Piper Announces First GA Aircraft with Autoland Capability - <AUTHOR> https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-new-m600-sls/ <comment><USER2> This is a seriously impressive bit of software engineering. It seems as simple as "push a button" to the layman but what happens when:

        There is a thunderstorm between the airport and the runway
        The nearest runway is closed due to a blizzard
        There is a mountain between the normal 3-degree glide-slope and the runway, an "offset approach"
        There is a 40-knot crosswind
        You have an engine out

That's just a few, I'm a commercial pilot and software engineer, and I find this insanely impressive.

<comment><USER3> It's to be used only in the event that the pilot is incapacitated.

Because it's an emergency feature engaged by a passenger or automatically, it probably can't manage all complex situations. It may be just good weather emergency landing. Check fuel and wind, steer to nearest emergency airport and land. Best effort is better than no effort and dying.

> There is a mountain between the normal 3-degree glide-slope and the runway, > an "offset approach"

I think it can land only to those airports that are it's database with landing approaches programmed it.

Cruise missiles have had similar technology for a long time.

<comment><USER4> > Cruise missiles have had similar technology for a long time.

I try to make my landings a little less eventful.

<comment><USER5> A "good" landing is one which people can walk away from and a "great" landing is one where you can use the cruise missile again so by definition, a cruise missile can complete neither a "good" nor a "great" landing by design.

<comment><USER6> "One unusual capability of the Snark missile was its ability to fly away from its launch point for up to 11 hours, and then return for a landing. If its warhead did not detach from its body, then the Snark could be flown repeatedly."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-62_Snark](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-62_Snark)

<comment><USER5> Of course cold war shenanigans would prove me wrong.... I stand corrected

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a feature of the Garmin G3000:

* [https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-announces-emergen...](https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/garmin-announces-emergency-autoland/)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ruFmgTpqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ruFmgTpqA)

* [https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general-aviation/201...](https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/general-aviation/2019-10-30/autoland-garmins-newest-safety-feature)

Also Cirrus:

* [https://cirrusaircraft.com/totalsafety/#safereturn](https://cirrusaircraft.com/totalsafety/#safereturn)

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGkzgfR_c0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGkzgfR_c0)

<comment><USER8> YT urls can be shortened like this:

[https://youtu.be/d-ruFmgTpqA](https://youtu.be/d-ruFmgTpqA)

^ I saw this in my feed before this HN article.

<comment><USER7> Yes. Or I can just copy-paste what's in my browser's URL bar by pressing <ctrl-l><ctrl-c>. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe a coincidence, but Cirrus Aircraft announced their SafeReturn Emergency Autoland on their Vision Jet series today as well [0]. Looks pretty impressive. A passenger can just press one button on the roof behind the pilot, and the aircraft will send a distress signal, re-route and autoland the aircraft at the nearest airport (including terrain and weather avoidance) and also convert all screens on board to inform the passengers how to use the radio for comms etc.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGkzgfR_c0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGkzgfR_c0)

<comment><USER10> FWIW Cirrus also has a Cirrus Airframe Parachute System that is standard in all models.

<comment> crooked-v The autoland system will even give passengers instructions on how to activate CAPS if there are no airports in range it knows how to land at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds very similar to something Austin Meyer (creator of x-plane) implemented a few years ago called Xavion: [http://xavion.com/](http://xavion.com/)

This is an ipad app that calculates a best glidepath to the best runway and guides you to the runway safely. It's intended for emergency situations when you lose an engine and quickly have to decide on an airport/runway. However, it sort of snowballed into an app with a lot of situational awareness features.

But he actually experimented with hooking that up to a plane at some point to create a self landing system: [https://www.x-plane.com/2014/07/xavion-brings- a-real-world-a...](https://www.x-plane.com/2014/07/xavion-brings-a-real-world- airplane-down-to-10-feet-above-the-ground/). Not sure if he ever shipped that feature. I imagine there might be some certification hassle :-).

<comment><USER12> Similar, but also kind of the opposite. Xavion is for when you have a functioning pilot, but a malfunctioning plane. Emergency Autoland is for when you have a functioning plane, but not a functioning pilot.

<comment><USER13> Austin Meyer did help on an actual autoland device that was based on the same concept: the VP-400 by Vertical Power. But I'm not sure it ever went anywhere. In theory with that system, you could push the "oh-shit" button if you lose your engine, and it would take over the autopilot to try to automatically fly the calculated path.

Of course I don't think it was as fully integrated, so no automatic radio callouts or anything.

I'm not sure if the product actually ever became available.

HOWEVER: If you have a TruTrak autopilot, and an an iLevil ADS-B receiver, then Xavion has a super experimental "auto" button that will actually control the autopilot, to attempt to automatically fly the calculated course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Garmin Autoland is emergency only autoland.

Not to be confused with CAT II/III autoland used in normal operations.

<comment><USER14> For anyone else wondering what "emergency only autoland" means:

From Wikipedia: "The feature is activated by a guarded red button on Garmin G3000 NX avionics, evaluating winds, weather and fuel reserves to select a suitable diversion airport and taking over the aircraft controls to land, it advises the ATC and displays instructions to occupants."

From the Garmin marketing site [1]: "Garmin Autoland. It takes complete control of the flight to land the airplane in an emergency where the pilot is unable to fly1."

I'm not exactly sure if this is the correct reference for CAT II/III autoland, but seems like the purpose of CAT II/III autoland is to land and aircraft when the pilot would otherwise have a hard time manually landing due to weather conditions (ie. limited visibility) [2]. But if someone has a more accurate description, please correct me!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland#Emergency_autoland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland#Emergency_autoland)

[1] [https://www.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/](https://www.garmin.com/en- US/autonomi/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#ILS_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#ILS_categories)

Edit: Just to clarify the reason for posting this versus just relying on the text in the press release, I was under the impression the announcement was for some fully-automated flight control system (ie. take off and landing without a pilot on board, a la self-driving cars) based on the press release not mentioning why the system would be activated.

<comment><USER7> Cat II/III use ILS which send out signals on the runway(s) in question. IIRC, those signals need to be monitored to make sure they're with-in certain tolerances because II/III is used in minimal visibility conditions, so there's very little time to correct things at the last minute. It's about trusting a whole bunch of equipment to work properly because you're basically flying with a blind fold on otherwise.

This Garmin G3000-based system primary uses GPS/WAAS (and perhaps VORs) to get location data, so accuracy may not be with-in necessary tolerances for day-to- day use, but it's better than nothing for emergencies.

<comment><USER15> The marketing videos say the airport needs to have a published GPS approach.

<comment><USER16> GPS WAAS is good only down to 200 and 1/2 (200' above ground cloud base and 1/2 mile visibility underneath)

Cat II ILS can go down to 100 and 1200RVR (100' bases and 1200' of runway visual range)

Cat IIIc can go down to 0/0.

200 and 1/2 is perfectly usable for most day to day weather and is certainly good enough for unexpectedly incapacitated pilot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cirrus' Vision Jet also has autolanding called "Safe Return" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGkzgfR_c0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiGkzgfR_c0)

<comment><USER12> Yes, both are implementing Garmin's new emergency autoland feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very cool option. The rocket propelled parashoot ^h^h parachute essentially totals the aircraft when used. Even a crash at post touchdown landing speeds is likely easier on those on board.

The autopilot features available to GA and experimental aircraft are quite impressive for holding things at a specific ask in various weather conditions. Not uncommon to have the autopilot active when flying in IFR conditions to help with some of the workload.

Assuming the plane has GPS, a correct altimeter setting, and airspeed - between the instruments you get a reasonable amount of cross checking for accuracy and enough information to calculate your vector. If you actually fly/land at the speeds recommended, most of the time landing will be pretty uneventful.

Many of the tablet/phone based GPS only solutions will give a pretty solid estimation of engine out glide distance too. You (should) pitch for 'best glide' speeds and in combination with the airport data bank with the GPS unit, know where you can get to. I'll push the 'direct to' nearest button and try for it were it in glide range. This sounds like it just connected all the automation dots.

A good landing is where everyone leaves the plane safely. A great landing allows the plane to be used again. I suspect this is going for a good landing... which is fantastic news for the passenger.

<comment><USER19> >...parashoot

A typo but that slip created a great brand name for a rocket-propelled parachute the "ParaShoot".

<comment><USER18> ah god damn it. I was just coming back to make an edit as enough coffee registered the mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to use the word HALO, seeing as its already used as an acronym in aviation for High Altitude Low Opening.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_military_parachu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_military_parachuting)

There is also TALO, which stands for Tactical Air Landing Operation

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJdISjq8Wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJdISjq8Wg)

<comment><USER21> Yes, but in a very different context. While both are "aviation", military aviation and commercial aviation are pretty isolated from each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cirrus announced their version of this yesterday for their Cirrus Jet, they are calling the feature Safe Return. Also incorporates 7700, TAWS escape, wind check, pax 121.5 simplified radio controls, everything.

