Utopia: USB power sockets on every wall - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/118187-utopia-usb-power-sockets-on-every-wall <comment><USER2> 300 watt sockets? So now I need a high power DC power supply with a fan in every outlet?

Someone is not thinking this through all the way. Even at 90% efficiency you are wasting 33 watts of energy at max, and that is a LOT of heat to generate behind a wall with no ventilation.

Not to mention the power supply is not going to fit in a standard box. Or that good (read: Efficient) DC power supplies are quite expensive.

And you won't be making central power supplies in the basement either. 300 watts at 12 volts is 25 amps! You would need pretty thick cables to do that. At 5 volts it's 60 amps - that would be a wire as thick as what an electrical dryer uses.

He can have as many dreamy smiles as he wants, but this is not going to happen.

<comment><USER3> What if we chose a voltage that could be transmitted throughout the house without too many issues -- like 48V?

Then we could step that down in the sockets, to 12 and 5V.

We could also use USB cables that have transformers built in, I guess -- bulges in the cable, or something. But then you're moving away from the 'one cable for everything' idea.

<comment><USER4> I like this idea.. I've actually been thinking about something like this for a while.

You could have a DC distribution panel next to the main one, that converts the mains voltage to 24/48 VDC for lighting circuits and DC receptacles. 240 Watts (10 or 5 Amps) could be enough to power a lot of devices on a branch, while still allowing the wires to be reasonable (14 AWG or smaller).

I think the bigger win would be for LED lighting circuits, but device chargers could use it too.

<comment><USER2> Why? I can't see any gain to converting to 48 volts if you just have to convert it again anyway. There isn't much difference between converting from 120 vs 48.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a marvelous way to get user data. How much do you trust every USB plug you use? If you plug your phone/music player/tablet into a USB "charger" could it pretend to be a host computer, and get access to all your files without you knowing?

There's no way a USB plug will replace existing power outlets. A 15A line in the US can handle over 1400 W, which is more than the 100W mentioned here or the hypothetical 300W in the future. An induction cooktop draws around 2000W and an electric oven around 7500W.

Plus, a number of devices depend on AC power to drive a induction motor, so there's a huge installed base that can't cheaply be replaced with DC power even there's enough raw power available.

<comment><USER6> Coincidentally, it's the other way around with USB dead drops.[1] Either trust that the USB won't fry your motherboard or carry a multimeter with you all the time.

[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop>

<comment><USER7> Ouch. I'd thought of the malware risk of plugging into a dead drop, but it never quite crossed my mind that someone could basically turn one into the equivalent of the Etherkiller:

<http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/>

<comment><USER8> I suspect some hubs would be suitable for buffering against that sort of attack. Not sure which though, or whether a more subtle approach (some sort of pulsed power to avoid tripping polyfuses, perhaps) would still be practical.

If you wanted to be a dick, I think replacing the insides of a USB stick with a large charged capacitor and leaving them in parking lots would be the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I built my office last year, I tried to find USB sockets and couldn't. It was like they didn't exist. I didn't even want ones that could supply a tonne of power, just a bare minimum would be sufficient.

In the end I retro fitting a hub to the wall that connected to my system which is hidden in the wall ,with the cables running under the wooden flooring.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, they do exist: <http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/e81a/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1\. The major flaw with USB is that half the time you have to try again to get the connector the right way round*

2\. A 5V television? Not likely. This will lead to more _types_ of sockets. Which is the opposite of what we want.

(* yes I know that the usb symbol should always face up, but that's often misused)

<comment><USER11> I'm not an electrical expert, but:

If you have many USB ports, could you wire something up to run a television from multiple USB 5V ports or is there a voltage/amp issue of some kind in the way?

<comment><USER2> Depends on how much power the TV took. Theoretically you could do it, but it would be a huge waste.

Suppose you have a 300 watt plasma TV - that's 60 amps at 5 volts. That's the kind of wire electric dryers and ovens use. You could take that wire and divide it into many small ones, but you would still have that much wire which would not be practical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Utopia can be simulated by carrying a little USB-to-Wall adapter in your pocket...

</comment><comment><USER13> However much current you can draw over your USB socket, it's still only 5V. Many devices want a (far) higher voltage than that for charging or powering themselves. A quick glance at my laptop PSU shows 20V, presumably related to the voltage of several Lithium Ion cells in series.

Yes, a given psu could transform the voltage back up with switchmode, but then you've got the horrible transformation inefficiency twice! I wonder how many devices there are out there that actually want that much current at 5V.

</comment><comment><USER14> Standard USB connectors are rated for about 1,500 connect/disconnect cycles. You'll want something more robust built into your wall.

I've worn out the connectors on several game consoles. :-)

</comment><comment><USER15> Which is a clear display of one of the major flaws of capitalism: duplicity just for the sake of having a competitive advantage.

It just makes me sad to think about how much effort, materials, knowledge and time has humankind wasted in working against each other.

And, just to avoid trolling, I have to say that I am not criticizing capitalism per se, but just this one side of it.

There must be a better way!

<comment><USER16> Is experimenting a wasted effort? Is an experimenter really working against other experimenters? Is there a better way to choose a solution to (virtually any) problem than to test multiple solutions? I don't think there is, at least not without some kind of omniscience.

<comment><USER15> Sure, experimenting is a great way to reach an optimum solution to a given problem.

Now please, go to your cellar and tell me for what kind of experiment are those 40+ different chargers that you have for all your devices, which most of them have _exactly_ the same power requirements.

I would say that, in most cases, those chargers were developed in order to take that extra 1 EUR profit.

And that, *ing the customer, which somehow has been taking this mess for over 20 years.

<comment><USER16> > go to your cellar and tell me for what kind of experiment are those 40+ > different chargers that you have for all your devices

Right now I can charge almost all my mobile devices (a phone, an mp3 player, a kindle and the batteries for my camera) with a single charger I picked up in a regular department store for ~15EUR (first set of rechargeable batteries included) and two standard usb cables which came with those devices and can also be used to transfer data. More, the charger is largely optional, I could just plug them into into my computer -- often connecting to put podcasts on is enough to charge the mp3 player.

Only my laptop really requires a separate, dedicated power supply. The 40+ different chargers are just remnants of my electronic history because the current generation of mobile devices didn't even come with the chargers (except for the htc phone, but it's a standard usb charger, I could use it with cables and devices other than the phone).

The experimentation phase is largely over and makers are converging. Sure, there will always be someone who diverges but it's the cost of progress (even if progress in this context means a prettier hole in your phone).

<comment><USER15> Your "experimentation phase" did not ended by magic. It ended, among other, thanks to regulation:

<http://boingboing.net/2009/02/15/european-commission.html>

Without that interference in the invisible hand of the market, your cellar would be full with other 40+ chargers. All in name of 1€ profit.

Sure, it is in the interest of the manufacturers to use standardized components ... unless the customer can be fooled to take pain with minimum marketing effort. No manufacturer is going to sit down and put in their priority list the item "how to reduce the junk electronics in the basement of my customers". They must be forced to it, and if the customer is not able to unite, the voter must interfere - as is slowly happening.

<comment><USER16> > Without that interference in the invisible hand of the market, your cellar > would be full with other 40+ chargers. All in name of 1€ profit.

At most my cellar would contain one additional charger for the phone. Other devices didn't come with a charger at all (some aren't even covered by the directive or were made well before its announcement). I guess in the name of 3€ of cut cost which coincidentally also reduces the number of junk electronics in my basement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ignore the power issues and think about the security issues. Would you give some random plug in the wall hardware access to your smartphone along the same cable that data goes?

(See [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic- secu...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/technology/electronic-security-a- worry-in-an-age-of-digital-espionage.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all))

<comment><USER4> One could easily make "charge only" USB cables with the data pins disconnected. Or a passthrough dongle which does that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I recently stayed at a US hotel that had a couple of USB ports for charging devices. Since I don't like having to buy even more adapters just for travelling abroad, being able to charge all my devices at the same time was pretty handy. Are USB ports in hotels common in the US?

</comment><comment><USER19> My first thought was "but only 5v?" Never heard of USB Power Delivery before. After seeing the picture, I kind of want to rig something like that up in my house.

<comment><USER20> I saw that when it was posted before, turns out you can't. There are problems with having low-power and high-power ports in the same socket, I seem to recall electricians saying it was unsafe, so you might be risking a fire with that.

<comment><USER21> You can, it's already for sale: [http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power- outle...](http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/a-power-outlet-with- usb-ports-built-in/)

<comment><USER2> That has the voltage converter (power supply) in the box. What's not legal is having a centralized power supply, and running low voltage wires from it to an existing box that also has high voltage wires in it.

