that can be redeemed for food and shelter.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but that would be communism, so let's just let people who were born into or stumbled into their wealth amass more of it. I think in general we need to start being more thoughtful about how the things we do can sometimes be hurtful to billionaires.

<comment><USER6> Well, while you're joking the original idea of communism and what I've been taught about Lenin was about excatly this - communism is inevitable because of technical progress. Call it what you want - universal income, handouts, we will end up in communism.

<comment><USER7> And yet all implementations of communism has failed so does this mean technical progress eventually leads to societal failure? Also I believe we will end up with socialism, not communism.

<comment><USER8> > And yet all implementations of communism has failed so does this mean > technical progress eventually leads to societal failure?

Only if you believe that once an attempt at something has failed, all future attempts will also fail.

> Also I believe we will end up with socialism, not communism.

Socialism is worker control of the means of production, and is an intermediate step along the route to communism, a fully classless and stateless society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The funny thing in this US-centric view is that we have such a cargo since a century where _trains_ play the role of "self-driving cargo".

In europe, the decline of cargo on tracks (trains) is also partially owed to subsidiation of automobile traffic and highway expansions. It is a pity, because from the raw numbers trains are much less expensive then tracks.

<comment><USER10> I think that's misplaced, freight is the one area where NA in general and US in particular absolutely blows every other region out the water. Circa 2010 Rail was ~40% of US freight by ton-mile, whereas for the EU it was ~17%, and the US had 10x more tonne-kilometer freight rail than the EU (beyond China and Russia, with India a _very distant_ third) (nb: China carried more tonnes total but shorter distances)

Of course a major reason for that is that the US have (literally) tons of commodities, a significant plurality of the tonnage is coal. I expect roughly the same of Russia, China, Australia and India (the other members of the tonnage top 5, Australia notably haults extremely heavy stuff for very short distances as it's about on par with the EU for tkm but waaay ahead in total tonnage).

Hell one of the reasons passenger trains is shit in the US is that passenger rail does not get priority over freight and thus you get the country's lone "high-speed train" giving way to slow freight leading to an average speed of 130km/h, slower than some non-high-speed intercity service in Europe.

<comment><USER11> > Hell one of the reasons passenger trains is shit in the US is that passenger > rail does not get priority over freight

They do have priority:

> (c) Preference over freight transportation. -- Except in an emergency, > intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation provided by or for > Amtrak has preference over freight transportation in using a rail line, > junction, or crossing...

[http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-49-transportation/49-usc-s...](http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-49-transportation/49-usc- sect-24308.html)

<comment><USER12> Passenger rail is supposed to have priority by law, but in practice they don't always get it. Freight carriers don't always yield, enough so that there are ongoing legal battles. You can check Amtrak's historical On-Time Performance and causes of delay here: [https://www.amtrak.com/about-amtrak/on-time- performance/](https://www.amtrak.com/about-amtrak/on-time-performance/)

My quick sampling of ~10 trains came up with an average around 65% on-time during the last year. The only one I've ridden, the California Zephyr, is less than 50%.

[http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/02/message-amtrak-regarding- time...](http://blog.amtrak.com/2015/02/message-amtrak-regarding-time- performance/)

[http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2017/03/24-judge- sides-...](http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2017/03/24-judge-sides-with- freight-carriers-in-amtrak-time-keeping-case)

[http://www.jconline.com/story/money/2017/08/24/csx-digs- its-...](http://www.jconline.com/story/money/2017/08/24/csx-digs-its-heels- insists-its-not-purposely-delaying-amtrak-trains/595061001/)

<comment><USER13> Yeah I've ridden the Zephyr from Chicago to Colorado (and back) a few times, and it was off-schedule about half the time, one of them was at least 4 hours of just sitting there in the train in the middle of nowhere.

One hour I can understand, four is ridiculous. The trip is pleasant and the views are great but for me to take it again they're going to have to do better than 50% on-time.

<comment><USER14> I used to live on a small town on the Empire Builder line a few hours west of Chicago. It was once a day each way, and we'd get one direction in the morning, and the opposite direction in the afternoon. Or that was the theory. Often the morning train was so late that when you heard them sound the horn you wouldn't know if it was the afternoon train or the "morning" train.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The video ad is so crazy -- we still need a human to lock/unlock the cargo?? and its good for the truckers because they can go home early to their family??

The first part can be trivially automated and the second is just stupid. Truckers get paid per hour of work, less work == less money.

AI-self-driving has arrived but to make the transition look "humane" as in the AD is crazy. Almost insults the intelligence of these guys who have been driving our cargo around for whole generations.

<comment><USER16> Truckers generally get paid per mile, not per hour. They are also heavily regulated as to the number of _hours_ they can drive (why you see so many husband/wife driving teams).

One can easily foresee a future where a self-driving truck has a driver in it who is only driving 'regulated' hours for a small portion of a trip (say during high traffic, highway entry/exit, etc). The driver could spend the rest of his time sleeping, reading, or coding - he'd basically be a passenger.

If a truck can haul for 20-30 hours without stopping for overnights, that dramatically changes the economies of fast freight.

<comment><USER17> _rest of his time sleeping, reading, or coding_

Problematic in at least two ways, probably three.

<comment><USER18> Even if (and that's a very big if) we get to a point where we decide we need someone behind the wheel of these truck, but it's okay for them to be staring at a laptop the entire time, I can't see a whole lot of quality code coming from someone who is sitting in the cabin of a truck with one eye constantly on the road.

<comment><USER19> Just when I thought there wasn't anything worse than the open office plan.

It brings a whole new meaning to the word "shipping".

<comment><USER10> > Just when I thought there wasn't anything worse than the open office plan.

Eh. A truck cabin sounds better. You can have music without needing to wear cans, you don't hear jim's mastication or janice's burping you don't get assaulted by emily's lack of hygiene or randy's mix of aggressive cologne and smelly feet, you decide what temperature you're most comfortable at, you can work without pants, …

The main issue would be 'net connectivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I assume these self-driving trucks still have a human driver in them. So, which exact parts are self-driving? Is it like Tesla's autopilot where it does lane following, cruise control and keeping the distance on highways?

<comment><USER21> > So, which exact parts are self-driving?

Just enough of it that they can skirt the DOT hour rules about hours worked while still blaming the driver for any crashes or tickets would be my guess.

That's the obvious lowest hanging fruit as far as trucking is concerned. If you can automate enough of the long haul grind that the driver could possibly be sleeping then you have a massive competitive advantage over everyone else.

If you don't automate enough to be able to skirt the DOT time rules there's not much of a competitive advantage.

<comment><USER22> I don't think you can skirt them. Time on-duty counts against their daily limit even if they're not driving (the example given in an official guide is a trucker taking a bus to get to the truck), so they must still get a proper rest afterwards. So Uber can't count the "not driving but watching the road" as time off.

<comment><USER21> They're not going to be on duty. They're going to be sleeping in the sleeper, on paper at least.

<comment><USER22> And how will they blame a crash on the driver, when the paper say s/he was sleeping?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think these companies (autonomous car/truck) understand that they need to transition these processes slowly over time. I feel like it's better to start with something only moderately different and iterate than try to completely reinvent the entire structure of such a large industry.

First they do this, then they automate more and more portions, at each step reducing the amount of manual, human supervision. It also allows the industry to more consciously reduce numbers through attrition rather than mass layoffs. Better to stop young guys from becoming truck drivers and have the automation increase over 10-15 years until it just really isn't a career. The only people that will be affected are in the 25-35 age range now who have already taken the plunge, but at least they get some time to consider other options.

<comment><USER24> This is a woefully optimistic viewpoint: when the technology is ready there will be layoffs. IMO.

These companies aren't slow-playing their hand to avoid layoffs, and it's a race to see who can perfect the technology first.

<comment><USER23> No doubt, but I think it's just the nature of complex systems. You could invent a drug that cures all diseases and maladies, and there would still be practicing doctors for 5-10 years while the cost/distribution/red-tape was worked out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I feel like they re-invented the train. :-)

<comment><USER26> When trains become competitive with road transport, maybe we should move more to using trains. Until then, we won't, and we shouldn't. (If it's a matter of externalities/hidden subsidies, then the costs of these externalities must be brought to the entity causing them, e.g. via taxes.)

I don't know why (in Germany) a long-distance bus is much cheaper than a train (from/to the same city), but it is. We shouldn't be trying to shift traffic to rail unless there's a good reason beyond "it feels good" for it. If it is better for the environment, I'd like to see a "citation" (not in the form of research, but in the form of well-justified taxes/tolls/... that transform this into a matter of cost).

<comment><USER27> If trucks had to pay the full cost of road wear, then trains would be a lot more attractive for long hauls -- road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight [1]

An 80,000 pound truck has 8X the axle weigh of a 2000 pound car, so should be paying 4096 times more road taxes than the car.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating#Impor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating#Importance)

<comment><USER28> Sort of. It looks like a car does about 4x more damage per axle because of using a single narrow tire[1]. If you compare a pretty typical 4000 pound car to that maxed-out truck, you would then only get a 64x difference (maybe closer to 100 depending on weight distribution). Oh and then multiply by the number of axles.