[https://cirrusaircraft.com/cirrus-aircraft-revolutionizes- pa...](https://cirrusaircraft.com/cirrus-aircraft-revolutionizes-passenger- safety-through-autonomous-flight-with-safe-return-emergency-autoland/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Man the headline borderline is incomprehensible. Here's the actual article headline: Piper Announces New M600 SLS. First GA Aircraft to be Standard Equipped with HALO™ Safety System and Autoland Capability

I'm assuming GA means generally available?

<comment><USER24> GA is General Aviation, I believe. I've been to EAA, but I'm not an airplane person so I could be wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is impressive. Use case is for an incapacitated pilot. It won't work well or at all if the aircraft itself is having issues or in other emergency scenarios. As such it doesn't replace the need for qualified pilots at the controls.

<comment><USER26> I suspect they are marketing this for incapacitated pilots (an extremely rare situation), but it also seems like an alternative for overwhelmed pilots. They don't want to call their potential customers idiots, but this is another feature to help pilots avoid loss of control.

And I definitely see a future version that could handle engine failures. If you can count on auto land to flawlessly glide to the nearest airport, who needs a twin engine airplane? Single engine airplanes are significantly cheaper to operate than twins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Title is innaccurate, as the m600 is not the first, it will be simultaneously made available accross several different aircraft with Garmin avionics. The system can be also be retrofitted in older aircraft.

<comment><USER12> Aircraft still have to certify the feature, now that it exists. The title is accurate in that the m600 will be the first to certify with Autoland. Other aircraft will follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Question: A private jet is obviously bad for the environment, but how does a propeller plane compare carbon-wise to driving a car the same distance?

<comment><USER29> Not good. A Cessna 172 cruises at 140 mph and burns 8.5 gph of 100LL fuel, the equivalent of 16.5 mpg, and this is at cruise speed, not accounting for taxi, run-up, and flying the pattern during a normal flight.

Not to mention we're still burning lead in most propeller aircraft as well.

Fortunately this isn't a very popular way of getting around.

<comment><USER28> It's interesting that it's not insanely bad. I assumed it would be maybe 2-10X worse but it's in a similar ballpark.

Would a full on private jet be way worse?

Would these planes carry a fair few people than a car? If so what's it like taking passenger numbers into account?

I guess super-rich folk probably would be happy to fly just themselves in a big private jet and also be travelling waaaay further than they ever would in a car so it's probably a silly comparison anyway

<comment><USER26> There's actually a huge range in private planes. This M600 plane does about 7 mpg, 250 knots at 45 gph. A typical light jet might do 400 knots at 125 gph (3 mpg). But a light jet cannot not fly nonstop to a different continent. For these trips, a large business jet might do 450 knots at 300 gph (1.5 mpg), but only the very super rich can actually afford these. Even most celebrities will be flying the airlines for long international trips.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the calculations! It's weird how a more advance technology like a jet can be so successful yet an order of magnitude less economical. Usually it's the reverse. But when you're rich it's time that's money

<comment><USER30> The short answer is that higher speeds come at a steep price. The relationship between velocity and the power required to overcome drag at that velocity is cubic, so that large business jet requires on the order of 50x more power to fly at 450 kts than it would flying at 120 kts, like the little Cessna might.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Pretty neat tech, and an interesting alternate ending from the "pinch hitter" courses being taught by CFIs across the country.

</comment><comment><USER32> The tech is still interesting, even if similar things that are used even in non-emergency scenarios have existed in large jets for a few decades. The one thing I don't understand is if it always just relies on WAAS and GPS no matter what, or, if depending on the runway it chooses to land, it may use something like an ILS.

<comment><USER33> It won't try to do ILS. I think the issue is that where GPS is available it can definitely put that plane down. Maybe it's not the world's greatest landing due to GPS inaccuracy, not right on the centre line, tries to put the gear through the floor - maybe the airframe ends up totalled, but if every passenger on the plane walks away it's a huge success given the pilot was incapacitated. Whereas for ILS that gets you down under clouds in mediocre weather, all lined up properly, but (except in airports with Cat III ILS) it doesn't actually put you on the ground. With a trained pilot in the seat that's not an issue, once they can see the runway they can do the rest, but this is for emergencies.

As I mentioned in a previous HN item about ILS, these autoland systems don't get you off the runway. For a grave emergency (pilot dropped dead in flight with their spouse and two kids onboard) that's forgiveable, and this mentions that the product begins broadcasting that the runway chosen is now unusable (because your plane is now parked on it) but this is why Cat IIIc doesn't magically allow JFK to function normally in a blizzard. When the pilots still can't see the runway even after their plane lands on it, that's not useful for routine passenger flights.

<comment><USER7> > _I think the issue is that where GPS is available it can definitely put that > plane down. Maybe it 's not the world's greatest landing due to GPS > inaccuracy, not right on the centre line,_ ...

I wonder how this will change when the L2, L5, and L1C signals start becoming used from the GPS III satellites.

Also, in the US, non-GPS/Navstar signals cannot officially be used for anything, though I think Galileo was recently (finally) approved by the FCC:

* [https://www.gsa.europa.eu/newsroom/news/fcc-approves-use-gal...](https://www.gsa.europa.eu/newsroom/news/fcc-approves-use-galileo-us)

(The issue was something like: once officially approved, the frequencies in questions cannot be used for anything else, and are protected.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not sure what HN is getting all excited about ... the Piper M600 is $3 million, and since Mexico is humid, they've had composite delamination problems ...

Or you can just pull the throttle to idle, and trim for Vx, which is the "descend through clouds" emergency procedure.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does this aircraft have LIDAR or cameras? Wondering how it works with other air traffic and potential collisions. This is one of the biggest challenges for self-driving cars and I can't see any details about this in the Garmin G3000

<comment><USER27> The G3000 has ADBS in/out, and from January 1st ADSB out will be mandatory in the US, so it will know where other traffic is. Additionally, the autoland talks to ATC, and ATC can tell other traffic to get out of the way.

<comment><USER36> Even without that the chances of two planes colliding is nowhere near what autonomous vehicle are facing. + a lidar wouldn't do much in the air, it can't see very far, that's why we have radars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How does it communicate with ground station? Voice recognition and speech synthesis?

<comment><USER38> I have 100% no familiarity, but I'd assume it's not processing voice from the ground. It is probably only announcing that this is an emergency and its intended course of action.

I would love to know if that's not true because that would be a huge leap in off-line speech processing and recognition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> >digital technology that safely lands the aircraft at the nearest suitable airport in the event that the pilot is incapacitated.

How does it know? Also a weird submission to be at the top of HN

<comment><USER40> > _weird submission to be at the top of HN_

Seems like the usual HN fare. Autonomous control of vehicles is a very common topic here.

<comment><USER41> A self-driving car article makes the front page seemingly several times per week, but an article on a self-landing GA plane is weird?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Sounds like something that, once it becomes perfected, could reduce the required number of pilots on commercial passenger aircraft from 2 to 1 (at least for smaller planes).

</comment><comment><USER43> $2.994M. Guess I'll just ride my bike then.

<comment><USER27> They mentioned it can be retrofitted in older aircraft. So it might be an option in the future if you are doing $100k panel upgrade in your 1950s tin can airplane.

<comment><USER33> As the plane gets older and less sophisticated it gets harder to put all the pieces of the puzzle together without ripping the whole aircraft to pieces and starting over.

Even after touching down, the aircraft this is built for have computer control for the brakes and full rudder authority, so it can do a pretty good approximation of a proper short field landing based on GPS and wheel speed sensors. Do you want to add computer controlled brakes and wheel speed sensors to your tin can? No? Then we have to assume the plan is to just roll to a halt and that cuts our list of viable landing sites and hurts survivability considerably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> And Cirrus announced the same thing. This isn't type specific but a characteristic of the new Garmin G3000.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why do they cost $3M?

<comment><USER46> The labor, insurance, and safety / regulatory certifications required of a low volume production aircraft.

<comment><USER47> Only about 1000 single-engine piston aircraft are sold every year worldwide, and only about 500 single-engine turboprop.

It's a market with higher certification requirements, but much smaller unit volume than boats and cars, so much more certification, R&D, admin cost has to be covered by each unit sold.

See eg. [https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2019/02/26/2...](https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2019/02/26/2018-world- general-aviation-aircraft-shipments-up-5/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Not to be a philistine about new technology: but somehow I think this would make people in the air and in the ground less safe.

It's probably like having a parachute on the plane: just a great marketing sales point.

<comment><USER49> If this system doesn't alert the outside world that it's been used more than a few intoxicated people are gonna use it to land at uncontrolled airports. Just get close and press the magic button.