<comment><USER4> You're mostly right, but it's legal to separate the mains voltage and low voltage connections like this: [http://www.smarthome.com/2546/Low-Voltage- Divider-Plate-SCDI...](http://www.smarthome.com/2546/Low-Voltage-Divider- Plate-SCDIV/p.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> <http://xkcd.com/927></comment>


On Touching Naked Bodies (In the Clinic) - <AUTHOR> http://gutsmagazine.ca/blog/naked-bodies <comment><AUTHOR> There's a NSFW image for this article. Not vulgar, but head's up. Learned a new word while reading this: auscultation. And while she doesn't quite use it like this in the article, I realize that sometimes I auscultate when I listen to people's problems instead of truly empathizing.

This is also beautifully written. One of my favorite parts:

       I am learning to worship strangers, and I want, so badly,
       the space—the moment—to seek multiple truths, like an artist
       or a writer—the truth of diagnosis, the truth of personhood.
       I want to seek out clinical truths with a steady hand and
       observant eye. But I also want to listen for spiritual truths
       and emotional truths; I want to expose my heart and be
       vulnerable enough to feel for and with patients.

Bihar sounds like she'll make an incredibly thoughtful doctor.

<comment><USER2> If NSFW means that images of naked body in a non sexual context are not acceptable, then you need to recognise that your culture is perverse. American puritanism is sadly becoming the norm worldwide and that is a dangerous cultural aggression. Somewhat relevant : see how someone had to sue Facebook in order to have his account reinstated after having posted "L'Origine du Monde" on his wall : [http://www.lefigaro.fr/arts- expositions/2016/01/06/03015-201...](http://www.lefigaro.fr/arts- expositions/2016/01/06/03015-20160106ARTFIG00290--l-origine-du-monde-la-bete- noire-juridique-de-facebook.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pretentious af.</comment>


Tesla meets self-imposed deadline for Model 3, rolls out 5000 cars in a week - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/29/tesla-q2-production-and-delivery-numbers.html <comment><USER3> "It was not clear if Tesla could maintain that level of production for a longer period of time."

I think this is the million dollar question—was this just a sprint effort to hit a milestone for PR sake or will they produce 5000 next week too?

<comment><USER4> I think it's a good question to ask, but it doesn't mean the milestone was meaningless. Several months ago this would have been unthinkable, and the 5000 deadline was arbitrary anyway.

<comment><USER5> > the 5000 deadline was arbitrary anyway.

Wasn't it in multiple letters to shareholders? It is literally an update to debtors on the company's position, far from arbitrary.

Were Tesla required to give an estimate? Nope. But doing so may be used to attract further investment into the company, so it is far from innocent.

<comment><USER6> Shareholders aren't debtors. It's still arbitrary, a goal they set for themselves.

<comment><USER5> SEC likely wouldn't agree, and haven't agreed historically.

<comment><USER7> What are you claiming the SEC would disagree with? The claim is that Tesla set a goal of 5000 vehicles per week.

There are two things you could disagree with but you don't specify which. You can disagree that Tesla set this goal for itself, or you can disagree that the number 5000 is arbitrary.

To disagree with the first part, you'd need to show that the 5000 figure came from an external party, do you have such a source for this?

To disagree with the second part, you'd need to show that there is something significant about the number 5000. Is your claim that there is some significance to the number 5000?

If you can't substantiate the claim that some external party gave Tesla the goal to make 5000 vehicles per week, and you can't substantiate the claim that the number 5000 has some fundamental significance when it comes to car manufacturing, then you have no grounds to refute the statement that Tesla set this arbitrary goal of 5000 for itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > with the final car rolling off the assembly line on Sunday morning, several > hours after the midnight goal set by Chief Executive Elon Musk

No, they missed the deadline, twice now. Lot of Muskites in these comments, remember, Tesla failed to meet the same deadline in January and pushed it to June. (EDIT: I've been told they missed this 3 times now, the 5K/wk figure was originally Dec '17, then Jan '18 then Jun '18).

When it was clear they would miss again, they put up a third production line in a canvas tent, which the NYT quoted as "never heard anything like this ever" using what Musk tweeted as "scrap we had in warehouses" to build the cars. And even then, and running all three lines 24/7 striving to hit that goal for just 7 consecutive days with the whole world watching... they still came up 150 cars short.

(5k/wk / 168 hrs/week = 30/hr * missing the deadline by 5 hours = 150 cars short)

<comment><USER9> Imagine that today is July 1, 2020. Looking back I see three scenarios.

1) It's clear now that the company is a sham and Musk is a snake-oil salesman. It's all smoke, mirrors, bubblegum and baling wire. After hitting 5000 cars per week one time, they never reached that level again. The company had to do a punishingly dilutive capital raise just to get 6 months more runway, and the company's market cap is now $6 billion (down 90% from 2018).

2) The company has continued to stumble from failure to failure with just enough successes to delay the day of reckoning. Musk is still sleeping in the factory trying to iron out kinks in the manufacturing process and automation. They're producing 3000 cars per week, but the quality is so poor that 30% of cars must be returned to the factory for rework. Competitors are likely to match Tesla's battery technology in the next 3 years, and the company's market cap is down by 50% from 2018.

3) After many delays and billions of dollars of cost overruns, Tesla has perfected the "machine that builds the machine". It's producing 40,000 cars per week in three factories in the US, Europe and China, and a fourth factory in South Korea opens next year. Tesla is cash-flow positive and the company's market cap is $600B (up 10x from 2018). In hindsight, all the delays people anguished about in 2018 proved to be nothing but amusing anecdotes in the company's history.

I assign probabilities of 10%, 50% and 40% to these scenarios, which equates to an expected market cap of $250B in two years. At $60B today, it looks like a bargain.

<comment><USER10> Why should Tesla be worth 600B if they produce 2 million cars a year? Toyota makes 10M cars per year and has a market cap of less than 300B.

Future growth is already baked into Tesla's current valuation of 60B. They're not making any money today (in fact they're losing billions) but they have a high market cap because they might become profitable years from now. Once (if) they become a mature car manufacturer their valuation multiple will go way down. They'll be judged on their profit margin and FCF like any other car manufacturer.

Your best case scenario of Tesla growing their market cap by 550B in the next 2 years is completely unrealistic. Even Facebook didn't grow that quickly, and their profit margin is second to none.

<comment><USER11> Tesla's best case scenario is much more than an automaker. They also have hopes of being an energy company, a battery company, a transportation company, and a logistics company. There is still a lot of debate whether any of those will actually become profitable (and I think 2020 is a very aggressive timeline for any of this to happen), but there are huge potential revenue streams for Tesla that simply don't exist for other automakers like Toyota.

<comment><USER12> Toyota or Ford or any other car company can enter any of those fields, either directly or through investment. That they choose not to probably indicates that the risk/reward doesn't make sense for them, and they probably aren't worth that much if Tesla manages to pivot. They chose not to play in EVs until recently, for example, because the market appetite wasn't there

<comment><USER13> You gotta hand it to Elon for stirring the appetite for EVs though. What makes you think he can't do similar things in other markets?

<comment><USER14> I am not convinced he really changed the market's desire for EVs. He made a halo car, and now he is selling the baby version for Average Joe. I think the success of the Model 3 has a lot more to do with the brand than it does with it being an EV.

<comment><USER15> It's simply ignoring reality to not acknowledge Tesla's center role in popularizing EVs. It's not even a question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's impressive. I've read a great many analyses stating Musk'll never succeed in his model 3 ramp up. Let's hope he keeps this up in the coming months. It's a long way to 450.000 vehicles...

<comment><USER17> This means they're now making about 7,000 vehicles total per week (S+X+3), which means they'll make more vehicles in the next 12 months than they have made in the previous 10 years.

I'd say they're ramping pretty fast!

EDIT: 7,000 per week, not per month, thanks below.

<comment><USER10> Tesla pulled people from the S&X lines to reach their 5000 Model 3 goal. No way they also produced 2000 S&X cars in the past 7 days. In addition, their current death march schedule isn't sustainable. They won't come close to producing 7k cars in any week in July.

Tesla needs to spend billions in capex in order to get to 5000 M3 and beyond if they want to produce at a sustainable pace with acceptable quality. Billions they don't have.

<comment><USER18> Musk just tweeted out: "7000 cars, 7 days"

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1013519243030253570](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1013519243030253570)

<comment><USER10> I stand corrected. Thanks for the update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does quality match the quantity here? I remember Tesla having lots of quality issues (misaligned doors etc)

<comment><USER20> Given that half of those 5000 are being produced in a tent in the parking lot with summer heat and no AC, I can only imagine.

