Taxation of Carried Interest - <AUTHOR> https://avc.com/2018/06/taxation-of-carried-interest/ <comment><USER6> The correct solution to this problem is to abolish the distinction between capital gains and ordinary income (ie wages), and abolish the corporate income tax that justifies the "double taxation" argument that justifies the capital gains rate.

Capital gains is why Mitt Romney can make 200 times as much as I do in a year, and pay half my effective tax rate. This is broad across the economy. It's a fundamentally immoral tax model. Moreover, it's a socially dangerous one - <USER2> idea that there is one set of rules for the rich and another for everyone else is already stressing our nation. Stop actually proving the point, lest you want a revolution to deal with it when society lacks the nerve.

Corporate income tax is no big loss. For one thing, it's an increasingly shrinking part of our tax base. For another, it's riddled with loopholes and borderline graft, much more so than individual taxes. This kind of stuff is biased against entrepreneurship, in favor of cozy relationships with politicians. Being connected is more important than being hardworking or imaginative.

Tax capital gains as ordinary income. It's simple and fair.

<comment><USER7> Abolishing corporation tax has always seemed to me like something that makes sense only in a quite naive view of the world.

The idea is always just to tax methods of getting income out of a corporation instead, (income, dividends) but there's a problem with this idea.

There are infinite ways to get your money out of a corporation.

If you start off with: power is power all forms of power can be transferred into money somehow

Then you realize that allowing someone to put their income into a company and only pay tax on DIRECTLY taking it out, there's hundreds of ways to get around that.

My company employs your son, then you give me a kickback in whatever form My company buys from your company, you give me a kickback somehow My company invests in something related to another investment that I hold and pushes the value of it up. My company employs me on minimum wage for 80 years instead of employing me on a high wage for 40 years, halving the tax that I pay through income My company employs my own son, girlfriend, relative

If I have access to and control over an entity that can swing a million pounds around you can guarantee I can find an indirect way to get paid from that which you can't prevent/tax/foresee. The only reasonable way to mitigate that is to slap some level of tax on me putting money into my proxy.

<comment><USER8> Not to mention, it assumes a priori that double taxation is _bad_.

Double taxation has _consequences_ , which may be bad or good in different situations, but isn't itself bad or good. Hell, I'm now getting double taxed, through the adjustment to the SALT deductions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the modern argument for preferential tax treatment of capital gains?

Arguments against it seem compelling to me:

1\. The American dream is achievement through hard work. But taxation of capital gains privileges ownership over labor. That's just un-American.

2\. This preferential taxation creates an anti-productive industry dedicated to re-casting ordinary income as capital gains, leading to misallocation of resources.

3\. Many states including California tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; CA is not exactly suffering from lack of investment income.

4\. Optics are terrible: I and many other ordinary Americans pay a higher average tax rate than the very wealthy, including ex-presidential candidate Mitt Romney and in all likelihood President Trump.

<comment><USER10> 1\. The higher the capital gains tax rate, the less money will be invested.

2\. Higher rates make for less efficient economics, because people will hold on to poorly performing investments longer.

3\. A big chunk of capital gains are actually inflation.

<comment><USER9> Every point you make applies equally well to labor:

1\. The higher the labor tax rate, the fewer people will work.

2\. Higher labor tax rate makes for less efficient economics because workers will prefer lower-paying (less stressful) jobs.

3\. Wage tax brackets are not indexed for inflation.

Given these, why should the tax code prefer capital ownership to labor?

<comment><USER10> 1\. only if they have alternatives to work.

2\. are you sure about that? Lower paying jobs tend to be more stressful.

3\. they are last time I looked, though those things change over time

<comment><USER9> This sounds like the gross argument that it's more efficient to tax labor because they have no recourse. The rich can move, hire lawyers, etc. to avoid taxes, so more it's efficient to focus on the hapless poor!

The rebuttal is to simplify the tax code as to eliminate loopholes, such as preferential income taxation.

You're right and I was mistaken that tax brackets are indexed for inflation. I'd support indexing capital gains if it eliminated their preferential taxation.

<comment><USER11> >1\. The higher the labor tax rate, the fewer people will work.

This is what you said and is basically untrue. It is not a gross argument, we are talking about how taxation motivates people. The fact that wage income is taxed does not seem like it would make people work less.

This may be different if we ever start a significant movement towards a post- scarcity economy where automation makes necessities so inexpensive that people with even a small amount of capital do not need to work. Then you might have to do strange things to incentivize people to do the few jobs that need humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Taxation of carried interest as capital gains makes absolutely no sense - <USER3> can't think of a better example really to illustrate "one set of rules for the rich and another for everyone else.'

<comment><USER13> Carried interest is effectively the General Partners share of the dividend. Dividends are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income, so this is as well. This is true whether you're poor and own one share of a dividend paying stock, or you're Ray Dalio.

Here a pretty good breakdown of how it works and why it makes sense [0].

To be clear, I'm not saying you have to like it, but the rich have been getting richer since the beginning of time. I don't expect that will ever change. It's as true with humans as with animals like lions (albeit the measures are different, as lions have no care about dollars).

[0] [https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/04/cnbc-explains-carried- intere...](https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/04/cnbc-explains-carried- interest.html)

<comment><USER12> Yes, but as the parent article states, and even what is pointed out in your own link, while dividends are taxed at a lower rate, the manager is paid the lower rate on capital _that is not his to begin with_. That's the part that makes no sense to me. It is quite simply an incentive payment for his labor: it's income that investors pay him for his expertise, and as such should be taxed at income rates.

<comment><USER14> You & I start a company. I provide $100,000 in seed money but little actual work/time. You provide no seed money but a lot of work & time. We agree to split ownership of the company 50/50.

5 years go by.

We sell the company for $1,000,000. You get $500,000, I get $500,000.

Should I get to pay a lower tax rate than you?

<comment><USER15> No, you have risked nothing but your time. Since you have no investment at risk you should not get preferential tax treatment meant to encourage you to do so.

<comment><USER14> (I think you might have inverted the "I" and "you" in my scenario making your comment a bit confusing. But I think I understand the point you were intending to make.)

Why is the risking of money deserving of special tax treatment but not the risking of time?

<comment><USER15> I personally don't think it is but that is the logic used to justify the capital gains tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess the HN "Georgist land tax as a solution to all taxation problems" meme has died off.

</comment><comment><USER14> FWIW, here is the simple counter argument:

Alice & Bob form a partnership to invest some money. Between the two of them they invest $100. After 5 years they sell their investment for $200. As far as the government is concerned, that's a long term gain of $100 and should be taxed as such. How Alice & Bob decide to split the gains is between them and not a tax question.

I don't necessarily buy this argument, but it's a valid way to look at things.

<comment><USER17> > I don't necessarily buy this argument

Why should risking time and risking money get taxed at different rates? I guess I don't understand the argument for why LPs should pay less taxes than GPs. Especially since entrepreneurs get to pay longterm capital gains on their stock, and the risk profile of being a founder is basically identical to the risk profile of being a GP.

<comment><USER14> Yes, your first sentence is an especially pithy way to boil down what I wrote.

When I said that "I don't necessarily buy this argument", I didn't mean that I necessarily disagreed with it either. TBH, I remain uncertain.

It's interesting that you compare founders/GPs/LPs without bringing up employees. They also risk their time and, in a majority of cases, will not receive preferential tax treatment.

<comment><USER18> Employees invest their time for immediate pay off (they get paid twice a month, monthly or something like that typically) So in essence, this is short- term capital gain which is taxed at the same level as regular income.

<comment><USER14> I'm sorry, I was unclear.

When speaking about employees, I was talking about startup employees who take a significant % of their compensation as risky stock options. My point was about this portion of their compensation.

<comment><USER18> Aren't employees get a same long-term capital taxation treatment on profits from their shares for their risk of taking part of the company in exchange for their time?

<comment><USER14> It depends. But, in general, no.

Startup employees generally get equity in the form of stock options. In order for employees to get preferential tax treatment on these options they have to exercise these options at the time they are granted (which can require a large outlay of cash) and then hold them for at least one year.

Due to the cost and risk of this exercise, most employees do not do this. Instead they wait to see if the company becomes more valuable (and liquid) and only exercise the options if so. At that point any realized gains are taxed as ordinary wage income.

There are a great many resources online on this topic if you are interested in more details.

<comment><USER18> sounds like a pretty bad deal... I am glad I never accepted stock options in lieu of compensation.

EDIT: after reading more about it, it actually makes sense. What really employee is getting is an "option" similar to one can buy for publicly traded companies. And whatever option price is already reflected in employees tax situation - it is an actual expense which lowers tax base by the cost of this option.

Now - the cost of that option (i.e. different between full salary and limited salary when getting options) is something that can be very incorrectly priced (which I assume is the case in the majority of startups)

So it is not tax code discriminating against these employees. It is actually employers taking advantage of these clueless employees.

