Did Airbnb Kill the Mountain Town? - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsideonline.com/2198726/did-airbnb-kill-mountain-town <comment><USER3> So much money is floating to the top x% that even just renting to them on weekends is more lucrative than renting to locals 365 days per year. Where are people supposed to go when even the middle class is homeless?

I guess we still have some buffer room as most people still have some disposable income that doesn't go to rent, but when that cap is hit, then what?

<comment><USER4> I know it sounds like free market dogma, but I swear this is true: supply grows to meet demand. Airbnb will just encourage more housing to be built, by creating a new short term housing market that until now had not existed.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't work for mountain towns. When skyscraper condos start going up it ceases to be a mountain town.

<comment><USER4> The parent comment asked:

"Where are people supposed to go when even the middle class is homeless?"

They can go to places that aren't mountain towns. EDIT: or they can build new mountain towns. There is no shortage of mountains.

<comment><USER6> There is a shortage of water, though, unless you solve desalination and pumping it up the several miles of elevation...

<comment><USER4> Right but there's no shortage of mountains where new towns can be built. If people _really_ want to live in mountain towns, the market can meet that demand for pretty much any number of people.

<comment><USER7> And, in fact, there are tons of "mountain towns" where real estate is cheap. They just aren't chi-chi mountain towns with cute coffee shops and gourmet restaurants often associated with world class ski areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The fact that airbnb is negative for rental rates and hurts locals is Airbnb biggest existential threat. In reality renters outnumber home owners that do Airbnb thus when it comes to regulations people will vote for more regulation long term.

</comment><comment><USER9> I moved to Taos, New Mexico last year, a ski town with a huge Airbnb market, like Crested Butte. It has definitely increased long term rental prices around here, but, to a former NYC resident like me, they were pretty low to begin with.

Taos, thankfully, has a lot of factors which prevent it from becoming the next Jackson Hole or Crested Butte. For one, unlike those towns, we have a lot of land. Taos isn't really hemmed in by National Forests and has plenty of room for new construction. Second, Taos was fairly large to begin with: 15,000 people or so in the greater area, so Airbnb has a more muted effect.

It seems like a very mixed bag to me. Long term rental prices keep going way up, but many locals seem to be making a lot of money renting out (of course, only the ones who can afford to own in the first place). The city also seems to make a decent amount of money from lodgers tax as well.

<comment><USER7> Of course, ski towns have also had a short, long, and midterm rental market since long before there was an AirBnB. For a number of years after school, a group of us rented a ski condo decades ago.

I'm a bit curious about this trend generally. Skiing as a sport isn't growing much and I believe it's still below pre-recession heights overall. Of course that's not the only reason to stay in a mountain town but it tends to be a big one in the winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a neighbor who grew up in Venice beach (a coastal town within greater Los Angeles). His parents live in the same house he grew up in. It's always been somewhat touristy, especially on the oceanfront, but since the digital STR wave he says it has rapidly destroyed the neighborhood. The challenge is lots of late night activity - people talking loudly in the streets, screaming etc, drink and drugs, and just a general itinerant population of people who come and go, adding nothing to the locality. I know this reads like a 'get off my lawn' mentality, but it is surprising how quickly a place can lose its ambiance and atmosphere - the things that made it attractive to visit - <USER2> the population becomes dominated by faceless, ever changing visitors. It seems anywhere 'interesting' is suffering from these issues...

<comment><USER11> Wow, those are some military-grade nostalgia goggles. Venice Beach was never a sleepy beach town, it was always kind of earthy with a healthy dosing of weekend revilers. The only thing that changed was the surfer dudes now own million dollar "quaint beachfront townhouses" and care about noise levels and the wrong type of people visiting their neighborhood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently relocated out of a small mountain town to a job in the city, so this article resonated poignantly. The bit about everyone either having a second job or a second home is so true!

I owned my home and did not have this problem with housing directly, but rising costs of living (possibly a side effect of rising rents for the rest of the workers?) and a reduction in the available jobs in the area led to me being available to recruiters.

In the end it was a positive thing, and I landed a position at one of the major tech companies that was very top on my list. But it was still a bit sad to go...

</comment><comment><USER12> Highly doubt Airbnb will be around in the next 10-15 years. If Hotels can catch up and get with the program they could easily get people to stop renting on Airbnb. Oddly enough the people who complained about rent control and increased rent prices in cities now ask for crazy prices on Airbnb when renting their room ( even if they have 3-4 roommates) It just isn't worth it anymore unless you're a group of 6-7 people. Might as well just get a hotel.

<comment><USER13> You can't actually kill the idea of a platform connecting travelers with decentralized supply. Sure, it's possible that the specific company Airbnb might not exist in the future, but there will always be people interested in exchanging spare housing capacity for money, and with the increasing ease of long-distance travel, I'd expect that population to only grow in the future. Maybe the dominant platform will be Airbnb, maybe it'll be HomeAway. Maybe it'll be Craigslist.

Hotels are actually really poorly positioned to fight Airbnb et al, since they face the huge capital costs of building/owning/maintaining giant buildings. Sure, they might win fights to change regulation or enforcement in some number of markets for some amount of time, but they'll never be able to spin supply up or down as nimbly as the marketplace platforms that don't own their own inventory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been renting my house out on Airbnb in Tahoe. It is a house I lived in for many years myself. I hear these concerns all the time, but Tahoe has always had vacation rentals, and in my opinion the real solution is to build more units. The backlash against building has gotten so ridiculous that we are creating our own problems. IMHO Tahoe would be better served by higher density development than the sprawl we have now

</comment><comment><USER15> Of course, this is happening everywhere the rental market is tight and tourism high, including large coastal cities.

<comment><USER16> Large cities do have prices impacted, but because of the larger existing population it takes a lot more to completely push out residents. They still operate as cities, with people living and working there year-round, businesses that don't exclusively cater to tourists, etc. Regardless of how many New Yorkers complain about tourists, New York as a functioning city with residents is not on the verge of disappearing. Smaller tourist-heavy towns really are being almost completely replaced with seasonal rentals in some cases though, to such an extent that the town more or less ceases to exist as a functioning town, and turns more into a seasonal amusement park.

In addition to mountain towns in the U.S., you see this in a lot of smaller European towns and cities, where especially in quaint historic areas nobody actually lives there anymore. Again usually below a certain size. Despite the AirBnBs, Paris is still a real city, but Venice is pretty much on life support (the old town has lost 70% of its population over the past few decades). Although AirBnB is only one factor in all of this. With Venice it started with mass conversion to regular B&Bs, and in some areas it's more just traditional purchase/rental of vacation homes (Londoners buying up 2nd homes in Cornwall is what's pushed locals out of towns like St. Ives).

<comment><USER17> Yes exactly. As an example in Switzerland the phenomenon predates the BnB boom by at least two decades. It has lead to a new law that tries to limit the 2nd home ratio for each town - not sure how successful this is though.

<comment><USER18> If the amount of second homes and STRs is causing a problem, it's perfectly reasonable for the government to tax them. As an example, UK councils are allowed to charge 50% more tax on homes that have been empty for more than two years (100% and one year in Scotland); if 19% of the town's rental stock has been converted to STR, that's a sizable revenue stream for rent subsidies and other programs.

That said, the only way to guarantee affordable housing is to build more housing.

<comment><USER16> Unfortunately the 50% "empty homes premium" excludes furnished properties, which means in practice almost all STR and 2nd-home properties escape it, so it doesn't really benefit councils like Cornwall that have a large proportion of such properties. The requirements are "unoccupied and unfurnished for 2 years or more" [1].

It seems more effective as an anti-blight law than anything else, encouraging people who have completely empty and unused property to sell it to someone who will do something with it. It's also supposed to target pure investment properties that people haven't even bothered to furnish, like those said to be owned by Russian oligarchs in London. Although I wonder if it will be effective there, since an investor can simply hire a company to throw some IKEA furniture in the apartment.

I'm not entirely sure if those were the goals, or if it started out life as a stronger proposal that ended up watered down. As is it's a bit confusing, since it seems to have a pretty narrow range of application that's easy to dodge.

[1] [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/council-tax- empty...](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/council-tax-empty-homes- premium)

<comment><USER18> Council tax increases also wouldn't have much of an effect on empty properties in central London because of the band system; tax on a property in Kensington would max out at £2124.04 before surcharges, or 0.02% on a £10M house. The property tax on a comparable house in Manhattan (based on checking MLS records for listings in Chelsea and picking a $13M townhouse) would be $44 000/year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Any title that ends in? -> The correct answer is No.

