I Think You're Fat (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707 <comment><USER2> If you haven't figured it out already, this is a terrible, terrible idea. I tried a variant of this for about two years in college and it caused way more problems than it solved (actually, I don't think it solved _any_ problems).

Despite what you may think about the righteousness of the Truth, people get offended. People get offended at even the slightest of things. Even if they're completely obvious.

We have social filters because they help people get along. The people around us don't want to know our real thoughts and opinions because they are often hurtful or awkward. It shouldn't matter, in the normal course of interaction, what I think about you, your clothes, how you talk, or what I think about anything. By filtering out some of my thoughts & opinions, I avoid pouring sand into the gears of interpersonal relationships.

<comment><USER3> Maybe, but I had a bad hair cut for 3 years, and I wish someone had had the balls to tell me.

<comment><USER4> True story:

I was out drinking one night many years ago right around the time mullet spotting became a meme. Several beers into the evening I spotted a college age kid walking into the bar sporting a classic example of the tennis mullet. Being a service minded individual (not to mention very drunk) I marched over to him and asked him if he was aware he had a mullet and directed him to <http://www.mulletsgalore.com/> the next time he was near a computer. The kid looked at me like I was nuts but he wrote the URL down. Mission accomplished I went back to drinking with friends.

A month later at the same bar I was approached by a vaguely familiar dude with a sharp looking haircut. He introduced himself, thanked me profusely for telling him about mullets and bought me a round before joining up with the rest of his friends. Apparently the kid just hadn't heard of mullets yet and I'd done him a real service by bringing him up to speed on the subject.

<comment><USER5> Classic! You might have done him a service, but perhaps you've done those around him a disservice - now he bears no evidence of toolhood as obvious as a mullet!

<comment><USER6> If he took the stranger seriously, visited the website, acted on the well- meant and accurate advice, and months later remembers the stranger well enough to buy him a round - I'm going to say that that's pretty good evidence he is not a tool.

<comment><USER4> And you would be correct. He was a nice guy who had an unfortunate haircut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I appreciate you linking to this article but I wonder what you were doing browsing the archives of Esquire. To be honest, I did not see much of a conclusion from the article, but I enjoyed reading it. Also, I thought I would let you know that I am writing this comment to get up-voted, so that I can increase my karma. If I increase my karma, people may remember my username, and later up-vote the articles I submit about my company. That will increase traffic to my website. Eventually, the result of this will be that I become rich and famous.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the same problem with your comment that I have with the article. What you're doing is a kind of kitschy psuedo-honesty that I think the author is engaging in to some extent. None of the author's admissions were that risky. They were refreshing to read and perhaps a little courageous, but it's stuff you might have guessed was there already. If, hypothetically, his wife left him because of a sexual fetish, that would be no more or less of a non- sequitur than anything else he admitted to, but much more potentially damaging to his reputation. (Again, the preceding was a hypothetical.)

It's not that A.J. Jacobs should have to hold himself to that standard of the subject he's reporting on, but that he's purporting-to-do-so-but-not-really, which is irritating. For some reason his (and your) version of "radical honesty" becomes a game where you just craft a succession of start-and-stop sentences with cute, largely forgivable admissions of self-interest. I'm not against humor but I'm suspicious that for some it functions as a coping mechanism that substitutes for sincere engagement with an uncomfortable idea.

I did not discover this article by browsing Esquire. It was part of Luke Muelhauser's list of favorite articles.

<comment><USER8> For me, there's definitely an attention-getting side to the "radical honesty" as presented in the article. I'm more inclined to believe people value the truth when they are:

a) good listeners b) rigorous with facts c) possessed of humility and respect for others

One can display such traits and thereby signal valuing the truth in a more substantive way than the behavior presented in the article, which I suspect could be easily faked (at least at first) by someone with borderline personality disorder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It isn't easy to be honest but I think that it's dangerous to do this sort of thing. Just because it's wrong to lie doesn't mean every truth should be voiced; knowing when to hold your tongue is an important skill. It might have been honest for him to tell his nanny that he was attracted to her or to tell the editor of Rachel Ray he was looking down her shirt but what good did it do? From the sound of it it only served to make them uncomfortable. The fact that it made him feel like an asshole seems to imply it wasn't making him a happier person anyway. I think it's good to strive toward total honesty, but total honesty doesn't mean saying every stupid thought that crosses your mind. Thoughts are transitory things. By voicing some of the darker ones you risk making a larger issue out of something that you might otherwise quickly forget ever crossed your mind. Just because it's true doesn't mean it's beneficial to speak.

<comment><USER10> I have not told a lie in roughly ten years -- although something bugs me about that statement, rankles me deeply, so I suspect I may have said something wrong at some point. I do, however, keep a lot of things to myself. I can speak truthfully without injecting lies, and I keep silent when it is obvious the truth (as I see it) is unhelpful or causes trouble. I will occasionally dodge a question, too, in order to keep conversation flow moving; it is another form of keeping silent, although some will consider that that is a kind of lie (probably because they feel entitled to an answer). I am also apt to answer the question that somebody really meant to ask rather than the easy surface question ("Do you have spare change?" == "Do you have spare change that you are willing to give me?" ==> "No.").

How does that affect my relationship with my wife? We both have been able to be very honest with each other, and we have a relationship built strongly on trust and honesty. I hope I never break that because it would be a betrayal. It is really about the tone used to express the thought if the thought is important enough to express in the first place.

I despise the whole concept of "white lies". I despise people who dare to manipulate me, to condescendingly see after my own good or feelings by bald- face lying to me about something. Be honest or say nothing, but do not dare tell me excuses that are obvious lies, "socially acceptable". According to whom? Where do you draw the line between "white" and "black" lies? I do find it insulting, and I often do not mind calling people out on it; sure, things get uncomfortable, but they are the ones spouting deceit.

Perhaps it boils down to the notion that what somebody expresses is a measure of their integrity and honor. Somewhere I read a quote along the lines of... You can judge a man by two things: what he wants and what he is willing to do to get it.

<comment><USER9> It sounds like we have a similar approach to honesty. The way I see it the distinction between honesty and dishonesty is entirely in the intent. What is being communicated isn't always the literal thing being said. The same sort of interpretation employed with the "Do you have spare change?" is also what makes things like sarcasm still honest (as it's an understood change of meaning) and true statements that are meant to deceive dishonest. I see white lies as in the dishonest camp myself; if the best thing you can do is to avoid answering, that's the best you can do.

<comment><USER11> Delivery also makes a difference. There is some saying that "people who value brutal honesty value brutality more than honesty". Telling people the truth does not require one to be ugly and hostile. If you are being ugly and hostile while speaking the truth, it probably says you are an ugly hostile person more than it says the truth is ugly and hostile (though there are certainly cases where trying to frame it in a nicer way is extremely challenging if not impossible).

Taking the title of the article as an example to work with: As a woman who used to be quite plump, I found that some men liked me like that and had pleasant ways of remarking on the fact that I had generous curves. Observing honestly that a person is not thin does not automatically require one to agree that simply being fat is inherently something horrible and in desperate need of remedying, worthy of making one a social outcast who should promptly pursue personal torture to get in line with the social norms and expectations that "thin is in".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm excessively honest. It's a tough row to hoe. I've worked hard at learning to live this way without just going around being an asshole all the time. Pulling that combo off is even tougher. One key: Honesty and full disclosure are not the same thing. I am entitled to my own opinion. Other people are not entitled to my opinion (ie I do not have to tell them what it is just because I have one). Learning when to keep my big fat fucking mouth shut is a good thing. "A closed mouth gathers no feet."

In short: Honesty and indiscretion are not synonyms.

