Cheap Beijing Flights With a Dangerous Catch - <AUTHOR> http://www.seat31b.com/2017/08/99-beijing-flights-with-a-dangerous-catch/ <comment><USER2> Companies like this have been around for years, and whenever I read about them I'm surprised that people would risk going to prison (or worse) just to get a discounted air fare. I wouldn't even carry a package for a friend unless I could see exactly what was inside, let alone carry a suitcase full of unknown stuff for a total stranger.

Also, an inevitable question when going through security checkpoints in some countries is "did you pack your own luggage". I assume that if you answer "no", you'd be subjected to a very thorough search for bombs or contraband.

Calling a company "Airmule" seems to be a particularly bad choice, since the term "mule" is commonly used to denote a person who carries smuggled drugs (sometimes concealed inside their body).

<comment><USER3> > _Calling a company "Airmule" seems to be a particularly bad choice, since > the term "mule" is commonly used to denote a person who carries smuggled > drugs (sometimes concealed inside their body)._

No kidding. One has to wonder how the founders can't be aware of that. Perhaps it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek name?

<comment><USER2> Perhaps it was. But security and customs officers aren't known for their great sense of humor, so it's probably best to stick with names that don't suggest drug trafficking.

<comment><USER4> Side note: Just a few days ago I flew domestically within Australia just a week after some anti-terror arrests and increased security screening (which has since been lifted). As my bag went through it got flagged and the security officer flagged the aerosol can. I was already pretty nervous already, so I apologise profusely for the mistake.

Turns out the security officer was just a Regular Person, claimed deodorant cans are his "bread and bitter" and had a little chuckle as he found it in my toiletries bag.

<comment><USER5> What airport security had to say about a regular person impersonating security agents?

<comment><USER6> > What airport security had to say about a regular person impersonating > security agents?

I initially read madeofpalk's comment ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940680](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940680)) as it seems that you might have, so that it seemed to say that the supposed security agent was not actually a security agent; but a second reading suggests that the meaning is instead that, _in addition to_ being a security agent, the person in question was a Regular Person, and had a sense of humour.

Repeated readings still do not reveal whether an Australian security agent referring to something as his "bread and bitter" is a typo or intentional. :-)

<comment><USER7> A bread & bitter is a typical Australian breakfast of stale bread and (when available) an anise liquor.

It's derived from the continental "existentialist breakfast" of a black coffee, cigarette, and Aspirin–but had to be adapted due to the bad availability of commercial products in the past, as well as the higher activity levels the Australian bush requires and the resulting danger of a breakfast completely devoid of calories.

<comment><USER8> I can't tell if this is real or not. I guess the joke is on me for not knowing if you're satirizing with bitter and liquor or not.

<comment><USER7> As @jonah found out, it's just a joke–only the "existentialist breakfast" is a real thing that probably started as a joke, and that I've seen on one or two menus of cafes willing to skirt the rules on selling pharmaceuticals.

But the joke is most definitely not "on you". As in: It wasn't meant to expose anybody's shocking lack of knowledge of arcane Australian trivia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.airmule.com/terms-of-service/](https://www.airmule.com/terms-of- service/):

 _" Please note that, as stated above, the site, application and services are intended to be used to facilitate travelers and senders connecting and arranging item transportation directly with each other. Airmule cannot and does not control the content contained in any package and the condition, legality or suitability of any items and luggage. Airmule strongly advises each traveler to inspect each item carefully. If a traveler does suspects an item is illicit, do not transport and contact airmule. Airmule is not responsible for and disclaims any and all liability related to any and all available transportation. Accordingly, any inquiries will be made or accepted at the member's own risk."_

I don't know how long that has been there, but it is clear. They are brokers, but don't accept any liability.

<comment><USER10> _" Airmule strongly advises each traveler to inspect each item carefully."_

But in their FAQs, they have this:

 _" Can I inspect the shipments?"_

 _" All travelers have the right to inspect their shipment(s) prior to boarding. However, please note that Airmule manually inspects and verifies each item for safety before traveler handoff."_

[https://airmule.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115004938167-C...](https://airmule.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115004938167-Can-I-inspect-the-shipments-)

<comment><USER11> This is extremely disingenuous of them to have their FAQ essentially contradict their TOS. Honestly sounds like they are deliberately trying to deceive people.

<comment><USER12> An interesting question is "What did the traveller agree to?" The ToS legalese which says "We have no responsibility" or the FAQ which says they check & validate that the luggage is safe to take.

It sucks that companies can say one thing in the ToS and that overrides the more prominant FAQ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I cringe when I read such Trumpian tweets from a founder. The journalist reached out a few times and the response was unclear. So he writes his piece with a pretty clear warning to future customers. Get your PR and compliance straight if you want to avoid such pieces, don't complain afterwards while calling names.

Caveat emptor. Just those responses are a red flag, if the subject is legal risk surrounding smuggling to PRC. They don't want you to know.

<comment><USER14> >The journalist

So journalists conduct their interviews in 140-character messages nowadays? I can't help but agree with the co-founder that hit-pieces should be based on actual interviews, not a Twitter conversation, ff we're going to consider this as journalism of course. If it's just amateurish blogging then I guess that would pass.

<comment><USER15> how hard is it for the founder to answer a yes or no question over twitter? Dodging it by saying they are like other OBC is basically an admission that they aren't legally protecting their carriers. If they had made known that they don't claim legal liability _at all_, then i would be fine with their service.

<comment><USER14> Even if he answered that question directly, I still think it wouldn't be enough as material to base a story on. How hard wouldn't it have been for "the journalist" to reach out for the co-founder for an interview?

<comment><USER16> The real story is that the founder refused to give a straight answer to a simple, explicit "yes or no" question when directly and repeatedly asked. Where there's smoke there's fire! His non-answer shows he knows there's a problem, and he's actively trying to deflect attention away from it.

<comment><USER17> Have you stopped beating your significant other? I just need a simple, explicit "yes or no".

Not every question that can conceivably return a bool answer should be answered that way in PR.

<comment><USER15> > Have you stopped beating your significant other?

that's an unfair comparison, because this is a loaded question (implying you were beating your SO). The question being asked in the blogpost is asking for clarification, with no assumption behind it.

<comment><USER17> There is an assumption behind the blogpost's question, IMO: that only by being setup exactly as Fedex and UPS can the couriers be adequately protected.

Maybe that is the actually the case (I'm not an expert in the field), but the underlying assumption of that being a hard requirement is present. Now, if Airmule thinks that they don't need to do exactly that but have another means by which the couriers could be protected, they can't reasonably answer "yes" (because they aren't organized that way) nor "no" (because that's a misleading answer from their point of view).

<comment><USER18> Easy response he could have made, but didn't:

"Not a common carrier - this page on our website describes exactly what protections are provided: <link>"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you can't answer a yes no question without wishy-washy flim-flam pr doublespeak then you don't get to complain that an article doesn't have facts.

and while i'm ranting. what is with founders presenting them selves as "bro's at the bar"? If the founders had bios that looked like they were from upper management at ibm i might be more likely to use their service.

<comment><USER20> It is rejecting the premise of the question. Airmule isn't a common carrier, so engaging with a line of questioning that presumes they are a common carrier is a lose/lose situation - the sort of questioning sometimes caricatured as "when did you stop beating your wife".

Rightfully so, too. The blogger clearly chose his very unfriendly angle. Of the few actual quotes from the company are statements such as on-board couriers being an established industry, both FedEx and UPS being in that industry and all shipments complying with customs. If the blogger was genuinely interested in informing his readers, diving into those statements would be interesting, but he seems to reject them out of hand, preferring instead to pursue a "gotcha" question about common carrier status.

<comment><USER21> No matter how supposedly hostile the question was, if there really is any genuine law protection of "couriers" \- then company rep could just point out the relevant FAQ item.

They are using as "couriers" mostly completely uninformed laypersons, which can't be expected to know what ocs is, ffs!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find responses like those given from the co-founder here infuriating for some reason - far more so than I realistically should. I've always valued transparency when it comes to business, so when I see people dancing around straight answers and then lashing out when people take issue with said responses it just seems so remarkably childish.

<comment><USER23> I sympathise entirely. Perhaps unwarranted, but this causes /r/punchablefaces levels of infuriation in me. The author of the blog post wrote a very level headed opinion piece, was perfectly polite even on twitter, and certainly didn't call anyone "lame". By contrast, the founder comes off as an overgrown child looking to get rich quick.

<comment><USER24> The founder should team up with Ja Rule and make a music festival on a remote island...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know anything about airmule's operation or China's customs/security, but the on-board courier industry is a legitimate one that has regulations and procedures that it's not clear the author of this article is aware of.