<comment><USER21> You can have AC on big tents, and I would be surprised if they didn't as your external 40C could easily become dangerous in a _literal_ greenhouse.

At least forced ventilation is needed.

<comment><USER22> There was a video linked of the "tent" and the ends are open, so I don't think AC would work.

<comment><USER23> The video clearly shows the ends are being closed up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Tesla is still maturing as a company; more to the point, they're maturing as a manufacturer.

While other companies would order whole componants from vendors - Tesla will only order parts - and assemble in house. For instance - Toyota will order brake assemblies. While Tesla orders guards. Toyota will order a door - <USER2> Tesla a door panel. Even worse - Tesla has a history or delivering third parties sub-par China made tooling; and expecting 2-3x performance out of it - when in actuality their sub-par tooling will reduce efficiency. Trying to save money on tool manufacturing isn't where mature companies cut corners. Trusting vendors to look after their own interests is a good practice (provided those vendors have a proven record)

Eventually Tesla will work it's way into understanding that it's core competencies are IP, design, and marketing - and leave the micro manufacturing to third parties.

A 6mo miss in production on one vehicle isn't a sign of the times for a company with a 10yr road map. The markets aren't super forgiving, but I think this will all get smoothed out as Tesla grows up.

<comment><USER25> > The markets aren't super forgiving

Tesla's stock is 40% above its 52 week low and was just near its all-time highs two weeks ago. That's pretty forgiving. Must drive the bears crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > It was not clear if Tesla could maintain that level of production for a > longer period of time.

When Tesla reached it's 2,000 units per week deadline, they had production line shutdown soon afterwards. Then ramp up again from lower level.

Based on their previous numbers I would say that their next 3 month production average will be 60% - 80% of their last peak.

</comment><comment><USER27> What are the chances that cars from this period will develop above average defects?

</comment><comment><USER28> You know, it is really interesting watching the Musk haters over the years.

The more he succeeds in doing what he promised (albeit usually behind schedule), the more they hate him, and the more convinced they become that his present projects will all turn out to be complete failures.

It almost makes you think they have some ulterior motive, like they work for the fossil fuel industry, of one of the other rocket launch companies, or a major auto manufacturer, or maybe they bet their life savings on Tesla stock crashing.

Any Musk haters out their want to respond? And if you do, be sure to tell us about your past predictions, and if they turned out right or wrong.

<comment><USER29> yeah, when he crashes and burns it will burn 100 billion dollars and the credibility of the whole tech industry (like Theranos but 100X).

There will be a nuclear winter in tech investment after that which sets back legitimate companies with real innovation by years with lasting damage to the global economy.

Same story as Uber and why people "hated" on them before the adults cleaned things up (as best as possible).

These con artists are shitting in the water for everyone else which has direct financial impact. Not hate, just money.

<comment> rich-w-big-ego I think there's something to this argument. Elon actually realizes this part himself:

      when he crashes and burns it will burn 100 billion dollars and the credibility of the whole tech industry

Elon has stated publically that it would be "really bad" (his words) if Tesla fails, because Tesla will then serve as an example of why electric cars will never work, and from that point it will be 10x harder to create an EV startup - to say nothing of the investment crater that's leftover from their death.

However, I don't understand the rest of the comment regarding the "con artists" and how this is at all like Uber.

<comment><USER28> >if Tesla fails, because Tesla will then serve as an example of why electric cars will never work, and from that point it will be 10x harder to create an EV startup

Except that during the last two years all the major car companies have started big EV programs, and in China, the world's largest car market, the government has gone all-in on pushing EV's. So no matter what happens with Tesla, EV's are here to stay. In fact the experts say that when batteries get cheap enough around 2025, the whole market is going to swing in their favor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Bertel Schmitt on Asymco's podcast was amusingly anti-Musk this week (listen from about minute 37) [http://www.asymco.com/2018/06/27/asymcar-44-the-view- from-to...](http://www.asymco.com/2018/06/27/asymcar-44-the-view-from-tokyo- with-bertel-schmitt/)

<comment><USER31> Amusingly? He has been like that for the past two years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hitting 5000 Model 3 Units in a single surge week is an anomaly, until it becomes a repeatable and sustainable pattern.

And a pattern that includes low/no rework, because building 5000 units a week is one metric, building 5000 high quality units with no expensive rework is another metric entirely.

Questions:

Why would someone work in a non air conditioned tent under high stress when they could earn the equivalent wage working across the road in an air conditioned McDonalds?

What impact will the major step down in Solar City/Tesla have in commingled Tesla finances?

Why is Bloomberg's Tesla tracker showing a fast flattening(rather than accelerating) production trend?

Back in 2016 at GSB we were supposed to get 80 minutes with Musk in class, but it turned into possibly the first "sleep at the end of the factory line" narratives.

Am I the only one who things a fancy tent is a modern equivalent of a Potemkin Vilage?

Fast, cheap, good.

Pick one today, maybe two later.

I find Tesla requiring $1000 deposit holders to contribute an additional $2500( for a combined $3500 converted into an advance payment no longer deposit) interesting.

At Amazon in the very early days we had 100% float from publishers for 30-60 days for a 20% gross profit operation.

Tesla's attempt at the same is 5% float for 3-6 months for a -20% net profit operation.

It's like using a single dish sponge to absorb a negative cashflow tsunami.

Making stuff is hard. Making stuff at industrial scale is super duper hard.

<comment><USER33> Do you have a source for Tesla assembly line workers being paid the same wage as McDonalds workers?

<comment><USER32> Hmmmm....

I couldn't actually find a McDonald's that paid the same as the $15 starting rate for Tesla production specialist/hourly as found on Glassdoor.

My bad!

But I did find In 'n Out Burger that offered the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would guess Tesla announces the 200,000th domestic sale sometime in the next week. They could be hitting their ramp-up to high production of the Model 3 right when they hit the 200k domestic electric car milestone. This also happens to be right at the beginning of a quarter so they can get as many $7500 federal tax credits for their customers as they can. One would guess this is not just some lucky coincidence, but who knows.

<comment><USER35> That's only for American sales so no reason why they can't ramp production and just export to other markets.

<comment><USER34> That is why I said "domestic sales". They want to hit 200k US sales at the beginning of a quarter and when they have a high production rate. That would be this quarter starting July 1, as they are already very near the 200k limit. It's not reasonable to think they could export the whole next quarter's production of S, X and 3 production without many serious repercussions. One being pissing off hundreds of thousands of US model 3 reservation holders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Elon may have did this the wrong way. He should have released the 2020 Roadster first, price it at a lux $500k, beat the snot out of every hypercar out there. Get the Semi out, make actual money, then lose money on every Model 3, but have a subscription service to have monthly income. Kind of how Amazon loses money on the thing people mostly use it for, selling physical stuff, but makes money everywhere else.

<comment> rich-w-big-ego Your analysis might make sense if money and profitability and staying solvent was what Elon was most interested in. However, money alone is not the goal; getting us off of oil is the goal. I think that Elon really wanted to make a mass-market car as soon as possible, which explains why he chose to take the harder path of making the mass-market car before the hypercar and the semi's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There's a pattern from Elon of overpromising, and then pulling through, but way later. I wouldn't be surprised if they're easily staying at a 5000/week production baseline in the next three months.

<comment> rich-w-big-ego Elon used the same over-promising strategy during the build-up to the start of Model 3 production. Elon promised that Tesla would start producing Model 3s in July 2017, noting that production would not _actually_ start until sometime later; since some supplier somewhere _would_ mess up and miss the deadline (and have themselves fired), they would inevitably be delayed. It's the same thing in this case: promise really aggressively, and be serious about the promise, but understand that Tesla will be delayed by the least lucky, least effective part of the team/production line. This way, Tesla can be aggressive, even though if you go by their promises, they should be _really_ aggressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So if I calculated correctly that's 4855 per week or 3 percent short. Not bad!

</comment><comment><USER39> So much insecurity in these comments. Hilarious. I hope you didn't buy into the shorts thesis.

</comment><comment><USER40> Can anyone tell me why they are taking a long time to ramp up? This is not their first electric car and electric cars are supposed to have a lot fewer components than gasoline engine cars.

<comment><USER41> Producing physical things is _hard_. Issues crop up every step. Of the way, and any one thing can have big downstream impacts. Just think of the web of supplies chains that feeds into the components that go into a car. And in Tesla's case, throw in the fact that they are still a new company and haven't had decades to iron out all the kinks.

