The rise and decline of Subway, the world's biggest food chain - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/business/2015/05/31/the-rise-and-fall-of-subway-the-worlds-biggest-food-chain.html

<comment><USER2> It is illustrative to read through some of the franchisee message boards where Subway owners talk. From what I recall, the margins are incredibly low and profits hinge largely on "combo" chips and drinks deals.

Subway is getting hit high and low: high from fast casual, low from convenience stores which can add in sandwiches made on premises (small remodels, no rent or significant additional overhead, ability to leverage existing business infrastructure).

Minimum wage laws will sink a lot of these franchises soon. One immigrant- owned Subway in my area seems to be surviving only by stretching vacation visa laws with a rotating cast of visiting relatives working the line. It's no coincidence that it is in the same strip mall as a couple of nail salons.

<comment><USER3> > convenience stores which can add in sandwiches made on premises (small > remodels, no rent or significant additional overhead, ability to leverage > existing business infrastructure).

All the Subways around where I live are part of a gas station & convenience store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Imo Subway is losing because it's the world's slowest fast food. I do enjoy Subway, but (at least here in germany) you can't get it delivered, and the process of pondering and ordering and watching them slowly put it together is excruciating and pointless exercise in standing around and wasting time, especially when you've watched it 4 times already with the people in front of you.

<comment><USER5> Subway is a subpar sub shop at best, and it no longer really has the advantage of being pretty cheap (remember $5 footlongs? Not so much anymore).

This may be a Maine thing, as I haven't noticed it as much in other states, but I would much rather go to a mom & pop gas station/general store and order an Italian than go to Subway. It's superior in every way: faster, cheaper, better ingredients, more toppings. Of course it doesn't really scale...

<comment><USER6> I would certainly rather go to a Wawa than a Subway, though regrettably the closest Wawa to me is half an hour away. Luckily there is no shortage of independent sandwich shops near me, but sometimes I really just want the Wawa experience.

<comment><USER7> I actually think Wawa quality is about on par with Subway these days. First they started using pre-sliced meats, now they bake lower quality rolls in the store (they have a chewiness to them, much like Subway rolls). The only thing that's better is their ordering process and even that bottlenecks at the register. They should add payment processing directly to the touch screen terminals.

<comment><USER8> Another consequence of people caring more about how than what. They don't want good rolls; they want fresh rolls. "Made on site!"

<comment><USER9> Yes declarative sandwich-ordering is superior to the imperative variety. It certainly seems so when someone picky (or worse, someone on the phone with someone picky) is ahead of me in line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The truth is, Subway only do a few limited options and they do them rather poorly. It's still at the end of the day no matter what combinations you come up with (like meatballs) just a sandwich, one that seemingly takes forever to make and in my opinion is quite pricey for sub-par frozen ingredients full of preservatives.

Subway lacks innovation. For a chain that can operate inside of shipping containers suspended by crane on high-rise construction sites, they seem to lack the foresight to improve their lengthy process for making a sandwich. Every Subway store you go to seems to be understaffed which just adds to the wait time.

Here in Australia if you go to a McDonald's in a metropolitan area you're literally stepping into a restaurant. They take your order, they seat you and then bring out your food on a wooden board (chips come in a basket). Compare that to Subway, where you stand in line while you watch a student make your sandwich (sometimes in a hasty way) only for the end result to either be cold because they're understaffed or fall apart if you take it out of the wrapper.

I like Subway, but there are arguably much better sandwich shops out there. When I was in Seattle for work a few months ago, Jimmy Johns was my go to. They only do a few sandwiches, but they're really fast, cheap, customer service is great and their sandwiches taste really fresh (something you can't say about Subway).

<comment><USER11> >Here in Australia if you go to a McDonald's in a metropolitan area you're literally stepping into a restaurant. They take your order, they seat you and then bring out your food on a wooden board (chips come in a basket).

Pardon? In every single McDonalds I've been to here, you now place your order and get given a numbered ticket. You then loiter at the counter until your number comes up and you can collect it.

<comment><USER10> What part of Australia are you in? It's not all stores, but McDonald's have started turning their Australian stores into restaurants. Gone are the days of taking a number and waiting around for your grease stained paper bag. I am in Brisbane (Queensland) and a few of the McDonald's in my area have this "Create Your Taste" in which you can actually build your own burger and meals from a massive touch-screen if you like. The burger comes out on a wooden like chopping board and the chips in a basket, similar to how your food comes out somewhere like Grill'd. [https://mcdonalds.com.au/create-your- taste](https://mcdonalds.com.au/create-your-taste) \- this article on Lifehacker shows you what the new McDonald's is like now: [http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2014/10/taste-test-inside- mcdon...](http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2014/10/taste-test-inside-mcdonalds- futuristic-restaurant/) (Ignore the part about it only being available in a single store, there are a few of them around now.)

It's funny in the US McDonald's in particular is struggling as well as Subway and others in the face of upstarts like In-N-Out burger, but here in Australia McDonald's is innovating and becoming the benchmark for a new kind of McDonald's.

<comment><USER11> Brisbane, but I also speak for my experiences in Melbourne and Sydney in the last ~year, as well as smaller cities such as the Gold Coast, Mackay, Rockhampton, Albury and several others more recently than that (when I travel for work).

I cannot remember ever having a McD's employee bring me my meal when seated. For as long as I can remember (nearing a decade) it has been pick-up-over- counter, with the more recent addition of having a number on your receipt with a screen showing when your order is ready.

My local one has the Create Your Taste but I've not yet been to it. That only appeared in the last 1-2 months for me (Annerley). The fact that they're doing create your own was impressive enough to me but if they're now serving it to you at a table then that's pretty incredible. They've spent so much time nailing down their service times that I would have thought the staffing limitaions on running food out would be too high. I have to hand it to them for their efficiency.

edit: I've not yet been to one with the Create Your Taste thing, by the way. If the service at table is limited to those, then that explains it. But equally, I've only seen that at a couple of outlets too so I wouldn't exactly call it widespread here.

<comment><USER12> The only time I had my burger brought to my table was when I had wait for my burger to be made. This was in a Melbourne McD back in ~2009. I hope if McD increase the minimum wage if they are introducing table service as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Subway has a brand problem,most people no longer want the cheapest food around and those that do will go to food trucks or places more "authentic". Subway is now viewed as everything wrong with American food.

For one thing, it is insufficiently "artisanal" for today's consumers. If I was opening a sandwich shop, I would actually offer less options. I would offer a "curated" selection of sandwiches, changing daily/weekly, based on local ingredients. I'd charge 10-12 for a 6" inch sandwich.

<comment><USER14> If you ever decide to execute on Artisanal Sandwich Shop Inc, I highly encourage you to speak to someone with restaurant experience prior to doing so. It seems that everyone has the idea "I know, I'll just move up the price/quality curve from fast food." Chipotle succeeded at that... and they're not in very good company.

Briefly, the reality of fast food in America is that that they're sustained by poor people who use them for 10+ meals a week rather than by middle class people who use them for 1~2 meals per month. If you charge a multiple of the fast food pricepoint, you have to locate the store somewhere where you can get high traffic of well-heeled customers. That implies expensive real estate. A lot of stores get broken by it simply being impossible to sell enough $10 foozits to cover the rent necessary to sell a single $10 foozit.

