You don't have to sell your company to have financial security - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1159-you-dont-have-to-sell-your-company-to-have-financial-security-and-the-freedom-to-do-what-you-want <comment><USER2> My point was not that selling was the only way to achieve freedom and security, merely that it was the optimal way. (That was the thesis of the essay in fact: that selling a company and living off its revenues aren't opposing strategies, but rather that the former is the optimal case of the latter.)

I don't see how anyone could argue that selling was not optimal for security. Sure, you could gradually save money, but that's not optimal; it's not more secure than getting a lump sum upfront.

Whether selling is the optimal way for most founders to work on what interests them most is a fuzzier question, because it depends on the likelihood that the average founder's startup is the most interesting thing he could be working on. (Not just interesting; _the_ most interesting.)

You can't prove this, only offer arguments of various strengths.

The strongest abstract one is similar to Occam's Razor: that a choice that has to satisfy two independent constraints is unlikely to be the optimal choice for either alone. Specifically, that you can probably do better on the dimension of interestingness if you don't also have to satisfy the constraint of making lots of money.

I'm surprised people find this idea controversial. It seems to pervade almost everyone's choices from the moment they enter the workforce. I.e. if you want to make more money, you often have to compromise on the type of work you do, and if you want to work on what you love, you often have to make financial sacrifices.

There may be a few statistical outliers who escape this force (a few top athletes, for a few years each) but for everyone else it's as pervasive as gravity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're talking about an exit and DHH is talking about choosing what kind of business to _start_. If someone offers to buy you, your chance of a liquidity event is 100%. But if you're still deciding what kind of business or startup strategy to use, that chance is more like 50%, 10%, or even 1% or less. Given those odds that any normal entrepreneur (not you or DHH) faces, he says it's smart to build for profit and take the safer money, rather than go all or nothing.

<comment><USER3> _he says it's smart to build for profit and take the safer money, rather than go all or nothing._

the point is that the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. they may well be if you're building a consumer web app without any monetization strategy but not for e.g. an ad network - something that needs to make money from the start and can also be bought out eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it hard to believe working on the projects they do is the most interesting thing those guys can think of to do for 30+ hours/week. Either they're incredibly boring people or a bit delusional.

I think they continue to work on them because it's mostly pleasant work, they have total control, there's a lot of inertia, and of course because it's making them wealthy.

<comment><USER5> _I find it hard to believe working on the projects they do is the most interesting thing those guys can think of to do for 30+ hours/week._

I don't.

Sometimes the real fun comes after the business passes its first few milestones. Lots of people bust their butts building a business _in order to_ get it to the point where it will be a lot more fun to run.

<comment><USER6> I don't buy that. The excitement for a lot of people is in building. Creating. Once a company is self sufficient where's the fun in that?

<comment><USER7> I don't know what you mean by "self-sufficient". Neglect a stable company and it will go out of business. The technology market is always changing and you have to keep an eye on your competitors and new technologies.

Sustaining a business over the years and making it through the ups and downs of the economy can be an extremely interesting challenge.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but to some "sustaining" is very very boring.

<comment><USER8> Maybe the key is that rather than just "sustain" you have to keep building and growing.

<comment><USER9> Why are people talking like 37signals is in a sustaining mode? They regularly release new products and significant new features for existing products. I'm pretty sure the people there still get the sense that they're creating something new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I respect both PG and DHH and i think that they are both right from their experiences. PG seems to be older and with more experience though. My thoughts on the situation are simple. Why not be flexible? Why not start a business and work on it as long as its rewarding to do so? If your company gets rally big and you think it wouldn't be as fun to manage it, as coding all day, then sell it, if you think running a big business is for you go for it. If you company doesn't grow, but guaranties you an income you can choose if you want to sell it and do something more interesting, or if you want to take it easy and just enjoy working. Are these men blind to see this as an option? Why is it supposed to be one way or the other? Flame wars on technology are annoying enough, but on business strategy they are annoying and boring too.

<comment><USER11> In 10 years the 37Signals crew might not enjoy the work as much as they do today. People change over time, interests shift, they might want to join the hypothetical pg co-op later down the line.

However, if you can make a nice wage like 20k a month, work when you are in the "groove", have all of the things you want in life, take some nice vacations I don't see why they would need to make any changes until there life's interests shift focus.

<comment><USER12> _In 10 years the 37Signals crew might not enjoy the work as much as they do today._

My thought exactly. Taking free cooking/art classes is fun, but sooner or later, you start wanting to make something that'll last 100 years. That's what Arc is about. Ditto for Knuth's Art of Computer Programming.

Can you imagine Knuth writing them while running a business?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think you do need to sell your company. The ideal of living of residuals shouldn't apply to the internet businesses. They are just way too unpredictable, look at companies from 1998...how many are still around? Only a few of the few are still around, and that's only because they have become synonyms with their niches. Google? Search, eBay? Auctions, Amazon? Online Stores etc. But for each one there are a hundred dead companies that had a good 5 years, and then died.

Small companies/large companies, most of them eventually fail to be competitive. Internet has almost 0 barriers to entry, there is absolutely nothing stopping another startup from coming in and taking you out, doesn't matter if you have a bigger piggy bank.

Better to sell while you are still on top, and then if you really want to, you can use some of that capital to build something else that you can be happy about. And lets face it, if its 6 years later, chances are you have plenty of new ideas you want to try out.

If I have a 5 year old company that makes $250,000/yr for me, and Google offers to buy it for 10-20 mil, I'd take the deal, because it means I'll now have guaranteed money to live the lifestyle I want for the rest of my life, and I'll be able to use a portion of that to do my next startup that I'll be just as excited, as I was about my original idea

<comment><USER14> I don't think many people would debate what to do if you had the opportunity to sell at a huge markup (i.e. 40-80x your yearly take) that would leave you set for life. That's kind of a no-brainer.

The real question, to me, is whether you should build with the intention of trying to flip or if you should build with the intention of making it a stable business. That direction will make a huge difference in a lot of your decisions about whether to take on funding, whether to focus on early revenue or just on user numbers, etc. And there's no easy answer to that one; it really depends on what you want out of the experience, what your expected likelihood of being able to flip is, if you take satisfaction out of building over the long term or if you'll get bored in a few years anyway, etc.

<comment><USER15> I think there's a legitimate question of how possible it is to build a stable software/internet business for the _long term_

It's easy to start such a business; but it's also easy for your new competitor, and for open source. But apart from barriers to entry, there's that routine cataclysm of a computer technology revolution every decade or so. That one is hard to survive. This volatility is the main reason Warren Buffett doesn't invest in computer technology companies.

I think the _long-term_ is a decade or so.

<comment><USER16> For what it's worth, MiTek Australia, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, recently acquired a software company: [http://www.buildsoft.com.au/Content_Common/pg- Announcements-...](http://www.buildsoft.com.au/Content_Common/pg- Announcements-1.seo)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for that. I think there's some kind of a distinction between a technology company, and technology company that is directly tied to a non- technology business, so that it also is a non-technology company.

Buildsoft (the acquired company) develop software for the building industry. At some point, this is the same business as developing physical tools for the building industry. Once there's a known task and a standardized way to solve it, we can develop our tool for doing that. There's less uncertainty.

I think the distinction is to do with uncertainty, generality and abstractness. A "technology" company is doing something new and unknown, that is _applicable_ to many different industries - but hasn't settled down yet. Once the application becomes concrete, and specific to a particular industry, and the way of solving it is pretty well established, I guess it becomes just a regular business like any other.

Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" talks about customizing a product to a specific industry, as a way to get a measure of security - you won't get wiped out (until the next revolution in computers).

I was thinking that Warren might not have anything to do with this acquisition, but he's very attentive to capital redeployment, so I would guess he did personally approve this purchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sell your company, keep your company. If you want to maximize your ability to work on interesting stuff, remember that there is a effective but unglamorous dual pronged approach to financial security. _Require less luxury to be happy._

Learn to cook brown rice. Bring your lunch to work. Walk to your job (or to a bus stop to your job) and can the gym membership. Yoga studios tend to offer free classes on Sunday. Visit the library instead of buying so many books. In fact most libraries will even buy a book they don't have if you ask them. And if you really want to give your mind a break from coding, buy a repair manual and learn to fix your own car. This actually results in the satisfaction of an affectionate bond with your car that you can't buy at the dealership.

Two things have surprised me the further I go down this path.

1\. Hacking the system by revolting against the consumer culture is so much fun, that I keep pushing harder regardless of my income.