It would be interesting to look at the costs and savings of 6 or 8 axles in the back. There's plenty of room to fit, and you could drop wear by a factor of 10.

Let's also not forget that the truck probably has over a hundred times as much payload as an average car.

[1] [http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601](http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=601)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am not sure that I want a company that is most famous for breaking rules, skirting regulation, and stealing medical records of it's victims operating large freight trucks on public roads.

<comment><USER30> This is a good point, but it can no way be worse than what we have now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Notice that you can extend this model to passengers and long-haul bus, train, or simply self-driven vehicle transport, in all of which cases Uber is well positioned.

</comment><comment><USER32> Should be a fun day when people realize they can pretty easily hijack automated trucks.

I assume you could either get in the back of the thing while it's moving, or simply slow down in front of it and cause it to stop. Unload your newly acquired goods and be on your way!

<comment><USER33> What makes you think they would be easier to hijack?

Part of the ease of hijacking truck is that you can drive off with it. What if the trailer locks its wheels and bricks itself, if it determines it's being hijacked, all while recording 360 video and sending immediate alerts to management and law enforcement?

Certainly better than a driver afraid for his life.

<comment><USER34> Think burglary vs home invasion. It's not just about easier, it's about it being a different threshold for whether it's worth it. The presence of other people drastically complicates crimes, and makes it much more likely that you'll end up dead or in prison for decades.

Also, all the countermeasures you mention aren't free or without issues, and could be in place now, but aren't. Why not?

<comment><USER35> In general, the real bottleneck with theft at scale isn't the actual theft. It's turning the stolen goods into money afterwards and disposing of the evidence. Items being slightly easier to steal doesn't do much to make them easier to fence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can't we get this technology nailed so well that hopping in a self-driving car for your day-to-day errands is something you do without a second thought, BEFORE we start sending out 30 ton missiles as beta tests?

<comment><USER37> I agree with the sentiment, but guiding a large missile down a straight highway with human oversight has many fewer variables than navigating smaller missiles through crowded urban areas.

<comment><USER38> Plus given the amount of trucking on certain corridors it might be possible to get some lanes 'roped off' for automated trucking only, further reducing the risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does the self driving truck have any kind of security? Given that there is a "do no harm" program embedded into the driving "subroutines", is there anything that prevents thieves from essentially surrounding the truck and robbing it in the middle of nowhere?

Edit: To clarify I mean - in a hypothetical situation where it is ever driverless, couldnt 10 of us surround it, while I walk in and commandeer it, disable GPS and drive off ?

<comment><USER40> What prevents 10 of us from surrounding a real truck, walking in, forcing the driver out and driving off?

[https://xkcd.com/1958/](https://xkcd.com/1958/)

<comment><USER39> I guess we are presuming that drivers wouldn't simply step on the gas in that kind of situation.

Also I suspect the absence of a human being in the situation would psychologically make the theft feel "less wrong" to many would-be criminals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Uber has a video depicting this journey, which took place staring in then > midwest and then via short haul to Sanders, Arizona, where it was loaded > onto an autonomous truck and then transferred to Topock, Arizona, where it > made the switch to another human-driven vehicle. This is a big step towards > commercialization of Uber's autonomous truck tech, and it seems like it puts > it ahead of some competitors who want to do similar things, including Embark > trucking. It's also the first we've heard about Uber's self-driving truck > business in a little while, so it's good to see Uber's continuing to make > progress and devote attention to this issue.

Uber's main line of business i.e. on demand car transportation is loosing money. They tell a story that they fix it with self driving cars which incidentally would require gigantic additional funding. Now they have expanded into self driving trucks that do already some services with some capacity in the name of their own surely significant trucking business for some customers that call for them through their app. This is the real deal, I know because there is a video.

Musk heaps one money loosing business over the other but at least they all make sense and are different. With Uber it was doubling down and now tripling down. Not impressed.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would be interested to know how would these autonomous cars/trucks behave on non-linear roads, with potholes, adverse conditions, etc

What kind of problem are these companies trying to address that hasn't been addressed yet?

Will these trucks be a replacement for trains? I can see the later ones being way more easy to automate (e.g. London Overground)

<comment><USER43> I'd expect they'll make potholes much worse, with all trucks driving exactly over the same spot repeatedly, until they learn to avoid the pothole. Perhaps Waze-style reporting will fill the gap.

<comment><USER44> Don't you think they'd be able to take that into account with the software? Large trucks already put a huge amount of wear like that on highways (I've seen plenty of ruts from trucks in asphalt roads). Technology like this is an opportunity to actually improve the wear patterns.

<comment><USER45> Without wanting to sound too cynical: Why would a private company care about the wear patterns of public highways?

Unless it's affecting the operation of their fleet, in a negative way, they don't have any reason at all to improve anything about it.

Especially considering how this does not look like a trivial problem to solve. Wouldn't something like this require an additional sensor suite to check for more detailed road conditions? What about the future, when other companies start doing the same, wouldn't that require some level of cross-company cooperation to make sure trucks take somewhat randomized lines on the street, to reduce wear?

<comment><USER44> You're referring to the tragedy of the commons I believe. So the simple answer is that they might not, and so perhaps there's a role for government oversight/requirements similar to safety requirements. It's not a stretch to consider this a safety issue, if only for the other human-piloted vehicles.

But I think it could be in a private company's interest too. Better road conditions would be better for wear and tear on their vehicles. Lower maintenance costs on the road should result in lower tax burden for the company (assuming company pairs fair share of their taxes which admittedly may not be true).

Cost of software improvements like this scale well (ie cost is distributed over time and customers well). In fact the vendor of the vehicle could present it as a competitive advantage over other vendors that don't address it in any way.

I wasn't thinking the solution would be based on sensing the build-up of lane wear/ridges, I presumed the solution would be something along the lines of varying their lane position to avoid the specific case of always travelling in exactly the same spot in the lane. With some randomness I don't think it would take inter-company cooperation. Just the idea that if the same vehicles were travelling the same route, that the wear on the road would be reduced by some amount. Obviously this is a lot of armchair architecture-ing from some random front-end UI developer, but I think it's not unreasonable to think along these lines once they reach the point of optimisations. Fun to think about anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> yay the future is here

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gv3vvx/logan- subt...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gv3vvx/logan-subtly- predicts-our-gritty-future-of-climate-change-and-big-agriculture)

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't mean to be a downer...but is there really anything novel here? I understand that this is a first step, but I feel like Uber could have significantly reduced the manual labor required (e.g. to disconnect/connect a trailer). It seems that the load (mental/physical) on the "driver" of the self-driving semi will be nearly equal to a driver who has cruise control.

<comment><USER48> You're right it's not that novel. Volvo has self-driving* truck convoys going back to the 90s I think.

I think for long-haul trucking it's certainly pretty hard to stay fully tuned while driving for such long times. And for truck companies, they can save tons of money on labor when they don't have to pay the driver for the hours on the road and just for the manual disconnect/connect docking. Maybe they can make it fully automated, but why haven't any trucks done that already? It's an easier problem to solve than self-driving.

* by convoy, I mean that one truck up front was driven by a human and then a few were automated to draft from directly behind to just follow the truck in front of them.

EDIT: Here's a source for the 90s, where this paper had a few authors from Volvo.

from: [http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/ITFVHA15/...](http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/ITFVHA15/ITFVHA15_USA_FutureTruck_ADP_TF_WhitePaper_Draft_Final_TF_Approved_Sept_2015.pdf)

> _Additionally, different applications of automated driving for trucks have > been demonstrated across the globe since the 1990's. The focus has been on > proof of concept for truck platooning due to the foreseen fuel economy and > traffic flow benefits._

<comment><USER49> Truck companies avoid this kind of thing because it's expensive to maintain pools of short-haul drivers at either end of the transport link. If you are willing to assume those costs/risks, you can already send freight by rail, which is an order of magnitude more efficient on fuel, and sometimes even a little faster.

The reason you pay for long-haul trucking is that you want to have the driver _already on hand_ for the two short-haul trips at either end of the journey, navigating complex issues and handling cargo loading. The downside is that you have to pay the driver for the over-the-road portion. The upside is that there's zero chance of a driver not being available, and zero chance of the driver being left idle waiting for the long-haul transport to arrive.

The only novelty here is that Uber is the one paying the pools of short-haul truckers on either end, and assuming the risk that they will sit idle. (They are, of course, not going to tell us if it is unprofitable!)

<comment><USER50> The US already has one of the largest freight rail networks in the world (at the expense of having a totally shitty passenger rail network; although that's starting to change with Florida and California's efforts).