<comment><USER12> You might find Sissela Bok's books, _Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life_ and _Secrets_ , interesting. Boiled down, her arguments amount to 1) there is rarely adequate justification for lying, and 2) the problem of secrets is far more complex. The arguments are very good and well-supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The problem with this is that because lying or omitting the truth is so common, you end up communicating more than you may intend to when you are honest and forthright. For example, it is impossible to comment about being attracted to someone without also implicitly communicating that you want to either go on a date with or sleep with them in most cultures. Or if you do the opposite and tell them you find them hideous, it is generally assumed that you must have told them this because you _wanted_ to cause them distress.

I think this whole thing could maybe work, though, if you take great care to be very aware of what you are indirectly communicating and head off those assumptions. In many cases, this may simply require that you first qualify things with "Don't take this the wrong way, since I'm trying this Radical Honesty thing, but..." or "Can I be blunt with you? [yes] I think..." In other cases, this could be more specifically addressing the feelings you expect to elicit, "I know this is going to make you feel bad, but I think it will be better for you to hear this from me now, ..."

</comment><comment><USER14> It is really interesting how the socially acceptable level of honesty varies from place to place. I've recently moved from Poland to Northern California, and the expression "dancing on eggshells" describes very well my experience.

In Poland, I would classify myself as maybe a little bit above the average in terms of the sort of honesty described in the article (and that mostly with people I knew very well). Here, if I don't control myself I end up being the awkward says-before-thinking guy...

What bothers me most, however, isn't not being able to speak my mind; it's the lack of feedback from people around me. I am always left wondering if stuff like "I really like your other glasses" isn't actually code for "you look like an idiot in those glasses, and I am embarrassed to be seen with you on the street." I can only hope that with time I will be able to calibrate my sensors for California...

(On a side note, I feel really glad to be married. Dating must be hell in California ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> Since when were the words honest and tactless synonymous? There are plenty of ways of telling people something they don't want to hear without being incredibly blunt. This man appears to get off on the while confrontational part of not lying.

I consider myself pretty honest but I don't tell people truths unless they ask my opinion or its a problem for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> _"Did you get the birthday gift I sent you?" asks her stepmom.

"Uh-huh," I say.

She sent me a gift certificate to Saks Fifth Avenue.

"And? Did you like it?"

"Not really. I don't like gift certificates. It's like you're giving me an errand to run."

"Well, uh . . ."

Once again, I felt the thrill of inappropriate candor._

If this whole thing felt "thrilling" then by my estimation, he's usually disingenuous to an extent where I'd just eliminate him from associates I feel are worthwhile.

Also, the fact that he feels a gift certificate is like being "given an errand to run" indicates a level of self indulgence and laziness that would eliminate him from associates I would hire, as well as supporting the theory that he's usually too disingenuous for me to hang out with. If someone doesn't have enough balls to flat out tell me, "I got your gift certificate, but I haven't had time to go to the store yet," and feel the need to tell me the "right thing," then I can't imagine being able to depend them to tell me the truth when there's a little stress and things _actually matter_.

</comment><comment><USER16> Some of us had to learn to _not_ be like this.

[http://stuffaspergerpeoplelike.com/2008/11/30/28-brutal- hone...](http://stuffaspergerpeoplelike.com/2008/11/30/28-brutal-honesty-aka- rudeness/)

<comment><USER17> That's a very important point. I guess I agree with the comment that it's a "pseudo-honesty" and not the brutal honesty mentioned in your link.

(comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3398217> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Single Page link <http://www.esquire.com/print-this/honesty0707?page=all>

</comment><comment><USER19> My wife is the only person I'm nearly totally honest with. I won't say _completely_ honest, but it's pretty close. Far more than I see most people be with their opposites.

Sometimes it hurts her, sometimes I say something and wonder if I should have lied instead, but ultimately I think it makes everything so much healthier between us. If I'm in the middle of something and she's telling me a boring story about shopping for clothes, I'll tell her right out, I'm busy and I don't really care about your clothes shopping. She'll be annoyed but she'll also listen, and doesn't harbor any long-term resentment over it. I don't know that this would work for everyone, but I think it's a good thing to do.

I don't think I have the courage to do this with _everyone_ , though.

</comment><comment><USER20> So, it took a while to dig up a working link, but there's a memorable/revealing story I listened to a while ago about a visit to Brad Blanton's Radical Honesty workshop... worth a listen.

mp3 link: <http://fancyandawesome.com/cm/?tag=starlee-kine>

Original source: The Moth podcast.

(( Spoiler: it goes beyond being merely unflattering towards Blanton, to downright disturbing. ))

<comment><USER17> Do you have a transcript somewhere? I can't listen to audio.

Maybe there's a service for deaf people somewhere... googling I found Dragon Naturally Speaking, I wonder if that is the state of the art.

<comment><USER20> A transcript would be nice! But I doubt there's one out there; it took a lot of trawling to find a mirror of the podcast in the first place, unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Many utterances do not exist in an abstract world of truth or falsity, but imply an intention. This may vary with context. In a group therapy session, "I'd like to kick your ass." may reveal (previously) unspoken intentions and lead to a useful discussion. In a bar, late at night when everyone's been drinking it means more or less "and unless you can prove that I can't, I either shall do so or shall simply make you an object of contempt to the bystanders."

In some neutral situation (is there one?) telling a woman that you are attracted to her simply conveys a fact. Telling your domestic employee this may lead to her pushing the desk against the door every night before she turns in.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think being honest, and talking about elephants in the room would open up some relationships. It would make people feel less alone in their thoughts. We all share similar thoughts but sometimes we feel we're weird as heck b/c we're the only one with such thoughts.

For me, it's less about talking/gossiping about others, and judging others. I'm talking about universal stuff like the unfairness of life(genetic lottery), death(do 80-year olds go to bed thinking this might be the day? do older parents wake up, thinking this might be the day their parents are dead?). Opening up about what we're thinking.. not about others, but about life.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think the Radical Honesty approach goes too far, but the kernel of truths that I've personally found useful are:

1\. vulnerability (i.e. telling the truth about your feelings) promotes intimacy

2\. boldly saying what you think does indeed help with picking up women

</comment><comment><USER24> I really enjoy A.J. Jacob's writing. His books[1] are great, well worth the read if you need some fun non-fiction.

1\. <http://www.amazon.com/A.-J.-Jacobs/e/B000APL8HO>

</comment><comment><USER25> Personally i try not to lie whenever possible, i prefer brutal truth, i especially appreciate it when given to me, because bullshitting me doesn't help me at all, if you tell me the truth then i can learn from it, if you bullshit me, i wont realise there is a problem.

However, when talking with others, i always try to stick to brutal truth, but word it in the nicest way possible, because lets face it, some people cant take radical honesty. Sometimes i will omit the biggest negative and give smaller negative as constructive criticism and suggest an improvement. While its not full on honesty, i feel its much better than just bullshitting someone.

</comment><comment><USER26> A counter-point (kind of) - On the Decay of the Art of Lying, by Mark Twain <http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/lyingessay.htm>

</comment><comment><USER27> Has anyone watched Kathy Griffin? It's like watching this principle in action. I have a friend who similarly has very little filter, though her heart is incredibly huge. She still runs into problems with it, but she styled her life as to also include radical acceptance and live at the point where she doesn't regret what she says.

It's fascinating to watch up close. I wouldn't suggest it to the average entrepreneur, however, because your silence and overstating/understating can be a large asset, especially when you have a reputation for being truthful.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd recommend buying this more thoughtful version by Sam Harris for three bucks:

<http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/lying/>

</comment><comment><USER29> Reading between the lines, Radical Honesty is a type of practice where one is constantly working to engage with every moment and every interaction, and not to always default to being "nice". Most people aren't aware of what they are thinking and how it shapes them. To be radically honest is a form of tapping into the mind stream and checking it.