</comment><comment><USER20> No.

</comment><comment><USER21> Nope.</comment>


Notes on Analytics and Tracking in Onavo Protect for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chronic_9612/notes-on-analytics-and-tracking-in-onavo-protect-for-ios-904bdff346c0 <comment><USER2> I uninstalled every Facebook product from my phone. Turns out I really didn't need Messenger after all.

As I still concede to using Facebook, I have decided to install a Chrome shortcut to mbasic.facebook.com. It does everything I need without tons of scripting, doesn't optimistically download content, and loads fast when my bandwidth is reduced. It never notifies me, and that's a good thing. Without infinite scrolling, I'm less likely to waste time.

Maybe I'll decide to ditch Facebook entirely, but for now, using mbasic has been a healthier alternative.

My 4g LTE bandwidth seems to last longer, too.

With HTTPS and a mobile connection, I can't see why I would need a VPN for Facebook.

<comment><USER3> Uninstalled Fb app and messenger long time ago. I can't uninstall whatsapp even if i wanted to and it's hard to uninstall Instagram.

<comment><USER2> I remember uninstalling Facebook was pretty difficult. I was only able to truly get rid of it by rooting my phone(I didn't do it for that purpose, but that ended up being one benefit). They must pay Samsung a lot of money because there's no good reason why a non-critical app would be so hard to remove.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't merely disabling the app (in system -> applications) have accomplished the same except for freeing up a couple hundred megs of storage on the system partition? Disabled apps don't have their services run.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but I also want that space. Nothing changes the fact that it really doesn't have a right to be there. :)

Also, there were other apps that I could only disable. I think YouTube might have been one of them, and I would really prefer to use NewPipe instead. So once I was rooted it was kind of like "Well, might as well delete ALL of that crap."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the app that was instrumental in FB consolidating their monopoly on horizontal markets, using the data pickpocketed from users to analyze potential acquisition targets. We need to explore whether antitrust scrutiny should consider data hoarding as a factor.

I also wonder if this sleaziness is why we can't have ad-blocking faux-VPN apps on iOS anymore (see AdGuard, e.g.). FB weren't the only ones abusing users' trust, but there were legit apps that allowed one to selectively block any device connection (not just DNS lookups) without any data leakage -- all blocking done on-device. But no more as of fall 2017.

<comment><USER6> Interestingly, Onavo Protect is using the same method (Packet Tunnel Provider) to send analytics data out. I am very curious if Apple is OK with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Of course it does, as it explicitly claims to in the App description. What's news here?

Also, that's some of the worst scroll-jacking and browser behavior modification I've come across - you cannot read it zoomed in on Safari because it jumps around instead of scrolling.

<comment><USER8> It's news because people use VPNs to protect their privacy. If they are under the impression that Onavo will keep their data private, they are wrong. Just trying to inform...

<comment><USER9> The app description does not even mention privacy.

<comment><USER5> The app places the acryonym "VPN" on the phone and instructs users to turn on the virtual _private_ network.

I'd say users aren't totally out of line thinking that an app providing virtual _private_ networking functionality would use a layperson's definition of private (as opposed to a techie's definition involving network protocols).

I'd argue that a VPN app that isn't _private_ should be required to put something like the warning on cigarettes: >

> WARNING: This app monitors and records for all time your every action on > your phone and only protects you from 3rd parties who haven't paid us enough > money to get access to your data.

<comment><USER10> I agree that a VPN service implies it's protecting privacy, but let me nit pick a bit: the "private" in virtual private network is not about privacy, it's about a network with a private IP space, the virtual part is that it operates on top of public IP space.

With that said, anyone could make the assumption that private means privacy here, and most common use cases for consumer VPNs are for privacy, so, I guess it really matters that they are explicit what they service does, and I think the description above is pretty clear.

<comment><USER11> You and I understand this distinction. The general public that has been told public networks are unsafe probably does not.

<comment><USER10> You are completely right, and I agree fully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is not surprising at all... This is why they bought Onavo. Onavo gives them a clear picture of how competing apps like Snapchat are doing and gives them an idea of potential threats to their business.

<comment><USER6> That is a rehash if old information.

My post includes new information:

\- The app will track when your phone screen is on and when it is off, and send that to Facebook

\- The app will track your daily Wi-Fi and cellular data usage, even when not connected to the VPN, and send that to Facebook

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the same company who asked their users if it was ok for grown men to ask nude pictures from 14 year old girls.

<comment><USER14> Source?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/facebook- men-children-sexual-images?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want a VPN (P == Private), don't get one from a company that treats "privacy" like a four-letter word. Just as you shouldn't trust an ad blocker put forth by an ad company.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there an upcoming product similar to instagram?

I really am over all the main facebook products, but seems like instagram has a monopoly on that specific category of apps.

<comment><USER18> I heard about Vero ( [https://www.vero.co/](https://www.vero.co/) ) the other day. Their business model is to allow the first wave of users to join for free, then later charge a subscription to new users. I don't know whether they'll be a contender in the long run, but they've experienced rapid growth recently (unfortunately leading to service scaling issues).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Next up: FBI buys VPN service, promises everything is chill

<comment><USER20> Maybe you didn't see this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501630)

<comment><USER8> Sketchy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "available free of charge" And that's the point were you become the product.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is such a bs article. Onavo is a VPN - what are they expecting from it?

<comment><USER8> Most people would expect a VPN to protect their data from websites, rather than sharing it with Facebook.

<comment><USER22> That is a different argument than what the author is making in the article. Don't go on a tangent.

Also, Onavo was acquired by FB in 2013. What were you expecting FB to do with it? It is not even the most popular VPN app.

<comment><USER6> I made no argument.

I presented factual and new information about what data is collected and asked some questions.

<comment><USER22> Your point was vpn collected all data sent and received from a device. You could have just tweeted that as that is always true.

Instead, from what it appears, you were trying to prop up views by calling out a facebook specific vpn and how it collected all data - as in you were expecting that to behave differently.

<comment><USER6> I would recommend you go and read the post, because what you are saying is simply not true.

I never claimed they are collecting all data sent and recieved from the device, nor would I have any ability to credibly make that claim without access to their servers. I only addressed what is observable in the app's code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Look, it is 2018, "Facebook" and "collecting data" shouldn't be any surprise to anyone. Stop using Facebook or submit to your data overlords but please, PLEASE stop posting this stuff. Facebook should never be trusted.

<comment><USER6> > PLEASE stop posting this stuff. Facebook should never be trusted.

Hi. I wrote the post and I disagree. There is a great deal of rhetoric and scaremongering these days when it comes to cyber security coverage in the media. I think it is important to actually look at the available data and ask direct questions derived from it.

I am fully aware that Facebook is not a bastion of privacy by any stretch, but collecting observable facts regarding this matter can allow people to better understand what is happening beyond "Facebook is invading your privacy" and decide how they feel about it.</comment></comment>


Man Drives into River, Blames GPS - <AUTHOR> http://www.weather.com/video/man-drives-into-river-blames-gps-49049

<comment><AUTHOR> xkcd in real life: [http://xkcd.com/461/](http://xkcd.com/461/)</comment>


Ask HN: Best place to get a demo video made? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking to get a demo video done. Ideally it would all be done graphically (no screen capture needed).
Are there any companies that specialize in making these types of videos.
Also, price is an important factor. I'm sure there are high end professional studios that could do this, but probably aren't in my budget. <comment><USER2> I really like the Epiphanies by Epipheo Studios: <http://www.epipheostudios.com/>

Not sure how much they cost, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the type of company I'm looking to find, however their particular "style" wouldn't mesh well with my design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> some good examples here: <http://qr.ae/FBsB></comment>


The Ultimate Instruction on the Ruby 1.9 VM - <AUTHOR> http://yarvinstructions.heroku.com/insns/answer

<comment><AUTHOR> and here is the list of all instructions.

<http://yarvinstructions.heroku.com/?lang=en></comment>


Feminine-named hurricanes are deadlier than masculine-named hurricanes - <AUTHOR> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/05/29/1402786111 <comment><USER2> A bit more context from Ed Yong:

[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/02/why- have-...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/02/why-have-female- hurricanes-killed-more-people-than-male-ones/)

<comment><USER3> The money quote:

"But Lazo thinks that neither the archival analysis nor the psychological experiments support the team's conclusions. For a start, they analysed hurricane data from 1950, but hurricanes all had female names at first. They only started getting male names on alternate years in 1979. This matters because hurricanes have also, on average, been getting less deadly over time. 'It could be that more people die in female-named hurricanes, simply because more people died in hurricanes on average before they started getting male names,' says Lazo.