Running a restaurant, QSR or otherwise, is by all accounts a brutal business to be in. I think the number usually quoted is 6% margins for the business owner -- i.e. if you sell $1 million in artisanal sandwiches in a year, you make $60k. You will be cutting a lot of bread yourself to earn that.

<comment><USER13> You are right, I have no idea of the economics and would probably fail quickly.

I wouldn't try to open it not where rich people live or work, but a marginal area that serves as a destination for after work drinks and the like where there is some sort of scene. Someplace like Red Hook in Brooklyn.

Maybe do cross promotion with other local artisans as well.

Really, I don't want to run a restaurant, I just want good sandwiches. I'll stick to supporting good sandwich shops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Subway's bread is awful, which pretty much kills the sandwich.

In my neck of the woods, there's a couple local chains that do subs right and dozens of local mom and pop stands. Subs are one of the harder things to screw up, yet Subway somehow manages to do it and then charges $6 for a tiny sub with soggy bread and flaccid vegetables.

<comment><USER16> Ditto, subway bread is horrible. Jimmy John's is much better.

<comment><USER17> In my experience, I have never gotten a sandwich I would consider bad at Subway. But I have always felt that I could get a better sub if I went to any other sub shop. A sub that I would consider good. Subway defines mediocrity.

Jimmy Johns is still the only sub place I've been to that I've felt was just as bad as Subway. Its almost an accomplishment, the subs taste totally different but equally as mediocre and a place I avoid if I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's interesting, I'd say that Subway were absolutely ahead of the game when it came to healthy eating - and made moves that chains like McDonalds haven't even matched yet.

Maybe that's the fate of all these chains - you innovate to get in front, then you go stale. I'm sure it'll happen to Chipotle eventually, too.

<comment><USER9> Innovation is part of it, but in the Subway example you see another phenomenon, which one could call "profit-taking" in analogy to the financial- media cliche. That is, a decade ago when Subway was in growth mode, they didn't want anything to prevent new franchisees from signing up. They kept their fees and ingredient prices low, and the low prices were passed on to the customer. The parent company probably didn't worry about profit during that time. Now they feel like they have enough franchises, and it's time to make some money. When prices are raised, the parent company makes more money, even though the franchisees probably make less, because they get a similar percentage on lower volume. Franchisees make up for that by getting really cheap, especially on labor. Because people are creatures of habit, there are still customers, even now that the same crappy sandwich that used to be $3.50 is now twice that.

Eventually Subway will be like Arby's (maybe KFC is like this now as well): such a bad deal for so long that no one goes there anymore. Perhaps like McD's, Taco Bell, etc. have in the past they'll be able to get investors interested in supporting a cycle of lower costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I walk down an alleyway next to a Subway every day on my way to work and all I can smell is some sour/yeasty/herby concoction that doesn't inspire me to want to go in. I think I've been in a Subway shop about 3 times in my 49-year life.

<comment><USER20> I worked at a Subway while in high school, and I agree the smell is not very inviting. Even the dough, once thawed, has a strange odor to it, though the biggest cause of that funky odor you smell is the bread proofer located beneath the oven. It circulates warm moist air around the bread to help it rise. The thing is, it's not cleaned regularly (at least it wasn't at three different stores I worked in), and when left unchecked mold forms on the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like Subway because it seems healthier than McD's, et al. and it's predictable (like McD's).

But lately there's a certain price point which they seem to have exceeded that's sending me back to drive thrus.

</comment><comment><USER22> I really liked Subway back in my college days in the 90s. What I don't like for the past decade is that I found I'm somewhat sensitive to gluten and have cut any unnecessary sandwiches from my diet.

Ostensibly, Chipotle (and even Taco Bell) can offer me a meal that's relatively gluten free (and even low on carbs for the carb-conscious).

I wonder if the Atkins anti-yeast anti-carb and simultaneous gluten free awareness efforts are impacting the chain?

Is Panera Bread doing well, while Subway isn't? Why?

I know they did have some ok-tasting atkins-compliant wraps a while back, but not sure anymore.

<comment><USER23> What is your reaction to gluten? What happens?

<comment><USER22> Fairly allergic, skin breakouts and general nausea, some congestion. Allergy tabs help me cope if I have no choice.

Got a friend with nuts/eggs allergy and it's the same - we shared notes that cetirizine is quite effective for both of us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One of the bad things about Subway is it is very slow. I have been in lineups at Subway of probably only 4 people and it can be at least 10mins before you get your food. Thats a life time in a "fast food restaurant". If it's busy during lunch...forget it. Also it isn't that cheap if you get a footlong + drink combo.

Also with more health conscious people these days and popular diets such as keto and paleo subway isn't that healthy. Your meal is basically 50% (or more) bread.

</comment><comment><USER25> Subway used to be a go-to option for me when I was craving a sandwich. Now, I'd only go there if there was no other option.

Far superior options, IMO:

* Publix deli subs * Jimmy Johns * Firehouse * Wawa

<comment><USER26> Florida area?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What is going on with that web page? The browser gives some security warnings and only the headings load. Is this another shining example of modern web excrement where we are required to let things run rampant in the browser just to view an article?

<comment><USER19> Did anyone else get a few seconds of autoplay sound/advert?

Something fired up on my tablet (Boat Browser on a rooted Samsung running adaway), but before I could investigate it stopped again.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you put your Git repositories in Dropbox? - <AUTHOR>

I like that I have a backup of things I'm not ready to commit yet and also being able to switch between desktop / laptop and continuing where I left off.
However, lately I've seen some weird Dropbox conflicts with Git's index.
Is storing your repos in Dropbox a good or bad idea? <comment><USER2> What kind of weird conflicts? My GitRepos are in my My Documents folder and that folder is backed up to Dropbox. But I haven't synced the git folder to my laptop yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the .git folder, I have multiple of these files:

        FETCH_HEAD
        FETCH_HEAD (mba's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (1))
        FETCH_HEAD (mba's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (2))
        FETCH_HEAD (mba's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (3))
        FETCH_HEAD (mba's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (4))
        index
        index (mba's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (1))
        index (mba's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (2))
        index (osyMac's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (2))
        index (osyMac's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (3))
        index (osyMac's conflicted copy 2012-05-30 (4))

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I was running into that as well. I have quite a few machines hooked up to it so it becomes a real pain.

I just started using a private github repo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tend to store all my repositories in Dropbox, but not in shared folders. That way, my work is synced to all devices and I avoid weird file conflicts.</comment>


How Hacker News hit us with 10 000 unique visitors in 10 hours - <AUTHOR> http://whoapi.com/blog/554/how-hacker-news-hit-us-with-10-000-unique-visitors-in-10-hours/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised it wasn't higher. I got 15,000 uniques in a day and my link (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1940129>) only had 36 upvotes.

I guess there isn't a direct relationship between links people find voteworthy and those they just want to visit.

<comment><USER3> I had around 1,800 uniques over 3 hours in 2011 - posted some stats (browsers, OS, geo) here: <http://willgrant.org/hn-traffic-stats-summary/>

<comment><USER4> I made a similar analysis over a longer period of time with a larger sample basis. <http://thenextcorner.net/hn-users/>

Always interesting to see what systems, browsers HN users work on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, but no new customers, no signups. Are HN viewers not the signing- up type? The article was of interest but I guess their site isn't as targeted to HN - thus no signups, makes sense.

What to take away? I hope it isn't "game Hacker News to get hits".

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not watch a video on how it looks like during a 2-min span during the first hour of being on top of Hackernews!

