Yes I Saw Your Text, but Don't Expect Me to Respond Instantly - <AUTHOR> https://blog.automateads.com/yes-i-saw-your-text-but-dont-expect-me-to-respond-instantly/ <comment><USER2> I was hoping this article was going to highlight the emotional issues with responding instantly as opposed to the "lack of time" issue. I don't respond to most texts instantly, not because I'm driving or busy with my life, but because I just don't feel like responding right away. I am not sure why this is. I am not trying to be rude, and most of the time I feel bad about it and think that maybe I have communication issues, such as keeping in touch with people. But I am starting to realize that we shouldn't be expected to respond immediately "just because". We shouldn't have to be occupied to warrant not responding. Unfortunately, it is a stigma, and people will continue to get upset if they don't hear back within a matter of minutes. I wish someone would touch on this issue as I've never really seen it discussed.

<comment><USER3> I read the article, and it wasn't all that insightful, to be honest.

However, this is a topic I'm very interested in because my fiancee is the first person I've ever met that _does not_ reply back soon to a text message and hardly picks up her phone.

When we first started dating, this was a little strange. She would sometimes reply back within minutes. Other times she would take up to two hours. I couldn't gauge her interest in me.

It turns out due to her age and culture (non-Western), she just simply does not use her phone that much. So she isn't looking at it a lot.

We've argued that there must be a middle ground, though, and this is where it gets interesting.

This isn't really a technology problem. It is a philosophical one.

When we deal with people everyday, there is an unwritten and unspoken social contract we agree on. The case for not replying immediately to a stranger or an acquaintance is easily accepted, I believe. As the article says, you may be driving, you may be in another phone call, busy reading or studying. A stranger or acquaintance takes a longer time to sit higher up in your priority list. This is a basic socialization rule. I accept these things easily, and what's more, I act according to this concept. I basically categorise people's importance in my world. Even if I've read the text message, seen the missed phone call, or read the email. These categories are key, I believe.

However, when a loved one, your significant other, spouse, fiancee or fiance, messages you or phones you or emails you, it is a totally different ball game, in my view. Emergency purposes, communicating your whereabouts sooner makes cohabitation much easier, especially when planning your day, unexpected plans, people know your schedule/routine and any changes may cause grief to your loved ones, etc.

I do feel like family whom you do not live with is considered a step down in the priority list, but those you live with, specifically a partner, is different. And feeling insulted when they don't respond within 30 minutes at most generally, is pretty natural.

<comment><USER4> I would find it infuriating if I was expected to reply to every contact within 30 minutes. Sure, if it's important I'll reply. But otherwise? It feels control-freaky.

<comment><USER5> Totally agree that it's very controlling and somewhat selfish to expect quick replies. 30 minutes is just an arbitrary line waiting for a misunderstanding or argument. Face-to-face and phone calls are different. If it's important, call. If it's not, I'll get to a reply when I'm free or not interrupting someone else I'm actually communicating with IRL.

<comment><USER6> But isn't expecting your spouse to answer your call immediately being "control freak" as well? _Who do you think I am to answer your call, a Slave?_ Seriously, this s*it has gone to annoying levels. Expecting timely response to time sensitive questions is just expecting the other person to have some basic "mobile etiquettes", not an intent to control them. Not all questions are life-or-death critical, some just needs quick response. "My friend is asking whether you'd like to come to dinner at his place tonight". A simple "Yes", or "No" would suffice. Calling for every such thing is actually much more time consuming for both parties involved (though that's the last option).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > If someone really needs you they will pick up the phone and call you. It's > that simple.

I actually never feel the urge to respond quickly to a text message. I treat it as the asynchronous platform that it is. Phone calls on the other hand are way more intrusive than text messages and I hardly ever answer any call because of it.

<comment><USER8> I always thought the asynchronicity was the main positive of SMS.

<comment><USER9> Eventually all communication mediums will be expected to be instantaneous and synchronous. It happened with email, it happened faster with SMS because everyone expects you to have your phone up your ass at all hours of the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sigh... Kind of OT but I'm reminded of an old client of mine. He would routinely send feature requests and bug reports over SMS. At the start, I'd interrupt whatever I was doing and log it in the appropriate place, but after the first few weeks of this, it started to get pretty disruptive. I didn't trust myself enough to remember to go back through my texts later and catch everything from the messages.

So I drew a line in the sand and explained to him that those things needed to go to email, so that I could deal with them at an appropriate time and not worry about losing them. This seemed to work well at first, but then every email was immediately followed by an SMS: did you get my email? The first few times, I interpreted that as "I sent an email a few days ago and didn't hear back" so I'd frantically go check my email and see the message: sent 2 minutes ago.

I don't miss that client. Eventually the solution was to ignore him on SMS entirely. Well... Eventually the solution was to fire him as a client, but that was for other reasons.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can definitely see the effect of this within development teams too. I remember one specific exchange where a developer sent "X is broken" to the whole team, pretty much all of whom immediately read it and then started wondering how "X got broken." A minute later the OP sent "Oops my bad, typo." What is the cost of a two minute interruption for an entire team, or of the broken concentration, which probably lasts longer than the original interaction did?

<comment><USER12> > What is the cost of a two minute interruption for an entire team

Approximately zero.

<comment><USER13> No.

We bill $120 hourly. If the client CC the whole team on a problem, the whole team is going to take time off their current work to read the email. (5 mins * 6 workers) They are then going to reply to the message (2 mins * 6) and then investigate (10 mins * 6). A manager is likely going to step in and manage the team (30 mins). Finally, one developper is going to fix the issue (1 hour) and all the other developers are going to require getting back in "the zone" (average of 11 mins *6).

That's three hours (or $360) wasted for an email that should have been properly sent to the product manager or to the support team. If the client do this every week and nobody notice it and educate him, he is going to waste thousands a month of the project's budget.

<comment><USER14> My grandma had a saying for people like you- "they know the price of everything but the value of nothing."

<comment><USER15> Enlighten us. What is the value of the email about a nonexistent problem sent to the whole team?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the best and simplest changes I ever made was to have my phone on airplane mode by default. Originally, the change was just to maximize the life of a dying battery, but even after I replaced the battery I discovered that I was happier, more focused, and less stressed when I only checked my phone 3-4 times a day. Essentially, I treat it like I treat email.

Everyone who knows me knows that I do this and I have told them that I am not going to change. For emergencies, they know the people I usually see each day and know to call one of them.

I've discovered that when people can't expect to contact you on a whim at any time, they think ahead and let you know what their plans are in advance. Both parties can then arrange their availability in advance and use their time more efficiently.

After a year of doing this it makes you realize just how absurd and artificial the expectation of continuous availability is. My attention is a resource and I am going to control how I allocate it, not others.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've never had a person actually get upset with me because I've not responded back to a text immediately.

I have some people who will always respond to my texts immediately, and some people who I will be lucky if I hear back in an hour.

I don't hold any ill will towards the second group of people. I come to expect that from them.

The only time I might get agitated is if someone always responds immediately and then stops, just because it's violating my expectations.

I wonder if this person were to stop compulsively responding to texts immediately if people would stop getting angry when he doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a phone for a reason. It isn't to send telegraphs. I don't carry my phone with me to work, because people who need to get in touch with me have my work phone number and I live a few minutes away from the office. If your ego is so fragile that you need realtime validation of your thoughts, then we aren't going to get along. I'll keep on doing what I'm doing because it works for me, and I hope you find people who are willing to spend all day looking at their phone. I'd rather see everything else around me.

</comment><comment><USER19> As someone deeply entrenched in a mobile workspace I tend to ignore a lot of txts because they aren't important. If they were important the person that's texting me would go through the proper channels and write up specs, etc for me instead of blasting a "WE NEED THIS NEW THING ASAP!" style message. Those texts get ignored and I send the person a Hipchat message stating that they must go through proper channels or NO work will get done.

Writing the specs takes about 1-5 minutes and allows the developer to have a clear path to work from.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is an issue of boundaries on the receiver's side. Other people's unreasonable expectations are not binding on us. Otherwise we quickly become enslaved to everyone else's whims, which is no way to live and certainly no way to succeed at anything.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is simply a matter of training people that you interact with. If you treat your own time as valuable and don't immediately respond to everything, eventually everyone else will come to think of your time as valuable also.

The trick is to never respond immediately on media that you don't want it expected from. It has the random reinforcement effect attached to it, so if they get you once, they'll always expect it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great post. This resonates with me because too often others expect a quick reply. I have read receipts disabled due to that mentality and won't use a messaging service that uses them without an opt-out option.

<comment><USER22> I hate read receipts and disable them where possible too. A pet peeve of mine is people who demand read receipts in Outlook. There is no way I'll ever send that person a read receipt.

<comment><USER5> Yep. I do the same with mail. Read receipts are just a privacy intrusion as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> An expectation of instantaneous response, combined with the pathetic verbal throughput of typing text on a glass screen. So many things that would be easy to say out loud are not worth typing on a phone screen.

I didn't like talking on the phone much but texting is so much worse in so many ways.