Jung's team tried to address this problem by separately analysing the data for hurricanes before and after 1979. They claim that the findings 'directionally replicated those in the full dataset' but that's a bit of a fudge. The fact is they couldn't find a significant link between the femininity of a hurricane's name and the damage it caused for either the pre-1979 set or the post-1979 one (and a 'marginally significant interaction' of p=0.073 doesn't really count). The team argues that splitting the data meant there weren't enough hurricanes in each subset to provide enough statistical power. But that only means we can't rule out a connection between gender and damage; we can't soundly confirm one either."

<comment><USER4> And BTW they just excluded Katrina as an outlier. While not necessarily a totally unwarranted decision, it makes already marginal conclusions that much more so.

<comment><USER5> Isn't this conclusion more significant because Katrina is excluded?

Edit: I meant the layman's sense of "significant" here. I just don't see how excluding Katrina "makes already marginal conclusions that much more so". I read your "but" statement as just saying that they haven't necessarily proven causality, but I don't see what that has to do with my statement.

<comment><USER3> Well, the word "significant" is a loaded one in this discussion -- in this context, it typically means "statistically significant," which has a very narrow (and sometimes questionable[1]) meaning.

You're right that leaving Katrina in the dataset (assuming the same techniques were used -- there are other ways to deal with outliers other than dropping them) would bias the result further towards indicating that female-named hurricanes are more dangerous. But the persistence of a significant finding in that regard in the absence of that data point does not prove a causal link, much less the specific one the author suggests.

[1] For some criticisms of how statistical significance is currently being used, read this: [http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/docs/jsm.pdf](http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/docs/jsm.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is an excellent example of reasoning that Dawkins refers to as 'PETWAC' (Population of Events That Would happen to Appear Coincidental).

Consider three possible scenarios: 1) female hurricanes, as a set, are deadlier than male hurricanes 2) male hurricanes, as a set, are deadlier than female hurricanes 3) neither male nor female hurricanes are deadlier

Surprisingly, if you assume a uniform distribution of deadliness independent of the names, you actually find that it's more likely that either 1 or 2 is true than that 3 is true; 3 being true would require that an arbitrary partitioning of the hurricanes would have resulted in equal deadliness, but if the partition is arbitrary, it's more likely that it creates two unequal groups. However, a quick appeal to symmetry shows that either 1 or 2 being true are equally newsworthy.

It's like the news getting excited that a coin-toss was heads... "Wow, look at how heads that coin toss was!"... When in reality, the odds of heads OR tails were exceptionally high and the newsworthy item would be the coin landing on edge.

<comment><USER7> Given that this was published in PNAS and edited by someone from Princeton, it's safe to assume (unfortunately it's paywalled so I can only assume) that the authors know how to perform a significance test.

<comment><USER8> [http://xkcd.com/882/](http://xkcd.com/882/)

<comment><USER7> Exactly. What's at play is a combination of publication bias and (possibly) a slightly-too-narrow null hypothesis. This kind of silliness can squeeze through without any need for the null hypothesis to be entirely absent, which is the aspect of fixermark's post that I object to. I'd bet good money at 5:1 odds that the null hypothesis the paper used was more sophisticated than his uniform distribution let alone the delta distribution he accuses them of using.

<comment><USER9> You may have missed that the result is _not_ significant, despite the headline, when considering the real data.

Only laboratory questioning showed a significant psychological bias (and there an unnamed hurricane was rated less risky than either).

<comment><USER7> > We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that > feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths

What am I missing?

<comment><USER10> From post down the page by tekp2 - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836326)

[http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/02/why- have-...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/02/why-have-female- hurricanes-killed-more-people-than-male-ones/)

 _" But Lazo thinks that neither the archival analysis nor the psychological experiments support the team's conclusions. For a start, they analysed hurricane data from 1950, but hurricanes all had female names at first. They only started getting male names on alternate years in 1979. This matters because hurricanes have also, on average, been getting less deadly over time. "It could be that more people die in female-named hurricanes, simply because more people died in hurricanes on average before they started getting male names," says Lazo.

Jung's team tried to address this problem by separately analysing the data for hurricanes before and after 1979. They claim that the findings "directionally replicated those in the full dataset" but that's a bit of a fudge. The fact is they couldn't find a significant link between the femininity of a hurricane's name and the damage it caused for either the pre-1979 set or the post-1979 one (and a "marginally significant interaction" of p=0.073 doesn't really count [this is a link in the actual article - [http://mchankins.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/still-not- signific...](http://mchankins.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/still-not- significant-2/) ]). The team argues that splitting the data meant there weren't enough hurricanes in each subset to provide enough statistical power. But that only means we can't rule out a connection between gender and damage; we can't soundly confirm one either."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't see the full-text to check the stats, but I'd wager this claim is heavily dependent on single point Fifi: a category 2 hurricane that was amongst the deadliest.

 _Edit:_ Ah, in fact, there is no significant result that corresponds to the title at all. Statistically, they have no right to claim the headline is true. Pure link-bait :/

</comment><comment><USER11> There is more such as the raw data under supplemental information:

[http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2014/05/30/1402786111.DCSu...](http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2014/05/30/1402786111.DCSupplemental)

</comment><comment><USER12> Can this effect be reasonably prevented? See [http://xkcd.com/915/](http://xkcd.com/915/) : some hurricane names will always be more threatening than other hurricane names, and will induce consequently more preparation. But the only thing to which people compare the names of hurricanes is _the names of other hurricanes_ (and maybe other named storms), so there must always be a least threatening hurricane name, etc. Even if we took the "nuclear" route and named hurricanes after, for example, historical tyrants (Hurricane Genghis, Hurricane Adolf, etc) this could happen nonetheless.

<comment><USER13> This seems to suggest that hurricanes should not be named in advance. If all we know is that a hurricane of a particular strength will hit tomorrow, we won't hang around due to gender prejudice. Then when we find out next week that the hurricane is named Daenerys we'll realize we shouldn't have worried about it.

<comment><USER14> It's possible that not giving hurricanes easily-recognizable names would cause even less preparedness and risk estimation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I call BS on this one. First, the implicit assumption seems to be that hurricanes have approximately the same strength and it's people's expectations that is the dominant factor in the death tool, i.e. (from the paper's abstract): "Feminine-named hurricanes (vs. masculine-named hurricanes) cause significantly more deaths, apparently because they lead to lower perceived risk and consequently less preparedness." Now I'm no meteorologist, but it seems like this may or may not be true. Since the male and female names alternate this may be pointing to an underlying mechanism that modulates the strength of consecutive storms' strength.

Second, up to 1978 hurricanes were given only female names ([http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames_history.shtml](http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames_history.shtml)). Where does that leave this theory?

<comment><USER16> The study included some questions where participants rated the perceived danger from some made-up storm names. People said they expected less danger from a given storm description if it had a more feminine name.

<comment><USER17> Which really shows nothing, or perhaps that participants accurately inferred what the questioner wanted to hear or what they were supposed to say.

There's a reason they didn't lead with THAT headline, but rather the inflammatory and bogus one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I understand this correctly, hurricanes should be named with the most threatening names possible. So no more Sandy or even Edward, but Cerberus, Smaug, and Grendel.

</comment><comment><USER19> For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. -- Kipling

<comment><USER20> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-wIvsZBFhQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-wIvsZBFhQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So we should just always give them male names. But we can't because whoever makes such decisions will bow to the pressure of feminism.

<comment><USER22> You do realize that feminists are the ones who lobbied to go from all female names to half male, right? Meaning that if this dubious research is accurate, they saved lives.

<comment><USER14> > Meaning that if this dubious research is accurate, they saved lives.

That doesn't necessarily follow. It could be that people have on average a fixed amount of "preparedness" per unit time that they will spend on various events as they see fit. Switching from all female names to half female half male might have simply caused more of this preparedness to be spent on the half named after males, but the total amount of preparedness would be unchanged.

<comment><USER22> I suppose that's possible, but it's the kind of claim that needs to be proven rather than disproven (just like the claim in the article, which is light- years from proven).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Duh.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Hell hath no fury like a woman stormed"

/sorry</comment>


6 SaaS Metrics You Should Track - ReadWriteCloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/09/6-saas-metrics-you-should-trac.php <comment><USER2> Why would they basically recap the entire article from ThinkVitamin?