> "We have found contraband in [courier] shipments," says U.S. Customs > official Bob Fischler, "but percentage-wise it is infinitisemal. And in any > seizure we made, it was obvious that the on-board courier had nothing to do > with it." In fact, at New York' JFK and at London's Heathrow airport, > because of the sheer volume of courier shipments, all courier pouches go to > a central location for clearance. The courier is typically dismissed before > customs physically inspects the shipments.

\- From Air Courier Bargains by Kelly Monaghan.

<comment><USER26> Then the founder of the company should have provided said links and documentation in response to tweets and communication.

<comment><USER27> He did, he did...

"Besides, Airmule talked to some professionals — people who are in jail for actually being drug mules or other drug-trafficking crimes. And they all said they'd never use a system like Airmule, Yang (CEO) says. "

See. It's perfectly safe (「・ω・)「

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Quite a few companies operate in this space. This business idea & its risks have been discussed on HN more than once. I'm surprised that some of these are still around. A likely pivot for these could be to carry specific goods where there are no "dangerous" side effects e.g. importing smartphones, laptops etc. Although they still are not exactly legal.

\- [https://grabr.io/en/](https://grabr.io/en/)

\- [http://www.entrusters.com/](http://www.entrusters.com/)

\- [https://backpackbang.com/home](https://backpackbang.com/home)

\- [https://www.piggybee.com/en/](https://www.piggybee.com/en/)

\- [https://worldcraze.com/](https://worldcraze.com/)

\- [http://www.canubring.com/](http://www.canubring.com/)

\- [https://www.manyship.com/](https://www.manyship.com/)

<comment><USER29> How do you know it's really a Macbook, and not a Macbook box that has been emptied and refilled with heroin and re-shrink-wrapped?

<comment><USER28> Because you (the traveller) would order it from apple.com and get paid for the cost + courier fee.

<comment><USER29> That makes sense for security if the traveller buys it. But does that then run into customs problems because you are bringing goods for sale rather than just carrying them for someone else?

<comment><USER28> > does that then run into customs problems

Quite likely. The traveler is evading duty and subverting the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Founder of a startup, having a major article killing your company and "don't have time on a Saturday with my family to engage".

I understand that family is important, but isn't a situation like this so important that you - at least - replace some time next week by 2hours now to answer to this article?!

Edit: made me think about this xkcd [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/)

<comment><USER31> It's always been fashionable for VCs to give large amounts of other people's money to these 'bropreneurs' because they think that some of the hip may rub off on them, or perhaps that a cool image is a sufficient business plan. The one startup every 6-7 years where someone parlays being a massive tool into a huge valuation (Uber the most recent poster child) is enough to keep this model going in perpetuity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can just see it at the airport. "Did you pack your bags yourself?". I guess at 40 I'm not the target audience for this, but I'd be worried a younger person trying to save money might end up paying a high price. The name 'airmule' doesn't do it any favours either.

</comment><comment><USER33> When I was studying in Taiwan in the early 80s, the island's high tariffs motivated travelers to carry suitcases full of stuff--Walkmans, cameras, Italian shoes, etc. Contact a guy in Hong Kong, he gives you a bag, a guy in Taipei picks it up and gives you NT5000, enough to pay for your ticket.

I never got up the courage to try it myself, but friends did. My girlfriend did it once.

Looking back, I realize how exceedingly stupid this was. Had there been heroin inside that camera, you were going to prison for the rest of your life. They didn't (and still don't) screw around.

I heard all sorts of stories. An Australian backpacker was caught at Korean customs with 50 Rolex watches stuffed in his shirt. He was sent up for ten years. Numerous young Americans and Europeans busted for drug smuggling were rotting in prison in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. At the time, with these countries technically allied with us against Red China, execution was not a politically feasible alternative.

This Mule thing is just another respin of an old practice. Best to avoid.

<comment><USER34> I've always thought the best way to get a bomb on a plane, was to bribe someone in the crew to smuggle drugs for you (and then give them a bomb that looked like a package of drugs).

This takes things to a whole new level - you could get people to smuggle anything for next to nothing, if you packed in something else. Or, get them to blow up a plane they're on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> There's another company that lets travelers subsidize their flight ticket / earn money for delivering US products to their destination:

[https://grabr.io/travel](https://grabr.io/travel)

Key difference is:

You buy the products locals ordered (locals pay for item + delivery fee upfront into escrow) so there's no risk of a third party hiding drugs or illegal materials.

<comment><USER36> One risk is if the item is perfectly legal and ordinary in the US but is illegal to import into the foreign country. The courier could wind up paying heavy fines or much worse.

Kinder eggs are an example of an item that is perfectly fine in, say, Canada, but carries a heavy fine for import into the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's significant that the business is about shipments from the US to China. That seems to be hard. Getting stuff shipped from China to the US seems to be ridiculously easy and fast. You can order stuff off Alibaba and get fast delivery via China Packet, which is a postal service with really good rates for China to the US. Delivery in the US is via the USPS. The other direction is much more expensive and slower.

The US needs to renegotiate postal rates with China. China is still getting the "developing country" discount from the USPS.

<comment><USER38> > China is still getting the "developing country" discount from the USPS.

I thought imports from China was cheap because it was subsidized by the PRC?

<comment><USER39> I remember reading that USPS loses money on every cheap Chinese package - it's a legacy agreement IIRC.

<comment><USER40> It's the international agreement under the Universal Postal Convention.

There's a good summary here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9794971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9794971)

<comment><USER39> Thanks :)

Think it was this that I saw (on HN, and as posted above): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14651884)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Plus, you really have to love the founders of this company. I mean, as a > startup founder myself, I'm rooting for them. One is a hardcore gamer, the > other is a former backup dancer for Gucci Mane, and the third loves beer > more than you do. I'm not making this up–this is what they say about > themselves on their Web page

This guy clearly doesn't get it. Your startup page is where you post a phip relatable quirky attribute, whereas your actual qualifications go in single- phrase sentences on your twitter bio and after your name on quora answers

/s, hopefully obviously

</comment><comment><USER42> It was not so long ago that the CBP stopped a business courier off a flight from Guatemala who happened to carry nine pounds of heroin. Because he was a courier, he was not criminally charged, nonetheless he was barred from entry and banned for at least five years. And that's the USA, not China.

[http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/cbp_officers_seize_...](http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/cbp_officers_seize_9_pounds_of_heroin_at_dulles_airport898)

</comment><comment><USER43> This makes me super curious about the pre flight baggage controls. How do they handle someone who picks up the extra bag, but winds up not taking the flight?

With baby formula, i'd just return the bag and apologize, eating the $99. Heroin on the other hand, i could probably move at a steep discount. $1k or so, not worth the risk. $10 or $20k? hmm. The bag needs to be worth at least $1000 in the target country, just to break even.

it _seems_ like pretending to be a stoner, and setting up enough to buy a plane ticket could get you a lot of money for $99. Fake id and a prepaid credit card aren't that hard to come by. It's not like the ID needs to pass TSA inspection, as you're not taking the flight.

Seems like a very risky business. If your customers are willing to be pasties, it'll be ok. but just a couple of sharks completely change the risk profile. Doing stuff that precludes government enforcement of contracts is just crazy crazy risky.

<comment><USER44> Just FYI:

Pasties: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasty)

Patsies: [https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/patsy](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/patsy)

<comment><USER43> Ha! Typed it on my phone. I indeed meant the second, 'patsy'. Thanks for the correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Before clicking on the article I thought that the dangerous catch was that you have to sit in seat 31B and wondered why. The article's title and site name should really be differentiated better in HN's title.

</comment><comment><USER46> On their website they state "Airmule then manually inspects and verifies each item prior to packaging for a traveler." but I doubt this company that started last year has more experience finding contraband than law enforcement doing it their whole lives who have seen everything. Pretty asymmetric risk profile, save a couple hundred bucks for potentially your life.

<comment><USER47> Just because an item is totally legal to have in China and legal to carry into China on your person doesn't mean you can bring it in for profit in such a scheme.

There are borders where you can carry through alcohol, petrol and tobacco for personal use but people who make a living off of it are breaking the law.

Of course in the first world all you get is a fine and get your contraband confiscated which just sets you back a month or two, but risking that in China..?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Looks quite shady, especially given we're talking about China. Anything being wrong with the package - not even drugs - that'd be insanely bad - but I'm sure there are many other things which require special papers to get into China, or are prohibited, and if something is wrong, it's the courier's ass on the line. I don't see how it could be worth the risk of being imprisoned in China. I mean it's one thing to be in a "gray area" as an American in the US, with all legal protections and ACLU and so on, and another thing doing the same in China...

And I wonder what TSA thinks about people transporting things that they have little idea about in their luggage?

<comment><USER49> Pretty sure tsa requires you to know what's in your possession too. Can't really hide behind "it's not mine, I didn't know X was in there!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The founder is lame and as /u/wjnc mentioned he has a trump-like behavior. The question is very simple: If there is drugs in the shipment, does the traveller get a _FREE_ pass?

