Ask HN: Reached rock-bottom low point in my life – how to get back up? - <AUTHOR> This is the 2nd time in my life that I turn to HN for help. The first time, I already thought I was kind of in a bad shape. But tonight, I reached a new low point. I have been out of a job for a long time. Currently, my only income is from a small remote job that requires no special skills. I can only survive on it, because I moved to a developing country in Southeast Asia. But this is a dead-end. I need to change - everything. I know the best way would be through a job that would allow me to gradually learn new skills. I don't really care that much about pay. I can survive on a few hundred dollars a month. Although I would like to say that I'm willing to do almost anything, I also know my limitations. I previously created some websites on my own using Ruby on Rails. But I'm probably quite far from a 'real' hacker who enjoys coding so much, they do it in their free time as well. For me, programming is just a tool to get what I want. Also, I always struggled a lot with front-end development and would often get frustrated when things didn't work. I never quite gave up on becoming a real developer - however, at the same time, I never had enough motivation to practice on my own until I would have reached a professional level. I believe the only way would if I could receive a lot of guidance. I did think about attending one of those coding bootcamps, but 1st, they are very expensive, and 2nd, they seem to be high-stress environments - and there is my other big weakness, I really don't respond well to stress at all. So, I guess what I'm hoping to find is some sort of coding internship where I could really very slowly grow into the role - without much pressure. I don't know how much sense that makes or if it's even remotely realistic. But I just thought I would give it a shot. If anyone thinks there is a chance that they could use my help, please do let me know. My gmail is firstname.lastname@example.com. My native language is German. <comment><USER3> The reality is that it sounds like you don't have the skills for the work you want and are chosing to turn your nose up at the work you can get. This obviously isn't sustainable.

You need to get a job. Any job. Preferably the best job you currently qualify for, even if it's not what you want to do for the rest of your life. Once you aren't worrying about how you're going to feed yourself, get some fire in your belly and take the time to learn the skills you need for the job you want. If it's technical, then build something, try to find a few small side hustles. Then start looking for the jobs with your new skills. Since you'll still be working the job you don't love, you can afford to take your time and find somebody who will gamble on you.

You absolutely should not join a coding bootcamp right now. Priority one is to feed yourself. Learn when you're not working. To quote the infamous patio11: Don't end the week with nothing.

</comment><comment><USER4> SEA is not helping you but letting you down. You only go to SEA when you are making Western World money online or remotely and living there. Move back to your country. See what kind of assistance they are offering you to get back on your feet. Find a local job.

Other advice: Don't get married. Don't ruin your health and be careful especially now. Share a rental. Don't travel back to SEA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I've been contemplating this for a long time. Actually, I already went back once already - and ended up here again after just two months. My biggest problem is that I've been out of a job for ages and I don't have much in the way of qualifications and skills. The most likely jobs I could get back home are things like delivery or burger flipping. I know, beggars can't be choosers. In the past, I wouldn't have given such jobs a thought. However, recently, I've been seriously considering it. I guess I got way too lazy.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, going to SEA is figuratively digging yourself into a hole. The longer you stay there, the bigger the hole gets and the more difficult it becomes to climb out.

I have a good friend around your age in your situation and have known others as well. I think what you're experiencing is fairly common because at some level, you realize you're an outsider in the country (even if you have connections with other digital nomads).

I've also been in situations where I've had an abundance of free time and would think "Now I can really focus on things that I want to do" but instead have just frittered it away. Work and a sense of contributing to a greater good is a necessary part of happiness. It also provides structure which can be important as well.

After university I went to Europe for a year. After I came back, I had no money so I worked at Toys R Us for the Christmas season and lived with my parents to save up money while looking for a programming job which I eventually found (first a short term contract and then full time).

I would recommend that you pack up and go home asap. Spending more time in Cambodia is just digging into that hole more. It will only get more difficult to leave later. If you can, stay with family or friends and get a part-time job at the grocery store or something to start giving you some structure and earning some money. With your spare time, look for entry-level development jobs where you'll be able to learn while you work. It sounds like this is the key you've been missing.

I know it sucks having to start over at 35 but it's better to do it now than in another 10 or 15 years. The fact that you've been contemplating going back for a long time now means that really you already know it's the right decision. You're just having trouble committing to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Coding, esp. in modern environments (byzantine stacks, code reviews, agile) involves a lot of frustration and can be quite stressful. I think that's the reason it pays so well - it's just a demanding and unpleasant job that most people don't want to be doing unless they're paid very well. If you don't particularly care about money, maybe you could find something easier instead?

<comment><USER7> It pays so well because there aren't enough developers.

That some developers have managed to screw themselves over by using Byzantine stacks, code reviews and agile is entirely their own fault.

Programming isn't a stressful job, but programmers sure love making their own working environments toxic.

<comment><USER8> Most programming is about turning set of chaotic and very poorly defined business requirements into a code. Which usually means you end up with complex code to handle edge cases that were not defined prior to development. Constantly changing business requirements and unreasonably deadlines don't help. End result can be very stressful and not enjoyable. That's why I think there isn't enough developers. Lots of people just don't have nerves to do this job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't know where this toxic "relocate to some Asian or other 3rd world shithole and work remotely, it's cheap there anyway so what can go wrong?" vision comes from. Don't get lured, folks. Visiting with piles of cash and living in tourist bubble vs. actually working and functioning there are two different universes.

If you are unable to find yourself in Germany, perhaps try one of the souless outsourcing centers in Prague/Wroclaw/Krakow? Close enough to home, brain- numbing tasks, they grant even some relocation lump sum if requested - <USER2> be just enough to get the things running...

</comment><comment> duncan-donuts I honestly think you should think about this carefully, and that you might want to consider doing something else. If you really think you want to write software I suggest that you find a job doing customer support and work your way towards your goals. I started in support, did qa, and eventually became an engineer.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I didn't think about that. I would be totally willing to do customer support. Just kind of difficult to find. Upwork rejected my resume last time I tried to sign up. But maybe, I should try and pursue that route.

<comment><USER10> Github hires in Germany for remote support work, doesn't matter you live in SE Asia only matters your authorization to work in DE [https://boards.greenhouse.io/github/jobs/1182009](https://boards.greenhouse.io/github/jobs/1182009)

Or just go on any job site: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15GJtJ5qpk7H9Cl3xTBwv2FR8/htmlview?usp=drive_web&sle=true) and search for "german" to see all the remote German speaking SaaS support jobs, plenty exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, sir!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > But I'm probably quite far from a 'real' hacker who enjoys coding so much, > they do it in their free time as well.

This is fine when you get to a certain level. You don't sound to be at that level yet.

If you can support yourself there, fine, minimize your expenses. If not, get back to your own region for 6 months - 1 year while you level up on your development skills and get a remote job locked in or have some savings. It's hard to learn while under stress, and anything in life has a certain amount of luck to it. Additionally, some of the best developers have trouble finding remote gigs because they don't know how to market themselves. Sounds like you a lacking a little of both so don't beat yourself up, but level up in both areas.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was in a similar situation in a kind of reversed way several years ago. I was good at coding, but had no interest in it, since I had started learning it around 8 years before. The passion just wasn't there any more.

But I was struggling financially so I took a freelance gig and turned out I enjoyed it pretty much.

I believe you are pretty screwed if you want to only work on what you are passionate about. Things can stay new and exciting for only so long.

I recommend reading the book So Good They Cannot Ignore You.

</comment><comment><USER11> > If anyone thinks there is a chance that they could use my help, please do > let me know.

A) How much time per day would you honestly put in if someone offered you something?

B) You should be more specific about what kind of development work you can do, and show at least 1 example of past work.

<comment><AUTHOR> A) I would like to put in as much as I can. I'm pretty sure I could do four hours a day - maybe more.

B) It's old, but it's the only public repo I have. If you want, I can give you access to a private repo on Bitbucket. That one is from last year. I haven't done any coding since. [https://github.com/qisine/jobs4ants.com](https://github.com/qisine/jobs4ants.com)

<comment><USER13> Why can you only put in four hours a day?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Move back to your hometown or wherever you have social and family connections. Get a low stress government job that prob pays equal to a dev job for low stress excel and ms word work .