<comment><USER24>
        > So many things that would be easy to say out loud are
        > not worth typing on a phone screen.

Yet even less worthy of a phone call.

<comment><USER25> "Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."

</comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash I have been arguing for contact states for years. You should be able to set conditions like the old IM status messages - "away," "in a meeting,","family time,"etc - that limit your reachability and optionally notify people that you won't be notified of their messages (until a certain time, if scheduled).

This was (naively) my first iOS app attempt before I realized this is something that has to be done at the OS level. Please, Apple, "Do Not Disturb" was a step in the right direction. Finish the job.

</comment><comment><USER26> Like some of the commenters, I don't respond to text immediately and not just when driving. This behavior of mine is made worse by all these new IM apps like telegram, hangouts which provide notifications on whether I have read it. If for some reason, I try to reply immediately and change my mind midway, the IM app shows 'xx it typing..' to the other party and now it's too late to back out.

</comment><comment><USER27> When I receive emails and texts or anything for that matter, I try to get back to the original sender quickly. I expect others to do the same. People who violate this I treat on a case by case basis. If I know your life situation (i.e. you are always checking your phone - you are unemployed) and you are unable to get back to me within a couple of days let alone 24 hours, then to me this strongly indicates flakiness, or lack of respect of my time. However, if you are a busy individual with job, family responsibilities and you are unable to get back to me within a couple of days then I will cut you some slack.

Ultimately, however, I find myself gradually mimicking the behavior of my contacts. If you always take your time to get back to me, then I won't see you as a priority and if we are 'friends' or 'romantic partners' then the relationship will gradually erode due to this. However, if you get back to me in a timely manner, you are always on time for appointments and you always let me know beforehand that you are not going to keep an appointment then I will put more effort than I would otherwise into trying to maintain the relationship.

</comment><comment><USER28> But, why would you _see_ the text or _read_ it if you're not going to respond?

<comment><USER29> I can think of a few situations. You're in a meeting and your phone buzzes. You can quickly read the message without being rude, where typing a response would be considered rude (at least in my office). I'll often do this to make sure it isn't something important that needs immediate attention.

This also applies to driving. It would be unsafe to type a response, but reading a message in my opinion is fine. Similar to glacing at a GPS.

<comment><USER30> _It would be unsafe to type a response, but reading a message in my opinion is fine. Similar to glacing at a GPS._

As a cyclist and a former driver, neither is acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> tl;dr version: "You kids today and your loud music! Get off my lawn!"</comment>


Ask HN: Open Source project ideas? - <AUTHOR> If you could do an Open Source project from scratch today, what would you build and share ? To keep it simple, lets say you have the time and resources. <comment><USER2> Tooling for dealing with and understanding legacy code. Some tools are around but they're scattered. I'd like to be able to easily see what code is not in use, be able to generate database diagrams, see what files are changed most frequently, automatically link changes to your change bug tracking system etc. I deal with legacy code and most often the real work is in understanding why a prior change was made.

</comment><comment><USER3> An open source version of AWS lambda, as soon as I get the time I will work on seriously it...

</comment><comment><USER4> I wish there were more good, open source, product life-cycle management (PLM) tools.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I will go first. I would love to create the Next Gen Online Learning Platform. Robust API to build your own interfaces on top of it. 100% Free and Open source.

<comment><USER5> What's wrong with openedX?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For example farmers are complaining about lack of open-source cattle managements software.</comment>


Why Daylight Saving Time Should Be Abolished - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/11/04/why-daylight-saving-time-should-be-eliminated/ <comment><USER3> Last winter I tried as an experiment setting up my own personal time zone, and not "falling back" an hour. Since I live in an offgrid cabin, having the sun still up at 6 pm in midwinter is especially useful -- it means an extra hour when I'm using direct solar power while working and not draining batteries.

It was occasionally confusing to visitors that clocks were not at the time they expected. Otherwise, I didn't have many problems with scheduling; I work with people in many timezones anyway so having to adjust times is standard practice. If I forgot to make an adjustment, I'd arrive early. Restaurants were occasionally annoying when I wanted lunch and they were still finishing late breakfast service, but they tend to have some crossover time anyway, and I don't mind a 1 pm lunch either.

I'm planning to do it again this winter.

BTW, tech-wise, it's easy enough to configure a personal time zone, at least on Linux. Just set TZ=JEST+4. (And be happy not changing the remaining dumb clocks. The only clock I had to manually adjust was on my android phone.)

<comment><USER4> You live in an "offgrid cabin" with an android phone and internet? Interesting... do tell...

<comment><USER5> Presumably he's referring to the electrical grid (hence the PV and batteries) rather than trying to avoid WiFi so he doesn't get migraines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As I recall, Russia has done just that this year and abolished the practice in Moscow, switching to GMT+4 year-round. Quote:

"Every fall and every spring we are swearing at this system," Medvedev said. "Our biorhythms are damaged. We are all angry. We either oversleep and turn up late for work or wake up too early and don't know what to do with this free time. Let alone poor cows and other animals that can't understand why they should have their meals or be milked earlier or later."

Here is a story on it: <http://rt.com/news/daylight-saving-time-abolished/>

<comment><USER7> What he said. First Daylight savings time, then Centigrade and the metric system. These three changes would give our economy a significant boost IMHO. Using outmoded metrics is an insidious and wasteful form of protectionism.

<comment><USER8> I don't see how centigrade would actually help. I agree that it's better for scientific measurements (if not as good as Kelvins) but the typical Fahrenheit range is much better suited for weather conditions than centigrade from a usability standpoint. The typical weather conditions on the inhabited parts of the earth don't range much further than 0-100, whereas centrigrade can't represent any kind of legitimately wintry conditions without resorting to negative numbers and everything above 50 is completely unused. From a usability standpoint, it makes sense that typical temperatures should be distributed along a 100 point scale, and that only genuine extremes should exceed the ends of that. Fahrenheit meets that requirement; centigrade doesn't.

<comment><USER9> If you live in a climate where you have real winter, then being able to tell the difference between freezing and not freezing is very important. -1 means snow from the sky, ice on the roads, lower humidity. +1 means rain, wet roads, and higher humidity. It's a very important divider, which is why it's at a prominent place on the Celsius scale, unlike the Fahrenheit one where it's between 32 and 34.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Anders Celsius lived further north than Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. :-)

<comment><USER8> I'm not fond of the tradeoff between not having to remember the number 32 and having to use a sign bit for half the year. Frankly you're not totally safe from ice until 35 or so, and it's useful to have a marker around 0 or so that just says "your face will fall off". Likewise, it's nice to have a convenient marker around 100 for "your face will melt off". 0 and 100 are good for extreme ends of a range, not so much for middle values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Greetings from 60 degrees northern latitude. We just turned our clocks back an hour a week ago. That means that there's an hour more sunlight before I wake up and it's dark by the time I'm out of work. I have to say, I don't really like the arrangement of daylight saving time.

Today the sun rises at 07.52 in the morning and sets at 16.14 at the afternoon. It's going to be getting worse for two more months and that means it's 4 months before it's any better than today. For a six month period most of my life is walking through these orange tunnels that appear when sodium lights illuminate wet asphalt and concrete. The first symptoms of limited sunlight exposure are starting to show around this time of the year and supplemental vitamin d has to be taken or wild mood swings start to appear.

When I used to live at a student campus, I had a period of "hibernation" every winter. I lived an ascetic lifestyle in the one square mile around the campus and the uni. I only left to go home for xmas. I re-emerged when the catkins started appearing on the willows.

In these latitudes, it would make sense to be in permanent daylight saving time ("summer time"). During the summer and the winter there's really no difference since the sun is practically constantly up or down. It's the fall and the spring that make the difference.

And if anyone knows of good software engineering career options a little closer to the equator, drop me a line :)

<comment><USER11> Have you considered going to a tanning bed? I have heard this works very well, improving mood and general outlook during the dark times. I plan on doing this 1-2 times a week when the winter gets going hardcore here as an experiment.

In reading up on this subject, just a few minutes is all that is needed, the point is not a tan, just exposure to UV and brightness.

<comment><USER12> Let's see how your mood is when diagnosed with skin cancer! Not that I would wish it in anyone, but intentional exposure to damaging UV when there are safer alternative treatments for SAD does not seem like a sensible course of action.

<comment><USER13> A few minutes exposure to UV isn't harmful, and is on balance likely benficial.

Put it this way - I would get more UV collecting my mail in summer than you would on a tanning bed for a couple of minutes. And I haven't dropped dead. But a bright sunny day does make my mood brighter.

Vitamin D deficiency and depression are much bigger issues than UV over exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm Swiss. Back in the day, the Swatch group had an experiment where they tried to invent a new unit for time. They came up with the `beat`, also known as Swatch Internet Time. The unit represented a 1000 beat cycle centered around midnight on the Swiss meridian, ie. UTC+1. There'd be no daylight savings time.

All in all, it's a really cool idea, and I owned a watch for many years that reported beat time, but it was essentially useless. This is perhaps the most gigantic of chicken-and-egg problems, the mere fact that it is currently useless ensures that it will forever be useless.