P.s.: Great article, just don't understand why parroting is better than a regular hyperlink. Some good discussion going on in the original article thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1652263>

<comment><USER3> I definitely looked at this and went I just saw that identical article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ugh, this is just a rewrite of:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1652263>

OT: ...can't people come up with something original to say?</comment>


The one-minute entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2012/1/6/one-minute-entrepreneur <comment><USER2> You've got no idea how surreal it was to click through and start reading that.

<comment><USER3> You've got no idea how surreal most of that book is :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems heavily related to the main point of the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" . There are two major types of thinking-instantaneous, "go with your gut" judgments, and conscious processing. Spending even a minute on a decision forces you to use some conscious processing in addition to the go-with-your- gut decision.

This is especially useful when you're solving new problems or working on things you're not particularly good at. My personal example is estimating distance. When somebody asked, my "gut feeling" about the distance from Boston to Delaware was 600 miles. 30 seconds of conscious thinking and I realized it could be no more than 400 miles (the correct answer is about 350).

The other useful aspect of switching to conscious thinking is that it at least makes you aware of the rationale for your decision. When making a conscious estimate I break it down into smaller parts, and if the estimate is way off it's usually because one of the parts was off. But for me, that doesn't work with instant guesses.

</comment><comment><USER5> The spread of the LessWrong meme is really positive. A lot of bloggers seem to be linking or alluding to stuff from there these days. And it's leading to increased awareness that rationality is not always easy, nor something to be taken for granted.

I don't think necessarily everone has to study the stuff in depth, as long as the "you is crazy/stupid, foolish human" message gets across. The future belongs to the wise aka those who fail to accept and put up with their own bullshit :)

</comment><comment><USER6> I liked the article. Here's my humble summary of the main 2 points

1\. Don't always make decisions in 0 minutes (instantly). Instead, think about them for 1 minute. The time difference is small but the results may not be.

2\. Don't always default to the easiest solution.

Point 2 reminds me a lot of a really great presentation I watched recently by Rich Hickey (the creator of the Clojure programming language) which highlighted that easy solutions are not always the simplest solutions; however it is the latter that we should strive for and not the former. The presentation is really good and contains some insightful thoughts about design and decision making - www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy

</comment><comment><USER7> > _If you're the kind of person who prefers to sit back and think about stuff, > entrepreneurship will be quite a challenge. The default in the world of... > humans... is that nothing happens._

Some months ago I was thinking exactly about this issue (for more than one minute!) and I started working on an idea to overcome it. Sort of meta, I know :)

[On topic shameless plug] Result: I'm building asaclock (<http://www.asaclock.com>), an anti-procrastination web community for startup single founders and people working on side projects.

</comment><comment><USER8> I enjoyed the article, although I felt the content was somewhat generic and platitudinous. I was hoping for more concrete examples.

</comment><comment><USER9> _"A programmer will fix every problem with more code."_

And that's why the best programmers are _lazy_. Would rather spend twenty minutes thinking about a good solution, than ten minutes implementing a contrived solution.

Maybe entrepreneurs should be a bit lazier as well? Or maybe they should just delegate all the big decisions to their daily 30 minute run?

Really, if people aren't dying this very instance, I see no problem with making a decision the next morning.</comment>


Comcast announces placing data caps - <AUTHOR> http://beauclaar.blogspot.com/2013/11/comcast-is-placing-data-caps.html <comment><USER2> "While we believe that 300 GB is more than enough to meet the Internet usage needs of most customers, Comcast will automatically add blocks of 50 GB to your account for an additional $10, should you exceed the 300 GB included in your plan in a month."

That made my jaw drop. Netflix usage eats that in no time. Online gaming eats that in no time. Actually, web browsing for a family of 4 (which includes Youtube, etc.) eats that in no time. Today's "regular" Internet usage eats that in no time.

Which dinosaur thought that 300 GB was "more than enough?"

<comment><USER3> I second this.

No Netflix , Amazon , Roku or any set top box based streaming of any other kind either.

No gaming either.

This is my usage for the past three months:

[http://i.imgur.com/ZDNGYVI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ZDNGYVI.jpg)

<comment><USER4> If you're not using any video streaming sites, what _are_ you using that uses up to 250GB a month?

<comment><USER3> IP Telephony is the only one I can think of.

<comment><USER5> Maybe an obvious question, but is your wi-fi secured?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who think this is a bad thing, consider that "unlimited" most often means "limited in an opaque way you cannot control". This cap and pricing structure adds some very nice clarity to exactly when you might exceed you quota. Personally, I would rather pay for the extra GB's than get my connection throttled at the end of the month.

Pricing May or may not be acceptable to some, but the model itself is better than "we will limit you if we feel like it".

<comment><USER7> If Comcast simultaneously were to commit to a 100% neutrality policy regarding the serving of that data, and would also commit to not traffic shaping - I.E. For my $50 a month, I would get a non-screwed-around-with-by-their-traffic- shapers 50 megabit/second stream - I might agree with you.

Unfortunately I suspect we will get both - a data cap, and Comcast will continue to screw around with your traffic feed so they can profit off the front end and the back end (charging for enhanced access to their customer) - basically screwing the customer in both directions.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. This is not the only required step. I am actually mostly concerned with minimum guaranteed bandwidth and latency than anything else. Working from home means that I need a reliable connection more than anything. However, from what I have seen of all the different providers I had and researched, "unlimited" traffic is usually a very bad thing when you least expect it.

<comment><USER7> As someone who has dealt with telecommunications providers (Sprint, AT&T, Verizon) for the last 10 years on a professional basis, "Unlimited" is _ALWAYS_ a code word for "There is a level that if you go over, bad things will happen to you, from traffic shaping, to outright cancellation of your account."

Honest to goodness conversation with Verizon I had in 2005 (we were purchasing about 100 M2M (Machine to Machine) CDMA circuits) - it was Pythonesque in its tortured logic.

      Me: So, I'm wondering how much traffic we can use?
      Sales Guy: They are totally unlimited
      Me: Great, so how much is "Totally Unlimited?"
      Sales Guy: Just what it sounds like - No Limit.
      Me: Right, but what is the actual Limit.
      Sales Guy: It's unlimited.
      Me: So, I can stream 100 kilobits/second continuously for 32 gigabytes/month/circuit:
      Sales Guy: No, that would fall under our unapproved usage clause.
      Me: Yes.  I understand.  So, I'm wondering how much traffic we can use?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Will I get more data included in my monthly data usage plan if I upgrade to a higher Internet tier? While you may upgrade your Internet service at any time to receive more speed and performance, all of our tiers of service include data usage plans with 300 GB of data per month."

[http://customer.comcast.com/help-and- support/internet/data-u...](http://customer.comcast.com/help-and- support/internet/data-usage-plans-expansion-upgrade)

Sigh.

<comment><USER9> My hope is that they eventually conform all plans into one (at a locked speed/price), and then offer plans in varying amounts of capacity at a certain speed.

Much closer reflects a usage-based model, which makes sense for internet billing, whether people like it or not.

<comment><USER10> That's an awful hope. My hope is that they are declared an illegal monopoly and an environment is created where actual competition can occur so we end up paying what bandwidth actually costs.

<comment><USER9> They're not an illegal monopoly though. Paying for what bandwidth costs is the crux of my argument. We're both arguing for what is essentially usage-based- billing ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From [http://customer.comcast.com/help-and- support/internet/data-u...](http://customer.comcast.com/help-and- support/internet/data-usage-plans-expansion):

"These FAQs describe our new monthly data usage plan for XFINITY Internet Service in the following areas: Huntsville and Mobile, AL; Atlanta; Augusta and Savannah, GA; Central Kentucky; Maine; Jackson, MS; Knoxville and Memphis, TN; and Charleston, SC."

<comment><USER12> This explains why I thought this was old news. It has been in Nashville for a long time now.

<comment><AUTHOR> How close do you get to monthly caps?

<comment><USER12> Currently I average around 200GB per month. Some months are closer to 300GB and 350GB and I pay the $10 overage fees. I only pay for Internet and only use Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime and that pretty much is what my B/W is tied to. If I could switch to something faster with greater B/W I would in a heartbeat but I just have no motivation since its paid for through work-related usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If they commit to providing suitable bandwidth for services such as Netflix and YouTube, I'm not sure how opposed I am to paying for bandwidth.

Estimates are that Netflix movies are 1GB/hr- or $0.20/hr at the Comcast rate. Not super cheap.

<comment><AUTHOR> We run into this a lot around the 8-9pm hour. Netflix on xbox seems to be the exception though. Everything else slows down equally (Bluray, phones, ipad, etc.)...not noticeable on anything other than the bluray player though but network stats definitely show it.