<comment><USER14> From a strictly "expected value" calculation you are probably right that in many cases startups are getting a pretty good deal when they get employees to trade salary for stock options. It's hard to say if this qualifies as "taking advantage of these clueless employees" though.

Certainly it is in some cases, but in others the employees could have a high enough risk tolerance that it is a good deal for them.

In addition employees also often make career decisions on factors that are not purely financial. This is also a perfectly reasonable thing for people to do.

<comment><USER18> From what I read typical stock option results in about 50k per year extra if company succeed. Chances of hitting that are really really small. So risk/reward doesn't seems to be right.

As for non-financial reasons - this is 100% valid point. But then why we are talking about non-fair taxation? Stocks come into picture only when employee exercise (at a nominal price on the moment employee was hired) The same would apply if you use regular options for the publicly traded company on RobingHood for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> (Disclosure: I'm a VC in California, which is one of the states proposing this tax.)

For what it's worth, the tax rates being proposed on carried interest in these states are very high. E.g. California is proposing 17% while Maryland is proposing 19%. The result is that these carry taxes combined with a capital gains tax can be significantly _higher_ than regular income taxes. I think imposing taxes of this size at the state level is foolish because I suspect many VCs would move to other states and commute. I already know LA VCs who fly to SF for 1-2 days every week, and the flight from Nevada or Portland would be approximately the same. Plus housing is much, much cheaper in those areas. It would be even easier to do this in Maryland, since Washington DC is so close.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like win-win. CA gets the parasites to move, then gets to declare that the policy works because CA companies still get investment, then the policy gets applied nationally. What's not to like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> New Jersey's new governor campaigned on multiple radical changes, including a "wealth tax". The governor is now trying to push this through Trenton. However, the Senate leader of NJ (Sweeney), although a Democrat, was recently reelected in what was one of the most expensive NJ Senate elections in history. Sweeney could not have succeeded at this game without the financial support of those who are most exposed to such a wealth tax. Naturally, Sweeney is sensitive to their tax exposure and has consequently opposed Murphy's plans.

I don't see NJ taxing capital gains in an administration that has many other bold plans requiring party support.

</comment><comment><USER22> Taxation of carried interest really made no sense to me. Sure, get the capital gains benefit off of your investment, but why should one get the capital gains for doing one's job?

</comment><comment><USER23> Here's how I think it should work:

You can get capital gains treatment on returns on investments in a given year which don't exceed 20% a year compounded annually. This would apply whether or not the taxpayer has realized the gain (though I'd be fine with an exception for startups to give them, say, 5 years to pay since liquidity events don't always align properly).

This solves the situations that enrage people, namely:

* Carried interest

* People that luck into huge gains on flyer investments (i.e. bitcoin or whatever

* Startup founders who get capital gains treatment because of the $100 (or whatever) that they put into the company initially

In each of these cases, these are really speculations, not investments. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't see why it should get preferential tax treatment.

</comment><comment><USER24> How about we require people who manage large funds to have their own "skin in the game", perhaps they'd do a better job for their clients.

<comment><USER14> Most large funds do require that.

<comment><USER25> This is correct. The vast majority of funds have _at least_ 1% committed by GPs. This is what Fred means when he writes, "The partners at USV make up a sizeable portion of our funds."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The real problem is that finance has got itself included inside the production barrier when really, a lot of what it does is charge outsize fees (e.g. vc and pe) and should really be considered rent-seeking.

</comment><comment><USER27> We can argue rules, technicalities and definitions, but here's the overriding one: Everyone needs to pull their weight, pay their share. Nobody is more important than anyone else.

Pulling your weight means equal sacrifice. It might be hard to calculate the equal sacrifice of someone making $20,000 and someone making $20,000,000, but I can tell you that $1,000 (EDIT: or 20% of income) is a heck of a lot more sacrifice for the former than the latter.

I'm sick of people complaining about pulling their weight or saying they are too important to do so. Should taxes (and other laws) now be contingent on the government's judgment of your importance? I suppose the unimportant poor should cover the share of these extra-important wealthy.

Personally, I'm kind of proud to pay my taxes and contribute to the enterprise of my democracy.

<comment><USER18> One potential problem I see with it - when welfare, public infrastructure, country protection and other goods for all commons is outsourced to one ambiguous entity (federal government) people who paid for it the most are not getting respect for that, and instead are being called thieves and abusers of the system and that they should give more. While praise (if any) goes towards that ambiguous system.

When a large donor donates to some cause - they get their name out there. When someone pays a lot of money into federal treasury - nil. It can be very discouraging and further isolating from people actually receiving a direct benefit (even if in the grand scheme of things everyone gets better off, including these large taxpayers.)

Not saying there is a solution to that in modern states to that, but I can see how paying taxes to ambiguous treasury not very fulfilling, and when one actually cannot feel how they helped someone with it.

I have similar feelings when contributing to a large code base. Yeah, we get top management's praise one a quarter/year about how good we did as a mass, but I do not feel that. Perhaps if I could see how the code I contributed somehow actually helped someone - I would feel better. But I could not come up with some solution to that.

This I would imagine applies to many large systems. This includes so often discussed BS jobs, which most likely are not, they are just perceived this way because one who did it has no clue what effect their work had. And unless you are "superstar coder", "industry disrupter", etc - no one even remembers your name...

<comment><USER27> > people who paid for it the most

If we are talking about equal sacrifice, they did not pay the most, they paid as much as anyone else.

> hen someone pays a lot of money into federal treasury - <USER4>

Why should they get any praise for doing their share? Or everyone should get praise (which I support). The premise that someone is somehow superior for doing their fair share is fallacious. They are not aristocrats condescending to help the poor; they are merely pulling their weight.

> are being called thieves and abusers of the system and that they should give > more.

This is a strawman often used by advocates of low tax on the wealthy to, in a standard rhetorical technique, somehow portray themselves as victims - <USER5> is quite an incredible, cynical, and frankly embarrassing stretch.

In fact, consensus has supported decreasing taxes for the wealthy, which is what has happened. Also, even those who oppose it, calling names is rare, IME. I'm sure there are some out there, but given that it's just a portion of one side of the debate, it's not many. If anyone on HN is using those words, I don't recall it.

> While praise (if any) goes towards that ambiguous system.

I'm not sure what's ambiguous about it at all.

<comment><USER18> > If we are talking about equal sacrifice, they did not pay the most, they > paid as much as anyone else.

I am talking in absolute numbers. There is plenty of research on who is paying the most taxes. A just random result from google - [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/06/a-closer- loo...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/10/06/a-closer-look-at-who- does-and-doesnt-pay-u-s-income-tax/)

" A Pew Research Center analysis of IRS data from 2015, the most recent available, shows that taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed (6.8% of all taxable returns)."

<comment><USER28> That's income taxes, the poor pay other taxes too. Also, the poor comprise the people who cut your hair, clean your yards, make your food, essentially provide for those making over 200K. Just because we don't provide the means to live to them like we do for other people doesn't mean they aren't important and don't equally sacrifice.

<comment><USER18> I am genuinely interested in seeing something about "total taxes paid" (including sales tax, which hits the hardest low-income folks) but I could not find such research.

And I am certainly not saying hair cutting is not important. For once, without proper haircut CEO of the company will not be able to raise money to do a new project which potentially can employ a lot of people and pay a lot of taxes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Courageous for a VC to say this.

</comment><comment><USER30> It sounds like the author does not want to pay taxes. How much tax does he want to pay?

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a law that powerful people made for themselves. This is my only hope for a favorable crypto tax treatment: if only enough rich people own these, then the tax regime will be palpable to develop it.

</comment><comment><USER32> Counterpoint from Matt Ocko (DCVC):

[https://twitter.com/mattocko/status/1005367508910596096](https://twitter.com/mattocko/status/1005367508910596096)

1/ TL; dr: "Having gotten immensely rich in part due to a tax break, I now solemnly opine that it should be denied to others... with no consequence to me..."

This is "pulling up the rope ladder behavior" - here's why:

2/ Fred's stance screws over underrepresented VCs the most...

They are most likely to have smaller funds that - when they win (& I hope they do) - they have big carry events. They are then disproportionately taxed vs old white dudes living on big fees w/ cunning tax structures;

3/ and, every dollar coerced by the state from emerging women & PoC VCs for largely noise-level financial impact (vs killing Prop 13) and only really for political posturing means less $ to anchor their next fund's GP commit, putting them at a fundraising disadvantage; and...

4/ ...smaller funds mean smaller mgmt fee, fewer women and PoC hired by those funds, and less reward for everyone from the partners on down - where a carry centric bonus/win for an associate might be hugely meaningful for their family.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure why Ocko is bringing women & PoC into the debate when they remain a very small minority of VC GPs. The minority is even smaller when you weight by AUM (and likely future gains) vs just counting the number of people.

The fact is that a change to how carried interest was taxes would, by far, mostly affect older white dudes.

I'll for hearing a legitimate counterpoint but this one strikes me as a fairly cynical manipulation.