Through being constantly aware of the mind's contents one is in a better position to elicit interesting relationships, beyond just mere niceties.

<comment><USER30> So if someone comes up to one of these radically honest people and tells them they are a pretentious self-important little jerk who is too full of themselves to be worth even contemplating getting to know they will think "Oh! What a refreshingly straightforward person, I must elicit an interesting relationship with them". I don't think so.

<comment><USER29> It is a process. One doesn't become radically honest with oneself until one notices how the body physically responds to criticisms.

Toastmasters is a good example where I keep noticing the better toastmasters actively solicit criticisms. Even if the message was "your speech was boring" is sufficient to prod them figure out how to improve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This comes from a test for Aspergers doesn't it? Only people who are incapable of comprehending their role in social relationships would think this was a good idea.

Hint for the Aspies, relationships require effort on your part. These little niceties help people to like you, it shouldn't be necessary but life is a lot easier with them than without. Its like error checking in your code. In an ideal world it shouldn't be necessary, but it isn't an ideal world.

</comment><comment><USER31> tl;dr: Blanton's diagnosis is right, but there might be better alternative treatments.

I read the article and the books. While I have never been able to fully implement it, there is something in radical honesty that rings very true to me. I now realize it is about Blanton's diagnosis: lying will rotten your life, by forcing you to create a self that is far from your true being. Nothing new here, Di Mello and Tolle have modernly approached the same subject from different angles, while it has been covered in many philosophical and spiritual texts throughout history.

But Blanton proposes a kind of shock therapy that, while possibly effective, is extremely difficult to put into daily practice. In short, by always telling the truth you will eventually build a fulfilling life, but you will have to go through a lot of drama and resentment, possibly pushing a lot of people away from you during the process.

Is it possible to do it in a better way? I really don't know, but I have tried a lot of things in the last couple of years that seems to be working. It basically involves trying to build a lifestyle where I just don't need to lie anymore. Start-ups are great for that compared to other work environments, but so is moving to smaller communities, being completely open and honest with family and friends, etc.

Whenever I put myself in a position where people's opinions can significantly impact my (perceived?) well-being, I find it very hard to be totally honest and close to my true self.

</comment><comment><USER32> In my early 20's I met at a party one of my parent's friends, who hadn't seen me for 4-5 years since I'd left home for university and then my first job. He squarely greeted me with "Crikey, you're starting to look fat".

It was completely out of the blue, and really hurt - initially - but it sank in and became a turning point. After that point I started eating less and realised I could no longer just eat whatever I wanted without consequence.

His unusual honesty has had a direct positive effect on my health, and then indirectly those around me.

</comment><comment><USER33> Oh please. I tried this with my girlfriend months ago. It took 3 seconds to tell her she could lose a little weight, and about 3 hours to beg her not to leave me.

</comment><comment><USER34> This would only work if there was one universally agreed upon truth. Our experiences color our opinions. One persons Fat is another persons 3/4 finished with a weight loss program. We all think we're above average. Rather than spending so much effort cutting each other down to get the real pecking order, isn't it better to build each other up to fit our inner ideal?

</comment><comment><USER35> People who try this should realize that--even though they themselves may not believe it-- if 98% of society thinks you're an asshole, then you're the asshole in society.

Some people are OK with this and feel it's worth the tradeoffs for the benefits of RH.

Regardless, I think that people should be more honest in general.

</comment><comment><USER36> Great link. I also read Sam Harris's Kindle Single, Lying, earlier this year and enjoyed that as well.

<comment><USER37> I also read Lying and I thought it was really, really vapid. I would have liked Harris to go into more social techniques that allowed him to be honest without offending. Instead of that, which would have been very useful, Harris simply parroted the old "lying doesn't solve problems..." Honestly, Lying seems like something he pumped out in a short weekend because he hadn't released anything in a while. Very disappointed.

<comment><USER36> Personally, I like it as it was. Had it been a guide, it probably would have been much longer.

<comment><USER12> If it was worth taking seriously it also would have been much longer. Go read Sissela Bok's _Lying: Moral choice in Public and Private Life_ then try taking Harris seriously.

<comment><USER36> Thanks. I'll look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What _is_ good is telling that girl or guy you like what you really think about them.

</comment><comment><USER39> this reminds me of the great movie invention of lying. Imagine a world where there is no lying, even in the smallest sense as possible. Brutal honesty, that is. There aren't even cinemas in that world, you can imagine ; )

</comment><comment><USER40> I've read this article three times in three years and every time I love it a bit more. It's crazy advice, of course -- but there is something about it, some deeper truth, that it hints at.

</comment><comment><USER41> Error – pg. 1, par. 13:

There is no such thing as a "former Texan."

</comment><comment><USER42> "Honesty" of this sort is nothing but an ego trip. You walk around like the cock of the walk, blurting out whatever little thought crosses your mind. As if you think it, it must be golden.

Well, here's some honesty for you: Nobody gives a shit.

Your opinions aren't interesting, and nobody cares. And if you want to have friends, you'll have to learn to act like an adult. An adult knows that compassion, sympathy, empathy, love, and tact are far more valuable than "honesty." These traits, which are _proven_ (research!) to be the basis of strong, long-lasting and warm relationships, are all about the OTHER person, and rightfully so.

Make it all about _you_ , on the other hand, and your precious little opinions, and your "honesty," will simply show the world that you're an arrested child in an adult body, crying out for attention.

When you're an adult and you actually _need_ to deliver an uncomfortable truth to someone you love -- for _their_ benefit, not because you _want_ to -- then you have to do it with compassion, sympathy, empathy, love, and tact.

That means that before you even open your mouth, or think of how to say it, you ask yourself hard & long, "Will this actually help them? Will this actually help them change? Will this be motivational? Will this DO anything for them?" -- then if the answer is anything but "Yes, absolutely," you keep your damn mouth shut.

Nobody in the history of the world was helped by some egotistical, overgrown child saying "I think you're fat."

<comment><USER43> _nothing but an ego trip. You walk around like the cock of the walk. Nobody gives a shit. Your opinions aren't interesting, and nobody cares. your precious little opinions, and your "honesty," will simply show the world that you're an arrested child in an adult body, crying out for attention._

Pot, meet kettle.

<comment><USER42> _Pot, meet kettle._

This is a discussion forum for the purpose of discussing the validity of both an article and people's opinions. This is not a dinner party or a coffee meet up between two friends. You don't know me, I don't know you, and in my comment, "you" is abstract.

This is nothing like the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Radical honesty is considered abuse, especially when your observations are 100% empirically true and spot-on and everyone can see it including the person targeted.

They wrote about this problem 3000 years ago. "Correct a fool and he will hate you, correct a wise man and he will love you".

<comment><USER45> Also Kant wrote about it quite a bit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant#Moral_philosophy>

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> As my grandmother used to say, it's only the truth and the truth can't hurt us - it may not be pleasant but its over and done with and we move on.

But I like to balance that with William Blake: "a truth thats told with bad intent is worth all the lies you can invent"

</comment><comment><USER47> This is not a new idea. In Vedic philosophy this has been preached and practiced only by realized person. In fact, practicing telling only truth one becomes realized. For e.g Gandhi adopted this practice of speaking only the truth as that is one of the limb of Yoga.

What happens is the moment you take this resolve to speak only truth, your actions and thoughts become aware. So there is a very subtle refinement going internally as you keep practicing speaking the truth.

But I think it is more appropriate to speak only when you are asked about it. Just telling your thoughts just for the sake of speaking truth does not make sense.

</comment><comment><USER48> This might be one of the worst articles I've ever read.

""I advocate never lying in personal relationships. But if you have Anne Frank in your attic and a Nazi knocks on the door, lie....I lie to any government official." (Blanton's politics are just this side of Noam Chomsky's.)"