<comment><USER14> They've been around 15 years and they bought a modern manufacturing plant purpose built to make cars. They can buy talent. I won't cut them too much slack, supposedly they're worth more than GM. Now prove it.

<comment><USER42> Up til now they've only been doing relatively low volume production. I doubt Bently could scale up either and they know a bit about making cars.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Well, Bentley is making ~9000 cars per year with ~3000 employees. Tesla is making ~100k cars per year with ~37k employees (not counting all the subcontractors). That's exactly the same ratio, and it's bloody awful compared to large-scale car manufacturers. E.g. Toyota has 10x the number of employees as Tesla but makes 100x as many cars. Even if next year Tesla production is 5000 cars per week all year, they will still have >4x as many employees per car built compared to Toyota.

Also, Bentley is fully owned by Volkswagen. If they wanted to "scale up" to a downmarket Model 3 equivalent, they'd take the VW MQB platform, use most of the non-platform components from the Mk7 VW Jetta (probably offering the 250hp and 300hp engines with AWD), spend 2-3 years developing sufficiently distinct styling parts, and then be able to churn out 100k cars per year.

<comment><USER43> Exactly. The Bentley thing would be just a badge, in fact now there is very little of their SUV being 'made in England', it is done in some Skoda factory somewhere.

But how much of a Tesla is Tesla? Don't large parts come from suppliers, e.g. all the seats from Lear corp? Or did they re-engineer those too?

I think the Ford F150 truck is the benchmark, in the U.S. there are 3000-4000 made a week. The price starts around the price of the Model 3 and then goes up and up with options.

Plus you get a lot of truck for that compared to a car, and due to the Chicken Tax there are incentives to buy the things.

Recently there was a fire in a supplier plant that affected the F150, with JIT they had to close the lines. But then they shipped the dies to England and restarted making the vital parts so production is back on. Really Musk should not be making promises if even the mighty Ford F150 truck can be brought to a production halt due to one fire in one supplier factory.

That story is quite interesting and right now there is a 747 flying those parts back from England to make sure Ford can keep on getting their $40 billion in revenue from selling that truck.

[https://eu.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/05/16/ford- launch...](https://eu.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/05/16/ford-launched- international-airlift-restart-f-150/617196002/)

I would be intrigued to know the numbers of vehicles per employee for the F150. Note how there is zero export potential for the F150 for a multitude of reasons whereas the Tesla products are definitely hot in international markets.

<comment><USER44> > Don't large parts come from suppliers, e.g. all the seats from Lear corp?

One of the problems for Tesla is that they make a bunch of things in-house that other manufacturers don't (e.g. seats).

[https://jalopnik.com/tesla-is-still-figuring-out-the- model-3...](https://jalopnik.com/tesla-is-still-figuring-out-the-model-3-as- it-builds-th-1827268649)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 7000 cars in a week. 5000 Model 3s.

</comment><comment><USER45> This is such a horribly biased and negative article.

</comment><comment><USER28> You know, when the Model 3 came out and terrible production difficulties meant they were producing only 200 cars a month, the Tesla-is-a-scam people told us that the company would never get production much above that.

But actually it has been improving production at a steady rate, and is now at least close to the promised 5,000 a month. So the Tesla-is-a-scam believers were quite wrong.

<comment><USER46> TSLA has been public a long time. The guys who shorted it are losing money. The guys who say it's a scam but don't short it are probably bullshitting.

<comment><USER47> Or don't believe you can time the market. You can be bearish on a company and still think shorting it would be a disaster. The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

<comment><USER46> Yeah, but their predictions have no predictive value at that point so I'm just going to ignore them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wouldn't want to drive a car built in a tent at breakneck pace to prove to investors how fast they could build cars. Not for me.

</comment><comment><USER49> Let's see if they're actually building 5000 a week after another few weeks or if they just built these in a burst and it's not sustainable. And let's see how many returns and recalls there are.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand the skepticism. He's not claiming to have built a perpetual motion machine. Even if it were the case that it's just a burst, it demonstrates feasibility. Of course the lines will get augmented and more efficient with time. It's not like there's some law of physics preventing regular deliveries of 5000 cars a week.

<comment><USER50> The skepticism is simple: Musk has a history of making schedule pronouncements that fall through. He predicted they'd hit this milestone last year, and they didn't. In fact, he predicted they'd be far beyond this milestone by now, and they aren't. And he really, really, really hates it when people point how his broken promises and failed claims, so it's reasonable to expect he might be trying to play with some smoke and mirrors and distract everybody with a one- time hit at 5k, hoping we forget he's late, and that he said that would just be a stepping-stone on the way to 25k/week.

Or, you know, it could just be late, and he's on track slowly. But the skepticism is absolutely warranted, and there are probably better odds for the skepticism.

<comment><USER15> Skepticism of hitting goals by certain dates are fair. But you are conflating skepticism of promises of meeting milestones with the ability to execute at all. They met the 5000 car a week goal. There was no promise of a date for a consistent 5000 cars a week. Is your claim that you are skeptical that they can _ever_ hit a regular 5000 cars a week?

<comment><USER51> > There was no promise of a date for a consistent 5000 cars a week

I'm pretty sure that was December 2017 [1]

        [1] "Chief Executive Elon Musk announced that production of its mass-market Model 3 would start this week and build to 20,000 per month in December. " - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-model-idUSKBN19O0GE

<comment><USER15> That's an old article, and Musk has since updated his estimates and dates, and was explicit that they would target burst builds before ramping full-time [1]. But that's beside the point - the question is, what is the source of skepticism of the ability to execute _at all_ (not by a particular target date)? We can go back and forth on dates and numbers all day, but that's not my question.

[1] [https://bgr.com/2018/04/17/elon-musk- model-3-production-6000...](https://bgr.com/2018/04/17/elon-musk- model-3-production-6000-july/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> promising news i think. a friend of mine said they would go under. i dont really want them to go under though.

<comment><USER53> Unless you are the one to receive the tent assembled model 3. If past rushes are an indicator of the future to be I totally expect a large recall operation following this stunt

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Would you trust a car built in a hurry?

</comment><comment><USER55> Musk has said to appear on Rogan's podcast when production of model 3 hits 5k/w.

[https://jrelibrary.com/upcoming-guests/](https://jrelibrary.com/upcoming- guests/)

[https://twitter.com/joerogan/status/1005924723983675392?lang...](https://twitter.com/joerogan/status/1005924723983675392?lang=en)

<comment><USER56> That will be one of the most entertaining conversations. I love how chill the atmosphere is on that show.

<comment><USER57> "Jamie, pull up the video of the chimp getting run over by a Tesla."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I can't give up my Model 3. Driving any Tesla car is a dopamine hit. You really have to try and drive them to experience it and you'll be hooked. Many people don't realize what a refreshing and tremendous difference a smooth and powerful torque curve gives. Seriously forget all the noise about Elon Musk. Try and drive an electric car, which are by far still smoother than gear- shifting gas powered cars, and then try a Tesla.

<comment><USER59> Tesla is not the only brand that creates electric cars.

This is all about Elon making clames he could not make true.

The danger for Tesla is that people don't want to wait for broken promises anymore and will choose another brand.

Edit: for example the Jaguar I-PACE might be very competitive.

<comment><USER60> I have yet to hear anyone say they're impressed with the I-Pace

<comment><USER61> 1\. "I-Pace is the most exciting, innovative car Jaguar has made since 1961, and it has the dynamics and look to back it up" \- [https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/first- drives/a22003661...](https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/first- drives/a22003661/2019-jaguar-i-pace-first-drive/)

2\. From someone not in the automotive press: "The interior build quality is second to none." \- although he sees enough negatives to hold out for a Model 3 instead - [https://model3ownersclub.com/threads/jaguar-i-pace- review.62...](https://model3ownersclub.com/threads/jaguar-i-pace-review.6231/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Leave it to CNBC and HN to take such a success story by Tesla and turn it on its head to call it a failure. 1- Emphasizing the 5hr delay as opposed to the almost 5k figure WHEN THEY THEMSELVES SAID A FEW MONTHS AGO THAT TESLA WON'T PRODUCE MORE THAN 2k PER WEEK 2- Accusing Tesla of having low production quality in their tent line without any evidence 3- Criticizing Tesla for not being able to produce performance and dual versions, then when they do criticizing them for selling those before cheaper options when that is what any sane company would do 4- ... Honestly it is baffling to me that you guys keep being proven wrong over and over again, yet you keep insisting that Tesla will fail. If you really believe Tesla is doomed I suggest you start shorting them (and let me know how it works out for you!).