[http://brajeshwar.com/2011/how-is-it-like-during-the- first-h...](http://brajeshwar.com/2011/how-is-it-like-during-the-first-hour- when-your-site-is-on-top-of-hackernews/)

<comment><USER7> Great choice of music on the video!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> that's so true, once my article got 500 unique visitors by only being on the frontpage for 5 minutes :D 500 unique visitors in 5 minutes + new visitors keep coming because it was still there in rss feeds and there is a huge community following hackernews via rss feeds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, plus the article gets quoted and reposted on other portals, it gets retweeted and everything. Its just a crazy ride. Even this article is trending, I am wondering what the results will be this time :D

<comment><USER9> Stop with the wide-eyed admiration of a someone (pg) who wishes nothing more than to take a portion of your win.

Grow up and recognize the wider world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Congrats! The hard part is to retain a couple of those new readers though :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Times certainly have changed. About 5 years back I got frontpages on Digg/Reddit for an article and easily saw 250K on the first day, maybe 750K before my server crapped itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> WoW, thats awesome! Pics or it didn't happen :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was shocked with Wordpress handling such a traffic without any noticable server load change on an average server.

<comment><USER13> 10,000 uniques in 10 hours is only 1 unique per 3.6 seconds. It'd be more shocking if it did cause noticeable load.

<comment><USER12> Most of it was within the first two hours :) yeah, I didn't do the math :)

<comment><USER14> People generally seriously underestimate the power of modern hardware. Suppose you have 100 million requests in a month. That's a small country of people accessing your website, so that will require a large bunch of big iron, right? No. A single commodity PC box can easily handle that. 100 million requests per month is just under 40 requests per second. Say your peak is around 100 requests per second. If your site is amenable to caching you can probably handle that load on a single core. Even if your site can't be effectively cached, for $5000 you can buy a terabyte of RAM these days, which can probably hold the hot parts of your database (for comparison: compressed current- revision-only of Wikipedia is under 8GB). Of course you need expensive hardware to be able to put that much RAM in, but then again you probably don't need anything close to a terabyte.

<comment><USER15> _People generally seriously underestimate the power of modern hardware._

They also often underestimate the bloat of modern software. The difference in page generation times between WordPress and some minimalistic CMS can be in the order of 50 or 100. And while it's compelling to believe that WordPress "does more", I don't believe that's the case.

<comment><USER14> Absolutely. A modern quad core $100 processor doing 10 requests per second has about 1 billion clock cycles per request. You can easily lose a factor of 100 by using an interpreted language, another factor of 10 by using a bloated framework, and another factor of 10 by using a DB optimized for disk instead of one optimized for RAM.

Due to network overhead (in performance, but more importantly in complexity when programming and sysadmining) and the speed and size of modern hardware, for the vast majority of sites it makes much more sense to run on 1 powerful box than on 20 small boxes. And even if you do need to scale to multiple boxes eventually (which >99.9% of websites won't have to), managing 10 boxes instead of 200 has advantages too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow! 10,000 WHOLE people? I can barely imagine the utter joy!

Stop thinking about sucking up to people who are doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING AS YOU.

</comment><comment><USER16> than

</comment><comment><USER17> Well this will get you another 10,000 for sure. Good post though.</comment>


A Dollar at Times Saves Million Dollar Fines - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fixnix.co/2016/10/22/do-you-care-for-your-customers/ <comment><USER2> Banks of india need to learn the lesson hard way. How about startups of India ?</comment>


Colombia, Once Consumed by Violence, Became a Tourist Destination - <AUTHOR> https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-colombia-once-consumed-by-violence-became-your-next-destination?mbid=social_facebook <comment><USER2> My dad had a business in Colombia and had worked between Colombia and other South and Central American countries all his life. In the mid 90's they killed his business partner while he was out of the country. When he went back for the funeral an attempt was made on his life. He was approached and gun point on the ports had to jump into the water and dive understand the docks to escape gun fire.

My dad fled the country and left his business and all his assets never to return. My mom told his it wasn't worth his life, which it wasn't. My dads business partner's wife was at the time was trying to install herself into the day to day operations and have more of a role in the business. He thought she was simply greedy and harmless. My dad now feels different about that because she was the only one that knew my dads schedule and where he was going to be that day. She was also the only one that knew that her husband was going to be without his body guards that time of day.

My dad has lots of stories of Colombia and it's violence in the 90's, most of which was drug influenced. It wasn't the media blowing anything up and exaggerating.

My parents loved Colombia and it's people though. It would be great now that it's safer so he can maybe visit the place he loved and worked most of his life.

<comment><USER3> How much money we're talking about in your dad's business?

Couple of hundred dollars to a teenage sicario in Escobar's time and you're gone.

<comment><USER4> >[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/i-fell- in-l...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/i-fell-in-love-with- a-female-assassin-791978.html)

I remember of this story that was posted on HN, a few months ago.

tl;dr woman becomes a paramilitary assassin killing political opponents, later she just becomes a contract killer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just in Medellín for JSConf Colombia a week ago. It was my first time in Colombia and I didn't know exactly what to expect.

I was blown away by how friendly and engaged the developers I met were. I can say unequivocally I have never had the audience burst out in spontaneous cheering and applause at the end of a technical talk with such enthusiasm as they did in Medellín.

The conference venue was a beautiful, modern building next to the botanical gardens. The coffee was both delicious and strong. But most of all, the people were whip-smart and hungry to make their dent in the world. I can't say enough positive things about Colombia.

<comment><USER6> The building (part of the Ruta-N complex) was designed by [http://alejandroecheverri-valencia.co](http://alejandroecheverri-valencia.co) It was the first LEED Gold-certified public building in Columbia (in 2016) so it's cutting edge rather than typical.

It's worth noting that Alejandro Echeverri also teaches (edit: has taught) at Syracuse University.

It sounds like you experienced the lives of the privileged, mobile elite of Colombia. That's valid, as far as it goes, but any boosterism should be tempered with at least a mention of the countries massive inequality (sadly not that atypical for Latin America).

<comment><USER7> Wealth inequality in Colombia is high, but actually lower than wealth inequality in the US by most measures.

If someone posted about a positive experience at a tech conference in New York, I wouldn't expect to see a follow up reminding us about poor people in Tennessee.

<comment><USER8> > Wealth inequality in Colombia is high, but actually lower than wealth > inequality in the US by most measures.

Really?

CIA Gini coefficients: US 47.0 (2014), Colombia 53.5 (2012)

Ratio of the average income of the top 10% to the bottom 10%: US 18.5, Colombia 60.4

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality)

Granted, this is income not wealth inequality. And there are many ways of measuring it. I would like to know your source.

<comment><USER7> [http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth- inequality/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth-inequality/) (the relevant list is at the end of the article)

See also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribution_of_wealth) for wealth ginis.

I'm sure there are lots of different measures that give lots of different results. My point was just that the US and Colombia aren't radically different in terms of economic inequality.

<comment><USER9> The US is not a high bar for comparison of wealth inequality. In fact wealth in equality in the US is a problem, and by any measures Columbia is either about the same or much worse.

The goal is places like Denmark.

South America in general has serious inequality problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm British and my wife is Colombian. I've lived in Bogotá and travelled around the country a fair bit. It's an absolute paradise.