More at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time>

<comment><USER15> I used to have a watch that gave beats. Totally useless other than annoying friends by constantly converting any meeting time into beats.

I think it will take colonising other planets before the world is ready for a new unit of time and at that point the whole concept of 'day' is kind of out the window.

<comment><USER16> Colonizers on new planets will probably still use minutes and hours because that's what they're used to culturally. Especially if they have to collaborate with people on Earth.

This Wikipedia artile about timekeeping on Mars is fun reading. The Mars rover operation teams used work schedules (and watches!) based on Martian time because they need to be available when the rover had daylight.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> DST is an example of how stuck in our ways humanity can be. In addition to the evidence in the article there have also been studies that have shown increased car accidents, lost productivity and all kinds of other problems caused by the cognitive impact of a whole society trying to wake up earlier then their body is expecting.

As far as energy usage is concerned I could see the argument being true if we could pick when the time changed each year to correspond with temperature fluctuations. But since weather tends to vary from year to year and we change the time on a set day the effort seems moot.

<comment><USER18> Who the hell is responsible for much of the DST insanity?

I think most people on hacker news would agree DST is insanity.

<comment><USER19> I don't agree that it is insanity.

People who live close to the equator or in the middle of time zones tend not to see much point in DST. The day length doesn't vary much at the equator, and if you are in the middle of a time zone then the offset doesn't vary too much.

If you are closer to a pole or at the edge of a time zone, the offset is not ideal around the solstices. So, DST is welcome for many.

I've heard the arguments from people close to the equator that the curtains will fade and the men will get their morning erections while they are on the bus, etc. Of course it is different there in the sub-tropics.

If you accept that time should not be completely local (i.e. the local church tower clock is set to noon, as it used to be) and not completely global (i.e. we all run on UTC and Tuesday begins at 00:00:01 which happens to be late afternoon in location X) and so that we arbitrarily assign time zones according to the rotation of our planet, surely we can also adjust the time zones depending on the path of our planet around the sun.

Well, if it works for the locals, that is. Insanity seems like a strong word.

<comment><USER20> > _People who live close to the equator or in the middle of time zones tend > not to see much point in DST. The day length doesn't vary much at the > equator, and if you are in the middle of a time zone then the offset doesn't > vary too much._

> _If you are closer to a pole or at the edge of a time zone, the offset is > not ideal around the solstices. So, DST is welcome for many._

I'm not quite sure what your argument is.

I can tell you that here, above 60˚, it's light enough the entire summer anyway (as in, it's only dark for about 2 hours a day), and in the winter the added light is too early in the morning but it gets darker earlier in the afternoon. Today, for example, the sun was up at 7:52 and down at 16:14 (4:14pm).

I suspect it's most useful for people around 35-45˚.

<comment><USER19> You probably aren't sure about my argument as it is not aimed at you. DST is useless at the equator, and useless at high latitudes. However, it's useful at middle latitudes, and that point is often missed by many. I would agree with 35-45˚.

I also live above 60˚ north - today I had 2 minutes less daylight than you :(

I think some of the negativity towards DST here is due to failure to consider the local needs of other people. I guess that's my argument. The day is important, and you know the importance of things more when they are gone.

<comment><USER18> Some people don't really care about daytime and nighttime at all. To them, the DST is just a mindless insanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I view DST as a clever hack to solve an otherwise intractable coordination problem: getting everyone to shift their schedules to not waste all that extra morning daylight in the summer.

As for the proposal of permanent DST, I would like that personally but I think that too many people would have a problem with kids going to school in pitch darkness in the winter and whatnot.

The theoretical ideal would be that standard business hours continuously adjust so that they always start soon after dawn. That maximizes the amount of after-work sunlight, without sacrificing daytime sunlight. Despite the existence of people who prefer early morning daylight, I think that maximizes social efficiency.

Of course it's not (currently) practical to continuously adjust, so DST is a coarse approximation.

I do appreciate the ridiculousness of changing the clocks instead of changing our schedules. But I think it's impossible to coordinate the change in schedules. You'd have too many defectors and the whole thing would fall apart. Think about the massive interdependence: work schedules, daycare, trains, social activities, etc etc. It really has to happen all together en masse or it doesn't work.

Whether it's worth the hassle (and, yes, the real cost in lost productivity and sleep disruption) is of course still debatable but I think those declaring it pure insanity haven't fully thought it through.

PS: Interesting exception that proves the rule: Arizona opts out of DST because it gets so hot in the afternoon and evening that people actually prefer the early morning daylight.

<comment><USER22> _But I think it's impossible to coordinate the change in schedules. You'd have too many defectors and the whole thing would fall apart._

I'd think that if all government agencies including schools switched their schedules at the DST point, most companies would quickly fall in line. And ideally lots of companies who currently have fixed hours would realize they don't actually need them.

At the very least, stop mucking with the changeover date every few years and breaking millions of software installations.

<comment><USER21> That's persuasive. You might be right. It's a tough sell though: Come on everyone, time to start waking up earlier! Up and at 'em! Daylight's a-wastin'!

(Yeah, imagining that collective groan has brought me back from the brink of changing my mind! It could never happen without the clock-shift hack.)

I agree about not changing the changeover date; that seriously compounds the hassle of it. Any clock that auto-adjusts on the old schedule has to be manually adjusted 4 times per year!

<comment><USER23> And of course, if you manage to do it without the hack, you still end up with many of the downsides, disrupted sleep schedules and whatnot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I definitely prefer the light later in the evenings (DST), I'd just like it to stay that way year-round. (i.e. let's stop the madness, but it would be a pity if we stuck with Standard Time year-round, we should stick with DST year- round).

<comment><USER25> You want more evening light, you get up earlier.

I want more morning light. Can't stand getting up when it's night, don't care when it gets dark later in the day.

How about we just agree that "noon" means "sun straight overhead" (within a half hour for time zone position) and each get up as each sees fit, with no thrashing over forcing strangers to adhere to an unwanted deviation at arbitrary dates.

<comment><USER8> Not everyone can just roll into work, lunch, dinner, meetings, dates whenever the hell they feel like it. People have to coordinate their schedules.

<comment><USER25> YOU try "coordinating schedules" with a couple of toddlers who now are up and raring to go at 5:00AM, thanks to a conspiracy of complete strangers to #^*& with my clocks.

As of this morning I hate DST 10x more than ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The real answer to this problem is to recognise that different people have different chronotypes (<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Chronotype>).

Flexible working arrangements allow workers to adjust their lives to match their circadian rhythms and other biological needs. Productivity increases due to workers shifting their workloads to the optimal times of day.

Perhaps some workers perform better over the span of a day if they take a 4 hour break in the middle for a main meal, quick sleep and some social activity? Perhaps others perform better if conducting their work in one contiguous block?

Some people like ordered, repeatable and structured schedules. Others prefer a flexible schedule where the order of their day may be completely different each day of the week depending on what commitments they have planned and what opportunities suddenly become available.

Daylight savings and fixed 9-5 working hours are deprecated concepts in a modern "high-tech" society.

</comment><comment><USER27> Russia just did it in 2011.

It will no longer have time adjustments twice a year. Last one was in Spring 2011.

<comment><USER28> Wait.. so it is now permanently on Daylight Savings time? (e.g. sun at highest point at ~ 1pm every day?)

<comment><USER29> Not a bad idea really. Since it gets dark muuuch sooner in the winter, it always made since to me that we should just stay on daylight savings time year round.. so effectively bump everybody over one time zone permanently. I'd rather have sun after I work than before it, leaving work in the afternoon and seeing stars is absurd.

<comment><USER30> The time of sunrise/sunset is dependent on the latitude you're at. For those living closer to the equator the time differences don't have much of an impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't know about energy savings, but I know DST has cost plenty in developer time, including mine. :)

<comment><USER32> Oh man I had so many stupid problems caused by developers who made two decisions:

1\. "hey let's store times in the local time zone in the DB" 2\. "oh the user wants their local time, I'll just use an offset"

This comment just brought back the memories...

And no, I'm no longer at that company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why stop there? Abolish time zones. Everyone should be using UTC directly.

This would solve more problems than it causes.

<comment><USER34> I vehemently disagree. I think the problems that this causes are larger than the current solution.

Timezones aren't a human construction. Humans have only offered a series of approximations that are accurate enough.

Cognitive dissonance: What time is the business day of Shanghai? What time should I arrive in New York to get there in the morning? What time will my American guildmates be online? People would still have to memorise the major timezone offsets, and this would negate any purported advantages. If we're still going to have to memorise timezone offsets, why bother?

Rather than asking "what's the time in New York?," I'll be asking "what part of the day is it in New York?" The latter will be asked in place of the other, but it would also be harder to answer due to no localised New York time.

"What's the time in New York?" can be answered by knowing that American EST is GMT-5. My local timezone is GMT+10, and it's currently 1300. Hence, I now know that it's 12 PM in New York, which means it's dark, which means that businesses there are shut and it's a bad time to call friends there.