<comment><USER33> > I'm not sure why Ocko is bringing women & PoC into the debate

It's this generation's "think of the children!" Just like Prop 13 was passed via "think of grandma losing her house!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Capital gain tax or income gain tax are designed to make the wealthy wealthier. Don't tax "gain", tax the "wealth". This will make it harder and harder to hoard wealth as you gain wealth. Every other "tax" can then be removed.

So with the "wealth" taxt, every year you sum all your possessions and you give X% (20%?) to the government.

This look simple enough to me, did any country try that?

<comment><USER35> Inflation is a wealth tax.

It's not necessary for the government to ever tax anyone for anything; they could just print the money and all "taxes" would come in the form of inflation instead. And that tax would be simple and unavoidable.

A very progressive tax system could be "print money and give it to everyone equally." If you're poor the guaranteed income would be a huge percentage of your wealth and since you have no savings the resulting inflation would affect you least. The wealthy with savings would essentially be taxed like you describe at the inflation rate.

This is a thought experiment rather than a suggestion for a workable system, but I think like the "ideal op-amp" it might be useful to compare tax systems to this one.

<comment><USER36> not completely true that they could just print the money and demand no tax. Without demanding tax payable in the government's currency then nobody would have any reason to use that currency and the currency would have no value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The carried interest exemption is shockingly unfair. I think the only reason hedge fund managers can pay 15% on a $100m income while say a nurse may pay 40% on a modest income is the fund managers are able to pay lobbyists to effectively bribe the politicians to let them pay less. It's only in the USA - I'm in the UK where we have a huge finance industry without this nonsense. It should go.

</comment><comment><USER38> Capital gains is wage theft. If you have money, you are taxed at a lower rate than people who have to earn it. Carried interest is just a follow-through of this principle that is apparent at every level of American government. Those with money steal from those who must earn it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I get annoyed when smart, wealthy people say that tax laws need to change while at the same time take advantage of the tax break becuase it's 'the government's job to fix.'

Either pay the additional amount you think is fair and complain about it or take the tax break and don't. But please don't complain about it while simultaneously benefitting from the that which you say is wrong.

<comment><USER40> Couldn't disagree more. What's wrong with a prisoner in the prisoner's dilemma playing the game rationally while also wishing he wasn't in a prisoner's dilemma?</comment></comment>


Microsoft Graph Engine 1.0 - v-yadli http://research.microsoft.com/graphengine

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool stuff! I wonder how it compares with existing graph processing systems: Pregel, GraphLab, GraphX, etc.

</comment><comment><USER2> A great work! intersting and useful!

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent work!

</comment><comment><USER4> cool job, thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hope this work could be wildly used in the future. i think it's meaningful</comment>


The DVD is dead. USB flash drive restores are here. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.backblaze.com/2012/01/25/the-dvd-is-dead-usb-flash-drive-restores-are-here/

<comment><USER2> Tangentially related: I really wish you could buy a pack of cheap flash drives the way you buy a pack of DVDs. At any given time, all the technology/office stores around carry a range of flash drives from $9.99 to $99.99. The capacity you get for a dollar goes up over time, but they never offer a drive for less than $10 (except the occasional advertised sale) or a package of multiple small drives for less than $10.

<comment><USER3> relevant: <http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/flashkus/>

Can't believe something like this does not exist yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That was the longest way of saying "We now offer mailed USB flash drives as a restore option for up to 28GB of data." I've ever seen.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, saying that and also, you know, providing very insightful statistics related to DVD use and some historical data on the matter. The part of the article you somehow missed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> DVDs are ridiculously cheap to produce en masse. USB drives are getting cheaper, but it's not really the same ball park.

</comment><comment><USER7> Finally! I had about 100 gigs to restore from another backup company. They sent me a stack of DVDs. Now I have to feed them all to my computer, one at a time.

</comment><comment><USER8> While I think this is a good move for backup restoration, I think it's a little hasty to call DVDs dead. Redbox doesn't seem to mind raking in the cash on a "dead" media format.

<comment><USER9> Can we at least call them annoying?

I for one find it exasperating how much time DVDs (and CDs) spend spinning up and generally clicking about whilst for some reason simultaneously freezing the rest of the computer. I bet most HN readers know the reason, but, come on, we shouldn't have to be inconvenienced like this :-)

I haven't found an OS yet that reliably writes to DVDs. If I write a bunch of pictures to a DVD, I need to check afterwards that they're all present and correct. This can't just be down to my level of competence. It's a scandal.

Sometimes they spin at high revs so there's a virtual hair dryer in the background while I watch my videos. Or they go slooww and cannot be coaxed to copy my files in less than 103 minutes.

And they scratch quite easily too!

I wish we had something like those elegant crystals that Superman drops into slots to access the Kryptonian archive. Some kind of optical flash linkage ought to do the trick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> None of my computers have had a working DVD Drive for the las t 4-5 years and I'm yet to go 'damn I need a DVD Drive!"'

</comment><comment><USER11> So true. The DVD has run its course.

With more and more emphasis on remote storage rather than physical, present storage mediums, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar phasing out occurred among similar technologies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Read-write media will never be as cheap as write-once-read-many media. Perhaps DVD's are on the way out, but their replacement will not come in the form of traditional USB flash drives.

For example, Blu-ray discs are about $0.03 per GB, where a USB flash drive is approximately $1.00 per GB. Using flash memory for WORM style storage (like backups) is just silly.

<comment><USER13> Never, ever, ever say "never" when it comes to tech. In 10-20 years they'll be handing out 8 GB USB drives in gumball machines for 5 cents each, and 16 TB flash drives will be $15 on amazon.

<comment><USER12> I'm not the one saying never. Why do you anticipate progress with flash storage but not with optical storage?

If we have the optical technology to render a certain number of floating gate transistors in a certain area, we also have the optical technology to render 10-100x as many bits of raw data in that same area.

<comment><USER13> Optical technology has different limits than solid state technology.

The "blu[e]" in blu-ray is a reference to the shorter wavelength of read lasers (relative to CDs/DVDs) necessary to cram more data on a disc. Trying to cram 100x as much data onto a single optical disc layer would require use of a laser with 1/10th the wavelength that blu-ray uses today, which would incur all sorts of additional costs and complexities. Granted, it might be possible to use other techniques (deep layering, holographic storage, etc.) to side- step such problems, but who knows what the limits are? It's telling that there isn't much research into next gen. optical storage compared to other storage forms.

Additionally, increasingly people are embracing form-factors for computers that do not accommodate optical drives (smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks), which helps drive R&D money into the forms of storage that are more popular.

My point is that one cannot firmly say, a priori, that one format will "never" be cheaper, larger, more popular, etc. than another. Technological progress is rapid in storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I keep a dvd drive on a shelf for "historical" purposes. Every once in a while I have to read one.

Dvd jumped the shark right about the time I could download 4 gig in about the same time it took to read it off a crummy dvd-r.

<comment><USER2> Watch how fast people start hitting Comcast's 250GB data cap in 2012 and on... especially after people start trusting online backup providers, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc with their files. That 250GB cap includes download and upload -- two months over the limit and you are terminated for 1 year, even if Comcast is the only ISP servicing your region.

Watch one HD Netflix movie a night and you've used 105GB. Make a daily backup of a 5GB folder to a cloud service and you've now gone over your monthly cap. Goodbye internet. That's what keeps me from using online backup services. If everyone is going to start downloading 4GB DVDs instead of buying software in stores, too, something's gonna have to give.

<comment><USER15> If you have a gigabit connection, you can use 250 GBytes in about 45 minutes. The solution is to make the networks faster, not avoid using them.

<comment><USER16> The solution is to be the only ISP in the area, and to strong-arm start-up competitors out of business with year-long contracts that force you to pay for months you have remaining upon cancellation.

Source: (I am secretly Brian Roberts - CEO of Comcast)

(Don't tell anyone)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It will be great once USB Flash Drives become as cheap as DVDs. For one thing the memory of the flash drive will continue to increase while maintaining the same form factor. And for another they don' damage as easily as a DVD.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." —Tanenbaum (1996)

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice of them to tell us what some of us have known for sometime... I haven't used a DVD in... at least 4 years except for installing Office because it was $10 on optical media from my University.

This feels more like an ad than anything else. It went: fact + backblaze pitch + fact + more backblaze pitch, and then it was over.

<comment><USER2> It's a feature announcement on a product blog. It's _supposed_ to feel like an ad.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you find high-quality materials for self-study? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Web dev.

I subscribe to Frontendmasters.com

It isn't my only source but it is constantly very good.

I've only been coding professionally for a little over a year and that realization when I figure out that something I found online was written by someone with just as much clue as me is really frustrating. I'm willing to pay to limit those issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazon reviews for textbooks are, surprisingly, great indicator of material quality.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coursera works well. I use libgen if need to study something in a more niche field</comment>


How Hacker Investors Could Save The Media - <AUTHOR> http://www.techvibes.com/blog/how-hacker-investors-could-save-the-media

<comment><USER2> So an industry of middlemen, is being disintermediated by a new technology - the internet.