Net safety will probably increase because most people will never have that use case though.

<comment><USER50> Funny, but no. It definitely alerts people and those kind of alerts come with consequences. Declaring an emergency will trigger a later review by the FAA with potential action from them ranging from nothing at all to removing the pilot's license.</comment></comment></comment>


Elastdocker – Elk on Docker, with Preconfigured Security, Tools, and Monitoring - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sherifabdlnaby/elastdocker <comment><USER2> This is really useful, especially with the preconfigured S3 keystone.

Could be used even for small docker nodes given enough RAM (elastic is hungry)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why this isn't a helm chart I'll never know.

<comment><USER4> Because you haven't submitted a PR yet.</comment></comment>


WordPress Won the Race - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@martindrapeau/wordpress-won-the-race-612f0047108a <comment><AUTHOR> You're given a website to build for a customer. What situations would you decide WordPress is not a good choice?</comment>


How to answer: So how much do you make? - <AUTHOR> http://alexpotato.com/blog/what-to-say-when-they-ask-you-how-much-do-you-make/ <comment><USER2> The blog has some good points for resisting the question, and got the first one right (e.g. courtesy to my current employer, don't give it out b/c salaries are considered competitive info.)

It is sad that people go into high-value salary negotiations once every 18-36 months without having read the basic books on negotiation before. Look them up on any MBA syllabus.

Here are some notes based on a book outline I have for a manual on negotiations for STEM grads (that I will probably never write):

First, remember that you are the seller, and it's up to you whether you want to sell to them. You aren't applying for an honor or academic award, or begging for mercy and approval, you are selling valuable skills. Sometimes you are a price maker, sometimes you are a price taker. Know which one you are before choosing your strategy.

Second, always appeal to principle. Real negotiation is a rational process of legitimate price discovery between parties. There is a true price, a kind of superposition, that is acceptable to all parties, and the work is to infer its position. You are engaging in a partnership to discover together if there is a viable deal. Understand the detailed differences between haggling, bullying/ultimatums, and negotiation. A negotiation is a conversation in which you derive principles to agree upon, and those principles shape the outcome (final numbers).

Third, always reiterate your commitment to flexibility and and appeal to their reciprocity of this principle. If they decline both reciprocity and flexibility, especially without a specific number, it's likely there isn't a real deal on the table.

Fourth, add variables (new principles) to soften positions. If they start haggling numbers at you, you can always ask what the principle behind a number is. (what's that number based on? Is it data I can see? What data did you disqualify? Here's one of the data sources I am using..).

Fifth, state you are evaluating "total package value." If they propose a number, you can ask about bonuses, equity, options, commissions, memberships, travel rewards, lifestyle perks, housing allowances, medical, vehicles, benefits, retirement matching, concierge services, wellness, "no red M&M's" etc. Anything they say no to, you can say you will evaluate any offer based on pricing in the value of these other things, whether they are in benefits or cash.

Sixth, know wtf you are talking about. If you don't know what the position pays in that city because you don't know how glassdoor works, and you don't know how much it would cost (gross) to pay a consultant to do the work instead of you, you are flying blind.

Seventh, never, ever, give anyone your current compensation. That's between you and your tax authority. Like many bits of information, it can only ever be used to disadvantage you. They will be extra persistent and act shocked and insulted because some of them are so used to STEM's just rolling over on the question. That's a tactic. Always appeal to principle, in this case, the principle of your employers competitive information. They might walk away, but only because they want a sucker and determined you weren't one.

Eighth, answer recruiters calls and emails and do interviews even if you aren't interested. You need the practice, and you may be surprised at how good a given opportunity turns out to be. Recruiters and HR people are in the business of selling jobs to talent. You are not wasting their time. If they can't close you on selling you a job, they are only wasting their own time.

Ninth, there are only about 4 reasons a principled negotiation fails: 1) one side is not committed to flexibility and reciprocity; 2) there just wasn't a viable deal between those parties on those terms in the first place; 3) one party was bluffing or exaggerating about their ability to deliver on their part of the bargain; 4) parties lack the emotional maturity to have principled discussions about abstract concepts and hypotheticals.

Tenth, if there were the possibility of an advance, I would be willing to have the conversation about what a deal would look like.

;)

<comment><USER3> That's one of the best posts seen in awhile. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/health/research/04aging.html?em&ex=1212724800&en=0262541f762d0969&ei=5070 <comment><USER2> They can say whatever they want with their fancy degrees in chemistry. I've always suspected that the real advantage of red wine is twofold:

1) Unlike other hard beverages, people tend to not abuse it, thus liver problems don't come up.

2) Like all hard beverages, it has the effect of mellowing you out. I probably spend at least 3-4 hours a day considerably less high-strung as a result of wine drinking. Stress is a killer. This kind of everyday moderate drinking has been the status quo throughout the Mediterranean for 1000s of years.

<comment><USER3> You drink wine every night? My schedule is far too buy to allow that...perhaps that is part of it? You are in a relaxed enough schedule to have some shutdown time every day?

<comment><USER4> Pouring a glass takes what, a minute?

<comment><USER5> True, but I find my ability to code significantly diminished after even one glass. I'm all for finding some time to unwind with a glass when you can, however...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A first for me: the exact same post in 2 different threads.

This makes 2 NYT science articles in the HN Top Ten, one about cell phones and one about red wine, both guilty of the same common mistake in lay "science" news. So let's get this right, once and for all:

       CORRELATION != CAUSATION

Great. Now we'll have a steady dose of "cellphones are bad" and "red wine is good" from the mainstream pseudo news aftermarket for the next 3 days.

Thanks, New York Times...

"All the Science News That's Fit to Misprint"

</comment><comment><USER7> "The Wisconsin scientists used a dose on mice equivalent to just 35 bottles a day." "[if other compounds are effective] a mere 5 glasses a day might be equivalent."

With those as the lower bounds for efficacy, does it count as having a long life if you don't remember any of it?

<comment><USER8> Dude, if you remember it, then you weren't _really there_!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I enjoy drinking Coke after a long day's work, not for the caffeine but rather the thirst quenching attributes. I don't drink more than that due to how much sugar/acid it has.

Does red wine have sugar/acid?

<comment><USER4> Most of the sugar in wines is fermented away, but some remains. Depends on the wine.

I'll point out though that there is no sugar in Coke, only high-fructose corn syrup.

<comment><USER10> High-fructose corn syrup contains large amounts of sugar.

<comment><USER4> Well, that's true, but it's not what people are generally referring to when they say "sugar". But technically I suppose that's correct.

I'm assuming red wine's residual sugar is in the form glucose, but could be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aubrey de Grey's SENS strikes me as the most sensible approach to longevity. I suspect that he's a bit optimistic in his time estimates, however. (He is a computer scientist, after all.)</comment>


Supermac War Story 8: Cats and Dogs - Admitting a Mistake  - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2009/04/23/supermac-war-story-8-cats-and-dogs-admitting-a-mistake/ <comment><USER2> This one is OK, but 'Supermac War Story 6' is much more informative about the job of marketing: [http://steveblank.com/2009/04/09/supermac-war-story-6-the- jo...](http://steveblank.com/2009/04/09/supermac-war-story-6-the-job-of- marketing-mission-statements-mission-intent-and-core-values/)

I read it now, and tried to submit under a 'picked-quote' title: _We will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel_ , but it had already been submitted a couple of weeks ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=554590> ).

Perhaps the guys over at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=575966> could benefit from it, too.</comment>


An introduction to vimwiki - <AUTHOR> http://franky.co/2012/06/vimwiki

<comment><USER2> "...I don't like camelCase ... The second option is to wrap your link in two brackets, like [[Example link]]..."

You can also just jump into Visual mode and highlight a word or words and hit Return and Vimwiki will add the square brackets automatically and make the link for you.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to git repository on github: [https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)</comment>


You are paid what you are worth - <AUTHOR> http://quality-spectrum.com/you-are-paid-what-you-are-worth/ <comment><USER2> Spoken like a single man with little or no other life costraints

<comment><AUTHOR> Right :D

I was thinking the same thing ...</comment></comment>


Not all bugs are worth fixing and that's okay - <AUTHOR> https://blog.bugsnag.com/application-stability-monitoring/ <comment><USER2> I have a funny feeling that the nontechnical people on my current project would be nodding their heads along to the article, but the truth is that our applications have bugs that 100% of our customers are running into; they simply aren't immediately noticeable to a layperson. That doesn't mean they're not important. The business relies on complying with the rules of third-party organizations and the software is blatantly violating those rules right now. The clients are aware but still choose to prioritize new features over fixing the bugs that are creating these compliance issues. If we're caught out by those third parties before the bugs are fixed, there's a good chance it could sink the whole company. But our users don't "see" these bugs so they're not considered a priority over new products, new features, or anything else marketing might want.