The nature and landscapes are just incredible. You have rolling lush green hills with forests and lakes, snowy mountains, canyons and desert plains, the coffee regions, tropical forests and beaches.. You can even drive for just a few hours and see a few of these in a single day. It is truly wonderful and can't really be described, you just have to go there and see it for yourself.

The food in particular is really great. For instance, the sheer variety of fruits and vegetables on offer that I didn't even know existed before I went to Colombia is remarkable!

If you are considering going to Colombia, don't give it a second thought, just book your flights! I promise you will have an amazing time, and will be telling your friends the same when you get back :-)

<comment><USER11> I've been saying the same to friends and strangers for over a decade. Colombia is an awesome place. As the article says, they have this seemingly gimmicky tourism phrase "the risk is that you'll want to stay" (only it's true).

Speaking of fruits, one of the problems there has to do with papayas. There's a Colombian phrase "no dar papaya" (do not give papaya) and it means that you shouldn't act foolishly because someone will "take your papaya", if you do. In fact, the second unwritten rule regarding papayas (aside from "don't give them") is that if someone offers it to you, you must accept. Essentially, it comes down to "take whatever opportunity will place you in an advantageous position". This is obviously bad on a societal level, in many ways.

That being said, it's still an undeniably beautiful place/people/culture/cuisine.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you, I'm Colombian and I think that the "No dar papaya"saying and mindset is terrible on so many levels. That mindset incentivizes distrust, cheating and exploitation of unfair advantages. I've personally thought about starting a movement called "Si dar papaya". I just haven't had much time to start it and no idea of where/how to begin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A lot of places are safer than you've been led to believe, since popular culture and 'the media' feed off sensationalism and fear mongering.

Colombia is indeed wonderful, and to anyone wishing to travel there I suggest you get away from the big cities and check out the countryside. Some spots in Boyacá worth visiting are Paipa, Laguna de Tota, Duitama, and Villa de Leyva.

</comment><comment><USER14> Medellín and Bogotá are great but I encourage all to make the trip to the north of the country: I live in Barranquilla, sandwiched between Cartagena and the Sierra Nevada and we have a healthy group of people who contribute to Open Source Software on a regular basis. We have the caribbean beaches right here all year long without leaving the DC/NY/Boston timezone.

<comment><USER15> Where are this OSS contributors in Barranquilla? I haven't heard of them before. Is there any kind of OSS meetup here?

<comment><USER14> There is Guillermo Iguarán who contributes to Rails. I personally have contributed to several large geospatial projects like GeoNode / GeoServer and Inasafe and bits to other projects like Django/GeoDjango in the past.

In retrospect I should have used a different term to differentiate people that are sharing smaller projects with liberal licenses from people who regularly write patches for the linux kernel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious how they pulled it off. Did the drug war work? What about the re- intensification of hostilities with FARC? Was Colombia's drop in violence just the flip side of Mexico's explosion in it?

<comment><USER12> There are 2 parts to it. Firstly, the guerrillas and narcos were heavily combated, thanks in part to Plan Colombia which was a collaboration with the US government to fight the criminal/drug dealing structures. This led to the narcos migrating to other regions and changing strategies (raw cocaine output wasn't reduced though) and to the guerrilla being weakened since most if it's long time leaders where killed, which in turn led them to peace negotiations and finally a very strange peace agreement (which the country voted against). All in all, we were very lucky to have two very successful executive administrations in a row. Secondly, the underlying problems leading to social conflict which are extreme rural poverty and inequality, have significantly diminished since 2002, with a close to 75% reduction in extreme poverty, thanks to economic growth. So as they say: growth solves nearly anything.

<comment><USER17> Is crack still a big business, the way it was e.g. in the 90s? Cocaine and its derivatives were never especially common in my region, but all of the news, and reports I've heard from friends in law enforcement seem to center on opiods, meth, and synthetic drugs like bath salts in recent years.

<comment><USER18> I took the bus to centro medellin yesterday with my dad and we saw 3 people smoking crack in the open.. If you are really poor and can't afford crack you are going to be sniffing glue all day. most tourist places you can buy low quality coke from nearly anyone for about 5 dollars a gram or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Unrelated but I thought I'd mention the great Colombian Gabriel García Márquez – one of Latin America's most famous authors.

I like his Nobel Prize speech: La soledad de América Latina (The Solitude of Latin America) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHWZKZXZwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHWZKZXZwI) (audio starts after a while, and captions are in available in English):

> _Several themes Márquez addresses in his speech mirror those of his short > stories and novels. Márquez touches on European colonialism, colonial > legacies, deterritorialization of the Latin American culture, and he > specifically addresses Latin American countries that have been affected > negatively by foreign policy._

I wish I knew Spanish well enough to fully appreciate his literary style (currently struggling with "Vivir para contarla", his autobiography, looking up every 10th word!).

<comment><USER20> This is something that is incredibly sad for me. I've considered learning other languages simply to appreciate literary works better, but life seems to get in the way (more likely: I'm just not that motivated). Being bilingual, I've seen just how much can be lost in translation... I can only imagine the things I miss when I read, e.g. Les Misérables in English .... :(

<comment><USER19> Aw don't be sad about it. The little nuggets of hispanic culture that I have picked up have enriched my life immensely. I take what I can and enjoy it. I've probably misinterpreted or missed loads. That's fine...

Anyway, there is a huge amount of excellent and diverse literature in my own language; other languages are a bonus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was in Colombia for a month 10 years ago, traveling through on my trip to Buenos Aires. Santa Marta, Cartagena, Medellin, Armenia, Bogota. It was safe then. I've been back a couple of times. Most recently in March. The tourism has really picked up.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was just in Colombia last month. Spent several weeks in Medellín and traveled to a few other cities.

There were a lot of tourists in Medellín. I do have to agree, people were very nice.

Highlight, I went to checkout an organic coffee farm outside of the city. One of the cowboys from the farm took my horseback riding through the hills. Very cool experience.

Definitely recommend Colombia for a unique vacation.

</comment><comment><USER23> Coincidentally, I just wrote about my trip to Medellin.

"The remarkable, inspiring story of Medellin" [https://medium.com/@martinweigert/the-remarkable- inspiring-s...](https://medium.com/@martinweigert/the-remarkable-inspiring- story-of-medellin-bc76d8c79b15)

</comment><comment><USER24> I got the feeling in Medellin that its "renaissance" was in a large part due to it being a center of the drug war. It brought a lot of violence but it also brought a _tremendous_ amount of wealth into the city, which put it in good stead once the war ended.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. It's impossible to analyze Colombia's macroeconomics without having into account drug dealing. At some point, I know that this activity represented 3% of the GDP.

However,

Lots of colombian corporate giants where founded in the '40s in Medellín. Today, out of the 10 most valuable colombian companies, 6 are headquartered in Medellín. These companies (not in order) are Éxito (retail), Argos (concrete), EEPM (utilities), Sura (insurance), Nutresa (food) and Isa (utilities).

In conclusion the city was heavily industrialized before the cartel, but the drug war did indeed bring some money that got managed for good in later decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the meantime Acapulco, once hugely popular with tourists is now engulfed in gang land slaying, vendetta and gun violence in general.

<comment><USER26> Mexico is a totally different animal.