That's a problem for them, no one likes to go out of business, so what to do?

Their thinking goes: The internet is full of nerds right? It's like made up of nerds, and like nerds made it, so... internet = nerds.

Now if we can get some nerds on our side they could maybe save our industry. Imagine if you will that the internet is superman, and the newspaper industry is Lex Luthor, well a nerd into journalism would be like kryptonite!

Clearly we must offer full journalism scholarships to computer nerds and at the same time search for nerd investors. That'll save us, hooray!

</comment><comment><USER3> An interesting idea I just had while reading this, just wondering if anywhere in the world does something like this. What about selling cards that are like game cards are for access to online news where newspapers are currently sold.

A lot of the general public would be against having to signup for a subscription to a newspaper online with a credit card or other online payment. I think a lot of papers online to are structured toward a model of drawing people in story by story from places like Google.

I a non tech person who still has an interest in a physical newspaper would go for a scratch card activated subscription service to an online paper structured more like a regular newspaper.

</comment><comment><USER4> A newspaper? Creating an actually functional value-added seed funding firm? Well, I was about to snark a mighty snark, but I guess crazier things have happened.</comment>


Show HN: Upcall - Non-AI Sales Assistant - <AUTHOR> https://www.upcall.com/ <comment><USER2> so this is a call center that has CRM integration? i guess it's a cute idea but the problem with call centers isn't that they didn't have the list of leads but that they're bad sales people.

<comment><USER3> Short term. no relationship building

<comment><USER2> i don't know what you're trying to say but not all sales is relationship building and you can still have good/bad single touch sales reps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google is going to kill this business with Duplex, because I'm in a few years I'm going to assume that any call I get from a stranger trying to sell me something is a robot.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you, but for the foreseeable future this will remain easy to test. Just ask the caller something out of it's domain. Get a call about life insurance? Ask about ratios of trail mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So it's like a mancierge, but for your business.</comment>


More young men dropping out of job market to spend time in an alternate reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.1843magazine.com/features/escape-to-another-world <comment><USER2> Is anyone really surprised?

"We're not going to pay you enough to ever actually own anything, so you'll have to rent most things for the rest of your life, and you're still going to be living paycheck to paycheck."

"Gee, maybe I'll find something else to do than maintain the institutions you rigged against me because you didn't want to invest in your own retirement."

<comment><USER3> Couldn't agree more.

I have been an avid gamer all my life. In the recent decade it's taken a hit, as life (work, moving in with the gf, etc.) got in the way.

Ultimately, though, I come back to gaming. I play fewer games, as their quality overall has been affected by capitalism's relentless pursuit to ruin everything in the name of profits, but there are still plenty of good titles left.

I have come to the realisation that nothing else in life gives me the kind of happiness and peace of mind as gaming does. It's about as good as the most effective drugs I've known and that's saying quite something (certainly healthier too).

When I play games, I have something to focus on, while simultaneously rewarding the part of my brain involved in learning and accomplishment. It's a killer mixture I've fostered since I was a toddler pretty much, so it hooks into something very primal, deep down.

The funny thing is, that gaming has gone from the thing reject-nerds used to do, to a thing that's broadly socially accepted. So nowadays I can finally just happily admit that I enjoy games.

What I do not admit is, that almost anything I do in life is so I can play more games and ultimately, I don't mind, because that's where I have found more happiness than anywhere else.

The only thing that comes remotely close is the stability I get from a healthy family life living with my girlfriend, who loves gaming just as much.

Going to work, the forced socialising required to hold down the job, etc. is all just a means to do more gaming. If I could disappear into a virtual world full-time, I would.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand (and always disapprove anyway) the downvoting. Fella above is contributing an honest point of view that actually adds a lot to the understanding of the situation. If anything s/he should be upvoted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Games offer a degree of empowerment and security to anyone feeling downtrodden: it's no surprise that they come entangled with other life issues. To deal with anything in the real world, you have to summon the energy to get up and do tasks, make calls, send emails and hold meetings, and worst of all, spend your limited money on something. If you're already depressed, even mildly so, you will have trouble reaching the "activation threshold" needed to do any task.

With an investment in a game, you pay for the game and the equipment once, and can then have a multitude of experiences with no financial consequence. Negative elements have been guardrailed and smoothed out for you into minor irritants, allowing you to get through a day without experiencing stress, panic or anxiety even if your mind and mood are at a low level of resilience.

What games often don't do is guide their players back into views and habits that aid in overall life satisfaction. Most forms of human development involve struggling with more and more things - but in a liberated sense, where you are taking it on because you want to grow and challenge yourself. The escapist fantasy can't do that - which doesn't mean they shouldn't exist, but society is conflicted with how they should be used.

</comment><comment><USER5> yeah, the majority of my male friends are addicted to gaming and living in an alternate reality; it is something I have struggled with as well. Though I have always held a job and currently am enrolled in college in pursuit of my B.S. Comp sci degree, I would rather relax at home and game on my PS4/PC than go out to bars or clubs. Every year I spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on new games, hardware, monitors and whatever comforts that enhance that experience.

Many of us don't see the point in chasing marriage, higher education, careers, relationships or being a homeowner. The dating game in most cities is abysmal, and the majority of attractive single ladies are high end escorts, sugar babies and or gold diggers. There are many factors in society that has led to that. Sure I can spend a thousand or two on a nice watch, but for what? I can get a high NUC PC and huge monitor for that price. The same applies to a luxury car, sure I can afford it, but I would rather walk, take the train/bus or uber, so that I space out and listen to podcasts, youtube or game while commuting.

Phillip Zimbardo wrote a recent book on the afflictions that young men are facing today. It seems dauntless. Sometimes, I too ask myself if the chase is worth it. My gut feeling is that it's not.

<comment><USER6> It is kind of interesting that you see two alternatives - drinking+clublife or gaming and not much else.

<comment><USER7> I hear a baffling amount of this sentiment these days, and its not just gaming, though gaming is probably the most common. Do people see the only alternative to leaving their home as drinking at clubs / bars? or is it just an excuse and people don't really mean it ? I hear it enough that I don't really think it is. Do people not know there are a plethora of social activities that don't involve drinking?

<comment><USER6> Maybe it is that when are isolated long enough, you cease to know what people normally do (not having occasion to observe it) and pop-entertainment reality takes over in your mind.

Isolation does that. And majority of population was never heavy clubbers or keg drinkers. That was always only minority of people despite being shown in movies as norm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gurpreet- I was addicted to gaming in my teens, often staying up late nights till 4am. I'm 100% sure if I'd have stayed playing games I would have destroyed my career. I understand the allure of games. I understand the buzz of fading into a world where you can be anyone or anything.

I came to the realisation one night that I was wasting my life away. That gaming was an escape from reality. I stopped gaming completely because I felt like I was missing out on what the world had to offer.

After I stopped gaming a lot of things changed for the better. I became happier, healthier and made more friends in real life than I had ever before.

Gaming addiction should be spoken about more.

</comment><comment><USER8> Games have a really well defined goal-reward structure. "Do this X times and get Y". If you get a job, your path to success is nebulous. Learning new things is hard, getting outside your comfort zone is hard.

Combined with slight depression, it's really easy to see video games dominating all aspects of someone's life.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. They are very comfortable and it's super easy to feel good about existing in the confined parameters. OPs attitude sounds a lot like "we've stopped trying and decided to let the games win". Rallying against the 'opposite' (opposite sex, or perceived successful men, 'jocks') seems like a defense mechanism that the group reinforces so that they don't have to face their own circumstance / fears.

I've fallen into it a bit in the past and it's easy to get bitter and isolated.

I think the only way out is to turn off the games and try something different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All this focus on gaming could be backwards. The young guy I know who games all day instead of working is always sending out resumes. None of his jobs lasts very long but he does well while they last. This labor market has failed young people and not everyone is going to respond by founding concerns of their own. Its not the games, its the economy.

</comment><comment><USER11> [2017] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13890782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13890782) Still very interesting though.</comment>


Training Officers to Shoot First, and He Will Answer Questions Later - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html <comment><AUTHOR> (From 2015)</comment>


Machine Learning Research at Apple - <AUTHOR> https://machinelearning.apple.com <comment><USER2> Hats off to people like Carlos Guestrin & John Giannandrea, who seem to have pushed a cultural shift through Apple. I didn't think I'd see a site like this a few years ago, based on Apple's historic reputation of strongly discouraging employees from publishing research.

<comment><USER3> Not to take away from the people who worked hard to shift the culture (which is always hard at a large company), but I saw the same shift happen at Amazon and it came down to a simple fact - it's very hard to recruit and keep the best talent if you don't publish. You don't build ML reputation and the best researchers often don't want to work somewhere where they can't add papers to their resume.