I looked up Pinedo's background and she's not a developer; she's a social media manager. This is kind of what I figured because her perspective on development seemed really out of whack to me. There are many kinds of bugs that can't be measured with a simple stability calculation, and IME there are definitely error states that are worse than death (crashes). Plus 97% of teams are definitely not following agile principles. Every dev team I've ever been on said it was agile, and most of them just meant that there was a kanban board and something that vaguely approximated a sprint.

<comment><USER3> One of the toughest things I struggled with while transitioning from a larval junior developer to a senior tech lead to a project manager was the fact that (at least in the context of a for-profit business) not all bugs need to be fixed, even the ones you personally think are really really bad. The goal is to make money, not necessarily by producing the most perfect software. The quality bar needs to be high, but there is always a point beyond which the returns for fixing a bug are outweighed by the costs of fixing it: the direct engineering cost, the opportunity cost of not working on a feature, the cost of missing a deadline and not releasing in time for Christmas, the cost associated with the extra risk you're taking by making a late change, etc. Good places judge all these costs, and the best ones have formal processes for judging lots of bugs at scale and constantly re-evaluate whether a bug should be fixed at this point in the project or not. Sometimes the clear right answer is "no."

<comment><USER4> That's fair, but one has to remember that some of the key points are to be balanced, and that, like you said, "the quality bar needs to be high".

And I'm more for prioritizing trying to not introduce bugs than to fix all the old ones. Which is challenging on, how could we call that?, "legacy" software. So that priority can and must be reversed temporarily when that "legacy" is too much.

So it's all very context dependent, and not having anybody (or too few) working on making things better when its needed is not going to deliver any kind of velocity in the long term (and probably the short term velocity is _already_ way too low in those cases). Too bad for the mythical time to market...

So you have to be able to say no to bugfixes, but you certainly also have to be able to say no to the eternal rush of new half-backed features, when needed. A short-term ever obsession on "opportunity cost of not working on a feature" could yield quite paradoxical results if trying to build them on some kind of zombie legacy code (that is only ever edited with disgust and great difficulty, but never seriously refactored).

Not only this balance is hard to achieve, but your role as a senior tech lead and project manager is certainly to consider carefully the cleanup needs, and be an advocate for them when needed, including by pushing back against feature creep pressure. Because if you are not, most of the time nobody else will. As a tech lead, this mean among other things, that a black box approach of parts of the maintained software is out of the question (of course you can delegate, but even then its imperative to stay in the equation for that purpose, only with less details). Paradoxically, even if the quality is crap and the organization notices and tracks loads of bugs, most people will be happy at the moment the bugs are triaged and assigned and eventually "fixed" by more horrible garbage (that is, the impression that something is done), rather than doing the right thing that is to organize a cleanup of the software more in depth.

I've got the impression that it is rare to find projects where this balance is achieved correctly, but maybe it's only because of bad luck. Well in lots of cases, the famous ones (I'm thinking on the level of Linux, Firefox, Python, etc. not just your random niche software) are actually not that bad, and their competitors have a way shorter lifespan when not as balanced...

<comment><USER5> This is my experience as well. Product progress is prioritized over code quality, and the ultimate cost to velocity is real but often unacknowledged. Bugs go unfixed because they are very hard to fix, and this high cost is taken for granted.

It's definitely on the technical leadership to stand up for code cleanliness and push back against product, and on the higher-ups to recognize the importance of this dynamic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something about this rubbed me the wrong way and I realized it was because this pretends that ignoring much of the long tail of userbase is not only okay but beneficial to the majority. If, say, Quip ignored bugs in IE6 that's likely fine because my parents using their CRT iMac aren't going to be using Quip, but imagine if a crucial app like Gmail ignored older browsers; suddenly all the disadvantaged people that can't afford new laptops lose access to their email.

If it's a bug that 10 users are hitting because they were migrated from an earlier version incorrectly, sure it might be okay not to fix, but if 10 users are hitting it because they're legally blind and using an extraordinarily large font to use your product, it's crappy to say they don't deserve a fix. You have to understand what part of your userbase is hitting a bug and then decide from there.

<comment><USER7> Something to perhaps consider: if both groups of 10 people are experiencing a bug, especially one not caused by their own doing, why is one group more "deserving" of a fix than the other?

<comment><USER8> A bad migration can be worked around by a clean install, but blindness can't, so there's one. Legal reasons are another (e.g. the Americans with Disabilities Act).

OT: does anybody know of a site with similar interesting content and discussion to HN, but with a fraction of sociopaths closer to that of the general world population?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the input!

I hope the sociopath comment wasn't triggered by my question. I tend to question widespread assumptions, perhaps more often than I ought to. But I find that, more often than not, people don't have a good reason for the positions they hold. I abhor groupthink which, sadly, dominates our culture today.

<comment><USER8> The sociopath comment was indeed triggered by your question, though it wasn't fair that it got directed at you rather than any of the hundreds of other comments that make me feel the same way, and I'm sorry for that, but I suspect that any of those commenters would have given a similar defense.

It matters very much _which_ widespread assumptions one tend to question, and which subconsciously get a free pass, and I find that HNers on the whole are likely to question assumptions like "people should be kind to each other" more than most people, while questioning "companies are legally required to maximize shareholder value" less, where in fact it's the latter that's false, and while the former isn't a statement of fact, it's a very healthy axiom for humanity.

Shared values are not "groupthink": they're what allow us to have society at all, and while we should be allowed to discuss them, dismissing them carelessly _is_ anti-social.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > There's no such thing as a bug free application

This is a stretch. Seems like many people think of code as a living thing that just does what it wants, and us programmers have to beat it into submission.

The truth is, there can be bug free applications.

The problem I think is the complete opposite of the point of the article. Programmers need time to write good software. Without stopping to fix the things we run into, technical debt does what it's known for, and exponentially increases, and kills time that could be spent writing features.

So maybe software is like a living being in a way, that it needs to be cared for gently.

<comment><USER10> I remember the time when people around me started using expressions like "My PC is not feeling good today." _feeling_

It's about time, it's about having managers that were programmers and not just managers and so on. Bug free is possible for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good article. It reminds me of Sandi Metz's treatment of well-designed code as a business proposition: the goal is to save money, because a good design makes changes cheaper.

It makes sense to consider the cost of having a given bug vs the cost of fixing it. Of course, such estimates will almost always be hand-wavey.

I would also say that when in doubt, fix it. A bug is, by definition, the software not doing what it's expected to do; I think it's better to make fewer promises and keep them. A user who encounters a bug loses trust in the software, and there's a tipping point where they abandon it. You might not know where that is.

You also might not realize what a bad day it could give someone, even if they're only one person. Eg, if you're an email platform and you have a bug that drops one email in a million, that might seem OK. But if missing that email gets someone evicted...

<comment><USER12>
        It makes sense to consider the cost of having a given bug vs the cost of
        fixing it. Of course, such estimates will almost always be hand-wavey.

I agree with that approach in theory, but in practice it turns out that that it's a lot easier to estimate the costs of fixing the bug than it is to estimate the cost of having the bug. As a result, because of our biases, in any ambiguous case, our bias will be for keeping the bug, since the cost of having the bug is the impact of the bug multiplied by the probability of someone hitting it, and it's always easy to lowball those probabilities. "Oh, no one will notice that," or "Yeah, but that's a really obscure case." And then you find out that all it takes is one obscure case for your trading application to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a day. Or for hackers to breach your systems and make off with millions of credit card numbers. Or for malware to turn your IoT devices into a botnet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "97% of respondents said they practice agile in their organization"

Yeah, they all _SAY_ they practice agile, but a lot of them practice waterfall with agile naming conventions.

<comment><USER14> 100%. They think they are doing agile as long as they have Sprints.

Startup I'm working at right now told me "Agile" is overkill for us. But ironically it's more iterative then any company I worked before that did sprints.

<comment><USER15> > "Agile" is overkill for us.

What does this mean/did they mean by this?

<comment><USER14> yeah being agile is good. I meant by incorporating Agile frameworks like Scrum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem is that many organizations don't know how to tell important bugs from non-important ones, don't have proper processes for bugs reported by customers, and generally ignore customers. Here's a couple of popular apps that I have used and the reason I have quit or will quit them: Hulu with the TV package constantly tells me I'm streaming to more than 2 TVs and won't play anything even though I'm not streaming to any. Youtube TV constantly plays the wrong thing when I click something to play. These are egregious bugs that I'm sure I'm not the only one experiencing because they happen on multiple, different mobile devices, tablets, the web apps, etc. The strategy outlined in the article may be viable when customers are not paying anything, but when companies charge an arm and a leg for software (> $40 / month) users expect the software to not have any major bugs like this that prevent its basic functioning. With the type of support offered by such companies, users will be moving on quickly to competitors that hopefully have their basics worked out. I wouldn't use an email program that can't send or receive email and these bugs are on par with that.