2\. While living like this, you'll even find low-maintenance (high-everything- else) women doing the same thing who find it attractive.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think both dhh and pg want the best for "us" (and that's why they deserve to have fans). Maybe dhh is worried that pg's talking about risk is too discouraging for many people who would be happier as entrepreneurs but remain scared in their cubicle life. On the other hand pg might be worried that people end up not pushing themselves hard enough and ultimately failing and staying mediocre.

Since dhh was a speaker at Startup School I also assume they get along fine and we simply benefit from a kind of benign competiton.

Probably they are both right, what I would like to know now is which course of action has the bigger chance of success ;-)

Nevertheless I also feel pointing to the CEOs who stayed with their company might be inaccurate. Jeff Bezos might still be with Amazon, but he might not be much into selling books. He might be exploring things like the Kindle and Amazon Web Services, or something entirely different. The point: those longterm-CEOs might simply be doing startups within the safety of the mother company.

<comment><USER19> So who is the Vorlons and who is the shadows?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My hat is off to DHH and 37signals for managing to implement the simple but not easy and classic ideal of doing what you love for a (excellent) living. If you hate your job, how can you be good at it?

<comment><USER21> I'm not even trying to be funny...I do hate my job, and I am pretty good at it

<comment><USER20> Freud was once asked what he though a normal person should be able to do well. The questioner probably expected a complicated, a "deep" answer. But Freud simply said, " _Lieben und arbeiten_ " ("to love and to work"). It pays to ponder on this simple formula; it gets deeper as you think about it. For when Freud said "love", he meant the expansiveness of generosity as well as sexual love; when he said "love _and_ work," he meant a general work productiveness which would not preoccupy the individual to the extent that his right or capacity to be a sexual or loving being would be lost.

(From "Identity and the Life Cycle", by Erik H. Erikson)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I knew it!!!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=254409>

<comment><USER22> So did everyone else :) Here is the next prediction: pg will post a reply comment here.

<comment><USER23> If you want to formalize that prediction there is a medium to do so.

<http://www.intrade.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We're in YC Summer 08, and our goal is the model spelled out by DHH in this post...with slightly less arrogance.

Wufoo has a somewhat similar model to 37signals and they're unbelievably profitable.

<comment><USER25> How do you plan on providing an exit to your investors by following the 37sig model?

<comment><USER26> Issue dividends or do a stock buyback.

Still, you probably could sell your hypothetical company. Could even be easier, since you have actual cash flow to look at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nearly every 37signals blog post seems to say the same thing.

<comment><USER27> What do they say?

<comment><USER28> My impression: "You should make a product to sell rather than making a company to sell."

<comment><USER6> I think both are valid business plans. There's not _all_ that much difference apart from the sums involved, and your potential market size.

<comment><USER29> No, they aren't. The former suppresses competition because it relies on existence of "big gorillas" to come over and buy you, therefore no new gorillas can emerge. Meanwhile, most often than not, big gorillas simply put their new toys on the shelf, thus suppressing innovation.

In that regard, entrepreneurs who build to flip are no different from real estate speculators: they make a few people richer, but in the end you'll end up with the same lot of aging houses.

Not to mention that "build to flip" companies simply suck. Their products are jokes built overnight as parasites on shoulders of open source excellence, and in the end they don't reward financially anyone but investors and (but not always) founders: it's statistically stupid decision to work long hours as a regular programmer for a startup whose goal is to sell out for $50M after 3 rounds of funding.

I like Paul a lot, but his patronage and encouragement (!) of build-and-flip projects is the worst part of "PG culture" that I have the biggest problem with. Especially when he blames VCs for not funding the "next Google". The Google wouldn't has happened if S&L landed on YC.news some day in 99: they'd sell out to Yahoo for $10M instead.

<comment><USER6> "Not to mention that "build to flip" companies simply suck."

That's a slight generalization. Also you can actually do both - build to be profitable long term, and also build to be attractive in terms of acquisitions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One thing that hasn't been addressed here is the likelihood of creating a company that that will be acquired for enough money that you no longer have to work vs the likelihood that you can create a business that lets you live comfortably.

My guess is that most businesses that make enough money for you to live off of comfortably would have an acquisition value that is high enough that you wouldn't have to work anymore.

</comment><comment><USER31> They introduced the article as a rebuttal to PG's article.

But, like most of their recent articles, its just promoting the bootstrapped stay-small business ideal.

If your looking to make a lifestyle business then they have some good advice. But all businesses are not equal.

The market, industry, and success all play a big role in determining whether or not VCs, M&As or IPO's are right for your business.

I've said this before, 37Signals is selling a work-style philosophy.

Which is probably why they didn't make much of an argument, besides "we work 4 days a week and still take vacation" and "other people have stayed small so you can too".

Let's not forget that 37signals is no longer an early stage start-up. If your making a million+ in revenues, of course you can make flexible hours for your staff.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's a tax advantage too: to have investments that return $100,000 pa you need to have saved (assuming 10% ROI) $1,000,000. You get taxed each year on that $100,000 as income - but you also got taxed when you made that $1,000,000 in the first place.

But if you create a business that returns $100,000 pa, while you similarly get taxed on that income, _you don't get taxed on the creation of the business_ \- even though it's equivalent to having saved $1,000,000, in terms of its return.

And if that doesn't set your heart singing in transcendental joy, it's probably better for you to just do what you love and the money will follow. :-)

<comment><USER32> the same is true for stock u won't get taxed for buying stock and the tax is just one time (not recurring every year) at 25% (15% after 1 yr)

contrast this to 'work for company' ... u get taxed 35% every year :(

probably it's the social design school-work-govt 1\. you obtain huge debt from school 2\. you become obedient by having to work to pay the debt 3\. you stay in the loop because of taxes

<comment><USER15> _the same is true for stock u won't get taxed for buying stock and the tax is just one time (not recurring every year) at 25% (15% after 1 yr)_

Really? Here in Australia, we don't get a tax break for buying stock (AFAIK). When you earn the money, you pay tax, and then you buy stock with what's left over. (though there's tax breaks for investing via superannuation)

<comment><USER32> I meant to say u get taxed at 15% flat on capital gain after holding the stock for more than 1 year (in the US)

in my country, the capital gain tax is only 0.1%, automatically included when one sells stock (0.15% fee for buying and 0.25% fee for selling any amount any time); however, income tax from working is 35% top

but the trend is ... tax on investment is substantially lower while it's much higher on working income ... social control perhaps?

<comment><USER15> OK, I see. Yeah, we have similar tax breaks for capital gains (when they are realized, via a sale). I think it's half the normal rate if you wait a year (your tax rate depends on your income here - highest is about 50%); and half _again_ (ie. 1/4 the rate), if it's the sale of a business you created.

But note that you only get taxed on capital gains if you realize them (ie. if you sell the stock). If you just sit on it, and take the dividends, you don't get taxed on the capital appreciation. Over time, the dividends (usually!) increase reflecting the capital appreciation (so you are getting something out of that capital appreciation), but you're not taxed on the capital appreciation itself.

The distinction between this and starting a business yielding the same dividends is that you don't pay tax on sweat equity; whereas you were taxed on the $ equity (that you bought the stocks with) when you earnt it.

hmmmmm, they are both instances of capital appreciation which you don't get taxed on - until you sell the stocks/business. It's just that the business starts closer to $0, though there is always some $ investment in starting a business - even if only in the form of your living expenses).

Yes, it's deliberate encouragement of investment (which creates new employment, new wealth... new taxable income), but which flows naturally from the nature of capital appreciation. And it's easier to police the event of a sale. But truly, if they really wanted to tax capital appreciation (without a sale), they could. It's a decision to not tax it, to encourage investment.

PS: you mean 0.1 capital gains don't you? (ie. not 0.1%, but 10%)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think this is quite interesting. On one hand we have an investor saying things you would expect an investor would say (grow as much as you can). On the other hand we have an owner saying things you would expect an owner would say (my business is great). Yet when these two say it, it seems fresh for some reason.

Perhaps because when they say these things we know that they believe it in some absolute sense not just because it benefits them. So maybe I should say refreshing, not fresh.

I love HN.

</comment><comment><USER12> Writing business apps in Ruby on Rails is only going to seem cool for so long. Give them a couple of years for the coolness to wear off, and they'll sell without a second thought.

<comment><USER34> 37signals has been doing web applications for five years.

They're not some new startup who are building Ruby on Rails applications because it is the hot new technology.