<comment><USER12> I notice this very same thing in my area. The mornings on workdays are considerably faster than evenings on the same days. I notice this when downloading ISOs for operating systems especially. I usually try and save my downloading of these things for morning so that it completes in 10 minutes vs 50 minutes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > We will send you a courtesy "in-browser" notice and an email letting you > know how much of the data included in your monthly plan you are using

That is the item that really bothers me. What Comcast is saying is that they will alter/inject their own content into a customer's HTTP requests when they deem it necessary.

<comment><USER15> I was wondering about this too when I read that... Is this an indirect admission that they actively use DPI?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is actually a much better policy then the one in place 3-4 years ago when I had comcast.

Back then I had a cap of 150-200 GB/Month and if you went over they would give you a warning, but eventually boot you for repeated offenses. Now it looks like they will just charge you a bit more instead of kicking you off completely.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have Verizon FIOS which has no data caps although there was a story recently of a user that received a call when he went over 77 TB for the month:

[http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/05/fios-c...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/05/fios-customer-discovers-the-limits-of-unlimited-data-77-tb- in-month/)

I really couldn't be happier with Verizon FIOS. For $74.95 per month I get 75 Mbps downstream / 35 Mbps upstream Internet, unlimited phone service and their Premium TV channel lineup.

Comcast is an option where I live as well but I can't imagine many people choose it. Twice now they've had a door-to-door salesman come around trying to sell it. No thanks.

I'm fortunate to be in an area that has a lot of broadband competition (including from wireless providers like Clear [now Sprint]).

<comment><USER18> >> Twice now they've had a door-to-door salesman come around trying to sell it.

Only twice? I've got Frontier FIOS (what used to be Verizon), and I'll bet Comcast is at my door at least once a month. Add to that the flyers that constantly come in the mail.

On a side note related to the mailings, I've opened a few to see if they have a better deal than Frontier. Sure, it's almost free for six months, but good luck finding out what the rate goes to after the first six months. Check the fine print of the flyer, check the web site, damned if I can find it. Yeah, I think I'll pass.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Broadband prices across the world: (45 Mbps or more)

[http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70717000/gif/_70717869...](http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/70717000/gif/_70717869_countries_with_high_speed_broadband.gif)

 _This research echoes the findings of another report earlier in the summer by the OECD, which compared countries in terms of their broadband-only prices. Across all 10 download speeds and capacities, it consistently ranked the US near the bottom.

For instance, at high speeds of 45 Mbps and over, the OECD report has the US ranked 30th out of 33 countries, with an average price of $90 a month. With phone and TV thrown in, plus some premium channels, these packages often cost $200.

"Americans pay so much because they don't have a choice," says Susan Crawford, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama on science, technology and innovation policy.

Although there are several national companies, local markets tend to be dominated by just one or two main providers.

"We deregulated high-speed internet access 10 years ago and since then we've seen enormous consolidation and monopolies, so left to their own devices, companies that supply internet access will charge high prices, because they face neither competition nor oversight."

Two-thirds get their broadband via their television cables, she says, because the DSL (digital subscriber line) service provided by phone companies over copper lines can't compete with cable speeds, while wireless and satellite services are subject to low usage caps._

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24528383](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24528383)

</comment><comment><USER19> The headline seems incorrect. Comcast has had data caps for a while now. They are increasing them from 250 gb to 300 gb.

<comment><USER20> Enforcement has been suspended in the majority of markets for the last ~18 months or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Telekom in Germany recently tried to introduce a similar data cap system on their flatrates ([1], with severe throttling to 384kbps after reaching the limit (between 75GB for their 16 MBit and 400GB for their 200MBit plans)).

Fortunately, a district court ruled that to be unlawful last month ([2], German). I fear, however, that a similar development in the US is more than unlikely.

[1] [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130425/02255122829/deutsc...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130425/02255122829/deutsche- telekom-dumps-net-neutrality-will-limit-bandwidth-competing-video-voice- products.shtml)

[2] [http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gericht-telekom- drosselung10...](http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gericht-telekom- drosselung100.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> In a world that is moving towards gigabit internet, which genius in Comcast thought 300GB is enough for most people? The internet is far from its peak. Already, we see more and more websites with background videos, beautiful images, and all kinds of wonderful media. At the rate of advancement we will consume even more amazing media on the internet (3D?) that will take up even more bandwidth as time goes on. By introducing a bandwidth saving mindset and forcing consumers to browse conservatively, Comcast is really going against the evolution of the internet. Like most companies that is destined to fail, Comcast makes decisions based on old and current data. They fail to take into account rate of growth and make policies that benefits and embraces the future.

</comment><comment><USER22> Switch to Sonic Fusion DSL if you're in their service area (Bay Area, perhaps elsewhere?).

[http://sonic.net/solutions/home/internet/fusion/](http://sonic.net/solutions/home/internet/fusion/)

Far cheaper than Comcast and no gimmicks. The service runs about $50/month with all the little FCC charges, taxes, etc tacked on and comes with an unlimited nationwide phone line too. The speed is dependent on your distance from the central switching station of the phone company. I've had it in two locations with speeds ranging from 8 to 16MBit/s, on par with Comcast. Perfect for streaming any TV show you want to watch.

<comment><USER23> Sonic.net is great but unfortunately DSL technology isn't. I've also had sonic.net in two locations but my speeds ranged from 5-7Mbits. So it's worth a shot but it's not perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This enables them to offer an upsale for an unlimited package in the future, which is what ISPs here in Canada have begun doing.

I pay extra for unlimited, and I need to since my family uses HD Netflix to watch TV, and I download a lot of entertainment content.

</comment><comment><USER25> And this ladies and gentlemen is when healthy capitalism turns into corporate greed. Internet needs to become faster with more bandwidth so engineers can design products that utilizes it. I can think of several ideas that are stifled because of America's draconian internet service providers. I'm not a big fan of the government stepping in to fix things the free market wont, but this is one of those things where companies should be forced to innovate because they choose not to compete. Providing the internet is too profitable for them to need to compete. There is something wrong with that in a capitalist economy.

<comment><USER26> I don't quite understand how you think that the current ISP situation is an example of healthy capitalism or a free market. It is anything but. There is a ton of government regulation related to ISPs. So I don't see how fighting regulation with regulation is a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Freaking barbaric, is what this is.

<comment><USER28> At least they are offering more bandwidth at a price. Before it was a hard cap at 250GB with no way to buy more.

But still, it makes me want to up and move to Chattanooga.

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

<comment><USER29> That's incorrect. The old comcast system took congestion into account. I routinely ran 500-600GB/month offsite backups, but I scheduled them for the middle of the night and midday, and I never got a nastygram for exceeding the cap. The new system pretends that all bits are equally expensive, regardless of whether the system is currently slammed or twiddling its thumbs, which is a profit-maximizing lie.

<comment><USER28> I suspect it was selectively enforced. I had a similar usage pattern and did get a notice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My plan with Northland Cable is capped at 200GB. even with lots of Netflix streaming I've never hit my cap. the only thing that irritates me is that I have no way of knowing exactly how much data I use.

</comment><comment><USER12> I have dealt with the 250GB cap for nearly a year and half, they always add the blocks on at 50GB for $10 per block. Luckily my internet is paid for through work so its trivial at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER31> The cap is not the frightening bit of this announcement. That Comcast has declared they will MITM and hack user connections to all websites not using SSL is frightening.

</comment><comment><USER32> Data caps is a completely brain dead idea. If they have problems with network congestion, they need to use bandwidth caps, not data caps. The later are just a rip off.

<comment><USER25> Its not a brain dead idea from a corporate policy to maximize profits. Datacaps allow them to not expand infrasture to accommodate growth.

Imagine if Google adopted a policy where each user was only allowed 300 queries a month. That means Google wouldn't have to expand their infrastructure to satisfy a growing demand for information. The only reason they don't do this is because Google profits from each query.

ISPs don't profit from their consumers downloading more data, it only costs them building more infrasture and employing network admins to maintain them. Its just internet providers generate a ridiculous return in profit for the amount of money they actually invest to provide internet. ISPs don't need to compete with other ISPs because how profitable internet is for them. They need incentive to provide better service and until something like Google Fiber forces disruption in the market; engineers will have an artificial roadblock preventing them from innovating.

For example a cloud based OS where users can access their PCs at home in realtime from terminals abroad will never be a reality until America is upgraded to fiber optic bandwidth. It causes to much latency to download and mount your filesystem onto a local machine. Anybody with experience using Plan 9 remotely understands this problem and knows I'm right.

