The Dyatlov Pass Incident - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident <comment><USER2> Tent put in stupid spot on snow slope leading to it being hit by small avalanche in night, which slammed metal stove and wooden bunks into injured victims. Panicked, they cut open the tent from inside and ran from the slope, fearing another, worse avalance, taking injured people with them (leaving torch on tent in rush). Put the most injured in a small snow cave, wrapped her with their clothing, thinking they could go back for more and stay warm with a fire, but ran out of firewood (all small lower branches were broken from surrounding trees). Person/s tried to go back to tent and died of cold on way, others died quickly afterwards (paradoxical undressing etc). Nothing weird happened at all. Probably too much alcohol, stupidity, dumb decisions and then panick. There is a full Russian coroners report online.

<comment><USER3> > Tent put in stupid spot on snow slope leading to it being hit by small > avalanche

Tent put in a place where slope is only 15 degrees, no signs of avalanche

> ran from the slope, fearing another, worse avalance, taking injured people > with them

There were traces of 8 people walking slowly downhill

> ran out of firewood (all small lower branches were broken from surrounding > trees

There was enough of dead wood around better as firewood then fresh branches. Te fire wasn't tended to at all.

> Person/s tried to go back to tent and died of cold on way

If you believe coroner report they were all quite well dressed (for example Kolmogorova - two hats, long sleeve undershirt, sweater, checked shirt and another sweater, cotton sport pants, trousers, ski pants and three pairs of socks. Two pairs were thin, then the third pair was woolen with insoles inside.)

[https://dyatlovpass.com/death#Kolmogorova](https://dyatlovpass.com/death#Kolmogorova)

> Probably too much alcohol

They have sworn off alcohol for the trip. A small flask of medicinal alcohol had been found sealed.

> There is a full Russian coroners report online

Coroner reports describe several traumas (pressing on chest cavity, bitten off finger found in the mouth (so bitten at the moment of death), severe burns consistent with torture rather then accidental burn, broken nose, choking with blood, bruise looking like left from a baton, fracture of the frontal bone and hemorrhages ) and then conclude hypothermia.

[] [https://dyatlovpass.com/death](https://dyatlovpass.com/death)

[] [https://www.facebook.com/dyatlovmania/posts/forensic- patholo...](https://www.facebook.com/dyatlovmania/posts/forensic-pathologist- eduard-tumanov-considers-that-on-krivonischenkos-body-were-/2068699123426019/)

> It looks as if Rustem fell repeatedly on his face as he was walking down the > mountain. And every time he fell he managed to hit the sides of the his > head. Rustem's body was with icy bed under from the hardening of the thawing > snow. This means that the body fell when relatively still warm and there was > a noticeable heat exchange into the environment. []

[https://dyatlovpass.com/death#Slobodin](https://dyatlovpass.com/death#Slobodin)

<comment><USER3> And for the record. (this info is better available to Russian speakers).

Russia general Attorney Office re-opened the case in February 2019. We might hope for some documents surfacing.

There is a lot of living witnesses coming forward on Russian TV (and also a lot of freaks).

There are no ground for exhumation of the bodies yet. Exception being the Semyon (Alexander) Zolotaryov for whose grave no records had been found. The grave had been opened and two DNA expertise made. First inconclusive and second confirmed a relation.

However there are still doubts about Zolotaryov identity. Coroner report describes tattoos [ "DAERMMUAZUAYA" ] (which only zeks (prisoners and criminal element) had at the time in Russia). Zolotaryov being handsome PE teacher (and wearing sleeveless shirt on multiple occasions) is well remembered by many as not having any tattoos.

Some people remember Zolotaryov's golden tooth, the exhumated body had multiple steel implants instead.

There is many more doubts about Zolotaryov's identity. He had been seen in two places at the same time on multiple occasions, he had a traitor brother (possibly kept in Gulag), he used two names (Semyon and Alexander), he worked as simple PE teacher but at one of the forbidden cities in Siberia, he moved a lot around the country on some tourist expedition always close to USSR borders. His little son vanished at the time of his death (into foster care) and never surfaced despite being actively searched for 50 years by boy's mother.

We also know that Yuri Krivonischenko's father was no ordinary Joe. He had been constructor of several atomic power plants in Russia and Ukraine protected personally by Stalin from persecution.

Yuri Krivonischenko had been working at Mayak in Chelyabinsk-40, where a massive nuclear disaster, second in severity only to Chernobyl, occurred in 1957.

Krivonischenko quit his job at Mayak abruptly just before the trip. He had received letter denying him to quit his job (that being Russia in 1959). He disregarded the letter (perhaps not being afraid of consequences due to his father's position).

As for Kolevatov we know he graduated from the Mining and Metallurgical College in Sverdlovsk and was sent to Moscow to work at secret PO Box No. 3394 (NKVD laboratory "B", focused on creating protection against ionizing radiation). Then he transferred back to UPI in Siberia. This is very unlikely to be voluntary career move but more of pattern of being recruited and given some mission.

> Only Muscovites received work in Moscow, and finding a job for a nonresident > in the capital meant pulling out a winning lottery ticket.

Only Kolevatov had his Finish knife registered at the police. (At the time laws of USSR made possesion of Finish knife a criminal offence)

[] [https://dyatlovpass.com/yuri-krivonichenko-mayak- documents](https://dyatlovpass.com/yuri-krivonichenko-mayak-documents)

[] [https://dyatlovpass.com/prosecutor-generals- office?lid=1](https://dyatlovpass.com/prosecutor-generals-office?lid=1)

[] [https://dyatlovpass.com/rakitin-on- kolevatov](https://dyatlovpass.com/rakitin-on-kolevatov)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 8th dyatlov pass headline on Hacker News. It's like Groundhog Day.

<comment><USER5> There are a handful of links (or closely related groups of links about a particular topic) that show up here over and over and over and over and over and over and over again... it's just the way things are. I guess some topics are just timeless.

Look how many stories have been posted about Amelia Earhart, for example:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=amelia%20earhart&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

or D.B. Cooper

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=d.b.+cooper](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=d.b.+cooper)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A thread from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11828346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11828346)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one of those mysteries where the sensational story covered up fairly mundane facts.

[https://www.cracked.com/article_16671_6-famous-unsolved- myst...](https://www.cracked.com/article_16671_6-famous-unsolved-mysteries- with-really-obvious-solutions.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> They also made a movie out of it [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dyatlov_pass_incident](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dyatlov_pass_incident) used to be on Netflix, not sure if it still is. It wasn't bad.

<comment><USER9> There's a game named Kholat too. I liked the atmosphere but didn't end up playing much, got kinda bored. It's a puzzle horror game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Terminal burial. Paradoxical undressing. People do strange things when they get cold. In winter mountains, it is not unusual to find bodies in unusual situations. People abandon warm tents, walk barefoot, and make stupid route decisions.

<comment><USER11> I think these death notes sum up the most interesting parts of the debacle.

Hypothermia; leader of group

Hypothermia

Internal bleeding from severe chest trauma

Hypothermia

Hypothermia

Hypothermia

Hypothermia

Fatal skull injury

Severe chest trauma, eyes missing

<comment><USER3> [https://dyatlovpass.com/death](https://dyatlovpass.com/death)

More like

Bayonet wound in front of the chest - leader of the group

Hypothermia (signs of torture with fire)

[https://youtu.be/_WSmcnGT0wU?t=100](https://youtu.be/_WSmcnGT0wU?t=100)

Hypothermia (signs of severe chest trauma)

Hypothermia (severe nose bleading, trauma from riffle butt or baton on a hip)

Fatal skull injury (hypothermia)

Broken ribs, chest trauma

Broken skull

Broken neck

Broken ribs (possibly not member of the group)

[https://youtu.be/-0PLLHogdbE?t=6](https://youtu.be/-0PLLHogdbE?t=6)

[https://youtu.be/rvNbjCDNOC4?t=192](https://youtu.be/rvNbjCDNOC4?t=192)

[https://youtu.be/UM2csYGEU5k?t=2197](https://youtu.be/UM2csYGEU5k?t=2197)

[https://youtu.be/QPpGQwprYP4](https://youtu.be/QPpGQwprYP4)

Plus many mysteries surrounding at least 3 members of the group.

[https://dyatlovpass.com/rakitin-on- kolevatov](https://dyatlovpass.com/rakitin-on-kolevatov)

[https://dyatlovpass.com/konstantin- krivonischenko?rbid=18461](https://dyatlovpass.com/konstantin- krivonischenko?rbid=18461)

[https://youtu.be/uBzHvq3fWh8?t=1230](https://youtu.be/uBzHvq3fWh8?t=1230)

[https://youtu.be/-0PLLHogdbE?t=6](https://youtu.be/-0PLLHogdbE?t=6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I first heard about this from those mini-documentaries that lemmino does on youtube

[https://youtu.be/Y8RigxxiilI](https://youtu.be/Y8RigxxiilI)

it's a great video explaining many of the theories revolving this incident</comment>


Understanding SOLID Principles: Interface Segregation Principle - <AUTHOR> https://codeburst.io/understanding-solid-principles-interface-segregation-principle-b2d57026cf6c <comment><USER2> I think a lot of what makes SOLID valuable is that its articulating patterns that make sense to people because they're obviously good ideas.

S -> don't write spagetti code.

O -> If you want your code to be extendable, explicitly choose the parts that can be extended so you can predictably deal with new functionality.

L -> If you extend code, don't screw it up so the code doesn't work the same way. Extensions shouldn't break stuff.

I -> Make your interfaces tiny.

D -> Dependency inversion to make things testable; because testing is good right?