They're building Ruby on Rails applications because _they invented it_. It is the hot new technology because of what they did, not vice versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> i think its great that theres all of this discussion over something such as business models -- in this age of technology i feel its often something overlooked -- but in my opinion, they are both valid, it just depends on what you're going for. if dhh is happy working 4 days a week on 37signals and earning the money that he is, and he wouldnt rather be doing something else, than great for him! if his interest were exhausted, and he were still doing that, then i would say why not sell? for me personally i could not be happier than working on my current project, because it is what i am most passionate about. however, with that being said, for the right price it would be crazy not to sell. not only could you continue to work on it afterward, but if something else came along more interesting you would have the opportunity to pursue it. i just dont think this is as cut and dry as dhh wants to make it seem, and i really agree with the clarifications that paul made in his first comment.

</comment><comment><USER36> I can certainly agree with some of this, but I really do enjoy working alot on a software project of some sort. I COULD work 40 hours/week on it, but I'd be perfectly happy working 60 or more and "chasing" this goal.

It's very rewarding for me.

</comment><comment><USER37> just 2 ways to get to the destination, driving or taking a train .. which is better ? well all depends on your taste, your feel or may be your mood! Just do the way way your like it man!

<comment><USER38> an analogy for me is you're in Singapore and you're thinking of flying or driving by car to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - driving, it takes you 4 hours. Flying is only 30 minutes but check-in time is 2 hours and disembarkation/waiting for your baggage is abou 30 minutes plus you need to take a taxi to the airport - it works out the same. Choose your poison. Driving is more scenic but you get flier's miles with flying.</comment></comment>


The New Radio Garage Door Opener (1933) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-craft/new-radio-garage-door-opener-september-1933-radio-craft.htm <comment><AUTHOR> The old Colman patents are cool too: [https://patents.google.com/?q=garage&inventor=Howard+D+Colma...](https://patents.google.com/?q=garage&inventor=Howard+D+Colman&oq=inventor:\(Howard+D+Colman\)+garage)

They're from the 1920s and go into more detail on the awesome morse-code-style cam-based mechanical decoding mechanism.

Don't try these at home.</comment>


Airline revenue from extra fees increases - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/as-airline-revenue-from-extra-fees-increases-so-does-consumer-ire/2017/11/01/6f14e874-bb43-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html <comment><USER2> The nickel-and-diming of airlines has been clear to me for ages, but I found what I considered a surprising new low last year. I bought round-trip tickets but missed my outgoing flight. I booked a one-way trip for later the same day, reasoning that I would use my original return flight to come home.

Surprise! I found out (at the airport, trying to fly home a few days later) that because I hadn't boarded the first flight, the airline had resold my seat on the return flight. I was not credited for the seat on the return flight (which was now unavailable to me). I wasn't even notified that it was forfeited when my trip was cancelled. Pressed for time, I had to purchase an additional one-way ticket home.

I understand the motivation to resell an unused seat at flight time in the event of a no-show. This, however, struck me as a deliberate predatory theft of my reservation, a sort of loophole to deprive me of my reservation without recompense. I don't think a scenario such as this is unforeseen by the airline (an honest misunderstanding); rather, I think it is exploited.

The airline may have a clause somewhere on their website explaining that the above is to be expected. That doesn't make it square for me. The behavior of the airline was, IMO, unethical. If I ever face a similar scenario in the future, I will know to communicate explicitly with the airline about my intention to use my return ticket. However, I shouldn't have to do so or risk finding myself stranded away from home.

<comment><USER3> I have a relative who moved to the US a couple of years ago. A one-way ticket costed _more_ than a round-trip, so he and his family bought roundtrip tickets. They flew normally but obviously never caught the flight back.

The airline later cancelled his platinum frequent flying status and charged him with the difference threatening to sue for fraud.

EDIT: typo

<comment><USER4> why would an airline care if the passengers caught their flight or not? The tickets are already paid for.

<comment><USER5> Because (in their eyes), you're gaming their fare rules. That said, I don't know how common this sort of action is. At various times, I've had to change flight plans and it was cheaper just to burn a booked return leg than pay the cancelation fee. And I've never had an issue doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Southwest Airlines does not play these games (the first 2 checked bags are free and canceling your ticket before the flight gives you a voucher for the full fare you paid to use in the future). It also does not have fares listed with the airline ticket search sites. They usually have good fares, decent service, and on time flights. I try and fly them when ever I can get a direct flight with them.

I understand why they keep growing and wish other airlines would try their style. I try to choose companies with friendly business practices, even if it costs a bit more sometimes.

<comment><USER7> Isn't Southwest the one that just launched obligatory in-air concerts? [https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/11/hitting- wro...](https://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/11/hitting-wrong-note)

I think I'll give that a miss.

<comment><USER6> I imagine Southwest will give this a miss also. Seems like a Nashville one- off. Never seen it myself.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately not just a one-off: [http://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560767453/southwest- airlines-t...](http://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560767453/southwest-airlines-to- offer-inflict-live-music-on-select-flights)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The new "basic economy" fares are the ones that piss me off.

For ~16 months, I've been taking the same handful of United flights between the same locations every few weeks. When they launched "basic economy" they insisted that they would just lower the price for people who didn't care about having a carry on, assigned seats, etc.

Not surprisingly, the basic economy fare is what I was paying before and to get all the "perks" like having a carry on, assigned seating or even having the miles count towards status, it's an extra $20-30 each way.

They f*d us nicely there.

<comment><USER10> We hit a nice little trap while booking our tickets for Christmas (Copenhagen to Stuttgart). The outgoing flight was Lufthansa "Economy Basic", which includes checked luggage. But the return flight was "Economy Light", which _doesn 't_ include checked luggage.

Since we would actually like to take our bags home with us, it effectively added a hidden fee on top of the original price, just so it would show as "luggage included" in the aggregator.

<comment><USER11> But you surely saw that when you booked? Did you book over some shady website? Lufthansa.com would've definitely warned you before you booked.

<comment><USER10> We booked through Google Flights, which only pointed out that checked luggage _may_ incur extra fees. We only spotted the difference on the return flight when we actually went to Lufthansa's site to check that everything was in order.

Both flights were shown as "economy" on Google Flights.

<comment><USER12> You can't book through Google Flights, it's just a search engine.

<comment><USER10> Everything was handled though Google Flights, only the final payment page was Lufthansa. On that page, information about checked luggage was not available, only the ticket type in very small print. We had to manually look up what each different ticket type meant, and manually select additional luggage for the return flight, based on information we gleaned from a completely separate Google search.

Trust me on this, I went through it only yesterday. Online flight booking is one huge dark pattern.

<comment><USER12> Right, so you booked the flights through Luftansa, not Google Flights. Google Flights helped you search for the flights you wanted, but then linked you to Luftansa's page to actually book them.

<comment><USER10> Google Flights labeled the flights as simply "economy", strongly giving the impression that both flights were on the same class of ticket, instead of providing a very important detail, namely that the return ticket was a lower class.

This is very important information when booking a flight, to give your customers the correct price, and they got it wrong.

<comment><USER12> If you think Google saw you as the "customer" in that exchange, you're very mistaken...

<comment><USER10> The problem with GOOG in a nutshell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Travelled in the US earlier this year on 3 regional carriers. I realise this is only an anecdote, but I was surprised by a number of things:

\- tickets stated as direct included a hidden stop and change of plane.

\- there was an extra charge for a checked bag.

\- the checked bag was promptly lost on my first flight and returned to me after 5 days.

\- on one united flight, we had to wait on the tarmac for 1hr45 min while a guy sat each wing of the plane in turn refuelling it with a gas-pump style hose through a port on the wing. This was because the central rapid-fuelling system on the plane was broken.

\- interior of aircraft was shabby. In one plane they had retrofitted LED lighting in the cabin, but it was too narrow and so exposed hull insulation and other structures in the gap.

\- seats felt much closer together than usual. What on earth do you do if you're above average height in the US?

\- price! Unbelievably expensive to fly between cities in the US. In SE Asia or Europe I have travelled between similar sized cities and similar distances for well under half the price in the US and at shorter notice.

What ever the airlines may tell you in the US, from the perspective of an outsider, I'm pretty sure they're ripping you off!

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER14> The prices are because of the recent big airline mergers (Alaska/Virgin America 2016, US Air/American '13, United/Continental '10, Delta/Northwest '09) [1].

United does its heavy maintenance in Beijing, China [2], so some maintenance issues are inevitable. I find it amazing that their planes even fly, it must be a huge logistical hassle.