I wish more effort would be put into expanding freight even more so you could get the same speed and efficiency for shorter hauls, mail and package delivery. It seems like that would be way more worthwhile than automated trucks. It's substantially more trivial to automate freight trains as well. Passenger trains in Singapore, Malaysia and parts of London are already fully autonomous with no driver at all.

<comment><USER49> The U.S. used to have extensive short-haul rail, even inside cities. That's how cargo moved around back in the era before inexpensive motorized trucks.

I suspect the reason it disappeared is that rail sidings are large and expensive compared to truck loading docks. You're not going to have ten sidings on a property as easily as you stick ten bays in a loading dock.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What really bothered me at the end of the commerical was the fact that the person could be in home in time for dinner.

Unless we have some form of UBI, where is that person going to source the funds to pay for his dinner?

<comment><USER52> What I find truly interesting of this thinking is that technological advances in the future are cataclysmic, but in the past are necessary.

It never becomes something like "lets destroy all the farming machinery, so we create more jobs plowing the land".

<comment><USER53> Oh, you can rest assured that we have enough cataclysms in history to make the case.

There's that entire "let's destroy all machinery that is taking your jobs" movement that gave a name to the "avoiding new things" attitude. All that in a period when people were choosing between literally dying of huger unemployed or of extenuation at work.

Just because the cataclysm is temporary does not mean it didn't exist.

<comment><USER52> Would you advocate to destroy all the machinery those people clamored against today?

<comment><USER53> Of course not. But some welfare would have saved a few million lives, greatly enriched any country (although people didn't know that by the time), and removed one or two world wars from our history.

<comment><USER52> You got some leaps of faith there.

Capitalism was basically born by the application of technology disruptively like it did. Saddling the creative forces with the consequences can easily prevent the change from happening at all, and in the end, it is better for the whole.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Text Manipulation Online – The Easy Way - <AUTHOR> https://nimbletext.com/HowTo/ManipulateText <comment><AUTHOR> Are there any other sites that let you do some quick text processing, usually I'm just copying random stuff from e-mails that need to be quoted and made into an array.

<comment><USER2> How about [https://www.textfixer.com/](https://www.textfixer.com/) and [https://textmechanic.com/](https://textmechanic.com/) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Quite handy, just hope I remember it when I actually need it.</comment>


How to tie world's fastest shoelace knot - <AUTHOR> http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm

<comment><USER2> _Premature optimization is the root of all evil._ -Donald Knuth

<comment><USER3> So the love of money placed before the love of God is premature optimization?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related - a visual trick but amusing nonethless: [http://www.metacafe.com/watch/360289/david_blaines_self_tyin...](http://www.metacafe.com/watch/360289/david_blaines_self_tying_shoelace_revealed/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Surprisingly interesting. You look at it and think, oh, of course it was a square knot, how come I didn't think of that? These things are so common and motorized that nobody cares to think of another way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER6> this should free up at least 30 minutes of my day

<comment><USER7> How many legs do you have?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been using Ian's Secure Knot from the same site for a few years now, after my slippery-shoelace problem reached such crisis proportions that I preferred to spend an hour Googling for, and learning, a better knot, than having to keep retying my shoelaces.

The new knot has never once accidentally come undone, and is about as quick to tie and untie as the Standard Knot -- maybe even a little faster.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's something abnormal about having a site dedicated to shoelaces.

Anyway, this knot will shave about 5.5 seconds off my daily commute. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER10> Loafers FTW!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is the kind of hack you can really appreciate.</comment>


YouTube: Climate Change Mitigation: Near Term Solutions 27m34s (Isaac Arthur) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbMmQFwdACk <comment><AUTHOR> _Sometimes even the most minor tweaks can have massive unanticipated consequences.

Just as an example, even something as small as switching to a type of lawn grass that was lighter or darker to cover 1% of Earth's surface, so that it reflected or absorbed just 1% more sunlight, would result in the Earth absorbing or reflecting away about 1/10,000th more light than now. It sounds small, but that is 20 terawatts of energy, which for comparison is 10 times humanity's total power consumption and parallel to the rate of heat energy released by a powerful hurricane._</comment>


Fake SpaceX YouTube channel with 36k live viewers scams people out of money - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYMWg_gQCUQ <comment><USER2> It always strikes me as odd how prevalent the bitcoin scams are on twitter. Virtually all of Elon Musk's tweets have a very prominently placed "BTC party" scam shown as a high-level reply.

As an example, from his latest non-pinned tweet, the second visible reply is a BTC scam: [https://i.imgur.com/ibO94uG.png](https://i.imgur.com/ibO94uG.png)

How does twitter have such a high tolerance for this?

<comment><USER3> I don't use twitter often, but looking over the UI I don't see any ability to flag tweets - am I missing this or does it not exist in any visible place? Pretty much every other social media (Reddit, Youtube, Facebook) seems to have the ability to flag posts. That would make it much easier for them to identify and remove these kinds of replies. Combine that with no upvote/downvote system and people have no way of pushing down spam.

<comment><USER4> Click on the caret (dropdown) at the top right of the tweet, then "Report Tweet".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the associated website they have this gem:

> If the transaction does not process properly, please try by sending the same > amount to the BTC address again, and it should go through. Your original > transaction will be refunded as you can only participate once.

<comment><USER6> The Kenyon Review only pays $.05 per word, this definitely seems to be one of the better markets for fiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This same group has been taking over ton of channels. It's amazing Youtube hasn't found a way to detect it. Reporting it does nothing as some are STILL up months past reporting.

Also interesting is these scammers are using fake viewers and fake chat messages to make it look more legit.

<comment><USER8> Seems like it's exploiting a hole in YT's reporting process. I stumbled on a few of these streams last week and tried to report the accounts for "impersonating". However, on the reporting page, you're asked to specify which of the users' _videos_ or _comments_ are violating the rules, but you're not given any option to specify a _live stream_ video. Since the accounts did not post any other videos or comments, there was no content for me to tag.

I submitted the reports anyway and, shortly thereafter, got an email from Youtube telling me "Unfortunately the information you provided in your report to YouTube does not meet our impersonation reporting guidelines." Seems they automatically ignore any reports without tagged videos/comments.

<comment><USER7> YouTube/Google need to be more aggressive about blocking logins from new locations. The account owners don't know until subscribers point it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They hacked a large food channel that had 133k+ subs. When you go to the cumunity tab you can still see some of the original stuff still being there. (in case it gets removed to [https://imgur.com/72nofl0.png](https://imgur.com/72nofl0.png))

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It asks for bitcoins and promises to pay back (I assume it never happens).

There's a lot of live viewers, probably many bots, but some real people too. It's high in youtube algorithm, I reported it obviously, but it will take a long time.

<comment><USER4> I reported it as well, it's a sophisticated scam. Look at all the bots in the chat talking about how they got double bitcoins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This scam has been repeated a couple of times. On the weekend they repeated an interview with Chamath Palihapitiya from 2-3 years ago and said it was a "Bitcoin Giveaway" where you got two for one bitcoin. It was hilarious but I never checked to see the transactions that had occurred against the target address.

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1ELonMUSK14JSGNYAcPJN...](https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1ELonMUSK14JSGNYAcPJNqubuFByZPyjcj) is the address the BTC was sent to. 2.5 BTC ~= $24k

<comment><USER12> some of this might be the scammers seeding the address themselves so people see others sending to it?

<comment><USER11> There are 0 BTC of outgoing transactions. A good Ponzi scammer would payout on small deposits so that the person is convinced to put in a bigger deposit. This was a popular Eve online scam and it was even more fun because the 'victim' sometimes managed to get a payout and exit the scam with a profit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> W-Stool Who exactly falls for this kind of scam? I mean, "send us X and you'll get 2X in return" isn't too awfully different than those scams years ago for plans for a perpetual motion machine or the secrets to a 300 mpg car engine.

<comment><USER13> Ha, I remember one of my brothers and a bunch of people from my hometown got all into those perpetual motion machines. They bought the "plans" and went on and on about how revolutionary it was, what a good deal the few hundred dollars for the plans were, and how there's a global conspiracy by energy companies to stop this information from getting out. Despite trying and never quite getting it to work, I think my brother even today still believes in it.

I guess the answer to your question would be "normal every day folks." But, still, how does the thinking that leads them to believe this stuff even actually work? I don't get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've seen it because youtube algorithm recommended it to me.

<comment><USER15> T H I S is the real issue here - YT actively promoting these scams to people, because they've replaced actual people with faulty algorithms...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Occasionally I fall asleep and awake to a channel like this, usually one showing science television content with an extremely active stream of real- time commenters. This gestalt of this channel is nearly identical. Has anyone written up an explanation of these vaguely (or not so vaguely) scammy YouTube channels? Or posted a YouTube video, more likely?

</comment><comment><USER17> The problem here is that there is absolutely zero incentive for YouTube to fix this.

These bots still contribute to their "growth" and "engagement" and user numbers. Some of them might even be real users being paid to participate, which means YouTube is still showing them ads and profiting off them.