Well, DI is always a bit contraversial, but at least its easy to say _why_ its good; its just a bit of pain to setup.

The interface segregation has always been the odd one out for me.

One method interfaces? I know the golang best practice folk love that stuff too, but I just find it irritating when I have to work on code that uses it extensively.

Anyone actually explain tangibly why its a good idea?

If you're using it to defend against workmates who might abuse an interface with too many functions on it... well, thats kind of lame imo.

Sure, mega-interfaces are bad... I guess... but so are objects with massive sets of methods on them. Why the special focus on interfaces?

<comment> d--b I don't think the push is for 1 method interfaces.

In C#, a good example is that many many APIs use the IList<T> interface to pass lists around. But that interface contains methods like .Add .Remove .RemoveAt .Insert... So while in most cases, you'd be just fine passing a IReadOnlyList<T>, using the IList<T> interface means that as a user of the API, you have to implement these methods which may have no sense for what you're doing.

And so more often than not, you see things like:

void Add(T element) { throw new Exception("Shouldn't go in there"); }

And actually I've just checked, the ReadOnlyList object itself implements IList (cause IList is so used), and so has these exceptions all over the place: [https://goo.gl/G6L9Ko](https://goo.gl/G6L9Ko)

<comment><USER3> Wow, the ReadOnlyList really does implement all methods of the IList interface. That's just ridiculous, %50 of the methods on the class throw an exception!

Why would the class implement these methods if they aren't even public?

Also, aren't statically typed languages like c# meant to reduce run-time errors by catching them during compilation? Wouldn't throwing exceptions from unimplemented methods from interfaces frequently break this idea?

<comment><USER4> Ideally yes you would catch this problem during compile time. However apparently the situations where you need to provide an IList for something that really _shouldn 't be changed_ is common enough that they decided to provide this functionality in the ReadOnlyCollection.

Now if you read carefully you actually do need to jump through some hoops in order to get an exception.

First of all the methods aren't public, you need to explicitly convert the ReadOnlyCollectionto to an IList or ICollection to access them.

Secondly the dependency inversion principle requires that any ReadOnlyCollection is stored as an IReadOnlyList or some other appropriate interface, there should be no way to convert it to an IList accidentally.

And finally the ReadOnlyCollections seems to be designed for the very specific scenario where you can't solve things using interfaces and need to design a class that supports IList, but throws an exception when it is modified. In all other cases you should use something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to disagree, or at least say "it depends". If your domain or stack tends to use a bunch of similar and related operations over and over, then packaging them together in a "UtilitiesForX" class or module is often much less code than managing them independently. Plus, they often use or reference each other so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Standardizing tools and conventions in a shop is how you save time. Independent bolts may not fit independent wrenches so that you have to reinvent both. Bundling tools and parts into "kits" helps ensure they fit together well. There's a balance between part independence and kit standardization. Experience and analysis is needed to weigh that trade-off well.

</comment><comment><USER6> This sounds a little like an intro to writing "Enterprise" code. Essentially each function has to be its own interface. And you probably need some factory functions in addition.

Why not provide a set of static functions for ByteUtils that behave in a specified way and be done with it?

<comment><USER7> Because a function is not a contract enough - it doesn't have a strong name at point of injection. But yeah, pure functions should be used way more often.

<comment><USER6> Does everything need to be dependency injected ? Sometimes it seems this is more important than code that works.

<comment><USER8> You can inject e.g. a Func<int, int, int> or an IAdder interface. Although they are for the sake of example equivalent, I prefer the latter for several related reasons: it gives the DI container a specific type name to work with and avoids complex setup there, it gives the person reading the code a lot more to work with when trying to understanding what the injected thing is used for, and Func<int, int, int> is very general - not all functions with this signature will be be a useful adder.

<comment><USER6> Again, why does everything need to be dependency injected? Why not a simple function that adds two numbers? I see these codebases where everything is abstracted two and three times and I don't understand what this achieves other than adding a ton of complexity for even simple things.

<comment><USER8> I haven't seen your codebase so I can't answer if your codebase injects too many things to too few, injects the right things or not. It also depends on how big the codebase is, and how long people are going to continue working on it - i.e. "enterprisy" concerns.

But injection is done for testability and flexibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh good example. It shows everything that's wrong with OO thinking

I could split the file interface like this, thinking that some modules will want to read only, some people will want to write only (in rare cases you want trim only, but that is obvious except to "enterprise architects" apparently)

Except it's splitting hairs. And my readers can ignore the write interface and my writers can ignore the read interface and that works in most languages.

> This gives the flexibility for the clients to combine the abstractions as > they may see fit and to provide implementations without unnecessary cargo.

Your compiler won't let you call an abstract method. It's that simple.

It's not increasing flexibility, it's increasing red tape and maintenance costs.

One of the reasons C# feels more fluid is that they reduced the level of lunacy created by this way of thinking where you create two or three classes to solve a problem that's solvable in 2 lines in other languages

<comment><USER10> As I understand this, the client here is not the caller of the methods defined in the interface, but the one implementing them.

Caller has no problem just ignoring the methods that it doesn't need. But the implementer doesn't have that possibility. If you have a read-write interface and a read-only source, you need to resort to subpar solutions like throwing an exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Solid principles also make porting between languages so much more possible. I ported Apache Shiro from Java to Python. It was a major undertaking. However, it was made possible by the authors following SOLID design principles. There was no one point where I was completely overwhelmed.

If you are writing software that others will use in a variety of ways, consider following SOLID principles as empathetic programming.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interface Segregation Principle: The Single Responsibility Principle applies to interfaces too.

<comment><USER12> Yep. I view ISP as simply a reminder that an object's public interface should be focused and cohesive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I like to work together with open-minded smart people. Stuff like SOLID only matters if you don't.

<comment><USER14> Oh, come off it.

Not every team gets to be made of 100% 10x supergenius ninja rock gods. And no one gets to be at their absolute best for every line of code they're ever going to write. Everyone, no matter how gifted, does a better job on average if the boring, obvious thing also tends to be the correct thing. Having some structure makes doing real work with real humans better, not worse.

SOLID isn't an iron law, it's a heuristic. And a damn good one. "Open-minded smart people" can and will find reasons to bend and break the rule sometimes, and the more experienced one becomes the more readily they'll be able to see when the rules doesn't apply. That doesn't mean they're bad rules.

Maybe I'm not open minded or smart enough, but I've seen plenty of codebases that adhered to _some_ set of coherent architectural guidelines and codebases that didn't, and I know which subset I prefer to work on.

<comment><USER13> No need to come off it. I don't mind working with mediocre people, but I do mind when they pester me with principles like SOLID, just because they don't understand good design when they see it. And, if you are working with great people, codifying good design into guidelines like SOLID is not necessary.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to hire/rent sysadmins on retainer?  If so, where? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen designers and programmers getting contract gigs, but I haven't ever seen sysadmins get the same kind of small-job contracts.  Am I not looking in the right places?  Or is this an untapped market?<p>For the people in early startups here, do you hire a sysadmin full-time, self-learn (I am in this camp), or keep them on in a retainer or as-needed contract? <comment><USER2> What I'd like to have is some kind of "sysadmin call center". I probably wouldn't feel comfortable hiring an admin to set up my app infrastructure and then don't keep him permanently. This is bad enough with code, but I'd find it hard that any documentation left behind will include all the minor details and setup option he has done to make everything work just fine (the equivalent of "use the source" would be "diff with a default system")…

But for simple maintenance or low-skill/time problem management I could easily imagine outsourcing that. Restarting your services, deleting some temp files if the file system is full, maybe doing an occasional upgrade of some packages etc.

Anything that someone with a basic grasp of Unix could probably do. Nothing major, i.e. if I have problem with the latency of my NoSQL replication system, he wouldn't be able to help me. But especially for single founders (or being the single guy at that technical level in a small team) it would be a big boon. You can go to that party, without worrying that you'd have to troubleshoot a non-working system wherever you are, in whatever state you are.

Not a panacea, but a bit more ease of mind. And it might work out for the admins, too. Potentially you can cover a lot of clients, as most of the time there won't be a problem and you're just waiting for one. Granted, according to Murphy's Law, you'll then get 17 calls at the same time, which is why I'd want this to be a team operation, not a single guy who sleeps next to his telephone and terminal

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to spend a lot of time at www.webhostingtalk.com and this would come up every now and again. There are quite a few companies who do this. The good thing about the business is that it seems to be heavily based on word of month. I remember a friend was looking for someone and I referred him to a place that kept being mentioned with comments like "Steve from XYZ is really good"

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually an issue I worry about. Sort of like how everyone's plumber is the best. I could be wrong but there's no good way to tell if a sysadmin is good. The sysadmins I know are the types where, if they're doing their job properly, you don't even know they are there or anything happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Self-learning has worked well for me so far. Within reasonable time, you should be able to do most typical tasks (i.e. within the context of Linux, do things like install new packages from a repo or from source, configure Apache/Nginx/etc., and so on.)

Some things are tougher IMO, like setting up sendmail/e-mail related configuration in general, to make sure your e-mails don't bounce. But that brings me to another point that is valid in 2011 -- fortunately you can "outsource" many tasks to cloud service providers such as Amazon. Definitely know what goes on under the hood, but don't spend precious time maintaining the infrastructure yourself.

If you do hit a point when for some reason the "cloud" solution is too pricy or doesn't scale to your needs, you'll likely be having other (good) problems. In other words, don't worry about that until you're successful, and then hire help if so need be.

</comment><comment><USER5> There was a post recently about starting up "rent a sysadmin." The problem is two-fold. How would you vet them apriori? After a while they could get reputation I guess but you're handing over everything to the sysadmin.