</comment><comment><USER17> >at a certain point, it's too expensive to keep fixing bugs because of the high-opportunity cost of building new features.

While I may agree with this in the abstract, in practice most folks don't really know whether they're at that point. It also doesn't consider cumulative effects over time.

Bugs don't just affect application stability or user experience. A system that does not behave as designed/documented/expected is a system that will be more difficult to reason about and more difficult to safely change. This incidental complexity directly increases the cost of building new features in ways difficult to measure. Further, new features implemented by hacking around unfixed flaws will themselves be more difficult to reason about and more difficult to change, exacerbating the problem.

The larger the system grows over time, the more people working on it over time, the faster this incidental complexity problem grows over time. At a certain point, it's too expensive to not fix the bugs because of the increasingly high cost of building new features. At that point, folks start clamouring for a rewrite, and the cycle begins anew.

<comment><USER4> If the only alternative is between a rewrite, and not-fixing the mess gradually, then I'll take the rewrite anytime and let the cycle continue.

The problem is: is your rewrite really going to be a full-rewrite, or some kind of hybrid monster (at the architectural level, of course, there is no problem in reusing little independent pieces, if any exist)? Because you can easily fall in all the traps of both sides, if the technical side is not mastered well enough by the project management...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The most important thing I take away from this, is that even if you don't fix the bugs, you should be aware of them and tracking them.

Maybe it is a bug that only affects 1 out of every 10,000 customers. But if you get enough of those it can start to add up. Keeping track of them allows you to go to management with the data to support spending a sprint on bugfixes and code maintenance.

</comment><comment> default-kramer This doesn't mention that crashes aren't the only kind of bugs. In fact, crashes are the bugs I fear least because I know about them immediately. It's the bugs that happily do the wrong thing that worry me. Like sending email to the wrong person, for example. I review email-sending code 3 times more closely than other code.

</comment><comment><USER19> The author of this article seems to think that occurrence frequency is the sole metric of whether a bug should be fixed.

Which of these two is more important?

      - 0.1% of my users lose their data irrecoverably
      - 30% of my users get an error page and have to refresh

The article never waded into this at all, which is disappointing. I don't feel like I learned anything.

</comment><comment><USER20> This article is strictly true - there are bugs that are not worth fixing. But the process of figuring out which ones are and aren't isn't as simple as crashes/sessions.

There are some categories of bugs that must always be fixed, regardless of how infrequently users run into them - security, privacy, accessibility, data loss.

There are also cases where many low impact bugs all share a common root cause - the value of fixing any one bug is low, but the sum of fixing all current and preventing all future occurrences is high value. Enforced static analysis tools (like error prone for Java) and libraries/frameworks with safety checks (autoescaping template languages, polyfills, etc) are a great way to address these long tail bugs. I generally write a new compiler error after encountering the same bug class three times.

</comment><comment><USER21> Both parts of the title are correct:

* Not all are worth fixing, that is, the (financial) upside of their being fixed is too low compared to the effort required.

* And it's okay, that is, it's something we have to accept and live on, though it's not really nice and satisfying.

</comment><comment><USER22> Thanks Kristine for the link to my article...

Myth of Five Nines - why high availability is overrated [https://www.iheavy.com/2012/04/01/the-myth-of-five-nines- why...](https://www.iheavy.com/2012/04/01/the-myth-of-five-nines-why-high- availability-is-overrated/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Dijkstra raised the distinction between pleasantness and correctness. Since most programs are unspecified there is no logical grounds for declaring their behavior incorrect. Unpleasant behavior abounds however, but if your users are willing or forced to accept that unpleasantness then it can be rational to let it stand.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't see any mention of security or legal concerns. Not all bugs can be identified by exceptions, exception frequency is not an indication of their impact, and in some cases stability is less important then correctness. Using bugs per session as the (only?) metric is a horrible way of doing product management.

</comment><comment><USER25> Bugs shouldn't happen. Actually, in some critical systems, bugs _can 't_ happen.

Bugs aren't magic; they happen for a reason. It could be a broken dependency(unsupported versions, fatal bug in a dependency, deprecation, configuration etc.), resource limitation(out of memory, security breach etc.), poor design which leads to poor implementation(logical errors, bad data abstractions).

Abstractly waving your hands and saying "we can't fix all bugs" doesn't feel right. Identify the underlying cause of the bugs and address that.

One solution is to reduce dependencies, increase resource allocation, and rely on a less rigid design. As a business grows, dependencies will increase, resource allocation will increase and the design will become more complex.

<comment><USER26> > Actually, in some critical systems, bugs can't happen.

[https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/05/29/an-empirical-study-on- th...](https://blog.acolyer.org/2017/05/29/an-empirical-study-on-the- correctness-of-formally-verified-distributed-systems/) says that they found 16 bugs in three formally-verified systems (including two bugs that didn't get caught _because of bugs in the verifier_ ). So, I'm pretty sure that bugs _can_ happen. (Unless you mean that in certain critical systems, bugs can't be allowed to happen, in which case I agree.)

More, I'm pretty sure that most bugs don't happen for the reasons you list. I suspect that the majority of bugs are just poor implementation.

It's possible, however, for the opposite extreme to happen: The program wasn't buggy, but circumstances changed, and now it is. I'm thinking specifically of crypto code, which can be perfect... until a new attack is devised. Then the software is buggy, because it can't stop an attack that didn't exist when it was written.

When we do get software that has "no" bugs in critical systems, it's because of extreme care at every step: specification, design, implementation, review, and _testing._ Obsessive testing, and testing, and testing, and testing.

<comment><USER7> From my personal experience, the vast majority of bugs happen due to an astounding failure on the part of developers to consider even the most basic edge conditions. Also, terrible contract documentation...</comment></comment></comment>


CEOs must be designers, not just hire them - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/06/ceos_must_be_de.html <comment><USER2> i agree</comment>


Software Engineering in Barcelona vs. Madrid - <AUTHOR> Hello guys,
I am a software engineer studying masters degree right now at the University Of Manchester. (Advanced Computer Science) I am graduating in September and considering moving to Spain after my graduation. The cause of that is the environment of England actually, I do not like the weather, food, people here. I know the salary will be less but that's fine. I have done quite sufficient research about the tech-situation of Barcelona and Madrid. However, I still have some queries in my mind, would it be sensible to move to Spain right after my graduation or should I get experience at least for a couple of years in The UK in order to have a good CV? I am expecting around €50.000, I have enough knowledge as well as practice about the tools that the companies are using. ( Java Technologies )
However, I have noticed that, in many comments given in forums, it's been stated that the people in BCN are less warm than the people living in Madrid. I do not know the reason of that. Would that have an adverse impact on my life as a foreign person willing to go to Spain?
Lastly, If you have the knowledge, could you please mention some of the good tech companies that have a decent salary and reputation in Spain.
Kind Regards.
(I am an EU citizen, no need for work permit etc.) <comment><USER2> > in many comments given in forums, it's been stated that the people in BCN > are less warm than the people living in Madrid. I do not know the reason of > that. Would that have an adverse impact on my life as a foreign person > willing to go to Spain?

In my experience, both cities are plenty of people that didn't grow up there, and plenty of foreigners. Most of the folks you'll interact with will be genuinely welcoming and willing to help you feel like home.

You'd totally make more money in UK, but I think that the quality of life you can get with nice CS-related job in Madrid/Barcelona is definitely worth trying.

<comment><AUTHOR> The salary does not play a crucial role on my life, I might earn less than I earned but the environment is the key that I am considering. What about the CS-situation of Spain in general? Is it improving, stable or not interested?

<comment><USER2> It's definitely getting better. If you can, take your time to find conpanies that follow and encourage best practices (proper staging environments and project management, testing, continuous integration and deployment, training resources, career path). Some well-known big consultancies are disguised sweatshops, avoid them like the plague. Attending local meetups should get you in touch with the kind of companies and team mates that you'd like to work with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well yeah, good new to hear that. Honestly, for me it is hard to attend to local meetups because now I am in abroad so the only source I can use is the Internet. I have done some research about the tech companies that are following appropriate practises such as Telefonica, Casumo, Socialpoint etc. Dont know the real situation though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Could you please state some tech-companies that will boost my career and motivate me to stay in Spain?

</comment><comment><USER3> 50k as starting salary is unrealistic for Spain. I don't think it's true that people in Barcelona are less warm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response,

I might have explained wrong, I have 2 years work experience. So, I will not apply for Junior positions.