Acapulco in particular has grown immensely since its heyday in the 1950s. Its population within the city proper was 49k in 1960. Now it has grown to 708k. Wages are low; think $8/day in a hotel where guests pay $150/night. Moreover, foreign tourism is dwindling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had a great time in Colombia a few years back (Cali, Bogotá, Medellín, Baranquilla and Cartegena, be prepared to sweat buckets with the last two though!). I would say you do still need to take basic precautions to avoid trouble (like taking taxis home after a night out instead of trying to walk home) but I felt safe, I heard more stories about Mexico than Colombia at the time, the drug war seems to be a bigger issue in Mexico these days, and I felt safe in Mexico too. Honestly, if I hadn't run out of money whilst I was travelling, I could have quite happily moved to Central or South America.

</comment><comment><USER28> Colombia is also home to the world's scariest drug. Ten cuidado!

> I woke up many hours later not knowing where I was. I stayed in bed, without > pillows or blankets, feeling queasy and resting for a half-hour, trying to > figure out what happened. At that point, I didn't remember the lady, but I > soon realized that I was at home, even though it hardly resembled my > apartment — because it was empty. Everything was gone: my computer, my > guitar, my clothing, my jewelry, about $5,000 in pesos I had hidden under my > mattress, even my shampoo. There was only the bare bed and a table.

> I went downstairs to the lobby. ''What happened to my stuff?'' I asked the > doorman.

> 'Your mom came with a man and took your things away,'' he said. I told him > that was impossible because my mom was hundreds of miles away in > Barranquilla, my hometown. ''Let's look at the surveillance video,'' he > said, explaining that I brought the woman by the day before. I had recently > told the doorman of my plans to move, so he assumed she was my mother > helping me out.

> 'That's not your mom?' he asked, standing at the video monitor and pointing > to her, sounding alarmed. I still didn't remember anything about the old > woman, but then, after watching the video some more, it started to come back > to me. I saw her haul my stuff out with the help of a middle-aged man, who > had waited in the lobby. She was wearing one of my coats as well as an > expensive pair of shoes (mine) made by a Colombian designer.

> Watching the video, I saw myself come in with the woman, smiling as if > everything were normal, and then I did not appear again. A doctor who > checked me out later said I was given a drug nicknamed burundanga, popularly > used by criminals in Colombia. He said it could have been administered > through the paper the lady handed me, or perhaps some kind of aerosol. Even > though my memory was wiped clean, on the video I appeared to be my everyday > self.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/magazine/the-swindled- sam...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/magazine/the-swindled- samaritan.html)

[https://www.vice.com/video/colombian-devil-s- breath-1-of-2](https://www.vice.com/video/colombian-devil-s-breath-1-of-2)

<comment><USER29> Not even remotely unique to Colombia or originated here. I seems even the Greek and Roman used it in their Bacchanalia.

Just Google "devil's breath" or "Angel's Trumpet".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium#Use_in_tradi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium#Use_in_traditional_medicine)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon's_Rebellion#Use_of_scopo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon's_Rebellion#Use_of_scopolamine)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15266468/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15266468/)

<comment><USER28> True and fair enough. The reason why I posted it was in the hopes that someone visiting Colombia would at least be aware of the possibility of this unique type of criminal attack. It is totally out of comprehension for most people from other parts of the world, being as is we are numb to armed attacks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Some of the most striking things about the show Narcos, are the amazing visuals of Colombian cities and country. It's extremely beautiful. Which is also one of the reasons why I found the depiction of the cartels and their ruthlessness in the show to be pretty tragic.

If what this article claims about Colombia today is true, then I'm very happy for the country and it's people.

<comment><USER31> If you'd like something with less amazing, but more striking visuals then give Orozco el embalsamador a try (NSFW).

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0982908/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0982908/)

It's on youtube, but it doesn't have subtitles

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG60-lk0o_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG60-lk0o_U)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I currently have a developer working for me in Colombia and am thinking about making a trip there soon.. I've talked to some really smart people online from there about topics like machine learning, it seems to be an up and coming place for tech.

<comment><USER33> How is the hour rate of Colombian developers usually?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I visited Bogota earlier in the year and I fell in love. I seriously considered moving there! I'm going back later this year to spend New Year's in Medellin. The Colombians were unbelievably friendly.

<comment><USER35> I visited Bogota in 2009 and scheduled only two days in the city. I regretted that as it's a spectacular city, and quite cheap (taxis are everywhere and really cheap). Food and coffee are excellent, and there are lots of interesting museums to visit (Gold Museum and the Botero collection alone were worth the visit). Only downsides were that service is usually very slow and traffic is awful. And the Bogota accent is delicious if you speak spanish.</comment></comment>


Job applicants rejected by flawed AI screening system - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/TheWrongNoel/status/1194842728862892033 <comment><USER2> I don't believe this to be a bad thing. It adds a random shuffle to your inlet that is fair and unpredictable.</comment>


Google admits it sent private videos in Google Photos to strangers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/4/21122044/google-photos-privacy-breach-takeout-data-video-strangers <comment><USER2> Previously on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22235756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22235756) (9to5google.com) : 135 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22232598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22232598) (twitter.com) : 6 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233785) (twitter.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22238156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22238156) (theguardian.com)

Unsurprisingly, there were many more.</comment>


Show HN: "Zero" a new app to help you fast - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kevinrose/introducing-zero-a-new-app-to-help-you-fast-209935e8245d#.lixxskovj <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13265723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13265723)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Didn't knew. Mods you can remove it :)

<comment><USER3> Just for clarification, 'Show HN' is for things that the submitter has created themselves and which people can try out or play with.</comment></comment></comment>


Git vs Mercurial: Google Code Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/DVCSAnalysis

<comment><USER2> Other than the 'Mercurial Advantages' section, which is nearly entirely incorrect, this is a pretty good overview of both systems. I can definitely see the HTTP transport support being a deciding factor for them, and the ability to hack in Python as opposed to C. However, the 'mercurial advantages' section should really be addressed.

1) Learning Curve. This section states that Git has more commands and is harder to learn. In fact, they both have about the same number of commands - run 'git' and 'hg' with no arguments and you'll see how similar the common commands listings are. Hg and Git both have 'plumbing' commands that can be used for lower level stuff (run 'hg debug' if you don't believe me) that are not meant to be used by normal users, but both systems have them. The documentation issue is pretty moot too - Git has tons of useful documentation and I feel the homepage (git-scm.org) is much easier to use and find helpful information on (though I could be biased because I created it). As to the 'command set is closer to SVN so people get confused less', I think that's actually unhelpful. Hg is not Subversion and thinking about it as a 'Subversion+' I think makes users even more confused when something doesn't work how it did in SVN. Now something didn't work right AND they have a faulty mental model of what it's supposed to be doing. Furthermore, the UI for Hg is not all roses and puppies - one of the first things you have to do, editing config files, has to be done manually and can be confusing and seemingly arbitrary. Both systems have good and bad points in UI and functionality, but unless you're basing your decision on the systems as they were two years ago, which this article seems to be, it's really difficult to effectively argue that Hg is really easier to use. For every thing someone can say is difficult or unintuitive in Git, I can list one for Hg. I have seen tons of people pick it up and be able to use it effectively in a single day. This is subjective hearsay, it is not a valid argument.

2) Windows Support. If you run TortoiseGit or Git Extensions, you will see that Git has moved ahead leaps and bounds in this department recently. Even the general MinGW port by itself works really well and has a nice installer.

3) Maintenance. They state that 'Git requires periodic maintenance of repositories (i.e. git-gc)' - this is just flat out untrue. Git runs this command automatically every once in a while - you do not have to do it yourself. This is actually pretty nice because it keeps your repository as small as possible, where Mercurials reflog format can bloat unnecessarily and there is no way to optimize it's disk usage.