The second is that IMHO a good sysadmin is worth their weight in gold. So what would the caliber of the rent-a-sysadmin be given the short term and relatively "low pay."

</comment><comment><USER6> Depending on where you are there may be roving sysadmins already. I'm in the SFBA and have supported myself in "lean times" (ahem between jobs) by sysadmin consulting.

</comment><comment> Zeus-TheTrueGod You can try ODesk.com Choose those who have at least 1000 hours and 4.8 raiting and pay them really well (compared to what they already have, of course)</comment>


StarTram - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram <comment><USER2> Cool sci-fi story hook, but the "Gen 2" magnetic levitation idea is _insane_.

> For the elevated end portion, the design considers magnetic levitation to be > relatively less expensive than alternatives for elevating a launch tube of a > mass driver (tethered balloons,[19] compressive or inflated aerospace- > material megastructures).[20] A 280-megaamp current in ground cables creates > a magnetic field of 30 Gauss strength at 22 kilometres (14 mi) above sea > level (somewhat less above local terrain depending on site choice), while > cables on the elevated final portion of the tube carry 14 megaamps in the > opposite direction, generating a repulsive force of 4 tons per meter; it is > claimed that this would keep the 2-ton/meter structure strongly pressing up > on its angled tethers, a tensile structure on grand scale.[3] In the example > of niobium-titanium superconductor carrying 2 × 105 amps per cm2, the > levitated platform would have 7 cables, each 23 cm2 (3.6 sq in) of conductor > cross-section when including copper stabilizer.[4]

> A SPESIF 2010 presentation stated that Gen-1 could be completed by the year > 2020+ if funding began in 2010, Gen-2 by 2030+.[1]

Even assuming these numbers are right, I disbelieve that we'll have the technology, let alone the resources, to magnetically levitate a megastructure 22 kilometers above the Earth, using 280 _million_ amps of current, in the next 10 years. I don't think we even have a material strong enough to create 22km-long cables which can hold their own weight, let alone be useful as tethers.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps something like a launch loop would be easier than Gen 2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop)

<comment><USER2> I think most options are more feasible than Gen 2, from "just use Falcon Heavy" all the way through to building a space elevator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maglev trains are cool! There's actually one here on earth: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_maglev_train)

<comment><USER5> There's more than just one. The Shanghai one is the fastest, though.

<comment><USER6> There's a faster one in Japan, although it's not open to the public yet: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world- asia-32391020](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32391020)

<comment><USER7> Japanese trains are crazy. I rode the Shinkansen for a few hours. I actually wondered at the time if it was maglev because the ride was so smooth, quiet, and fast.

<comment><USER8> It is really incredible, so smooth and quiet - and so fast! What surprised me the most was how the track was banked in the curves like a race track.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Makes sense to have mass drivers like this on the moon or asteroids for sending cargo (mined materials) back to Earth orbit. Reduces the need for rocket fuel.

<comment><USER10> This is covered in-depth by Robert Heinlein in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" ([1], [2])

1\. [https://archive.org/stream/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress_201701/Th...](https://archive.org/stream/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress_201701/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress_djvu.txt)

2\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Spaceline is another concept that makes access to space cheaper and easier to achieve. It's a space elevator dangling from the Moon's surface into Earth's gravity well.

Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20895443)</comment>


How Google Deals With A Recession - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/how-google-deals-with-a-recession-goog <comment><USER2> I just tried the same query he has in the screenshot - no ads in the suggest box. Same with a bunch of other queries that I thought would likely come with ads.</comment>


Musings on the Oculus Sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.raphkoster.com/2014/03/25/musings-on-the-oculus-sale/

<comment><USER2> From the guy who destroyed Star Wars Galaxies having worked for Sony after it bought and ruined Verant. Of course he's going to think the sale is a good idea.</comment>


The art of mastering airline loyalty programs -- Going for Elite - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flightcaster.com/part-2-the-art-of-mastering-airline-loyalty-p

<comment><USER2> A few years ago I had a job that had me flying 5000 miles a week. I signed up for AA's status challenge and qualified for platinum status in nearly a month.

I think they charge for taking the challenge now (it was free then) but it's well worth it. Not only do you get better seats, free bag checking, priority security access, and earn upgrades, but that was 30,000+ additional bonus miles I wouldn't have earned had I just skipped the challenge and qualified for the status the normal way.

Also, if you're on the fringe between status tiers, often times it's very much worth it to spend a couple hundred bucks on a "mileage run" if it means the extra EQM will put you into top-tier status.

<comment><USER3> I'm wondering if you know whether there's any program that allows earning miles to spend on _any_ airline?

I'm going to be doing a trip in two months that will take me from the Mid-West to SE Asia and then I'll hop a few places in SE Asia before coming back to the states - I currently don't have any frequent flyer program as I hardly ever fly (a few times a year) - but I'd hate for this trip to go wasted - plus I may be traveling quite a bit next year.

<comment><USER4> Last time I undertook a major trip (37 flights through 20ish countries), there were two main alliances - Star and OneWorld, from memory. If you stuck to airlines from one of those, your points would be combined.

I don't fly all that regularly (maybe just above average) so things might've changed since then.

<comment><USER5> Now there is a third - SkyTeam. Plus there is Virgin Atlantic who aren't a member of any alliance but have one-off deals with individual airlines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I NEVER understood, and still don't understand, why are people so attracted to airline loyalty programs? Are the benefits this important? It seems to me the average frequent flyer can reduce his costs by ~10-20%. This is not much.

<comment><USER2> If you travel extremely frequently, like every week or every other week, the benefits save you quite a bit of time and make the general air travel experience suck a little bit less. For example, the priority security screening line for passengers with status meant I could sleep an extra half hour on Monday mornings.

On the other hand if you don't travel that often at all, you probably won't see much benefit. By reducing capacity and increasing the number of required miles to claim reward tickets, the airlines keep moving the goalposts.

I'd imagine there are plenty of people out there who choose a given airline because of the prospect of getting something for nothing through the loyalty program, but travel so rarely that they'll never accrue enough miles to get any reward tickets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Somehow this reminds me of a scene from Up in the Air in which George Clooney reveals that his dream is to gather ten million miles in order to get "lifetime executive status, meeting the chief pilot Maynard Finch, and getting his name painted on the side of a plane."</comment>


A happy customer (The Oatmeal) could be worth $40,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.uservoice.com/blog/entries/crowdsourcing-the-oatmeal-customer-service/?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=blog&utm_content=crowdsourcing-the-oatmeal-customer-service

<comment><USER2> and more, since you can't buy this kind of advertising</comment>


Netherlands City plans to pay all citizens a basic income - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/26/dutch-city-utrecht-basic-income-uk-greens <comment><USER2> As is usual also with The Guardian, the actual story is not quite what the headline says.

" _Nevertheless, the municipalities are, in the words of de Boer, taking a "small step" towards a basic income for all by allowing small groups of benefit claimants to be paid £660 a month – and keep any earnings they make from work on top of that. Their monthly pay will not be means-tested._ "</comment>


Fallout 1.5: Resurrection - <AUTHOR> http://resurrection.cz/en/info/ <comment><USER2> The first two games came out at the worst time for me - A-levels precluded me from spending any time at all with them (that's probably for the best, though - a few years later, Morrowind and the absence of parental oversight killed my degree stone dead :) ).

Fallout 3, NV and 4 have all in turn nudged me to try the originals again, but they're _just_ old-fashioned enough that I struggle to get into them, every time. These days I think I've resigned myself to only getting to play them properly in the event of a long stay in hospital.

<comment><USER3> You really should try. They're clunky and old, but they are great stories with engaging narratives, interesting characters, and ambiance aplenty. Which is really what Fallout used to be about – great story telling – before Bethesda started ruining the franchise with cookie cutter narratives, simpleton characters, and being distinctly non-canon. (I appreciate artistic freedom as much as the next guy, but at some point you've created a different world and just slapped Fallout stickers onto it.)

What's odd to me is that the Fallout 4 Nuka-World DLC is much more engaging than the main story. Is this typical of games these days? Do a crappy "main" game but "fix it" with DLCs? Or is it just Bethesda and possibly even just Fallout?

<comment><USER3> Another thing the old games has that Bethesda forgot about: replay value. I _still_ play FO1 and FO2 every now and then, and _still_ find things and side quests I never knew existed. And they are _interesting_ – not just randomly generated "there are ghouls that are bothering me over there, plx 2 go and kill them kthnxbye" grinding crap. I've just finished Fallout 4 and can't for the life of me be bothered to play it again. I had fun, it's not a _bad_ game, and I don't mind the price of admission, but just like Fallout 3 it'll end up in a box somewhere and I'll never care for it again.

Not so with FO1 and FO2 (my favorite being FO2) – I dread the day I can't play them anymore because they are too old.

Also, pro-tip: [http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/fallout2.html](http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/fallout2.html)

That guide has _everything_ , it's awesome.

<comment><USER4> Are there any modern games that fall into the same category, do you think?

<comment><USER5> Fallout is itself a spiritual successor to a game called Wasteland, which is old enough to have been released on the Commodore 64. The people who made Fallout couldn't get the rights to Wasteland so they made Fallout. Well, now they have the rights, and you can pick up Wasteland 2 now: [http://store.steampowered.com/app/240760/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/240760/) Currently on sale 60% off, though I'll say I've seen it on sale quite a bit. I'm sure it'll be on sale Christmas again.

<comment><USER6> I cut my teeth on the original Wasteland (on an Apple 2) and am working my way through WL2 (haven't yet got to CA).