</comment><comment><USER15> Forget coding for now; try and get in shape locally, instead: face real people and interact with them. Customer support is very good, even remotely if you get a gig through HN. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER16> You should look into Lambda School ([https://lambdaschool.com/](https://lambdaschool.com/)). You don't have to pay anything up-front and instead agree to share a % of your income once you get a job over $50k. I have no insight into the stress levels of their students, but from everything I've heard about Lambda, it's incredible.

Disclosure: I am not affiliated with Lambda School at all, just really believe in what they're doing and the way they are doing it. @austenallred is the guy to speak with.

<comment><USER17> No, no, no, no, no. The guy's barely functioning, clearly unable to keep his shit together, and your advising him to effectively get himself into debt and thus trap himself into a career he's not even sure he wants? I don't care if you're affiliated or not, I don't care how hipsterish and "disruptive" these Lambda people are, this is really, really terrible advice. There are plenty of ways to learn tech skills online without paying a penny, no need for anyone to start their career indebted to yet another start-up that exists to profit from the gullible and desperate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is moving in back with your parents/family not an option. Maybe take that time to develop a skillset and then start a job again.

</comment><comment><USER19> Are you doing all this alone ? Have you tried finding a work/study partner ? It can be good for motivation and against stress.

</comment><comment><USER20> You could try:

1) Running your own business 2) A marketing job 3) A job with computers at a large corporation that is not coding

</comment><comment> Mick-Jogger Just out of curiosity. I am also in SEA and working for a German company. Which country are you located in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Cambodia

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> 1\. Do you have any kind of formal training? 2\. Are you willing to relocate back to the DACH region?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I don't have any kind of formal training. I would be willing to relocate.

<comment><USER22> How old are you? Could you go to university and are eligable for Bafög? Do have a support network at home?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 35. I could theoretically go to university. But I would first have to study one year to pass the university entrance exam. In any case, I would rather avoid it. If university were a realistic option for me, I probably wouldn't be in the situation I am today.

<comment><USER23> University of the People doesn't have an entrance exam, and it's zero tuition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to bed now. Thanks again for all the support!

</comment><comment><USER24> willing to mentor and teach to get a few projects running off the ground. tech stack is production grade django python java redis mq react.</comment>


Uproar: MariaDB Corp. veers away from open source - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/3109213/open-source-tools/open-source-uproar-as-mariadb-goes-commercial.html?try=2 <comment><USER2> > It's a further slap in the face to MariaDB Foundation, which now sees the > MariaDB trademark associated with a proprietary product.

Definite trademark confusion time.</comment>


Watermark.js: Watermarking for the browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brianium/watermarkjs

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544970)

</comment><comment><USER3> Could we use the term "watermarking" for a process which near-invisibly marks the image? We could use the term "branding" for the visual counterpart.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice approach.

I need to get JAWS out to confirm, but based on the resulting page source, I'm pretty sure that when JS is disabled in the browser you might break the page from an accessibility perspective by using this tool.

If this did degrade in a more elegant way, i think this would be a very practical tool.

<comment><USER5> And, it doesn't even help much, as the actual image is still accessible to the browser, unless executed on the server.

<comment><USER4> Yeah that was my other concern, but like all forms of DRM, it's pretty much broken from the start so initially I didn't think it was worth pointing out. I'm glad you did though.

It's an important and likely not obvious point to some people that as the image is being modified in JS, the original image is locally accessible regardless of the watermark if the viewer is even just a little tech savvy. Might be good for getting credit on printed pages, but its certainly not a complete solution.

<comment><USER6> Isn't it kind of obvious that if you want to modify something in the browser, the browser must be able to load it?

There is no standard for "trusted" downloads yet, in the sense that everyone except the user is "trusted" nowadays... I'm sure it will come though.

<comment><USER4> To you and me for sure, but a photographer who is not familiar with how JS is executed, I would say its possible they might miss the issue and just focus on the result.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ten people arrested in Gujarat for allegedly playing banned game PUBG - <AUTHOR> https://www.news18.com/news/india/10-held-in-gujarat-for-playing-pubg-game-on-mobile-phone-2066777.html <comment><USER2> > the ban was necessary as these games were leading to violent behaviour among > children and youth

Ah another claim that video games cause violence not backed by any sciecific data.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the result more mixed? There are some studies that found no relation and other studies that found a relation, and no sufficient explanation why repeating the same studies end up showing different results?

<comment><USER4> Considering the amount of people (myself included) that have grown up playing video games and shooters. I think we have enough empirical evidence that violent video games do not in fact raise violent people.

Im only looking at the crime rates in the US using wikipedia [1], and the crimes are going down. Im certain that this trend is similar in other developed countries that have a long history of violent movies and video games.

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

<comment><USER5> Yeah no kidding. All of my friends and I grew up on Wolfenstein, Doom and Duke Nukem. None us grew up to be the least bit violent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish the cops had showed more interest in recovering the cell phone that was snatched from my wife recently. I wish they show more interest in the rise of snatching jewellery in than arresting kids for their questionable choice in games.

Its common practice among Indian cops to refuse to register such crimes. But when it comes to pandering to politically blessed agendas, many fall over themselves to please.

I dont think I had much choice in the matter when I had to sign up to pay for their salaries to do the job of parenting.

<comment><USER7> >many fall over themselves to please

fall over themselves to please someone in power

<comment><USER6> Indeed ! Thanks for completing my sentence.

What is rather intriguing is the downvotes, not that I mind but curious about the point of view they are coming from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's illegal to play a _video game_? What world is this?

<comment><USER9> This is Modi Kaka's New India. Many websites like reddit, alexa.com, etc. have also been banned by ISPs over the last few months.

<comment><USER10> Haha, Modi fans are downvoting you for pointing out that the obvious. This incident took place in Gujarat. Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat for more than a decade before becoming Prime Minister of India. The BJP has now been in power in Gujarat for nearly 20 years. If Modi/BJP isn't responsible for this idiocy, then I would invite the BJP bhakts (devotees) to tell us who is.

Before you speak, let me establish two facts. Modi and the BJP are synonymous since 2014. When the BJP wins an election, it's called a "Modi wave". The flipside of taking credit for everything and micromanaging everything that the BJP does is that he is responsible when they fuck up... like they have here. Second, the police ultimately report to the Chief Minister who is answerable to Modi. Now say what you have to say, without resorting to the downvote button.

<comment><USER11> From the article, it looks like the local police banned PUBG after locals complained about its addictive nature(in the exam season). Not saying that this is legit, but I don't think Modi would've called the local Police chief and said, "hey bro, please ban PUBG because kids won't do well in exams in my state".

As for the sites ban, I couldn't find any Government order banning these sites. For all we know, it might be the courts issuing these bans.

<comment><USER10> I don't mean that Modi personally signed the order banning PUBG. I meant that Modi and the BJP have ruled and continue to rule over a state where policemen think they are a law unto themselves. They think they can ban perfectly lawful activities, then arrest anyone who violates their idiotic ban. The policeman thinks the ends justify the means. I am asking why the policeman's boss agrees with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The interesting bit for me is: how did regular police find out who was playing the game? Were they spotted in person, or is there good enough network surveillance in India to implement filters and pass subscriber information to the police? (Or is this some kind of hoax to make more people comply?)

<comment><USER13> it's 2 people, so they've gotta be two people who were caught on their screens flaunting the rules or being ignorant of it. If it was network surveilance, you'd have numbers in the thousands easily.

<comment><USER12> I've seen some are mentioned as caught on the street. Just wondering about the rest where the situation was not listed explicitly.

> If it was network surveilance, you'd have numbers in the thousands easily.