We need proper regulations where platforms should be considered complicit of these scams when they fail to remove such content or outright promote it. As it stands, is is absolutely irresponsible from them to let any new account set up a livestream, boost its popularity with fake viewers and the algorithms will do the rest and start recommending it to _real_ viewers.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've seen this at least twice before - once with a Microsoft video, another with a Coinbase. (The Coinbase one was quite clever because early on, Coinbase would put a bonus amount in your account when you signed up, so the videos seemed to add a bit of validity). In each case, they use a channel with a lot of subscribers (not sure if they are hacks, or they purchase a channel)

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember seeing this on youtube (maybe a week ago? same scam, same idea, I'm not sure if it was the same channel) and clicking on it and being like, this is a scam, but a well-targeted one. I was looking to see how it had anything to do with SpaceX and big surprise, that answer was nothing.

Looking through my watch history I can't seem to find it though...

</comment><comment><USER20> Looks like that address in the video has about ~2.5 BTC received: [https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1ELonMUSK14JSGNYAcPJN...](https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1ELonMUSK14JSGNYAcPJNqubuFByZPyjcj)

<comment><USER21> Is 4 now, only 30 minutes later...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> seems to be some russian guy who calls himself Maxim Sakulevich (from youtube's url [https://www.youtube.com/user/MaximSakulevich/community](https://www.youtube.com/user/MaximSakulevich/community) which you'll get by clicking on the 'SpaceX' channel name and on community)... instagram: [https://www.instagram.com/maxim_sakulevich/](https://www.instagram.com/maxim_sakulevich/) ... and some blog [https://maximsakulevich.blogspot.com/](https://maximsakulevich.blogspot.com/) ... definitely a modern way of making/stealing money

<comment><USER23> That guy likely is a _victim_ here: Channels get hacked and rebranded for those scams to get an initial subscriber base.

<comment><USER22> Good point. So who should be responsible? Mr. Sakulevich/channel owners? Youtube/platform provider? Scammer (probably won't take responsibility)? Victims who fail for it? Educating all people (including channel owners and scammers) probably won't work/ won't be fast enough against fast paced internet technology and 'I want to use it now without effort' mentality.

<comment><USER24> Sometimes the channels are derelict - someone created the account, maybe to leave a comment, then never really used it again. Maybe you could argue that people should be responsible for shutting down unused accounts. I wouldn't agree but that's not unreasonable.

But it is often the case that the owners of these accounts try to get access back from YouTube, to no avail. Several animators I subscribed to had their accounts hacked (maybe poor passwords) and filled with crypto scam nonsense and the process of getting them back was hopeless and took many months of concerted effort from them and their fans.

At that point, though the scammers are of course primarily at fault, I'd also place blame on YouTube for allowing the scam-turned accounts to remain. Protection for user content that is sometimes illegal should cease when a host repeatedly fails to remove that (specific instance of) content in good faith.

<comment><USER25> Also probably shouldn't use your real name on any site nevermind YouTube. From that alone we have almost a clear idea of his life, his Instagram page, his children. Very scary stuff. I'd hate to be this public about my own life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> They ran one with Oprah clips recently too.

</comment><comment><USER27> [video]</comment>


Neptune.io (YC S14) Helps Network Admins by Fixing Common Issues Automatically - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/15/yc-backed-neptune-io-wants-to-help-network-admins-sleep-by-fixing-common-issues-automatically/

<comment><USER2> At last :-)

My suggestions:

1) It would be good for it not to be just tied to AWS - though I can see why you'd bootstrap up one cloud.

2) The thing I'm always looking for is the following combined _elegantly_ :

Availability Metrics (ala Pingdom), Custom Metric Reporting, Agent Based System Metric Reporting, Metric Viewing, Metric Comprehension (what does it all mean), Metric Triggered Alerting and Automated Actions.

(I can get 80% from DataDog)

The automated actions should be based on alerts, which are based on metrics. The metrics should be custom or system. The actions should include: scale out (on an IaaS deploy by image, on a PaaS scale out), scale back, reboot, rebuild from image, custom script execution etc.

For the life of me I don't understand why there isn't a single SaaS providing end to end metric -> alert -> action flows.

Again good luck, looks very nice and if I wasn't moving away from AWS I'd jump on board.

<comment><USER3> @neilellis, thank you for the comments. For (1) We are trying to provide rich experience for customers on AWS to start with, however, we won't be tied to only AWS in future (2) your use cases are very interesting. I'll follow up over email.

which hosting provider are you moving to?</comment></comment>


A quick Python script/hack to plot data - <AUTHOR> http://www.penzba.co.uk/Writings/KarmaPlot.html

<comment><USER2> I've found matplotlib to generate really nice graphs with Python.

<http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/>

I've used it to graph things like IRC usage per nick before.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not going to offer yet another "You should've used..." comment. Instead, I offer a thanks. A nice little script, I used it to adapt a little IP address map (ala <http://xkcd.com/195/> but with dots) for a firewall attack log.

I'll update this comment with a GitHub link when it's not embarrassingly bad and hacky.

</comment><comment><USER4> Another option is Google's Chart API and pygooglechhart.

[http://asktherelic.com/2010/09/05/large-graphs-with- google-c...](http://asktherelic.com/2010/09/05/large-graphs-with-google-chart- api/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Or you could just use Webnumbr

<http://webnumbr.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty cool, provided you use it from the start, and only want to track a single number.

But it's cool - thanks. I'll probably be able to use that for something later.

Problem is, I don't want to log in to it with any of the options. I don't want to hand over my credentials. Shame I can't create my own login specifically for that page.

I guess I could create, say, a fake twitter account and use that, but it seems odd.

Hmm. Something to think about.

<comment><USER6> You don't have to log in, going to your page and click on the karma-number should be enough:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=RiderOfGiraffes>

Edit: Ah, you meant log in as in making an account for the website. If you're only going to look for karma, then there's no need to make an account from what I see.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've done that, and I've created it.

<http://webnumbr.com/hacker-news-karma-for-riderofgiraffes>

It said, however, that if I want to edit the details then I'd need to login. Or so it would appear.

But I find it very confusing. It's not clear what, if anything, is private, or what, if anything, can be edited. There's lots I want to know, but can neither figure out nor figure out how to find out.

It also constantly and consistently hangs my machine with my browser repeatedly warning me that a script is taking too long, and do I want to abort it, or let it continue. And when I say continually, at last attempt I got 23 warnings, and it took 2 minutes to load a page.

Somewhat frustrating. Brilliant idea, no doubt brilliantly executed, but causing me, personally, huge frustration in its usage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How mistakes can save lives: one man's mission to revolutionise the NHS - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/05/how-mistakes-can-save-lives

<comment><USER2> A very interesting article, although I can't help but feel that it tars doctors with slightly too broad a brush.

For the sake of context, I'm in the UK (so med school is a 5 or 6 year degree, not an undergrad and postgrad like the US), my fiancee is an Obstectric Surgeon (aka an Ob/Gyn) who's half way through specialist training (six years out of med school, three years training in her specialty), my father is an Oncologist (clinical, not surgical, though a lot of interaction with surgeons as would be expected) in his mid-sixties (so med school was forty odd years ago, consultant for over thirty years) - he is, however, both research focused and head of his department so is far more aware of current trends in the NHS than someone who's purely a clinician who wouldn't have much reason to keep up to date with the current literature or thinking in the NHS.

It's interesting to compare and contrast the mindsets and training they both have. A large number of the points raised in the article have been, from what I can tell, incorporated in the training that doctors receive these days - there have been changes to how surgical teams work to help break down barriers between the surgeon(s) and everyone else in the room. In the current NHS thinking the idea of surgeon-as-god is long gone, and even little measures like everyone in the operating theatre introducing themselves before the operation starts go along way to breaking down the formal barriers between the staff.

However, medicine is a very traditional discipline and it can be hard change the way people practice when you're trying to fundamentally change something they've been doing for the last twenty years. From the stories I hear from my father, there are more than a few surgeons of his era who do take the view that they can do no wrong and errors happen as a result. Thankfully, people of that mindset are mostly approaching retirement age and the generation of doctors below them seem to be more open to new ideas - something I suspect is an artefact of being trained during the eighties onwards when lots of fields of medicine became a lot more research focused and less interested in doing things because "that's how it's always been done". Quite likely also due to increased collaboration with colleagues around the globe suddenly being possible so new ideas spread faster.

It's also difficult to talk about the NHS as a whole. Every NHS trust (every geographical area in the UK falls under a particular trust that encompasses one or more hospitals) is slightly different, as there's a degree of autonomy within each trusts. Each deanery (the group of hospitals that a doctor does their specialist training in) is different - the quality of training you'd get in a deanery which is recognised as delivering world class training in your specialty is going to be entirely different than if you end up at a random deanery that has little connection to your specialty. Like any other area of academia, the best people tend to clump in certain places.