Wasteland 2 is good but buggy. There were some balance issues with the original and even though they went back and made a director's cut it's still not great. I'm most annoyed by the way that certain factions are hostile depending on where you are on the map (e.g. not based on actions).

<comment><USER7> You're just missing the Red Boots DLC. Makes everything perfect.

Warts and all I really enjoyed wasteland 2

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love how they decided to embrace the fact it is a "fan work" and diverge from established 1&2 canon when the story calls for it (ya know unlike a certain company who has the rights to the name and think cramming references to older games will make Oblivion with guns a Fallout game). Not to mention the passion and work to make such a thorough game/mod with a two decade old engine.

<comment><USER9> Tbh, fnv was not that bad even though I started it with negative bias.

<comment><USER10> What exactly is the difference between NV and F3? Looks the same to me. How can it be so much better?

<comment><USER11> Fallout NV had a superior narrative and more complex characters. The writing was superb and often times hilarious. Quests were much more engaging and thought-provoking and could be resolved in novel ways and didnt fall into the WoW trap of go here, kill baddie, collect reward. The choices were also non binary. Decisions in Fallout 3 often had you pick between a selfless saint or a psychopathic, mustache-twirling dick, while NV offered shades of grey, similar to the Witcher 3. Also like the Witcher 3, when you made decisions, there were actual changes in the game world and the consequences were often unexpected. And the DLC's foe NV were amazing, especially the sci-fi themed one.

To be fair, Fallout 3 had a more immersive environment and atmosphere. It captured the setting and feeling of a post apocalyptic world. You dont feel as compelled to follow the game's questline... exploring the world was more satisfying. Bethesda and Rockstar have a penchant for making games where you can have so much fund just walking around.

I often times wish that a colloaborarive rpg between comapnies could be made. Obsidian would do quest design, CD Project Red would do the writing, Bioware would do the voice acting and character design, FromSoftware would do the world-building map design and lore, Platinum games is responsible for gameplay, Square Enix would provide the music, Naughty Dog handles graphics and motion capture, Blizzard would do the QA, Bethesda would do the mod kit, and Valve would be the publisher....

<comment><USER12> Have From Software do the combat engine as well.

<comment><USER11> I much prefer the sublime perfection that is Platinum Games. Bayonetta's gameplay is damn near perfect. It strikes the perfect chord between stylish/beautiful and challenging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really wish I could have Fallout 1 & 2 for iOS. Turn based point and click games seem like a perfect candidate for a touch interface. Instead we have crap like the Doom clones which are horribly difficult to play and don't really provide the authentic feel of those games.

<comment><USER14> I think there are already quite a few ports of early Bioware/Black Isle RPGs (Baldur's Gate I and II, Icewind Dale) on iOS.

Also the new Shadowrun games (isometric/turn based) are worth a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:381dvf...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:381dvf2c6rEJ:resurrection.cz/en/info/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If somebody here had played it, I'd love to hear opinions before risking to lose few weeks of my life as it was with the original game.

<comment><USER16> If you played original games long ago I would recommend to first to play them again with "Restoration Project" mods. It's very well-done projects and most of additions are indistinguishable from original content.

These mods fix bugs and carefully re-add to the game bits that was cut off before release, but later on exposed in Fallout Bible by Chris Avellone (and some other sources probably).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> After watching my current obsession, this post makes me want to make a Fallout 4 mod:

Fallout: Westworld

<comment><USER17> All I can think about when I watch Westworld is how the hosts are basically synths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Oh god no, I already lost so much time this year with Outcast 1.1 and Black Mesa (Half life 1 remake).

Please don't let this be good! ;-)

<comment><USER19> I remember Outcast being real good. How does it hold up these days? I am just wearing nostalgia-goggles?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For anyone who want to get a bit more inside on original games development might want to check this "Fallout Classic Revisited" talk from Timothy Cain:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa5IzHhAdi4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa5IzHhAdi4)

</comment><comment><USER20> I wish someone could port 1 and 2 into a good first person experience. Would really make it accessible to many more people born after _that_ time.

<comment><USER21> Fallout 1 and 2 are about storytelling. Most of their value comes from great text and situations, so the interface should not really matter.

If you want to give it a shot but get annoyed by the fighting system, try it as a social character, zero-fight gameplays are possible.

<comment><USER20> It's not that, it's the texturing. I'm color blind and most of the game looks like a blur. It's super hard for me to tell things apart without a 3d component. It's worse since the game is painted with the fallout-blend or gray, brown, and more gray.

I can do play the game just fine but I end up missing a lot because I can't tell if from rocks.

<comment><USER22> There is a tool that might help you, it's called Visolve ([http://www.ryobi- sol.co.jp/visolve/en/visolve.html](http://www.ryobi- sol.co.jp/visolve/en/visolve.html)).

I couldn't find anything similar for Linux distros, though.

<comment><USER20> That would be fantastic if I could download something like this for my thinkpad. I know what spectrum i need help with from doing the enchroma test. I'm red green.

Edit: thinking about it more, the easiest way to get something like this would be to just put an overlay on my monitor with the coating that the enchroma uses. This would pretty much solve my issues.

<comment><USER23> Maybe the color calibration features in the display stack could be used to apply something like this globally to a system. They should allow quite powerful color transformations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For someone who never played Fallout, what do you recommend playing first?

I've also read about "Restoration Project" mods and I am bit confused.

<comment><USER25> I think you should play Fallout before Fallout 2. There might be some small spoilers in F2 of how F1 ends, but ... probably not enough to worry about. Mainly it's about the world-building and settings.

The gameplay in F2 is a little better than F1 -- more freedom, I think, and less pressure to finish a major quest part within a time limit. However, F1 does an _amazing_ job introducing the setting, and making you feel like you want to play in that world (IMO). There are some things in F1 that have no analogue in F2 (that I recall), and vice-versa, which make them both awesome.

In Fallout 1, there are parts where you really care about radiation, for reasons which would be spoilers, whereas in Fallout 2 I don't recall that ever really feeling like something I was worried about. Fallout 2 has a whole quest hub (New Reno) which was very memorable, whereas I don't recall as much about F1 (granted, that was almost two decades ago. ;))

I recommend making a custom character; if you try to play a Sneaky or "Face" type character, the game seemed much harder; then again, I always ended up effectively going the sniper route, so I am admittedly a little biased.

<comment><USER26> I think the official patch for Fallout 1 actually removed the hard time limit in the original release. There's still some pressure at some parts of the game but players are no longer required to pass on exploration to rush to the end.

Some fans were unhappy with certain thematic changes in F2, e.g. the (at that time) excessive increase in pop culture references and muddying of the 50s retro sci-fi backstory.

For the uninitiated: There's a reason one of the original major Fallout communities was derided as "glittering gems of hatred" at one point. Fallout 1 had a very emotional following and what happened after Fallout 2 was a series of bad business decisions around a franchise with fans that just wanted another game in the series.

Basically Interplay tried to open the franchise to the combat strategy demographic with Fallout Tactics but had outsourced the entire game to a study with no sensibilities for the established setting or even premise of the first two games beyond "kinda like Mad Max with retro sci-fi".

Then they followed up by trying to do a console shmup with desperately oversexualised marketing (press packages contained actual condoms). Again, outsourced, and with no resemblence to the original two games at all.

In the meantime they killed off the actual in-development Fallout sequel codenamed Van Buren, which was the closest the fans ever got to a successor to Fallout 2.

Then they announced plans to create a Fallout based online game with another external company, which luckily never went anywhere (fans referred to the hypothetical Fallout Online as "FOOL" even before anyone took the idea serious).

At some point all the mismanagement and continued failures caught up with Interplay, long-time employees managed to sue for lost wages and a certain company that gave the world cookie-cutter fantasy combat RPGs with two dimensional characters bought the rights to Fallout 3, 4 and 5 (and possibly more) and created what people born in the late 1990s or later think of as Fallout today.

There were some other tearful events with ex-developers creating Fallout-like RPGs (in gameplay, not in story) at other companies (just to namedrop a few: Lionheart and Arcanum) but let's just say there were good reasons to be very angry and disappointed even before Bethesda had any chance to screw anything up.

<comment><USER25> On the bright side, Steam has Wasteland 2. I haven't played more than a week or so of it, but if you're looking for "isometric turn based combat RPG in a post-apocalyptic wasteland", it nails it. It felt like a Fallout, probably because Fallout took so much inspiration from the original Wasteland. The only thing that made it Not-Fallout was the absence of Pip-Boy or Nuka-cola.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Tried playing the first one a year ago but with the turn-based system and fast-travel being what it is, progress is slow. Which wouldn't be bad when you want to spend your Sunday afternoon in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but this is not a game for someone who has a 9-to-5.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hope it doesn't get a Cease and Desist.</comment>


Google Techtalk - Programming Bits and Atoms - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8ubXgXM7kk

<comment><USER2> This is outrageously cool. Thanks for sharing</comment>


A Mathematician Whose Only Constant Is Change - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/amie-wilkinsons-only-constant-is-change-20190613/ <comment><USER2> Prof. Wilkinson was my very first math professor as a freshman at Northwestern. She was a fantastic teacher and, I think, part of the reason I decided to major in mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER3> "To me, the fear of being seen as saying something trivial is the biggest impediment to free speech in a math classroom"

Not going to lie, this fear held me back more than a few times in college math classes.