<comment><USER4> Not sure about this: a lot of interesting work is just hidden because of NDAs, commercial IP, military, etc. You will never see anything made public until necessary and just the minimum amount required.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that's actually true. Lots of stuff gets published that could (and if the bean counters had their say _would_) be "hidden". But NONE of it is published by commercial labs before all the patents are filed. MS Research cranks out an amazing number of patents. As does Google Brain and Deepmind. Then they have this Mexican standoff and "license" patents to each other.

But _some_ select stuff does not get published. I know of at least two examples first hand: one at MS, one at Google. This is usually the case when publishing a paper would help large, direct competitors to partially or fully close staggering competitive gaps. As you can imagine Google doesn't publish a whole lot on the subject of search ranking, for example.

<comment><USER6> Isn't it just defensive ? Is there any instance of anyone using or licensing an ML patent ? Mostly people like IBM, MS, etc. were doing patents anyway for decades, and they continue to do so. So everyone else has to play the same game. I don't think there has been any big case involving patent infringement over ML/AI.

<comment><USER5> It's "defensive" only until the company starts sliding financially, at which point it becomes _very_ offensive. That's how IBM got MS into this game: one day IBM lawyers showed up with an invoice at Bill Gates' office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The open stance on R&D that the industry is currently adopting is good for everybody involved. I hope it will become the norm someday.

Journals and other centralized entities that regulate access to science should wane and disappear, the sooner the better.

<comment><USER8> > Journals and other centralized entities that regulate access to science > should wane and disappear, the sooner the better.

To the extent that other mechanisms are in place to to peer review research and curate quality, yes. And yes I'm aware that the current system is far from perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ian Goodfellow is at Apple but doesn't appear in any of these papers. Interesting.

Is he on something too secret to reveal? Leading the SDC effort? The Karpathy of Apple?

<comment><USER10> I think he joined last year, not sure when. Maybe that has something to do with this.

EDIT: He joined in March 2019 as Director of the Special Projects Group.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Built with Next.js: [https://mobile.twitter.com/rauchg/status/1286769353027801088](https://mobile.twitter.com/rauchg/status/1286769353027801088)

</comment><comment><USER12> I remember ICML 2015 in Beijing when I was the only one (I suspect there was another guy but apparently he even had to hide his affiliation) from Apple at the conference. Not allowed to officially/publicly to talk about what I do. Went only because of networking and to hire people. Times change slowly there.

</comment><comment><USER13> Discussed 3 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14804018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14804018)

<comment><USER14> Different content. Back then it was a handful of cherry-picked publications expanded into articles, now it seems like the page is an overt advertisement of Apple's Machine Learning efforts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interesting. I thought that apple mostly did closed research, yet they are publishing in public conference.

</comment><comment><USER16> I mean Apple would have to be open eventually right? To attract and retain talent, if everyone else is doing it?

It's like Microsoft under Satya Nadella, really understood that Open Source is a way to actually win developers, rather than Steve Ballmers "Developers! Developers!" chant that was just marketing speak.

So if you want to be in the same league as Deep Mind, MSR, FAIR, Google Research, then you gotta play like them.

</comment><comment><USER17> guys, is this the first time apple is involved with academic papers?

<comment><USER18> Nope, they've been sharing their research more widely in the last few years. Here's an example from 2018, in a different area of research: [https://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol11/p540-shraer.pdf](https://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol11/p540-shraer.pdf)</comment></comment>


The first song ever written by artificial intelligence is pretty good, actually - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/790523/daddys-car-the-first-song-ever-written-by-artificial-intelligence-is-actually-pretty-good/ <comment><USER2> Not bad at all!</comment>


Why my friends hate Google Voice - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-20040294-85.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like Google Voice isn't the problem, so much as her switching between various phones a lot. If she wasn't, they'd have, at most, two numbers to contend with: the GV number, and the carrier number.

<comment><USER3> The main issue seems to be that the people she talks to have no way to identify which of the various numbers she contacts them from is the Google Voice number.

<comment><USER4> I have the same difficulty she desribes. It would help if Google Voice was consistent about how it presented caller ID numbers to people I called. It should be the case, that if I call _through Google Voice_ , I get presented as _calling from my GV number_. That would make it easy for my friends, as they could just hit my call on their Recent Calls list like they do for everyone else.

Google Voice doesn't present caller ID consistently. Sometimes, it comes across as "Unknown." To reach some of my friends who won't answer an "Unknown" call, this means I am forced to call directly from another number of mine, which creates a habitually attractive call-back option (Recent calls) what won't have my Google Voice number.

In short: Google Voice still has a long way to go!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Her friends don't hate Google Voice, they hate that she doesn't use it enough.

Google Voice is the exact solution to her problem, but since she only SOMETIMES uses it for outgoing calls and texts, it completely loses its purpose. This she blames on the tediousness of using the GV app. Sorry but at the moment that's the price you have to pay if you want to test 10 smartphones and be able to be reached on one number (for free!).

</comment><comment><USER6> I've used GV with my iPhone 4, HTC EVO 4G and HTC Hero. Also with SkypeIn/Out numbers.

Mirrors my experience, especially on iPhone: freezes often, messages can be delayed, unreliable voice service, voicemail transcription is rarely accurate. As soon as there is a problem and I have to switch to my carrier number, and confusion exists again.

I also run into the problem stcredzero describes; showing up as "Unknown", forcing me to move back to carrier number.

In short the biggest benefit I get from GV is actually the Chrome extension where I can send SMS messages very quickly and play voicemails (the transcription is usually useless) - really wish Apple would acknowledge that tying your phone to a browser is really powerful.

I've switched to giving out my GV number professionally and using my carrier number for close friends and family.

That vanity number is just not worth it.

Disclaimer: I am not an idiot and I understand how GV works.

</comment><comment><USER7> My fiance and I write mobile apps together, so we have a pile of iphones and androids, and one Google Voice number that rings them all. It's like a throwback to when a family just had one household line. Except sometimes we're not together so we both have to guess who should answer based on the caller ID.

Even worse, all of our text messages go only to my email inbox. Luckily, we get fewer than five a month.

It does really annoy our friends, but most have figured it out after two years of this setup. Mostly we just communicate via email and gchat.

It is pretty crazy when the phone rings at home though, Gizmo goes off on both our computers, the landline and two extensions start ringing, and the three mobile phones.

</comment><comment> wh-uws Why does it take so long for Google Voice messages to come to your phone? I've waited all the way from 30 minutes to 4 hours to receive one message.

<comment><USER8> That, and the dependence on a stable data connection to initiate a call, and sometimes DTMF (dialpad) doesn't work with automated systems (reproducible, so i'm not crazy). To alleviate the slow messaging sometimes i'll use GV's SMS gateway which for some reason is faster than texting with the GV app itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was lucky to adopt Google Voice when I was coming back to live in the US after a long stint in the UK.

I had abandoned my old phone number, and now no one even knows my new Carrier- assigned phone number, I LOVE it because there is never any information that is ONLY available on my phone.

For example, if I left my phone somewhere, I can still see all my missed calls and texts.

</comment><comment><USER10> What does the supply of phone numbers look like?

Imagine if Google assigned Google Voice numbers for all of my contacts, even if that person wasn't on Google Voice yet. Then I can program that number into my normal phone to reach that contact. Google gets a call from my phone to that number, and initiates a call from my google voice number to my friend's actual number.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER11> They sort of do already -

[http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/07/faster-dialing- with...](http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/07/faster-dialing-with-google- voice-on.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> During the brief period in which I used Google Voice on my Samsung Epic 4G, I noticed poor audio quality.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, the audio quality when using the VOIP on wifi (which I think you need an old gizmo5 account to do?) is terrible. But I haven't noticed any difference using the standard callback method.

As far as I know, it shouldn't really be any different, as Google isn't brokering the actual audio... they're just connecting you using your existing network. I've certainly never noticed any difference on Verizon.

<comment><USER14> _which I think you need an old gizmo5 account to do?_

Not anymore. You can do VOIP calls through a browser, and I do them with my iPhone using the Talkatone app (free). (Ironic that this is through GV but Google's GV app doesn't support VOIP calls; someone else had to implement that.)</comment></comment></comment>


Start-up working on organizing biological information - <AUTHOR>

Our startup, built on Rails, is working at the intersection of biomedical research and search, with the ultimate goal of organizing biomedical information.  We're looking for great hackers to join us.<p>We've built a web platform  that is meant to help scientists find each other, share information, and search the literature.  This is meant as a spring board for organizing the world's biological information.  We've received funding from a cofounder of PayPal and people from Google and Amazon.  We're looking to work with people who want to solve interesting engineering and algorithmic problems that are fundamental to the way biomedical research is done.  Anyone interested should get in touch: email@example.com.
We're based in Palo Alto, CA. <comment><USER2> Sounds interesting. Is image analysis/search a part of the plan? (Just curious, I don't need a job.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I sent you an email.</comment>


Internally, NASA believes Boeing ahead of SpaceX in commercial crew - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/nasa-commercial-crew-analysis-finds-boeing-slightly-ahead-of-spacex/ <comment><USER2> There are a lot of big organizations that seem to understand something that few of us in the software industry ever did:

When you have one vendor they have no reason to give you any special attention. They are min-maxing you against all of their other customers and if you aren't about to either Give them more money or take it away you fade into the background.