I'll admit that DST makes things harder, but I can still calculate a good approximation on the fly. 11 or 12 PM - it doesn't really matter. If it does, well, I know that the northern hemisphere will be at the end of Autumn, so NY- local DST is probably over.

With one global timezone, how do I answer "what part of the day is it in New York?" Well, I still have to remember that New York's "timezone" is -4 GMT, and I still have to remember that my local "timezone" is +10 GMT. I still have to do a calculation, but I have to have a mapping of times to the state of the day in my head to know where New York is in relation.

It's so much more complicated.

It also makes it hard to know "when" a certain place is. Say I arrive in London, and it's overcast. I'd actually have to calculate what part of the day it is, by working off my home time->day-state mapping. That's so wrong.

<comment> muuh-gnu > Rather than asking "what's the time in New York?," I'll be asking "what part > of the day is it in New York?"

Except that the current time zones dont really tell you that, sice most of them are decided politically, not by mapping to sunrise/sunset as closely as possible. The world time zone map is a irrational mess, including time jumps of 2-3 hours when crossing a land border, or time zones changing backwards becuse of convulted political borders.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Standard_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Standard_time_zones_of_the_world.png)

<comment><USER34> Actually, yes, the current timezones do tell me that.

The time known as 7 AM is early morning everywhere. 11 AM is late morning everywhere. 2 PM is early afternoon everywhere. 8 PM is mid evening everywhere.

By their definition, timezones are 100% accurate for telling the "part of the day".

They're inaccurate in the sense of telling where the sun is in the sky - <USER2> too big of a deal, really. But even then, they're close enough for casual purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> China has a single time zone, Beijing time

[http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical- applications/astr...](http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/astronomical- applications/astronomical-information-center/world-tzones)

</comment><comment><USER36> Am I the only one who at least subjectively likes DST? I hate waking up in the dark, which DST doesn't help with, but the alternative, namely moving clocks one hour ahead the whole year through (effectively bumping up a time zone) would make me feel downright miserable. Also, I just love being able to sit outside in the sun until 11 P.M. in the summer.

That said, I _did_ just miss a meeting this morning because the EU switches to winter time at the end of October whereas the US switches early in November. Makes it even more confusing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes, we should 100% make it permanent. It's simply better to have more daylight in the evening than in the morning.

<comment><USER38> Do you think it's better for the sun to rise at 8:25 am? Because that would be the situation during the winter solstice in San Francisco if DST was made permanent. Not much fun to wake up and go to work in darkness.

[http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=224&#...</a>

<comment><USER39> Most people seem to have bigger issues with getting out of work/school and going back in the dark. Leaving work at night is just depressing because you have the feeling of no free time, whereas it doesn't matter in the morning because you're probably just having breakfast and getting ready to leave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> When posed with the question, if there were one invention you could erase from human history, what would it be-- the only erasure I could think of that would have a wholly positive effect was dst. What other fixture of American (others too, I'm sure) life is so colossally pointless?

</comment><comment><USER41> I think I agree. I can see lots of semantic problems, but I can't think of anything that would be an actual problem. After all, we already have Zulu time, Unix time and UTC being used in various places. Maybe I'm just not being imaginative enough?

<comment><USER42> > After all, we already have Zulu time, Unix time and UTC being used in > various places.

Tangential, but "Zulu time" is just another name for UTC.

<comment><USER43> I hope you never have to care about this, but Zulu is synonymous with GMT, not UTC. UTC includes leap seconds, whereas GMT does not.

There also used to be differences with some measurements of GMT starting the numbering at noon instead of midnight (madness!)

I am the creator and maintainer of <http://the.endoftimezones.com> and an amateur time historian.

<comment><USER30> Zulu includes the leap seconds. Zulu just comes from US Navy denoting it as Time Zone Z and all US Navy time zones are based on offset from UTC.

<comment><USER43> Ah, thank you. I suppose that is the amateur in amateur time historian ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Still don't buy it.

The article that it points to, where it's said that energy consumption is reduced by a mere 0.2-0.5% is talking about total consumption - in my understanding the most pronounced effect of DST is a reduction in _peak_ consumption.

In peak hours (around 6-7pm, when everyone is getting home), the extra energy is provided by coal plants, which are expensive and polluting. A 5% reduction in peak consumption might mean that dozens of coal plants are kept shut during that time.

And even a 0.5% reduction is _huge_ when you talk about a whole country...

</comment><comment><USER25> All these posts on HN about DST with no mention of impacts on systems?

DST sucks on embedded systems, especially when the change dates are changed. Not knowing the local DST standard, or not being able to update fielded systems when legislation changes the DST dates, means a system may be on the "wrong" time for days, weeks or months. Many are opting to abandon automatic time changes for "hour+1" user settings, or ignoring DST altogether.

Could be amusing to compute how much worldwide total storage and CPU time is devoted to handling DST.

<comment><USER45> My opinion goes like this: all computer systems should track time in GMT and not care in which timelines the humans live. Your admin (or his software) in NY can convert to local time when he needs it. Your backup admin in LA can do the same thing. Why a system at this point in tech history needs to keep local time is beyond my understanding.

<comment><USER25> EMBEDDED systems. There is no admin who can just tweak a field for hundreds or thousands of devices out, not networked, who knows where.

<comment><USER45> I still don't see why an embedded system cares about timezones. It measures ticks. That's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I was rather annoyed this last week at trying to schedule meetings with people in Europe who have a DST that started a week before ours did in the US.

</comment><comment><USER47> > You can also thank railroads for time zones—geographic swaths of the globe > set to the same hour.

Or, more specifically, Sir Sandford Fleming.

<http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10182>

</comment><comment><USER48> Here's my comment and the following discussion from a while ago about having just one time zone: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2528354>

</comment><comment><USER49> While we're at it...

13 months, 28 days each = 364 days Plus 1 or 2 special days at the beginning of the year. Much easier to figure out the day of the week for your next meeting.

We could name the 13th month Jobsuary, or you pick.

<comment><USER50> Eastman Kodak used this calendar internally for over 60 years. They called the extra month Sol.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar>

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Is really the twice-a-year DST change significant compared to time changes while traveling? I mean, what fraction of Americans do not travel to another time zone at least once per year?

<comment><USER52> Probably a large fraction. Most people I went to high school with never leave the city we grew up in, let alone the time zone.

I didn't leave my timezone until after I had graduated college... and almost all of those times were to go to PAX .. which is now also on the east coast so I haven't even done that in 2 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I don't think anyone needs to be convinced that we should stop with DST, or the whole timezones thing for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER54> In the process why don't we also redefine the second and split the day to 1000 minutes?

<comment><USER55> It's been tried before: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar#Deci...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar#Decimal_time) and it lasted even less than the republican calendar. And retried <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time>

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Daylight Saving Time is great. It helps us have more sunlight during the spring, summer, and fall. Everyone is happy when it is enacted in the spring and they get to have sunlight when they go home from work. And in the fall, you get an extra hour of sleep. It's win-win.

</comment><comment><USER56> Go all the way and everyone switch to GMT!</comment>


Retro: A Modern, Pragmatic Forth - <AUTHOR> http://forthworks.com/retro/book.html <comment><USER2> The link [http://forth.works/book.html](http://forth.works/book.html) is broken. Maybe the correct link is: [http://forthworks.com/retro/book.html](http://forthworks.com/retro/book.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another modern Forth that has a cross-compiler to make Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, Raspberry Pi, and iPhone executables is 8th.

[https://8th-dev.com/](https://8th-dev.com/)

It comes bundled with the C++ based JUCE GUI framework, SQLite, ODBC, encrypted binaries, JSON support, and a lot of support for other things that you typically don't see in a tool written by one person. The more expensive licenses come with AWS and automotive Linux support, so nifty for this area.

Sadly, it is closed source and commercial (although you can get source with an enterprise license I think). On the plus side, it is really cheap (there is a free version too I believe) and the main developer seems to add user requested features and fix bug reports very quickly.

I obviously wouldn't write a production system in it (although I'm sure you could), but I wouldn't mind having a fun REPL based language to write simple and easy to distribute cross-platform desktop apps.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting (at least to me) because it's different from anything else out there. The way it runs, the way it is compiled and the language itself are nearly unique. It's also easy to bootstrap on very small machines and fairly easy to implement. It's the light saber of programming languages, "a more elegant language for a more elegant time". But then, that could just be the nostalgia talking...

<comment><USER5> What is the culture here on correcting wrong star wars quotes?

"An elegant weapon for a more _civilized_ age"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aRtupiY9Dw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aRtupiY9Dw)

<comment><USER6> Polite pedantry is generally okay here. If done well and including a source, it may even get a bunch of upvotes (a somewhat objective, though imperfect, metric of cultural acceptance).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Retro has been in development for 2 decades and has gone through quite a few changes in that time. It is inspired by Chuck Moore's forth and avoids the mistakes of the ANSI standard.

It is the forth of choice for any serious forth developer.