That doesn't have to be true. If you want fewer people playing the game, it's easier/cheaper to catch a small number and make it known in media than actually arrest thousands. (Unless arrests are your goal that is)

<comment><USER13> That's not how you control the behavior of a population. You'd post the entire number of people caught, warn the violators and make them pay a small indemnity. Having a small number of people reported caught makes enforcement seem ineffective in finding the culprits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like a tactic orchestrated by parents-cops to scare other kids from playing PUBG, because: Exams (:rolling_eyes:)

Will certainly backfire (more kids will get onto it).

Highly clickbait news item for Indian/International media to report on this.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am super glad that Doom, Wolfenstein, Mortal Kombat, Shadow Warrior have not got as popular as PUBG else I would have a really hard time with India.

</comment><comment><USER16> Its Indian version of tabloid news. AFAIK some local enforcement agency passed a rule banning PUBG near to school exams.

<comment><USER17> News18 is not a tabloid website.

But just in case you're not convinced, here's the BBC reporting the same arrests:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- india-47238545](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47238545)

<comment><USER18> This reminds me of the time when my friends ran a fake contest on Facebook in the early days. Someone won. Then they told their local newspaper. Other small papers picked it up. Then it got picked up by bigger publications. Everyone treated it like it was a legitimate contest.

Sometimes a story is so juicy that even the big fish can't ignore it.

<comment><USER17> I think 16 people being arrested for playing a banned video game is real news that deserves to be widely published.

Your friends' fake Facebook contest is not quite comparable.

<comment><USER18> I disagree. This story is far too insignificant for people who are nowhere near the incident to be alarmed about.

We have a lot to think and worry about all the time much closer to our homes. Stories like this being reported by an outlet so far removed from the situation on the ground don't serve the people receiving the news apart from triggering them.

<comment><USER17> HN is a global community and if something is insignificant for you because it's too far away or something, it's quicker to just ignore it than to go into the discussions and tell people that are actually engaging with the topic that it's not worth their time. A little disrespectful as well.

I can tell you why it's relevant to me: I live in India, so it's local, and it's related to the social effects of technology. Now the front page has news about California being drought-free. It's not of interest to me, so I will just ignore it.

<comment><USER18> We weren't talking about HN. How many Indian newspapers report on every little nonsensical arrest that happens in the US?

<comment><USER17> But these are not merely nonsensical arrests otherwise unconnected to everything.

Modi named PUBG as a problem in a recent public meeting. Then some local police officials decide to outlaw it, and start arresting people over it, while the courts and the government do nothing about it. The arrests are absolutely a part of the rise of fascism in the country under the current regime. Why should the world not be interested in the growing fundamentalist face of India?

Multiple people being arrested because of draconian laws enacted at whimsy, anywhere, is always newsworthy. I don't understand why you're trying to trivialise it.

<comment><USER11> > Modi named PUBG as a problem in a recent public meeting.

Any source to back this up? If you're referring to "Yeh PUBG wala hai kya", then it was a reply to a mother who was concerned about her son's addiction to online games. Any person who knows about online games would've pointed towards PUBG. This is also the reason why the locals petitioned the local police about rising PUBG addiction. Banning is not the solution but the concerns of parents about addiction(in exam season) are absolutely legit.

> The arrests are absolutely a part of the rise of fascism in the country > under the current regime.

Either you don't know what fascism is or you're clearly making a joke out of it.

<comment><USER17> Did the locals also petition the police to arrest their own children?

I know what fascism is and in my opinion it is exactly what is happening in India in the current regime.

Today a BJP MP has openly declared that if the BJP wins the 2019 elections, there will not be a need for any more elections in 2024 or thereafter.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy - <AUTHOR> http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html#content <comment><USER2> Previous threads:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3003574>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7354>

</comment><comment><USER3> It is an induction of : A person is its own worst enemy.</comment>


Ask HN: Authorize.net Vs Zuora Vs Aria for Subscription Billing - <AUTHOR>

I know there have been multiple discussions about subscription billing and I have commented on it as well- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198672
We currently use Authorize.net's ARB platform for our subscription billing but I keep hearing of the "new" services such Zuora and Aria. And both of these new breed of services don't seem to be bucketed in the same category as Authorize.net's ARB and Braintree etc...
Has anybody evaluated all these platforms and is using any of these services after the evaluation? If yes, your thinking on why is/was better for you would be great. <comment><USER2> Arrrggghh ! I, too, hope someone else chimes in with some experience. I keep procrastinating about reading through all the reams of material from Authorize.net then debugging their user unfriendly processes to get to a functioning billing process.

Their reputation for security and friendliness to the end customer seems good, so I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet, but if someone has used another system all the way through to a finished eCommerce product, I'd love to hear about customer satisfaction, etc. (or anything about relative reliability, security, etc.)</comment>


Implementing the Binary Memcached Protocol with Ocaml and Bitstring - <AUTHOR> http://andreas.github.io/2014/08/22/implementing-the-binary-memcached-protocol-with-ocaml-and-bitstring/

<comment><USER2> A few nitpicks:

It looks like this implementation only works on the requestor side of the conversation -- that when we create / encode / write a header, it's presumed to be a request; when we read or decode a header, it's presumed to be a response. I would choose a side-agnostic design for a reference library to be used on both sides.

Also, presuming this runs over TCP or similar protocols, I would refrain from using the term `packet` in the code, as it is both jarring and misleading. TCP users are only concerned with streams -- packets themselves are handled by the TCP stack.

EDIT: to refer to a message implemented on top of the TCP stream, I would use the term message or frame

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points. The code is indeed only intended to be used as a client. I've mirrored the terminology used in the Memcached protocol specification, but now that you bring it up, it's true the word "packet" can be confusing.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: Please don't add noise to the conversation - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that it's become more acceptable to add noise and meaningless comments to HN threads. I came across this thread yesterday: http://i.imgur.com/ZZt3F0M.png. The parent comment about the wingsuit flyby was somewhat relevant to the original topic. The subsequent replies were silly noise.
Please refrain from writing comments that don't add anything meaningful to the discussion. Hacker News is not a place to post chains of memes. If you want to do that, go to reddit where it's an accepted and important part of the culture. Please do your part to keep the signal to noise ratio here high. Thank you. <comment><USER2> I was getting the feeling that Slashdot had finally given up the ghost, or some subreddit that mainly attracts teenagers had posted an HN link for some reason. I mean there have been pun threads on HN posted recently, and reference "humor", and meme chains. It was enough to make me not even look at this site for a week.

I really hope it turns around. I can't take another site I love turning into a cultural "me too" wasteland.

<comment><USER3> In my honest opinion, I think that it is worse knowing that the guidelines were created specifically to stop HN from degenerating into Reddit and Slashdot.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't every community need guidelines/rules on the internet? Without them you get wild-west-style communities. I think HN works BECAUSE it's heavily moderated. In the beginning we could rely on a small user-base to self-sustain discussions, but we've reached such a wide audience now I don't think that's possible without mod assistance.

Would be interesting to implement a veteran-only view to only show user's posts and comments that reach a certain karma or age threshold. Neither of which would correlate with conversation quality, however you'd likely see on- the-whole more 'classic HN'-style discussion as you've filtered out the vast majority of new/'casual' users.

<comment><USER3> I think you misunderstood my comment, I did not mean to state that I thought the guidelines are bad -- I think that they are very good for the community (In fact, imo it's what makes this place better and more informative than Slashdot). What I meant to state was that the increase of the signal-to-noise ratio is a _bad_ thing, that is happening _despite_ the extrememly well written guidelines.

Anecdotally, I would say that this could indicate that either the guidelines are not being enforced (However, from what I can tell they are being enforced), or that the guidelines have a black spot that could be filled (Whether this would cause more harm than good is debatable).

<comment><USER4> An increase in shadow-banning would be very effective, but there's a lot of push-back against that form of penalty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those types of comments are downvoted to hell 99% of the time. I'm actually surprised that thread wasn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I was surprised they weren't downvoted into oblivion either.

edit: as bradfa pointed out, this comment is the exactly the kind of noise we want to avoid. shame on me. I'll leave it as an example of what _not_ to do.