The article is lengthy and kind of make this question vague. In my understanding it is a single question: Who bares the responsibility?

Well, it is you the poor traveller. There is no way in hell you can accept such a deal even if you are flying for Free. In fact, if you are, ask yourself the question: Do free meals really exist?

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm glad that the author of this travel blog is warning people against using Airmule. Someone is going to get in a heckuva lot of trouble.

First: I can only imagine, when checking my bags, getting the question, "Did anyone give you anything to bring on the flight?" and answering, "Yes, my entire 2nd bag belongs to someone else who is paying for half of my ticket."

That alone would be enough to give you extra-special scrutiny when checking in.

But let's assume that you get through security, go on your flight, and arrive. I've traveled to China many times, and have thus put my bag through the customs/airport scanner many times. If they find anything illegal -- and in China, that can mean all sorts of stuff -- you are in Big Trouble. I haven't ever seen anyone pulled aside when going through customs in China, but I don't envy them.

And sure, Airmule can say that they've inspected things, and that this is safe and fun, etc. Just try telling the Chinese customs officials that the drugs don't belong to you, but rather to a startup in Silicon Valley. I'm sure they'll be very attentive.

Airmule's site attempts to calm potential couriers' nerves by saying, "Read this Wikitravel article." (Reference: [http://wikitravel.org/en/Air_courier](http://wikitravel.org/en/Air_courier)) However, the article says, very clearly:

> You need to be very careful about the legitimacy of the jobs you take. The > last thing you want is to be caught > transporting contraband (or worse) on > a plane. A good way to avoid this is to use an agent (usually a > > representative of the service you are working for), who will take you > through customs and clear the contents. > Always check the reputation of the > courier company before booking. None which are reliable and legitimate > > would ever try to ship anything illegal.

Airmule doesn't promise to have an agent on the arrival side. They do promise that they'll "walk you through" things, but that's very different from physically being there in China and claiming the luggage and any responsibility for it.

The idea is a good one in theory, but as executed, it's half baked -- and might lead to executions of a more literal sort, if people aren't careful.

</comment><comment> zupa-hu So, they claim they can have the cake and eat it too - as in, ship the bag as non-personal carrier stuff to avoid prison, and ship it as personal non- carrier stuff to pass customs. Bold.

</comment><comment><USER52> From their FAQ:

"We don't just ship any item that comes through our front door. Airmule only partners with TSA certified shipping companies.

"Under their Certified Cargo Screening Program, the TSA certifies cargo screening facilities throughout the United States to screen cargo prior to providing it to airlines for shipment on passenger flights." [1]

The TSA however does not search for drugs however from the TSA's site:

"TSA security officers do not search for marijuana or other drugs."[2]

[1] [https://airmule.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115005116068--...](https://airmule.zendesk.com/hc/en- us/articles/115005116068--How-do-I-know-this-is-safe)

[2] [https://apps.tsa.dhs.gov/mytsa/cib_results.aspx?search=marij...](https://apps.tsa.dhs.gov/mytsa/cib_results.aspx?search=marijuana)

</comment><comment><USER53> I frequently fly international with zero checked bags and about 5lbs of carry on.

I would love to be able to do so for $99 if someone wants to on-sell my checked allowance.

After reading the article I see the pitfalls I had never thought of, and would obviously want some extremely, extremely clear legalities to make it very clear the bags are not mine, and I'm not bringing them into any country.

No, I did not pack them and, no, I am not bringing them into your country.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wait...let me get this straight: You carry a package on a plane to China given to you by someone you don't even know? This is a joke, right?

</comment><comment><USER55> Real life example of a Guatemalan OBC unknowingly bringing heroin into the US: he was deemed not responsible quickly, and got expelled right away with no right to come back for 5 years.

[http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/cbp_officers_seize_...](http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/cbp_officers_seize_9_pounds_of_heroin_at_dulles_airport898)

<comment><USER56> On that note, China is not remotely as understanding as the United States when it comes to these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I haven't heard about air couriers for years, but I don't travel much. That said, I was under the impression that for basically all of them the package being couriered was _never_ in the possession of the traveler but was instead packaged as freight and was delivered to the airline as such and handled as such at the receiving end. If the "courier" in question wanted to drop it off or pick it up themselves they'd still have to go to the appropriate air freight terminal.

If these folks are providing packages to travelers to be checked directly by the traveler then they're idiots and so is anyone who takes them up on the offer. If not for the defensive tweets, etc. I'd feel that (as someone else noted) this must be a satire of the 'gig' economy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Soylent being tongue in cheek with their name is one thing. But Airmule? Why would they want to associate themselves with the most common border crossing association with mules - drug mules? Besides the whole arrangement seeming bad, the name choice is horrible.

</comment><comment><USER58> Risk of a death penalty for accidentally smuggling heroin? They couldn't pay me to take this flight.

</comment><comment><USER59> I like the idea but in the world we live in (post 9/11), it is a major security violation.

</comment><comment><USER60> I don't carry checked bags for the specific reason that I don't want to deal with checked bags. I guess this is for people who want to be as cheap as possible, while simultaneously being as inconvenienced as possible.

</comment><comment><USER61> If airplane companies take into account that certain percentage of passengers will not arrive and overbook flights wouldn't they also take into account that most passengers will have less than maximum allowed baggage?

</comment><comment><USER62> Why not just specifically operate in the market of importing baby formula in China.

You can easily subsidize a flight ticket with a checked luggage full of baby formula and for extra security the mule can go buy the formula him or herself.

</comment><comment><USER63> From their FAQ

Airmule then manually inspects and verifies each item prior to packaging for a traveler. We also guarantee that 100% of the items shipped through our service are safe for travel on commercial aviation.

This is classic lawyer speech (notice the words "safe for travel on commercial aviation"). This just means that there are no harmful things to a plane, but they don't say anything about 'safe for customs'.

</comment><comment><USER64> If someone came to me with this business idea I'd chuckle and say haha, good one. Of course assuming that it is some joke. It boggles my mind that apparently 3 (presumably reasonable?) people have decided to seriously pursue this idea. It's so bad on so many different levels it may actually be the worst business idea I have ever heard.

<comment><USER65> Quite a few consumers just go for whatever's cheapest without reading through the laundry lists of caveats or realizing the risks they're taking.

(I for one wouldn't be surprised if they end up successful until a client of theirs actually ends up in trouble serious enough that TV news outlets raise public awareness.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This is exactly how DHL started btw: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/how- dhl-pioneered-the-shar...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/13/how-dhl- pioneered-the-sharing-economy/)

</comment><comment><USER67> So if they missed a small pack of drugs that some slipped in there, some ones life is ruined

</comment><comment><USER68> Some startups just need to die in a fire. This is one of them. (Theranos is another one).

</comment><comment><USER69> While I agree with most of the article, I don't understand the part where the author is complaining about the bios of the founders/managers.

It's a startup, not old slow mega-corporation where making a joke will get you fired.

<comment><USER70> Would you trust your life to a guy that has a bio that mentioned how much beer he could drink? This isn't playtime – you are literally trusting some bro to know the nuances of Chinese customs and manage a team that is supposed to "inspect" courier packages before you trust your life with them.

Would you trust a surgeon with a bio that describes how thouroghly he can consume beer?

International air courier work isn't the place to be trusting zany, hip dudes. It's not the place for making jokes, that's for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Is 31B a reference I'm missing? It didn't come up in the article body.

<comment><USER72>
      "You'll find me sitting in the middle seat, all the way in the back,
      next to the toilets, but smiling the whole way because that seat was
      ridiciculously cheap or even free!"

It's the premise for the travel blog. The author describes it as "the worst possible seat in economy class", but at least it's cheap!

[http://www.seat31b.com/why-another-travel-blog/](http://www.seat31b.com/why- another-travel-blog/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> China United Airlines once did the route for CNY488 with carry on only

</comment><comment><USER74> Cheers everyone, this is Sean Yang, CEO and cofounder of Airmule, the air courier startup with an admittedly strange name that you might have read about earlier today.

Is Airmule legal?

On Board Couriers (OBC) have existed over decades. Their purpose is to service cargo that needs to be delivered in a timely manner. It's quite an expensive service, often servicing auto parts, airplane parts, important documents, passports, NASA parts, etc. Costs can vary from a few hundred to thousands of dollars. To become an OBC is simple, just call any OBC company and register on their list. In our case, we simply request you to list your trip. The OBC companies size doesn't have to be the same as Fedex, UPS or any airline cargo department. As long as they follow the TSA's IAC regulation, only ship items from a "Known Shipper," and have the cargo secured in a locked area inaccessible by outsiders. At Airmule, we have a surveillance camera over cargo 24/7\. (49 CFR 1544.228, 1546.213, 1548.15, 1548.16, and 1548.7.)