I don't see how the quote is even remotely related to Chomsky's politics.

</comment><comment><USER49> People are not perfectly rational beings.

It's irrational to ignore the realities of human emotion, perception and cognition.

</comment><comment><USER50> The invention of lying (2009) - <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1058017/></comment>


AWS Summary of the EC2, EBS, and RDS Service Event in the EU West Region - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/message/2329B7/ <comment><USER2> It seems like when something does break, ebs failures cascade to other services (RDS) and you're pretty much hosed...

Ever since the first big us-east-1 ebs outage I've tried to avoid ebs, but I am using it for root volumes on most of my instances which makes me nervous -- so many instance types don't have instance storage, I guess I need to look at c5d instances again.

I thought this writeup my smugmug was pretty good and still applies: [https://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2011/04/24/how-smugmug- survive...](https://don.blogs.smugmug.com/2011/04/24/how-smugmug-survived-the- amazonpocalypse/)

<comment><USER2> Doing some research - pretty much nothing in the current generation of instances supports instance-store root - it's impossible to build stuff this way now...</comment></comment>


Show HN: Buy For Life – a platform for durable and sustainable products - <AUTHOR> https://www.buyforlifeproducts.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Independent product research is a huge pain these days and it's tremendously hard to find unbiased reviews. That's why I built an ad-free, independent and crowdsourced database with brands that manufacture durable products that are made to last.

I think it can be useful on our way from a throwaway culture towards a more frugal lifestyle. We should spend our money on selected high-quality products instead of short-living garbage.

<comment><USER2> I like the idea, but if this is crowdsourced how can we trust that the reviews will be unbiased? Amazon reviews are supposedly crowdsourced, and we know what a shit show those are.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. You need some way to prove that the reviewer is acting in good faith. With Amazon reviews, I ignore most of the 5-star reviews and focus on the 2-3 star reviews (1 star reviews are often worthless), mostly because 4-5 star reviews seem to frequently be biased (free item, out outright purchased/fabricated review).

How about compensating reviewers relative to the "helpfulness" of their reviews? Maybe allow manufacturers to refund X product purchases for reviews, but with zero control over who does the review and zero knowledge of which order is being reviewed (can't send golden samples). That's basically how "mystery shopping" works, but that seems to not be a thing with online retail.

There are a lot of good approaches here, but this seems like the only benefit is that it separates the reviewer platform from the retail platform. It's still ripe for abuse unless reviewers have more incentive to be honest than to be bribed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, will definitely think about the helpfulness score and the mistery shopping approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea but the problem I can see with this, is that good reviews on 20+ years old goods from brand X tells very little about the durability of same good from same brand bought new today. Actually, every brand with a good reputation is merely a brand that's been late to convert its product line into the new fashion of programmed (or engineered) obsolescence.

<comment><USER3> Then again, some brands have built up a reputation over decades of being durable, so even inferior, current gen products are often more reliable than most of the competition, but they command a premium for the reputation.

I certainly wouldn't consider it a guarantee, but having a proven track record still holds weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be good to see the percentage of upvotes on a product. Something like reddit.</comment>


Rhythm of Food - <AUTHOR> http://rhythm-of-food.net/ <comment><USER2> First, the assumption that search equates to consumption is invalid.

Second, the research methodology is stupendously biased towards people who do Google searches for food in English.

Third, the authorship - _a collaboration between Google News Lab and Truth & Beauty_ \- reveals the source of this bias.

Finally, 'findings' like _the season for pumpkin spice latte has started to creep earlier into the year since 2011_ are mostly bunk. A single marketing campaign or media appearance of such an obscure notion would completely skew the result.

In any event, if you are wont for marketeering advice, heed this: if you want to sell pumpkin spice latte, it's quite possible that you may well have more luck selling it on the basis of novelty to people who have never tried it, regardless of what country you are in, or the time of year - Google searches be damned!

</comment><comment><USER3> That domain name ticks off all the boxes for spam. But neat overall.

</comment><comment><USER4> So is this data available only for people who work at google? Or is it available for other people as well? Curious to see if I can make other types of data exploration.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious to see similar "rhythm" graphs for music beats for different kinds of music.

</comment><comment><USER6> The content is cool, but the site was a little slow on my computer

</comment><comment><USER7> Death by graphs</comment>


PlainSite bans federal courts from accessing court data - <AUTHOR> http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=1&uscourts=1 <comment><USER2> Much ado by tech guys who are complaining about a law they apparently have not bothered to read. The courts are not required to provide _free_ public access to court documents, they are simply cannot charge more than is necessary to maintain the e-filing/docket system. See sec. 205 in the pdf linked by their post.

<comment><AUTHOR> "We examined the Courts' budget documents from the past few years, and we discovered that the Courts claim PACER expenses of roughly $25 million per year. But in 2010, PACER users paid about $90 million in fees to access the system [5]."

[https://www.recapthelaw.org/2012/01/10/recap-featured-in- xrd...](https://www.recapthelaw.org/2012/01/10/recap-featured-in-xrds- magazine/)

I operate PlainSite on a budget of far less than $5,000 per year. It's far more advanced than PACER in a number of ways. Even multiplying PlainSite's budget by a factor of 100 to account for features that PACER has but PlainSite does not, you still get pretty close to zero on a cost-per-page basis.

<comment><USER3> Maybe it would be helpful to modify "entitled free of charge on PACER" to a phrasing that includes information about how the charges are unreasonable.

I happen to know that under the law, PACER access is not required to be "free of charge", and thus the rest of the statement falls flat. Even though I agree that PACER pricing is out of touch with the law due it's pricing being well above the costs required to maintain the system.

While I'm not sure of your target audience with your statement, it's clear that on some level federal employees of the court system are included. They may also know "free of charge" is not what the law says, and thus it may also undermine your argument with them as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is already a link in the statement to this letter, which is quite detailed:

[http://www.thinkcomputer.org/20120209.pacer.pdf](http://www.thinkcomputer.org/20120209.pacer.pdf)

Furthermore, many at the courts have read this blog post:

[http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=84](http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=84)

They are well aware of what is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Access is free if viewed from a federal courthouse terminal. While it's not necessarily convenient it is worth mentioning that a free option exists.

[http://www.pacer.gov/documents/epa_feesched.pdf](http://www.pacer.gov/documents/epa_feesched.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. You can't save files and the courts I've been to charge $0.25 per page to print if you can print at all.

<comment><USER5> By 'save' do you mean locally, or do they also disallow email, dropbox, etc? (I think it's great what you're doing regardless; I ask only to more clearly assess their intentionality in all this...)

<comment><AUTHOR> The court workstations are Dell Optiplex machines running Firefox on Linux configured to visit one and only one web site: PACER. The local filesystem is locked.

<comment><USER5> Jeeesus. So this ain't even a "don't hate the player" situation -- they _are_ the game?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The man against the State.

</comment><comment><USER7> Posted by the same guy who invented facebook and mobile payments, people should listen really closely to this genius!

<comment><USER8> spare us the ad hominem

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure it's entirely ad hominem to point out past PR stunts and quixotic crusades.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A gaming idea - <AUTHOR>

So I've been mulling this idea for a little bit.
It's based on the popularity of distributed endeavours like Folding@Home and so forth.
Running a distributed effort to generate some data I could sell is never going to fly for volunteers :P so I was thinking of other ways to "pay" people for it.
The unique idea I came up with was this; produce a free MMO game (probably not a 3D game). Then instead of charging a monthly fee include our distributed system in the game. When people are playing the game it generates some data (designed not to hog the CPU ofc) and sends it back - this "pays" for their play time.
The extension could be to get them to generate data when not playing the game and this could add up to give them "in game" credit for items and VIP treatment.
If I get the balance right (i.e. just creating some data but not affecting their computer use) do you think it would go down well? (obviously the game would have to be attractive - but i have ideas :D) <comment><USER2> I'd take a look at Plura- They're doing this now for webgames. <http://www.pluraprocessing.com/games/index.html>

If I recall, they're using this to run their 80legs product, which is where they're hoping to make their real money.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this not like the approach of the protein folding game? Though they are directly for science and not for profit but the data that you generate is sent to them.