[1] [http://airlines.org/dataset/u-s-airline-mergers-and- acquisit...](http://airlines.org/dataset/u-s-airline-mergers-and- acquisitions/)

[2] [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane- maintenance...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance- disturbing-truth)

(When this Vanity Fair article was written, 2015, American still did major maintenance in the US, but apparently not for much longer: [http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/25/american- airli...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/25/american-airlines- workers-protest-job-outsourcing-in-miami.html) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Airlines (in the US, mostly) are incentivized to add these fees for two major reasons:

1\. Fees are exempt from the 7.5% federal excise tax on airfare. 2\. It makes the initial fare lower on airfare sites like Kayak, for people who choose the cheapest route, then they up-sell customers once they've decided.

<comment><USER16> Every so often a flight aggregator (Kayak, Expedia, etc.) shows up. To date precisely none of them have solved the REAL customer pain point: _show the actual price I will pay_.

I really wish restaurants and everywhere else would include taxes in their prices too. I frankly don't care what fraction of my money is going to the government, all I care is (a) what I pay in total and (b) what I'm getting.

<comment><USER17> EU mandates to show real price (including taxes)[0][1]. From my personal experience, it works with all major EU-based airlines when booking online. Of course, if you want extra (travel insurance, priority, luggage etc.) you pay separately (opt-in), but it's nothing like it was ~10 years ago when you had to play hide&seek with all these hidden taxes and opt-out extras during the booking process.

0\. [https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2015/january/flight- book...](https://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2015/january/flight-booking- systems-must-display-final-price-at-first-instance-rules-eu-court/)

1\. [http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pric...](http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pricing- payments/index_en.htm)

<comment><USER18> Yes, this is one space where regulation has really helped, even if sometimes you still find that the actual price is a bit different from the one you expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find high undisclosed taxes on rental cars and hidden resort fees at hotels much more unfriendly to consumers than airline fees.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely! When buying an air ticket, at least on the checkout page I see the final price I'm paying.

On the contrary, when renting a car a couple of years ago I had following situation - I booked a car and paid, then I arrived at the airport, and at the counter I was told:

* 5EUR/day more because I'm below 25yo

* 5EUR/day more because it's a diesel car ("so I don't want diesel" \- "but we have only diesel")

* gas policy is full/empty, so I have to pay for gas in advance; I check the contract and it says I have to pay "market rate", I check online and market rate is 20% less than what they want me to pay, I say this is not market rate, they say it includes surcharge for fueling the car.

In the end I didn't have much choice and rented the car, but the experience was much worse than buying air tickets.

<comment><USER5> Fees in general for rental cars are awful. In the US at least there are also all sorts of taxes, concession fees, high hourly fees if you return at a bit later time than you picked up, etc. It can all add up to 30% or more of the total price so you need to make sure you're comparing apples-to-apples when you make a reservation.

On the plus side, most rental cars don't charge for canceling or missing a reservation, returning early, or just not showing up--so there's that.

<comment><USER21> If you reserve (just book, no need to pay in advance) a popular class of vehicle in advance the pick-up location will often not have one available so you get a free upgrade to whichever superior class they do have ready. Also, look for 'off-airport' locations because these do not assess an airport surcharge fee. Off-airport locations are even less likely to have popular classes in stock. Doesn't matter if you just flew in, (remove your airline luggage tags, try not to be obvious) take a taxi to the location. It will frequently be cheaper this way. Off-airport locations are often near airports.

As an American living in Europe, I found that some US insurers will issue a 'driver only' policy that covers you while driving rentals in the USA on your European license. I'm paying $24/year for mine which has generous limits and is much cheaper than the coverage rental agencies offer.

Also slightly unrelated but don't dare call British Airways to enquire about changing your flight or you will not be able to check in online and you will get the worst seats when you show up for your flight. This is true even if you make no changes, your booking is put in to some kind of frozen state and the phone agents are unable to reverse this. You must visit the BA desk at an airport in person to have this corrected. Bizarre, but this was confirmed by multiple people at BA who I spoke to after having it happen to me.

<comment><USER5> Off-airport rentals are a good tip to save some money. I confess I very rarely do it because it's one more hassle after a long flight. The one thing you need to be careful of is hours as off-airport rental companies often operate on more conventional business hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As someone who literally _just_ ranted on Twitter (and on their 1990s style, "/start.tk" issue website) that Turkish Airlines has never once replied to my messages after losing my bag on the 26th of October: I wish there were a central, democratic review system for airlines, outing them for all their faults. Paying for checked in bags is not fun if the bag doesn't arrive. Fighting for (soon) two weeks to get back what is yours is no fun either.

Any public outrage about airline practices gets my upvote..

(I understand that for certain routes you cannot really choose someone else..)

<comment><USER23> [http://www.airlinequality.com/](http://www.airlinequality.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The economy (or even "premium") customer service on most of my recent flights has been awful. In most other U.S. service industries (restaurants, bars, etc), the staff is incentivized to serve you and increase sales and get tips. I've been on many 3-5HR flights where you see a flight attendant at most twice, and the attendants seem almost required to do the least. It comes across as if the airline firms are trying to make things as uncomfortable as possible to upsell to first/business.

<comment><USER25> Flight attendants aren't really there for service. Their primarily responsibility is supposed to be safety. Serving snacks is just a courtesy. You can always bring your own, or walk to the galley and ask for something.

<comment><USER26> They are paid to do both. The customer service side isn't optional.

[https://jobs.aa.com/job/Dallas-Trainee-Flight-Attendant- TX-7...](https://jobs.aa.com/job/Dallas-Trainee-Flight-Attendant- TX-75201/439653000/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We're in a golden age of flying for both airlines and passengers. If you want 1960s style service, first class tickets are cheaper today than the cheapest tickets were back then.

The reason airlines nickel and dime is Americans' preference for cheaper tickets over almost anything else. The bulk of the remaining demand comes from frequent fliers, who are exempted from most fees, or business travellers, who are too profitable to risk pissing off.

<comment><USER28> The itemization of services isn't the problem. It is the hiding of the fees that is the problem. What they are doing now is essentially a bait-and-switch.

They should (and should be legally mandated to) be upfront about what they are going to charge you for, include that information prominently when advertising tickets and make the fee information available to third-parties so that ticket shopping sites can offer an accurate comparison of what your total cost will be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I sometimes fantasize about having one of these companies as a client and billing them with fees mirroring the ones they charge i.e. add a fee for "mandated federal and state taxes" (my income taxes), maybe an "internet surcharge" and of course a "fuel surcharge". My biggest expense next year will be insurance so I'll definately add an "insurance fee" that in there as well. I'm getting giddy just thinking about it...

</comment><comment><USER30> In recent years, the only decent experiences I've had flying have been with JetBlue, European national carriers, and WOW.

JetBlue and the European carriers still offer decent service and don't nickel and dime everything. They let you check a bag or two. The gate and flight staff are competent and relatively efficient. The aircraft are clean, well- maintained, and modern. The European carriers even feed you. It's almost as good as flying was before 2000.

WOW is a cut-rate airline, and they're upfront about it.

The other major carriers are a dumpster fire. I won't even try to fly United or American or Delta anymore.

<comment><USER5> JetBlue is definitely one of the better US carriers for those who don't have status. (I typically fly United but I have relatively high status on them.)

But JetBlue has adopted a lot of the fee structures of the legacy carriers. They do charge extra for checked luggage now. They have pay for more legroom seats (although their regular seat pitch isn't bad by economy standards). They have pay for early boarding. Their change fees have gone up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I guess this is also a way for airlines to devalue their frequent-flyer points programs: the bag is no longer included.

Or, in the case of a Canadian airline, Westjet, you get a free checked bag when you have their premium credit card.

<comment><USER32> Frequent flyers don't pay bag fees. Airline status comps those fees.

<comment><USER33> "Airlines" don't collectively do anything. Most airlines' medium tier status and up generally entitles members to some extra baggage allowance, but eg. British Airways basic economy has no baggage allowance, including for status holders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unless you're going away for two weeks or more, cabin luggage really should be all you need. Pack smart and pack light, think long and hard about which clothes you're actually going to need. If you're bringing bulky items of clothing (such as hiking boots), wear them on the plane. Don't bring a bunch of extra stuff "just in case", odds are you'll be able to buy whatever it is at your destination.

Most airlines allow 55x40x20cm(-ish) size cabin luggage, _plus_ a so-called personal item, which can be as big as 40x30x15cm on some airlines, or described as a purse, a handbag or a slim laptop bag. Sometimes the weight is included in the cabin luggage allowance, sometimes it's not, so you have to check the terms for each airline. This will let you bring a bit of extra luggage, or at least make sure your laptop isn't taking up a bunch of space in your cabin luggage.