<comment><USER6> Is your comment here an example of what you'd like to see less of?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you're right actually. Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's the great thing about threaded commenting, as opposed to the typical sequential forum style- it's easy to mentally block out a bullshit thread.

<comment><USER8> Parsing for quality signal here can be tough with an article with over a 100 comments. Screen real estate can be hogged by the noisier threads, making it difficult to track a meaningful discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another reason we meed collapsable threads here. You'll never stop "noise" entirely, but bullshit threads that sparked by OT comments could be easily snipped with collapsable threads.

<comment><USER9> I've been using the Hacker News Enhancement Suite[1] for a while in Chrome. Among RES-style features like keyboard navigation it also enables collapsable threads. The source[2] is available on GitHub.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news- enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm) [2] [https://github.com/etcet/HNES](https://github.com/etcet/HNES)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please don't post AskHN threads that aren't in the form of a question just to try to impose your personal preferences and discourage your personal pet peeves on the rest of us, because that is a stupid and immature thing to do.

<comment><USER11> It's more than a personal preference; vecter is representing something about the culture of the site.

It isn't just about community preference, either. HN is a democracy, but a constitutional one. The constitution is [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

> _stupid and immature_

Speaking of which, please review what the constitution says about not calling names in arguments!

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry, I just downvoted your comment but I meant to upvote.

<comment><USER11> If it helps, the data says you did neither :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Come on guys, this isn't Reddit. Leave the gag threads at the door.</comment>


The King of Human Error - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/12/michael-lewis-201112.print

<comment><USER2> The quiz that accompanies this article [1] makes an error. Question 2 asks

"A team of psychologists performed personality tests on 100 professionals, of which 30 were engineers and 70 were lawyers. Brief descriptions were written for each subject. The following is a sample of one of the resulting descriptions:

Jack is a 45-year-old man. He is married and has four children. He is generally conservative, careful, and ambitious. He shows no interest in political and social issues and spends most of his free time on his many hobbies, which include home carpentry, sailing, and mathematics.

What is the probability that Jack is one of the 30 engineers?"

The answer given is that the probability is exactly 30%, since there are 30 engineers out of 100. But this ignores all of the information available in the description! Imagine if the description said "Jack's hobbies include writing compilers, hacking assembly code, World of Warcraft, designing new programming languages and LARP." Would we still conclude that there's only a 30% chance of him being an engineer?

A correct answer to this question should apply Bayes' rule. With E representing 'Jack is an engineer', L representing 'Jack is a lawyer' and D representing the description, Bayes rule tells us

P(E|D) = P(E) P(D|E) / P(D)

P(L|D) = P(L) P(D|L) / P(D)

where P(A|B) is 'the probability of A given B' and P(A) is 'the probability of A without taking other information into account'. We can ignore the common factor of 1/P(D) and we know that P(E)=0.3 and P(L)=0.7, so the relative probabilities of Jack being an engineer or a lawyer, given the description of him, are

P(E|D) ~ 0.3 * P(D|E)

P(L|D) ~ 0.7 * P(D|L)

so the a priori probabilities of Jack being an engineer or a lawyer need to be weighted by the probability of seeing the description that we did, _given_ that Jack is an engineer or a lawyer! If you claim that there is a 70% chance of seeing the description if Jack is an engineer but only 30% if Jack is a lawyer, then taking all the evidence into account, you should ascribe an equal probability to the two possibilities.

Basic probability fail by the editors of Vanity Fair, I think.

[1] [http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/12/kahneman...](http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/12/kahneman- quiz-201112)

<comment><USER3> Not only do they seem to lack basic probability skills. They also cannot cite the original material correctly. Kahneman and Tversky tested something else completely. Namely, that people tend to ignore base rates when making probability estimates. From Kahneman's book:

"In one experimental condition, subjects were told that the group from which the descriptions had been drawn consisted of 70 engineers and 30 lawyers. In another condition subjects were told that the group consisted of 30 engineers and 70 lawyerss. [..] In sharp violation of Bayes' rule, the subjects in the two conditions produced essentially the same probability judgements."

There is also a blatant error in the OP article: Answer No. 2 (Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.) is by no means "logically impossible".

EDIT: wording

<comment><USER4> 'There is also a blatant error in the OP article: Answer No. 2 (Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.) is by no means "logically impossible".'

They meant that it's logically impossible for the probability of A AND B to be higher than the probability of A, since A AND B is a subset of A. She could be feminist, but the probability of being feminist is lower than the 100% probability that she's either a feminist or not.

<comment><USER3> I am well aware of the point they were trying to make. Or, more precisely, the point Kahneman et al. were trying to make. What I am concerned about is that they, that is, the editors / writers of Vanity Fair, do not understand their mistake. This is somewhat likely given the error they made described by the grandparent comment.

Overall, I find it rather ironic to find such gross errors in an article that sets out to educate the reader about "human error".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A well-written (by Michael Lewis) article that should invite people interested in economics and human or rational decision-making to get to know Kahneman's work, which won the Nobel prize, better.

Engineers try to make rational decisions but probably we don't realize the extent to which it's not really human nature to do so.

Teaser:

Amos [Tversky] and I once rigged a wheel of fortune. It was marked from 0 to 100, but we had it built so that it would stop only at 10 or 65 One of us would stand in front of a small group, spin the wheel, and ask them to write down the number on which the wheel stopped, which of course was either 10 or 65. We then asked them two questions:

Is the percentage of African nations among UN members larger or smaller than the number you just wrote?

What is your best guess of the percentage of African nations in the UN?

The spin of a wheel of fortune had nothing to do with the question and should have had no influence over the answer, but it did. "The average estimate of those who saw 10 and 65 were 25% and 45 respectively."

<comment><USER6> I wonder what the control group/s who was/were asked the questions without the wheel came up with.

<comment><USER7> Aren't the emerging two groups each others control group? What could you gain from your proposed control experiment?

<comment><USER8> That article, as written in Vanity Fair, is so poorly written. Paragraph one is evidence enough. More indefinite modifiers so that you don't know who is who. Also I don't understand why answer 1 is the correct answer regarding Linda. There is simply not enough information given to determine which answer is true.

<comment><USER9> Regarding the Linda the Bank Teller Question: Here is an analogous numbers only probability question:

You are told that the test administrator is thinking of a number between 1 and 100, and that the number is odd. What is more likely?

A. The number is greater than 50. B. The number is greater than 50 and ends with a 3, 5, 7 or 9

Answer A and you have a 50% chance of being correct. Answer B and you only have a 40% chance of being correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> a while ago I did a mechanical turk experiment that shows experimentally a bit of how kahneman/tversky prospect theory ends up working: <http://joshua.schachter.org/2008/09/amateur-economist.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> "Which alternative is more probable?

(1) Linda is a bank teller.

(2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

The vast majority—roughly 85 percent—of the people they asked opted for No. 2, even though No. 2 is logically impossible. (If No. 2 is true, so is No. 1.) The human mind is so wedded to stereotypes and so distracted by vivid descriptions that it will seize upon them, even when they defy logic, rather than upon truly relevant facts."

Umm.. no. The reason 85% of people chose option #2 is because the answers were so poorly worded. They give the impression of an unspoken assumption for answer #1 that Linda is NOT active in the feminist movement.

<comment><USER12> Various alternative explanations like that have been explored, but it seems the effect is not due to wording: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/jj/conjunction_controversy_or_how_th...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/jj/conjunction_controversy_or_how_they_nail_it_down/)

<comment><USER11> Actually, I would take it to mean that the wording has a huge effect on how people respond, as per his previous post: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/ji/conjunction_fallacy/>

Notice that in the jazz playing accountant example, 92% of people answered A, E, C.

Notice now that in the gambling situation, only 65% of subjects answered 2.

92% for the "story" question, and 65% for the "hard data" question. I still look at the jazz question and read it through the cultural interpretation of A > E > C, despite it being incorrect in a strictly logical sense. That does not make my interpretation a conjunction fallacy, regardless of what the question creator intended.

This only goes to show that the conjunction fallacy has no hope of being measured accurately unless the question is completely unambiguous in subtext (meaning that it doesn't tread upon cultural aspects of language, where people fill in the blanks and read between the lines).