So yes, OBC's are totally legal, as well as all OBC companies. I see many ask the answer to "Did you pack everything yourself" question. The answer is to be honest with Airline company "No, I didn't. I'm an OBC and I have the manifest, and I know what's inside my luggage".

Every single traveler will receive a manifest prior to receiving Airmule shipments Airmule is 100% responsible for the items on the list.There are items we don't accept if they don't comply with our policy or the destination country customs policy:

For example:

1\. Powdery items. 2\. Pills, medicine, prescriptions 3\. Unclear liquids (wine, etc.) 4\. Live plants 5\. Animal products (elephant teeth, fur items, etc.) 6\. Counterfeit items

If the Shipment is for commercial purposes, we will declare through the proper channel. We contract with a professional customs brokerage company for every single country we service. In that case, couriers simple leave the item at customs, a receipt will be issued by Customs, and Airmule will handle it onsite, couriers will be relieved from duty at that point. Airmule is not "Smuggling". We do pay duty on behalf of shippers. Our shipping policy is very restrictive with Senders responsible for all duty fees.

For those who "likes" the name, we can't do anything about it. Regardless of what we are called; it sounds like you don't want to work with us. We just hope one day, when you need something urgently, that Airmule is a better and more affordable option to help with delivery, and saves your day.

Airmule has been running for almost 2 years, we've helped thousands of travelers to see the world they never were able to see before. The deal we post is 100% authentic, but a very limited offer. In appreciation of your time to read this, we'd like to give a bonus for $100 if you use coupon "ISupportAirmule" when list your trip. If you still have concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER75> What are the odds the whole thing is an elaborate joke?

</comment><comment><USER76> Could this be performance art?

</comment><comment><USER77> This is 100% illegal no doubt

</comment><comment><USER78> "We'll pay you to take this bag on the airplane for us.".

Yeah...nah.

</comment><comment><USER79> Besides the quite unnecessary personal attack on the founders ("One is a hardcore gamer, the other is a former backup dancer for Gucci Mane, and the third loves beer more than you do. I'm not making this up–this is what they say about themselves on their Web page") I feel the writer did nothing to back up his claim. The "clear as mud" answer from the founder "same as all OBCs" was a really weird thing to leave up to interpretation of the reader. Nowhere did the writer enlighten me about the actual rights of an On Board Courier. I found this article really lacking in substance, sorry.

<comment><USER48> I feel that answering any questions which could very well have legal consequences on Twitter is not a very smart idea. Legal questions are rarely well-answered in 140 chars, even if you're allowed to use emojis.

<comment><USER70> "Are couriers covered by Common Cartier rules?"

There isn't much need for anything beyond 3 characters:

"Yes" or "No"

If you asked FedEx that question, there isn't a legal department response needed. It's a simple "Yes."

Also, that question – the public has a right to a clear answer.

"Do your cars have seatbelts?"

"Does your food contain salt?"

These are examples of questions that don't have gray areas worthy of "legalese."

If legalese is required that means the expected answer isn't the same as the actual answer.

<comment><USER79> It's assuming there first of all is a simple yes/no answer to the question. An extreme example: Is it legal to shoot a person? Yes or no? Give me a yes or no answer! The answer is "sometimes, maybe, no and yes". I think it's weird that all of a sudden everyone knows enough about Common Carrier rules or OBC's to know what the implications of either a "yes" or a "no" in that case would be.

I personally have no idea. And after reading the article I still don't. Does the writer know? I couldn't see anything passed the sarcasm that would convince me either way.

I would expect more substance in an article on the front page of Hacker news.

<comment><USER80> If the answer "Are couriers covered by Common Cartier rules?" were "yes" it may have some caveats like: "Yes, but the protection cover only he items send by AirMule, not the personal items in the other bag. Also adding any item to the AirMule bag voids all the protection." [Just in case this is not clear, this is a fake quote.] [Also, check it with your lawyer.] I guess you can reduce it to 140 characters and get a proper lawyer to write it.

If the answer "Are couriers covered by Common Cartier rules?" were "no", the extension is: "No, totally no, 0%, zero, nada, zip!" [fake quote]

Their answers to "Are couriers covered by Common Cartier rules?" is something like: "They will get a seat in the plane and can use the bathroom." [Also, fake quote.] They are not replaying the question, only stating something unrelated.

<comment><USER81> There is no technical issue here preventing a clear answer due to 140 character limits.

These guys had my email address and could have sent a detailed response. Instead, they sent a short (but clear) one. If they actually wanted a phone interview, they could have asked for one and provided a number to call. And it's possible to send more than one tweet if they wanted to respond that way.

They did link to a FAQ which isn't clear, and their Terms of Service is posted on the page as others have noted. This is what raised my eyebrows to begin with and why I started asking questions.

A friend who is a tech reporter said "When they're responding like this, you know you got 'em." Given that Rory has had all morning to dispute any of the facts in my blog post, and has not done so despite being very active on Twitter, it seems clear that my reporter friend is right.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Eventual Demise of Power Buttons - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2010/12/power-on/ <comment><USER2> >I think we could save a lot of space on these devices if we all just agree that power buttons are irrelevant.

Doubtful - though I agree with the overall premise.

However, my new dell studio machine has no eject button on the CD and it drives me nuts to have to open windows explorer, scroll to that drive, right- click eject in order to get a disc out. (windows 7, required for work, has a view for explorer that makes this process very clunky)

I also HATE having to fully boot a machine to get a disc out.

However - WRT to the post; I am planning on POE++ (60 watt POE) for all future gadgets, in fact - I am designing a facility with this in mind. We will have 15,000+ POE capable ports in the new facility, roughly half of them will be 60-watt POE.

I have yet to see these devices to market, but when we open in 2015, the expectation is there.

Power buttons are good for hard resets, but I am more interested in eliminating the power CORD. I would like my laptop to be POE chargeable.

I think a focus on the convergence of the technology and utility infrastructure - at least in how we think about the two - is better than thinking about the button on the device.

I have an external HDD that is always off/asleep unless it senses USB connectivity to the machine - it has no power button. I prefer these types of enclosures.</comment>


Operation Car Wash: Investigating corruption at Brazilian oil company Petrobras - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/01/brazil-operation-car-wash-is-this-the-biggest-corruption-scandal-in-history <comment><USER2> As a Brazilian, I find the writing in this article disgusting. I know the BBC (edit: not BBC, The Guardian) is often seen in good light here, but this piece goes through extreme lengths to distort reality to try to save the workers' party reputation.

<comment><USER3> As a Brazilian, I find this writing highly accurate and extremely well behaved and impartial. It is not trying to save the workers' party reputation, it is reporting facts.

<comment><USER2> Please see my reply to dmichulke for my opinion on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this tale is worthy of several movies and it seems they are just scratching the surface!

<comment><USER5> It's funny to see how the "House of Cards" twitter even mocks themselves, in portuguese. In the middle of all the Brazilian impeachment, mr. Underwood was appreciating some moves. Then, last week, they said they can't compete with Brazilians real life. No screenwriters would be creative enough to turn that into a plot.

</comment></comment><comment> g-adamante Update: The guy who was investigating Teori Zavascki's death was murdered yesterday.

<comment><USER6> Not true. It was the guy who originally registered the case, but he didn't actually investigate it, that is in someone else's hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Clarification" rather than "Not true" would be a far more charitable way of stating this.

Story: [http://veja.abril.com.br/brasil/delegado-que-abriu- inquerito...](http://veja.abril.com.br/brasil/delegado-que-abriu-inquerito- sobre-teori-zavascki-e-morto-em-sc/)

Translated to English:

 _The delegate Adriano Antonio Soares , the Federal Police in Rio de Janeiro, was killed early on Wednesday in Florianopolis, after exchange of fire in a nightclub in the capital of Santa Catarina. Soares was responsible for opening an investigation into the death of Federal Supreme Court (STF) Minister Teori Zavascki , who died in a January crash._

That ... sounds sufficiently close to what was posted above to be considered "substantively true".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> none of this would have been possible if Brazilian court justices lost their minds and considered limitless political contributions free speech</comment>


Why Are Shootings Deadlier in Some Cities Than Others? - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-shootings-deadlier-in-some-cities-than-others/ <comment><USER2> One thing the article didn't mention which I'm curious about is the role of urban geography on shooting lethality.

For example, Chicago's lethality rate is almost half of New Orleans (16.3% vs 27.9%). Having been to both cities, I've noticed that Chicago has remarkably long city blocks (1/8th mile per block iirc), with wide sidewalks and numerous alleyways, and a very straight and regular grid in most of the South and West side sprawl. New Orleans trends towards the opposite (though it's also much more varied than Chicago), with narrow sidewalks, lots of narrow one way streets, and irregular grid layouts. It's easy to see how New Orlean's geography could favor the attacker and lead to higher lethality. Would be interesting to see these geographic features quantified in some way.