<http://fold.it/portal/>

I could see it working if you had some disclosure on how and what data you are automatically generating and sending back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Im a big fan of disclosure so that would always be the plan (the thinking being would I play the game if I didn't know what the data was for - answer, nope).

Thanks for the link - that looks like along a similar line,. My initial thought was a web game but I suspect a decently addictive MMO (esp if it is "free") might generate a bit more :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a good idea, but I would drop the distributed system and focus on the game. If you can get enough users to make it worthwhile, there's probably an easier way to monetize than the whole distributed-data-processing thing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds good. Don't forget that having the idea is the easy bit, the hard bit is the execution.</comment>


Unix v6 Ported to ANSI C - <AUTHOR> http://os-blog.com/xv6-unix-v6-ported-to-ansi-c-x86/ <comment><USER2> There is a bug in the memmove() function from ulib.c:

        void*
        memmove(void *vdst, void *vsrc, int n)
        {
          char *dst, *src;

          dst = vdst;
          src = vsrc;
          while(n-- > 0)
            *dst++ = *src++;
          return vdst;
        }

If the two blocks overlap, and the address of dst is greater than the address of src, then parts of the source will be overwritten before it can be copied.

<comment><USER3> I'm not massively great at C but would this be a fix?

        void*
        memmove(void *vdst, void *vsrc, int n)
        {
            char *dst, *src;

            dst = vdst;
            src = vsrc;
            if(*vdst > *vsrc) {
                *vdst += n;
                *vsrc += n;
                while(n-- > 0)
                    *dst-- = *src--;
            }
            else if(*vdst < *vsrc)
                while(n-- > 0)
                    *dst++ == *src++;
            return vdst;
        }

<comment><USER3> Ok, updated version:

        void*
        memmove(void *vdst, void *vsrc, int n)
        {
            char *dst, *src;

            dst = vdst;
            src = vsrc;
            if(vdst > vsrc) {
                dst = vdst + n;
                src = vsrc + n;
                while(n-- > 0)
                    *--dst = *--src;
            }
            else if(vdst < vsrc)
                while(n-- > 0)
                    *dst++ == *src++;
            return vdst;
        }

Does this solve the bugs?

<comment><USER4> There's an == for an =. Also vdst+n is an error, I believe, because sizeof *vdst has no meaning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm starting to suspect that Russ Cox is actually a team of people, all contributing under one name.

<comment><USER6> He is really just one very productive man, and his real name is Nicholas Bourbaki.

<comment><USER7> "Nicolas Bourbaki is the collective pseudonym under which a group of (mainly French) 20th-century mathematicians wrote a series of books presenting an exposition of modern advanced mathematics, beginning in 1935. With the goal of founding all of mathematics on set theory, the group strove for rigour and generality. Their work led to the discovery of several concepts and terminologies still discussed."

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I pulled the repository and all of the code is very well documented, and easy to read. Really a great resource for learning OS internals.

<comment><USER9> it's small enough to fit in one `ls` screen, really inciting to be read, kinda like plan9 source code.

<comment><USER10> If anyone is interested:

<http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was under the impression that Minix was created and used for this kind of thing. Is there something about Minix that makes it unsuitable today's classrooms?

<comment><USER12> Minix is a microkernel design, so it's of limited use in understanding how modern OSes work.

<comment><USER13> It would be fair to say _current_ operating systems.

<comment><USER12> Microkernels have been the wave of the future for longer than some of the most popular OSes have been around, namely Windows NT (not just Windows 7, but the whole NT design), Mac OS X (NeXTStep too, for that matter), and Linux (but, admittedly, not Unix).

If I may prognosticate, stripped-down monolithic OSes running on hypervisors are the wave of the future. Look at VM/CMS for an extreme example: CMS is about as complex as MS-DOS, being a single-user single-tasking OS with no memory protection or security model. VM is the hypervisor. Together, they date to about 1968, or a little before if you include research systems.

<comment><USER13> There are a lot of parallels between VM/CMS and a microkernel with a service built specifically to host an application. They are very different beasts at their core (a microkernel is built to connect services and a hypervisor to segregate them), but they solve similar problems in sometimes similar ways.

<comment><USER12> You seem to be talking about Service Virtual Machines:

<http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#25>

A Service VM is one where an application runs directly on the 'bare metal' provided by the VM (that is, the whole point of a VM is to multiplex the hardware; it provides few or no abstractions as such). There's no guest OS as you'd think of one.

This idea also exists in exokernel designs:

<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExoKernel>

<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/exo.html>

In an exokernel, the guest OS is reduced to a library, like libc, which is (ideally) optimized for the specific application: Emacs has its own, Apache has its own, and so on. It's a half-step removed from the Service VM idea in that the applications themselves would still get to use the OS abstractions, unaware that the OS is basically gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/schedule.html>

The project page gives this link to the schedule, where the lecture notes are supposed to be, but the link 404's.

Is there a working URL for these lecture notes?

<comment><USER15> <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/schedule.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is unspeakably great. I'm going to have to forward this on to my old OS professor. Really wish we had this when I took that class.

</comment><comment><USER17> I encourage you to try out the 6.828 course material, especially the labs. It's one of the best OS courses. I had taken UCLA's CS 235 which is based on similar content [1]. Learned a lot from that.

[1]: <http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~kohler/class/10f-aos/>

</comment><comment><USER18> > Although the Unix v6 source may seem like an ideal introduction to operating > systems engineering because of its simplicity, students doubted the > relevance of an obsolete OS written in a now defunct dialect of C. In > addition, students struggled to learn the details of two different > architectures, the PDP-11 and x86, at the same time.

Those students were MIT students. I'd expect MIT students to not have had a problem with either of these, so I'm a bit puzzled.

</comment><comment><USER19> Compared to the OS course I've taken in Sweden this seems to cover more, but I can't find how many credits you get from it. It is scheduled from September to end of december, but is it full time during this period or do they take other courses at the same time?

Edit: URL: <http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/index.html>

<comment><USER15> Most students take 6.828 along with three or four other courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why not XINU? It's a great little kernel; already exhaustively documented (Lions' Commentary style) along with its TCP/IP stack.

P.S. I still maintain a very HLL is ideal for presenting multi- processing/multi-tasking to students.

<comment><USER20> Comer has a new edition of "Operating System Design: The Xinu Approach" that focuses on a Linksys/Cisco router. I've not read the text officially yet, but the drafts were very interesting. Purdue CS grad students use Xinu for the OS course projects (<http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cs503/>).

<comment><USER6> Very interesting. Thank you :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The info page says that xv6 was released in Fall 2006. What's new?

<comment><USER15> Address spaces based on paging rather than segments. Much clearer context switching code. File system crash recovery via logging.

<comment><USER21> And now using the HLT instruction so you don't chew CPU power unnecessarily, great for QEMU etc on laptops. I just sent you a patch.

Edit: all the user tests passed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip. Good.</comment>


BRCK - your backup generator for the internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776324009/brck-your-backup-generator-for-the-internet

<comment><USER2> scam

<comment><USER3> It you're going to claim this Kickstarter project is a scam, at least back it up with facts or something more tangible than just saying "scam".</comment></comment>


New locations Google maps  - <AUTHOR>

Does anybody know if Google (maps) has a programme to acquire world locations not currently covered and how does it work (can an user "advice" on acquiring certain location's images? Any link or info?<p>Thx <comment><USER2> > Does anybody know if Google (maps) has a programme to acquire world > locations not currently covered ...