<comment><USER63> Not surprised the only sane and accurate comment is grayed out at the bottom of the thread. HN is filled to the brink with anti-tesla shill bots. The astroturfing is so obvious it's comical. That's why I don't ever trust HN comments..

<comment><USER64> The community is obviously divided about this. That's not the same thing as "astroturfing". The guidelines ask you not to insinuate that without evidence, so please don't.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER63> Look at the comments. It's 90% anti-tesla and all the pro-tesla comments get down voted into oblivion. So the community is not "divided" it seems...Statistics is my evidence. The extreme slant and voting behavior of all Tesla threads, mixed with debunked misinformation peddled by oil and gas industries being presented as fact pervasively in these threads is plenty of evidence

<comment><USER64> That's neither statistics nor evidence. You may be falling prey to the Hostile Media Effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22&sort=byPopularity&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

It makes things seem intensely obvious that actually aren't true. People on the other side of the fence from you are just as convinced that HN is dominated by pro-Tesla shills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Finally got to drive Model 3 yesterday. A friend received his car a few days ago and let me try it on some suburban streets. Nothing fancy. But I did take it for a mini "drag race" against another buddy's Porsche 911. Again this was on a residential tree-lined street with kids playing outside. Not exactly fast and furious. But it definitely kept pace that first eighth of a mile ;)

In my humble opinion it outclasses all similar rides: Audi A4, Mercedes C Class, BMW 325, etc. And with charging stations popping up in every supermarket, office park, highway rest area, etc. It may rapidly become the brand of choice for young, urban commuting professionals.

<comment><USER66> I find it hard to believe that it would outclass a C-class on interior luxury, a BMW on overall sportiness. I've driven all these cars, and when you get in a Tesla is definitely feels like a significant step down.

<comment><USER67> For a lot of people, "sporty" means "torque" and that's about it.</comment></comment></comment>


The Cosmetic Class - <AUTHOR> https://zandercutt.com/2018/07/16/the-cosmetic-class/ <comment><USER2> Reading this kind of reminded me of old Christian Slater movies like Pump up the Volume and Heathers, and other movies of the GenX era. (But, I'm sure films of the 60s fit, as well)

Hopefully this is a sign that this generation is forming its identity and ready to express it with some real cultural movements! I've been waiting eagerly for their cultural identity to emerge and express itself with authentic art, music, film, etc.

However, I also find the essay ironic. When the Internet first went mainstream, one phenomenon was "the lurker" - the fact that most, the mass majority, of internet users only "consumed content" (although, back then it wasn't called content). That's because few of us felt confident enough to claim enough expertise to share much. Therefore, most of us just "lurked". We let the experts speak, and we indulged in surfing on their knowledge.

In this "Instagram era", though, everyone is expected to be a "content creator". (e.g. everyone has a github!) But, to be one, one unfortunately misses out on a long history of prior work. One gets so bogged down by creating new content and reading all of the new content created within the previous few hours, that much of the past 108 years of knowledge and wisdom isn't fully accessible. And, although the author seems to try to escape that vortex, they also seem to have ignored that they're mostly reinventing ideas that were created between McLuhan and 2010.

But, that is ok! I actually read the whole thing and enjoyed it (because it also kinda reminded me of reading Zines). Yeah, as others have said, it could use some editing, but at least it has paragraphs!

<comment><USER3> > I've been waiting eagerly for their cultural identity to emerge and express > itself with authentic art, music, film, etc.

I think it's already happening/happened, it's just not as easy to see and commodify because media is not being funneled through a few mediums. I don't think we'll ever see these large generational "identities" like we did pre- internet and especially pre-social-media. I predict that from now on the defining identity trait is that there is no defining trait. You can choose one identity from the many pre-existing ones or create your own, then find your community online to make you feel good about your choice.

I also enjoyed the article. Not perfect but hey, it's fostering discussion. I'm actually more interested in their authenticity article, which I will read next

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sometimes I think the deepest, most absurdist corners of the internet are its last bastion of humanity. Where the memes are fueled by people's desire to be so incredibly nonsensical and inscrutable as to defy marketability. Of course, if you look at recent trends in corporate Twitter accounts you can see companies doing their very best to appropriate even that.

<comment><USER5> Even commercials are tapping into absurdist themes. I can remember a few asian ones I've seen but a recent one that comes to mind is the newest Sprite commercial where the kid is running around the house yelling about how they are out of sprite.

<comment><USER3> Haven't commercials been doing absurdism for a while? Speaking of Asian ones, it's been known that Japanese commercials can be weird AF (to the western mind) that it was made fun of in the Simpsons with the Me Sparkle episode back in the early 90s. US has also been creating absurdist commercials pre-internet for a while now as well

<comment><USER6> So they aren't weird for the Asian mind? I doubt it.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I put that caveat in there because I am not Asian so I did not want to speak on behalf of Asians. Sorry if that wasn't clear. My assumption is that it is weird for everybody but maybe there were some cultural things I could have been missing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really, really dislike this kind of medium-to-long form article that don't bother to even expose some sort of context (topic introductory line). This is incredibly disrespectful to the reader. You read the first half trying to put the pieces together, while given that this is a proto-longform article (does not have the length, but has the tone), there is fluff added here and there for flavor. This is so frustrating to read.

> The truth, then, is this: our generation was raised with the understanding > that the image we portrayed mattered more than who we actually were not out > of some malevolent, externally imposed agenda, but because it was actually > true. The result was that nothing we ever did felt organic; instead, > everything felt like a checked box.

As every generation before? Why even speak about generation here? This seems like an absurd reduction from the author, while this is the kind of thing you learn to recognize as you age and you start seeing the word with your own eyes. Most people becomes disillusioned as time goes on, seeing how much public action is fake.

A much more interesting analysis would be to show how the new engaging platforms distord this longstanding social behavior (signaling), amplifying it or distording it. But to say that they are an "Instagram" generation is giving far too much credit to Instagram. The world was not "disrupted" by Instagram, it was only a lens and a way to capitalize on this behavior.

I could go on with the "lost authenticity", but I feel I'm just trying to justify the time taken to read this empty piece.

<comment> V-2 _" I am 23 as I write this"_. I can't say I'm surprised, and the author is clearly of the "I love the sound of my own voice" type. That's how the piece reads at least. Narcissism isn't only about looks.

<comment><USER8> My first thought when reading your comment was "wow that's more sharply critical than the author deserves".

But on second thought it is a bit ironic that a piece so critical of "signaling" and empty gestures (the author cites things like joining student counsel) would be posted to the author's personal blog. I think it would have leant credibility to the article if the author had the self awareness to point out the fact that blogs are a form of self promotion not too far removed from Instagram.

<comment> V-2 It is of course ironic, but perhaps it is also to be expected.

It might be that we're more sensitive to - and insightful about - the social phenomena that stem from personality traits not unlike our own (on some level at least).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Its business, after all, is driven by engagement, and because engagement is > well-understood to be eroded by the presence of nuance and depth — two > traits that are essential for a complete understanding of anything — > Instagram promotes neither.

This must be the best description of fb/insta mechanics.

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, it's absurd. I've my 20 able developer friends who weren't able to find job despite being very good developers. They were always messing up interviews.

Yes, they can solve whatever tricky questions you throw at them because they've lots of experience working on low level stuff.

People's eyes are so used to Instagram people that they think less attractive people are less healthy so they'll not be good at problem solving which takes great genes. This is what most have concluded from Instagram photos of bodybuilders/athletes/celebrities.

I am guilty of this myself, I've dated many beautiful ladies who i chased with passion. They all had invested lot of money into their looks. They always complained about not being well off like me but now you know why.This is what attracted me to them. Face is the first thing i notice, i was young and naive and got fooled by clever makeup. So why you can't do same as a man? Hack your way to success.

If you are a good programmer and still not getting paid well or getting promoted faster, then it's probably this.

Here comes the twist. We finally figured out it has to do with their appearance. No one gives this as reason to you, they simply reject you period.

So we got a writer and analyst, to figure out what the market truly wants then created a script and we gave it to the programmers to memorize.

Add some professional make-up artists, took some photographs at a studio with many others (pretending to be at some event of great importance). This went straight to their Instagram account.

And 16 out of 20 programmer friends showed up for interview and got a successful placement.

But still 4 of them didn't find job yet.

What is this? This is new normal and this is what people who are interviewing and recruiting want.

<comment><USER11> The fuck?

This is a joke right? I would have thought development would be the one sector unaffected by look / image etc.