And even then, the dice rolling question, though devoid of cultural baggage, still might not be the best way to measure the conjunction fallacy. I know a great number of people who couldn't figure out probability to save themselves. This could have skewed the results higher or even lower, depending on what proportion of the test subjects could properly interpret probabilities. Now if this question were asked to statisticians, the results would be compelling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "They had a rule of thumb, he explains: they would study no specific example of human idiocy or irrationality unless they first detected it in themselves."

God I love these guys.

<comment><USER14> Also love this passage:

"Most people after they win the Nobel Prize just want to go play golf," said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology at Princeton and a disciple of Amos Tversky's. "Danny's busy trying to disprove his own theories that led to the prize. It's beautiful, really."

It shows amazing intellectual honesty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Which alternative is more probable? > (1) Linda is a bank teller. > (2) > Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

If Linda is a randomly chosen person, then clearly 1 is more probable.

However, there is another sense in which 2 is more likely to be true. For example, in the radiology department where I work, doctors ordering studies need to enter in a reason for the study. Frequently, they put something generic like "pain" to get the study approved, which may or may not be accurate. On the other hand, if I saw a history that said "1 day history of RLQ pain, nausea, and fever", I would consider that history to be more likely to be true.

So in a narrow probabilistic sense, 1 is true, but when you consider that people sometimes make stuff up or don't have the full story, you might rationally judge a more detailed story to be more believable.

</comment><comment><USER16> The Vanity Fair staffer, Jaime Lalinde, who made up the sidebar quiz, misinterpreted Kahneman's point through the lens of political correctness: Stereotypes (even about engineers) Are Wrong!

</comment><comment><USER17> cliffs?</comment>


Ramen Hacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/03/ramen-hacks-30-easy-ways-to-upgrade-your-instant-noodles-japanese-what-to-do-with-ramen.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+seriouseatsfeaturesvideos+%28Serious+Eats%29

<comment><USER2> Even the egg section doesn't quite achieve one of the simplest hacks: Crack an egg and plop it in. Stir with chopsticks while it together with the noodles and broth cook another minute or so.

I like to add a bit of hot sauce after that.

Not fancy, nor a well-rounded diet on its own. But a very good, convenient, and quick fix. And the protein (and some nutrients) will keep you going longer than the carbohydrates and salt alone.</comment>


Modern History of the Middle East - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Middle_East#Modern_Middle_East

<comment><USER2> So, it has come to this? Linking to Wikipedia?</comment>


Asteroids bookmarklet with rudimentary multiplayer - let's blow up HN together - <AUTHOR> http://realitymachine.net/asteroids.html

<comment><USER2> A fun idea. But a note from the Github page:

 _At present the only "functionality" is the display of other players locations on the page. That's pretty lame, right? But I'm tired..._

<comment><AUTHOR> True— although I think that's most of it, really. The comment I read that inspired this idea just wanted to see the other players.

And if you really get into shooting stuff, the mayhem creates an excellent illusion of participation :P

I think it's the sort of thing that needs a certain critical mass of players to be engaging... maybe this just isn't the right time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it went down overnight, but the server is now running again.</comment>


My Evil Undead Credit Card - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2012/08/26/my-undead-credit-card/ <comment><USER3> Back in 2000 my wallet, including my Visa check card and other credit cards, was stolen in Paris. I called the bank right away, got cards canceled, had new ones ordered and all that.

I get my checking account statement and see several charges that the thief made before I was able to get the card canceled. My bank cheerfully reversed those and I thought nothing of it.

Four months later, I see a charge on my statement from one of the same merchants as before. I called my bank, and they said that the merchant had authorized my card, but did not proceed to capture the payment until then. I asked why this happened on a canceled card, and was told the authorization happened before the card was reported stolen so they had to honor it. They told me the merchant had six months to capture the payment, and it basically was as if I had written them a check and they sat on it for months.

Clearly the thief had some buddy with a merchant account, and they were trying to see if they could sneak a charge in later without me noticing it.

I asked my bank if there was a way for them to see if there were more of these charges in the pipeline, because I had written some checks and it would be highly inconvenient to me if they bounced. They said they had no way of knowing. The only way to stop these from going through was to close the checking account, which would also mean the checks I've written were going to bounce anyway. So I just had to wait out two more months and hope nothing more happened.

Luckily, that was the only instance.

<comment><USER4> One of the several reasons Debit cards are much worse and anti-consumer than Credit cards.

People think that because it has a Visa logo and their bank has a limited fraud liability policy that they're safe. That their debit cards have the same consumer protections as credit cards. That's just not the case.

Moreover, if you swipe-and-sign for _anything_ you should be getting rewards or cash-back. Very few debit cards offer rewards, and the ones that do are often less lucrative than those offered on credit cards.

<comment><USER5> I don't know how debit cards work in the US, but I need a PIN to use my debit card, so short of being forced to withdraw money at gunpoint, you won't get any access to my bank account.

<comment><USER6> I had a co-worker once who used his debit card at an ATM at a coffee shop nearby our office. Somehow, some genius had installed a mechanism in the ATM to read the stripe and the PIN. So they were able to take that info and create a fake debit card that replicated my co-worker's debit card. The next week, his bank account got cleaned out. He was absolutely broke and went through a few weeks of hell trying to get it all sorted out. Fortunately, the bank was able to help him out. I don't know what happened with the police investigation, but basically none of us used cards at that coffee shop again. The coffee shop was still operational, and I think the police were somehow able to determine that it wasn't the coffee shop at fault (maybe only a single employee or an ATM maintenance guy, not sure).

I think this is why a lot of debit cards have chips nowadays. The chips are harder to counterfeit (I think). But I think we still have to grandfather all the old debit cards without chips. :(

<comment><USER7> Wow, I thought everybody had heard of ATM card skinners by now. Be very careful at any ATM you use, don't think you are safe because you avoid that cafe's. And cover your hand when you enter a pin.

<comment><USER6> That was in 2010, hadn't heard of them back then. Not sure if they were actually common back then, although I'm sure they're certainly more common now. Yes, careful, careful. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This makes sense somewhat - if you could get out of a contract with a merchant, simply by canceling your credit card, then why bother to uphold your obligations (multiple payments, length of relationship) etc... Just get whatever benefits you want, then cancel the card and wave goodbye to the merchant. That would be _particularly_ problematic on a multiple-payment scenario.

The net-net is _never_ give your credit card to anyone who suggests they will charge you, unless you have full control over that relationship.

It's the key reason why I subscribe to all my magazines and newspapers (key exception being the WSJ) through iTunes - single place to control subscriptions - with the added bonus that I get reminded every month that there will be a renewal coming up.

I also negotiated with my Gym to allow me to pay the full year up front + initiation fee to avoid having to give them my credit card - It was amazing how difficult it was for me to convince them to allow me to give them $410 up front for a $30/month gym membership. They really make a lot of money off of people who don't want to come into the gym and cancel, or forget to do so on their "Annual" anniversary when they get signed up for another year.

Most of us are in our early 20s when we discover the downsides of recurring credit card charges - I'm surprised that someone as savvy as Arrington is discovering that he can't just cancel his account to end those recurring charges - I thought it was something that students usually do and discover doesn't work. I certainly did when I was a student.

<comment><USER9> No, if you have purchases on your agreement prior to cancellation, it's obvious that you are beholden to these purchases. These are within contractual guidelines _and_ sensible.

If a merchant tries to charge my card, and finds that they cannot, they can end their relationship with me, and if, for some reason, cannot reconcile outstanding costs through traditional means, can utilize collections agencies or any other means they wish to obtain their due.

This is not only nonsensical, but legally questionable at best, and I'm very surprised this is the first I've seen anyone bring a point against it.

<comment><USER8> My gym offers a membership - $30/month with credit card and a one year term, no initiation fee, or $50/month, $75 initiation fee on a month-by-month basis. When I sign up for the one year membership, I put my signature on a contract, indicating that I will oblige by all the conditions.