An example would help (and I'm not clear on what you're asking). If you type in geographical coordinates, then everywhere is covered -- all you need to do is acquire the desired location's geographical coordinates.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard about a Google protocol(project?programme?) to acquire new locations' sat images as users can just ask Google to acquire a certain locations that are currently not displayed on google maps. But I cannot find anything about it.. In particular I'm interested in a certain location in the south of Rwanda that in not (fully) covered at the moment by Google maps, I'm assessing different possibilities to get it.

<comment><USER2> > to acquire a certain locations that are currently not displayed on google > maps.

But all locations are already displayed on Google Maps. Do you mean a fresh, new image, taken at the present time, on demand? I seriously doubt that such a program exists within Google -- it would be fantastically expensive.

As to the general issue, I recommend that you use geographical coordinates. That way, you don't need an answer to your question, you can proceed with what is already known about Google Maps. But this will recall stock, historical images, not new ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is just partially true that all the locations are displayed - some are blurred out, intentionally fo security issues ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_map_images_with_missi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_map_images_with_missing_or_unclear_data)) some for other reasons like not good weather conditions to take pictures from satellite. The point is: I am looking for a location that, not for security issues - is blurred on Google maps, and I am wondering how to actually acquire it. I've tried other places, I'm trying to see if there is a program/project that allow you to make a request of such kind (e.g. "Dear Google, can you display satellite images of the location x&y, coordinates lat/long? Yours, one of the users is making you rich")</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Kiwiforgmail shares 5k+ emails via TO header - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/kumokasumi/status/613210550948859904 <comment><AUTHOR> Apparently they are working on the issue. I think the horse has already bolted.

Looks as though they sent the email in batches of around 5k with all emails in the TO header.

Another user: [https://twitter.com/mattgemmell/status/613242663102488577](https://twitter.com/mattgemmell/status/613242663102488577)</comment>


Dr. Elon and Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla's Production Hell - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-life-inside-gigafactory/ <comment><USER2> Every story I hear about Musk just makes me think: avoid him at all costs. Work for him? Be miserable, underpaid, likely get fired and never share in the success. Invest in him? Your money becomes his, whether it's questionable mergers subsidizing his other ventures, SEC violations sending the stock crazy, or just continual unrealistic timelines on deliverables. Buy his products? They probably have significant short-comings compared to the competitors and you'll be giving up every iota of control - after you've shelled out thousands of dollars it's still up to Tesla to decide whether you get the car's basic safety updates. Even just happen to work on a project that Musk has decided he wants to work on and you're liable to get publicly smeared as a pedofile.

I think it's possible Elon Musk pushes forward technology in some material ways (I think there are also good arguments he doesn't). But fuck me, he seems to do it at the cost of literally everyone around him.

</comment><comment><USER3> the facts of the article are interesting. the opining is not.

one of the lead statements is how the flush popout door handles are a signature tesla bit and that musk foresaw their importance. LOL! like the falcon doors, they are stupid. many cars have flush handles, or even no handles. (e.g. corvette)

i think i saw it reported, but it may have been word of mouth, that engineering hated the handles. they ended up having to ship broken ones. the second gen are just buttons that are decorated as handles. like many other cars. for the article to state that the handles are something that ultimately worked (they didn't) and that are a critically defining part of the car (they aren't) demonstrates the author's lack of deep understanding of what he is reporting on.

the falcon doors are stupid because of the extra cost (design and manufacture) and reduced functionality. it excludes the possibility of a roof box or roof rails, which is important for an SUV.

On the plus side, back to facts or maybe anecdotes, I did love the quote "We have to stop hitting ourselves in the head". Musk using the royal _we_. It's too rich.

</comment><comment><USER4> Funny the story left out that at the same time SpaceX was going from triumph to triumph, and Musk also launched the Boring company.

Also, if the story has any truth, then it would seem that Musk is suffering from emotional problems, and should get some professional help.

<comment><USER5> It's possible that not all companies run by the same person suffers from the same extent of problems. Square is doing quite well and has had a good reputation, unlike Twitter, despite both having been founded by Jack Dorsey. Apple has a culture of intense secrecy, occasionally broken by leaked rumors of authoritarian severity, while Pixar does not, despite both having been led by Steve Jobs in one way or another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> can confirm, once removed. i know 2 former and one current tesla software engineers. i'd never work there based on the small sample i've polled.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "The young Tesla engineer was excited. Ecstatic, in fact. It was a Saturday in October 2017, and he was working at the Gigafactory, Tesla's enormous battery manufacturing plant in Nevada. Over the previous year, he had been living out of a suitcase, putting in 13-hour days, seven days a week. This was his first real job. And now a colleague had tracked him down to say that Elon Musk—Elon Musk!—needed his personal help..."</comment>


Scientists Invent a New Steel as Strong as Titanium - <AUTHOR> http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/news/a13919/new-steel-alloy-titanium/ <comment><USER2> Steel can be stronger than titanium depending on the alloy and heat treatment. It's not uncommon to see heat treated 4130 upwards of 100ksi which is right in line with titanium. At those hardnesses it tends to be more brittle, though, unlike titanium.

The breakthrough here isn't that they can make it strong, it's that they've made it both strong and tough. Toughness is how much something deforms plastically rather than breaking. Mild steel is very tough but not terribly strong, you can easily make it 4x (or more) stronger by sacrificing toughness.

Not having to make an engineering tradeoff between strength, toughness and price would be pretty fantastic.

<comment><USER3> It's easy to make steel that's stronger than titanium; the challenge is making steel with a higher specific strength than titanium, since titanium is so much less dense. Steel is still the clear winner by volume, which is what unqualified 'strength' refers to.

Titanium is also nice for its anti-corrosive and non-magnetic properties, and its low coefficient of thermal expansion. There's a reason it showed up in aerospace very early - its a good fit there.

<comment><USER4> And military submarines with non-magnetic hulls are considerably harder to detect.

<comment><USER2> Man, that would be an expensive sub, made completely out of titanium. At $8/lb and 6000 tons (12 million pounds) you're talking about $100mm just in materials and that's before you do anything. Titanium is very difficult to weld due to oxygen embrittling the weld so you'd have to put everyone on rebreathers and assemble the whole hull inside a giant tent with a slight positive pressure of argon only. That's the kind of project that'll give people nightmares.

<comment><USER5> Why a giant tent? Why not normal MIG/TIG welding that floods just the weld area with argon?

<comment><USER6> [http://weldingdesign.com/archive/beginnings-and- development-...](http://weldingdesign.com/archive/beginnings-and-development- pressure-hull-welding-united-kingdom-submarines)

The quality of the weld is extremely important, enough so to justify the 0% o2 environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In addition to being old news, this story isn't all that exciting. They've made an Aluminium-based steel that's 13% lighter than ordinary steel(density of about 6.83 vs. 7.85) and that isn't brittle like previous Aluminium steels. It could have interesting uses, especially if it can be made cheap and with good properties (weldability, formability, workability, corrosion resistance), but they're just at the small-scale stage and they have a corrosion resistance problem to solve.

<comment><USER8> Shouldn't they add [Feb 2015] to the title?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previously on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9001704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9001704)

(Same South Korean researchers)

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how it compares to "Flash Bainite" steel?