4) History is Sacred. They say that "Git is perfectly happy to lose history.", which is incredibly untrue - in fact, it's pretty difficult to lose history in Git. They site that you can run '--force' on a push to overwrite history, but there are several ways to disable this on the server. To point out how little they seem to understand Git server concepts, they say: "It should be noted, however, that a custom Git server could be written to disallow the loss of data, so this advantage is minimal." All you have to do for this either a) add a simple pre-receive hook that simply doesn't allow non-fast-forward pushes, or b) run 'git config --system receive.denyNonFastforwards true' on the server, which will make Git ignore the '--force' client option. You don't have to write a "custom git server", you need to run one quick command.

I actually like parts of Hg. Given that Guido works there and there are a lot of python devs there and Hg has good smart http protocol, I'm sure it makes perfect sense to use it. However, spreading this sort of FUD about Git is not helpful to the DVCS ecosystem as a whole.

<comment><USER3> You should keep in mind that this evaluation was done more than a year ago.

<comment><USER2> That makes more sense on some of the stuff, but the auto gc and non-fast- forward server options are both older than that. If it was done that long ago, I can't find any mention of it in the paper, and people will use this, being from an authority like Google to enforce wrongful beliefs about the systems. If the document is that old, it should have been prefaced with that information - it looks to have been posted no more than a day ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have worked both with mercurial and git (3-5 developers).

Git has definitely more features, but there aren't useful that much. Things like rewriting history is often quite confusing and it is pretty easy to shoot yourself in the foot. It also got tons of quirks.

Personally I think that git is over-hyped. A lot of developers said to me how git is awesome, but it seems that they spent much more time maintaining code then on the other VCS/DVCS. Hg just work, it is easy to learn, gives much more meaningful error messages... and got all of the major advantages of DVCS, but it has much less fans then git.

So the question is whether you want to focus on developing an application and use DVCS as a tool. Or rather playing with your DVCS is a fun itself. First case pick Hg, second - git.

Note that my comment applies only for small teams. I have got absolutely no experience with big projects(> 30 developers, > 2 years) so YMMV in that case.

<comment><USER5> Anecdotally...

Most of my friends and co-workers have switched to git for their local work (pushing back to SVN when working on a project that requires this). Since then I've seen more time spent tracking down and fixing weird version-control things than I ever did with SVN, or with hg (which I've been using).

I don't know if this is because one is genuinely more "easy" or more "powerful" than the other, or whether it's just the learning curve of a new workflow (I'm not really using the 'D' in 'DVCS' much, actually).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Darn. I was really hoping they'd pick git, to help one dvcs win the stalemate and I would never have to become proficient in both :-)

Now google has probably put the balance back to a tie between the two systems- Git probably was in the lead before this announcement.

<comment><USER7> Given that I currently still have to deal with SVN and, god help us, CVS, I can't say I'm particularly afraid of Hg. Should I be?

<comment><USER8> Heck no. Check out the hgsubversion plugin for HG. It is getting pretty close to seamlessly hiding SVN as a parent of an HG clone. I've been using it for a few months on a large project (ca. 450k LOC, 8 years of history). You "hg clone svn+[http://..."](http://...) and then you can hg pull/push like normal. I haven't tried any major cross-branch merging -- I still do that in SVN at the moment -- but it works really well. I've got an HG SVN clone on my desktop at work, and a clone of that on my laptop.

I don't know about the HG/CVS possibilities, but I wouldn't be worried about DVCSes.

And, on an unrelated note, I'm really happy about Google's decision. I evaluated git a while ago, and I found it kludgy and awkward. A revision control system should stay out of my way and be a useful tool, not become a full-time job with an equivalent learning curve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I bet Google picked Mercurial because it was easier for them to hack on and adapt to their infrastructure. A "libgit" is on lots of people's wish list, but the official developers seem pretty happy with the hodgepodge of binaries.

<comment><USER10> Just read their announcement. They picked hg for two reasons:

1\. Google Code is built around HTTP, Git sucks at talking HTTP (it's an order of magnitude slower than hg). On the other hand, HTTP is hg's first-class protocol. So hg's integration was simpler here.

2\. Windows still is a first-class platform for mercurial, still isn't for git, and windows users are an important part of Google Code's clientele.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The biggest draw in favor of git - especially for those people, who are already working with SVN or CVS - is the interoperability scripts for git.

git-svn is freaking brilliant and is so convenient a bridge that several people maintain their SVN checkouts as git repositories and eventually checkin to the central SVN repositories using git.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm surprised there isn't more talk of Bazaar. It's awesome.

<comment><USER13> I'm not. It still lags behind in usability (even though they want this to be one of their strong points) and performance (which they promised to fix ever since 1.0). They also don't have any large projects actually using it.

Bazaar tries to be simple, but they currently have so many different repository formats and supported workflows that everything is a mess. Using one format on the local side, and a different format on the remote can cause a performance loss. Commands do different things in one repository than in another, depending on how it is set up. They have the weird 'a branch is a directory' thing, and using lightweight branches like in git is a mess. That, and something like 9 of the top 10 developers work for Canonical, so it seems there's just not much interest of the open source community. What happens if Canonical stops getting money from millionaires? Will Bazaar still be supported? Do you want your product to depend on that?

<comment><USER14> "Bazaar tries to be simple, but they currently have so many different repository formats and supported workflows that everything is a mess."

Quoted.

That's the #1 reason I've switched to mercurial two years ago: a simple model that perfectly fits into my mind.

I realized something was wrong with bzr when I created a mindmap to understand its model and its commands... and that was two years ago, I don't even want to try and imagine how that mindmap would look today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about comparing what the users want? It doesn't matter how good the product is if everyone wants something else. Or even better yet what are your users already using? I have seen several google code projects that all point to github for the code.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this because Linus gave a git talk at Google calling them stupid for relying on Subversion?

<comment><USER17> Joking aside... they don't talk too much about the development communities of the two systems, and it's more than likely that they will have to 1) hack the system to work with their infrastructure, and 2) may want to feed some stuff back, and perhaps hg is easier in that sense, being in Python. Also, while I don't know this, perhaps the authors are easier to work with than Linus, who is a very busy dude and extremely ... let's say ... sure of himself (which is mostly deserved).</comment></comment>


Airbnb stipends. Grubhub credits. New office perks in a remote work world - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/startup-perks-go-remote-childcare-mental-health/ <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR; Vacation rentals | Pet adoption fees | Mental health subscription | Digital well-being experiences | At home "concierge" services | Childcare support?</comment>


Clink: Bash-style command line editing for cmd.exe - <AUTHOR> http://mridgers.github.io/clink/

<comment><USER2> I spent a long time bemoaning the sad state of shells on Windows. cmd.exe is pried out of amber for each release of Windows, so intent on remaining compatible with DOS and NTs gone by that it can't fix its brokenness, let alone innovate, for "fear of breaking backcompat."

PowerShell is a fine scripting language but using it as an interactive shell is sort of baffling to me, even compared to the already wonky cmd.exe. Maybe this is the new hotness and I'm just a crufty old Unix neckbeard but I just want this off my lawn.

Cygwin and friends always impress me that they work at all, but they're slow and weird. I could probably put up with the speed of I never had to remember that sometimes I'm going to need to type `/cygdrive/c` for Cygwin-type apps and sometimes I'm going to need to type `c:/` for everything else.