<comment><USER4> Same in physics. You'd think it would get better after a few semesters but it kind of became one of the constants during my studies. Especially in math 1-4 and in almost every theoretical physics lecture I attended. The worst was quantum field theory with a close second in classical mechanics. Most students, the tutors and the professors somehow really liked to appear superior. Asking things in general during a lecture was almost frowned upon in most cases. Nobody wanted to acknowledge their "inadequacy". I vividly remember the faces of people looking with elitist impatience (for a lack of a better term) at those who dared to ask for a different explanation or a repetition if something was unclear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I took a class from Amie. Brilliant researcher!

</comment><comment><USER6> Immediately thought of Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park on reading this title.</comment>


Show HN: Eatrel – Find food offers near you (New York) - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eatrel <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

Let me add few words about an app. Eatrel is a mobile app that helps people find nearby places where to eat with discount. Open an app and discover special offers nearby places have: simple percent discounts, sets with special prices, happy hours and so on. See menu, see what's included in the offer, see restaurant info, see restaurant rating, get directions.

We've launched the first version of our app for Android with Happy Hour offers only and still working on content quality. Will happy to see your feedback and thoughts. Currently we work in New York only. iOS app is coming soon.

You can also read a few words how i got inspired to work on this on Product Hunt(link is below).

Our landing page: [https://eatrel.com](https://eatrel.com)

Google Play: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eatrel](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eatrel)

Product Hunt: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/eatrel](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/eatrel)

</comment><comment><USER2> I've seen a lot of these types of startups in London -- Nez, Karma, Ritual, Mealpal, Eaten, Olio.

But my question for all of these companies is how do you make money (or plan to) and how do you sustainably create deals which attract people to your platform?

Our whole office used Mealpal until their VC money dried up and their £2 lunches stopped happening. And we used Nez for their £1 falafel wraps/satay boxes and then promptly deleted the app. How will you stop this? Or are those losses you're willing to take?

<comment><AUTHOR> If talk in a few words - our monetization model is pretty simple, we sell coupons and promote posts.</comment></comment>


Metacompilers Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.bayfronttechnologies.com/mc_tutorial.html

<comment><USER2> OMeta (<http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/>) is a more recent investigation into this area.</comment>


Does prospect theory explain Trump and Brexit votes? - <AUTHOR> http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/christophe-heintzs-blog/does-prospect-theory-explain-trump-and-brexit-votes <comment><USER2> "we face people who, perceiving that they have lost something, are willing to take high risks."

I love how throughout the post the author keeps on pushing the point that people simply have a misguided perception of reality, under no circumstance it is considered that these people are directly or indirectly affected by current policy.

There are too many people living in opaque bubbles blogging about "what REALLY happened!".

<comment><USER3> Pundits who were 99.9 percent sure Clinton was going to win, are making new predictions and analyses with equal confidence.

<comment><USER4> One of my favorite cases happened on NBC on the election night.

After crying and being distraught for an hour or two, a glimmer of hope arose - after-hours and international stock market was down. And suddenly their demeanor changed, there was a chance again of a tiny victory. They were predicting disaster with the same certainty as they predicted Hillary winning. There was talk of everyone's accounts being wiped out, a lot of "we told you" and so on.

And of course next day stocks went right up and nothing happened.

I just liked it because right after talking how they mispredicted the election so badly, they turned around and predicted something else, which again was quickly shown to be false.

So I do recommend watching the popular news channels, they are a pretty good source of entertainment. Read Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky and it becomes even funnier.

<comment><USER5> It felt like they weren't just predicting disaster, but hoping for it. Like being right about Trump's election victory having dire consequences is somehow preferable to everything turning out ok despite their candidate losing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sadly, at least for Trump, i think it came down to

1 party loyalty

2 identity politics

3 active voter suppression in key states

4 The Electoral College, which was designed to prevent this exact thing (demagoguery)

#1 & #2 are discussed in "Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton Studies in Political Behavior)" [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691169446)

#2 also discussed in "The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago Studies in American Politics)" [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022634911X)

#3 and other dirty tricks discussed in "Ratf __ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America 's Democracy" [https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked- Behind-Americas-Democracy/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Ratf-ked-Behind- Americas-Democracy/dp/1631491628)

and

"The Great Suppression: Voting Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy" [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/110190576X)

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it probably didn't have much to do with the economically left-behind working class that constitutes the majority of the country and wasn't appealed to at all by the Democratic campaign.

<comment><USER6> Lets remember, at this point Hillary is 1.7 million popular votes ahead of Trump.

<comment><USER8> None of those votes do anything to change the result in Pennsylvania, which until recently was part of a "Blue Firewall" that made a Trump victory impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note to moderators: the typo in "Brexit" is really distracting. When I saw "Brezit", I thought it was about a possible Breton (Breizh) secession from France!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, fixed the typo.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting essay. But it starts with: _The quantity of votes in favor of the Brexit and in favor of Trump surprised most of us._

It's only "most of us" if you live in a liberal echo chamber. E.g. the NY Times has done some recent naval gazing, but it would be fascinating to find out what percent of their employees voted for Trump. Fewer than 10%? Fewer than 1%? So, certainly, the result "surprised" them.

Meanwhile in the real world the popular vote breakdown was:

       Clinton 63,515,588
       Trump   61,917,320

That's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to "surprised most of us"!

<comment><USER11> This has nothing to do with "liberal echo chamber". Most opinion polls indicated that Clinton would win, and most people believed so. That's all there is to it.

> _That 's about a 1% difference. I don't see how that translates to > "surprised most of us"!_

You can't use the result of the elections to claim that the result was "expected"!

The stock market expected a Clinton win, and so did betting markets outside the US:

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record- wage...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/07/betting-sites-see-record-wagering-on- us-presidential-election.html)

Arguably, at some point even Trump indicated that he believed Clinton would win, when he claimed the elections were "rigged".

<comment><USER12> You don't think maybe the elections really were rigged?

Here's a video where a computer programmer who worked on voting systems is questioned under oath, and he makes some pretty good arguments that elections are rigged. At least the ones where electronic voting machines are used.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcxGGnmRQAs&t=92s)

I'll admit, I didn't bother researching, but I'd understood a lot of electronic voting machines were used in the election we just underwent.

The results of the election only slightly surprised me, but I've gone to great lengths to avoid ingesting media from mainstream sources. Outside the mainstream, Trump's popularity was quite a bit more obvious.

<comment><USER11> To be honest, I have no opinion on the rigging claim. I'm not a US citizen or resident and I don't know much about how y'all go about actually voting.

My point is that candidate B claimed the election would be rigged against him; it's not a stretch to assume he thought candidate A would probably win at that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Trump won because people got sick of liberalism, and to make matters worse we (I'm a liberal) created an environment where they couldn't express that in a shared public area without being berated or shamed.

That's it, honestly.

We on the left need to dial it back a bit and have a discussion, and move forward with consensus rather than trying to drag everyone kicking-and- screaming along with our agenda regardless of if we feel it's "right" or not.

You don't win the tolerance argument with a stick, you win it with a carrot.

<comment><USER14> I disagree. (Edited this for tone)

I'm not American and I've watched American politics for fun and profit for a long time now.

Firstly - "you" have already tried cooperation.

The day Obama won, the republicans regrouped from a devastating loss and promised to make him a one term president. They've converted the routine and boring debt ceiling increase into political theater, grinding America to a halt.

Iirc they've fought Medicare tooth and nail, even though it's modeled on a republican program.

Many things have aligned to create this situation. As i recall working with people on the other side is considered bad form.

This isn't simply because of a liberal agenda or because people haven't been listening. It's because people have actively been injecting narrative and false data in order to move voting populations in specific directions.

<comment><USER15> I don't think your understanding of American politics is very accurate. For example:

> Iirc they've fought Medicare tooth and nail, even though it's modeled on a > republican program.

First, you're thinking of Obamacare, not Medicare (actually, the Affordable Care Act); the narrative you're reaching for is that the _ACA_ is modeled on Republican ideas, therefore the GOP isn't allowed to object to it. Medicare is something completely different, a health insurance entitlement aimed at seniors that's existed for decades.

And even then, neither half of the story is really true, _because the GOP is not a monolith_. Yes, the Heritage Foundation proposed something vaguely similar in the '90s, and Mitt Romney -- a liberal Republican governing one of our most liberal states -- pushed a vaguely similar plan as well many years ago, but the majority of Republicans disagreed with both on the idea. And even if it was based entirely on an old GOP idea, there's no logical way to therefore decide the GOP can't have problems with this implementation of it, or not believe the Obama administration would be competent to execute it.

Think of it this way. Bill Clinton supported military action against Iraq during his term, and even carried it out. Does that mean no Democrats were allowed to object to George W. Bush's Iraq war, because it was "based on a Democratic idea"? Of course not; the very idea is absurd. Same deal here.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, It helps to understand it better. I thought Obamacare was a pejorative term for medicare, but I see it is a pejorative term for the ACA.

But as I just checked, it seems that all the republicans voted against it and that support for ACA was considered toxic, and that this negatively affected Mitt Romney's standing in the party. I am of course happy to understand more.

Do note, that I have been watching and learning more about American politics and history since 1990, since before the Gulf War. Theres a distinct trend towards partisanship, which got enhanced during the era of Fox news, and has now resulted in hyper-partisanship.

(Do note that America is not particular alone in dealing with this trend)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's no point for someone who voted for Hillary to guess why another person voted for Trump. What is the point of prospect theory when you can just ask the people and get it straight from the horses mouth.

If you voted for Trump... Why did you vote for him over Hillary?

<comment><USER17> Some would argue that voting for the opposing candidate leads the other party to produce better candidates in the next election cycle.

In other words, it takes a swing to the other side in order to radicalize the other side and swing the pendulum of discussion back in their favor.