Should I be allowed to sign up for the one year term, and then cancel my credit card after a couple months?

Whenever you enter a contract, there are conditions that must be fulfilled to cancel that contract. Simply saying "I didn't read those conditions" or "I don't want the product anymore" is not a sufficient condition to terminate the contract. And thinking that you can get out of it by "canceling the credit card" is naive in my opinion.

<comment><USER10> _Should I be allowed to sign up for the one year term, and then cancel my credit card after a couple months?_

Yes, you should. Because it's not the credit card companies responsibility to worry about what outstanding contracts you may or may not still have ongoing.

It would be up to the merchant to pursue legal action if your attempt to defraud the contract was substantial enough for them to care. If this was an ongoing problem for them, they would have to debate if their "deal" is really valued by their consumers and worth continuing to offer.

But, it's not Visa's problem to worry about these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Doesn't everyone know this? You can't enter into a contract with someone and then just pull the payment instrument out from under them. Even if they stopped charging your credit card, they could still sue you for the amount you owe them.

You have to cancel your gym membership if you don't want it anymore. Send them a registered letter and CC the state's Attorney General office if they won't cancel the account for you.

Edit: Wow, I just realized this is Arrington's blog. Isn't he a lawyer? How can he not know this stuff?

<comment><USER12> "Sending a registered letter" sounds like a "getting ready to sue" legal last resort. You don't have to do things like that to cancel subscriptions with most any other business.

Unfortunately that's actually the _only_ way to cancel membership in writing at most major gym chains in the US. They all outsource membership billing to the same company, ABC Financial. ABC has their customers (the gyms) require member cancellations be sent by certified mail. Any cancellation request by phone or mail that isn't sent certified is simply thrown out. If you cancel your credit card, they'll just send you immediately to their collections agency.

This is how they guarantee "more revenue from more members than with anyone else". It's such a scummy business.

<http://www.abcfinancial.com/>

A Google search for "ABC Financial scam" (in quotes, exact phrase) has over 13,000 results.

<comment><USER8> I've had five gym memberships in my life. Every one of them allowed me to cancel the membership by coming into the gym and canceling it. In every case, that method, "Come into the gym and cancel" was written write on the contract.

If you are willing to negotiate with the owner/manager, they might even allow you to pay the full year up front - because that's basically the same thing (this was my argument) as signing up for a 1 year membership, and then canceling it the very same day - you are still responsible for the full 12 months, but it would end after one year because you had "cancelled" it.

Can you name a gym that won't let you cancel your membership by coming into the gym and doing so?

<comment><USER12> Ballys Fitness, Blast Fitness, Anytime Fitness and Gold's Gym according to just a few of the 90 reports on RipoffReport. I didn't just pull names out of titles, I read the reports and these are people that said they went to their gym to cancel, but kept getting billed by ABC.

<http://www.ripoffreport.com/directory/ABC-financial.aspx>

<comment><USER8> I didn't read all of them, but the first, "Golds" caught my attention:

== SNIP ==

"I am currently on the phone (and have been for an hour) with ABC Financial, the company that handles billing for Large Gym chains Golds Gym, Lifequest Fitness (I'm sure there are others).

I've been trying to cancel my membership. I've been put on hold 4 times." == SNIP ==

I've never had a gym membership that, by default, could be canceled via letter/fax/phone call. They all say the same thing, "Come in to the gym in person, and cancel the membership."

Most of them also have a clause saying that you are renewed for a year if you don't cancel on your anniversary.

I always add a half dozen riders (and have the manager sign it) that says things like "If I get a job or move more than 25 miles away from the gym, I can send in a letter stating that, and cancel via registered mail." - <USER2> managers are usually reasonable, and will let you do that. Take 15 to 20 minutes to negotiate your Gym contract - you do realize it's a contract, right?

In 90% of these cases, people just aren't demonstrating personal responsibility for the contracts they've entered.

I'll say it again - never, ever, ever enter a recurring contract (or something that might _be_ a recurring contract) with your credit card, unless you have 100% control over the cancelation and terms.

<comment><USER13> My experience with Gold's Gym is you call the number (for ABC Financial) and they tell you to mail a letter to them. They were very friendly, no hold time, but couldn't (wouldn't?) cancel over the phone. I got the phone number from trying to cancel in person at the gym. The people working the desk didn't appear to be getting paid enough to care too much (on the bright side, they didn't try to sell my anything I didn't want when I signed up. They told me $30 a month, take it or leave it).

Overall, I had to mail a letter and pay for an extra month's membership (and a stamp), but it wasn't that bad. Supposedly my contract required 60 days notice, I didn't care enough to check. People get burned up about these things, I figure there's more important things in life than $30 for a gym membership I didn't use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is interesting that charges can be put through after a card is cancelled. I, for one, did not know that.

I've cancelled cards previously because merchants were unreasonable or unresponsive. Gyms are one of the worst for this. Cancelling a gym membership is an exercise in torture.

Anecdote: I was in an Equinox gym a couple of months ago, thinking about joining. I saw a "representative" who was happy to give a tour through the gym and explain the costs and benefits. For these sorts of things however I give a fake phone number because I loathe the follow-up calls from such places.

Anyway, at one point while standing around reception where there were 5 or so such representatives standing around the receptionist answered the phone. Someone was inquiring about closing their account. She said they had to speak to a specialist and none were available. What the...? No one else seemed to be with a customer. It just struck me as another tactic to make it more difficult to cancel.

Now for me this would be relatively easy. My company has a corporate membership so it can be deducted directly from payroll and when I say for it to stop, it stops. But honestly I can't condone these hard sell tactics by giving such companies my money.

Cancelling a gym membership should be as simple as a 2 minute phone call or (better yet) clicking a button on a Website (Equinox has a Website where you can reserve exercise bikes no less).

My only experience with dispute resolution was reasonably painful although not as bad as it could be. I ordered something online and the merchant called me to say that price was only when I bought it as part of a package. I said I didn't want it. He said fine. A week later it turned up anyway. I had the charge reversed. They applied it again. I had it reversed (again). I had to send the item back by registered post.

I think the lesson to take from gym memberships and similar fixed-fee for shared usage pricing models is that they create the wrong incentives. Gyms really want customers who pay every month but never come in so they can oversell their capacity. If gyms were pay-for-use you simply wouldn't have this problem. Likewise you could discount memberships for people who come in at non-peak times, etc.

Some point out the "you signed a contract" argument and agreed to those terms. To this I response: people have an innate sense of fairness. People will (rightly IMHO) reject unreasonable terms. If I don't pay my gym membership, I can no longer go to the gym. This isn't like failing to make a car payment.

Unfortunately consumers seem to like monthly fees so you kind of get what you ask for.

<comment><USER15> I suspect the economics of gyms might be such that if it was pay-per-use they'd either have to charge insane rates or go under. It's not so much that consumers like monthly fees as that the gyms like them because they're easy to forget about.

<comment><USER16> Most gyms charge attractively low fees because they are typically a year or more contract, with an auto-renew clause, and they know that the vast majority of the members will use the gym a few times and then stop coming. If all their members used the gym regularly, they'd be packed to overflowing.

There are gyms that charge per use, the fees may appear higher but if your dedication to exercise doesn't turn out the way you planned you will be money ahead.

For the best chance at getting a payment plan that doesn't count on you having low motivation to exercise, look for locally-owned independent gyms, avoid the Bally's and other franchise/chain operations.

<comment><USER17> >look for locally-owned independent gyms

This isn't good advice. The locally owned ones are often even more desperate and willing to go the extra mile to defraud you. The idea that small businesses are more honest than big ones is a complete myth. Most of the time it is the reverse: big corporations have more to lose.

<comment><USER18> Unfortunately, as much as I hate the middle ground fallacy, it is correct here. It's far too broad to say that locally owned ones are more likely to defraud you or less likely. The real truth about locally-owned establishments is that with big corporations you know exactly what you are getting because it is the same everywhere whereas individual local establishments will depend on who the owner is. If the owner is desperate and willing to do everything to defraud you, so will be the establishment. If the owner is the nicest person in the world they'll be perfectly happy running a business in the red for as long as they can avoid total financial ruin so that they can better serve their customers. And, of course, you'll get everything in between.