</comment><comment><USER3> One statistic I would like to see is the % of homicides that are _solved_. So many urban killings end up becoming cold cases because of the lack of witnesses.

<comment><USER4> I recall reading this NPR article that says about 2/3 of homicides are resolved. In fact, since you specified 'urban' killings, those trend higher than rural killings.

[http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why- one-t...](http://www.npr.org/2015/03/30/395069137/open-cases-why-one-third-of- murders-in-america-go-unresolved)

<comment><USER5> "clearance" is not the same as solved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It amazes me that we don't have better data on something like this.

<comment><USER6> The NRA and NRA-backed politicians tend to fight even _researching_ gun deaths, let alone trying to do anything about them. If you know that, then any gap in our knowledge about gun violence stops being surprising.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-nra-kills-gun-violence- re...](http://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-nra-kills-gun-violence- research-2013-1)

<comment><USER7> I haven't seen any evidence that the NRA has fought research. They have taken a stand against the CDC advocating for gun-control policies, not performing gun-violence research. The CDC has simply refused to do this research since being banned from advocating for specific policy. The CDC is not banned from performing gun-violence research, and has even conducted such research at the specific behest of Obama. The conclusions of this research actually largely vindicated a lot of the points made by the pro-gun community.

<comment><USER8> Funding was cut for the CDC's gun-related activities at the same time as they were banned from advocating policy. Being "allowed" to research it but not having any money to do so is pointless.

<comment><USER9> IIRC the money was restored pretty quickly. If you read the CDC research it was pretty shoddy so I have a hard time being too angry about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At first, I though maybe the data examined in the article might have some correlation with organized crime presence in the cities, but then I realized that if I were a professional assassin, I would probably never use a gun unless the client demanded it. I would almost certainly use automobile collisions in preference to almost everything else. And _then_ I realized that most criminals are not clever enough to plan like that, and might just kick down a door, shoot someone, and run away during the emergency response window.

Shooters in Baltimore apparently invest more conscious effort in ensuring their targets are _dead_ than other cities. A 10% higher lethality rate than other cities seems way too high to be explainable by accidental factors.

<comment><USER11> How do you plan out an automobile collision homicide?

<comment><USER10> Start by mapping out your target's usual movements. Check public records for any fatal collision hot spots in the area. Check out their vehicle. That will determine what you do next.

For instance, if I were trying to kill _me_ , I'd find out that I usually take the same routes to and from work every day, passing twice through one intersection that has a relatively high number of injury accidents, in a Honda. So I would either crack the remote access security of the traffic control computer, or install a device in it that would allow me to control it remotely. I'd break into my car, replacing the air bag with one modified to outwardly resemble those recalled, defective, exploding Takata air bags, but guaranteed to explosively project shrapnel into the driver. This would be relatively easy, as my car is not parked in a secured or observed spot. Then I'd use my remote device and binoculars twice a day, until I saw that I was passing through the dangerous intersection, and try to manipulate the lights to get myself into a t-bone with a larger vehicle at 45 MPH. On impact, the air bag would deploy with metal shrapnel and loose screws, shredding my chest, face, and neck. That, plus any injuries from the collision itself, would likely be fatal. Just in case, the air bag device would also contain cloth infused with resistant bacteria cultured from the local hospital, so that any open wounds would be _infected, antibiotic-resistant_ wounds.

I might also do a weak denial of service attack on the local emergency medical response immediately after the collision, using a recorded message to 911 from a burner phone. The message would suggest a high-priority emergency, such as a stroke or obstructed airway, and hang up.

The other driver would swear that I ran the red light, and I would be too dead to say it was actually green. The local cops would likely just sweep up the glass, rule it as an unfortunate accident, and not investigate further. The auto manufacturer might catch some flak for not mailing me a recall notice for my air bag, but I'd be the 12th recall fatality, and no one would really care. My target's bereaved spouse might even get a settlement.

That would just be for me, though. Someone else might get a flat tire in the wrong spot, or hit a patch of black ice on a day that's too warm for it. Or they might get their onboard computer hacked, or hallucinogenic vapor in their interior air. Or maybe they get catfished by someone who starts sending crisis texts while the target is driving.

Excuse me now, as I'm going to silently rock back and forth in the corner and pretend my world is safe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> To get good data it either needs to be either indisputable or non- controversial. Murders (as a statstic) are controversial but indisputable.

But shootings are controversial and disputable. I suspect the numbers will be politicized and manipulated until they are no longer a good measure.

<comment><USER13> > Murders (as a statstic) are controversial but indisputable.

 _Homicides_ are (to a reasonable approximation, but even then not quite) indisputable, _murders_ (or even "criminal homicides") aren't, even approximately.

<comment><USER12> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> One other plausible explanation: the quality of trauma response protocols in different cities.

<comment><USER15> RTFA

"Some other experts have speculated that differences in shooting death rates could be tied to differences in emergency medical care: Gunshot victims are more likely to survive if they arrive quickly to a high-quality trauma center. By that logic, however, Baltimore should be one of the least lethal cities in the country. Dr. Sahael Stapleton, a surgeon who previously conducted research at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, points out that Baltimore gun violence takes place in relatively concentrated areas near the city's state-of-the-art trauma center."

The general takeaway is that data collection is too incomplete and too inconsistent across jurisdictions to test lots of hypotheses well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Shot placement? That and getting a .22LR in the hand is a little different than getting a 12ga slug to the head

</comment><comment><USER17> I notice a correlation between the cities studied and race. I am surprised that this obvious variable was not taken into account.

<comment><USER8> What correlation, exactly? Picking a few cities from the list and comparing racial demographics and the relative shooting/murder rates, I didn't see much connection.

<comment><USER17> www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/03/22/gun-deaths-shaped-by-race-in- america/

Non-Hispanic blacks (2.8 per 1,000) and Hispanics (2.2 per 1,000) had higher rates of nonfatal firearm violence than non-Hispanic whites (1.4 per 1,000) [https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/fv9311pr.cfm](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/press/fv9311pr.cfm)

[http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate- by-...](http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-by- raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&selectedDistributions=white--black--other)

<comment><USER8> The topic here is not overall gun violence, but specifically the percentage of shootings that result in death, and the fact that this percentage is extremely different in different cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Seems like there is quite a different racial makeup of those listed cities. Is that question permitted to be asked?

<comment><USER8> Can you put some numbers on it? This is the second comment mentioning race and I just don't see the supposed link.

<comment><USER18> Using top 4 and bottom 4 shows correlation.

[https://imgur.com/a/Imo9Y](https://imgur.com/a/Imo9Y)

<comment><USER8> I did a scatter plot of all of them and there's a bit of a trend, but for the most part it's just a mess:

[http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_19EB61AA-4DD0-4258-A5D5-A8...](http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_19EB61AA-4DD0-4258-A5D5-A8AA3B47E98F.png)

For some reason their two tables don't include the same cities, and the numbers don't quite match up. Doing the same thing from the first table, which includes more cities, produces this:

[http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_C047DD43-3029-47E5-901C-9E...](http://mikeash.com/tmp/screenshot_C047DD43-3029-47E5-901C-9E28C9E6DEFD.png)

There is a bit of an upward trend there, but it looks pretty uncorrelated to be.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Our logo built in JS - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/digitalbungalow/pen/BfCmh

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to see if someone has a more efficient/faster way to accomplish this logo through HTML/CSS/JS.

The whole thing is dynamically created so the container size can change. Canvas would probably be a better approach...</comment>


Incident of drunk man kicking humanoid robot raises legal questions - <AUTHOR> http://techxplore.com/news/2015-10-incident-drunk-humanoid-robot-legal.html <comment><USER2> > Under current Japanese law, the man can be charged with damage to property, > but not injury, since injury is a charge reserved for humans. Dr. Yueh-Hsuan > Weng, who is cofounder of the ROBOLAW.ASIA Initiative at Peking University > in China, and former researcher of the Humanoid Robotics Institute at Waseda > University in Japan, thinks a better charge lies somewhere in between.

I try not to be too dismissive, but this is very silly.

I'm all for having a conversation about AI rights when... well, when I can have that conversation with an AI, I suppose. But as of right now, it really is just a bucket of bolts, and I don't think giving it special rights for happening to be _shaped_ like a human is in any way the right direction to go.</comment>


Things product managers waste their time on - <AUTHOR> https://blog.appacademy.io/how-should-product-managers-spend-their-time/ <comment><USER2> I'm going to admit that I'm ridiculously biased on this topic, which is terrible since I've never been a PM :-) While I don't disagree with anything in this article, it falls a bit flat for me because it doesn't say anything that you _should_ do.