<comment><USER4> Still, I think that kind of salary in Spain is for high profile senior positions in most cases.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have heard that such companies like Telefonica, Wallapop, Casuma pays around that range. No ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I might have explained wrong, I have 2 years work experience. So, I will not apply for Junior positions.</comment>


Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/24/sanitation-and-health-rights-in-india-launched-its-non-profit-for-sanitation-and-water-purification-services/ <comment><USER2> Sanitation is the proverbial uphill battle in India. West and affluent Indians often do not understand the full extent of issues here. Some 15 years ago we built 5 toilets (along with flush) for a community of sheep shepherds deep into the jungles of Maharashtra-India. 6 years later when we visited them again it was embarrassing to see that they were using the toilets as shelter for their sheep and still defecating in open.

Their logic was flawless. Why should we change our priorities because you think what we are doing is wrong. We thought it was a lesson not to interfere in their affairs any more.

Some changed land regulation laws made their land extremely valuable. 5 years back these people sold their land for multi-million dollars. Now these people are into Trucking and Fishing business with homes better than mine own.

This is a anecdotal evidence and must not be used for any kind of conclusion. I visited Dharavi-Mumbai(largest slum in world) where there is literally no space for toilets. Every morning there will be like 1000 people trying to use like 20 toilets. There are people who then have no choice but to defecate in side their home in a reusable utensil and throw it out in gutter. Men can defecate in open but women sometimes even soil themselves standing in line. It is pretty horrible given that this is the same place responsible for making snacks for millions of Mumbai residents. [1]

[1] [http://sanitation.indiawaterportal.org/english/node/2918](http://sanitation.indiawaterportal.org/english/node/2918)

<comment><USER3> Is that link your work? Do you have more about what you do?

<comment><USER2> No that is not the link to my work. The work I referred to was the work by a local Temple and I was a 15 year old volunteer who laid bricks for toilets. Never had the big picture that time.

<comment><USER4> There is some irony in here. I know of cases where people broke up the toilets built with govt money just to sell the bricks. I am glad however, that the discussion has been less myopic than I would have otherwise expected: oh look at these poor Indians why don't we get some money and build them toilets.

<comment><USER2> Yes. The discussion around education in India however remains myopic. Lets build "free schools" for poor Indians remains the objective which has achieved very little.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work.

From my visits to Indian villages, open defecation seems more of a choice that the people make. Even though people _have_ toilets in their houses, they still prefer not using it. Of course not everyone has access, but even the ones who do prefer not using it.

Another issue with public toilets I can think of is hygiene. How do you educate a large population to use toilets and use it reasonably, otherwise it would be a disaster for the maintainers and the public. The point is, most people would be first time users.

Another issue is to do with social status and the caste system. How do you plan to get people belonging to different social strata and castes(yes, it still exists!) to use the same toilet. Could you share your experiences regarding this issue so far?

<comment><USER6> Thanks! You bring up some great points!

In the communities where we work right now, the vast majority of people don't have toilets in their homes, and they do understand the importance of using toilets. Right now, the government offers a reimbursement program for families who build a toilet for their house, but most people cannot afford this upfront cost and see corruption diminish the amount (if/when) they're paid back. Another big issue is land ownership - if families don't own the land they live on, this significant investment doesn't make a lot of financial sense. We see our role standing in solidarity with Indians making these tough decisions with incredible social, health, and economic outcomes.

You rightly pointed out maintenance as another key issue! We sell safe drinking water from our sites and use that revenue to pay for the facility to be cleaned 2x a day and maintained by our staff. We're tracking daily toilet users and see that people use our facility consistently.

There is definitely still social stigma connecting handling human waste and those at the bottom of the caste system. Our model is designed with this understanding. Waste is disposed of directly from the toilet pan into our biogas digester to decompose, so no humans have to handle the waste. We've also have hired members of these communities to work with us, and have seen them promoted and earning more money than the would in another other role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> UNICEF put out a rather humurous video called "Take The Poo to the Loo" an attempt at changing the cultural acceptance of defecating whereever they seem fit.

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

<comment><USER6> If you are interested in learning more about the cultural and societal implications of open defecation, you can also check out a video series we helped put together last summer. The focus/perspective falls on rural Indians (naturally, the real cultural experts on the matter of open defecation). Videos feature folks working to increase access to toilets, a drama troupe doing grassroots education work, and women talking about their personal experiences. [http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/giveashit/](http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/giveashit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi there! I'm Joan, one of the Directors at SHRI. Happy to talk more about sanitation or answer questions about our work!

<comment><USER8> I can't get your website to open up. Shows up completely blank

<comment><USER6> Sorry to hear that! The issue was just brought to our attention, and we're working on the fix. Your browser is probably set to block cookies by default. Turning that off should allow it to load.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great.

Sometimes the problems of open defecation are more complex than just a lack of toilets.

Here's a short article that mentions some of these: [http://www.irinnews.org/report/102414/when-shit- happens](http://www.irinnews.org/report/102414/when-shit-happens)

<comment><USER10> Gram Vikas Mantra is one effort for to reduce open defecation.

[http://gramvikas.org/water-sanitation-mantra](http://gramvikas.org/water- sanitation-mantra)

here is his TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_madiath_better_toilets_better_l...](http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_madiath_better_toilets_better_life?language=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> don't count your chickens before they're hatched [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows- wo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-worlds- racist-countries-answers-surprise-you.html)

<comment><USER12> Correlation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a wonderful idea, but sanitation and health rights goes hand-in-hand with _civic duty_ to where one lives and works. It's not just the responsibility of governments to keep an environment safe and clean. Citizens must do their part, such as minimize their ecological footprint, pick up litter in their communities, be a good neighbour and so on.

A sense of civic duty seems to be amiss nowadays. Just look at the streets strewn with litter, or the runaway urban sprawl by rich land developers who have no regard for natural habitats.

We can't just throw money at the problem. That's not sustainable. People need to be educated to take responsibility for their surroundings.

We all have an impact on the environment. We all have a say. It is our world.

<comment><USER14> This may be true on some poetic level, but helps little the Indian kid who has to urinate somewhere.

<comment><USER13> I'll reword my comment since you seemed to miss the point: Civic duty goes _hand-in-hand_ with sanitation and health rights. Otherwise, it is unsustainable, even counter-productive to provide toilets for an Indian population that will not use them or maintain them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is such an incredibly sad Country. My wife is Indian, from Noida, we went there two years ago. I saw much of Delhi. The amount of pollution, poverty, filth, homelessness including children that are begging in the streets hooked on who knows what drugs and being molested and raped is staggering.

I remember one little girl maybe 10 that came up to my wife and I because she saw my wife using a small travel bottle of hand sanitizer. And she really wanted it. Didn't ask for money just that little bottle of hand sanitizer. She thought it was lotion. We gave it to her and she tried to use it like lotion on her arms and hands. She just wanted to be a little girl doing little girl things. She was covered in dirt, hadn't bathed in who knows how long.

It's effing heart breaking there. I mean that. Women are constantly harassed at best, gang raped at worse. They can't go out after dark in most of the country. Indian male society HATES women. It's literally one step away from the Taliban. Not all Indian men, but its a majority. Women are not safe there at all. The police are lazy and useless. Corruption is rampant. Everyone is out for themselves. It's dog eat dog. Rolling blackouts. Unfit water supply. No proper sewage. Appalling infastructure. The country was in better shape under British rule. And that PAINS me to say that being Irish in blood. The Indian government has just failed the people. They are xenophobic when it comes to business. State run monopolies or family owned monopolies large and small. Very very hard for non Indian controlled capitalism to get in there.

It is just such an depressing place. Which is incredibly sad because it has so much beauty and history and culture and food! I don't know what happened to that place. You go from the Karma sutra, an epic depiction of the love of women to gang raping women on a daily basis. WTF?

Ugh, it's just sad.

<comment><USER8> So you judged a whole country after visiting a single city?

>one step away from Taliban

Really? I mean, really?

I would expect this kind of bullshit in maybe r/worldnews but not in HN.

<comment><USER16> He might have exaggerated a bit but overall conclusions are still right on point.

I've lived all over india (due to the fact that my father was in Indian army) and what gp said is true everywhere in India.

We have to admit what is wrong with our country. Feeling shameful, defensive, angry, proud, hurt ect is not going to help anyone and infact is counter productive.

<comment><USER10> I am never an apologist for the Indian State, but to say, India would be better under British rule, is a NO - NO for me. In spite of its failures at many levels and mostly falling short of expectations, India is a miracle. There is no other way to put it. The population of entire Americas, north- south and central is lesser than population of India. So, if you are seeing grotesque poverty and violence, well they are still there in Americas.

Xenophobia is really not a phobia if you read the history of Delhi. I mean this city has been sacked since 10th century and regularly had its population obliterated.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix listens to customers, keeps profiles - <AUTHOR> http://blog.netflix.com/

<comment><USER2> Interesting to think of this in terms of 37 Signals feature-minimalism and "say no" philosophies. Once added, this feature became a weight netflix had to carry through it's designs and keep working. Netflix chose to listen to the minority of customers and keep it--to not "say no." Would 37 signals have listened or just "said no", I wonder?