If you have two vendors, they have to pay attention. They have to and get to stay engaged.

If SpaceX is ahead or Boeing is ahead doesn't matter. What matters if SpaceX is still at the table. If they drop to third or fourth place then they have a real problem.

NASA doesn't want to give all their contracts to one vendor, and neither should we. That makes things easy this year but fattens then for the slaughter.

As long as Boeing is getting some noteworthy fraction of the contracts they stick around as a goad for SpaceX to try harder. And SpaceX does the same for Boeing.

<comment><USER3> >If SpaceX is ahead or Boeing is ahead doesn't matter. What matters if SpaceX is still at the table.

Not only that but SpaceX is delivering commercial payload after commercial payload to orbit while still TESTING new stuff on their rockets while they do all the planning for ITS/BFR... how many launches has Boeing been doing while designing SLS?

<comment><USER4> That may be useful for stuff you can afford to lose, but during the same period how many spacecraft have Boeing lost.

When a mission takes a decade to plan a build, you go with the launch vehicle most likely to get you to destination successfully. Fail rates matter immensely. You don't want a launch vehicle iterating on your launch.

<comment><USER5> Whether or not NASA (and by extension Boeing) can afford to lose a mission isn't dependent on how much it costs but on public relations and legislation.

Money has diminishing returns when it comes to mission success rates. A common ballpark example I've heard from JPL PMs: you can spend $500 million on one launch with a 95% chance of putting one satellite in orbit - or - you could spend $250 million per launch on two launches, each with a 80% chance of putting up one satellite. The probability of getting at least one satellite in orbit with the latter scenario is ~96%, higher than than the $500mil/launch option, with an 80% chance of saving 25-75% of the budget for the second launch (depending on scheduling and staff retention costs for that mission).

The problem with the latter option is that the public is swayed more by the absolute number of failures rather than the percentage, especially since NASA's missions usually draw a lot of global publicity. This kind of public pressure effects legislators and eventually starts changing the "cost-benefit" analysis agencies like NASA do until they're chosing the one launch option every time.

The SLS is inseparable as a project from NASA as far as the public is concerned. Even though SpaceX is also heavily funded by NASA historically, Musk's cult of personality has largely saved them from feeling the kind of public pressure NASA has had to deal with in their usual missions. That ability to experiment without PR consequences is invaluable but we'll have to see whether their failure rate is big enough to scare away NASA for manned missions.

<comment><USER6> The numbers are even better than you're throwing out there. Gotta keep in mind two big factors. A lot of the cost in these missions is not just the satellite hardware but the R&D costs. And the second is that launches are insured, so you'd need to compare the relative rate of insurance more than the expected value of _fail rate x satellite cost_. I have no idea on insurance costs for e.g. SpaceX vs Boeing launches but I'd be quite surprised if they're not extremely comparable.

But yeah, I think you're really hitting at the heart of the problem that's going to become even more troublesome once we start putting people on Mars. There are a practically unlimited number of ways for something to go wrong. And even if we do everything we possibly can, we're still playing an odds game with extremely high stakes. A sensationalizing media and an ill informed public creates a nasty mix for issues like this.

<comment><USER7> Insurance doesn't matter for this tradeoff, except maybe in the very short term. If they fly with a high failure rate, their insurance price will go up. At their price point, insurance companies pay attention.

<comment><USER8> I assumed the parent meant that you don't get the benefit of a lower failure rate until insurers have noticed a pattern of lower failures, so for rare launches you might not achieve a financial benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ...by a little bit (mostly due to Boeing's greater familiarity with NASA paperwork requirements.)

"Based on NASA's "schedule risk analysis" from April, the agency estimates that Boeing will reach this milestone sometime between May 1, 2019, and August 30, 2020. For SpaceX, the estimated range is August 1, 2019, and November 30, 2020. The analysis' average certification date was December, 2019, for Boeing and January, 2020, for SpaceX."

<comment><USER10> Also probably because "Boeing asked for, and got, 50 percent more funding for the same task" [0]. Despite the mythical man month, 50% more funding on a 5/6 year (current estimate) project can pay your way ahead of the competition on almost any project (that is a really really long time!).

Considering the timeline difference is only 10% (6 months spacex is behind based on 5 year delivery), I would expect Boeing to be much further ahead of spacex than they currently are.

Sounds like spacex will be the real winner in the end IMO due to future contracts as a 50% savings ($1.6 Billion in this case [1]) to wait 10% more time is totally worth it in almost every case.

[0]: from the article: [https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/nasa- commercial-crew...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/nasa-commercial- crew-analysis-finds-boeing-slightly-ahead-of-spacex/)

[1]: [https://qz.com/266665/the-us-will-spend-6-8-billion- hiring-b...](https://qz.com/266665/the-us-will-spend-6-8-billion-hiring- boeing-and-spacex-to-build-new-spacecraft/)

<comment><USER11> SpaceX, on the other hand, is pouring a lot of their own money into shared systems used by the contract. On the third hand, SpaceX is developing both the rocket and capsule, whereas Boeing is using an off-the-shelf ULA vehicle. Boeing's is expendible, SpaceX is making theirs reusable.

Really, it's apples to oranges.

<comment><USER12> Put like that the fact they are a couple of months behind on an estimate is a massive win for spacex

<comment><USER11> Yes, but I'd agree with the headline even if it wasn't supported by the article. If I were a betting man I'd place better odds on Boeing making the deliverable date (or slipping by less) than SpaceX. Boeing has a tendency to promise something reasonable, and so long as there's no requirement creep, deliver more or less on schedule. SpaceX has a history of promising the impossible, then actually delivering on it many years late. Based on that alone I'd rather place money on Boeing delivering on time than SpaceX, as much as I really do love SpaceX.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm still impressed that SpaceX, with <20 years of experience, is even in the same ballpark as Boeing and its 101 years.

<comment><USER14> Check out how many of the Space X team have experience leading government space contractors. ([https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space- exploration-te...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/space-exploration- technologies/current_employees/current_employees_image_list#section-current- team)). They're not going in raw.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Having worked at one of Boeing's competitors (not in this specific industry but a similiar one) I think I'd rather sit on top of the rocket built by the big, old, slow defense contractor. I'd hard to overstate how much consideration of making sure edge cases (for both hardware and software) don't kill people is baked into the culture at these companies.

As a taxpayer I think the rocket that moves fast and breaks things is just fine for nonhuman cargo.

<comment><USER16> There were recently a discussion about NASA insisting in loading propellants when crew is already onboard, and opponents pointing out that it increases the duration of crew sitting in the capsule during a dangerous process of fueling.

It could be a lot of consideration, but if some important area is overlooked, then it's no guarantee safety will improve over some threshold.

Similarly in Russian Soyuz-2 rocket the 2.1b variant adds about 10% of payload - but uses a much more stressed engine on the upper stage. That's the reason Russians don't want to use that variant for manned flights - even though there were lots of flights and rockets with engines like that certified for manned flights.

<comment><USER17> > even though there were lots of flights and rockets with engines like that > certified for manned flights

In the end, a certification doesn't actually mean the rocket won't explode, just that it hasn't so far. For manned missions, certification is necessary but arguably not sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The GAO report this is based on: [https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/693035.pdf](https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/693035.pdf).

</comment><comment><USER19> I find it hard to treat news published by Eric Berger as objective, sadly. He receives special treatment from SpaceX & Elon—for example, its arguable he only had permission to interview Musk and attend the launch of FH from 39A precisely because his articles mainly cast a positive light—and in turn, this clouds his objectiveness when it comes to such reporting. It's quite a shame.

<comment><USER20> If this allegation were true, it would definitely render the journalist unreliable and ethically compromised. But, this article is in favor of Boeing, not SpaceX, so I'm wondering what you're trying to say..?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I didn't know that Soyuz flights are scheduled to stop in 2019. I'm not optimistic at all about all that. Manned missions are a whole new level, a level where a single failure could mean the end the road either for SpaceX or Boeing's space department. If I were to put my tinfoil hat on, I would even suggest that Russia managed to deal the end of the Soyuz contracts for when USA is ready to launch their own manned flights, but not reliably so, therefore increasing the probability of them having an accident and looking weak.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sigh. [http://spacenews.com/crew-dragon-completes-thermal-vacuum- te...](http://spacenews.com/crew-dragon-completes-thermal-vacuum-tests-ahead- of-first-test-flight/)

<comment><USER23> This is for certification, not demonstration missions. That capsule is scheduled for the unmanned DM-1 flight, after which will be the manned DM-2 flight, at which point SpaceX will submit its data for final certification in advance of operations flights.