[http://www.flashbainite.com](http://www.flashbainite.com)

For the DARPA Armor Challenge, to stop a .30-cal APM2 armor piercing round, requires:

1/4" Flash 500 vs. 1/2" Titanium vs. 3/8" High Hard vs. 1-1/8" Aluminum

From: [http://www.flashbainite.com/about/applications.html](http://www.flashbainite.com/about/applications.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Yes, but is it as strong as Rearden Steel?</comment>


Bay Area rents down for second straight quarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/23/BUV3176CF5.DTL <comment><USER3> I'm seeing both ends of this. My roommate is moving out because she's worried about her job and is looking for a cheaper place so she can save up some money. I'm looking to upgrade, because decent 1BRs are now only a couple hundred more than I pay for my room now. Places that were $1700+ when I looked at them in December are now going for under $1400, and there're even a few 1BRs (in crummy complexes) available for under $1000, whereas there was nothing under $1200 back then.

I'm also noticing that there's a lot of shifting around with my coworkers' friends/roommates. A lot of people are moving around, either because they're not secure in their jobs and want to downgrade, or because they're bargain- hunting and want to upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER4> I live with 4 other people in SF. Our one-year lease is up in July, and even the most cursory browsing of craigslist shows that we're far overpaying for our apartment, even within our immediate neighborhood.

Landlord offered to drop our rent by $750 for next year. Any other time, we might have taken it; but now we can live in a bigger, nicer apartment for $1500 less.

<comment><USER5> Thought about brining this up with your landlord? Seems like too much available supply. He may comply without y'all having to worry about moving and the associated headache (think of all your "behind-the-desk" cabling).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, we've had a lengthy (but polite!) email back-and-forth with the landlord about this. Honestly, I think at this point he's just calling our bluff - <USER2> we won't move because of all the hassle involved.

But we're all 20-somethings, so we're definitely willing to move in order to save that kind of cash :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> supposedly business rental areas have drastically cut prices. hackerdojo was looking for office rental space for awesome hacker mayhem and managed to find a space at 40 cents a square foot, or $4000 for a 10,000 square foot space in a downtown location.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was trying to rent my 2 br (technically 1 br since 2nd br was large but didn't have closet) place in hayes valley and saw this happen nearly in the blink of an eye: I had a renter ready to go at $3,000/ mo in December, but foolishly turned him down because he needed it too quickly and I wasn't yet ready to move out. Then in January, a lot of people coming through kept mentioning how many 2 br's were out there, and I ultimately ended up renting it for $2650 after the applicant showed me several comps at lower prices.

</comment><comment><USER8> To add another data point. I recently rented a 2 BR apt in a nice complex in Santa Clara for $1400. The ad asked for $1500, but I negotiated it down to $1400 with a slightly longer lease term. Just 6 months ago, the same apt was renting for $1800.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGgkA91hOb8>

<comment><USER9> Why was this voted down?

<comment><USER10> Because that points to an irrelevant (and downright stupid) "Final Fantasy V Music - Victory Fanfare".

<comment><USER9> It's celebratory, which is relevant to the context of falling rents/property prices.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with GDPR / cookie notices in the context of a crawler? - <AUTHOR> To comply with the new European legislation many websites put a GDPR / cookie consent notice in front of their websites. There are different implementations of this. While some are only implemented as modal covering the website or bar on the bottom of the screens (in both cases right next to the original content), other implementations redirect the user to a totally different (sub-)domain or even hijack the request and show the consent form instead of the requested content (on the same URL with a 200 status code).
The latter ones present a issue to my crawler. I cannot access the content of the page without accepting those notices.
Things I'm considering to bypass those notices:
* US IP address (easy to implement, but some websites also display those notices to US IP's)
* Heuristics to detect those notices and accept them programatically (takes some time to implement - while a couple of vendors (i.e. OneTrust) offer off-the-shelf solutions which are easy to identify and automate, there are also many custom made solutions, so the system would need understand the concept of a consent form and how to bypass it - some forms only require the press of the right button, others involve checkboxes/radio buttons). To collect test data one solution might be to visit a set of websites once with an US IP, once with an EU IP and/or with different user agents (browser or googlebot).
Do you have any ideas how to approach this problem? Or are you even utilizing some techniques already and are willing to share them? <comment><USER2> Side question - how does HN feel about the cookie/gdpr notices in general? I personally feel that while I like the purpose they have, they just feel like spam at this point. I kind of expect most websites to use cookies, and if I didn't want them to I'd probably block them with an extension. As for the GDPR notices, are these going to be persistent forever? It feels like the web did 5 years ago, except instead of viagra ads I'm getting GDPR and cookie popups on every site now.

Overall I feel like the intent of these is correct, but the execution is terrible. I'd much rather have say a badge in the address bar of the browser (similar to the https badge) saying a site was gdpr compliant and used cookies then a popup everywhere.

<comment><USER3> (For background, I was responsible for figuring out GDPR compliance in a past job, so I've picked through the literal text and a lot of interpretations of it.)

I think there's a spectrum, but I think the vast majority of the cookie notices I've encountered have been implemented in a sneaky way that runs counter to the spirit of the law.

The spirit of the law is that sites should explain how the data is used in a way that the layperson can understand, and it should be clear to the layperson that (in most cases) the site is legally obligated to give you a way to say "no."

As it stands, most GDPR notices give you a choice between "OK" and "more info" (where the "no" option is hidden) or between "Yes" and a subtle X in the upper left (because upper right would be too obvious). And they don't tell you that by clicking "Yes", you are consenting to having your information brokered and sold to innumerable advertisers.

I think that's a dirty UX trick, and that for the purposes of getting consent the "no" button actually should be an obvious "no" button.

The reason the badge isn't possible is that GDPR did the right thing to enforce privacy by default, and all of the sites that want to monetize your data for advertising have to get your explicit consent. So you get all of these notices because they have to and want to ask you. Were it not for advertising, you GDPR would have been a pretty peaceful transition with a few exceptions like "oh yeah we keep crash reports, you're okay with that right?"

<comment><USER4> Add to it that most sites make it impossible for you to use the site without enabling cookies or if you dont consent to them storing cookies.

<comment><USER3> GDPR actually draws a reasonable line for this. Using cookies to remember your login or browser sessionis fine, and you can probably not even ask to do this. Analytics is a bit trickier, but as long as the data is aggregated and no "personal data" is collected, you're on the safe side of the gray area.

The problem is that using cookies for advertising _does_ require you to ask, so how do you conflate the two?

I've seen some sites phrase it like "we use cookies to personalize your experience". You can interpret that to mean session cookies, but you can also interpret that to mean marketing.

I hope EU regulators end up actually going after people for doing sneaky crap like this.

<comment><USER4> Indirectly the solution/workaround the sites have come up with is saying, "if you want to use our site, you will have to agree to our cookie settings. Else don't use the site."

I have cookies disabled by default. Whenever a site does not work without cookies (news sites, travel sites, and blog sites especially), I open them in a guest mode. Still feel, its a bit tedious thing to do, but works for me.

<comment><USER3> The irony of course is that GDPR actually forbids this sort of "all or nothing" deal under specific circumstances. But it's a gray area, so sites just say "accept how we use cookies."

Oh well, it's still better than before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a related question. How do you bypass them in the context of an RSS reader/podcatcher? I was building a service to parse some podcast feeds into JSON, and noticed they were failing on NPR podcasts. Pulled up the URL fine on my laptop, but it failed in Hetzner.

Of course, it failed because it was getting some sort of GDPR page at the podcast feed URL. I'm wondering if there was some way around this, because it's not like podcatchers can opt into something via an RSS feed...can they? I'm pretty sure I passed headers only accepting feed content-types, but even that wasn't enough.

Sure I can host elsewhere, but I just didn't care enough about the project to do that. But if there's a way around this, then I might pick it up again.