Clink, for me, is the best I've found. Yes, cmd.exe is still a trainwreck of bad ideas from the 90's, but at least entering command doesn't suck anymore. My emacs keys work, tab completion isn't an abomination and command history works (up arrow goes to the last command typed, `!history` works!)

</comment><comment><USER3> Whenever I use Windows, Clink is usually one of the first things I install.

And this is my favorite inputrc. Search backward/forward history when using the arrow keys.

        # c:\users\username\AppData\Local\Clink\clink_inputrc
        "\e`H": history-search-backward
        "\e`P": history-search-forward
        "\t": clink-menu-completion-shim</comment>


Software bug fingered as cause of Aussie A330 plunge - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/20/bug_cause_aussie_a330_plunge/

<comment><USER3> "suggested it may be down to a high-energy atmospheric particle striking one of the integrated circuits within the unit."

Radiation shielding aside, how in God's name would you design a system to survive those kinds of errors? If some circuit deep down in the core logic of the black box just suddenly spiked a random voltage, it would be really hard to predict (and correct) the damage. Hell, that voltage spike might even kill the actual error-handling code!

Redundancy seems to be the best way to go (with three being the optimal number), but I guess there's still always a chance of things going wrong. I'm glad everyone survived

<comment><USER4> Instead of plain redundancy, error correcting codes (e.g. Hamming code) should be able to control errors

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error- correcting_code#List_of_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error- correcting_code#List_of_error-correcting_codes)

<comment><USER5> What happens when your error correcting circuit gets hit with such a particle?

Or worse - the CRC generating circuit does, generating a value which causes you to "correct" things to an incorrect value.

<comment><USER6> If your CRC generator gets damaged, then it will produce values that are inconsistent with the CRC checker, which is in another piece of equipment. At which point your component gets kicked out of the system entirely, and all is well. Note also that CRC is an error _detection_ code, and cannot _correct_ detected errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "The problem was fixed by turning the unit off and then on again."

Good to see IT support was immediately on deck with a fix.

<comment><USER8> I can't help but be reminded of this:

 _A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."

Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So the flight control systems acted on bad data from ONE of 3 ADIRUs? So what's the point of having the other 2 then?

<comment><USER6> The article summarizes the report a bit badly. With most ADIRU inputs, each flight computer independently samples all three ADIRUs, and takes the median value. It also looks for outliers - if an ADIRU input falls far out of line with the others, the flight computer signals a fault, and disables that input. This can also be done manually.

What actually happened is one (of three) ADIRUs started mixing up its outputs - it intermittently labelled altitude data as angle-of-attack data. This happened after internal checks for data consistency, and before CRC generation - exactly how this occurred is a mystery, but it happened without the ADIRU detecting an internal fault.

Now, AOA data is measured by multiple independent sensors, and each ADIRU has its own sensor, on different sides of the plane. Because of this, under normal circumstances, AOA data can be somewhat different between the ADIRUs - <USER2> more so than the other inputs. Moreover, two sensors are on one side of the plane, and one on the other - making the median method weight one side far more than the other. As such, the flight computer software normally averages the AOA data from all three ADIRUs, but has an error checking system to detect and exclude erroneous data. This system detects when an outlier occurs, after which point it enters a 1.2-second cooldown, in which it uses last-known-good data. 1 second into the cooldown, it rechecks its inputs to see if the outlier remains (and if so kicks it out of the system), and at the 1.2 second mark it resumes normal operation. This error-checking algorithm is supposedly meant to deal with the situation where two ADIRUs are both temporarily bad due to some turbulence on one side of the plane - a fault scenario identified during early testing of the A330.

The key thing is, at that 1.2 second mark, it assumes any input that passed the 1-second-mark test is valid. In this event, ADIRU 1's AOA input spiked, triggering the 1.2-second cooldown. It then returned to a normal value for the 1-second-mark test, and then spiked again - at the 1.2 second mark, this invalid data was sampled, the average of all three ADIRUs taken, and a bogus value resulted. Once the spike resolved again, rate-of-change limiting prevented the value from returning to its true value immediately.

Note that there's also an independent flight computer monitoring system for each flight computer that only listens to _one_ of the three ADIRUs, cross- checks the control _outputs_ , and has the authority to disable the specific flight computer it's attached to if there is a discrepancy for too long (450ms). This flight control computer monitoring system _did_ work properly, and disabled the flight computers in the end, switching over to manual pitch control via a more primitive, secondary flight control system. However, it took two faults (ie, pitch down events) to do so - one to take out each of the primary flight computers with pitch control authority.

In any case, a new error detection algorithm that avoids this issue is currently being distributed as a software update, and in the meantime there are safety bulletins instructing pilots to disable the affected ADIRU manually at the first sign of trouble.

<comment><USER9> Thank you, that was a good summary.

From the incident report (PDF) it seems the system chooses either the median or arithmetic mean AOA values. Could the incident have been averted with more robust filtering algorithms?

<comment><USER6> Median suffers from the very real (ie, _seen in a test flight_ ) problem where one side of the plane can give bad data to two ADIRUs, so that's out. Supposedly there's a new system being deployed via a software update (see 7.1.1) that does more detailed monitoring of each channel individually - looking for oscillations, etc. They also got rid of this 1.2-second monitoring period. The report doesn't go into much detail about this though.

Keep in mind, we're not talking about analog noise here. We're talking about one type of data being labelled as another - but only part of the time. Analog filtering techniques might not be helpful, depending on how often it switches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What about <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance></comment>


Show HN: CourtDateReminder.com - weekend project - <AUTHOR> http://courtdatereminder.com

<comment><USER2> I would definitely enter my credit card information into that page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops! My last update turned off the require ssl stuff. Fixed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why court dates and not doctor's appointments or "remember to buy milk" or whatever?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I was talking to a lawyer friend when the idea hit me. And because lawyers have money and are accustomed to spending it.

But you are right. The same idea could be used for anything. I'd probably need to tweak the pricing for remember the milk though. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just a simple weekend project-type app. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

<comment><USER4> Great idea. Consider making the notification reminders more flexible. So that the person can enter the weeks, days, hours, min themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> I considered that, but in the end I wanted the simplest interface possible. I know that most of us techies want to fiddle with the options, but I think most people would prefer some easy presets. It's definitely something that I can a/b test though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Capturing credit card details? This should be done by the payment processor.

<comment><AUTHOR> The credit card stuff is handled by stripe which I thought was a favorite around here. It uses their js API which strips out all cc info before passing it on to the website.

By the way, I love stripe! I've used authorize.net for a decade and it is amazing how slick they'be made charging a credit card.

<comment><USER3> People are upset that the information is being sent to your servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> The cc info doesn't get sent to my (or herokus) servers. All I get is a stripe token that I send to stripe. They get the cc info.

<comment><USER6> Then you should make that explicit. It looks like I'm sending my credit card info to _you_ , not stripe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why wouldn't they use ohdontforget to get a free reminder?

<comment><AUTHOR> ohdontforget looks awesome. I hadn't heard of it before now...