This may seem like a bunch of needless extra work when packing, for saving a small fee, but it also means you won't have to waste time at the luggage carousel, and it will be much less hassle if you have to go by taxi or public transport. And of course your luggage won't be at the mercy of underpaid and possibly careless luggage workers.

Pack smart, avoid fees and hassle.

<comment><USER34> When weight is a concern, try not using the carry on bags with wheels. Those bags themselves weigh about 6-7 lbs and the telescopic handle takes up space inside the bag. I use the Amazon basics carryon or the more expensive Patagonia MLC 45L both of which which weigh less than 2.2 lbs and are a breeze to carry on. It's amazing how much space and time (it's much faster to walk with these carry on's) you save when you use these. Oh and these provide O(1) access as they fold like a suitcase and not like a hiking bag which in my view has a best case o(n) access and worst case o(n^n) access.

<comment><USER5> I see Patagonia has redone the way the bag opens up and loads. Looks like a big improvement although I still prefer bags that are basically one big compartment; I just use my own organizers which are more versatile.

To your basic point, fully agree. I expect that at least some of the carryon issues are the result of business travelers taking rollaboards for one-night trips. Like you, I find soft over the shoulder/backpack bags a lot more versatile as well as being more space efficient. Yes, some people can't easily carry the weight but that describes a small portion of travelers.

<comment><USER10> I used a soft messenger-style bag for a long time, but in the end I simply got fed up with how annoying it was to pack, and how much care I had to take when packing, in order to avoid discomfort when carrying it.

<comment><USER5> The older Patagonia was very vertically oriented with a compartment divider down the middle. I liked it until I decided it just didn't accommodate bulky items well and wasn't easy to dig things out of. These days I mostly use an Osprey travel backpack which unzips to a single big compartment and that works pretty well for me.

I do have rollers on a couple larger pieces of checked luggage but I only use those a couple times a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So, what does a carry-on bag really cost an airline anyway?

Is it reasonable to discourage it because the airline needs to pay the airports for each bag and the ability to carry non-passenger cargo is reduced that much?

<comment><USER35> The airlines cost are based on weight, as that determines the fuel use for the flight (not including in-flight variances that would also contribute to fuel costs).

<comment><USER31> Not sure why I my question was just about carry-ons...

For checked bags, what do the departing and arriving airports charge the airline per-bag for handling?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was once charged a ticket purchasing fee! This was not an online free, it would have been charged no matter how I purchased the ticket

<comment><USER37> Easyjet in the UK now have a mandatory £15 'administration fee' for each booking. There's no way around it.

It would be less galling if they just called it 'Minimum Fare'.

Plus they add a 1% credit card charge!

<comment><USER38> The credit card charge should disappear in January once the new law on banning credit card charges is in place :)

<comment><USER39> It's already against their merchant agreements, I have doubts the ban will do anything.

<comment><USER40> Effective Jan 27, 2013, surcharges for credit card transactions became permitted by the Visa and Mastercard merchant agreements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Even though they have clauses on their website explaining that your ticket may be resold, it is still not fair.

</comment><comment><USER42> Are airlines or landlords worse nowadays...?

</comment><comment><USER43> Who checks bags anymore?

<comment><USER22> Anyone

\- going on a 3+ day vacation

\- having something unwieldy to transport

\- going on a 3+ day business trip that needs shirts, fancy pants and shoes (or a suit)

For me, carry-on is for a bag with my electronics (laptop, Kindle, headphones) and necessities for the flight if any. Being able to travel with nothing but a carry-on bag is a luxury and quite rare for me.

<comment><USER5> Most people really don't need to though. I just got back from a 2 1/2 week trip with just (fully compliant) carryon. Yes, once you get into suits (or a lot of recreational/camera/etc. gear) it gets harder, but I suspect most people could packa lot lighter.

<comment><USER10> I saw people repacking bags at Copenhagen airport the last time I went to Germany (start of September), so they could fit everything while still barely scraping in below the weight limit. Multiple heavy jackets and winter boots. For southern Germany in the late summer. It was 30 degrees C in Stuttgart when we landed. Some people...

<comment><USER39> To be fair, you don't know when they left, or how long they were gone.

<comment><USER10> No, of course not. To my untrained eye, they looked like tourists.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


There's a good chance wildlife photos weren't shot in the wild - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/969811/game-farm-photography-love-wildlife-photos-theres-a-good-chance-they-werent-shot-in-the-wild <comment><USER2> I can relate to this.

I am in West Africa now, and have seen a number of wild Chimps and Gorillas, seriously far in the jungle. Rain, mud, fog, etc. play hell on the cameras, and I can only get to within a few hundred yards before I am told that's close enough and/or the animals leave.

The photos are worse than bad.

I just spent a week at a great conservation project where I was just a few yards away from many, many chimps for 30+ hours. (behind electric fence).

The photos are the best I have ever taken in my life. (not online yet, coming soon @theroadchoseme)

<comment><USER3> I have also struggled with getting great shots until I learned how many tricks are commonly used like feeding animals, cooling down insects so they don't move or shooting in a confined areas. It makes me feel a little better that rarely get any good shots without using these tricks.

<comment><USER4> If all of this has to be done for taking photos of wild animals, how does BBC's Planet Earth do it? The footage they get is incredible.

<comment><USER5> The making-ofs are incredible and worth watching. For one piece of footage, the camera guy was in a bird hide for weeks on end, waiting. I can't imagine the boredom! In another, they used a hot air balloon. And from a technical perspective, the bit where they're shooting sharks in super slow mo is interesting. All of those are on the Planet Earth 1 DVD box set - I'm sure there are digital options around.

<comment><USER6> It still gets stuck in my head: My Bird of Paradise...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can relate to this on a slightly different level.

I've never really done wildlife photography, but I've done a decent amount of hunting, and spend a decent bit of time near game farms (but never hunted on one). Hunting here in New Zealand is very different from the USA, it requires a lot of walking and actually finding animals, so you end up covering a lot of ground and spend a lot of time looking at things through binoculars. I've seen a lot of animals from far away, getting close to them is a different matter.

In the open, it's seriously hard to get near animals. They have better sight, hearing, and smell than us, and can run faster up steeper terrain than us. This applies to most game animals. It's not easier in the bush, deer stalking is not an easy skill. They also tend to stand in annoying places that are hard to climb to, and wouldn't be very nice for photos.

Wild animals tend to avoid humans, because humans have guns.

On the other hand, one day, we were driving past a game farm, and there was a serious trophy stag just sitting 50 m from the road behind a deer fence, would probably set you back near 10 grand to shoot if that's what you're in to. We stopped and took a couple of photos of it. It just sat there. We waved at it, it just sat there. We tooted our horn at it, and it stood up but didn't move at all. It was not bothered by humans at all in the slightest. We got some rather nice photos of it, photos you'd struggle to get in real life, first because such a stag in real life is once in a lifetime, and second, because you wouldn't be able to get anywhere near a stag standing in an open field with no cover.

If I was in a mind for poaching, it would've been the easiest trophy ever. Without hunting pressure, animals get amazingly placid.

Another thing to note about wild animals (or animals in general), is that they tend to spend most of their day doing boring things, they usually just sit down and don't do anything.

<comment><USER8> Actual hunting is phenomenally difficult. My dad does "spot and stalk" bowhunting, which is what non-hunters think people mean when they say "hunting". Hunters always think my dad is kidding when he says he hunts that way, because the vast majority of "hunters" are using man-hunting rifles with excellent optics from quite a distance, or even paying a lot of money to sit in a tree-stand with feeders right underneath them, so they can shoot the (mostly domesticated) animal as it comes to feed. When people have that kind of "hunting" available, it makes sense that they'd think someone like my dad is crazy.

<comment><USER9> One thing to really point out for those who don't hunt is the style of hunting you indicated is only available in a few states. In Texas you can hunt over a feeder, I am not sure of any other states where it is legal. In many other eastern states there is limited public land so a lot of large game, aka deer, hunting is done via stands with bows. This allows people to hunt in smaller areas near more urban centers.

Out west (CO,UT,NM,NV,WY,MT,ID) things are different. There is a lot of public land so there is definitely a lot more long range hunting. Also the private land out west tends to be much larger than the private land tracks out east. So you will see a lot of pay to play hunting ranches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When has professional photography ever represented itself as a strictly truthful, unambiguous, and simply decipherable medium?

What I mean is, who told you all those photos were of wild animals in the wild? Who doesn't know that models in the cover of Vogue are covered in makeup? Is the dress blue or gold?

But unfortunately there is a cross-cutting of two unrelated problems here: the populist view that art should be nothing but a strict representation of the real world, coupled with the elitist view that photography is not real art.