I think keeping the feature was a good move--the profiles feature previously stopped me from canceling my account under a barrage of my wife's chick flicks that kept "accidentally" topping the queue. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> The threat of losing profiles made my household seriously consider how useful Netflix was for us. Since I'm paring down expenses anyway because of shifting from consultant to startup founder, we decided it wasn't worth it. Cancelled yesterday. I briefly considered re-activating today, but we'll be OK with iTunes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's nice to see Netflix keep the feature, though I myself do not use it. The customer outcry was considerable; See NYT (<http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/monday-2/>).

Netflix's motivation to retain the feature was no doubt out of fear of losing customers rather than any type of benevolence. It would've been a huge gaff for them to lose customers over it; especially considering the strong competition from Apple, Hulu, and the television studios adding to the existing competition from Blockbuster, the cable and satellite providers.

Chalk part of this win up to market competition.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been wanting to sign up for netflix for a while ... but their streaming video app is windows only.

I have an iMac running leopard and a thinkpad x60 running ubuntu. The day netflix provides a mac/linux client, is the day I'll sign up.

</comment><comment><USER5> To be honest, I hadn't heard of the profile feature until the brouhaha came out about them being canceled.

Of course, now that I know the feature exists I'm going to start using it immediately.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting that this feature turned out to be important enough to customers that Netflix ultimately decided it was better to keep it, but apparently Netflix wasn't able to see that in its usage.</comment>


MYO - Gesture control armband - <AUTHOR> https://www.thalmic.com/myo/

<comment><USER3> I preordered one of these, and I somewhat regret it. The promo video is no assurance of quality in the end product, and it's not even going to ship until "early" 2014, which is a fair way away yet.

Why not wait until it's launched? Then you'll have reviews from dumb saps like me who can tell you whether it's worth it or not.

<comment><USER4> When this first hit HN, wasn't it set for a Fall 2013 release as well? I'm not surprised if it's been pushed back (maybe it hasn't) but I agree that waiting for it to land makes a lot more sense especially since Leap Motion is a very similar interaction and coming out sooner.

<comment><USER5> The first batch is still scheduled to ship fall 2013, I believe. The second batch is the one shipping 2014.

Per <https://twitter.com/thalmic/status/339752687694405632>

<comment><USER4> Ah, that sounds right, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any additional content here that wasn't at their old getmyo.com domain? If not, why was it reposted?

<comment> maarten-pi There seems to be a new Behind the Scenes video (unless I missed it before)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this could be used to allow ASL input to a computer - <USER2> transcription of conversation and such? I think it really depends on how accurately it can sense actual finger position rather than just motion in that muscle

</comment><comment><USER8> I think this has great potential for things beyond gesture control; if it can be accurate I would love to have one of these on each arm to replace my keyboard to allow me to type in the air (I have RSI).

That said, I am not spending a cent until you ship and get a lot of positive reviews.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is all nice, like with leap motion, I am not preordering anything, once you ship and reviews come in, I would be happy to pay for this. I am really looking forward to new ways of interacting, but I can't finance your development.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me or is HN receiving a lot of submissions on gesture and EEG based technology recently? Not complaining, just curious if anyone's started noticing a trend?

</comment><comment><USER11> It'd be cool to see something like this built into a watch; Like the pebble but with gestures. I wonder if it'd still work further down the forearm.</comment>


Ask HN: Ethernet 3G modem-router? - <AUTHOR>

Why do you think no one is interested in developing a 3G (hsdpa, hspa, etc) modem-router?
Something with a html admin interface (like all standard routers) and USB just for power (no kernel extensions and proprietary apps). <comment><USER2> Not sure I understand your question.

I use a CTR-350 from <http://www.cradlepoint.com> frequently when I travel, and I think it is doing more or less exactly what you describe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. It's doing most of what I described indeed. Still I was thinking more of a integrated modem with cellphone battery king of thing. Just insert SIM card kind of solution.

<comment><USER3> Verizon has the MiFi. I think it's exactly what you describe. The service probably costs a fortune, but it's a pretty neat device.

[http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=pho...](http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=4726)

[edit]

Looks like Sprint has one too: [http://nextelonline.nextel.com/NASApp/onlinestore/en/Action/...](http://nextelonline.nextel.com/NASApp/onlinestore/en/Action/DisplayPhones?phoneSKU=NV2200WFDO)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm based in europe. So no Verizon. The mifi looks good even though it needs, as far as I know, the proprietary software for setting it up. I know it seems like a pet peeve but running macosx with vodafone's (actually novamedia's) software is a pain! My contract isn't that bad, I get unlimited (60GB) trafic, 5Gb/s Down 1.4Gb/s Up for 35euros month.

<comment><USER4> I have the MiFi for Sprint and there is no software...just plug it in and open 192.168.1.1 in a browser

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool! Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Pixel 4a - <AUTHOR> https://store.google.com/product/pixel_4a <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24038843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24038843), which is currently on the front page.</comment>


A Biotech Evangelist Seeks a Zika Dividend - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/business/a-biotech-evangelist-seeks-a-zika-dividend.html <comment><USER2> Photo caption: "An Oxitec worker puts her hand in a cage full of genetically modified male mosquitoes to show that they do not bite."

This a sad reflection of the author's/editors' scientific diligence. _Male_ mosquitoes _do not bite_ , period.</comment>


University Of Calgary Refusing To Pay Access Copyright Any More - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110724/01464615221/university-calgary-refusing-to-pay-access-copyright-any-more.shtml

<comment><USER2> Any Canadians with a little perspective on this? In the US educational use is usually covered under fair use rules.

<comment><USER3> I'm a current UCalgary student, myself.

As far as I am aware, the most major impact of this decision will be the abolition of the "nickel copiers", which allow for the copying of a certain percentage (10%, I think?) of any copyrighted work if you are a UCalgary student. I am uncertain of how the restrictions applied to professors & faculty.

I personally doubt that this will have much of an impact on my own career at University. I am not enrolled in a program that makes heavy use of such copyrighted materials, and thus far my use of said copyrighted material has been limited.

I think Access Copyright had it coming. For a very, very long time.

<comment><USER4> OT: What faculty are you in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a useful perspective on it by a famous Canadian copyright lawyer: <http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5951/125/></comment>


Prisoners Read More Library Books Than Do Non-Prisoners - <AUTHOR> http://acrosswalls.org/section/communicative-structure/prison-libraries/page/4/

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem in the least bit surprising. They have a lot more spare time than us, and many fewer available things to do with it.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention prisoners probably get all or nearly all their books from the library, and people outside of prison have many other options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I spent over 10 years in prisons, over two stretches. My first bit was 2.5 years long and I wasn't much into books during that. My second one got me thinking about what I really wanted for my life, and so I started educating myself and devoured hundreds of books. Also, books let you "escape", if only briefly, the stark reality of prison. Quite a few guys I knew loved to read romance novels.

What Imaginenore said, about having one TV for a group is very true for every prison I was in (6 state and 3 federal). That makes it difficult to find a program you like.

Usually, an ethnic group or gang takes over the TV and everyone else does their own thing. I DM'd D&D games for 4 different groups each week, and played in one.

Two things that disbelief stated above were absolutely untrue about things prisoners do: stare at walls and walk in circles. I believe he is trying to suggest boredom-coping mechanisms caused by a lack of activities. In prison, there is always something to do.

People can exercise with weight equipment. there is a yard you can walk a track in, play tennis in, play basketball in the courts, play soccer or touch football.

There is an indoor rec center with treadmills (usually), musical instruments, art room (for painting, drawing), and lots of tables for card (or D&D) playing.

As for book access, I found I could get any book I knew about. The library services in the prison education department allowed us to get inter-library loan books to read. Also, I purchased a lot of books by mail-order.

I subscribed to 20 different magazines of varying interest. I did that to keep abreast of my interests, and also to pass them on to others after I finished. I felt it important for the other inmates to expand their knowledge of subjects. There are inmate magazine subscription services where I could get magazines at $4 to $10 per year per subscription.

I had internet prior to my incarceration, high speed internet at a university. I thought I would die of boredom in prison, but it turned out to be far from the truth.

</comment><comment><USER5> Cause they don't have access to Reddit and HN.

Imagine prisons had internet access.

<comment><USER6> Totally agree. On the other hand it's interesting that inmates watched a bit less television than the average non-inmate too though.

<comment><USER5> My guess is - they have one TV for a bunch of inmates, so it's hard to watch what you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given the pretty stark class and education gap between prisoners and non- prisoners, the difference in percentages between prisoners (53%) and non- prisoners (33%) in the "reads books daily" category is something I found a bit surprising.