As we become more dependent on the cloud to sync data between our mobile devices and PCs, datacaps will stifle innovative growth. Its something we need to vehemently battle to shift the market in our favor.

<comment><USER32> This "maximizing profit" is an effective rip off fueled by pure greed and not any real need. They can perfectly build up their infrastructure without introducing these rip offs.

And I'm not sure how they can accommodate usage growth without building up the infrastructure. Data caps aren't going to help that, they'll just make bad service cost more, nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Crap I just looked at my usage. Basically looks like I will be paying $10-$20 a month more. Not much money but that really irritates me.

</comment><comment><USER33> Fuck Comcast. I use around 500gb/month. So I'm looking an extra $40 onto of the $80 I'm already paying for Internet only.

</comment><comment><USER34> US you're ISP's suck please wake up and do something about it!

Now I'm not in a lot better position ISP's in London are not that much of an improvement.

However if i say Romania what pops into your mind? I my case internet speeds starting from 50Mb/s in every major city at a price equivalent to £6/month.

[http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi- net/fiberlink?t=internet...](http://www.rcs-rds.ro/internet-digi- net/fiberlink?t=internet-fix&pachet=digi_net_fiberlink_50)

<comment><USER35> Do what exactly? Most areas in the US are served either by one provider that does whatever the hell it wants or multiple providers that offer the same awful service at the same terrible prices (ish). We can't vote with our money and we can't vote with our votes since our politicians (1) are clueless about all things technology (2) get the little knowledge they have from lobbyists and (3) won't do anything about internet problems unless they hear about it from a lot of voters, most of whom are also clueless about all things technology.

<comment><USER36> I assume Romanians are somewhat (equally) clueless about technology on average. What's the difference, then? What are they doing right?

<comment><USER34> Actually worse. Most people still have a hard time just doing basic things on a laptop.

The difference is teenagers are teaching their parents how to use laptops or other new electronics so they are improving slowly.

<comment><USER36> Is £6/month a lot in Romania? Does it buy less than the $70 I spend for 50mbs?

<comment><USER34> Prices for most things in Romania are the same as in London but the income is a lot less that's what puts most Romanians in a nasty situation.

Imagine you living on (average us income)/6 while everything else around you has the same price it has now. That will give you a good idea.

Most people have a monthly income of about £250 if you were to convert it. Now that should cover all the bills and food, most Romanians own their houses so they don't have to pay rent which is good but that is still a bad situation regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Am I missing something? How exactly is this increasing "the amount of data included in your XFINITY Internet Service"?

<comment><USER19> When I had Comcast, they had a data cap of 250 GB. The HN headline is misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last month I ran 345GB. Didn't pay extra. This month I will due to notification. counter claim: not misleading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I hate comcast so much, they compress the shit out of their television content

</comment><comment><USER39> With 4K streaming and displays coming soon, what are they thinking?

</comment><comment><USER40> It's about 1Mbit a month... (1Mbit = 328.5 GB).</comment>


Ask HN: what medical examinations would you get if money didn't matter? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious if there are any medical screenings that would make sense to invest in?<p>For example I just did a blood test for food allergies for 150€. Would have been useful to do that years ago. What else could make a big difference to my/your future health? <comment><USER2> 1\. A test for dyslexia. I had a friend who didn't know he had it until well into his teens.

2\. Sleep Study. like hunterjrj

3\. Figure out your blood type.

4\. Full drug/food allergy testing.

</comment><comment><USER3> A sleep study. Obstructive sleep apnea can cause serious problems with the heart.</comment>


Red Hat Nearing $1 billion in revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/red-hat-nearing-1-billion-in-revenue-not-bad-for-free-software/46445

<comment><USER2> It took me a long time to settle in on one Linux distribution, but Red Hat is it for me. I really feel as though I can trust the company to innovate and deliver products that are aligned with my long-term objectives.

Thank you, Red Hat.

<comment><USER3> _innovate and deliver products that are aligned with my long-term objectives_

I'm tempted to simply make a joke about whether Red Hat also leverages your synergies and upscales your key metrics -- but I'll ask the question: what does that mean?

Can you give me an example of what you're talking about? (Vis-a-vis another distro?)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this (-> <http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html>) popped into my head when I read that too.

Red Hat has made some cool stuff though. Not sure if it would be my first choice if I had to choose a distro to deploy, however.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> good to see RH being profitable. They put a lot back into the open-source technologies that are the foundation of their business, much more than many other modern tech companies, _ahem_ facebook, amazon whose contributions are relatively small compared to their huge profits

</comment><comment><USER6> The question is, does Redhat have a repeatable business model, or is it a combination of being in the right place at the right time, with very good execution?

<comment><USER7> redhat has been in business for almost 20 years. They're traded publicly. They have over 3,000 employees.

I'm pretty sure they have a repeatable business model.

<comment><USER8> I think the question is more: is there room for more than one RedHat?

They're by far the biggest and most notable "Linux company", and all the other companies like them have had a way of either getting bought to become a mere division of a corporate giant (like SuSE to Novell), or else losing money until they become irrelevant. It's important to have at least one or two corporate sponsors of Linux that won't "sell out" or screw the community in favor of their proprietary offerings.

If Canonical can get to where they are comfortably profitable and growing for two or three years, then I think we can say that RedHat's repeatable, but until then we'll only have the one example of a sustainable and successful independent Linux company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does RedHat have a product similar to Microsoft's Visio?</comment>


AMD Publishes Open-Source HD 7000, Trinity Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA3NDE

<comment><USER2> I hope this means their Linux drivers will stop sucking as hard as they do now.

I run their closed drivers on a 5870 HD (I know the open ones do 2D just fine, but I need openCL for work) and boy are they crap.

<comment><USER3> AMD's windows drivers aren't exactly good either. Plenty of known VPU crash bugs that aren't getting fixed, and every now and then a good old BSOD. In fact, as many bitcoin miners know, the linux driver performance is actually higher. There is something wrong with their driver team and/or management.

<comment><USER4> Take it from someone who uses both OSs with the same card: The Windows ones might not be great, but the GNU/Linux ones are a new dimension of evil. Check my comment: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3734065>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've had pretty good experiences with their open source driver running on a HD 3870. No tearing, KMS support, good stability. I don't have a need for much 3D performance, nor do I use OpenCL. I just want something that runs well without crashing, and supports the new Linux 3D architecture (DRI2, KMS, DRM etc.) so it can run Wayland.

<comment><USER6> I've never really understood why you'd want to burn around 100W if you don't have much need for 3D performance and all you want is good desktop performance. Surely there are cheap alternatives at less than half the total board power?

<comment><USER7> You can put the card in low power mode with

      echo low | sudo tee -a /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile

ymmv

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run the proprietary ATI drivers on my laptop. I can't run the libre ones because they drain my battery and heat my machine up like there's no tomorrow. They are _bad_. The tearing is more than just annoying; I simply can't watch flash videos nor use 3D graphics applications. Watching local media crashes X if I use anything other than OpenGL output.

I had vowed never to buy another ATI device until they got their shit together concerning GNU/Linux support. Maybe that will change.

<comment><USER8> have you tried using their catalyst software? [http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_lin...](http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/linux/Pages/radeon_linux.aspx)

I'm not a fan of binary blobs, but ever since I've installed catalyst, I have had no problems with video tearing/ X crashes. I even use compiz and its quite nice (there is a _slight_ discontinuity if you move the windows very fast though. Its a small point, but I would have liked it to be smoother). I have also had no problems with projectors/external monitors after using catalyst. (using radeon HD4300 which is probably an old card by now)

<comment><USER9> Gnome 3 shell on OpenSUSE 12.1 and Fedora 16 regularly (at least 10 times a day) crashes when using catalyst drivers on my HD5650. Using the opensource drivers it works fine. Chrome blacklists the GPU/drivers so no WebGL without --ignore-gpu-blacklist, WebGL performance is ~ old TNT2 in chrome/firefox (although that can be simply because WebGL implementation/app isn't good). I used to buy ATI/AMD because they offered good price/performance ratios but I'm going to go with nVidia/Intel for my next PC, it's going to have to suck really bad to provide a worse experience than this.

<comment><USER8> perhaps I should have clarified a bit.... I use Debian Squeeze which uses gnome2, and on it I have had no problems for the whole of 2011 (and I run advanced visualization softwares such as VTK on large datasets, still no trouble). Maybe the problem has to do with gnome3? (No problems with chrome/WebGL either.)