Here's my list of things you should do as a PM:

\- Understand your product. Not just conceptually. Not just how it fits in the market. Not just what we used to call the "box features" (features you write down on the box in shrinkwrapped software so people will buy it). You need to understand what the product does in detail. You need to understand how it does it in detail. You need to understand exactly how to do every single thing with the software. You should be an expert -- more than the programmers, more than the QA, more than the users. You should know what's great, what sucks and what's in between.

\- You need to prioritise the incoming work. By this I don't mean "X is priority 1. Y is priority 1. Z is priority 1. ZZ is priority 2". Ordinal priority. If anyone asks about 2 pieces of work, A and B, you should be able to say which one is more important and why. You should produce reports that are visible and understandable that document these priorities so that everybody can see them.

\- You need to plan the upcoming work. This is different than prioritisation. To plan the upcoming work you need to break larger goals down into smaller vertical pieces, each of which give you some value. You should then be able to arrange these in an order (again ordinal -- none of this "these 500 things all need to be done at the same time"). To do this, you will need to work with a variety of different people because you won't have all the information to do it by yourself.

\- You need to ensure that acceptance criteria is available before development for something starts. You do not have to furnish this acceptance criteria yourself, but you must be able to understand it and to judge critically if it is sufficient.

\- You need to track development and produce reports. You should be able to say that something is not yet started, but planned to be started in a specified time frame. You should be able to say that something has started development. You should be able to say that something is done (and not just it-compiles-done: done-done-like-we-are-going-to-ship-it-tomorrow-done.) You need to produce reports that are highly visible by anyone that shows this status.

\- You need to be active in promoting process that shortens the timescale from feature request to done-done. Likewise you need to be active in making the movement of work from request to shipping more and more visible to all parties.

\- You need to handle political problems between the various groups that have a stake in development. Do not delegate this.

As far as I can tell, that's it. Not that it isn't a hellishly difficult job with just the above. As the article suggests, don't waste your time doing things other than this -- you don't have time! I've had the good fortune of working with a handful of amazingly good PM's in my day. It's not easy, but try to be one of the good ones (they are exceptionally rare)!

<comment><USER3> This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and _Project_ Management.

Both roles can juggle as needed on the size of the organization, but I imagine ProdMan positions to be interfacing with consumers needs and the trends and gathering feedback on new and existing lines of work.

I think one critical skill a ProdMon is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, and prioritizing actually solutions to people's problems and not just ticking down feature lost from some analyst who's like 6 steps away from the day to day pain of the people.

A million small evolutions will change the world and take everyone by surprise :)

<comment><USER4> > This sounds a bit like a conflation between Product Managers and Project > Management.

And what's the significant difference between these two titles? I can invent half a dozen more pro- _something_ manager titles by myself, which doesn't mean they will be in any way useful.

<comment><USER5> By way of extreme stereotypes, accepting blurriness in the middle:

Project management usually takes some fixed bundle of work and aims to ensure it is within scope, on time, on budget, to acceptable quality. The typical focus is to optimise for efficiency. If it is more efficient to build concrete pylons and then sling cables, that's what happens.

Product management tends to focus on _what_ should be built and in what _order_. There is less focus on execution and more on understanding what the problem is -- or whether there _is_ a problem. The typical focus is to optimise for _value_. If more user or business value comes from throwing a rope bridge, followed by a single lane suspension bridge, followed by a concrete bridge, that's the order the product manager will likely pick, even if it costs more and takes longer to get to the final stage.

Product management is more typical in software, where the ability to quickly iterate on or replace a product is available. Project management is more typical of problems where the cost of change is very high (construction, civil works, spaceflight etc), creating a strong incentive to do the thing _once_.

<comment><USER4> > Project management usually takes some fixed bundle of work and aims to > ensure it is within scope, on time, on budget, to acceptable quality.

And project manager does that by what means? What useful things can a project manager do to achieve these goals? Barring telling the team how to do their work (micromanagement) and reordering project goals (this is supposed to be product manager's job).

<comment><USER6> Your comment suggests that all work involved in delivering something is either (i) setting and prioritising goals, or (ii) doing the work to achieve those goals.

But there are other things that a good project manager can do in some situations, particularly around driving consensus around coordination between different teams when things are changing a lot, and figuring out ways that re- allocating resources can unblock other teams, and so deliver the project earlier overall.

BUT many people with the job title 'project manager' aren't really doing those things, either because those things don't need doing in the organization where they work, or because they lack the skills/drive to do them.

Even if you haven't worked in a project that required a project manager, or met a good project manager, it doesn't mean these things don't exist.

(I'm not a project manager btw, and the things a project manager needs to do are not among my favourite tasks, although I do them when required.)

<comment><USER4> So it's a list of things that _may_ be done _if_ we have an (almost mythical) good manager at hand _and_ the organization in the company is right? Not a list of concrete responsibilities that just come with the position and if the guy doesn't fulfil them he's outright incompetent?

Then again, what is the difference between fundamental responsibilities of _project_ and _product_ manager? The ones that need to be done by one and cannot be done by the other.

<comment><USER6> Just like not every situation requires a bricklayer, and not every person claiming to be a bricklayer is actually competent at building walls.

Your second question is answered here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16240377](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16240377)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


[Giveaway]4 Books Every New Entrepreneur Should Read - <AUTHOR> http://strategicsauce.com/giveaways/giveaway-4-books-every-entrepreneur-read/

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Choose Yourself! by James Altucher 2\. CRUSH IT! by Gary Vaynerchuk 3\. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan 4\. Let Go by Pat Flynn

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks! Entered. I've read Execution before - really good stuff on the importance of processes and management</comment>


Study: Reinfection could not occur in SARS-CoV-2 infected rhesus macaques - <AUTHOR> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.990226v1 <comment><AUTHOR> Rhesus Macaques is a type of monkey found in China. Researchers infected 3 monkeys who all exhibited weight loss, pneumonia and temperature increase. The virus infected most of their organs within mere days.

All symptoms went away overtime. Upon reinjection of infection of two of the monkeys with a third left out for control, there was a slight temperature gain but overall no reinfection.

The paper concludes that we get immunity [1].

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-fauci-those- who-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-fauci-those-who-recover- will-be-immune-2020-3)</comment>


Spam for sale - <AUTHOR> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3232

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that the submission about spam is basically blogspam: it cites [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/26/kindle- eboo...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/26/kindle-ebooks- publish-naughton) and then just basically reiterates what that original article says, inaccurately.</comment>


Undiscovered Bach? No, a Computer Wrote It (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/11/science/undiscovered-bach-no-a-computer-wrote-it.html?mcubz=1 <comment><USER2> I remember reading about this at the time and wondering where I could get my hands on the source code. What happened to this? After the burst of publicity and some MIDI samples, EMI seemed to disappear without a trace. Was it all just a hoax? Did David Cope abandon the software?

<comment><USER3> Cope's bibliography [0] suggests he's been following that train of thought up until at least 2012.

Though he seems only indirectly involved (the OM book's preface), OpenMusic [1], seems to contain most of his ideas of how a language should tackle those problems. OM is actively developed, latest release was 2017-04-27, so far as I can see.

[0] [http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/bibliography_page_2.ht...](http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/bibliography_page_2.htm)

[1] [http://repmus.ircam.fr/openmusic/home](http://repmus.ircam.fr/openmusic/home)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Emmy Bach style chorale: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PczDLl92vlc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PczDLl92vlc)

<comment><USER4> Impressive for a computer, the sounds do hint at Bach's chorales. For a Bach listener, this is a turn-off. A string of nonsensical movements with a sauce of Bachesque colours doesn't make for a composition.</comment></comment>


Sarah Silverman Has Been Canceled - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2019/08/14/sarah-silverman-has-been-canceled/ <comment><USER2> Sarah Silverman is possibly one of the least funny people ever. perhaps the producers of her new show realize that now and are using this as an excuse to get out of the contract.

</comment><comment><USER3> No, she hasn't.

Some execs thought one of her old sketches would be controversial and that people wouldn't care about its context. We know they would because Robert Downey Jr was not canceled for his blackface role in Tropic Thunder.

To be "canceled" implies a group of consumers telling others to ignore her -- that didn't happen here.

There's some galling hypocrisy here: Reason supposedly advocates for unregulated markets, and now they decry the capriciousness of the invisible hand.

In the end, this article is a thin attempt to tar "the left" as hypocrites, and it largely demonstrates Reason to be the hypocrites.</comment>


Elixir v1.7 released - <AUTHOR> https://elixir-lang.org/blog/2018/07/25/elixir-v1-7-0-released/ <comment><USER2> I've been programming heavily in Elixir for the past 2+ years and I've become increasingly happier with the language, its growing ecosystem, and the Erlang/OTP.

I first came across Erlang a few years back, while I was researching more exotic programming languages, but for some reason Erlang never felt like home. I know plenty of people like it, but personally, I found it difficult to get accustomed to its syntax, especially after having spent most of my time in Python.