This means that, to the detriment of the NHS as a whole, just because some hospitals and trusts change the status quo and improve matters, it doesn't mean that it will spread immediately to everywhere else. It's sad, but perhaps not too surprising when you consider the size of an organisation like the NHS - were you to add them all together, it's an organisation with something in the order of 1.4 million employees, so it perhaps should be a surprise that chance is often slow. Doubly so when you consider that it's a profession that likes to see an idea proved before it's implemented.

On the upside, my fiancee will be spending the next year (from Sept) as an education and simulation fellow where she'll be designing and running simulations for junior doctors. Making sure that they can recognise when the blinders start to slip on and empowering them to speak up when they think that something is going wrong, even if it means telling someone several decades their senior to stop what they're doing, is surely one of the most useful things we can do to ensure that problems like the one in the article are kept to a minimum.

<comment><USER3> On the topic of The Way Things Are Done, I remember talking to a surgeon a little over a decade ago, talking about Weary Dunlop, an Australian folk hero. A surgeon credited with keeping a great many men alive during internment in a Japanese PoW camp in WWII, he rightfully gets a lot of accolades.

The surgeon I was talking to said that it was probably a good thing when Dunlop died when he did, as there were increasing murmurs in the surgical field about the extremely poor quality of his work, some floating the possibility of him being deregistered. The words my friend used were "his techniques were fine for the jungle, but his skills haven't advanced since then" ('this is the way things are done'). The two examples he gave were that when doing an amputation, he wouldn't leave a flap of skin to cover the stump; and that his sutures were "almost thick enough to be twine", leading to huge, ropey scars where other surgeons were routinely making their work invisible. "Old soldiers love those scars, because they can point to them and say 'Dunlop worked on me', but it's simply bad practise". Basically my surgical friend was saying 'can you imagine being the person who stripped a folk hero of the license to do the exact thing he's a folk hero for doing?'

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article. The checklist bit speaks to me in particular. I once worked on a team that was responsible for maintaining a medium-sized legacy application. After one-too-many failed deploys, we instituted a pre-deployment checklist. The checklist consisted of things like:

* Have the tests all ran and passed? Is CI green?

* In addition to the tests passing, has a third party (not the devs themselves) clicked around and kicked the tires on any new features?

* What is the roll back plan? Can we roll back cleanly?

* What is in this set of changes? Should all of these changes go out?

These checks seem stupid, but the simple act of taking a breath and slowly going down the list really seemed to make a big difference. After instituting the list we had almost no failed deployments.

I don't know if this is an approach that generalizes. I tend to think that for clean, well-maintained and well-tested web applications, a continuous deployment approach is safer and faster in the long run. But when you're working on legacy code, a checklist works wonders.

<comment><USER5> And software has an even bigger advantage (making the lack of checklist use inexcusable) that all of the process _can be encoded in software_.

You can restrict deploys to only CI-checked revisions, you can mandate some sort of functional testing (with the tester stamping the revision), you can check that the rollback procedure works and works cleanly, you can put the changes list in front of somebody and ask that its items be validated.

The field seems to be moving very slightly forward, but it's not always easy to get people to relinquish useless control to automated systems. I'm currently trying to get an integration bot[0] set up in my company and the pushback surprised me. But fundamentally, you can get something similar for deploys, ask for a deploy and it kicks off the checklist automatically, mailing people and updating statuses on dashboards as needed.

And then you can even start collecting stats and charting time to deploy or amounts of rollbacks.

[0] by which I mean something similar to the Rust project's "bors": when changes are proposed, the bot requires validation by a "core developer" (who may be able to self-validate, it's only software so the validation process for a change are flexible), runs the linter, runs the tests, sends the changes to functional testing for validation[1], and merges the changes to "mainline". Humans only get involved where they make sense and _can not_ be automated away: proposing and reviewing (technically and functionally) the changes.

[1] optional, and requires a significant functional validation/testing team, but definitely possible

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Absolute hero. The NHS tried their hardest to be as negligent as possible with my wife. It's almost a copycat situation to be honest but she was lucky. Three days on ICU and the surgery failed, plus she had an internal bleed where they did a "stupidly bad job" according to our current surgical reg. The surgeons were show-boating in this case.

She's been through 4 years of shit getting a diagnosis to start with thanks to several GPs being disinterested or just incompetent, now a year of immobility after a fucked up surgery and now faces at least 2 years of recovery and rehabilitation.

When it's over we're rolling out the legal eagles but based on past experience I expect to have to do a few weeks of forensics first and possibly get a court order to hand medical records over. Historically we've requested them and they've either been too expensive to prepare (ha) or completely disappeared. It's like chasing cockroaches with a torch.

And this is a minor surgical issue (hernia).

<comment><USER7> _Absolute hero. The NHS tried their hardest to be as negligent as possible with my wife._

I'm sorry that your wife had poor care - nobody should have to go through that.

But isn't the approach you've described exactly what we want to avoid in a healthcare system? Blame is almost poisonous in its ability to encourage people to cover up the truth, "misplace" documents, make excuses, and so on - this often actively hinders improvement.

Applying the principles of air accident investigation to the NHS is absolutely something I applaud, because the focus _should_ be on why accidents happen, and how they can be prevented — not on who is responsible for them, outside of the most egregious cases of professional failure. Most medical professionals are competent and skilled, and really try rather hard to avoid causing harm to their patients. But mistakes and accidents will always happen regardless of this.

I'm actually very surprised that such a system isn't already in place in the UK. We've already got an independent body which investigates rail accidents, for example - the RAIB looks into all major irregularities or failures on the UK rail network, and rather than finding fault, identifies root causes for failures. That often includes things like the design of systems to reduce the possibility of human error, or even such things as shift patterns which risk causing sleep deprivation. They then issue recommendations for improvement to different bodies as required, and I think they have some legal clout to follow up if they're not implemented.

It seems like a system similar to that would be effective applied to the NHS, but I'm _very_ cautious of heading down the same litigious route as the US.

<comment><USER8> "Most medical professionals are competent and skilled, and really try rather hard to avoid causing harm to their patients. But mistakes and accidents will always happen regardless of this."

I don't know if I believe this. I have found many medical professionals (not all of course) to be arrogant and cocky and even if you pointed directly to the cause of the problem, would most likely not think that those rules apply to them.

"not on who is responsible for them"

Mistakes happen because of people. If there isn't some sort of punishment or blame, the majority of people will just continue on with what they are doing (and the mistakes will continue to happen).

We need to blame people, so they change their behavior and have less accidents in the future. We also need to know why it happened.

"Blame is almost poisonous in its ability to encourage people to cover up the truth"

If someone covers up the truth, they should be fired immediately. I honestly don't want someone like this working anywhere near the medical field..and neither should you.

Children cover up their mistakes and lie..adults own up to their problems and admit when they made a mistake.

Also, the reason pilots have less mistakes is because a computer pretty much does 99% of the work. This is not the case with surgery and medicine. Humans still do most of the work.

<comment><USER9> Mistakes happen because of people's errors, not 'because of people'. To blame a person, rather than their actions, is to alienate them.

You want everyone on your team to be focused on quality outcomes, not on avoiding blame.

<comment><USER6> The NHS currently runs on avoiding blame which is the problem.

When someone is made accountable and the first thing they do is establish a process to avoid blame then you need to ask the question: do these people have my best interests at heart or are they avoiding being accountable?

On many occasions the outcome is to avoid a breach rather than to fix a problem.

<comment><USER10> The NHS also runs on overworking its employees and assuming they will still be effective at the end of a 20 hour shift with no sleep. If anyone making a completely understandable mistake due to the terrible conditions they have to work in is blamed and fired for it, would that really help? I think it's understandable for people to cover their own ass if they are expected to be infallible even under poor conditions - everyone else is doing it, if you don't the only difference it makes to the NHS is that it's down one employee. This is just one way of many possible ways that what might first appear to be a single human failing is down to a larger institutional problem.

<comment><USER6> No they don't. That's the nursing unions and the press talking. It's total bollocks.

The decision makers and the senior staff have considerably smaller shifts. With respect to the surgical and anaesthesiologist staffing, most of them (80%+) are contracted out and are private staff working on contract to the NHS now. A surgeon for example will probably spend two days a week on NHS cases, one day being surgical and the other being consultant and that's all you see of them. The remainder of the time is lucrative private care and occasionally teaching (which is well paid as well).

There are a few exceptions to this i.e. StR's and consultants who seem to migrate into a speciality then leave after a few years. They all take the extra shifts because they're paid for the privilege of up to a 50% bonus. They're overworked because they're chasing the cash.

The REAL overworked staff are mainly the support staff i.e nursing, supply, logistics. Most of them are contracted out now as well in the larger PCTs.

Even with all that, no one should be allowed to cover their arses as it turns into a vicious circle of unaccountability. It's a poor excuse which must not be allowed to continue in the profession (or ANY profession to be honest).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wrote about this a few months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7655018)

The top comment there starts like this:

        What I object to here is the core principle that
        there's something to fix in software development
        terms here.