<comment><USER9> >Maybe the problem has to do with gnome3

It certainly does - but it's also driver specific because on open source drivers it works without the crashing - but then the performance is terrible, even playing YouTube fullscreen lags (!?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm quite interested in seeing their user space (Mesa/Gallium) driver source code, I find the guts of video card drivers and graphics library implementations to be quite interesting.</comment>


Things I Won't Work With: Selenophenol - <AUTHOR> http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/05/15/things_i_wont_work_with_selenophenol.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget to read the comments; there are some good war stories.</comment>


Ask HN: What's your go to app (or site) while in restroom? - <AUTHOR>

twitter, FB, instagram, vine, HN... <comment><USER2> Kingdom Rush!

iOS: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom- rush/id516378985?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom- rush/id516378985?mt=8)

iOS sequel: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom-rush- frontiers/id598...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kingdom-rush- frontiers/id598581396?mt=8)

Android: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ironhidega...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ironhidegames.android.kingdomrush)

Online: [http://armorgames.com/play/12141/kingdom- rush](http://armorgames.com/play/12141/kingdom-rush)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think Github is my go to, kind of relaxing to browse around and read about different projects.

</comment><comment><USER4> Into the Dead. After dying 3 times I'll move on to HN.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm doing my duty right now.

</comment><comment><USER6> news:yc</comment>


Networking tool comics - <AUTHOR> https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/02/10/a-few-networking-tool-comics/ <comment><USER2> The content is pretty interesting but the comic format doesn't make sense to me, there's basically just text and colors. Isn't this just a collection of cheatsheets?</comment>


Don't Hire Anyone Over 30: Ageism in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://anewdomain.net/2014/12/11/dont-hire-anyone-30-ageism-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> I'm 43.

This article hit a very strong point. I remember being told point blank at 32 (by a boomer company owner) that even though I was doing the job and had the capabilities, I simply wasn't old enough to be high level management yet. So a short time later I offered my resignation, and he responded by trying to give me a substantial share of the company with the option to buy out the rest over the next decade.....

Hilarious.

At any rate, I'm not threatened by companies that won't hire people my age. I've seen plenty of people my age that have grown fat and grey and are burnt out and lazy with the spark gone out of their eyes. But I've also seen enough to know that time keeps marching on, and the foolish and trivial is shaken out before very long. Many of these types of companies won't be around long enough for the law to take action. Those that do last will find they are soon enough full of... fat grey middle aged people protecting their jobs and going to meetings....

I happen to agree that young people are on average smarter. (As in mentally faster). But if one is exceptionally mentally fast to begin with, another person does not automatically become mentally faster by virtue of youth alone. And as for bad judgement and a misunderstanding of how the world works.... well, that's a subject for another post...

<comment><USER3> I work with a 62 year old that puts me and everyone around him to shame. He is very productive in the company, readily picks up new technologies, is an open source contributor, and also manages to bike to work. Age doesn't have to equal stagnation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The reason age discrimination isn't included in the diversity mea culpas is because they have no plan to change. The economics of manipulating young professionals is too compelling to be changed by (mere) outrage.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is Sam Altman on Twitter, in April 2014, during a YC interview period: "it's a little creepy when someone has a 35 year old looking face and 70 year old looking hands" [1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/sama/status/460215704302534657](https://twitter.com/sama/status/460215704302534657)

</comment><comment><USER6> >The head of the most prominent start-up incubator told The New York Times that most venture capitalists in the Valley won't take a pitch from anyone over 32.

I have a really hard time taking this seriously

<comment><AUTHOR> I went back and looked and you're right, that paraphrasing doesn't appear in the NY times article that they're using as a source.

Also, the gawker article used as the source for the Buzz feed comments doesn't read as being about age at all.

Given the two strikes at the first two things I've looked at it just calls into credibility the whole article - which is a shame, as there probably a good conversation about age to be had.

<comment><USER5> The original NYT quote is pretty easy to find. May 2013, Paul Graham: "The cutoff in investors' heads is 32." [1]

Still in denial mode?

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator- sili...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-silicon- valleys-start-up-machine.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well thats not what they linked to though is it.

Suggesting I'm in denial mode is unhelpful - as I've already said there is a good conversation about age to be had.

<comment><USER5> It's just factual. You're both denigrating the value of the linked article based on not knowing about Paul Graham's NYT quote.

Even if there were no such specific, personally identifiable quote -- should we deny that there are v.high-level players in SV who indulge in and (apparently) support ageism?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In this day and age when a person can create value from their bedroom developing applications (especially mobile), who cares about not being hired to build someone else's dream, just build your own.

</comment><comment><USER8> I generally prefer to use the phrase "age-related employment difficulties" rather than flat out "age discrimination" when talking about silicon valley. I absolutely do not doubt that there is plenty the latter, but a bigger issue is the general culture that, as the article puts it, "might as well be scientifically designed in order to make adults with kids and a mortgage run away screaming".

I do think these sorts of articles and stories about the experience of being middle aged win silicon valley re important, because young people do need a counterpoint to the almost relentless message that there is a shortage of software developers and that what the US really needs is more young people going into CS.

What they need to hear is that in San Jose, registered nurses earn a bit more than software developers (122k/yr median vs 116k), and dental hygienists in SF earn only a bit less. Lawyers in San Jose, in spite of all the talk of a glut, earn a median of 185K a year.

No, it isn't paradise in these fields, the grass is never totally and perfectly green on the other side. But we need to understand how rational the aversion to software development careers really is when you consider the options available to highly educated, focused, intelligent young people.

Of course, plenty of people still do ok as they cross the 40, 50, 60 year threshold. However, in many fields, there is nothing remarkable about this. Lawyers and dental hygienists don't tell stories on job boards about they guy over 40 they know who managed to stay relevant. Many young people considering a career or college major are increasingly aware of what goes on, this is yet another reason why they avoid this field or abandon it quickly and early in their careers.

</comment><comment><USER9> The article mentions that silicon valley hasn't had a net increase in jobs since 1998 and links to this article:

[http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technol...](http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531726/technology- and-inequality/)

"According to Chris Benner, a regional economist at the University of California, Davis, there has been no net increase in jobs in Silicon Valley since 1998; digital technologies inevitably mean you can generate billions of dollars from a low employment base."

</comment><comment><USER10> The linked article is not exactly the pinnacle of journalistic quality (referring to generic alleged age discriminators as "jerks", for example), but the topic is timely and relevant.

As a 50-something IT guy, of course, I'm painfully aware of age screening in the hiring process, and I've reluctantly acquiesced in recent years to others' advice to shorten my lengthy resume to include only the past 10-15 years' worth of experience.

But, I'm not about to go out and sue somebody. First of all, I'm not into suing potential employers; it tends to burn bridges, waste money, and just make things worse overall.

Secondly, go prove it. I mean, I've applied for hundreds of jobs over the years, and most of them either never answer, or interview me then decline to offer, or sometimes put me on hold and a few months later ask me to come fill a different position. Who am I to conclude that it's all about age?

There are so many factors involved that isolating age as _the_ main reason for being passed over is difficult if not impossible. Of course, companies sometimes do settle out of court just to avoid the expense and bad press associated with defending themselves, but that just feeds the lawsuit beast and I'm really against frivolous lawsuits and the horrific effect they've had on our society.

Thirdly, why would I, at my current stage in life, want to be an employee of a company run by and full of 20-somethings who are young enough to be my sons (or, occasionally, daughters ;)? I have been there, and I find myself cringing to watch Junior say and do silly things. The father in me tells me to let him go ahead and make his mistakes because that's part of growing up. The politician in me tells me to keep my mouth shut and look for something better.

Nope, although I'm quite fortunate right now to have a work-from-home full time job designing and writing web apps and mobile apps for a living, if I found myself out of work I'd probably try to start my own consulting business or otherwise try to make it free-lancing and partnering with other app writers and designers rather than go and try to be a code monkey at a 20-something start-up. Or try to start my own start-up, for that matter.

The 20-somethings (except for a few cool, mature-beyond-their-years ones) don't relate to me, because they're young and inexperienced. I can relate to them, however, but I have already been through that awkward phase of life and have little interest in reliving it!

Frankly I'm surprised that so many 40-somethings and 50-somethings really want to work in such an environment. A friend of mine in SV complains about his manager who is half his age, who said "convert this script from Python to Java; it shouldn't take you more than half an hour" and in fact it took my friend two weeks. Come on, if it takes half an hour then do it yourself, hotshot. On the other hand I have a manager who is 20+ years my junior, and he's very cool, mature beyond his years, very focused on business.</comment>


Chicago HNers: 1000 dollars and a dream, Come Celebrate Pickle Power with Us - <AUTHOR> http://scalewell.posterous.com/scalewell-grant-3-announcement-and-event

<comment><USER2> I thought someone was trying to use pickle batteries as an alternative energy source, "They'll fund anything these days."