But as soon as I discovered Elixir, I got hooked. All the advantages (and disadvantages) of using the Erlang/OTP programming model, while experiencing a nicer, developer-friendlier, and more familiar interface.

Our work is seldom, if ever, not dependent upon the sweat and labor of other people.

So, thank you Elixir team! Elixir is truly a joy.

<comment><USER3> Elixir Erlang/OTP are indeed a joy. Everything seems so organically put together and integrated! I love the OS-like feel of the platform.

However, I'm curious: does the lack of types (both Elixir and Erlang are dynamically typed as you know) affect long term productivity on the platform? The lack of proper static typing does make large codebases very difficult to build and maintain, don't you think?

People have mentioned dialyzer a lot in reference to Elixir/Erlang but how good/practical is it?

Sometimes I wonder: how fault tolerant can the OTP platform be anyways if your process can crash due to an unmatched pattern? A type checker should tell you at _compile_ time that you've not tested all possible combinations and this should not happen at runtime. For a process to crash on an unmatched message and have a replacement process restarted by the supervisor to take its place ("let it crash") is definitely cool but seems like an extreme solution. What could have been fixed forever by a type checker is being deferred to the runtime. Thats really my main gripe.

There are probably many scenarios where the whole OTP philosophy of crash recovery is definitely going to help with the robustness of the platform but I suspect a lot of crashes of processes are due to fairly prosaic reasons like unmatched patterns, wrong arguments to functions etc.

<comment> passer-by-123 A type system will allow you to catch a certain category of errors. There are still whole categories of logical errors and runtime errors, such as the ones that arises with communication with other systems and processes, that you can't foresee and making sure that your system will go back to a working state in face of those errors is essential.

From this perpective, a type system is a nice to have and a recovery mechanism is a must have.

However, a type system is much more than preventing a certain class of errors. It is documentation, it is a design tool, it can improve performance, and others. Plus, if you can catch errors earlier, why not? At the end of the day, I would love a type system in Elixir, but I am certainly happier that the recovery system is there right now.

<comment><USER4> are you aware of dialyzer?

<comment><USER5> Dialyzer works on success typing, which only tells you when it's certain there's a bug, but will stay silent if it's unsure. Even at the highest settings I couldn't get the same lovely iteration loop that you get in an ML- style language (like Haskell, Elm, Rust, etc) that I've come to expect, where you feel like you are having a conversation with the tool.

At the time I was attempting to use it, it was also super slow, and libraries were not keeping their typespecs up-to-date. Also a big one: no parametric polymorphism results in `any`s galore. :/

<comment><USER6> It basically starts with a notion that your program is correct, and then runs through all the facts it can collects about dependencies and your code, and then if it finds some contradiction, it warns. It does weird things though for optimization, such as replacing long lists of literals with any() after a certain point, or merging structs into bizarre-o franeknstructs like %{:__struct__ => A | B, :a => int(), :b => int(), :shared => int()} if A and B have that :shared field in common and your typespec is A.t() | B.t().

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great QoL improvements.

I'm building a very large complicated product in a very boring market that traditionally has old tech. Building it with Elixir helps me write less code with fewer bugs and test coverage. I love it.

It feels strange how I remember Elixir was a "what if" back when Meteor was in vogue, now I couldn't be happy at my job if not for Elixir. It's the best!

Jose's vision of developer UX first is really something else and it shines through when you work with Elixir.

<comment><USER8> How do people convince their team or management to use a newer language which may not have plenty of alternative programmers and experiences in the team in their projects? I can't even use anything other than PHP if I sense anyone else may touch the project later, otherwise I'm currently using TypeScript throughout the stack.

<comment><USER9> You don't except if management are devs themselves. From a business perspective, Elixir is a terrible choice.

Ive worker on Elixir over a year and it is great, but there are 0 devs and learning it is hard for newbies

<comment><USER10> > _learning it is hard for newbies_

It is? Why?

<comment><USER11> Coming from someone who went from hacking out PHP projects to using Elixir, and only having three years total dev experience, switching to Elixir was tough. It probably took me a month where I felt like I was productive, and three before I started to understand processes and pattern matching and Gen Servers where I could really utilize them properly.

There's just a lot that's different. Now, I'm looking for a job and I mostly know Elixir, and it's making it difficult to find stuff when all you really know is how to write code in a (good, but) relatively unused language.

<comment><USER10> So Elixir was your second language after PHP? If so, I would take that with a grain of salt. Learning your first programming language is really hard because it's all new. Learning your second language is really hard because it's all different. After that it gets _way_ easier because you start being able to see the analogies and commonalities between all languages. Each new paradigm - ie. more procedural to more functional going from PHP to Elixir - is a bit of a hump as well, but still easier than from the first language to the second.

<comment><USER12> Depends a lot on the programming languages though. Learning two similar languages doesn't help as much with the third language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The surprising thing is Elixir has better tooling than many lang. funded by the tech giants.

<comment><USER14> I believe much of this is due to the Erlang/BEAM foundations Elixir is built on. Ericsson has invested considerably in Erlang for decades, giving Elixir a boost in the tooling department.

<comment><USER15> I don't think so. Earlang tooling, rebar3 and erlang.mk, is not really the best out there.

<comment><USER16> I'd love to get your feedback on rebar3; I've heard that opinion repeated often, but not really often have I heard specifics that we could address directly.

<comment><USER17> Not op, but just to counterbalance it, I'd like to mention that rebar3 is great. Thank you for all your time and work you put into it. With a large enough project there will be people who criticize stuff. Those who like it as a rule don't usually say anything, so it might seem like there are all these issues, problems and unhappiness, but it's just because it is an application that is used a lot.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. One thing I'm wary about though is developing blind spots due to a) knowing Erlang and OTP very well and b) knowing rebar3 itself very well.

I'm sure there are plenty of tricky traps that regulars have learned to work around and "just know how to use it without breaking it"; I have a suspicion a lot of unsatisfied people are those who come with different expectations of what the tool should do and how it should behave.

In these cases, they'll have a frustrating experience. I'd be interested to learn what it is so that we can make the whole thing better.

<comment><USER17> > I'd be interested to learn what it is so that we can make the whole thing > better.

Ah good point. And rebar3 along with docs, and books are probably the first thing a newcomer will see when they explore Erlang the first time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like Elixir and the community is amazing, especially for such a young language. Particularly the quality of the standard library as well as the more popular open source libraries is really high.

That said, there's one design choice that I simply never understood: the dynamic typing. Bear with me, I'm not trying to start another holy war here, I have an argument. Thing is, Elixir very seldomly _uses_ its dynamic typing. Ruby has method_missing and monkey patching, JavaScript (finally) has Proxies, but Elixir has none of these. In fact, most Elixir code is particularly undynamic in nature.

All Elixir code that I've seen _looks_ more like a non-OO version of typical Java or C# code. Notably, variables and seldomly change type. Function arguments are seldomly "a string or an array" like is common in JavaScript. Structured arguments are typically _either_ used as a dictionary, _or_ as a struct (the Elixir word for object, record, whatever), but not really ever "a little bit of both". Modules always have the same set of functions, the functions always have the same signatures.

Elixir replaces Ruby's monkey patching with _macros_. They feel a bit similar, but notably macros are entirely compile time. There's nothing dynamic about them.

I feel like if Elixir had unambitious static typing, more akin to C# or TypeScript than to Haskell, it'd have significantly better tool support, code would be much much easier to read and follow, and virtually all code that works now would still, well, Just Work except that you'd need to specify types on function arguments of course.

Of course, there's typespecs, but anyone who's ever tried to use them knows how abysmal the development experience is. Dialyzer error messages are impossible to figure out, often showing errors multiple functions down the stack from where the typing or programming error actually is. The syntax is weird, minimally documented and not integrated with the rest of the language. I'm impressed by how well most bigger libraries are typespec'ed, given how hard it is to get that right.

All that said, I'm well aware that even an "unambitious" type system would be hard to accomplish. Making a dynamically typed language surely must be easier than an ergonomic statically typed one - especially if the underlying VM does not depend on static types. Maybe the simple reason Elixir lacks a good static type system is that it's a lot of work.

<comment><USER19> There's a bigger reason than that: [https://learnyousomeerlang.com/types-or- lack-thereof#for-typ...](https://learnyousomeerlang.com/types-or-lack- thereof#for-type-junkies)

To recap, one of the main Haskell designers tried to come up with a type system for Erlang but couldn't cover the inter-process communication, probably because a process which has another process' pid is allowed to send it _literally any type_ of message.

In Elixir, you notice the dynamic typing mostly when you're defining callbacks that take MFA-style function specs, e.g. def handle_click(m, f, a) ...

Last point, you are right about Dialyzer error messages, but people are working on it right now. Look for messages in this discussion from _asummers.

<comment><USER18> Hey, thanks! I wasn't aware of that.