This is something I feel strongly about, and yet I don't seem to be able to get existing software practitioners to take it seriously. They're happy that everyone else needs it, but convinced that software doesn't.

A bit like many of the doctors.

<comment><USER12> The core difference is that programmers do new things every time. Pilots can write checklists for things to do when they fly the plane, because landing and taking off is usually pretty similar wherever it may be. Doctors can do the same. Software is a bit more like engineering in that checklists are largely useless - it's not that we think we're infallible, it's just that we have no idea what should be on the checklists since we don't have standard procedures to write checklists for.

If you look at critical software development they're big on analysis and testing and those kinds of things. Not the same.

<comment><USER13> > The core difference is that programmers do new things every time.

Boy, it's just as well human biology is so perfectly deteministic and well- understood it can be trivially mapped out, unlike the vastly more complicated field of software development.

<comment><USER12> You've been watching too much House MD. Most operations are pretty standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> See also: Atul Garande's books on medical practice in the US: [http://atulgawande.com/books/](http://atulgawande.com/books/) including "The Checklist Manifesto".

You can have the best people in the world, but without a safety culture that abstains from blame and works to eliminate sources of error over time, your hospital will kill people that didn't have to die.

<comment><USER15> Yes, checklists do seem important, but keep in mind the counterpoint data (new from just this year): [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1308261](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1308261)

Now, I've seen studies with positive results and neutral results from checklists, but never one with a negative (harmful) result, so on balance the checklist approach seems useful or at least not harmful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I started work as a doctor at the start of this year we watched a training video on this exact case narrated by the husband. The parallels between airline and medicine are very interesting and we would do well to incorporate the hard-won lessons of airline care.

I think the major issue medicine lags here is that airline disasters are highly visible and airlines and pilots are forced to respond, whereas medical disasters are usually seen as 'one off' so even with root cause analysis of failures, injuries sustained by 1 patient periodically do not become as visible; systemic failures are harder to identify

</comment><comment><USER17> Atul Gawande's book, Checklist Manifesto, is an excellent source on the topic at hand. Surprisingly the author of statesman article didn't mention it at all. This article from New Yorker that was probably the inspiration for his book is worth reading. Interestingly, it draws analogy from the perils of not having a checklist in flying airplanes too

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all)

</comment><comment><USER18> If you find this interesting, check out the Design for Patient Safety Handbook - [http://www-edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/medical/downloads/report.pdf](http://www- edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/medical/downloads/report.pdf)

Its the result of a multi-institution look at applying design thinking to healthcare, in the context of patient safety and risk management. In my opinion its quite well put together and has great graphics.

</comment><comment><USER19> Stanford did some research on using large screen displays and google glass to increase safety in medicine, using smart adaptive checklists and good UI design:

[http://hci.stanford.edu/research/icogaid/](http://hci.stanford.edu/research/icogaid/)

This might also be interesting for creators of user interfaces for rapid decision making under stress.

<comment><USER20> Really interesting paper, thanks for posting

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really, really enjoyed this article, which is something I don't say too often. I spent about an hour talking over this with my girlfriend last night. Her father is also a pilot, and we were discussing the difference in methodology between both of our professions (programmer and researcher, respectively), piloting, and surgery.

I'm mostly intrigued that someone who has no background in medicine was able to cut through some bureaucracy and effect major change. It's tragic that something like this had to happen in order for someone to do that, but it makes me wonder how many other tragedies have to happen before something like this changes.

This guy experienced a tragedy. Afterward, he insisted upon an investigation. When he received the results, he saw a very fixable flaw in the NHS, assembled experts on that issue, and managed to kickstart a revolution within the system to address the very fixable flaws that he and his experts had identified.

The Flight 173 case is another example of this. A tragedy happens, experts are assembled, and very fixable flaws are, well, fixed.

Contrast that with other tragedies that occur monthly (if not more often) in America. Mass shootings in Aurora, Santa Barbara, Fort Hood. Investigations occur, and maybe experts are assembled, but nothing changes. What's up with that?

Then we have the other side of the coin. Take 9/11, for example. Investigations were done, experts were assembled, and changes were made. Have they helped? Probably not as much as we'd like.

I'm not really sure what the takeaway is, but I'm very interested in seeing if we can really, truly prevent some of these tragedies from happening with a little foresight, a little communication, and a global recognition that things need to change for the greater good.

</comment><comment><USER22> The next step should be to make this systematic like in the aviation industry. Build a database, and make it compulsory to register all incidents and accidents. Use that data to update procedures and checklists. Hope he succeeds. NHS researcher here.

</comment><comment><USER23> Also read about how using checklists to reduce simpler errors reduced infection rates at major hospitals.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pronovost

Pronovost's "work has already saved more lives than that of any laboratory scientist in the past decade" according to this article in the _New Yorker_

The article also mentions the airline industry - specifically the the use of checklists to reduce pilot errors in the new complex bombers of WWII.

A great read: [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?printable=true&currentPage=all)

It has also been discussed here on HN.

</comment><comment><USER24> UK's healthcare system has real serious issues, sorry but the Victorian era is over, stop underrating all the protocols, procedures and recommendations from your American and European counterparts.

And don't say it's because UK population has different needs, one example, two hospitals at London same medical specialty, they recommend different medication doses for exactly the same treatment in their protocols.

No specialty chiefs, no teams, no supervisors, only solo consultants.

<comment><USER25> From what I've heard the fact that every single hospital insisted that it's requirements were special and that they could never standardize was one of the contributing factors in the great NHS systems disaster.

Of course, the other part was the the consultants doing the analysis were quite happy to work with this complexity as it meant more billable time for them - they had no incentives to make anything simpler.

NB I'm not implying that medics should be forced to standardize when it isn't relevant - getting the right level of standardization of processes is why implementing these kinds of systems is so difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is a similar movement in the USA to apply the practices of high- reliability industries to medicine to reduce error:

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/thewrongstuff/2010/06/28/risky_bu...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/thewrongstuff/2010/06/28/risky_business_james_bagian_nasa_astronaut_turned_patient_safety_expert_on_being_wrong.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> The ironic thing is that if that guy wasn't a pilot (high in the hierarchy) nobody wold have bother listening to him.

</comment><comment><USER28> This stuff is gaining some traction in the UK. There's a textbook available, and plenty of courses.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Factors-Healthcare-Level- One/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Factors-Healthcare-Level- One/dp/0199670609/)

</comment><comment><USER29> This guy is a hero. Can we kickstart having him come here to the US?</comment>


Everpix is Shutting Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.everpix.com/landing.html#adieu <comment><USER2> I'm a little ashamed to say that this is the first time the shutting down of a service almost brings me to tears. A couple months ago, burglars entered my house and stoled --among other valuable stuff-- our laptops (wife's and mine) our cameras and with them a lot of pictures from our first year married. While I was able to recover some from iCloud and Dropbox and instagram, my wife was crying hopelessly for the lost of her photos.

The truth is, handling photos and backups is hard and time consuming. I was so happy when I started using Everpix just last month. I was so sure that I will never have to worry about backups and storage and that my photos would be always safe. Naive, I know, but I wanted to believe.

Have they charged me $20 a month, I would have been more than happy to pay.

<comment><USER3> Truth is, there aren't as many people like you and me who would pay $20 a month to Everpix. So many people are just not worried about their data until something bad happens to them.

I kept telling every single friend every time I see them post data loss grief status update on Facebook - use Dropbox, use CrashPlan, use iCloud, etc etc. And yet it seems like they either think that their data is not worth $5 a month, or that once accident happens to them it can't happen for the second time.

What the world really needs is an education of how important it is to backup our data.

<comment><USER4> Right, people only value their data once it's gone. Here's an idea: free and seamless backing up of your data, but if you want to access it in the case of loss, you pay through the nose.

<comment><USER5> Ha, that is an excellent idea :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additional reporting about why they're shutting down: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life- and-d...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-death- inside-the-worlds-best-photo-startup)

</comment><comment><USER6> Eventually "growth hacking" is going to be replaced by "sustainable business plan hacking".

<comment><USER7> Tt doesn't sound like that was the issue here. They had a functional business model, as they have specifically said that their user revenues outpaced their customer acquisition and service costs. They had positive customer lifetime value. The issue was that they couldn't acquire enough customers to pay their overhead.

It's actually a case where "growth hacking" would have been good for them because they needed more users to justify their fixed costs.

<comment><USER8> > _It 's actually a case where "growth hacking" would have been good for them > because they needed more users to justify their fixed costs._

Here's the current crux of the startup world cost structure - it's not variable based on business solution, but rather technical solution - and this is problematic. Here's the general group-thought - the more money we put into a company the quicker it can sustain growth.