Maybe the ACA repeal will lead us to actually have single payer with the next cycle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> People not voting are as important in this equation as those who voted. At least in the instance of the Trump situation.</comment>


XKeyscore sourcecode published - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/484730180758671360 <comment><USER2> It's a single C++ file containing some matching rules to identify tor users. From the article it's not very clear where they got the source from and if they have the rest of the program (although they show some other screenshots).

It would be interesting to see where the data is transmitted to from the monitoring nodes.

<comment><USER3> It certainly is not a c++ file, but it does include a very small portion that seems to be c++, and it does not look like any language I've ever seen.

It is probably a DSL.

e: """XKeyscore provides a modular architecture in which tens of thousands of small computer programs, or rules, written in XKeyscore's specialized programming languages called Genesis and XKScript as well as general-purpose languages such as C++ and Python,"""

well that answers that</comment></comment>


Germany's car industry can't build its own battery (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/15/17685634/germany-car-industry-battery-cells <comment><USER2> Is this because everybody is expecting a "breakthrough" in battery tech, thus dooming a big investment in lithium-ion plants?

I keep seeing stories about solid-state batteries, but I don't have a feeling if they really are close to being production-ready.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cells are a short-lived technology, and are soon to be replaced by better tech. It's highly dependent on Chinese rare earths. But Germany is the sole developer of hi-tech PMM's, the motors needed for E-cars.</comment>


Work Less, Get More Done: Analytics For Maximizing Productivity - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/10/04/work-smarter-not-harder/ <comment><USER2> Working harder IS a good business strategy, but only if you've correctly worked out what's worth working on. Once you've identified what tasks produce the highest value, it makes sense to work on those tasks as much you can (i.e. as many hours as you can put in without inducing burnout). Good business strategies are not always good life strategies of course...

Nothing in the article contradicts that, even if the article title implies it does. It was a really great article and I particularly loved the idea about assigning monetary value to your tasks. Unfortunately it's difficult for me to do at the moment since so many of my current tasks are based on all-or-nothing gambles.

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing bothers me about this whole WorkHard / WorkSmart / BeProductive meme: it focuses too much on "the competition".

I know my approach is heresy in these parts, but bear with me...

I understand that there's always _some_ potential competition, but I choose to not pay much attention to it. The only thing I compete with is another version of myself in another universe. "What would that other Ed have done?"

And that's awfully hard to measure. I've tried all kinds of metrics to keep my projects going, but the only one I use now is how much progress I make each day on my most important task. Pretty subjective.

I have seen tons of good software and services and have done a lot of work deploying them. What invariably happens is that there is no solution for something the consumer wants, so that's what I write. I like to think, "If I had good competition, I would just go out and sell it for them. But since I'm writing something no one else has, I won't worry about competing with anyone but what I would have been."

This may sound a little silly, but it works for me. Provide something that no one else is providing and working harder or smarter than the competition suddenly doesn't mean so much. I just have to be a whole lot smarter and better than doing nothing at all.

<comment><USER4> There are two issues here: What you should tell yourself and what actually is.

I read a sports psychology textbook which quoted a study or studies showing that folks who concentrated on improving themselves and not worrying about the competition were winners. A long distance runner should care most about beating their own time.

But note that in focusing on themselves, they end up winning.

There are many areas of human effort. Some are more competitive than others. The post that this one claims to be refuting was specifically about competitive fields.

Surely we can agree that some fields are competitive? Then the question is, in these fields, where winners abound (people focusing on their own efforts), are outcomes actually improved by the principal or executive investing more work.

Although the voting patterns in this forum don't appear to agree, this is basically settled both in science and commonsense.

It almost appears that people are conflating the issue of whether it's a good idea from a quality of life perspective with whether it works. Those are separate issues.

<comment><USER5> I think those studies also say that spending time doing something without consciously trying to find ways to steadily improve is not of much use.

I think patio11 describes a process of always improving the $ / hour value of his efforts. Someone who puts in a lot of hours but does not consistently look for way to make each hour more valuable or productive is going to lose to someone following patio11's approach, I bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly off-topic, but the cd-company mentioned (swiftcd.com) has a brilliant frontpage headline: "At SwiftCD, we create custom CDs and DVDs one at a time, and ship them world-wide directly to your customers."

Nobody that ends up at that website, accidentally or not, will be confused about what that company does.

</comment><comment><USER7> ""Working harder" is a poor strategy which your competitors can trivially replicate."

Actually, working longer hours can ultimately lead exhaustion and burn-out, which leads to poorer quality work, less productivity per unit of time...etc. And, no, not everyone can replicate it. Some people don't have the physical energy and basic health to do that.

(Obviously, I am in the "work smarter" camp. :-) )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was inspired by a recent post to HN about how "Working Harder Is The Only Alternative". I respectfully, but strongly, disagree.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=858679>

<comment><USER4> So, two people of equal intelligence, insight about automation, wealth, etc. are in a field...who is more successful? The one who works 10 hours a week or the one who works 70?

As I've pointed out elsewhere, the stories of great things being done by workaholics are absolutely overwhelming. Warren Buffett, Edison, Franklin, Jefferson, Einstein, Carmack ad nauseaum.

That's anecdotal, but then you dismiss the science behind long, targeted training to become good at things elsewhere in this forum.

I really hope that other folks don't use the current voting pattern in this thread as evidence that doing more work isn't helpful. Trust me (or don't), other people in your field are smart. They are automating tasks, etc. Working more is a battle-tested method of gaining an advantage (or at least staying even in fields where everyone is working as hard as they can).

<comment><USER5> "As I've pointed out elsewhere, the stories of great things being done by workaholics are absolutely overwhelming. Warren Buffett, Edison, Franklin, Jefferson, Einstein, Carmack ad nauseaum."

Anecdotes. I bet there are a lot of workaholics who are total failures and certainly not many workaholics become a Buffett, Edison, etc.

Warren Buffett is certainly not working for an hourly wage. He is fabulously wealthy because he found ways to leverage other people's hard work to make him rich as an investor. Number of hours worked has diminishing returns if not tied to a strategy to make each hour worked increasingly valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everyone tries to work a smart as they can. You can't get an advantage over your competitors by working smarter if they're smarter than you are.

If you truly believe that working harder, while still working as smart as you can, doesn't significantly aid your efforts, you're simply deluding yourself, and self-delusion always leads to suboptimal results.

The public record is rife with minutely detailed cases of hard work leading to out-sized success. Hard work by people who were already working very smart, as smart as they could.

Yes, other people can work really hard, too, and so it can be an unwinnable race. Sadly (perhaps), that's life. That doesn't change the fact that working harder is under your control, being smarter isn't.

Yes, some people get burned out. Yes, taking a break can help some people find insights they wouldn't have otherwise. However, some people don't get burned out. If you don't realize this, you're fooling yourself.

Bobby Fischer is the only American to be world chess champion. Read about the complete immersion in chess that was required to achieve this.

It takes 10,000 hours of directed practice (directed practice means "working smarter") to become an expert at something. No amount of working smarter makes the 10,000 hours go away.

<comment><USER8> "It takes 10,000 hours of directed practice (directed practice means "working smarter") to become an expert at something."

Any links to solid research (i.e., not Malcolm Gladwell) regarding that number?

<comment><USER9> Yes, Anders Ericsson is the authority on the subject: <http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson.dp.html>

Here's the paper "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expertise": [http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps words are confusing things. Instead of "working harder" let's say "working more". For some people what they're doing is not work. There are plenty of people who can work on something they enjoy almost every waking hour for 10 years on end. Burn out is a non-issue. So if you intend to compete an a business or field for which the bar is that high, and you don't really love what you're doing, you may be in trouble.

</comment><comment><USER10> > I used to write my bingo cards myself, and I'm fairly good at it, but > eventually I figured that while it was a worthwhile activity it didn't > really get all that much more worthwhile as a result of me doing it. > Instead, I put out a call on my blog for freelancers, and eventually worked > out a mutually rewarding relationship with a highly-educated American > teacher. She bangs out the cards on her own schedule, and once a month I > click "Post" on my backend interface and then mail her a check.

> The economics of this arrangement are so staggeringly efficient that people > tell me I have to be lying about it. The pages my freelancer writes for me > were visited 65,000 times in September, producing roughly $1,300 worth of > sales for me through getting people into my various conversion funnels. I > did less than five minutes of work to maintain the freelancing relationship > in September. Do you want to do the math?

I find myself hoping that she sees this post and ups her prices.

<comment><AUTHOR> I detect a bit of resentment here, as if I'm some rapacious capitalist baron exploiting the poor teacher. That's one way of looking at it. Here's another: teachers are expected to produce teaching supplies on their own time, for use in their day jobs but without receiving any compensation for them.

The market price associated with these teaching supplies is zero: there is absolutely no one, in the entire world, who cares enough about what one particular teacher's opinion on good bingo topics is to pay her a dime for it. Except me. I paid her a few thousand bucks to copy/paste her activities into a web form.

Importantly, without me, she'd have 750 activities and _no money_ because she has neither the time, skill set, nor inclination to produce a Ruby on Rails application and then market it on the Internet. I'm the guy she outsources that to.

<comment><USER10> I am looking at it economically.

If you are clearing so much thanks to her that you can chortle about it so happily, then that suggests to me that she can get more from you; if she can get more from you but isn't, then you're underpaying her, which I have a strange irrational urge to call 'unfair' and cast all sorts of moral connotations on (but I'm sure at Hacker News I'm just an outlier in that regard).

The other alternative is that you are _over_ paying her (no doubt out of the goodness of your heart), which I think can be rejected given that your whole post is about optimization of things like that.