<comment><USER8> > It is inspired by Chuck Moore's forth

Which one? Because Retro and ColorForth seem light-years apart to me.

<comment><USER9> ColorForth is light-years apart from everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not too familiar with Forth, but I see posts about it and variants like this on HN from time to time.

High-level, what makes Forth interesting? What are it's major strengths and weaknesses?

<comment><USER11> A long time ago I wrote a tutorial for FORTH. It's in two parts, a part written in i386 assembly: [https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...](https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesforth.S)

followed by a part written in FORTH: [https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...](https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesforth.f)

It builds gradually from asm primitives into a somewhat sophisticated language with features like exceptions, function inlining and a decompiler.

The major strength, probably unique amongst programming languages, is that you can keep the entire system in your head (by "system", I mean both language and the simple operating system that it implements). The downside is that the code is write-only.

<comment><USER12> I just wanted to say "Thank You!" For jonesforth. I don't know how many times i've read it. It's probably what made everything "click" for me, so "thanx"</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Utilities you would like to see resurrected? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for an interesting open source project this summer, and John Grubber's utility Dragon Drop has inspired me. I want to create an intuitive and useful app, but still need inspiration.<p>Is there any utility that you used to have, yet was discontinued, that you still miss to this day? Hopefully something small and lightweight. <comment><USER2> Google Notebook.

Google just pushed Docs too hard, but I don't need all that functionality. I want performance, a few basic formatting options and instant saving.

I don't use no stinking sharing either.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Quanta IDE very web developer friendly - nor or less died with KDE 3.5 \- Kooka scanner tool (which incorporated OCR, there is a quite a lack of Linux OCR apps.)</comment>


Spotify's Best Feature: The Spoken Word Section - <AUTHOR> http://thehustle.co/spotify-spoken-word <comment><USER2> Not available in the desktop client it seems.

<comment><USER3> It is for me on Mac. Browse -> Genres & Moods -> Word

Awesome stuff. Looking forward to exploring it.</comment></comment>


Apple v. Samsung jury wants to know what Jobs said about Google - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/inside-the-apple-v-samsung-jury-room-many-questions-no-good-answers/

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems once again the jury is ignoring the process of the trial and wanting to rule based on emotional appreciations of the situation. A jury trial for this kind of case seems to be really hard to do well.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you find it productive to have an email folder categorization system? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering if you find it productive to design folders and apply rules to each folder. e.g. IF I receive an email from John >>> THAN that email will go to John folder. So the end-goal is to multiple folders based on your peers' names. <comment><USER2> No, because I can search my emails for sender, recipient, words in the subject/body, etc. When I get an email that I think I may need to find later but it doesn't include relevant keywords (for example, the project or client name) I forward it to myself with the keywords added. I haven't used email folders for a decade, I rely on searching. I use GMail.

Sometimes email messages have information that belongs somewhere else, like a bug report or a task. I transfer those to the relevant system or document when I receive them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do find it useful if the separation is made by project or by such a topic that cannot be found through search.

A folder for each sender is redundant, you can filter your mail and get the same result.

Best is if you can apply the GTD methodology and sort the incoming email in what needs immediate attention, what can wait a bit, etc... I use this with work emails. For my private emails I have a topic based tagging/folder technique.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have plenty of subfolders in my IMAP account and use them all the time. But they're an archive for me. New email automatically going in there will never be discovered.</comment>


If Russian Intelligence Did Hack the DNC, the NSA Would Know, Snowden Says - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/07/26/russian-intelligence-hack-dnc-nsa-know-snowden-says/ <comment><USER2> I'm sure they do know the truth. The trouble is, we, the public, can never learn it from them. Even if they decided to reveal exactly what they knew, their repeated lies during the Snowden affair have undermined their credibility too far for anything they say to be believed.</comment>


Jeff Bezos Finds Apollo 11 Rockets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/amazons-jeff-bezos-discovers-historic-apollo-11-rocket-engines-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea/255190/

<comment><USER2> There is an interesting sub-text here which should probably get more attention. Jeff Bezos funded this effort.

Let that sink in for a moment.

When the CIA wanted to get a peak at a Soviet Era sub that sank to 17,000' they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer [1] to go retrieve it. It was a mammoth undertaking which required the financial assistance of a nation state to make it work.

In 1982 when Forbes first started listing the 400 richest people they had 13 billionaires and 75 million made the list [2], which is about 167 million in inflation adjusted dollars [3], and the current lists #400 is is $1.05B so a bit over 6x larger even after inflation is considered.

The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments. Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)

I talked with some folks at Scaled Composites a bit after their successful X-Prize bid. A common theme was that they could have been successful earlier if it had not been for the red tape put in their way by the government. (some estimated two years earlier but I think that was optimistic).

And you look at the world concerns that arise when North Korea tests 'long range' rockets because building a rocket that can get a meaningful payload into orbit is 98% of the way to being able to drop something out of orbit pretty much anywhere you want.

Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly. Not something the government can generally tolerate but explorers can.

The risk though is that you end up with a corporation that is has the capability of exploiting space and corporations don't generally sign treaties. That makes for interesting times indeed.

[1] <https://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/jennifer.htm>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_400> (hopefully it is accurate)

[3] <http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi>

[4] [http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#p_40_s_arank_All%20industr...](http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#p_40_s_arank_All%20industries_All%20states_All%20categories_)

<comment><USER3> >The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments.

Wealth has been concentrating as well. If the rich continually get richer, it makes sense that at some point their capabilities become comparable to nation states.

<comment><USER4> Hundreds of greedy individuals with more power than some countries. What could possibly go wrong?

With barely any oversight, non-existent checks and balances, no social responsibility, an the power to sway the laws that the rest of us must live by, I urge you all to consider where we're headed. To me, at least, it seems that the age of kings is once again upon us.

<comment><USER5> It's not like government officials are devoid of greed either, by the way. Ever noticed that there are rarely any "poor" or even remotely middle-class person in politics to be seen ?

Private parties are subject to the law. They can be sued. They can be made to repair damage.

Governments ? They have no responsibilities whatsoever. Once their term is done, everything's forgotten and forgiven. Where is their social responsibility? Ever seen a president appear in court an unlawful attack on another country ?

No ? That's what I thought.

<comment><USER6> > Ever seen a president appear in court an unlawful attack on another country > ?

I have seen some presidents in courts of Justice. Bill Clinton, Jacques Chirac, also in different categories, Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. I would say that this is roughly as common as seeing a wealthy CEO charged for crimes that his company made.

Basically, when you give power to an entity, you must keep in mind what it will cost to remove it when it abuses its power. Corporations or public authorities are not that different in this respect : if a fairly elected body cannot keep them in check, or step in in case of abuses, don't give them power, even if they look "nice".

That is a simple principle to avoid violent conflicts. If NASA says it wants to start inject cesium in huge quantity in the atmosphere, vote them out in the next term (yes, voting can work, even in America). If Exxon wants to do the same, make sure that a justice+police environment exists that can forbid them and coercively force them to not do that.

<comment><USER5> Wrong answer - you mention presidents who were in trial not for unlawful attacks on other people (Chirac and Clinton) and others who were anyway losing the war they were involved in (Milosevic and Hussein) which is a totally different situation. I have yet to hear about presidents of "democracies" being charged of crimes of war, for example.

> hen you give power to an entity, you must keep in mind what it will cost to > remove it

Agree with you, but why is it that in so many countries, elected officials are beyond the law in so many ways ? In France, for example, elected officials benefit of immunities and they cannot be sued during their mandate. How is that fair ?

> voting can work, even in America

Even in America ? A country when you only have a choice between 2 parties does not really qualify as "it's working" to me. It's like choosing between plague and cholera: you basically wonder every time which one is less harmful than the other.

We don't need more policies to protect the environment. If you gave actual ownership rights on the environment, people who own them would defend their ownership and sue polluters for damages and reparation. It's a well known problem called as "tragedy of the commons". When nobody owns anything, everyone will keep destroying the resource until it's gone. That's what's happening with Tuna fishing in the Mediterranean Sea currently. Ownership is the only answer to ensure there will be balance and retribution for unlawful acts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since I was a kid, space has always been a deep source of curiosity and wonder for me. With events like James Cameron's dive last week, Elon Musk's work, and this, it heartens me that private citizens are attempting rekindle the wonders they felt when they were younger for a new generation. All in reaction to the governments budget cuts and the limited ambitions of today's industry titans.

The longer term solution maybe showing tax payers scientific/statistical evidence that these sorts of 'stunts' really do yield an impressive ROI. It's a tough thing to do, but might be our way back to places like Mars.

<comment><USER8> How strange that this amazing dream, now rekindled, was originally born of cold war.

<comment><USER9> It's not that strange, competition breeds ambition and innovation. It's in humans' fundamental nature to compete by out-innovating, which is one of the strongest arguments for free markets. Since the fall of the USSR, more competition has been inward focusing, between companies. Most companies tend to compete at a lower level than nation-states, which is why you don't see as many of these huge projects. I think if the US became openly competitive with China, you'd start to see some very large projects again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Though they've been on the ocean floor for a long time, the engines remain the property of NASA."