Let's say (none of this following data is accurate, just giving an example) it costs $20k to run the servers for Pinterest (which can make $5 per user on advertising) and it costs the same $20k to run Everpix (which is a freemium service, that makes on average $1.50 per user). As long as profit margins are sustainable both companies can survive. The problem is, no tech startup today I know of really assesses their cost structure today because "its cheap". We get the "scale as we grow" cost structures of providers and just assume that economies of scale mean that the more users we get the cheaper it gets. However, it's often is the case that the things that don't scale (humans and human costs) are not entirely sustainable and nearly as predictable.

Very generally speaking, I believe this means a few things:

1) One business model will tend to outweigh others (today this is advertising)

2) Shovel sellers are the more sustainable winners here.[1]

3) I think we'll slowly start to see a re-shift to offshore development as the ecosystem of "get code out the door technologies" (Rails, Node, PaaS-plays, etc) become much more mature in other markets (as it happened during the first .com burst).

One of my favorite Drucker quotes resonates well:

 _" For the problem of any business is not the maximization of profit but the achievement of sufficient profit to cover the risks of economic activity and thus to avoid loss."_

[1]-[http://startupsunplugged.com/startup-data/selling-shovels- in...](http://startupsunplugged.com/startup-data/selling-shovels-in-the-new- gold-rush/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've never used Everpix ... though I considered signing up a while back due to the critical acclaim they seemed to have achieved. But I've given up hosting my photos with paid services. The best alternative I've found is Koken. It is free software you host yourself, and provides great interface to manage, publish, and share your photos. Additionally, they have plugins from Lightroom to publish directly from your desktop to your host. I'm certain it lacks many of the algorithmic and aggregating features Everpix offered ... but for organizing my collection, and sharing it in a place I know won't decide to go out of business, it's worked well for me.

[http://koken.me/](http://koken.me/)

<comment> alok-g I cannot believe this is free! The website puts this right too: "Free download. Seriously."

Only thing I cannot figure from their website is how to upload pictures and albums in bulk. Does someone know if this is possible?

<comment><AUTHOR> The interface provides a drag-and-drop way to upload images, or if you're a Lightroom user - you can publish with the plugin directly from Lightroom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Everpix was one of the best $5/month I spent. I would have been willing to spend far more for their services. I wish they would have tried to bump the price up to save the service. Having one place for all my photos made me exceptionally happy. Even my wife absolutely loved Everpix.

I guess I need to find an alternative... what are they?

<comment><USER10> [https://www.dropbox.com/features/photos](https://www.dropbox.com/features/photos)

[https://trovebox.com/](https://trovebox.com/)

[https://loom.com/](https://loom.com/)

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

and of course, [http://www.flickr.com/](http://www.flickr.com/)

<comment><USER9> One of the key features of Everpix was the "set and forget" capability. Also their dupe-detection was really good.

Do any of those do that? I guess Dropbox is the most established... I'd hate to be in this same situation in a year from now with Loom...

<comment><USER11> The problem with Dropbox is that photos are eating space on my local hard drive, unless I manually manage them. Everpix was perfect from the syncing perspective. Sharing could have been improved and I think they should have put more effort to private sharing experience and that would have helped with growth too.

<comment><USER12> You can selectively unsync particular folders in your Dropbox Advanced Preferences; that's what I do with my Camera Uploads folder.

<comment><USER13> That still presents the problem of frequent uploads: you have to sync a folder on your hard drive, and then follow up with unsync when it gets too large, and then set up a new folder for the next batch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazon Glacier seems applicable at this point: around $1000/mo to archive the entire Everpix collection, then work out (cheap) pricing for people to retrieve their photos. Just a thought, pursuant to not losing everything outright.

<comment><USER15> Might not be a bad idea considering the user presumably still has their pictures on disk when they want to browse the whole collection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't help but think that their reliance on (very expensive) Amazon Web Services played a part in their collapse. It looks like they also failed to grow enough, but it should have been possible to sustain a paying service.

<comment><USER17> If you look at the figures in this verge article it looks like the S3 costs were almost immaterial.

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life- and-d...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5039216/everpix-life-and-death- inside-the-worlds-best-photo-startup#paragraph31)

<comment><USER18> That's right. AWS infrastructures costs were already being covered by subscription income. We also had prototypes ready to flesh out to reduce per- user costs as we scale up, but were not at that point yet.

<comment><USER19> If the only problem was scale... how is it even possible that a VC didn't invest? You had a proven product, fanatically loyal customers (including myself), and unbelievable growth potential. Everpix is a textbook case for venture capital.

Even more amazing to me is why someone like Apple didn't purchase Everpix. They're in desperate need of competent web services, and god knows they have the cash. Of all possible futures for Everpix, I could never have seen outright shuttering as a possibility.

<comment><USER18> There's two levels to the scale problem: (a) sufficient scale for a successful small business, and (b) sufficient scale to repay a whole VC fund, with interest. VCs agreed that (a) was achievable, but they really need (b) and didn't see that with us.

Tools for private photo collections are important, but don't have the same sort of explosive viral growth curve of, say, a public social network. Even private social networks have a more difficult time scaling up quickly compared to the more open but less privacy-respecting alternatives.

<comment><USER19> Even so, Everpix is a tool that literally everyone needs -- organization, deduplication, backup, and daily refreshers of all your photos. I was contemplating buying a subscription for my elderly mother, since she has no idea where her pictures are or how to access them. To say nothing of the rest of my social network.

Maybe I'm still in mourning, but if I ran a VC fund, Everpix seems like a sure investment. You certainly had much more potential for growth -- and steady revenue -- than another Instagram clone or internet radio service. And once your growth eclipsed your fixed costs (which could have been reduced further by running your own servers when you reached an appropriate size), you'd be consistently profitable. And since Everpix provided such a valuable service, your customers would advertise on your behalf.

However, even I discovered Everpix only a few weeks ago, just before The Verge published a write-up about cloud photo backups -- and crowned Everpix the winner. You were just reaching a critical mass of followers... I can't help but think Everpix would have been a wild success if it stuck around for just another year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Users of this service may want to consider setting up an installation of Trovebox (formerly OpenPhoto). You can grab the sources from [https://github.com/photo](https://github.com/photo) and host it yourself, or sign up for a paid hosted account at [https://trovebox.com/](https://trovebox.com/).

<comment><USER21> Looks like the TroveBox hosted service has increase price dramatically, and going for a more professional market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> As someone who had 10,000+ photos in the service and was recommending Everpix to everyone I'm pretty sad. Really was set and forget software, used it regularly to dig out photos and share with others. Super sad that it's going away, hopefully I can find another service which is half as good

</comment><comment><USER23> Until a company sets up a separate trust designed specificially for handling ongoing long-term operations it's never going to be reasonable to trust a company will continue to host your content for any reasonable amount of time.

It also strikes me as ... odd? I guess that we have these examples of companies declaiming they will be around "forever", they even put it in their name, and yet only surviving for about 27 months. It reminds me of teenagers in "love".

It'll be nice when, if ever, the industry matures out of this state.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's a wild thought: open source the client apps, so maybe it can be rewritten to work with Flickr or any other service. That way it keeps the 'set it and forget it' alive. Because right now I can't think of a tool that does the same so smoothly for Flickr.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you were an Everpix fan I would love to hear from you, our startup Pivotal ([http://pivotal.ws](http://pivotal.ws)) is doing something very similar and we would love to hear what you liked and didnt like about Everpix and how you would make it better.

<comment><USER2> I liked everything about Everpix, except that they didn't charge enough to keep the lights on. Please don't make the same mistake. I'd want to trust you.

<comment><USER25> We are looking at 9.95, 19.95 and 35.95 a month based on storage levels and other benefits.

The 'other' benefits is something that sets us apart, with our service you get to choose some photos each month and we will mail 3x5 copies to you (or you can have them sent to someone else like parents or grandparents), monthly merchandising deals like 75% off a photo book or calendar.

<comment><USER26> PictureLife manages pricing based on storage. One of the things I liked about Everpix was that it was $5/mo no limits (AFAIK). If you can figure out a no limit pricing that would be great, it doesn't have to be $5/mo.

I am also a Flickr Pro member. I always thought Flickr+Everpix was a great combination. You can always create a set of apps (desktop/mobile) and have users connect with Flickr accounts to store the pictures. I won't mind paying one time $50-100 for a good Flickr uploader that works more like Everpix.

<comment><USER27> It seems to me that "no limits" scales when you can expect people to average out their usage. But when people just _accumulate_ usage I'd suspect that it becomes harder to sustain. There has to come a known point where a user is costing more than they're paying - and when every active user is bound to reach that point sooner or later, I can't see it could be sustained.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sigh, I really liked Everpix. I was just about to move some of my older data into the cloud and "go full in". This is really sad to hear. You guys build a great product, sad to see it go.

Edit: I purchased the yearly $40 plan and would definitely have continued paying / using.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think we have deeper issue here: Users expect services to be cheap (because it's internet) and founders give them it using investors money. After they use all money they just shut down. Everpix is only another example.