The advice to go local is less about it being a guaranteed win and more about it being how you find those who will go above and beyond everything.

<comment><USER17> Your description is accurate but the advice to go local is usually not given that way, it's usually given as a slogan.

I've actually never heard anyone say "The advice to go local is less about it being a guaranteed win and more about it being how you find those who will go above and beyond everything."

Instead I always hear a dogmatic something like "support local business! Big corporations are evil!" When I've actually been defrauded out of FAR FAR FAR FAR more money by buying local.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The basic affordances underlying credit cards are backward: "Here's my wallet -- go ahead and take what you think you need."

Carrying a computer (i.e. phone) running a user agent can vastly improve the interaction. Something like:

1\. Transmit an identifier from user agent to merchant via radio, barcode, or some other method.

2\. Merchant's system asks user agent (either directly or through a service such as the user's bank) for a dollar amount.

3\. User agent asks the user: "do you accept this charge? yes/no"

At no point is the merchant given a piece of information that allows them to charge whatever amount they want. The transaction isn't complete before the user approves the amount on their own device.

It's kind of amazing we haven't switched to something along these lines already.

<comment><USER20> Every month, your card company sends you a list of charges. If any of them are illegitimate, you tell the company, and don't pay, and they investigate. That's basically the same as your proposal. Your credit card number is like a public key, if you will. Checks are worse. They pay out immediately without asking for approval.

<comment><USER19> No, it isn't the same. I don't want to wait until the end of the month. The information about this transaction is freshest in my mind at the exact hour and minute I enter into it.

I want a notification on my phone immediately:

"(Merchant X) requests a payment of ($Y). Do you accept this charge? ( ) yes ( ) no [ ] Auto-apply this answer to future requests from this merchant"

The notion that I shoudn't, by default, have a role in approving each and every transaction before it goes through is a holdover from the days when I didn't have an always-connected computer in my pocket.

If I never approve it in the first place, there's no wrong that needs to be righted, no fraud that needs to be investigated. I just got some spam asking for money. I marked it as spam to keep from being flooded in the future by the same spammer, and that's it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know where this is from. But in Portugal, I really feel blessed by the MBNet service that exists here. Basically you tie it to any card (credit/debit) and generate temporary credit card numbers with a hard value limit defined at the time of creation. Want to buy a 10$ game, generate a card with a slightly larger value and pay with it. If the merchant tries to take more, it is denied and the card automatically cancelled.

I am amazed this doesn't exist elsewhere (if it does I have never heard of it). Even banks themselves could provide something like this.

EDIT: I don't know how it actually works if you want to pay by credit. I generally generate cards with values that my bank account can cover.

<comment> X-Istence Bank of America, my credit card provider provides the same sort of service. They call it ShopSafe. You generate a temporary credit card number with a certain limit and you can set when it expires.

It is fantastic for purchasing goods from web sites that may not secure their card data completely, or if you are worried about fraud on the internet. I've also in the past generated the numbers for when I need to pay over the phone and don't want to hand out my credit card number!

Extremely handy, unfortunately it seems that not enough people make use of it, to the point that BoA employees in the fraud department are at times not even aware that the feature exists...

<comment><USER22> Are there fees attached to this?

I'd be interested in using this, but I get so frustrated with Bank of America's fees. They want to charge $10/month just for using OFX to access your own financial transactions!

Given the level of security that most banks implement, this is completely indefensible in my books (given that the same information is available through the shoddy web interface).

<comment> X-Istence My bank of america card is completely free of monthly fees, and I have Mint.com pull my financial transactions without issues.

ShopSafe is also completely free to use.

<comment><USER22> Whether or not you have a fee for your card itself depends on what card you get; I'm not referring to those kinds of fees.

As for the second point, Mint/Intuit probably covers those fees for their own service, but they don't allow you to interface with them over OFX, so it's a moot point for anyone who wants that information for something other than Mint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is anyone surprised that Michael Arrington has soured relations with a vendor enough that they'd refuse to talk to him? Not I.

The dispute resolution process deals with these sorts of things and punishes merchants who repeatedly violate rules. Strategy number one is to not be a dick. People respond better that way and you won't end up in the situations Michael Arrington always seems to end up in.

I probably deal with as many merchants and as much travel as him and have always resolved such issues amicably.

</comment><comment><USER24> Had a friend who cancelled an old mobile phone contract. He kept the old phone and sim in a drawer somewhere.

House got broken into and the old phone was stolen but my friend didn't notice the missing phone since it wasn't used anymore. Thief managed to call up the phone company and get the contract re-instated. Friend received bills for thousands.

Cut up your old sim cards.

</comment><comment><USER25> My solution to this is to use an American Express card. Every single time I've had a problem, domestic or international, they've been on my side, and disputes are easy to handle. (the correct Amex cards to have are Starwood Preferred Guest for USA use and Platinum for international or status (lounge access, etc.) use.)

<comment><USER26> Interestingly the one time I had a chargeback dispute with an Amex customer-- even though I won the dispute (I had clear evidence--video, signatures etc...)--Amex still credited both my account and the customer's for the full amount.

<comment><USER25> Amex is the Apple of the payment world -- they control and brand the whole thing end to end, and own the high end, charging a slight premium for some things when the market will bear it (and were both far larger premiums and lower volumes in the past).

With Visa/MC, it's a card association (until recently, a non-profit), and an issuing bank. The issuing bank may have a bunch of banking relationships with you (so you're unlikely to walk over a credit card), or only a credit card (so you're not that valuable to them anyway), and doesn't have as much incentive to protect the card association brand. End user consumers almost never contact the card association itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To play devil's advocate, you should not be able to just close your credit card account and be able to walk away from a contractual recurring payment agreement into which you entered.

<comment><USER27> But is it the bank's responsibility to enforce the contract?

I would rather have a civil court be the recourse for a broken contract than for a third non-governmental party to handle it.

I suppose if it was written into the contract that the bank would perform this role prior to the card being obtained and this being made abundantly clear to both sides things would be a little different. Still, ideally I would have the bank as the holder and mover of funds at the will of the cardholder, not someone outside of the contract between the bank and cardholder.

<comment><USER28> Oops, meant to upvote you. I agree. I guess when you agree to use credit cards you're not just using a payment instrument the bank has made for your convenience, but choosing to use a system which the banks find lucrative and the merchant exert a good deal of control over. Consumers are not as politically proactive as merchants so we can't be surprised to find the laws favor the merchants.

[edit] Someone upstream mentioned authorizations. I'd like to know more about how authorizations work with subscriptions. Do they keep a rolling six month queue of auths or is there a seperate and unique structure for recurring payments?

<comment><USER22> > so we can't be surprised to find the laws favor the merchants.

The contracts that merchants enter with credit card companies are _very much not_ in the merchants' favor.

That may not always translate into being in the customer's favor (as opposed to the banks'), but merchants are certainly not the ones winning in this setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thankfully in the UK, Direct Debits[1] are used for most recurring payments and have a lot of protections in place, namely:

1\. The payer has the right to cancel the direct debit at any time.

2\. The payee cannot alter the date or the amount of the payment without prior notification/authorisation.

3\. The bank has no ability to alter the payment instruction after it has been authorised.

4\. There is a guarantee in place to return funds in case of a dispute. The bank will process an immediate refund, and it is up to the payee to chase payment. The banks play no part in the dispute resolution process.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure why the author is so afraid of the chargeback process. If you request a merchant to stop charging you and they refuse or don't acknowledge you, your credit card company will contact the merchant on your behalf to cancel the relationship or block future transactions. It only takes a few minutes to submit the request.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just never give authorization for recurring billing. I use my credit card for one-time payments for monthly services all of the time, and I never authorize recurring billing. When you do that, you establish an on-going relationship with the merchant that isn't so easy to cancel. But you can cancel their authorization to do recurring billing in writing, and then any charge made on that ground should be refunded to you as a simple matter of course.