Interesting, I thought Law of Finds stated that abandoned property belongs to the person who salvages it (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6896645.stm>), or maybe the engines were not abandoned?

<comment><USER11> government agencies do not relinquish their claims lightly. They don't consider their hardware to be "abandoned", merely "very hard to get to".

My ex-coworkers at the Museum of Flight (in Seattle, mentioned in this article) know the exact location of a WWII-era fighter aircraft that crashed in Lake Washington. They recovered and restored one aircraft from the crash site at least a decade ago, but the Navy will not let them touch the other one.

<comment><USER12> this may be because there are human remains at the second site, which makes it a war grave. its against federal law to disturb those IIRC

<comment><USER11> It was a "non-fatal collision" between the two aircraft [0]. Both pilots were rescued [1]. One aircraft was recovered without incident; the other sits corroding at the bottom of the lake. While the second corsair is in worse shape than the first one and therefore a much more significant challenge to recover, I know several people who would jump at the chance to try if they could get permission from the Navy.

[0] [http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/goodyear- fg-1d-corsai...](http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/goodyear- fg-1d-corsair) [1] <http://www.dcsfilms.com/Site_4/Corsair_lake_washington.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is what gets me about the moon-shot deniers. If NASA was motivated to save expense and risk, doesn't the act of launching the first stages of a bunch of Saturn rockets going to mostly squash any savings flat?

Those things are _huge_ , their launch was witnessed by many 10's of thousands, and their flight was tracked by the USSR and anyone else with the technical capability to do so. (Admittedly, the latter is probably only sporadic, but still an effective deterrent.) The second stages -- also huge, also tracked by the USSR and anyone else with the technical capability to do so. The third stages: the same. Even the command module+LEM: freaking conspicuous. And it's not as if you can send them up there, then fake the thing coming back -- you had to actually bring the freaking things back so the USSR and everyone else could track it then too.

So, after going to all that trouble, exactly how much money is going to be saved? How much risk is going to be saved? If you're faking a flight to the moon, and your fake command module misses its burn and flies off into the void, you're going to have to fake the deaths or kill off those astronauts anyways. If anything, one has greatly increased the risks by engaging in a such a huge and technically challenging conspiracy.

Kudos to Bezos for finding the engine!

<comment><USER14> The audacity of the Apollo program and the amazing engineering successes were so incredible that I am not surprised there are still skeptics lurking about. They are incorrect in their belief, but their doubt is reasonably based. Landing on the moon and returning safely only 66 years after the first powered flight and only a few years into the age of transistors and computers was to put it simply, a completely unbelievable accomplishment and without precedent in human history.

<comment><USER15> I honestly cannot think of anything since that has rivaled it in terms of sheer audacity and a leap of pure faith.

You'd think with all our technical marvels now, we'd have something that can hold its own against the missions to the moon, but I'm honestly at a loss to suggest anything here.

<comment><USER16> I agree. If you haven't yet seen it, "Failure is not an Option" is an awesome mini-documentary about mission control from the early years through the Apollo program.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9mFBY1oT8>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like where he says "I imagine that NASA would decide to make it available to the Smithsonian for all to see." - creating enough publicity around it's eventual public display that NASA will have no choice but to do just that.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does make sense - the Apollo 11 command module is already on display in the Air and Space Museum, as is one of the Saturn 5 rockets.

<comment><USER18> I remember as a kid going to Space Academy in Huntsville, AL. A camp counselor told us how the engines came to find a home at the Rocket Park of the Alabama Space and Rocket Center. NASA had placed the Saturn V on tour to show off this amazing machine - this particular rocket never went in space, but it was a _functional_ vehicle. The story goes that once the rocket was set up, the governor rallied for the rocket to be labeled a historical landmark. And since it really is an incredible chunk of American history, the motion passed.

And, as it turns out, you can't move historical landmarks. Apparently NASA was furious, but played it cool.

Or so a museum counselor told a band of 7th graders.

More on this particular rocket: [http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/butowsky4/sp...](http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/butowsky4/space12.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am glad that we have in this world at least a few rich people with uncontrollable curiosity. It seems like wealth is wasted on some.

</comment><comment><USER20> First James Cameron chills in Challenger Deep for 8 hrs solo, now this? What a week!

Maybe James can use his new toy to go down there and hook up the tow cables to bring the engines up!

</comment><comment><USER21> He say it's us government property but aren't there maritime laws related to salvaging ships that say whomever does the salvage owns it?

</comment><comment><USER22> _"... NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year- olds. ..."_

Best quote.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a waste of time. It's a wealthy man's playtime.

How about we kill the F35 and F22 planes entirely and make a Mars mission instead?

We're going to be neck deep in drones in this country and around the world within a few years, expensive fighter jets are now worthless.

<comment><USER24> Your beef seems to be more with expensive fighter programs than expensive salvage efforts. I don't see how this really relates to the discussion.

Don't underestimate the power of icons. These are the rockets that put us on the moon, and a private citizen is planning on recovering them for posterity, using his own money. Hopefully future generations will be inspired to explore because of this wealthy man's efforts (or 'playtime', as you put it). This should be celebrated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like how Jeff Bezos talking about hiring a team that found the engines ends up with the headline, "Jeff Bezos Discovers ..."

<comment><USER26> And Steve Jobs never wrote a line of code for the iphone. So he didn't create it right?

<comment><USER27> He did not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ain't it sad that we are reduced to fishing for our own space trash remind us of when we used to go to the moon?

</comment><comment><USER29> Side note: How is it that the Atlantic, despite having excellent quality in their articles, manages to consistently attract crap in the comments section? This is almost youtube-eque... (Might need to expand my "hide comments from certain sites" greasemonkey script)

<comment><USER30> It's not just the Atlantic - it's every single site. The age of comments is just about finished, I expect more and more sites to remove them (unless the ad views are so high that it makes up for it).

My theory is that the only (or the majority) people who have the time to post are those too stupid to have anything else better to do. And once the majority is stupid it becomes too toxic for anyone else to bother.

Good forums (like this one) require very careful curating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "tough stuff" -- I love Bezos' technical terminology.

</comment><comment><USER32> Cute but silly really. If you want to see a genuine Saturn V rocket there is an actual one on display in the Apollo building at the Kennedy Space Center. It's open to the public and it's intact and it's amazing.

I think Bezos is just pulling a publicity stunt here as he makes no mention at all of the artifacts and treasures on display to the public at the inspiring Kennedy Space Center.

<comment><USER33> There's one on display in Huntsville too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What if Jeff Bezos took that funding how much ever that he used to find the rockets and used that on education. There are many in different countries who doesn't even have basic education needs. I am not saying Jeff is the doing the wrong thing, he worked hard, he earned it, he might have or might be doing charity work, but the satisfaction you get just by thinking that you can help some kid get educated is more than finding rockets. Just my thoughts.</comment>


The Secret Language of Signs (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/life/signs/2010/03/the_secret_language_of_signs.single.html <comment><USER2> > Slate's Use of Your Data By clicking "Agree," you consent to Slate's Terms > of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by > Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to > personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy > Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to > withdraw consent.

This is called a "cookie wall", and it's illegal.

</comment><comment><USER3> That road junction in Atlanta still looks terrible.

There's an enormous "ahead" arrow, which looks to be lit up, immediately followed by a dead stop.

Rumble strips across the exit lane would give a visual and audible warning.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B048'09.4%22N+84%C2%...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-84.4076,10z?hl=en)</comment>


Profile of Naval Ravikant and AngelList's new seed fund - <AUTHOR> https://pando.com/2015/10/12/most-patient-man-silicon-valley/ <comment><USER2> A tremendous vote of confidence for AL and while it may take time for this to impact the market, $400 Mil. is a lot of money and it will have a long-term impact on how seed funding happens.</comment>


Proposer and Supporter of the "Snooper's Charter" Will Be Prime Minister - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36768148 <comment><AUTHOR> From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_Communications_Data_Bill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_Communications_Data_Bill)

        The Draft Communications Data Bill (nicknamed
        the Snoopers' Charter or Snooper's Charter) is
        draft legislation proposed by Home Secretary
        Theresa May in the United Kingdom which would
        require Internet service providers and mobile
        phone companies to maintain records of each
        user's internet browsing activity (including
        social media), email correspondence, voice
        calls, internet gaming, and mobile phone
        messaging services and store the records for
        12 months.</comment>


Ask HN: As a busy founder, how to address a website best? - <AUTHOR> I'm a single founder of a high-tech (but not web-based) company. However, I don't really have the thousands of dollars it would take to get a website designer to put together a site for me.
I absolutely respect that it's worth the money, the money just doesn't exist. So, I need to find a stopgap so that my company has something out on the web which makes us look professional enough that when I reach out to customers we don't look like total amateurs.
Can anyone help me navigate this mild morass? Should I just use Bootstrap and get something minimal up? Or is there some other solution that takes a little more time but would look a lot better?
What I'm trying to find is whatever will get me to a site that, not including creating the content, will take me less than 10 hours to get to a clean and modern state for someone who has used Linux exclusively for over a decade, and knows basic programming, but is busy enough to want to really just follow a tutorial (that actually works).
I don't care about things like the new trend of scrolling graphics windows or whatever that sin of nature is, or probably most other modern features. I'm looking to make a site closer to DuPont in style than a web startup. The one thing that would be a really "nice to have" is a news feed that I can update via the web to keep the content updated more often. <comment><USER2> Find a suitable free template here: [http://startbootstrap.com/template- categories/all/](http://startbootstrap.com/template-categories/all/)

Find some suitable stock photo here: [http://www.imcreator.com/free](http://www.imcreator.com/free)

Upload it here: [https://pages.github.com](https://pages.github.com)

Professional looking website in a couple of hours.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, thank god. These look great. This one looks amazing:

[http://themeforest.net/item/enfold-responsive- multipurpose-t...](http://themeforest.net/item/enfold-responsive-multipurpose- theme/4519990?WT.ac=search_item&WT.oss_phrase=business&WT.oss_rank=2&WT.z_author=Kriesi)

is this kind of drag and drop page layout common nowadays? I feel like I'm going to have to buy you all a beer.