</comment><comment><USER30> Just signed up less than 12 hours ago. Cool.

<comment><USER31> Same here. The last of my 50,000+ photos just finished uploading. Just my luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I really liked Everpix as a "fire and forget" method for backing up my photos. It's a shame they're shutting down.

As an alternative I'll probably switch to Dropbox, who have been improving their 'photo upload' features, one of which is the ability to automatically upload from iPhoto (similar to how Everpix did it).

One of my favourite features in Everpix was the "1 year ago today" emails they sent, which picked a few random photos from a year ago and dropped them in my inbox. That was a really nice touch.

<comment><USER33> It was a 'this day in history' — not only was it one year ago, it was any photo taken on that day. Which was even more awesome. I have 15 year old photos in my library. It was really cool to slowly relive long-passed vacations and trips that way. Very sad to see them go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Surprised Yahoo didn't buy them

</comment><comment><USER35> I tried them for about 3 months, was not a bad service. I had some issues with the methods in which they allowed for navigation of photos and how easy (or hard) it was to find a specific photo in a large collection. I ended up going back to Flickr. That being said, the display UI was great and I had hoped to see them pressuring other sites in the same space. Good luck to the team in whatever they decide to work on next.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is sad. Everpix was a fantastic solution to a common problem, so it's unfortunate that even with such good execution, they couldn't go anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER37> I really liked Everpix and was a paying customer. A real shame. I appreciate that they're giving refunds.

I used it as my photo library in the cloud. I have far too many photos to put on my phone, but it was nice to be able to look them up to show people when I'm out. Not sure what to use now! Flickr? To be honest, there isn't another service I trust to keep my photos private, and that's what Everpix was billed as.

</comment><comment><USER38> Next someone complains (again!) about an aquihire on HN, and how it means the company is shutting down I'll just point at this as the alternative.

</comment><comment><USER39> I never use their service but I have been following them. It's sad to see them go as I think they have a good product.

From the comments, there seems to be a consensus on not charging enough. It'd be interesting to hear from the team why they didn't try charging more or even going thru the crowd funding route.

</comment><comment><USER40> As someone who has been working on sort of a competitor...this makes me sad. Everpix was a great tool, such a great tool that it helped push my company in a different direction. I would've been very proud to build what they did.

<comment><USER25> Building a competitor as well ([http://pivotal.ws](http://pivotal.ws))

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> While it isnt photo specific, backblaze is an awesome way to backup everything, and have a simple and quick interface for restoring your data. You can even buy hard drives with all your data on it from them, pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER42> December 15th, 2013 seems like a too little time. A two month vacation might mean that someone loses all of his photos, even though one of the main points of this kind of service is backup of photos.

<comment><USER43> This is usually how running out of money works. If they had 6 months runway they wouldn't shut down the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Very disappointing. I've been promoting Everpix to my friends and family, and had paid for an annual plan myself.

Will need to hunt down a new alternative.

</comment><comment><USER45> Well thats disappointing. This looks like the service I've been looking for for all these years.

</comment><comment><USER46> Very sad news to hear. Best of luck to everyone on the team.

</comment><comment><USER47> just started using them, the platform was actually really interesting and well developed. sad to see them go...

</comment><comment><USER48> really sad. They messed up on a lot of aspects but build a great product.

</comment><comment><USER49> [https://www.thislife.com/](https://www.thislife.com/)

Pricing is here: [https://www.thislife.com/pricing](https://www.thislife.com/pricing)

Disclosure: I work at SFLY

<comment><USER50> For clarity, raghus' disclosure was about working for Shutterfly, who acquired ThisLife earlier in 2013.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This sounds cruel, but Everpix was effectively operating as a Ponzi scheme. They offered services (photo storage) that they couldn't afford unless new money came in. Then the money stopped.

<comment><USER52> Actually, Everpix was making around $40K / month from subscription revenue covering the infrastructure costs for both free and paid users with some margin. The problem is (obviously) having enough to cover fixed costs as well i.e. mostly personnel costs.

<comment><USER53> The personnel costs of a 7 person startup really jumped out at me. Am I the only one that was surprised?

<comment><USER54> No, I thought the personnel costs / salaries was bonkers too.

EDIT: I read some of the comments on the Verge's page and it seems that the salaries were over a few years, and apparently that isn't bonkers money! I must be out of touch.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: If you can have only one pain in your life solved, what would that be? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Lack of willpower/inability to build good habits.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Although physical pain is an acceptable answer, im interested in all types of pain points

</comment><comment><USER3> Having to work for a living. Though I suppose you want realistic requests?

</comment><comment><USER4> 2 hour daily commute >_>

</comment><comment><USER5> Back pain :(

<comment><USER6> I would look into Electronic Muscle Simulators. Just search Amazon. There are dozens of units.

<comment><USER5> Looks like those things that are advertised on marketing channels to get abs while sitting on a couch:

[https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/143-0074589-0085364?...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/143-0074589-0085364?url=search- alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Electronic+Muscle+Simulators)

How are they helpful?</comment></comment></comment>


You no longer can sign on to Namecheap while using VPN (Private Internet Access) - <AUTHOR> I was last in Namecheap in December.  I've had a PIA account for years, for public cafes and such, and after Comcast started e.g. injecting Javascript, I started using it at home as well.  Today, Namecheap's sign on flow took my credentials and then presented me with a Recaptcha.  After checking "I'm not a robot", I received a page telling me my credentials were invalid.  Worried, I did a password reset, apparently successfully.  But then got the same flow.  Namecheap support informs me they now block VPN connections.
I've been concerned for some time that the Internet is becoming differentiated.  This appears to be one more sign of it.  Let my ISP snoop on and potentially interfere with my connection, or forego doing business.  I fear this will only continue to grow worse.
I'm also concerned for Namecheap.  Why block this?  And the flow was atrocious and uninformative.  Also new since December:  Once in, www.namecheap.com now redirects to ap.www.namecheap.com that uses a separate certificate from a different root, that uses the obsolete combination of RSA and HMAC-SHA1.
I've liked Namecheap, but I'm not finding this combination of changes acceptable.  And I don't like the broader implications, perhaps an encroachment of some form of "true name" prerequisite for TCP/IP level Internet connectivity. <comment><AUTHOR> I kept the OP brief -- I seem to recall a size limit for them. And also, for the sake of the reader.

A bit more: The dashboard and domain list pages were under this ap.www.namecheap.com subdomain (new to me) with its cert from GeoTrust having the obsolete configuration -- www.namecheap.com uses one from COMODO that has more current settings. But the shopping cart and checkout pages are still under www.namecheap.com .

And, I've been having more and more problems with sites rejecting access while I'm using a PIA connection. First came the blockage from Netflix and Amazon streaming video. Then, archive.is and some others. Now Namecheap? Is Amazon next?

I'm not hiding anything in particular. But I don't want Comcast monitoring and selling my connectivity, nor feeling free to inject Javascript into it whenever it likes.

I guess it's time to set up my own VPN on some hopefully untainted IP address. But more generally, are we slowly being pushed to use our / our ISP's addressing? "True name" addressing, one site at a time?

Feels more and more like the Internet is falling under corporate and government control. Not just the snooping, but active control.

Call me paranoid.

P.S. Encountering the combination of these changes, all at once, caused me considerable pause. Credential swiping? Fraudulent sub-domain passing through the main site while harvesting data?

Ultimately, after chatting with support a couple of times and weighing what I know and have seen in the past from Namecheap, I decided to proceed. Finding the checkout pages on the main domain was also a bit reassuring, and I used a credit card that I can monitor and cancel and chargeback if necessary.

Hopefully, Namecheap will clean this up.

They've generally received favorable comments and recommendations here on HN, for years. The basis of my posting this here.

</comment><comment><USER2> I agree that this is horrible. I also agree that I think it is a completely wrong course of action for those trying to protect their privacy from corporate and Commercial intrusion. But I don't know what to do about it.

What recourse do I have as an individual?

</comment><comment><USER3> They also only have SMS as a 2FA option, which is neither convenient nor secure. I've been a customer of theirs for a long time, but they do indeed make some poor decisions every now and again.

<comment><USER4> What do you consider a convenient way to protect yourself? A VPN on your laptop isn't going to help much if your laptop is compromised or stolen. 2FA would of course work though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> information === money

Also, PIA should allow paid accounts to add their own custom nodes and manage them via their convenient interface.

This would cause such a bummer for wanabe-trackers.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can sign into NC with a PIA VPN no problem.</comment>


IBM's Sequoia Is World's Fastest Supercomputer - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/info-management/240002268

<comment><USER2> The problem is of course that very few pieces of software beyond the benchmarks actually can scale to 1.6 million cores, so I wonder what the actual functional speed-up is for most research codes moving from the past generation to this generation of hardware, and what is the general lag time to bring a code online on a machine like Sequoia that can take full advantage of the tech.</comment>