Unless you're interviewing for some hipster startup.

<comment><USER10> > This is a joke right? I would have thought development would be the one > sector unaffected by look / image etc.

I know this guy who used to screen models at a Hollywood studio. Now he works as a recruiter in a tech company (he met a VP at stripclub who got him in), what do you think he does?

They are still same people! They look for same signals. They give it weird names like vibes / cultural fit or whatever.

<comment> V-2 They are still same people no doubt. It's quite typical for your IT recruiter to have screened Hollywood models back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are several comments complaining about the lack of an introduction or topic sentence. Maybe it's me, but I knew what ride I was on from the large clear title and subtitle:

"The Cosmetic Class"

"What happens when a society with a penchant for the cosmetic meets a medium dominated by it?"

<comment><USER13> That says nothing about if it's worth reading the article.

I wish every article came with an abstract and conclusion like a scientific paper. Generally that's enough and you don't even need to read the middle.

<comment><USER14> That was supposed to be gold standard. The "inverted pyramid"[0]. It's taught to journalists as very important. It's also universally ignored everywhere.

I've seen _one_ news source do that, by putting a bullet-point summary at the beginning of the article. Sadly, I don't remember which one was that (I don't usually pay attention to _who_ is writing, when an article lands on HN). Most others prefer to do the inverse - bait you with the headline, make the beginning confusing, and only later on reveal the important details.

\--

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_\(journalism\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One could just live in the real world where you don't know or care what a finsta is.

<comment><USER16> Eh. For many young people, this IS the "real world". These are their experiences. It's not productive to discount so many other people's realities.

<comment><USER17> Nope, it is plenty productive to call out corporate pseudo-cultural production for what it is: fantasy.

<comment><USER14> This isn't the first generation to live in a "corporate pseudo-cultural production" world.

Movies and movie conventions. Baseball cards and other popular collectibles. Sport events. Music events. All those things are just "corporate pseudo- cultural productions". Yet they're also the culture, because - for better or worse - commerce is part of our lives too.

<comment><USER17> > Yet they're also the culture, because - for better or worse - commerce is > part of our lives too.

And I am saying it is enormously productive and beneficial to be skeptical of those things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the movie Ingrid Goes West. It's this article in the form of a brilliant dark-comedy.

</comment><comment><USER18> I do not like being so negative, but i feel like reading this article was a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think it's worth noting that the author of this piece has a private Instagram account.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_sentence) !?

<comment><USER21> Are you asking why the author chose not to include one?

<comment><USER22> The context would have helped immensely. Instead I had to read the first half of the article again after I finished.

The author captures the essence of the vapid absurdism permeating social media, and our culture more broadly.</comment></comment></comment>


Why people have trouble reading neutral faces - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/science/reading-neutral-faces.html <comment><USER2> As someone with parents who fought constantly and particularly an abusive mother, I can confirm this is true.

I have always been introverted and averse to talking to new people. I've been told I'm stand offish or that people think I don't like them all the time and really I just have a hard time reading faces and assume everyone doesn't want to talk to me.

It's something I actively have to fight against and it's had a negative impact on me my whole life.

If you're a parent, please please consider what you are doing to your children when you fight around them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've thought about getting plastic surgery to change the way my eyebrows sit on my face. They naturally angle downwards and always look like I'm angry, when my face is completely resting. When I'm interacting with new people, I have to consciously keep my eyebrows raised as I'm smiling to look more pleasant. I really do think it is a hidden handicap though, and one that affects literally every interaction I have with people.

<comment><USER4> I'm similar. I have bitchy resting face. I used to do that (raise eyebrows, etc) when I was younger. The wonderful thing about aging, is you don't really care what other people think anymore; at least not as much as you used to.

<comment><USER5> I remember the first time someone verbalized about my completely relaxed face. I was miles away, daydreaming, and one of my friends touched my shoulder and asked if I was alright. I told her yes, and asked why. She said I just looked really sad.

So apparently I have resting sad face.

<comment><USER6> Seem to have similar, consistently asked by friends if i'm not ok or upset when i feel fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _A study published in March in the Journal of Social and Personal > Relationships suggests that some people who grew up with parents who fought > a lot never learned to properly read those in-between faces, perhaps because > they spent so much time watching out for signs of conflict_

Why is this kind of reasoning so often applied in such cases? Could just as well be that your parents fought a lot because they were hopeless at reading each other. A shortcoming which you then went and inherited.

<comment><USER8> While it is possible that this is the case, I doubt that it is equally likely. Parents who fight for that long would have to be bad at reading faces, and abnormally bad at speaking, to accidentally misread each other through an entire argument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Moving to a country with a different culture and language may help overcome the symptoms. If parents fight using a specific language, aggressive tones and swear words are more easily associated to that language. "Resetting" to a neutral state in a different language can help dissociating everyday words from the negative memories.

Also, in different cultures people's faces and expressions may be markedly different, forcing the person to have to re-learn to interpret them. Again, supposing that on average exposure to people will be more neutral that in a home of disputing parents, the relearning process should tend to have a positive effect.

This is likely to be stronger the more "alien" the new culture/language is, because a more radical relearning will be necessary.

<comment><USER10> Are you speaking from experience? I never had this issue before, but I moved to a different culture and now I do feel like everyone is angry all the time.

> forcing the person to have to re-learn to interpret them

I've been in said new culture for almost 20 years and haven't done this re- learning, so I don't have high hopes

<comment><USER11> I kind of get the opposite. I'm Greek but have been living in the UK for 12 years. It's really remarkable how much more people smile at you here in situations where you wouldn't expect anyone to smile, back home.

For instance, anyone who is offering a service or selling something is smiling, here. Back home, I find that people tend to smile when they meet friends or acquaintances, but not when they service total strangers. In fact, a merchant that always smiles would probably come across as dishonest. People tend to consider social smiles to be fake smiles and I think they try to avoid them so as to not look distrustful.

The effect this had on me is that when I go back home, or when I'm serviced by non-British staff who may not have been long enougn in the UK to pick up the habit, I sometimes find myself wondering why they are being so brusque. Which is not at all the case. People aren't impolite when they don't go out of their way to put a smile on everything. They're just acting neutrally.

Edit: Oh and I've been on the other end of this myself- when colleagues complained that I was treating them with disrespect when I was just ...not smiling :)

<comment><USER10> I guess that explains it ... I'm from India (lots of smiles) moved to the US (fewer smiles).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My problem is not that; it's that every headline/blurb seems like it's begging the question.

</comment><comment><USER13> I can confirm this is true in my case. My folks fought at least 3 times a day when i was growing up till they divorced. A few years ago i realized that i was perceiving anger when none was present. This is why i favor divorce since you don't want to put your kids through this shit. :)

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately if my parents had divorced, I'd have been left with the angrier one most likely. I'm glad my dad hung around even though he was as much a victim of the abuse as I was.

<comment><USER14> It's impossible for men to be victims of abuse in our patriarchal system. Check your privilege.

<comment><USER15> You've posted a bunch of flamebait to HN already. Could you please not do that? It isn't what this site is for, and we eventually ban accounts that do it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER14> I have posted two questionable comments as satire but I'll stop. Thank you for the courtesy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone else think that in the "neutral" photo, the actors look like they're about to kiss?

No, really. I blame an overexposure to pop culture. That particular framing, with the characters staring into each other's eyes, combined with the sense of stillness implied by a photo, to me feels reminiscent of a certain overused stock scene in film…

And there's reason I thought of film. In a real-life photo, people are usually either looking at the camera (if they're aware of the photo) or farther away (if they're not). You wouldn't usually see that kind of perfectly framed side shot.

So I'm not sure all the children were really "misreading" the emotion in the neutral photo. (Unless, of course, it's just me who's misreading…)

<comment><USER17> They do look like people about to kiss. If would look less that way if they would be further from each other. Their shoulders are almost touching. Also, people rarely silently stare at each other at non-kissing occasions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just remembered the 'how emotions are made' book I read last year, and screaming 'no universal emotion expression' inside.

</comment><comment><USER19> Wondering how ML/AI can read neutral faces?

</comment><comment><USER20> Finally, some science behind Resting Bitch Face.

<comment><USER21> How is it different from the INTJ death glare?

[http://intj-explained.tumblr.com/post/10233359295/the-death-...](http://intj- explained.tumblr.com/post/10233359295/the-death-glare)

<comment><USER22> I think it's important to remind yourself that the Myers-Briggs test is not valid psychology.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers–Briggs_Type_Indicator#Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers–Briggs_Type_Indicator#Criticism)

<comment><USER23> It is sound but not reliable or entirely valid. (Soundness pertains to logic behind the test. Validity to accuracy and predictive power and reliability to test/retest reproducibility.)