I've got my own webserver, so my inclination is to try to install it there because it's there... it sounds like it might be much more sane to host it elsewhere though? Is there a benefit to something like "webfaction" as suggested elsewhere versus the github hosting? I'd never heard of github hosting websites before, but I definitely trust the brand and definitely like the idea of versioned website updates.

<comment><USER3> Just keep in mind that while themes from ThemeForest (and similar marketplaces) look great, they are usually a disaster from a code perspective. These should be seen as a temporary measure, and one that will be largely discarded when you have the funds to dedicate to a better site.

Source: I've made quite a bit of money fixing ThemeForest themes when the business outgrows them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you seen Squarespace[0]? It is one of the quickest ways to launch a website. It even lets you register a domain, so it is all-inclusive.

[0] - [http://www.squarespace.com/](http://www.squarespace.com/)

<comment><USER5> +1 for Squarespace - clean & easy to get up and running. Tutorials and 24/7 support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd say your best bet is to check out some of the high quality themes at [http://themeforest.net](http://themeforest.net) \-- if you don't want to deal with html / css the wordpress themes are really easy to setup and look amazing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the advice! My primary concern with Wordpress is that it has been around long enough that it could actually be harder to set up because of out of date tutorials, and that I've been told it's got a lot of security issues. I also have a vague horrible memory of trying to install it in 2006 or 2007 and it being a disaster to customize... but I don't want to hold that against it in 2014. On the other hand, I've been told that because it's a blogging platform (is it really?) it's easier to update content through the web interface, and that makes it get higher rankings on Google (for now).

I don't know enough to evaluate any of these claims or worries; do you think that they're still true? I certainly absolutely positively have no problem paying for a high quality theme, I'm much more worried about creating a mess on my server that will take dozens of hours of attention to clean up.

<comment><USER7> These days, Wordpress is quite secure for most uses - especially a simple corporate site. Here's how I'd go about it-

1\. Buy theme from themeforest or similar. 2\. Buy a shared hosting account from webfaction or similar (less than $10/month) 3\. Use their one-click Wordpress installer to install Wordpress 4\. Install theme in Wordpress install.

This keeps it off your server in case of issue, doesn't really cost much at all, and offers some great hosting support if you run into issues ([http://docs.webfaction.com/software/wordpress/index.html](http://docs.webfaction.com/software/wordpress/index.html)) that's current.

<comment><USER8> Exactly this

Don't sweat it. And webfaction (or other shared host) allows you to run something else if you need it, like a simple PHP (or something else) app

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of founders who have businesses that aren't reliant on the internet dump money on a really nice website thinking it'll be a great marketing tool. Then they end up disappointed when their website isn't generating any leads.

The web is so competitive nowadays, simply having a site (even if it looks great) won't do you any good.

10-20% of a budget should be spent on web design and 80-90% on actually marketing the website. So if you have a 5K budget you should spend around $500-$1000 on the website and the rest on marketing the website.

If you can't get something built for under 20% then maybe just put up a facebook or google places page in the interim. A website can be a huge distraction from time better spent going out and getting customers.

Also, if you're a designer doing basic business websites, keep in mind on-page SEO practices. It really bothers me when designers completely disregard search engines and do their clients a huge disservice. Designers who can talk about basic SEO principles have a huge leg up. At the end of the day, a business owner is only really interested in more business.

 __I 'm not suggesting this is the OP, but a common mistake I see amongst founders __

<comment><USER10> It's a common mistake for medium and large companies too. Most budgets are poured into design and development, which encourages adding requirements, more design, etc., not leaving anything for ongoing content development and marketing. The result is a site with more pages than it needs and pages that are all boilerplate, puff, and sparsely related to pushing the purpose. The effort is distracting and mostly futile, especially lacking marketing time and effort.

If I can make a recommendation, the only pages that should be added to the web are those that make the it better. Are you a web services company? Expose your service as part of your site (Github does this by providing a Google- searchable central hub of OSS projects). Are you a non-profit? Obsess over getting people involved instead of spreading your message: adding people builds up your voice, spreading your message spreads you thinner (and adding people spreads your message with less effort). SEO is best played as adding, building, and providing useful things (or collaborations). And the best improvements in search rankings is had by providing useful things for people to reference (the Github example again). If you're not providing something to link to, preferably a never ending stream of awesomeness, SEO and other marketing become difficult.

I've been part of many very wasteful website projects, with dozens of about pages, blog listings, categories, and other nonsense that on their own do not make something worth investing in. Put up as little as you can, make it useful, and focus on marketing what you do to people with the rest of your $.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Don't waste time trying to build/theme a website yourself. You should be focusing on building your business.

$10/month [http://www.simplybuilt.com](http://www.simplybuilt.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> Like others have said just go with a themeforest theme, if you or someone else in your company knows html/css they can take an html theme and have your website up and running in an afternoon.

I'm not a fan of wordpress unless you're going to be blogging posting articles on a regular basis.

WP is fast and easy to setup from scratch on hostgator or any web host . . . it will probably take longer to get the site setup vs. an html version . . . but it will be easier to edit/post articles.

hostgator is good shared hosting . . . to get setup fast and inexpensively . . .

Good luck with your new website.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're looking for something a little bit more custom than a pre-built theme, my start-up has been experimenting with offering a custom designed theme for $200. We'll set up a phone call to go over your needs and design preference and then put something together for you and give you free hosting on our platform. The catch is that you allow us to open source the template so that your customers can use/tweak it in the future and that you use your hosting platform and give us good and honest feedback. We've done this once before and it turned out well. This was the end result: [http://www.365startupgirl.com](http://www.365startupgirl.com)

Our designer is really talented and a pleasure to work with.

If you're interested feel free to hit me up. My email is in my profile.

EDIT: We also have a couple free bootstrap themes on our blog [http://900dpi.com/blog](http://900dpi.com/blog)

</comment><comment><USER14> I am building a product called Triangulate ([http://triangulate.io](http://triangulate.io)) that would work for you. It is an open-source site builder (or CMS) built in AngularJS. I provide a hosted service, plus, the app is completely open source so it can grow with your business.

<comment><USER15> If you didn't know, the "Get Started" button is broken on (some?) mobiles :)

[http://i.imgur.com/4GUVVcT.png](http://i.imgur.com/4GUVVcT.png) (HTC One M7, Chrome)

<comment><USER14> Thanks! Should be fixed now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would recommend checking out www.weebly.com. It is a drag and drop website builder which I think would meet all of your requirements. You could easily have your website up and running in 1-2 hours with a nice design, and the costs are very reasonable (~$4/mo with hosting included). Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER17> Not used it myself but I've seen a few nice sites around that are built with [https://www.strikingly.com/](https://www.strikingly.com/).

Downside is you're not hosting it yourself.

Upside is you're not hosting it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER18> Creating a website for a business that isn't a website isn't work. It's attractive because it looks like work and is so much easier than the real thing.

In most of the world's businesses customers don't give a shit about your website. They care about your product. And if the business isn't generating enough revenue to build a website, that's a sign that either the product isn't viable or more productive channels for finding the first few customers aren't being adequately exploited.

If sales are occurring but they don't support hiring out a website, then the pricing model is wrong.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://wrapbootstrap.com/](https://wrapbootstrap.com/) is a quick way to make whatever you made in bootstrap look nice

</comment><comment><USER20> If you are that busy, please don't create a Wordpress site with plugins and themes. They are hacked very often - the extensions, php and wordpress itself are vulnerable and have to be updated often to stay safe.

Make a simple static website, maybe even a site-builder like wix. Backup your content (the text and pictures) and don't rely too much on trendy graphics - they'll go out of fashion in 2 years anyway.

<comment><USER21> I used to have a static website, before I wised up and moved to Wordpress like everyone else.