<comment><USER3> These are just edible pickles - no promises of renewable energy that I know of. We have helped people make theremins, web apps, and curriculum already so pickles seems like a logical progression :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you want to register for the event you can go to <http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=220285197987830>

</comment><comment><USER4> congrats! Cool that they get $1,000 bucks. Do you know what they are going to do with it?

<comment><USER3> We have not determined the spend with the founder yet - but are excited to have another physical product company. From our experience - the small amount of money can have a noticeable impact when you are not dealing with the abstractions of web startups. He has a product, fixed costs, and a process - so I am hoping we can connect him with people familiar with scaling single food products (getting into stores, higher production levels, etc). Also the marketing/branding since there are lot of creative campaign ideas surrounding a cartoon pickle.</comment></comment>


America is set to surpass Saudi Arabia in a 'remarkable' oil milestone - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/business/us-oil-exports-saudi-arabia/index.html <comment><USER2> Enjoy it while it lasts. America's largest shale plays are in decline. More worryingly, shale oil producers have never been profitable. They lose money consistently year after year, to the tune of hundreds of billions pf dollars total since 2010 [1]. The industry is entirely funded by revolving and growing debt. Production is simply not sustainable at current prices, however oil prices that do make production profitable can rapidly damage the economy, further imperiling debt-funded exploration for new reserves, which is urgently needed to prevent the world from running right the fuck out of oil. That's the scary reality of our balls-to-the-wall extractive economy.

1 - [https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Wall-Street- Loses...](https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Wall-Street-Loses-Faith- In-Shale.html)

<comment><USER3> With the US having the largest oil reserves in the world and half of that being shale [1], I doubt we are going to see an implosion. Besides, Big Oil Companies are getting into the game with their massive war chests [2], so while the little companies are going under, the big ones will take over and keep the crude flowing.

1\. [https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/05/investing/us-untapped- oil/i...](https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/05/investing/us-untapped- oil/index.html)

2\. [https://www.investors.com/news/oil-companies-target-oil- pipe...](https://www.investors.com/news/oil-companies-target-oil-pipeline- capacity-us-shale-oil-surge/)

<comment><USER2> The only way to avoid an implosion is to find a way to make shale oil profitable. Given that no one's been able to do that, after a couple decades of trying, I'm deeply skeptical that the big boys will do any better. I think they're desperate, after cutting a trillion dollars in capex on conventional exploration since the crash. Meanwhile, shale is sitting on massive a debt bubble that won't be payed off with modest profitability. They need to make big profits to dig out of that.</comment></comment></comment>


Guy Steele: Types and Run-time Types - <AUTHOR> http://projectfortress.sun.com/Projects/Community/blog/TypesAndRunTImeTypes?src=rss

<comment><USER2> At their core, these two techniques are not the same thing at all: <http://www.pphsg.org/cdsmith/types.html></comment>


Pluto image revealed by Nasa offers closest look yet at dwarf planet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/10/pluto-image-revealed-by-nasa-offers-closest-look-yet-at-dwarf-planet <comment><USER2> Non-blogspam link: [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News- Article.php?page=20150709)

Just because it is the guardian does not mean it is not blogspam. They do not add enough info to the original article IMHO.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, this link is much easier to consume, and the original photos have even more resolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yuggoth... is a strange dark orb at the very rim of our solar system... There are mighty cities on Yuggoth—great tiers of terraced towers built of black stone... The sun shines there no brighter than a star, but the beings need no light. They have other subtler senses, and put no windows in their great houses and temples... The black rivers of pitch that flow under those mysterious cyclopean bridges—things built by some elder race extinct and forgotten before the beings came to Yuggoth from the ultimate voids—ought to be enough to make any man a Dante or Poe if he can keep sane long enough to tell what he has seen...

—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness" (courtesy of the Wikipedia page on Yuggoth, aka Pluto).

<comment><USER5> > The sun shines there no brighter than a star

Worth noting though that the Sun looks a lot brighter than other stars from Pluto. Pluto orbits out at 40 AU, so the Sun is 40^2 = 1,600 times dimmer. In contrast, as seen from Earth, the full Moon is 400,000 time dimmer than Sun. Therefore the Sun from Pluto is about half way between the Moon and Sun on earth (on a logarithmic scale). It's roughly twilight.

<comment><USER6> NASA made a tool to help visualize daylight on Pluto by letting you know when during twilight the Earth is getting about the same amount of sunlight as Pluto does at noon.

[http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/plutotime/](http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/plutotime/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fact that this is the clearest image we have of Pluto reminds me how little we really know about our own solar system, and how much more is out there to be discovered.

<comment><USER8> On a stellar scale Pluto might be right next to Earth, but it still 5 light- hours away, meaning roundtrip communication times from probes takes 10 hours.

On a human scale that's really, really, really far away. So it's not _too_ surprising that we know very little about the tiny dwarf planet at the edge of our solar system.

<comment><USER9> What's a bit more disappointing is how little we know about the "ice giants". Both Uranus and Neptune have been visited only by Voyager 2.

<comment><USER10> I keep hoping for a Cassini-like mission to Uranus and/or Neptune, but so far, no luck.

<comment><USER5> Neptune is about 3 times further away than Saturn, and I believe Jupiter won't be in position for a good gravitational boost to get there for many decades. It's possible, but very very expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Starting to look very similar to Triton, which isn't surprising considering they are similar bodies: [https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/gallery/P353171.jpg](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/gallery/P353171.jpg)

It'll be interesting to see if Pluto also has Cryovolcanism.

<comment><USER12> Comparing the Hubble-obtained 1995 map of brightness to the latest map from New Horizons shows big differences on the surface. The only consistent feature between both maps is that the northern hemisphere is brighter -- the rest is almost completely different. That's sign of processes capable of changing the surfaces brightness on quite a rapid scale. Is it just the cycle of methane decay through UV light, or is it cryovolcanism also at work? Are there any other mechanisms that haven't been considered yet affecting the surface? Hopefully those questions will be answered "shortly" (in the following years that is).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone posted a 13 minute NYT video to HN:

[http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000003783764/fast- an...](http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000003783764/fast-and-light-to- pluto.html?smid=tw-share)

I thought it was enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER14> They can reuse this headline every day for the next week!

<comment><USER15> For months, actually. Some of the images from the flyby won't get sent back until November!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Serious n00b question - how do spacecrafts like New Horizon transmit images back to NASA? I mean what medium of communication, what protocol etc?

<comment><USER14> Here's the current status page for the Deep Space Network:

[https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html](https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html)

NHPC is New Horizons. At the moment they are on one very large dish in Canberra Australia, with a data rate of 2.11 kb/sec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting to hear that he pronounced _Charon_ as "Sharon". How do you pronounce it?

<comment><USER18> I always pronounced it "Sharon", but apparently the Greek name is pronounced "Karon". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_%28mythology%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_%28mythology%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone explain why we don't see any background stars in those photos?

<comment><USER10> Pluto is a lot brighter than the stars at that distance, so they are underexposed (to the point of invisibility). If you look at pictures when New Horizons was farther away and Pluto therefor a lot dimmer, you'll see plenty of stars.</comment></comment>


UK considers virus-tracing app to ease lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52095331 <comment><USER2> > But the academics say no-one should be forced to enrol - at least initially.

A third party app...

Everyone in tech seems to want to get in on the coronavirus and do something, but nobody seems to know what to do. We're on our 500th tracking website, but the real areas we can make change nobody is doing anything.

The big tech companies have such an insane reach that they could make the difference, if they wanted. Facebook, Apple (via iOS, macOS), Microsoft (via Windows, Outlook), Google (via Android, Search, Gmail), have reach to basically everyone across the globe.

If they wanted to implement something like what King's College London did[0], but into their actual OS rather than as a third party app which won't be downloaded as much, the reach would be incredible. Then, without even having to 'abuse' privacy rights, the government could triage supplies and services, have well-defined lockdowns, and understand and control the spread better.

The results? I'd guess a less frustrated population and less extensive, yet earlier, lockdowns. Better triage of supplies and resources. More data for scientists and a better understanding of the disease, with more data points. Ultimately, less deaths.

[0]: [https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/new-symptom-tracking-app-aims- to-...](https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/new-symptom-tracking-app-aims-to-slow- spread-of-coronavirus)</comment>