(The third option of course is that the price is exactly right, but as you are neither of you _Homo economicuses_ with unlimited computing power, perfect information, and working in efficient markets, that's extremely unlikely.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. Well, you've got me, I self-identify as a capitalist. I am efficient in most of my dealings because that lets me choose how to distribute my surpluses rather than having no surplus to distribute. I do things which are not strictly speaking economically efficient with my surpluses of time and money: I play video games, I donate to charity, and I pay freelancers more money than the lowest possible amount they would work for me for. That's the whole point of optimizing away the things I don't care about, like time spent writing bingo card word lists.

As I mentioned, I have a global monopsony on bingo card word lists. (A monopsony is to buying as a monopoly is to selling.) As predicted by MicroEcon 101, the market clearing price for bingo cards is whatever I say it is. I used to say it was $1 each, before I said it was $1.50 each, before I said it was $3 each. I keep walking it up because I'm happy with the arrangement and like to keep my freelancers happy. I don't need to, any more than I needed to send her a Christmas card with a month's wages in it, but I do a lot of things that I don't _need_ to do.

Could I say the price is $30 each? Yeah, sure -- all it would take is writing another zero on my check. Am I under any particular obligation to do that? I haven't heard a compelling reason why yet.

You are, of course, free to call me "unfair". You're also free to open your own business, compete against me, break my worldwide monopsony on bingo card writing labor, and pay her any price you darn well please. If you can beat a few thousand a year, I'll happily forward you her contact information.

I'll refrain from giving my opinions as to the relative moral worth of entrepreneurship and telling entrepreneurs how to spend their money, as they would get political very, very quickly.

<comment><USER10> So you take option 2 of my trilemma?

That's an excellent answer; if you claimed #1 or #3, I was going to ask how you expect 100/hr out of posting to and commenting on HN (since I can't see that HN demographics would generate many bingo-card customers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting post, but I wonder if even when you are working smart, sustained intense effort isn't sometimes worth it. The late Randy Pausch, in a lecture on Time Management mentions the importance of working smart but _also_ refers to the _years_ he worked late into the night working on his research.

I suspect regularity/ sustaining effort maybe the key. Work a solid 8 hours a day _every day_ without fail for a few years might be a "harder" thing to undertake than a couple of months worth of eighty hour work weeks. You still use metrics to optinmize what you are working on of course, though it maybe harder for something like a research effort or a PhD thesis to get meaningful metrics.

<comment><USER10> > Work a solid 8 hours a day every day without fail for a few years might be a > "harder" thing to undertake than a couple of months worth of eighty hour > work weeks.

Follow-through is really valuable; look at FLOSS. How many projects are not as successful, or are very successful and then decline, because there was no follow-through?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My response to Patrick's post on his blog, which I am replicating here

\</comment><comment>-----

Hi Patrick, thanks for writing a detailed post which you say is an anti-thesis to my post. I agree to most of your key points here that measuring the output for each unit of effort put in is ultra important and that there can be no real progress without measuring productivity.

However what I fail to see is that it cannot be an excuse for not working harder. In fact measuring productivity makes you even more motivated to put in more hours as you can (and often do) clearly see that the amount you derive from a business correlates to the hours you put into it. Of course there are gazzilion other factors which determine eventual success such as vision, _rightness_ and _smartness_ of effort, big competitors like Google, intellect, funding. However, somehow I fail to comprehend why such factors should be considered a case against hard work.

Regarding your point of "working hard" as a bad strategy because it is easy to copy, that is my point exactly. One may not be subscribing to "working hard" strategy, but that doesn't guarantee that his competition also doesn't adopt that stance. Irrespective of his beliefs, competition will work as hard as they can. So you have no other option but to take the best guess (and worst case) and work even harder.

No doubt your points on outsourcing, automating and delegation are valid and make sense. Good thing about such activities is that they free you from sub- optimal activities such that you can work harder on the stuff that matters. You can make an exponential dent to your chances of success, if you put in _MORE_ efforts doing things that really matter.

Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed your post but I still subscribe to my philosophy of working harder. Of course, one should realize when he is bordering at insanity. Mental and Physical Health first. Work later.

PS: Google being my competitor gives me even more kicks to put in more effort. I know I can never match them in resources, that is why I avoid working average hours which would eventually spiral to not working at all because, hey, I am competing against Google and of course I stand no chance.

<comment><AUTHOR> _In fact measuring productivity makes you even more motivated to put in more hours as you can (and often do) clearly see that the amount you derive from a business correlates to the hours you put into it._

I think it would be interesting if you described what your setup for measuring that was and, in rough terms, what your productivity was at various levels of labor per week.

Eric Ries had a phrase called "shadow belief": the unvoiced, unquestionable assumptions we make about the business world we're operating in. My day job had, for decades, a shadow belief about engineering productivity: namely, that it was a constant number per hour, and that therefore the number of kousuu (a unit of engineering production) produced could be computed as kousuu = constant * # engineers * # hours.

Then one day quite recently we sat down and said "Hey, we keep obsessive records of how many kousuu we produce. We keep obsessive records of how many hours each engineer works. Let's divide."

And we found that the constant _changed_. Some changes were not unanticipated: our best senior engineers were routinely more productive than our new company employees, OK, training period and whatnot. Some of the differences between expectations and results were so vast that I could not tell you them in good conscience.

Don't just say you're measuring. We did that, for decades. _Measure._ Then, act on it.

(I wish I could tell you what my day job found when actually started to measure. I think I can tell you this: there was audible skepticism and derision when we introduced a "temporary, experimental cost-cutting measure" obligating employees to leave at 5 PM two days a week. It was thought that, aside from the sheer un-Japaneseness of it all, it would throw schedules into disarray, necessitate extra crunching on the other days, and be widely ignored anyhow. That was months ago. On Friday, we received word that, on review of Actual Results, the experimental policy was henceforth merely Policy. 90% of the office was not there to read about the news, as the news arrived at 5:02.)

<comment><USER13> It would be really interesting to hear 1) how you measure - what data do you track, and what tools do you use to do so and 2) how you analyzed (simple Excel, something more sophisticated?). I imagine it's not simply RescueTime.

I think many, many people would love to have this to take to their employer and also for themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Re the Warren Buffets and such of the world. I think if you find something you love doing and can arrange to do it largely on your own terms, spending a lot of hours at it isn't going to lead to burn out. This is where I have issues with the mantra of "work harder". It implies that your job is about sweating and suffering. Those folks who have found their calling and love what they are doing may be putting in very long hours, but it isn't remotely the same experience that your typical worker has of their job. They also typically built themselves a custom niche. Warren Buffet used to work from home and arranged his work life such that he didn't have to do any of the things he didn't want to do. He found that, legally, as long as he kept the number of investors below X (I think 100), then he didn't have the reporting requirements, registering requirements, etc that most funds have -- ie he had the freedom to do whatever he wanted without answering to anyone else. So that's what he did (kept it below X number). I don't know what he is doing these days, but I seriously doubt he has some supervisor standing over him and cracking the whip.

You see the same thing with a lot of very successful people: They act like "rock stars" long before they "make it" and are infamous for indulging their personal peccadilloes. If I can work on my own terms, in my own home, at my own pace, on things I want to work on and love doing, you betcha I can put in much longer hours than if I am a wage slave.

</comment><comment><USER14> My company has always pretty explicitly discouraged working nights or weekends, though obviously some people will always end up working more because they want to.

While burnout and recruitment are both good reasons (you don't want core people to burn out and leave, and people don't want to come work for a bunch of slave-drivers), the less-often-cited reason to not work "harder," and one of our explicit motivations for it, is because often times saying "we'll just work harder" prevents you from having to make tough prioritization decisions, and that can mask bad decisions that have been made and that are costing you time.

As with all rules, there are exceptions, and there are times when you just need (or want) to crank hard on something. But in this case, we've found that the constraints imposed by working normal hours helps to improve your decision making and focus your priorities.

</comment><comment><USER15> article should be titled "increasing hourly productivity to improve life balance" - working more hours do not have any negative impact on having less productive time

maximized hour/efficiency-productivity * maximized #hours/week = maximized output(not necessary value). The rest depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice to balance your life with other activities.

</comment><comment><USER16> What matters is being better. How you are better changes from one individual to the other.

There is however a certain amount of work necessary to deliver appealing products.</comment>


The Grateful Dead's Breakthrough Wall of Sound - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-wall-of-sound <comment><USER2> Some of the technology and concepts developed in the Wall of Sound eventually got commercialized, via Meyer Sound, a Berkeley company that has an insane dedication to sound quality. You see Meyer speakers (especially Milo arrays) in nearly every amphitheater and club these days. They have very high specs for all their speaker components- including having a dedicated tract of virgin trees that are cut to make the paper for their speaker cones. [http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california- magazine/spring-2015-d...](http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california- magazine/spring-2015-dropouts-and-drop-ins/ballad-john-and-helen-berkeley- based-meyer)</comment>


Everybody in Uganda Is Kung Fu Fighting - <AUTHOR> http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2015/everybody-in-uganda-is-kung-fu-fighting

<comment><USER2> It's worth watching the trailer for "Who Killed Captain Alex?": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BymeLkZ7GqM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BymeLkZ7GqM)

(By a weird coincidence, my coworker's cousin actually has a part in the movie.)

</comment><comment><USER3> The headline is just idiotic. A single school is not "everybody"

<comment><USER4> It's from the song, I'd say "everybody" is just to keep the song lyric the same.