I found that, once I restricted myself to the features of static pages, the security risks of Wordpress were a lot less scary:

\- You can't hack form submissions if the site doesn't have any forms on it.

\- If you're going to require SSH to publish new pages, you can require SSH tunnels to log in to Wordpress or access any admin pages. (I should write up my nginx config for this.)

\- If you were prepared to make every site update require a Git push, you can surely afford to disable WP's very scary self-update-in-place feature and perform WP updates from a development server instead.

\- A WP site that could be usefully replaced by a static site is vulnerable... how, exactly? Static sites don't accept credit card numbers. Customers can't even log in, so they won't type in their darkest secrets even if they wanted to. Employees can be told to follow rules like "don't use your Gmail password for the corporate WP site" and "don't type anything into the public publishing engine that would cause an emergency if it were published to the public."

The biggest risk is denial-of-service and defacement. Restore from your tamper-proof offline backups, which you need to have anyway. There are probably fifteen different services you could use to be alerted when the website changes unexpectedly or starts serving up malware.

Of course, static websites are faster. Until you turn on Cloudflare's free plan, which makes everything faster still.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would you consider someone to help build your website? If we're talking about a 10 hour project, maybe you're being quoted wrongly or there is some unclarity. Would you like to talk about the details? I make sites with Themeforest themes for small companies. Maybe there are a few options to explore. [http://webodew.com](http://webodew.com). I'm Mike

</comment><comment><USER23> Try [http://webflow.com](http://webflow.com) \- it hits the sweet spot of "sensible defaults" while still giving you enough control.

I recently built a launch page with it ([http://gitsub.io](http://gitsub.io)).

I'm used to doing sites "from scratch" but I have to admit the immediate feedback the webflow editor gives you is a huge win.

</comment><comment><USER24> Since everyone is recommending random stuff, I've been impressed by these guys: [http://yootheme.com/](http://yootheme.com/). They even have a great open source CMS (albeit written in PHP): [http://www.pagekit.com/](http://www.pagekit.com/).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone have experience with the providers Wordpress lists as their recommended hosting services?

[https://wordpress.org/hosting/](https://wordpress.org/hosting/)

Wordpress.com itself looks maybe a bit restrictive in theming, although that can be a good thing too of course.

<comment><USER25> I 1000% endorse Cloudways. It allows you to spin up a _managed_ high performance Wordpress Stack in minutes on DigitalOcean or AWS.

For most small businesses, I'd say a 1GB or 2GB server should be fine, so $15 or $30 per month.

I only host my clients on Cloudways, just because it takes so much hassle out of the situation, and is much cheaper than using something like a Flywheel or a WPEngine.

Edit: Cloudways sets up Varnish, Nginx, Apache, Memcache. I then manually set up a CDN (MaxCDN being my preference), and use CloudFlare for DNS. I usually use NYC DigitalOcean. Love the speed. Oh, and Cloudways has patched (for ShellShock) all of my clients servers for me :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Your ISP might have something simple where you could just fill in some blanks.

A lot of companies, including some VC firms, have just gone to Facebook and used it.

Could try any of the blog hosting means.

Probably don't want to run your own computer and, thus, if it is running Linux or not will be irrelevant at your level.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just use [http://wiz.com](http://wiz.com) or [http://squarespace.com](http://squarespace.com) and call it a day

</comment><comment><USER28> 29doors.com - they will setup a semi-custom WordPress site for under $500 that you'll own. Mention this comment and you'll get a discount.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you don't have the $1k to pay a designer, do you have money to host the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> The designers I've talked to (and trust) generally see $1k as an amount they'd want to set up a very basic customized website. Much beyond that seems to come in more like a $5k-$10k range.

I'm sure I could outsource to the internet and get a better "deal", but that makes me very uncomfortable. I know that's not always rational, but basically I trust myself to put in whatever time it takes to make it meet my needs, so long as the tools are available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Checkout Handyland.in should be able to help out.

</comment><comment><USER31> Let me know, I can be of help. username at gmail.

</comment><comment><USER32> DNS is the best way to address a website. It translates human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses.</comment>


What's Next for Nokia? - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/nokia_next <comment><USER2> Interesting that people are complaining about the "hardware first" side of Nokia, since in the good old days of monochrome screens and phones that made phone calls Nokia always had the best (ie easiest to use) user interface out there.

<comment><USER3> And still, that wasn't saying much. Symbian's UI was at least usuable unlike the stuff coming out of Motorola and the like. But it still sucked.

Man, look at how radically the industry has changed in the last 4 years. I'm not giving iPhone all the credit here, but the hardware-vs-software world has flipped a complete 180.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought Qt apps that ran on symbian and Meego was a fairly good idea (and bold since they'd previously been Gnome-centric on Linux).</comment>


Stephen Wolfram Speaks About His New Question Answering Engine - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/04/08/stephen-wolfram-speaks-about-his-new-question-answering-engine/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=549398>

<comment><USER3> That link is worth expanding (Rudy Rucker interview, also quoted source of singularityhub piece): [http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha- search...](http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching- truth)

And in _that_ page, the tail 'Resource' links include this: [http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.htm...](http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html)

which is the Jorge Luis Borges essay with the amusing mention of a system of animal classification: "(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame ..."

Borges lucidly nails the Achilles' heel - the definition of the database scheme. I stand by my less insightful comment of three weeks ago - care and feeding of 'fact databases' is hard (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=520281>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know Wolfram Alpha is going to be great, no doubt about the genius behind it. But the first time I heard of it, it was presented as a google killer which gave it a bad reputation as overhyped and cuil-like image.

I like their new image. They do one thing and they do it like nobody else before.

Kudos to Stephen Wolfram and his team.</comment>


Maurice Sendak, Center Stage - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/29/maurice-sendak-center-stage/ <comment><USER2> This is great. To me his work is so transcendent. It communicates on a purely intuitive level, and it seems to work the same way whether you're five or 50.

If he were doing designs for me, I'd find myself tempted all the time to ask for more comps. Not because the first ones wouldn't work but just to enjoy what I might get.</comment>


See who any Facebook messages are posted to - <AUTHOR>

On Facebook when accessing messages, you can change the message id in the URL and see for any message who it is posted to.
e.g. try this in your Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/messages/503348860 or see a screenshot here: http://postimage.org/image/a6w7x76yv/
It doesn't show the message so I can't think of a serious problem but I'm not sure I should be able to see who a message was posted to. <comment><USER2> You also can't send a message the the recipient, so it can't be used to spam recently active users.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is not message id, it is the profile id of the person to whom message is to be sent.</comment>


Startup Quote: Jack Dorsey, co-founder, Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/3866215350

<comment><AUTHOR> The strongest thing you can cultivate as an entrepreneur is to not rely on luck but cultivating an ability to recognize fortunate situations when they are occurring.

\- Jack Dorsey (@jack)

<http://startupquote.com/post/3866215350></comment>


Men emerge from Mars experiment - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8150385.stm

<comment><USER2> I wonder why no women were involved in the experiment. Will we not be sending women on the first mission to mars? Also, I would imagine that regular sexual activity would make for a more placid social environment.

<comment><USER3> You would need to have couples in a long-term committed relationship, and everyone would need a partner. I think anything less than that would lead to problems.

<comment><USER4> One of the sexes would need to be made infertile also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd guess the answer to the isolation problem is increased reliance on virtual worlds and online interaction. Though the lag might be dreadful when communicating with the Earthlings.

<comment><USER6> _the lag might be dreadful when communicating with the Earthlings_

That was an interesting aspect of the experiment. It's hard to phone a friend when each exchange of the conversation takes twenty minutes each way

<http://athena.cornell.edu/kids/bn_special_report.html>

to travel to the other end of the conversation.

<comment><USER7> Asimov proposed that this problem be solved but both parties not waiting for a response before continuing to talk. I can't remember what the name of the short story this was a part of though, ring any bells with anyone?

<comment><USER8> I've worked with many people who talked this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 500 days? Thats almost 2 years of your life given over to essentially a useless experiment. What are they going to learn? People don't like cramped conditions, but they can deal with it. Give them movies and books to read and don't be a d*ck when you have to share some cramped space with people.

Are they going to cancel the mission to mars if it turns out people would become extra-irritable?

<comment><USER10> "Are they going to cancel the mission"

Unlikely, but they may consider postponing until a bigger spaceship is available or trying other crew formulations.

<comment><USER11> Or if they can put you into a 'sleep like' state...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hats off to the volunteers. That's a lot to do and not even get to go to Mars.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't see a reason for these useless and throwing life away experiences if the purpose is just making the astronauts used to isolation. I kind of get it if it's to study something psychological, but we have so many prisoners in almost the same conditions...

After the moon, everything is just too far away to travel. We can study Mars very well with the robot approach. We're just throwing astronauts life away for our stupid need of putting Men in Mars, which I dare say is utterly pointless.

<comment><USER14> Pointless? For all we know we will be the first species (anywhere in existence) to go to another planet. The prospect of stepping foot on an foreign planet blows my mind away. Before I get carried away, I'll just assume you're flamebaiting.</comment></comment>