As an aside, the author (Eric Berger) is in no way biased against SpaceX - he's one of the most overtly pro-SpaceX journalists around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> President Bush promised a shuttle replacement by 2014 when he canceled the shuttle.

<comment><USER25> Obama cancelled Constellation, then backed the SLS disaster, and told everyone NASA will be going to Mars in 2030.

I think it's pretty safe to assume that NASA will not be going anywhere outside LEO in 2030.

If we are really lucky, it would stop with the manned space expedition charade entirely, and do something useful with those billions of dollars, for a change. Probes, robotics, ecosystem study.

<comment><USER26> If we are to leave the planet eventually, some level of skill at keeping people in space is essential.

(N.B. I'm a scientist who would _love_ more dedicated robotic missions. Human spaceflight is important, too.)

<comment><USER25> If, instead of sending 12 people to the moon, we took that money, and worked on sending hundreds of robots to the moon...

We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today. And better robots. Or, at least, more than six people in space.

<comment><USER16> > We'd probably have more then zero people on the moon today.

Unfortunately the opposite could also be true - loss of interest to space research, because, hey, they don't make anything perceivable...

In the awesome game "Bazz Aldrin's Race Into Space" if both (human) players try to perfect the technology, to avoid costly failures with human flights and stop flying for a while, at some point budgets get slashed and the game stops. I suspect it could be a possibility in the real world. Fortunately, by now we both depend on space enough and have enough technology to keep flying.

<comment><USER25> The benefit of using robots is that failures are less costly, and that you don't have to stop flying if a mission fails.

<comment><USER16> Robots do have a lot of benefits in space. Lots of them weren't obvious in 1950-s, but robots came a long, long way since then.

So apparently did manned spaceflight. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, Simonyi, Garriot, Laliberte flights demonstrate it's much more within reach now than before. Same could be said regarding private makers of rockets, spacecrafts and even space stations. Not only we see the push to increase the new industry, with new services to humanity and new taxes to governments - we're actually learning to do things in the environment (the learning itself happens there) which is quite different from where we evolved in.

And when we talk about actually living in space - including doing really complex things, like unexpected actions across the specter of what might be needed when you're actually trying to be successful for long periods of time - many robotics specialists, last time I've checked, admit that human flights are actually less costly than robotic ones. In other words, if you want to have a big enough exploration program for space, you ought to include people into that.

Fortunately flying to space becomes easier as we learn more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Forgive my ignorance on the subject but how can Boeing be ahead if they don't have any rockets?

<comment><USER28> SpaceX has no human-rated launch vehicle either as of now. But this article is about the spacecraft, SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner, not the launch vehicles. The Starliner is to be compatible with multiple launchers, including human-rated variants of Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon 9.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is the Boeing team that worked on the schedule for the 787 Dreamliner involved in this schedule?

</comment><comment><USER30> so many billions wasted just because they don't want to play along with russia :')

</comment><comment><USER31> This headline is another example of biased news pushing a narrative.

<comment><USER32> Not disagreeing with you, just genuinely curious: how is this headline biased?

Do you mean that the margins are thinner than one might expect by reading it?

<comment><USER31> The margins are meaningless at this point.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17510611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17510611)</comment></comment></comment>


Apple cuts orders for iPhone 5 parts on weak demand - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/apple-cuts-orders-iphone-5-parts-weak-demand-report-1B7956611

<comment><USER2> There's a comment by matrix07 on AppleInsider I think may be worth a read:

 _Look at the number here[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/14/us-apple- iphone-de...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/14/us-apple-iphone- demand-idUSBRE90D04B20130114)

Apple was expected to order 65 million screens?

Considering the best iPhone quarter is only 37 mil., and that's Christmas quarter. WTH Apple to order this much in a quarter AFTER Christmas?_

 _Makes no sense._

[Edit: link to comment [http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/155446/wsj-apple- cuts-iphon...](http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/155446/wsj-apple-cuts- iphone-5-component-orders-in-half-due-to-weak-demand#post_2258338)]

<comment><USER3> BGR also notes that the same screen is used for both the iPhone 5 and the iPod Touch. It can't simply be assumed that the iPhone demand has lessened because Apple orders less of one component used in multiple lines of products.

[http://bgr.com/2013/01/14/iphone-5-analysis-component- cuts-2...](http://bgr.com/2013/01/14/iphone-5-analysis-component-cuts-291307/)

<comment><USER4> Now that's interesting. Did iPad Mini kill iPod Touch sales? $299 and $399 vs $329 iPad Mini. Hm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suspect this type of information is pushed to manipulate the market and provide flip opportunities for hedge funds. Apple is down 5%. Imagine if you knew on Friday this story was going to be published.

Given Apple's forward looking cash position, the stock is extremely underpriced, even if sales were to decline significantly.

<comment><USER6> > Given Apple's forward looking cash position, the stock is extremely > underpriced.

The market seems to believe that the level of sales and/or profits per sale are unsustainable in the medium term.

Stocks the size of Apple are never "extremely" under/over priced.

<comment><USER5> > Stocks the size of Apple are never "extremely" under/over priced.

Size has nothing to do with whether a stock is over or underpriced. Apple could rather conservatively be valued at $600 or even $700 per share. I'd say that's an extreme underpricing, particularly given the difference in market cap that would make.

> The market seems to believe that the level of sales and/or profits per sale > are unsustainable in the medium term.

There are other reasons for a stock to be depressed that may in fact have to do with the size of Apple. For sure they are in a fickle market and there is risk.

<comment><USER6> > Size has nothing to do with whether a stock is over or underpriced.

The reason why size does matter is that there are thousands of analysts constantly monitoring the stock, and companies are constantly trading based on their informed opinion of the value of the stock.

A small, relatively infrequently traded, stock is far more likely to get out of line with fundamentals.

<comment><USER5> You could also make an argument that a large stock like Apple gets out of line with fundamentals because it represents such a large portion of pretty much every institutional portfolio that could own the stock, so movements are often due to portfolio rebalancing than fundamentals. This seems likely to be the case with Apple right now.

<comment><USER6> Then you would be making an argument that flies in the face of every investment textbook Ive ever read.

<comment><USER5> Significant demand in a large cap stock mostly comes from large institutional investors. Large institutional investors are finite, and those investors must limit how much any stock represents in their portfolio. Regardless of what your textbooks say, it is true situation.

<comment><USER6> It only takes a few hedge funds and a couple of Goldman Sachs to balance out any of those effects. I'm sorry, but you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

<comment><USER5> Because hedge funds will bid up a stock that no one else is allowed to buy? I thought they like to make money.

Markets are often undervalued due to restrictions on buyers. The bull case for the stock is that AAPL will make itself the buyer of last resort, as I expect them to do this earnings announcement. Knowing that the stock is undervalued and that any price increase due to their purchases will be maintained by the market, they can confidently buy the stock back.

Dividends can have a similar effect to a buyback, and also expose the stock to dividend focused funds.

Large cap companies often must resort to these tactics to increase the number of available buyers when their stock is widely owned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aside: I, for one, am extremely disappointed in the iPhone5. Its WiFi sucks ass, to put it delicately. I just got back from traveling abroad, and when I'm there, I rely heavily on WiFi. My 3GS had no issues; it use to work like a champ. But the iPhone5? Lord! It couldn't hold the signal; it wouldn't log in to the (WPA2) network even though it would see it; etc. etc.

Apple's response so far? Try disable WPA2 and remove all authentication. Really?!?!

And the problem got worse after iOS 6.0.2

After seeing my issues, several friends of mine have decided to hold off upgrading till they're sure the issues are worked out (in iOS 6.1.0?). At least 1 person I know picked the Samsung instead.

Sorry to threadjack.

<comment><USER8> That's the first time I'm hearing anyone complain about wifi issues. Everyone I know that have an iPhone5 have had no such complaints.

<comment><USER7> checkout this thread on the Apple discussion forums: <https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4322714> (it's already at 219 pages and counting).

There are many such threads in that forum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These reports based on reduced orders to suppliers are pretty routine, either in the post-holiday period or a few months before the roll-out of a new model. Without actual info on sales numbers, it's just hearsay.

</comment><comment><USER10> Typical "analyst" bullshit.

Even if the story were true, alternate explanations seem more likely. E.g. Apple is moving to a 6-month tempo for updates, which would affect component ordering about now. Or, it could just be that Apple is moving more of its component orders from one manufacturer to another--many iPhone components are multiply-sourced.