That said, I suppose a Haskell designer and me have rather different expectations from a type system. I want great TypeScript/Java level tooling, catching stupid type-style bugs, and easier to understand code. Going for a fully covered, sound, type system sounds like quite a challenge indeed and I can imagine why it didn't work out.

I disagree that "The type system can't guarantee the types of what gets sent between processes" implies "a type system would be useless". Most of my code is not busy sending and receiving messages. It's just, well, regular boring single-threaded code that manipulates data, performs some side effects maybe, etc. I'd be perfectly happy with a type system that just makes me specify, at compile time, what message types a process is expecting to receive. Somebody sends something else? My problem, runtime error. That way, _each process_ can be decently typechecked individually, the process type can just be "pid", and you can skip the entire "how do we type the actor model" problem. I'm sure I'm wrong here in some subtly detailed way, but I'm convinced that Elixir would fit a TypeScript-like type system like a glove if you just forget about typed messaging.

Does this guarantee "if it compiles, it works"? Nop. Does it allow for readable code, extremely powerful tooling and catching stupid errors? Sure thing.

<comment><USER19> Out of curiosity, have you tried Dialyzer? It sounds like almost exactly the level of static typing you're looking for (i.e. a TypeScript-like system). It's been a part of the Erlang distribution for a long time.

<comment><USER12> They have, they mentioned it in their initial post. Although I don't think they've tried the lasted RC that VASTLY improves the Developer Experience

<comment><USER18> Oh!! Good to know, thanks :-) Half our codebase is still typespec'ed from when we were optimistic believers, so we'll give it another go for sure :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> To those using Elixir, how are you deploying it? Would love your insight especially if you're on GCP (app engine, super curious).

Thanks!

<comment><USER21> At Discord, we use distillery to package, and salt to configure our Elixir machines. We also bake golden images using basically the same thing.

Our CI builds our elixir artifacts, updates them to GCS, then our minions pull the artifacts, untar them and move them into the right place. Aside from deploying go binaries, Elixir binaries have been the next easiest thing.

We have one (very low throughput) service that runs Elixir inside of a docker container, however, the rest just run BEAM on the VM directly, with no containerization. BEAM at higher load does not enjoy sharing cores with anyone. Most of our Elixir services sit at 80-100% of CPU on all cores. BEAM likes to spin for work, and is CPU topology aware. Two BEAM scheduler threads running on the same core is a recipe for disaster. Since we're fully utilizing our VMs, and shipping the tars is simple enough, Docker gave us too much operational overhead for it to be worth it.

We've also had our fair share of troubles running the BEAM VM on GCP at scale. I could go into this in more detail if anyone's curious.

<comment><USER22> > I could go into this in more detail if anyone's curious.

Please do!

<comment><USER21> We've experienced a plethora of platform issues that were exacerbated by how BEAM consumes resources on the system. Here's a few that come to mind:

\- CPU utilization can differ wildly on Haswell & Skylake. On Skylake processors our CPU utilization jump by 20-30% due to Skylake using more cycles to spin. Luckily, all of that CPU time was spent in spinning, and our actual "scheduler utilization" metric remained roughly the same (actually, on Skylake it was lower!).

\- Default allocator settings can call malloc/mmap a lot, and is sensitive to latency on those calls. Under host memory bandwidth pressure, BEAM can grind to a halt. Tuning BEAM's allocator settings is imperative to avoid this. Namely, MHlmbcs, MHsbct, MHsmbcs and MMscs. This was especially noticeable after meltdown was patched.

\- Live host migrations and BEAM sometimes are not friends. Two weeks ago, we discovered a defect in GCP live migrations that would cause a 80-90% performance degradation on one of our services during source-brownout migration phase.

GCP Support/Engineering has been excellent in helping us with these issues and taking our reports seriously.

<comment><USER23> > Default allocator settings can call malloc/mmap a lot, and is sensitive to > latency on those calls. Under host memory bandwidth pressure, BEAM can grind > to a halt. Tuning BEAM's allocator settings is imperative to avoid this. > Namely, MHlmbcs, MHsbct, MHsmbcs and MMscs. This was especially noticeable > after meltdown was patched.

Excessive allocations and memory bandwidth are two very different things. Often then don't overlap, because to max out memory bandwidth you have to write a fairly optimized program.

Also, are the allocations because of BEAM or is it because what you are running allocates a lot of memory?

<comment><USER21> BEAM's default allocator settings will allocate often. It's just how the VM works. The erlang allocation framework: [http://erlang.org/doc/man/erts_alloc.html](http://erlang.org/doc/man/erts_alloc.html) is a complicated beast.

We were able to simulate this failure condition synthetically by inducing memory bandwidth pressure on the guest VM.

We noticed that during certain periods of time, not caused by any workload we ran, the time spent doing malloc/mmap would 10-20x, but the # of calls would not.

<comment><USER12> > We noticed that during certain periods of time, not caused by any workload > we ran, the time spent doing malloc/mmap would 10-20x, but the # of calls > would not.

I'm curious what tools you used to discover this

<comment><USER21> [https://github.com/iovisor/bcc](https://github.com/iovisor/bcc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there any hope that Elixir can be used for client side programs, with GUI windows?

Or will Elixir only be used for server-side programs, that don't require a graphical user interface?

I would like to program video games with Elixir. But the examples I see online are rather immature.

And it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in using Elixir to program desktop GUI programs.

<comment><USER25> Supposedly there's going to be a massive unveiling by the next Elixir Conf of a library that's been developed by the guy who headed Xbox Live. It's called Scenic and there's a lot of anticipation.

<comment><USER24> I'm looking forward to this.

[https://elixirforum.com/t/3-elixirconf-2017-elixir-native- ui...](https://elixirforum.com/t/3-elixirconf-2017-elixir-native-ui-boyd- multerer/8653)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Did any of the deployment improvements discussed at Lonestar Elixir make it into 1.7?

</comment><comment><USER27> How well supported is Elixir (and Phoenix) on Windows? I've experimented with it on Windows, and it generally seems to work, but I'm curious if people are actually using it in production on Windows.

I personally wouldn't choose Windows, but there are areas where that is a hard requirement.

<comment> passer-by-123 Both Erlang and Elixir have CI running on Windows and provide installers. I am aware of many using Windows for development, although I am not aware of people deploying on Windows.

<comment><USER28> I'm currently learning Elixir using my Personal Windows Dev Machine. Haven't run into any problems, but I know if I were to deploy anything it would be on a linux server for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nice! Really digging the additions to ExUnit. Curious: why was Behaviour deprecated?

<comment><USER30> Note that it's just the Behaviour _module_ that's deprecated, not the concept of Behaviours. So, `@behaviour` is still there.

And the reasoning is that one should instead be using `@callback` and `@macrocallback` which also are typespec attributes: [https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Module.html#module-typespec- attrib...](https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Module.html#module-typespec-attributes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Along the lines of comments below... what _are_ the sweet spots people are finding for Elixir? I've used Erlang a lot in the past and like it, and would love to have an opportunity to use Elixir for some projects, but it seems that for regular old CRUD kinds of stuff, I'm not sure it's a win compared to Rails.

<comment><USER32> You may be confusing Elixir and Phoenix. Phoenix is the Rails equivalent in the Elixir ecosystem.

<comment><USER31> I whipped off the comment pretty quickly. Yes, Elixir is the language and Phoenix the framework. My experience is that _most_ people using Elixir are doing so via Phoenix, whereas Erlang tends to be used for more disparate things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I used to be really bullish on Elixir, but having used it in production for over a year (and having worked on libraries since '13), I think people are overselling the daily experience.

The language itself is good, the tooling is pretty excellent, but there are issues for things like deployment, ops, and frankly a general excitement about neat things instead of focusing on bread-and-butter stuff like, say, timezones and timestamp formatting (something coming in a couple of releases, allegedly, but which was always an obvious absence).

<comment><USER34> Why does everyone seem to be so upset about deployment? I can't comprehend the issue.

<comment><USER32> Because there is no agreed upon way to properly do it yet. I tried using Elixir 2 years ago in production, and while the language is great, deploying (and runtime configuration) was a nightmare.

It was 2 years ago, I know the community tried to improve things, but it's still not there. I read some excerpt of the upcoming book "Phoenix in Action", and in chapter 1, the author himself mentions "deployment" as a drawback of using Phoenix since it's still painful.

<comment><USER25> Distillery is pretty much "the way" right now and the core team hired the guy that built it to flesh out the long term built in solution. He's explained the various moving parts but the short version is that he's aiming for portable binary style deployment.

<comment><USER33> Except, it's really not. Boring "MIX_ENV=production mix phx.server" works just as well, and you can trivially add the stuff to make logging into a node easier.

Everybody wants this tooling for deploying appliances when frankly we are almost all just doing boring webshit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>