<comment><USER7> I hate when that happens. However, with proper SEO, your site could still get a lot of visits. A quick search of Google Keywords shows that tens-of- thousands of people are searching for "court date" related items.</comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: "BitCanary" (canary in a coal mine) hack detector - <AUTHOR>

A convention in which a /bitcoins folder is added to each Internet server that you hope is secure.  You put some bitcoins in it.<p>When they are gone, you have been hacked. <comment><USER2> The Bitcoins would need to be of greater value then keeping longterm access to your servers</comment>


We Acquired Hey.com - <AUTHOR> https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-we-acquired-hey-com/ <comment><USER2> What was the price tag though?</comment>


Stores Can Now Pass On Credit Card Fees to Customers - <AUTHOR> http://codinginmysleep.com/stores-can-now-pass-on-credit-card-fees-to-customers/ <comment><USER2> I guess the change in the law is significant. However, I thought that shop owners would assume that any large item would be paid for with a credit card and raise the price accordingly. I don't have any evidence for this, but, is it likely that the only effect of this ruling will be on items that are usually paid for with cash, ie those under $25 (or whatever reasonable number of dollars)

</comment><comment><USER3> I never knew that stores cannot charge more. I would assume more stores will already set the price with credit card charges in mind. Some restaurants give you 5% discount for paying in cash.

<comment><USER4> It's a loophole of sorts. They cannot legally post a sign saying "Credit card transactions will have a 5% fee added" but it's perfectly fine to say "Cash purchases receive 5% discount."</comment></comment>


England House Prices Sad Story – Live Dashboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.briskat.com/blog/House-Prices-Analytics

<comment><USER2> _> England is already the second most crowded major country in the EU_

This particular definition of country is an abuse of the British term (let alone "major"). You cannot compare England to Italy; you could compare it to Northern Italy, maybe. If you want to compare "major" country to "major" country, then use UK numbers. Figures would likely look different: every "major" nation out there will have more populous and less populous areas. You don't get to discount Scotland but include Southern Italy just because it suits your viewpoint better.

TBH, here in Northern England there is still plenty of brownfield to revamp and house prices are fairly sane. The problem is not Europe or England, it's bloody _London_ , so go fix your own bloody problem.

<comment><USER3> England is more than four times the area of the second most dense EU country (Belgium) and nevertheless has higher population density.

So the wording is imprecise but I don't think the comparison is unfair.

<comment><USER4> NL is considerably more dense than Belgium and definitely not the most dense (that's Monaco).

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I omitted the qualifier ("major" in the original I was criticising) that was meant to exclude the tiny states which really are not a fair comparison (100 times smaller).

<comment><USER4> Belgium and NL are about the same size.

<comment><USER3> But Monaco is not. So NL is the most dense [macroscopic] EU state, and England is more dense than the second most dense such state, Belgium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It makes the property market look a bit more stable than it really is if you compare to this graph [http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/](http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Something not mentioned here is the historically low interest rates. The Bank of England base rate is only 0.5%, with mortgages available for only 2.0%.

I think if mortgage rates went back to 6% - 8% a lot of people would be screwed.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't the whole economy be screwed if interest rates are back up that much? It seems the low interest rates are the new normal, unless for some reason inflation becomes very high. With commodity prices falling hard due to increase productivity, that threat seems to be quite far now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The key here is demand - with open door immigration from Europe, that demand is ever increasing. People are flocking to the UK, and want somewhere to live. As long as we have that massive population explosion, there's only one way for house prices to go.

If we want to solve the problem, and a whole host of other problems, perhaps we shouldn't have an open door immigration policy.

<comment><USER9> Hmmm I think it's unfair to put the cause purely on immigration. A few other causal factors:

\- Anglo Saxon obsession with property. There is a culture of being obsessed with home ownership in Anglo-Saxon countries. Particularly the UK. This pushes people to pay over the top for property and thus increases prices even further.

\- Property prices seem to be increasing particularly sharply around London & Brighton. This is because they are wealth creation centres. Well paid jobs, tourism, industry, culture all cause property prices to go up as people want to live there.

\- Weather. This one isn't written about so much. But the hypothesis is that people tend to want to live in the South because of better weather. The weather in Kent is far better than is say Yorkshire in terms of net sunlight and average temperatures.

I would be willing to bet that, in the past, property prices would have still sharply increased in certain areas even without high immigration.

<comment><USER10> restrictions on supply are the most important factor outside central london. There is no reason why sufficient housing could not be built in Kent or Oxfordshire to meet new demand.</comment></comment></comment>


A Gentle Introduction to Bayes' Theorem for Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://machinelearningmastery.com/bayes-theorem-for-machine-learning/ <comment><USER2> This is a far gentler introduction, and the rest of the blog is pretty good too: [https://www.countbayesie.com/blog/2016/5/1/a-guide-to- bayesi...](https://www.countbayesie.com/blog/2016/5/1/a-guide-to-bayesian- statistics)

Edit: this is a different take on the subject but an enjoyable and accessible read too: [http://mbmlbook.com/toc.html](http://mbmlbook.com/toc.html)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for the second link. Apart from great content, it is really well presented for web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I appreciate the lack of math notation, for many with a poor mathematics backgrounds it feels like a huge wall into getting into interesting and useful theories.

<comment><USER5> Bayes Theorem hardly requires any math notation at all. It would literally take you less than a minute to understand conditional probability.

Yikes.

<comment><USER6> Possibly true, but just looking at the Wikipedia page for Bayes Theorem, more than half the text on the page is math notation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem)

It doesn't matter how simple the math actually is, if someone is unfamiliar with mathematical notation it's going to be overwhelming to read.

<comment><USER5> Then learn the notation or find another source.

This is a bit like complaining about the existence of books because you never learned how to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Always nice to see a little piece of python code show up whenever one of these ML blogs get posted to HN. It's becoming, or has become, the lingua franca of this field.

<comment><USER8> I'm very excited for Tensorflow for Swift, personally. The type system will make development so much more pleasant IMO. Judging by the way things have been lately though, I imagine that by the time TF for Swift is ready I'll be reaching for PyTorch at every opportunity anyways...

<comment><USER9> I think the fact that Swift has first-class automatic differentiation is an even bigger deal than the fact that it is strongly-typed. Here is an interesting write-up about it...

[https://gist.github.com/rxwei/30ba75ce092ab3b0dce4bde1fc2c9f...](https://gist.github.com/rxwei/30ba75ce092ab3b0dce4bde1fc2c9f1d)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've used Bayes for classification before, is it still the go to for that?

<comment><USER11> Naive Bayes is a good baseline since it's both very fast and quite efficient, and it doesn't need a big training set. But it's not often the best model you can find, and it only works if your classes can be linearly separable, i.e it can't model an xor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Shameless plug but if anybody wants to look at Naive Bayes classifiers for continuous and categorical dat, I wrote a library here:

[https://github.com/remykarem/mixed-naive- bayes](https://github.com/remykarem/mixed-naive-bayes)

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember the first time I heard of Bayes Theorem , it took me a while to grasp it.

</comment><comment><USER14> His alternativ formulation of P(A|B) is really confusing me.

Is there a typo in there?

</comment><comment><USER15> change my mind: bayes in practice is just a way to regularize your model and the language of bayes makes it seem principled but really you could use literally any regularizer and it would work almost just as well. i believe this because ultimately you're always going to minimize loglikelihood anyway (and so the prior becomes the regularization term).

<comment><USER16> Counterpoint: regularization is just a way of specifying a Bayesian prior for maximum a posteriori estimation.

<comment><USER15> but what value is that perspective? how do i use this to actually fit a model?</comment></comment></comment>