Everybody was kung-fu fighting Those cats were fast as lightning In fact it was a little bit frightning But they fought with expert timing

They were funky China men from funky Chinatown They were chopping them up and they were chopping them down It's an ancient Chineese art and everybody knew their part From a feint into a slip, and kicking from the hip

Everybody was kung-fu fighting Those cats were fast as lightning In fact it was a little bit frightning But they fought with expert timing

There was funky Billy Chin and little Sammy Chung He said here comes the big boss, lets get it on We took a bow and made a stand, started swinging with the hand The sudden motion made me skip now we're into a brand knew trip

Everybody was kung-fu fighting Those cats were fast as lightning In fact it was a little bit frightning But they did it with expert timing

(repeat)..make sure you have expert timing Kung-fu fighting, had to be fast as lightning

source: [http://www.lyricsondemand.com/onehitwonders/kungfufightingly...](http://www.lyricsondemand.com/onehitwonders/kungfufightinglyrics.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting read, but ten years of experience does not a master make.</comment>


Wikipedia over DNS - <AUTHOR> https://dgl.cx/2008/10/wikipedia-summary-dns <comment><USER2> _DNS is basically a huge associative array [which] gets cached at nameservers_

Uhoh. This might be a dangerous meme.

<comment><USER3> My favorite abuse of DNS is Dan Kaminsky using it to stream DNS.

<comment><USER2> Explain or link, please?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps this: [http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_kamins...](http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-12/ff_kaminsky)

He tunnelled low-bandswith video over DNS, before finding a more serious bug in DNS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool hack. I especially love the inclusion of the Perl code to "use" it, as if leaving it out would leave people thinking "this is cool, but how can I use it in perl?!"

</comment><comment><USER6> You can try this using the native OS DNS lookup tools as well -

Linux: dig hacker.wp.dg.cx TXT Windows: nslookup -type=TXT hacker.wp.dg.cx

<comment><USER3> Web browser: <http://dig.jsondns.org/IN/hacker.wp.dg.cx/TXT>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like something straight out of Cory Doctorow's _Little Brother_. Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool! It should probably work in non-free Wi-Fi zones.</comment>


The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever - <AUTHOR> http://qntm.org/gods

<comment><USER2> Hardly the hardest. Here's a harder:

[http://justinpombrio.net/tell/prisoner- lightbulb.html](http://justinpombrio.net/tell/prisoner-lightbulb.html)

EDIT: Also, for anyone stuck on the three gods puzzle, the three sisters puzzle is a good stepping stone:

[http://mathpuzzlewiki.com/index.php?title=Three_princesses](http://mathpuzzlewiki.com/index.php?title=Three_princesses)

<comment><USER3> Is there a link for a solution to your variant (of the prisoners and lightbulb problem)?

<comment><AUTHOR> The original problem is on a website that also contains the answer (in a red, dash bordered box) [1].

[1] - [http://www.cut-the- knot.org/Probability/LightBulbs.shtml](http://www.cut-the- knot.org/Probability/LightBulbs.shtml)

<comment><USER3> I know the original problem. I'm curious how he obtains a deterministic solution for the version where the warden can switch the light-bulb state at random (excerpt below).

 _"I reserve the right to flip the light on or off between interrogations up to 12 times in total."_

Maybe it's poorly worded?

<comment><USER2> You mean the Easy++ problem? The solution isn't very different from the solution to Easy (i.e. the original problem); it just takes longer to run.

For the Hard problem, you're on your own.

The wording is very careful :-)

<comment><USER3> >> "I reserve the right to flip the light on or off between interrogations up to 12 times in total."

> The wording is very careful :-)

Do you mean he can flip the switch 12 times in total between _all interrogations_? Or that between _every interrogation_ he can flip the switch up to 12 times.

That's what I mean by poorly worded.

<comment><USER2> The former, hence the phrase "in total", and the number 12 instead of 1.

<comment><USER3> > The former, hence the phrase "in total", and the number 12 instead of 1.

It wasn't very clear.

>> You mean the Easy++ problem? The solution isn't very different from the solution to Easy (i.e. the original problem); it just takes longer to run.

Btw what's the run-time on your easy++ solution? - I think the run-time on the solution to the regular problem with a single counter is around ~26 years, so all your prisoners will die before they can get released unless you're doing something more clever than the basic solution.

Also I'm not sure I understand the difference between your Easy and Hard problems? I assume the prisoner who is not interrogated with the other inmates just estimates the run-time for their solution and waits (which I think is part of the original problem anyway ? )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2886](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2886)

</comment><comment><USER5> Another interesting one in the style of the Singaporean puzzle that's been making the rounds recently: [http://jdh.hamkins.org/transfinite-epistemic- logic-puzzle-ch...](http://jdh.hamkins.org/transfinite-epistemic-logic-puzzle- challenge/) (knowledge of transfinite ordinals is useful)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hints: [http://pastebin.com/ypPA5Uab](http://pastebin.com/ypPA5Uab)

</comment><comment><USER7> Do the true/ false gods know how the random god would answer? I don't see how they could since only he know the randomness. But if they don't know, they would have no way to answer the question, "what would guy x say ja meant" where x happens to be the random one.

<comment><USER8> This is a question of implementation, and answering it was part of the reason why I implemented this problem in the form of a computer program in the first place. In this implementation, the True and False gods simply pose the question to Random and take Random's answer - which is random. If you then ask the same question of Random again, of course you may not get the same answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can make this question even harder by removing foreknowledge of the words! So you know the gods have words for yes and no, but don't know what those words are. Here's an article on the solution: [http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428189/the-hardest- logi...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428189/the-hardest-logic-puzzle- ever-made-even-harder/)

<comment><USER10> Isn't that the same as stated in the link?

<comment><USER9> The qntm link tells you the words are da and ja, which makes the problem easier. In the hardest version you have no idea what the words for yes and no are.

<comment><USER11> If you actually read the next sentence..

"in which the words for yes and no are da and ja, in some order. You do not know which word means which."

<comment><USER9> That's the original version. The harder version is discussed below. In the harder version, you don't know the words are "da" and "ja". They might be "potato" and "walrus" or something completely different.

<comment><USER12> I don't think this makes the problem any different, does it? If it were possible that there was a list of "yes" words and a list of "no" words that they could prick from randomly or something, then yes, that would be much more difficult.

But in both examples, there's one word for "yes" and one word for "no" and in both examples, the asker doesn't know which one is which.

<comment><USER9> There's a solution that works if you know the words are "da" and "ja", but doesn't work if you don't know what the words are: "If I asked you if B is random, would you say ja?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems like asking about randomness is not a valid question. I'm not sure how you would implement that (beyond checking for the assignment of random behavior), you can't really find out until you observe a difference in behavior over a larger sampling.

<comment><USER8> If you're puzzled about the implementation, I invite you to inspect the JavaScript code! And if you disagree with my implementation, I'd be interested to know what you would do differently.

<comment><USER13> My statement was conceptual. Boolos himself suggests that we ask if X is random to get to a solution (though in a more complex iff statement). But being able to ask if a source is random seems unreasonable, though without that capability I can't say if there is a solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Be very careful what you ask the gods, you might run into:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER15> You can ask multiple questions by compounding them into one. For example: "what is the outcome of 'is A true' converted to string and concatenated by the outcome of 'is B true'"?

<comment><USER16> You can only ask yes/no questions.

<comment><USER15> In that case, I'd try enumerating all possible questions to tackle this problem (breadth first on question size).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > each question must be put to exactly one god.

> It could be that some god gets asked more than one question (and hence that > some god is not asked any question at all).

Make up your mind.

<comment><USER18> Basically he's trying to say

"Each of the 3 questions must be unique and only asked to a single god, and each god can receive 0, 1, 2 or all 3 questions out of the 3 unique questions".

In other words, don't create 1 question and ask it to multiple gods. But if you create 2 or 3 _different_ questions, it's fine to ask them to the same god (forgoing to opportunity to ask them to another god).</comment></comment>


DNA pioneer James Watson has final honours stripped amid racism row - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/james-watson-racism-honours-dna-double-helix-cold-spring-harbor-laboratory-a8724896.html <comment><USER2> This reminds me of that Star Trek episode where the local aliens were bilaterally symmetrical humanoids, with one side solid white and the other side solid black. There was conflict between those who were white on the right side and white on the left side and each persecuted and tried to enslave the other as 'inferior - isn't it obvious?' Yet in this PC eruption with Watson we have to examine the merits of what he says. We know genes encode skin, hair, eyes and thousands of other attributes that - over time - have evolved to suit local conditions. That is why melanized skin clusters close to the equator and we lighten as we go away from the equator. There are other things close to the equator, like a permanent growing season - food crops, animals, and predators are more common and population density is higher. With higher density of population competition for food gets more intense. Tribes form to protect food/crops/prey etc., these tribes have different organizational structures, much like an army, tribes have structured leaderships - chains of command, so tribal society may well evolve to favor loyalty to the strong leaders and disfavor community decision making? Can you envision an army where the privates discussed their orders, and fed their comments up the line to cancel an attack - we do not want to take this risk... Examining this granularly, we may well find a tribal society values combat skills as more valuable than intellectual skills. Throwing a spear, chasing an enemy, and combating an enemy and similar skills are crucial to tribal survival. Intellectual skills are down graded and - to a degree - fade away as evolution does it's work. What this means is a intelligence has many factors and some are 'body smarts' and some are 'head smarts', in the sense that a faster runner or a more accurate and far ranging spear thrower is smarter than me, yet I can parse Latin sentence structures, sadly an inferior combat skill. This may well mean that we need to examine and modify our thoughts on this topic to fully understand and fit reality to theory and not just hit the PC button.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps he had been smoking too much phlogiston.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Scientists don't like their crazy uncles.</comment>