Journalists choose words and cherry pick quotes to create an impression they want. Painters have literally zero external constraints. But involve a mechanical contraption literally designed to bend light and suddenly we ask people to not bend light.

<comment><USER11> This sort of thing comes up all the time in the photography communities I follow. In particular, the idea of post processing. There are some purists who think that no photo should be Photoshopped because there's some sort of loss of integrity there. You didn't capture the moment, you _made_ the moment.

But post processing has existed long before Photoshop. People who shot film did (and still do) alter their developer times, or do stand development over agitation, or dodge or burn prints. And every modern digital camera does some post processing in camera as well. White balance, color correction, or even more fancy stuff like film emulation modes...those are all forms of post processing.

I know a lot of photography contests require the submission of an unedited raw file in order to enter, but that's not what people want to see in the end. They want the Photoshop look without going into Photoshop, and that's very, very rare to pull off. So where do you draw the line?

<comment><USER12> Photojournalism is a fraudulent concept from the beginning. There is no platonically neutral way to present a scene, you are inherently making editorial decisions even before you snap the picture, with your choice of positioning/framing/focal length.

Which of these is the "neutral" way to portray this shot? And says who?

[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/23/23/2CB1092D0000057...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/23/23/2CB1092D00000578-3246791-image-a-2_1443046088866.jpg)

[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/24/23/2CB066F80000057...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/24/23/2CB066F800000578-3248214-image-a-2_1443132727378.jpg)

From there it's all a matter of degrees. Pulling a distracting highlight, desaturating a distracting visual element, cloning something out, it's all on a spectrum. But you could do the same manipulations by changing your positioning and perspective a little bit when you take the shot.

Even stuff like white balance and color correction is frowned on, which is incredibly stupid when using a filter or changing your film stock would have the exact same effect. And the fact that digital is inherently a processed format in itself - you're not seeing color, you're seeing black and white run through a Bayer filter and interpreted back to a color image.

Basically, photojournalism is a bunch of people jerking themselves off and handing out awards for getting "the perfect shot" in-camera.

<comment><USER13> This is wrong in about fifty different ways right from the first paragraph. Photojournalism has _impartiality_ at its core, not 'neutrality'. Everyone has biases, nobody can be neutral. But you can certainly be impartial.

Framing, composition are also aesthetic decisions, not just political ones, and those decisions are made both by the photographer at shooting time and picture editors at publishing time. The point is to draw the reader into the story.

Making corrections and alterations to digital images is not 'stupid', it is a development that has occurred over time in response to accusations and revelations of genuine manipulations and fakery. With film, large-scale changes were very hard and almost impossible to do with the original negative or positive, so elaborate printing techniques were considered to be almost entirely aesthetic and artistic. With the advent and ascent of digital darkrooms, manipulation and alteration is easier and harder to catch, therefore the appropriate approach is to respect the original pixels and not change any: the integrity of the picture can never be called into question.

This is a potted summary and there are certainly more nuances, complexities and subtleties than I can relate here, I also have a Masters in Photojournalism and do not appreciate the abusive tone bolted onto the previous comment.

<comment><USER12> > Photojournalism has impartiality at its core, not 'neutrality'.

These words are literally synonyms.

> Framing, composition are also aesthetic decisions, not just political ones, > and those decisions are made both by the photographer at shooting time and > picture editors at publishing time. The point is to draw the reader into the > story.

Certainly, but the need for drama doesn't detract from the editorial aspects _inherent_ to those artistic decisions.

> With film, large-scale changes were very hard and almost impossible to do > with the original negative or positive, so elaborate printing techniques > were considered to be almost entirely aesthetic and artistic.

No, for someone with a degree in photojournalism you're highly misinformed. Basic darkroom work is trivial to accomplish (it's literally taught in Photo 101 courses) and was routine during the entirety of the film era. Up to and including outright manipulation of photographs in many cases.

Famously, consider some of the "unpersons" removed from images of Stalin - although I certainly agree this is the type of thing that should be avoided in works of a documentary nature.

[https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/ca4cecf5-8daf-49fa-93...](https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/ca4cecf5-8daf-49fa-93dd-02cd2958d2af/906968fc0d73a207e520dfcc574df324.jpeg)

> With the advent and ascent of digital darkrooms, manipulation and alteration > is easier and harder to catch, therefore the appropriate approach is to > respect the original pixels and not change any: the integrity of the picture > can never be called into question.

I don't see how that substantially addresses the problem. Retouching is not inherently unethical, and individuals who engage in unethical behavior aren't going to be slowed down by your code of conduct.

To wit: did your code of ethics keep the guy from being removed from that image of Stalin?

> I also have a Masters in Photojournalism and do not appreciate the abusive > tone bolted onto the previous comment.

Please don't descend to the level of tone argument. It's a logical fallacy and not constructive at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was a wonderful episode of the 99% invisible podcast on this subject, while it focuses on sound it goes way deeper than this article

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds- natural/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sounds-natural/)

<comment><USER15> Not to mention this recent 6-min video, on sound & narrative

How Nature Documentaries Are Fake [https://vimeo.com/214023666](https://vimeo.com/214023666)

<comment><USER16> That wasn't quite as mind blowing as I was expecting. I guess after working on a lot of video projects I can sense when documentaries are taking a narrative license or using music and sound effects to enhance the scene, so that sort of thing isn't shocking to me. Planet Earth is still going out to remote locations to get some pretty amazing shots, rather than doing the work on one of these game farms or adding CGI. As long as they aren't interfering with nature while they do the work I appreciate their effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is true of a lot of nature films as well. I got first hand experience of this working as a field biologist in Panama. We had several well known film crews come through where I worked. Trapped animals (temporarily captured for research reasons, it would be highly unethical to trap animals just to film them) were filmed in cages with natural looking backgrounds was common. Several segments involving larger animals were filmed at a local zoo. Insects were often "tethered." A very thin clear plastic thread was glued to their bodies and attached to another surface so they could not fly again. One group wanted to film a tree fall in the forest, so they cut down a tree after attaching several cameras to it... It was an eye-opening experience for me.

</comment><comment><USER18> Slightly related but very cool, there's a British photographer Tim Flach who takes photos of animals in his studio [0], they are openly taken in a studio and it takes nothing away from their beauty.

[0]: [http://timflach.com/work/more-than- human/](http://timflach.com/work/more-than-human/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Ultimately, if you want to know whether a particular photographer's work is genuinely from the wild, you need to check into their body of work. Ideally, they'll be honest about the use of such animal parks - for the overwhelming majority of cases, though, if they claim the subjects to be wild, they will be.

That's not to say the photos won't have been processed, of course - that's entirely up to individual taste, whether that's casting it to monochrome, or boosting the contrast to bring out the skin texture of an elephant.

In photography circles, parks like those are promoted as a means for enthusiasts to see species they'd otherwise have to travel great distances for - rather like a cageless zoo. It's not something I've engaged in[1], but I can understand the appeal from a hobbyist perspective; and understandably, if you're looking for "wildlife" photography on demand, perhaps for an advertising campaign, you're unlikely to commission someone to attempt to obtain just the right photo out in the wild.

[1] My wildlife focus is primarily rabbits, eg "Momentary":

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/porsupah/9495186995/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/porsupah/9495186995/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't really see the issue. It's not like wolves don't walk through snow in packs. Or that mountain lions don't jump over rocks.

<comment><USER21> At a previous job, we talked a lot about managing the expectations of clients. If you promise someone an operating system delivered in two weeks, with a budget of $10k, they will be very upset when you don't deliver. It doesnt matter that it was an unrealistic promise. This is why engineers should double their estimates, and be proactive about communicating delays. People do not like to be disappointed when their expectations are not met.

I think that's what is happening here. People are expecting wildlife photos to be shot in the wild. A studio, or feeding the animals feels like a 'cheaper' or fake product. So they are upset. It doesn't matter if the footage is representative, or if the photos were of a better quality than what could be obtained in nature. It doesn't matter if baiting the animals reduces the cost of making the documentary, potentially increasing the amount of footage we can view. Their expectations were not met.

I've said it before, and probably will have to say it again. We are not logical creatures. We can expect people to behave logically, but we will be disappointed. Then we get upset ;)

EDIT: not saying you were upset

EDIT 2: this is why people don't want to pay for things on the internet. Their expectations have been set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Finally an article about hacking on Hacker News. It seems like a clever business. We have Photoshop these days so it's hard to know whether anything is real anymore. AI will only make that worse. But hey, at least they aren't shooting to kill.

</comment><comment><USER23> Do wild animals even exist in the wild anymore?