What is invalid is using this test to anything more than pain typology. It is not meant to be a hiring guide, a mental issue test nor intelligence test, nor social group fit test.

Big Five makes it a bit more explicit though still does nor fully decorrelate the factors. It also has a bit of a reliability problem. NEO P-I is even better. IPIP, further still.

There are more advanced psychological inventories too and ones more specialised for given tasks. I'm pretty sure soneone will come up with a way to integrate emotion and body language reading into an inventory one day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The comments on this article seem profoundly American. I could never imagine anyone I've known to care this much.

<comment><USER25> We've already asked you to stop with the off-topic national swipes. Please?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER24> It wasn't intended as a swipe.

<comment><USER26> I don't see any way to read your comment that isn't condescending.

<comment><USER24> Funny how well this goes with the topic. It's only condescending if you take it to be a bad thing. I'm making no judgement, just pointing out the substantial difference in attitudes.

<comment><USER26> If you didn't intend to make a judgment, then you're communicating poorly, since a lot of people clearly read it as judgmental.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bullsh*t Ipsum - <AUTHOR> http://bullshitipsum.com/

<comment><USER2> You probably want to run this on a single static page, not requiring PHP, MySQL or Wordpress. That will help avoid the completely broken state it's in now.

<comment><USER3> static pages are future

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the useful features of Lorem Ipsum text is that it's clear that it's purely there as a place holder so there's less danger of it accidently making its way onto the live site.

If there's some reason why you need actual real text as opposed to Lorem Ipsum, then I'm more of a fan of "indicative" text rather than random nonsense. By that I mean briefly write something related to what is actually going to appear in the space. It doesn't need to be great copy, but a person reading it can make out what is generally going to end up there and if it does accidently go live it's less of an issue than if you productionised "bullshit ipsum".

Given that Bullshit Ipsum appears to have neither of these features, I don't really see a use for it.

<comment><USER5> Except when you don't proof-read your fancy French wine bottle label: [http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/nice-bottle-of-lorem- ipsum-2009....](http://blog.jgc.org/2011/11/nice-bottle-of-lorem- ipsum-2009.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somewhat related: <http://slipsum.com/>

Pulp Fiction Impsum

<comment><USER7> Also similar is Hipster Ipsum: <http://hipsteripsum.me>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is brilliant.

By the way: If you're not absolutely clear that the generated text is a placeholder after five words, you seriously need a change of occupation.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cool, but I can't comprehend why something WordPress would be used for a site like this.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://youtu.be/dF1NUposXVQ></comment>


Marijuana use and schizophrenia: New evidence suggests link - <AUTHOR> http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/314896.php <comment><USER2> I've seen these studies for years now and they always conclude the same thing but twist the headline and omit very important data in their study. They conclude:

"There is growing consensus that cannabis use might increase the risk of developing schizophrenia. Our results support this, but also suggest that those at increased risk of schizophrenia may be more likely to try cannabis in the first place."

I've never found any good reason to suspect a link between use and cause in their data and the link between schizophrenia and use is almost always consistent with use of other drugs as well, and most any drug as far as that goes. For example, almost all of those who used marijuana also used alcohol and prescriptions drugs as well, but links to those (and combinations of them) are completely or mostly ignored in these studies.

Furthermore, they almost always suggest that "Paranoia" is one of the symptoms that Marijuana causes but they never address the fact that everyone they study has grown up with a lifetime of harsh disinformation and the very real threat of imprisonment for taking just a puff off a joint, which is a very good reason to get paranoid if you do.

As they say "Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me." and in this case "They" most certainly have been and still are in most places and everyone has seen it happen. The real result of that is, if you're not paranoid you're a idiot and most schizophrenics are not idiots. Some of them are geniuses. ([https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful- minds/200903/...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful- minds/200903/schizophrenic-thought-madness-or-potential-genius))

<comment><USER3> > Furthermore, they almost always suggest that "Paranoia" is one of the > symptoms that Marijuana causes but they never address the fact that everyone > they study has grown up with a lifetime of harsh disinformation and the very > real threat of imprisonment for taking just a puff off a joint, which is a > very good reason to get paranoid if you do.

This is a british study.

[http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsdisorders/cann...](http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/problemsdisorders/cannabis.aspx)

> A young person found to be in possession of cannabis will be:

> Arrested

> Taken to a police station

> Given a reprimand, final warning or charge, depending on the offence.

> After one reprimand, a further offence will lead to a final warning or > charge.

> After a final warning:

> The young person must be referred to a Youth Offending Team to arrange a > rehabilitation programme.

> A further offence will lead to a criminal charge.

That's pretty far from being imprisoned for a single puff.

<comment><USER4> Trust me, being arrested is fucking terrifying. Being under threat of persecution for getting a little high is a definite paranoia-inducer.

Do you think 'they know' would be a concern if police couldnt cuff you for doing it? Search your personal property over a smell they may not smell?

<comment><USER3> > Trust me, being arrested is fucking terrifying

Sure. That wasn't the claim though. The claim was "imprisoned for a single puff", which just doesn't happen in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't it established since about 25 years that any drug-use can bring onset of schizophrenia in those vulnerable?

<comment><USER3> The correlation between drug use and schizophrenia is very clear.

There's considerable debate about the causality.

Does psychosis cause people to smoke more cannabis? (It causes people to smoke more cigarettes).

Does cannabis cause people who would not have had psychosis otherwise to get it?

Or does cannabis just bring out an underlying psychosis that the person probably would have experienced anyway?

It's probably a bit complicated, with circular stuff going on.

While I'm strongly in favour of legalisation of all drugs I am a bit worried when some of the legalise crowd refuse to accept that there might be health risks. (I'm also frustrated when the anti crowd refuse to accept that the situation is probably a bit more complicated than "drugs make you mad")

<comment><USER6> Or is it that people who have schizophrenia often belong to social classes that are more likely to use drugs?

If poor people are more likely to use drugs, and poor people also have a higher incidence of schizophrenia, you could arrive at this correlation even if marijuana and psychosis are entirely unrelated.

<comment><USER7> Marijuana use actually may be more strongly correlated to higher socioeconomic status than lower.

A quick Google search for "drug use by socioeconomic status" turns up a 2012 article titled "Socioeconomic Status and Substance Use Among Young Adults: A Comparison Across Constructs and Drugs" [0] which concludes, in part

      > Findings based on three indicators of family background
      > SES—income, wealth, and parental education—converged in
      > describing unique patterns for smoking and for alcohol and
      > marijuana use among young adults, although functional
      > relationships across SES measures varied. Young adults with
      > the highest family background SES were most prone to alcohol
      > and marijuana use.

[0] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410945/)

EDIT: Change lede.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anecdotal evidence: Kurt Vonnegut's son Mark wrote a fascinating book ("The Eden Express", 1975) about his experience being schizophrenic and a prolonged psychotic episode triggered by marijuana consumption: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eden_Express](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eden_Express)

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8689377](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8689377) seems to suggest increased paranoia with alcohol consumption as well. Probably makes the condition worse rather than being the root cause.

</comment><comment><USER10> My friend in med school mentioned a study that found a number of genes for which smoking cannabis increases risk of developing schizophrenia, and a small number for which smoking cannabis actually decreases it! If anyone has heard of this I'd love a link to the study

</comment><comment><USER11> as i understand it, the growing opinion of toxicologists (who, if drug use comes up in court, are the ones who get to have expert opinions on what drugs do), is that the delta-9-THC can cause short term psychosis. on the other hand, CBD prevents it (and has most of the non-recreational benefits of the plant). further, THC and CBD levels can vary dramatically by strain.

in this study, they do claim to measure THC concentration, but don't measure or talk about CBD, and have a sample size of 17.

there's stuff going on that needs to be studied, but this study isn't contributing anything useful.

</comment><comment><USER12> tl;dr; those prone to schizophrenia may increase psychosis risk if they are consumers of marijuana.