<comment><USER4> One thing that every prison I was ever in required was that inmates finish their GED.</comment></comment>


Canadian researchers find illegal drugs more plentiful despite seizures [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/09/30/canadian_researchers_find_illegal_drugs_more_plentiful_despite_police_seizures.html

<comment><USER2> The inverse of "make something people want" is "don't take away something people want". If people "want" something, they will get it. They will shell out their wallets, climb over walls, invent technologies (or use technologies invented to give them what they want).

Want to stop them: you are doomed to failure.</comment>


Twitter Shares Drop as Pace of Growth Slows - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-09/twitter-inc-falls-as-revenue-growth-slows-to-1-percent <comment><USER2> > It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, > increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time is divided because of his other > job -- as CEO of Square Inc.

I find it interesting that the CEO of Twitter has two jobs. It's really in line with our future of a "sharing economy" where one job isn't enough to survive. It'd be funnier if it was Travis Kalanick (Uber CEO) but this is pretty good too.

Now joking aside, why the heck do investors allow the CEO to have a second job? If I were an investor at either of those companies I'd be pretty pissed off. Unless there's some magical synergy that can be had between them (and for the record I don't think there is), this is bad news on both ends.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock- owner...](http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-ownership- takeover-acquisition-challenges)

>Add on the fact that much of the board is new, with little financial stake in the company. It's possible they are loyal to CEO Jack Dorsey, who essentially appointed them, and don't have the financial incentive to push change the way older, more frustrated investors might.

<comment><USER2> I like how the chart in the article you linked to has Steve Ballmer's job title as " _Owner, Los Angeles Clippers_ ".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The whole world is watching Twitter. While we may not be currently meeting everyone's growth expectations, there is one thing that continues to grow and outpace our peers: Twitter's influence and impact."

[https://medium.com/@jack/twitter-q416-earnings- call-4574b01e...](https://medium.com/@jack/twitter-q416-earnings- call-4574b01e4cef#.w75ie5hl0)

I honestly don't see how they are growing in influence and impact. I'd say that if it weren't for POTUS tweets, most people wouldn't even notice any change on Twitter's impact.

<comment><USER5> I mean, that's exactly what they're talking about. You can't just exclude one of the most impactful topics of global discussion (US politics). The fact of the matter is Twitter has a tremendously disproportionate impact on US politics and US journalism, and by extension world affairs.

<comment><USER4> Let's say that for some reason POTUS decides to start using facebook instead. Then what? Yes, I'm not denying the impact of those tweets, all I'm saying is that is just only ONE user driving the impact.

<comment><USER5> Not just POTUS. You'd also need Congressmen/women, non-profits, journalists, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter is in the news all the time with POTUS, or something else. Talk show hosts like Fallon use it as a bit on his show. And yet it just can't grow. It's time to start charging the twitter faithful a WhatsApp style fee of say something small a year or monthly. I'd hate for twitter to go under.

<comment><USER7> Grow where ? Do people realize there are actual limits on growth because humans aren't infinite ?

<comment><USER8> I don't think growth necessarily means growing the user base.

<comment><USER6> Exactly I'm thinking growing revenue so as to not fold. Maybe though they never should have gone public. Maybe the business model just doesn't exist for them to be profitable and maybe people have moved on from twitter to Facebook and Snapchat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not surprised. Their ad product is just not that good. I spend $ on FB and it works. On Twitter.. gee, you can pay $2 per follower you end up getting. Organic is so easy on Twitter that you don't need the ad product.

<comment><USER10> I've spent thousands on Twitter ads (for my clients) in the past but am spending less and less these days.

Their new card design (ie, design of the ads) apparently is a magnet for unintentional clicks. Around 90-95% of clicks for my last campaign were accidental.* The crazy thing is that their support team knows about the problem yet they still charge you for those clicks as though they are legitimate, AND they still let people create ads in that format. I've since taken my (clients') advertising dollars elsewhere. No wonder their ad revenue has gone down.

*I can only assume they were accidental because Twitter showed, say, 100 clicks, and Google Analytics showed just 3 visits. Yet Twitter support insisted the clicks were legitimate. That means people clicked the ad (unintentionally) and, upon realizing it's loading a new page, left the page before it finished loading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was reading Twitter financials.

The income from operational activities is growing a lot (The news usually don't comment this), really good numbers, but as also the expenses. Selling/General/Admin. Expenses doubled, I suppose they are trying to find a way to make money, and they are doing it, but the expenses needs to stop growing. It also seems years ago they borrowed a lot of money to invest on firm, now they are paying constantly.

Impossible to know if this will be a good company to invest or not, but it is still very risky, as major disruptive IT companies.

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&ei=1X...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ATWTR&fstype=ii&ei=1XucWPioD4W2e-Tnl- gD)

</comment><comment><USER12> Twitter's tendency to ban and censor is either part of the problem or a sign of desperation. Either way, not good.

<comment><USER13> But isn't Twitter's unwillingness to ban unless in instances of overwhelming PR part of the problem? (i.e. the harassment issue that has legitimately driven away users)

<comment><USER14> It may be the case that it is simply impossible to serve too large a diversity of users out of one central service. Even ignoring the proximal political issues that people are thinking of right this second that are centered in the US, there's a lot of cultures in the world, with a lot of social norms in active conflict with each other, and a lot of nations who have various interests in enforcing those social norms and whose interests appear to be growing rather than shrinking. For a similar example, it is increasingly difficult if not impossible to run an international backup service housed entirely in any one country... you _must_ have the data housed in an acceptable jurisdiction for your customers and there is no one jurisdiction acceptable to everybody. It may the case that Twitter's current issues are not an anomaly, but a fundamental aspect of trying to run an impossibly large service. Going back to those "proximal political issues", they may not be an anomaly... they may simply be a specific instance of an inescapable general problem.

Facebook is facing similar pressures. Their valuation still seems to assume they've got a lot of growth potential, but what if this circle can't be squared? It isn't hard to imagine the possibility that not only has Facebook more-or-less grown as much as it can, give or take some stragglers, but that it may even have grown _more_ than it can sustain, in which case it is grossly overvalued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Unfortunately, it's a situation of investor indifference -- everyone is used to Twitter's troubles by now."

Could easily replace "Twitter" in this quote with a scary number of other public tech company names where investor indifference is going on.

I don't know all the reasons why we read this same fucking article every 3 months. I do think passivity in public markets and the rigged proxy voting schemes are letting bad things go on for too long. There is a fiduciary responsibility here. How long should a company and it's management get before you pull the plug and replace them. Maybe the next guy or girl will be worse than Jack. Who knows. But that doesn't mean he should have stayed this long.

Maybe we should learn from the President. 8 years max for CEOs. For better or worse. CEOs are people and other people can do the job. Get out. Stay on the board if you miss it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Twitter probably gets more free PR (with the news about famous people tweeting) than just about any tech company out there. It's sort of found its niche as a nano-blogging platform for people others like to listen to. It's never going to get to the true social network like Facebook and others have achieved, but that's fine.

The issue is just that's it's a very bloated company. I still question why Twitter isn't just like 100 people in a basement somewhere. Their revenue isn't great but it's also not terrible--it's their costs (which is mostly people related) that's complete out of whack. In my interactions with the company they always felt very bloated relative to what they do.

<comment><USER17> >I still question why Twitter isn't just like 100 people in a basement somewhere.

Interesting idea. Has this ever been discussed on HN before?

<comment><USER18> ad infinitum

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think, in a sense, Twitter is living up to its potential -- and it has a lot of potential.

What happens, however, when it doesn't live up to its benefactor's expectations?

</comment><comment><USER20> What are people's opinions on the most optimistic case for Twitter (the business)?

<comment><USER21> They get acquired by the Executive Branch of the US Government and relabeled "The Voice of Freedom"? :-)

<comment><USER20> Haha wow. This is already the worst of all possible dimensions but that would be rich

<comment><USER21> Obviously (I hope) my comment was intended as humorous but given that Twitter now appears to be an integral part of the political landscape I could imagine a scenario where it was bailed out as simply being too important (rather than too big) to fail.

I wonder if there would then be a "revenue" model in charging other governments to use it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why don't they just put ads on their page like every other company? With all the embedded tweets as well as what the user subscribes to they know who the user is so they can show them relevant ads.

</comment><comment><USER23> Funny how this thread is out of the front page. Either flagging or admins.

This is something that makes this industry look bad. Criticism is suppressed.</comment>


Automatic Wordpress Backup - <AUTHOR> http://www.wordpressbackup.org/ <comment><USER2> I've been thinking about this issue a lot more since Jeff Atwood lost his data.

What I like about this option is that it goes from the cloud to the cloud.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is no reason anyone should have to lose months of hard work in writing quality articles just because you didn't back up.</comment>