Edit: Wow, lots of down votes. I'm not being snarky. I genuinely ask. The term "wild" seems to have undefined semantics. Would a reservation park count as wild?

<comment><USER24> I get what you are getting at, but yes there are still massive amounts of Earth that are incredibly wild.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File:World_population_density_1994_-_with_equator.png)

<comment><USER25> Incredibly wild, yes. Sustainably wild.... I have my doubts. As the climate changes, moisture and temperature norms in various habitats are going to change. What we have are islands of wild habitat, and without connections the flora and fauna will not be able to migrate as the climate norms migrate.

The absolute number of acres is not the only consideration. I am concerned about the ability of Ponderosa Pine or cougars to migrate as necessary for survival, to name a couple of species.

<comment><USER25> OK, what's with the down-votes? Down vote isn't for "I disagree", actually make a reasoned argument. Down vote isn't for "you don't share my politics".

FWIW, I spend a lot of time in the Sierra Nevada and the Sierra foothills. I can see what is happening right before my eyes. I can see what the Ponderosa Pine on my own property are doing in response to stress. I can see the wildlife migrate through and can only imagine what happens to them as they try to cross a bridge from one wild region to another. I am blessed to be a steward of a parcel of wild land that can host mountain lion and other large fauna. Join me if you want to make a difference.

We have islands of wild habitat. That is not an opinion, that is a fact. Wildlife and especially wild plants have a difficult time migrating from one wild island to another. Not opinion, that is an observable, measurable fact.

HN has been getting out of hand lately -- getting down voted for making verifiable, factual observations is something that may be the accepted norm on SlashDot, but has no place here.

<comment><USER26> I downvoted you for capitalizing the D in slashdot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm a big fan of wildlife documentaries, and it's very clear that more recent documentaries, either as a result of cost-cutting, trying to be more engaging or what have you, are splicing footage of unrelated scenes (even with completely different lighting and/or landscapes) to create a narrative of something happening that is clearly not taking place.

It's not appealing. It's not exciting. It's farcical and insulting to a certain degree.

<comment><USER28> It is a little off-putting, but I think it certainly has its place in educating and entertaining people about wildlife.

BBC's Hidden Kingdoms comes to mind, where they make no illusions about the fact that you are watching a film not a camera left out in the woods for ten days.

In fact, after each episode they double down and re-use all their work by showing you just how they got the shots and set up all the scenes.

That, and I think Planet Earth has occasionally been guilty of what you're talking about, but personally I've never felt insulted, more like impressed they managed to make a palatable narrative out of a bunch of wildlife scenes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There is a great book about the subject of capturing wildlife images/movies by Chris Palmer: [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7482381-shooting-in- the-w...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7482381-shooting-in-the-wild)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm really not sure I'd prefer them pestering actual wild animals.

<comment><USER31> When you go to many of the parks with noted wildlife, you'll see a fair bit of people traveling around with big telephoto lenses. They never need to pester any wild animals at all.

The only time I've seen people pester wildlife in the national parks, was when they wanted to get a close up using their limited-zoom-ability cell phone. (Nothing happened in this case, others haven't been as lucky -- see pg. 293 of this: [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/pdfs/mm6511.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/pdfs/mm6511.pdf))

<comment><USER32>
      Age   Sex     Park affiliation    Activity                                            Distance from bison Encounter type Injuries
      16    Female  Visitor             Photography; turned back to bison                   3–6 ft              Gored           Serious
      62    Male    Visitor             Photography                                         3–5 ft              Tossed          Serious
      19    Female  Employee            Walking; did not observe bison                      10 ft               Tossed          Minor
      68    Female  Visitor             Walking; observed bison and continued to walk past  NA                  Gored           Serious
      43    Female  Visitor             Photography; turned back to bison                   6 ft                Tossed          Minor

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This doesn't really surprise me. I take pictures as hobby and combining with walking it turns into animal photography (well birds mostly). Its not common to see animals like lynx, bear or wolves or moose (mammals basically). So if you are trying to get a great photo of them to sell for stock, I can see this is a huge time save.

For example the wolves I've photographed have been really really far away at Yellowstone. I like the pictures, but they've not great.

Though this takes some of the excitement out of it I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER34> This guy has written extensively about the business:

[https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Wildlife-Filmmaker- Challe...](https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Wildlife-Filmmaker-Challenges- Industry/dp/1938954076)

</comment><comment><USER35> I live near Yellowstone National Park and there are a ton of real wildlife photographers in this area doing amazing work.

</comment><comment><USER36> [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073024/BBCs- little-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073024/BBCs-little-white- lie-Polar-bear-cubs-filmed-Frozen-Planet-zoo-Arctic.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> So now we have fake news, and fake wildlife pictures.

</comment><comment><USER38> Good place to photo wolves in n nj

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

</comment><comment><USER39> So how does this belong to HN?</comment>


Google Employee Creates Closure Lite - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/closure-lite

<comment><USER2> With every other software package that uses functions called "Closure", it is getting somewhat difficult to tell what's what. Apparently this is a JavaScript library. (Not to be confused with the programming langauge Clojure, or the CL implementation Clozure, or the web browser Closure...)

<comment><USER3> Google has been perverting names for a while.

Some one-name google products: reader, chrome, notebook, docs, calendar, sites, voice, wave, transit, checkout, groups. Searching for those words alone usually brings up the google product as the first result. Looks like google wants to own a lot of common generic nouns.

I was reading some mozilla docs recently and every time I hit the word "chrome" meaning "browser chrome" and not "chrome the browser," I was met with a little cognitive pause and kept having to double check their meanings.

Just look at <http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config_entries> \-- we have entries like "browser.chrome.[blah]." A few years ago it was blindingly obvious what they meant. Now, for a spit second, I see myself wondering "Why is FireFox using Chrome settings?" It's against good taste to call your products very generic but widely-used names.</comment></comment>


Francis Crick Institute's £700m building 'too noisy to concentrate' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/21/francis-crick-institutes-700m-building-too-noisy-to-concentrate <comment><USER2> I found that some earplugs from Walmart really make a night and day difference in concentration for me in noisy areas. Also makes people think twice before starting a conversation with me when I'm focused on something.</comment>


Learn A Language in 90 Days - <AUTHOR> http://zenhabits.net/how-to-learn-a-language-in-90-days/ <comment><USER2> I would like to expand on this bit:

> Once you know the techniques, you'll be able to apply the same grammatical > patterns and language techniques in every new language you learn.

Only to new languages in the same family.

> It's for this reason that, while Italian took me 3 or so months to master, > Spanish took only 2 months and Portuguese took just a few weeks.

That will mostly be because Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are in a lot of ways quite similar. My Spanish friends understand Italian and vice versa, without having been educated in it. Being romance languages, they fit in the same family as French (which you'll also be able to learn quite easily now, although there's a bigger difference than between Italian/Spanish/Portuguese) - they all stem from Latin. For example Dutch, English and German are all part of the Germanic family of languages and once you know one, the others will be much easier, too.

The problem will be learning outside of families you know. For example the Finno-Ugric family (Finnish, Estonian, et al) will be very hard to learn since you won't be able to relate any of the words to stuff you already know, and the grammar is completely different. Knowing more languages won't help you, although knowing German might help you a little bit for Estonian if you're good at pattern-recognition.

Source: I know 4 languages from the Germanic and Romance families and am learning Estonian.

<comment><USER3> +1

As for the author, let him teach others to master Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, and Chinese with the same accelerating rhythm as with he achieved in learning Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Edit: Add to the list Arabic, Armenian, Farsi, Hebrew, Indonesian, Mongolian, Navajo, Siamese, Tamil, Vietnamese, and any other independent/unrelated languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Então você fala português? é NÓIS QUE AVUA BRUXÃO.

Well, i learned english by watching tv shows and movies with subtitles. My english still sux, but im able to speak with people and get the job done, also i can read and understand almost perfectly, but my grammar is pretty bad ... I still feel unconfortably to speak when its not with friends or family, but, i dont let it get in the way, of course some times i look like a fool, but i think everyone does when they ar learning a new language and it is part of the process of learning. You just need to practice and dont be affraid of fail.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I write for Packt? - <AUTHOR> Someone from Packt Publishing reached out to me today asking if I'd be interested in authoring a video course for them. The subject is a good fit for me and I'd stand to learn a lot by going through the process. But looking around on the web it seems that people have had wildly divergent experiences with this company. So for anyone out there who has written for Packt: what was the overall experience like? Is it compatible with a full-time job? Did they keep their promises regarding royalties, etc? Most importantly: would you write for them again? <comment><USER2> I wrote one book with them so I can share a little about the experience. Note that it was a book, not a video course.