It generally works out pretty well if you just never authorize automatic recurring billing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hmm I have a Visa connected directly to my bank account, (debit?) So far so good, but i also have an app on my phone (Android) from my bank (Handelsbanken) that lets me check/transfer money from my accounts. But i can also LOCK my Visa from being used outside of Sweden and on the internet. So every time i want to buy something on the internet or going to another country i open the app open my card for internet/international use and tada.

This service is free and i can Unlock/lock my card as much as i want too.

</comment><comment><USER33> Why not just call the gym in question? I've had numerous accounts with recurring charges, but I've never dealt with them by changing account or card numbers.

<comment><USER34> Have you ever attempted to cancel a Gym membership? It is near impossible.

<comment><USER30> Why? I've had to switch between a few different gym companies over the years and never had any trouble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I noticed this a few months back. I had cancelled an Amex card and get a new one (brand new number). My old one was saved in my Amazon profile. I charged to that old account a couple times before I realized that that was the card I cancelled. But it worked fine. To this day I can still pick that card when checking out of Amazon with no issue.

</comment><comment><USER36> I closed an account, and moved. Had this happen, go to collections, damage my credit, and had no idea.</comment>


HTML5/WebGL source port of Quake - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SiPlus/WebQuake

<comment><USER2> So you can write on the checklist of things html5.5 or 6 or whatever needs:

* Local config storage (doable in cookies or localstorage)

* Local save storage (probably too big to fit in 5MB of localstorage)

* Mouselook (mouse buttons work fine). I think you can already do this though, I know you can at least track cursor position and you can implement mouselook off that.

* Mousewheel in firefox, at least, wasn't rebindable.

* I see problems in fullscreen browser games that take every single browser button and override it, so you would probably want a "you can't rebind this key" key. If there isn't already one.

<comment><USER3> MouseloOk != MouseloCk

Tracking view position from mouse coordinates has always been possible, but handling mouse focus and coordinate wrapping is necessary for games with mouse look. The really tricky bit is that there are security implications in much the same way as full screen mode.

See here for details on Pointer Lock: [http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/mouse- lo...](http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/mouse-lock)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If we are able to play games which required a fairly decent PC 15 years ago in a web browser today, imagine where we will be in another 15 years time.

<comment><USER5> 15 years ago you needed a fairly decent DOS PC. This works on every major OS out of the gate.

<comment><USER6> ... if you have a fairly decent browser installed

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This one is crashing osx for me, but the GWT team did a similar JS port for quake 2 back in 2010, playable here: <http://crystalin.dyndns.org:8080/GwtQuake.html> .

<comment><USER8> Crashing your browser (which browser?) or actually crashing the entire OS. Both are worrying from a security perspective, but the latter is very worrying.

<comment><USER7> Oops, I meant to say crashing _on_ osx, the browser is chrome 24

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That worked very well. With mouse support it would be great.

Also, quite scary how well you remember the maps, 15 years later.

<comment><USER10> I've always thought about how well we learn lore and geography inside games we love (for example, I know where everything is within several different lands of Hyrule), and yet it's very hard to get students to really learn actual Earth geography. Perhaps some aspects of this kind of teaching should move into a gaming environment in schools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Playable version here : <http://www.quaddicted.com/stuff/WebQuake/Client/WebQuake.htm>

Although the controls are really weird, right click goes forward, I can't aim with the mouse...

<comment><USER12> It's "Aw, snap!"'ing my chrome 24 on osx 10.8 :(

<comment> adam-f Working great on a macbook-pro with Windows 8. :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "and don't kill the server please?" if only ppl were that nice. Quaddicted will be quaked soon!

<comment><USER14> Quaddicted.com admin here. Should be fine since it is just static content. You might saturate the 100mbit/s but the server itself should be fine.

<comment><USER15> Challenged accepted!

Just kidding. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Best. Thing. Ever.

Running smooth in Chrome Canary.

</comment><comment><USER17> Really impressive. What are peoples thoughts on games moving more and more to browsers?

<comment><USER18> I think it's an interesting question of time. Quake I came out june 1996; so, html5 is almost* capable of doing a 16 year old game. This... is interesting from a data point perspective.

There is an open question as to how html5 now compares to native some years ago since that's how (for gaming) it should be judged. I believe we will reach a limit point and in the long term, maybe the browser-related inefficiencies will just be marginal to the end user experience.

* mouse look is really what is missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The programmer behind this is 17 years old. Hand ported as well, not emscripten.

<comment><USER19> 15 *

16 on March 15

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, audio is a bit slow for me in Safari but great tech demo. I still love that game!

</comment><comment><USER21> On Mac OS X on Chrome it does not work, on Firefox it works but blinks...

<comment><USER19> In Chrome on Mac and Linux, sound crashes the tab often. Play with ?-nosound or on Windows. The loading image is also not displayed in Chrome (unlike Firefox).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anybody getting mouse support working?

<comment><USER19> I added it today only for Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> awesome work.

Running smoothly on Linux, tested on Firefox and Chrome.

<comment><USER24> Yup, runs good on Ubuntu, used Chrome. Pretty cool stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> very slow in rendering

<comment><USER26> works fine for me which browser are you using ?

<comment><USER25> am using firefox

<comment><USER27> There's your problem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> amazing work</comment>


Seed Investor's Guide to Finding the Next Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/seed-investors-guide-to-finding-the-next-twitter/

<comment><USER2> Honest question: Why is everyone convinced that Twitter is such a great investment? How seriously should we take that $1B valuation?

Also, haven't the seed investors pretty much been priced out of the later rounds? Isn't that a bad thing (for them)?

<comment><AUTHOR> When a company raises capital at a $1 Billion valuation, the dilution to early investors who do not participate is minimal...</comment></comment>


Frank Lloyd Wright Loved to Hate New York - <AUTHOR> https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/why-frank-lloyd-wright-loved-to-hate-new-york/ <comment><USER2> Taking an Uber into Manhattan 2 nights I was struck by the beauty and grandeur of the city at night.

Then over where we came out of the tunnel and onto the island it turned out to be garbage day. Heaps of trash everywhere. Homeless wandering around. Minimal trees or greenery.

Still glad I moved away, but it is nice to visit, and it is in many ways a great city.

<comment><USER3> Every day is garbage day, somewhere in NYC

<comment><USER4> And every day it looks like the garbagemen are on strike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those towers sound pretty cool. Has anyone else tried the spiraling or even just tapering floors idea?

<comment><USER6> One was eventually built, sort of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_Tower)

<comment><USER5> thank you

<comment><USER7> I stayed at the hotel there several years ago: 1 night in a regular room and 1 night in the suite. If you stay, I highly recommend splurging on the suite so you can experience more of the design elements and have a chance to soak them in.

One interesting aspect of the design is that electrical outlets were far more plentiful than was standard at the time of construction in the 1950s, but IIRC Wright had already spec'd those out in the original design from the 1920s. If you stay in the suite you get to _experience_ how convenient this is, convenient even compared to modern construction, rather than simply being told about it during a walk-through tour. (The regular rooms are too small to have many outlets.)

The Arts Center shop also sold a nice range of reproductions, like garden sculptures. You could probably find them (the authentic reproductions) elsewhere, but probably not all together like that; you can't know what to look for if you haven't seen it available.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Fw – faster workspace (workspace productivity booster) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brocode/fw <comment><USER2> Nice! I use Fedora Silverblue and Emacs. Since Silverblue uses toolboxes (OCI containers), it would be nice to put most config codes into projects and set up one toolbox for each of the projects. That way, I can start working on a new computer in 10 minutes, without setting up all those environments.

fw seems to make this more feasible.</comment>


Salesforce's Lightning Design System - <AUTHOR> http://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Blog post about how it was made: [https://medium.com/salesforce-ux/how-we- designed-the-new-sal...](https://medium.com/salesforce-ux/how-we-designed-the- new-salesforce-at-scale-6d3607fd92e5)</comment>