</comment><comment><USER11> When there is no news, they make up some news, see a similar story from 2011:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57321362-17/slower- iphone-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57321362-17/slower- iphone-4s-demand-making-apple-rethink-supply-orders/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Long or Short, would you put your money on your prognostications?</comment>


Ask HN: Repurchase Right on Vested Stock? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I joined a startup a few months ago and my compensation includes a small amount of stock. The company recently provided a document for me to sign, which laid out the terms for the options they are granting me.
As part of this document, there is a clause describing a Repurchase Right for the company. According to this clause, the company is able to buy back at fair market value any quantity of my vested, exercised shares when I leave the company, or when I exercise my options after leaving the company.
Is this kind of arrangement common? Given that I have already accepted the offer and worked at the company for a few months, I don't think I have any ability to negotiate this. The offer letter specified that the options would be subject to this agreement, which I didn't realize or ask to read at the time, so I guess that's a lesson for me in acquiring every relevant document before signing. <comment><USER2> IANAL and you should spend the $300 or so to get them reviewed.

That said (having used standard forms before) there are usually two terms with respect to shares: the repurchase right for _unvested_ shares and a right of first refusal.

The repurchase right gives your employer the right to repurchase your unvested or unexercised shares after a timeframe (often 90 days) after you leave the company. There was a lot of excitement when companies like Pinterest extended that 90 days to several years, as it's very employee friendly. The amount they pay is usually the value you "purchased" them for, often the grant price (e.g., pennies per share).

The right of first refusal, which I believe you're talking about (given your market value statement) says that for the shares you own (exercised and vested) but have found another buyer for the company has the right to buy them first. The wording is usually very confusing about whether or not they have to match the external offer, but the basic provision makes sense: let the company buy back its equity rather than let some random new investor appear, but pay the (usually former) employee the same amount. Note that as above, there's some time period involved, so you don't get to just say "I found a buyer at $100/share, pay up by tomorrow or else".

Note that while I think you've misunderstood, it's totally possible that you've read your (highly unusual then!) equity contract correctly. Again, take them to a lawyer if you want to be sure rather than listening to some random person on the internet :).</comment>


Spreadsheets are dreams - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/hand-brain/rod-mclaren-d9ffe6bfb83c <comment><USER2> Treesheets (open-source for Mac, Windows, Linux) extends the spreadsheet user experience to general data organization, [http://www.treesheets.com](http://www.treesheets.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ever so often i think it would be interesting to see something akin to a spreadsheet for full on programming, that would display the state of every variable and constant much like a spreadsheet shows the result of the formula within.

I guess it could be compared to the "blinkenlights" of old mainframes and minis, showing the state of various CPU registers etc.

<comment><USER4> The "watches" feature of most debuggers give you something like that.

Having said that, debuggers don't give you the ability to graphical visualize dependencies between formulas/expressions that Excel does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Bacon used sand to add texture to a painting of Van Gogh._

This threw me for a loop. I suppose adding "Francis" wouldn't have helped much, but when I see the single name I think of the philosopher, scientist, Attorney General, and Lord Chancellor (who died long before Van Gogh lived), not the painter.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Off topic_

Is it a new trend on medium.com to use grainy GIFs with "shivering gaudy text" (text in gaudy colors moving back and forth with a grainy image in the background)? I noticed a similar usage in another article a week or so ago. Apart from looking really terrible (IMO), it would be useful to put a seizure trigger warning before such images are even shown.

<comment><USER2> Yes, this is troubling. If live experiments are going to be run on readers, it would be safer to have live sensors hooked up to the readers, rather than broadcasting to thousands of anonymous viewers.</comment></comment>


Another Paywall Experiment Ends Badly - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newscred.com/?p=299

<comment><USER2> It should be noted this is merely for another news sites. "paywalls" themselves (content for cash) are a proven way to make money. It depends on the industry, or content, and the price. Paywalls for news sites generally won't work, especially when it's yet another news site on the web.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've mentioned in previous posts that paywalls for news sites only work if certain criteria are met. There may be more, but these are the ones I can think of:

-Niche (i.e. news about F1 racing that has rabid fans) -Financial (variation of niche, but ones that help readers make money) -Local (without high quality, free competitors) -Incredible brands with strong differentiation in quality (these don't exist. NY Times might be the closest, but even they failed the first time around with TimesSelect)</comment></comment>


The Cost of Mistake in Hardware Projects - <AUTHOR> https://blog.maddevs.io/the-cost-of-errors-in-hardware-projects-7d73b0fd8465?source=friends_link&sk=eb21eb69d892cb19c0f85f3e0276481e <comment><AUTHOR> In this article, we will consider common errors in the design of electronic devices and how to solve them. We will see how to calculate the cost of rolling back a batch of devices, get familiar with the main prototyping cycle.</comment>


Ask HN: Who designed your startup pre-launch website? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a freelance UI/UX designer to design my pre-launch website for my startup. Does anyone have any recommendation working with a good designer? How much does it typically cost (range) ? <comment><USER2> My friend designed this one: <http://ignitiondeck.com>

If interested, I can pass along his details.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pre-launch, as in just a coming soon page? - LaunchRock.com

Pre-launch, as in some beautiful minimalistic page(s) with some info.? - 99designs

<comment><AUTHOR> How good is the quality by 99design?</comment></comment>


Camera+: The Road to 3 Million (infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://taptaptap.com/blog/cameraplus-the-road-to-3-million/

<comment><USER3> Now this is what I call an infographic!

Unlike many others which I have seen in the recent past, this infographic delivers a ton of data in a very clear, concise, easy to parse way.

I can't stand those infographics that just throw a bunch of numbers onto a canvas and expect it to make any sense. There was one on bottled water [1] that was a perfect example of this.

[1]: <http://www.onlineeducation.net/bottled_water>

</comment><comment><USER4> Not bad, $2.7m in sales over a year, 8 people, gives you around $350k per person. Presumably they're not sharing equally, but that's still not a bad return for the first year on the market. I wonder how many person-years it took to build and market... I would assume less than 8, so they seem to have done pretty well for themselves.

<comment><USER5> Nearly every one of their apps have gone #1, not to mention all their MacHeist revenue, so their small team is doing really, REALLY well on an individual basis since they mostly do a profit share between teammates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first infographic I've seen in a while that is actually good - <USER2> data, good design, and it actually has real analysis behind it. I don't think I've ever seen a circle time chart like that before - really cool.

</comment><comment><USER7> I now use it pretty much every day. I've only got good things to say about this app.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightfocus/>

Sadly, they never responded to my improvement suggestion list. Now I see why.

</comment><comment><USER8> Worth pointing out that the Instagram launch was on October 6, right in the middle of that gap between Camera+'s banhammering over VolumeSnap and their December reinstatement. Talk about great timing.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how they got the top effects and scene mode numbers. Do they send usage information from the app to their servers?

<comment><USER10> When you share a picture from the app to Twitter, it's uploaded to campl.us. Along with the picture itself comes the metadata of the various filters used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would it not be prudent to port it to Android and make further revenue, then?

<comment><USER12> Android paid apps sell horribly. Since taptaptap makes paid apps exclusively, I'm guessing that's why they are sticking with iOS.

<comment><USER13> The developer of the iOS game "BattleHeart" has announced some notable success with a paid-app port to Android recently[1]. Not at a level of equivalence, but at the level of 'worth doing' [2].

Though that uptake may not translate to a non-game app. Particularly in a niche skewed so heavily toward Apple's base, rather than Google's. And hinging on a component that reviews very well out of the box on the iPhone and as middling on many Android models.

[1] <http://mikamobile.blogspot.com/2011/06/android.html>

[2] Caveat two: he was using Unity middleware, which greatly lowers the effort of porting.

<comment><USER12> Yes but BattleHeart is not a top 200 even in iPhone games if I remember the article correctly. Camera+ is Top 10 overall, which based on my experience in the app store means its probably selling at a 100x greater rate than Battleheart. So there is a huge difference in addressable market between the two apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Enough with the infographics!

</comment><comment><USER15> Camera+ is the single best app I've added to my iPhone4!

</comment><comment><USER16> This is the web, not a magazine. We don't need information packaged in this form. I don't like this trend; it's abusive to my scrollwheel.

<comment><USER17> Huh?

This should be an HTML document – if only to make it at least a tiny bit more accessible and also to allow you to, for example, copy text. So sure, that's not so nice.

But what's your problem with packaging information this way? Scrolling (and not paging) is one of the most elemental properties of the web. They could have added interactivity but that's additional work you can't really demand.

I don't understand what you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a must have application for iPhone4. Its far superior to every other photo app and I've tried them all. If you ever use your camera, at all, buy this app.</comment>


Ask HN: What software should I include on my budget request for next year? - <AUTHOR>

Ok, so my boss asked our team to submit any software we want included on the budget request for next year.  For a little background, I work on an Online Banking web application for a regional bank on a team of 7 developers.  We are a Microsoft .NET shop with MSDN subscriptions, but I know there are a lot of good software out there that could probably make our lives easier.  What are some tools/utilities that I should take a look at and consider trying to get into the budget?
Thanks!
Mark <comment><USER2> NDepend and TestDriven.NET come to mind, as do Resharper and/or CodeRush.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions, one of my team members has been gushing about Resharper, but I haven't checked out those other ones.</comment></comment>