\- in terms of money, they did keep their promise. The royalties were 16% which I think is decent in the industry. They did pay without problem. Note that if they approached you with the project it's because they've done their research and think that there is a significant market for the project.

\- it takes a _lot_ of time. Seriously. I know every single guy who wrote a book will cry about how time consuming it is. But it is. I had a full time job and it was difficult to spend another 1 to 2 hours at the end of each day on it.

\- they had a set schedule for the book. Basically they will work out a timeline to deliver chap1 after a week, chap2 one week later, etc. I was not very happy to work like that (note that I worked with them on the timeline to push back a little). I would have liked having the option to go back to earlier chapters to edit them based on something I mention later on in the book. Their timeline was also very aggressive. They used an average of 2 pages/day, which is actually really high in real life.

\- the contact at packt who was working with me was very helpful. He was always providing feedback and asking me to weigh in. At the end of the day, I was able to write what I wanted. They never tried to influence the content (the form sometimes, since they know what looks good in their books and what doesn't, which is fair).

\- I didn't like that everything was done in a .doc file. It makes it difficult for me to keep track of versions, etc. I ended up working with markdown and then having to move everything over to their .doc file at the end of a chapter.

Would I write for them again? At least not for my next project. I would try another publisher to get a different experience.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your experience! That's very helpful.</comment></comment>


Akka Streams: A Motivating Example - <AUTHOR> http://blog.colinbreck.com/akka-streams-a-motivating-example/ <comment><AUTHOR> I can very much relate to the pain points and benefits mentioned in the example.

Last year we had a project in which we had to take a stream of data that needed to be verified with several calls to an external system before being partitioned, transformed and inserted in batches to a relational DB. The system processes ~100 million messages per day (message length is ~1.5 KB) on 2 nodes each with 4 cores and 16 GB memory.

We built the routing and partitioning logic using Akka cluster since we wanted to have consistent hashing as we scale the number of stream workers horizontally. Initially, the stream processing was also done via Actors, which are a fantastic concurrency tool, but we soon found ourselves reimplementing a lot of the features mentioned in the article and needed to handle backpressure between each of the steps since the rates at which the producers put data into the system often burst for short periods of time. Last but not least, we suddenly had a huge amount of non-business logic that needed to be tested and maintained.

At some point we decided to rewrite the stream processing part to make use of Akka streams. I have to admit that I was initially skeptical given that no one on the team had previously worked with it and since some of us already had experience with Apache Spark, which could also be used to process the data.

Long story short, it was a breeze to rewrite as it consisted mainly of removing the non-business code and using the Akka streams stages to handle the batching, rate limiting and end to end backpressure for us. And similarly satisfying, our codebase was much smaller and readable.

Soon we will begin work on another project of similar nature, and while we are considering a couple of alternatives depending on the final requirements, Akka streams is definitely on the top of the list for us.</comment>


Apple releases open source 'Password Manager Resources' project for developers - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/05/apple-releases-new-open-source-password-manager-resources-project-for-developers/ <comment><USER2> Direct link to Github: [https://github.com/apple/password-manager- resources](https://github.com/apple/password-manager-resources)

Seems like a good idea, instead of every password manager trying to re- implement the same kind of edge cases. One day I hope we can just "muss change" password because sites follow a common theme like [https://wicg.github.io/change-password- url/index.html](https://wicg.github.io/change-password-url/index.html) \- but maybe we have a better strategy than passwords until then.

<comment><USER3> If Apple wants to throw their weight around on this, that would be best directed at pushing sites to stop having stupid rules IMNSHO.

Of the documented rules only _minimum_ password length is even an excusable rule. Should your site accept 40kB passwords? No, but that's not a "maximum password length" rule at that point it's just common sense about unauthenticated payload sizes. Whereas this list includes limits of just eight characters and in one case simply 4 digits.

The other restrictions - required or prohibited characters - and the shared credential quirk (systems that let you, indeed often require you to use the same credentials but on different FQDNs) are both making users less safe. While there's an argument that just documenting them is neutral I'd argue that for an outfit with Apple's clout it isn't enough and they need to be loudly calling for reform.

That's tempered by the knowledge that Apple has never been very good at doing more than one thing. "Password stores" are definitely not the new iPhone, and so they can't pivot their whole company to this problem, and maybe in the absence of that level of focus this is all they can offer, but that's kind of a shame on its own.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately I think they'd rather you just authorize everything against your Apple ID.

<comment><USER3> That's far from the worst outcome. There are anti-trust concerns in play of course, and we certainly don't want a world where anybody without an AppleID is a second class citizen, but from the security side such systems are a win- win for users and site owners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea of reading a password manager reading a website's password rules (which they are calling "quirks" apparently) is a great idea as the app would then know what the controlling parameters are (15 characters, must have an upper, a lower, and three special characters) when it auto-generates a password. Since I started using KeePassXC I've been shocked at how many websites -- especially financial institutions! -- don't allow you to use 64 character long passwords using multiple "special characters" (why would you make a password rule that says I can only use five select non-number, non- letter characters and only "one to three" of said characters?)...

<comment><USER6> I cannot conceive of any situation that would make a 64 character password necessary. Even 256 bits of random data can be encoded into less than 42 printable ASCII characters.

And even that is twice as much as would ever seem necessary.

<comment><USER5> Why 64 characters? Because 128 would be too much...

Seriously though, I like obnoxiously long passwords because it clues me in to who is storing my password in a manner than can be reverted to plain text if not in plaintext directly. If you're using a salted hash to store my password it shouldn't make a difference whether my password is "HN/2020/Jun!" or the full text of War and Peace -- just the hash will be stored. Anyone who tells me my password is too long makes me nervous because they are doing something different.

And of course I'm a little paranoid: how many breach datasets are your credentials in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like this would be better as a Well-Known URI, for example /.well- known/password-manager.json with similar format to the repo – That way it's not up to Apple to decide what goes in the repository

<comment><USER8> Sites would immediately use it to essentially disable password managers "for security." Sites have done everything they can to block password managers historically, I don't anticipate that changing.

<comment><USER9> Why would any site do that? Other than in a banks website I haven't encountered that behaviour previously

<comment><USER8> You're asking the wrong person: Sites shouldn't do that. But they do, often.

Banks are the worst offenders, but it isn't limited to that. Any site that thinks it is "special" and requires "extra security" targets password managers for reasons unknown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just wish Apple allowed better integration with third-party password managers.

<comment><USER11> What are your suggestions? Genuinely curious as I find the iOS integration quite excellent, it lets me pick from 1Password directly on the password prompt.

<comment><USER12> I'm probably just doing something wrong but I haven't figured out how to save a new password for something I just signed up for anywhere other than Apple's password manager.

<comment><USER13> I am going by memory here so I very well could be wrong/it may have changed but I think the process is as follows -

1\. On the signup page select either the username/email or password text box

2\. Press the key icon.

3\. Select add in whatever password manager you use (I use Bitwarden)

4\. Generate a password, etc. then hit save

5\. Select it and it will autofill and add any extra stuff in the sign up form

That is how I have done it in the past (maybe not exactly like that, as I said this is from memory) and it has worked well enough. Not a great user experience though to be fair.

<comment><USER12> Thanks! I think I was missing the key actually, I usually use the little pop up asking me to save to iCloud, didn't realise the key let you save too and to any password manager. Nice! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll say it. This is kind of a joke.

Not that it would be a joke if an individual developer released it, and built an active community who contributed, or if it was more than 100 websites long.

But the heavy publicity push seems a bit early. And, it feels like Apple's announcement is little more than "hey guys, check out this POC repo!".

It kinda feels like Apple doesn't get OSS.

<comment><USER2> [https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06052020a&1591373342](https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06052020a&1591373342) doesn't seem like a "heavy publicity push". It's a niche topic and the target audience of people who build password managers isn't exactly a huge one.

<comment><USER14> 1 hour ago this began appearing on plenty of Mac news sites. The PR game is a push not a pull.

<comment><USER2> Every tiny bit of information trickling out of Apple is circulating on Mac news site. Even if it's just a delivery date changing somewhere in the store. These news site are actively looking for that.

I doubt the PR department is pushing out a footnote on the developer portal to a bunch of Mac rumor blogs.

<comment><USER15> It's not even on the major Mac rumor blogs.

MacRumors and AppleInsiders both don't have the article.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/05/apple-open-source- passw...](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/05/apple-open-source-password- management-project/)

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/05/apple- announces-o...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/05/apple-announces- open-source-project-for-password-manager-developers)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>