<comment><USER3> The article links to the study (this is great, and I wish more people did that). The study has a nice tl;dr

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge- core/c...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge- core/content/view/122D651C3670683DAEDDA33997417105/S0033291716003172a.pdf/div- class-title-assessing-causality-in-associations-between-cannabis-use-and- schizophrenia-risk-a-two-sample-mendelian-randomization-study-div.pdf)

> Results. There was some evidence consistent with a causal effect of cannabis > initiation on risk of schizophrenia [odds ratio (OR) 1.04 per doubling odds > of cannabis initiation, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.01 1.07, p = 0.019]. > There was strong evidence consistent with a causal effect of schizophrenia > risk on likelihood of cannabis initiation (OR 1.10 per doubling of the odds > of schizophrenia, 95% CI 1.05–1.14, p = 2.64 × 10−5). Findings were as > predicted for the negative control (height: OR 1.00, 95% CI 0.99–1.01, p = > 0.90) but weaker than predicted for the positive control (years in > education: OR 0.99, 95% CI 0.97–1.00, p = 0.066) analyses.

> Conclusions. Our results provide some that cannabis initiation increases the > risk of schizophrenia, although the size of the causal estimate is small. We > find stronger evidence that schizophrenia risk predicts cannabis initiation, > possibly as genetic instruments for schizophrenia are stronger than for > cannabis initiation

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks a lot like propaganda. Not saying it's inaccurate, but pointed squarely.

<comment><USER10> Well.. if you have a latent mental illness and you take psychoactive substances, you may have a bad time.

The issue is complicated: people often don't know about their illness and don't know that they respond differently to substances than other people do.

I'm looking forward to a future where genetic testing for these things is as common as testing your drugs for purity (which, i hope, will also be be more common!)

<comment><USER13> > you take psychoactive substance

So are they going to release individual studies for each of the other substances? This is the crux of the issue for me.

<comment><USER14> Hopefully we'll get to that point. It isn't like the research is complete in any way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How MacArthur Geniuses Handle Their Windfalls - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/your-money/how-macarthur-geniuses-handle-their-money-windfalls.html <comment><USER2> My father worked for a MacArthur. That woman was ruthless in her search for perfection. She did so out of love. I just want to come here and say as someone with an immigrant childhood and where my family was doing whatever we could to move up - she made my child self so happy. She personally picked out 3 industrial sized bags of Christmas presents that my dad took home to me. They filled our apartment floor.

</comment><comment><USER3> The MacArthur awards are amusing if you know who John MacArthur was. He made his money selling mail order life insurance and stalling on paying claims.[1]

[1] William Hoffman, "The Stockholder", 1969, ASIN: B001HS4R58.

<comment><USER2> This is the very reason the foundation was created. The family wanted to give back to the community for his actions - basically forcing him to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most people who randomly get a windfall of money were previously poor. If you're poor and suddenly get lots of money, you most probably can't handle it; " _#4. Extra Money Has to Be Spent Right Goddamn Now!_ ": [http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you- devel...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop- growing-up-poor/)

MacArthur winners have two advantages: First, they are probably good at something, and therefore are likely not poor. Secondly, even if they _are_ poor, they are probably _very_ focused on their thing which made them get the prize, and any money goes to _their thing_ , not to themselves, which makes most people a little more rational when deciding things.

<comment><USER5> Additionally the MacArthur grants are divided into quarterly payments over five years, so you're not getting 625k all at once, you're getting 20 payments of $31,250, one every three months. That makes it pretty much impossible to blow all of it within half a year.

<comment><USER4> People could still get into debt because they know that the money is coming. Look at how many people buy things and assess the price based on the _size of the monthly payments_ instead of the actual total price.

<comment><USER6> You could literally go into debt by using the structured payments as collateral for a loan for something close to the full amount up front.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cormac McCarthy used his windfall to research and write the greatest (IMO) novel of the 20th century _Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West_

<comment><USER8> Try as I might, I can't bring myself to love Blood Meridian more than The Road.

But I would definitely place it among my top 20 books of the last century. Perhaps even in the top 10

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What programs are out there like a MacArthur for coders? I know a bit about Google's Summer of Code, but it's not really the same...

<comment><USER10> Okay, I don't want to sound like I'm making fun of you, but you're on a website run by a company that gives large amounts of free money away to coders to explore ideas...

<comment><USER11> Comparing MacArthur Genius Grants and similar awards to venture capital isn't particularly apt. YCR or the fellowship might be slightly more comparable, but still pretty off mark.

To the parent: MacArthur Genius Grants have been given to computer scientists... IDK about "coder"; ostensibly, that code should be pretty remarkable if you're getting that kind of windfall. And if the code is so remarkable, there's probably some science or engineering behind it that is the _actual_ reason for the award. In other words, by the time code is doing something that is societally significant, there are probably ideas extant in that code that are worth codifying and explaining in something other than a programming language. And probably those ideas/results have impacts that go far beyond a particular implementation.

<comment><USER9> I think that there's a lot of "boring" code that could be written which could have a tremendous positive impact for the world. Some of it I think, if it actually saw real adoption, which would collapse the market caps of some fairly big companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why not just simplify it down to MacArthur Fellows are smart, and smart people are smart enough to solve the rather simple problem of not wasting a large windfall?

<comment><USER13> Because poor people are not stupid. They're often actually pretty damn rational within their constraints. Smarts alone does not equip one to handle a windfall.

<comment><USER5> This is a very crucial point. The so called "stupid" financial behavior of people in (first world) poverty is anything but, it's a series of carefully calculated and measured responses to extreme inflexibility. Almost all means of establishing long term financial stability involve either a) put away some money now, wait for some time, then receive more money or b) risk losing some money for the chance to gain more money in a way that averages to a net positive over time. _Neither of these are possible when you do not have flexibility_ , you can't afford to put away money when doing so means not eating for a week, and you can't afford to risk money for more money when coming out on the losing end of that deal means becoming homeless. You have to have a completely different approach to managing money when in poverty, and it sticks with you mentally even after escaping to a more stable situation.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that was exactly my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> People always say winning the jackpot will change their lives, but from what I have seen $50,000 will change a LOT of lives for ever. In Am.Me.Ri.Ca.

Give a person $200,000 and that may be just enough that they know they cannot make a mistake. Give them north of $500,000 and now they feel they can spend freely without a worry. Give them north of $1.5M and now they may literally think this money is a bottomless well.

<comment><USER9> Different scales and different 'changes'. You can give $50,000 to someone who has $10k/yr living expenses and it might change their life. But people with $10k/yr living expenses probably don't typically have the work experience and skill sets of your target demographic. When MacArthur finds someone who meets both criteria, well, that's great and a smaller award might even have more impact.

But if you are giving an award to someone with 6-figure salary and 5-figure annual living expenses, no $50,000 isn't going to make as much of a difference in their lives. If you want to seriously free that person from thinking about money for a significant period of time, it better be 7 figures. And anyway, $1.5M is not all that far from a bottomless well (i.e. 5% per year).

<comment><USER14> Correct, but remember that even in the US 4 out of 5 people make less than 6 figures yearly (Before tax).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is grant or award money taxed?

I've read stories about people in the US who win a not huge but not small lottery prize of say $1 million don't do so well.

By the time they pay all the taxes and get bumped up a tax bracket or two spend a few hundred thousand they probably owe even more.

In Canada lottery wins are not taxed but the interest is. But even so many "poor" people and that's a broad term end up blowing it all.

I've seen fishermen who made $30,000 a year go work in oil fields and seem to treat $100,000 like it's play money.

<comment><USER5> Note that because of the way tax brackets work, it is not possible for a small increase in income to increase your taxes to the point that it's a net decrease (due to tax brackets anyway). If you're just below the next tax bracket, and you get a ten dollar raise, _only those ten dollars are taxed at the higher rate_. All of your previous income remains taxed the same as it was before.

<comment><USER16> That's not how tax brackets work, but it is how some brain-dead payroll systems work! I have seen first hand a broken payroll system that simply extrapolates the current pay period out into the full calendar year and then deducts taxes at that rate. This has the result of a small gross increase (usually due to intermittent overtime pay) resulting in a net decrease in pay for that pay period. This is very much an edge condition of an already broken model, but I have definitely seen it happen.

<comment><USER17> > extrapolates the current pay period out into the full calendar year and then > deducts taxes at that rate

For US Federal taxes, thats generally how its supposed to work - see [1], and for some exceptions [2].

> small gross increase [...] resulting in a net decrease in pay for that pay > period

If a payroll system is doing that, its not for the reason you cite. US tax rates are such that an increase in gross pay always results in an increase in net pay, and that doesn't change when you divide gross and net by 24 (or however many pay periods you have each year).

[1]: [https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15/ar02.html#en_US_2015_pu...](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15/ar02.html#en_US_2015_publink1000254685)

[2]: [https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15a/ar02.html#en_US_2015_p...](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15a/ar02.html#en_US_2015_publink1000236700)</comment></comment></comment></comment>