<comment><USER6> That's a bug on their side. The RSS feed should not require any consent since it doesn't have tracking (I don't think you can even embed trackers in an RSS feed). If they want tracking they can link to outside pages in the RSS feed and put the consent notice on those before displaying the content that requires tracking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Manually accept (or reject) the tracking once, and then pass the relevant cookie as part of your crawler's request.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why does every website need to create its own UI for this? Whatever happened to that "Do not track" browser setting? This should be equivalent to rejecting all of these notices automatically.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thanks for asking this question, I'd like to learn about this too.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like a possible use case for a mechanical Turk for those that do a redirect popup and not just a forefront dom object while loading the actual content behind it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't use a server or IP based in Europe. Problem solved.

<comment><USER12> If you have customers in EU or any business with EU, you did not solved the problem. The law applies to users regardless of where the server those users connect to is located.

<comment><USER7> I believe he meant to not crawl using an EU-based IP address. Which would make sense if not for the fact that many sites are serving the GDPR notice to all users - EU or not.</comment></comment></comment>


There Are No Magic Words That You Can Post to Change Instagram's ToS - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/there-are-no-magic-words-you-can-post-change-instagrams-terms-service <comment><AUTHOR> Yes there is: "I don't have an Instagram account."

Bam.</comment>


NYC's Taxi and Limousine Commission Trip Record Data for 2014-2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/about/trip_record_data.shtml

<comment><USER2> I downloaded the first year dataset and didn't get very far in my analysis... but this was the first result, which was kind of pretty:

[http://i.imgur.com/ov6K6mt.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ov6K6mt.jpg)

<comment><USER3> I would love to buy a wall print like this.

<comment><USER4> This really is beautiful and I agree, if you do not want to sell it, is there any chance you could share a higher res image?

<comment><USER2> The trouble with making a higher res image is that when you make that lat/lon buckets smaller, you have fewer samples in each one, so the image gets noisier. For the best possible image you'd want to download _all_ the years of data.

The process of making it was quite simple. I zeroed a 2d array of integers, then took all the pickup/dropoff points and incremented the nearest cell. The pixel values are based on the logarithm of the counts, since otherwise everything outside midtown would be pretty much black.

There are some artifacts, like the thin vertical line down the east river. I think that was because of how the data was rounded, i.e. the number of unique longitude values that map to a certain image column.

I wrote this myself with a few hundred lines of C++, though I'm sure there's GIS software out there that will do all this for you with a few clicks.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain why there is a line going to the airport? Shouldn't the airport be more of an island of light (since I imagine most people aren't getting picked up / dropped off a half mile from the airport)?

Also did you overlay it onto a map? How did you get the angled effect if it's just a grid?

<comment><USER2> > Can you explain why there is a line going to the airport?

I assume it is because there is a fixed fare to/from JFK so drivers have little incentive to start/stop the meter at the exact pickup/dropoff location.

> Also did you overlay it onto a map?

No. If taxis did not pick up or drop off people on some street, that street does not appear. For example there is an area downtown where there _are_ streets but they have had security barriers since 9/11 thus no taxis.

> How did you get the angled effect if it's just a grid?

None of NYCs grids are exactly north/south/east/west aligned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW:

\- 2013 data as FOILed by Chris Whong [http://chriswhong.com/open- data/foil_nyc_taxi/](http://chriswhong.com/open-data/foil_nyc_taxi/)

\- 2008 to 2013 data as FOILed by me, on BigQuery [https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/alien- climber-851:ny...](https://bigquery.cloud.google.com/table/alien- climber-851:nyc_taxi_redacted.trip_data?pli=1)

...note that after Whong's request, the TLC redacted the medallion numbers, making it virtually impossible to analyze trips by cabbie.

<comment><USER7> > 2008 to 2013 data as FOILed by me

Is that data set available for people who do not use Google Accounts as well? Maybe you could upload it to [https://archive.org](https://archive.org).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not able to review the data yet but I wonder if TLC took in any of the feedback to better anonymize the data. [0]

Also, I would love to see an analysis of whether traffic is actually getting worse compared to that of last year. This claim was made by mayor de Blasio as a reason to cap Uber rides.

[0] [http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the- stars...](http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars- passenger-privacy-in-the-nyc-taxicab-dataset/)

<comment><USER8> Also: [https://medium.com/@vijayp/of-taxis-and- rainbows-f6bc289679a...](https://medium.com/@vijayp/of-taxis-and- rainbows-f6bc289679a1)

Downloading one of the CSVs to check it out. Each one is about 2GB.

EDIT: Per the BigQuery table schema, medallion is no longer a field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Press Release: [http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/press_release_08_0...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/press_release_08_03_15.pdf)

BigQuery tables for the data: [https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/3fo9ao/nyc_taxi_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/3fo9ao/nyc_taxi_trips_now_officially_shared_by_the_nyc/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Local governments should be demanding detailed data from companies like Uber in exchange for legalization, even raw data on locations of available cars. They have the leverage to get it now but they're wasting the chance. This data could eventually be used to avoid a true monopoly.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/30/ub...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/30/ubers- data-could-be-a-treasure-trove-for-cites-but-theyre-wasting-the-chance-to-get- it/)

<comment><USER10> we already have enough hoops for companies to jump through to prevent competition so we certainly do not need any more. New York is a perfect example were regulation and so contorted the market you can make money selling your permission to run the business to the point it might be more profitable than running the business.

From medallions to food cart and restaurant permits, regulation is keeping competition out while rewarding those who merely sit on permits and rent their use. It is nearly an identical situation to how badly patents are managed and rewarded

<comment><USER11> One of the reasons that taxis are licensed is that they're supposed to pick up everyone and anyone. Uber and Lyft don't seem to have that problem with race (AFAIK) but there are two other situations where people have trouble:

(1) small children, where you need a car seat (or two)

(2) people with disabilities - service animal, wheelchair, etc.

Analyzing the data would hopefully show whether people had to wait for 2 hours.

Also, as a substitute for race, it might be possible to see if certain areas are under-served or not served at all. Perhaps drivers are avoiding picking up in Harlem.

<comment><USER12> "One of the reasons that taxis are licensed is that they're supposed to pick up everyone and anyone."

Which is clearly violated thousands of times per day. Sure you can call 311 in NYC but very few people do.

<comment><USER13> The difference is, the city has the authority to crack down on it. I was just in NYC, and cabs are running a video in the back seat informing passengers that it's illegal for cabs not to pick you up for race/disability. The city doesn't legally have that kind of leverage over Uber.

<comment><USER14> Leverage that is rarely and reluctantly used, and that no one reasonably expects to be used, and that does not translate into any observable consequences in the lives of black people attempting to get a ride.

I've once heard a quip that "You have no constitutional right to eat at a restaurant, but you do have one to a speedy trial -- but which one feels more secure?"

The city has "leverage" to stamp out discrimination against black people wanting a cab ride, but "no leverage" to stamp out discrimination against black people on Uber -- yet which one will more reliably secure a ride?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a disturbing dataset, in that it seems straightforward to extract personal data from it. Consider the information revealed by a taxi ride between a personal address and a workplace, a sensitive location, or another personal address...

This kind of data was previously an issue with Uber, too.</comment>


Show HN: Expii – Zoomable interactive map of topics in math and science - <AUTHOR> https://www.expii.com/map <comment><USER2> Nice. This is about 70% of the way there toward the fully visible conceptual graph I've wanted to make or find for years. I'd like to be able to see items from multiple zoom levels, for example. I want to be able to look at a bubble that says something like "addition of positive integers", and follow a sequence of arrows to every academic concept and career that makes use of addition.

Another thing I want software to do is highlight everything I think I know (maybe take some quizzes to prove it), ask me what I'd like to know, then show the graph and list of topics I need to learn in between. Based on another comment[0] it sounds like it would eventually be possible to use this data to do exactly that. So again, nice.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your comments! :)

You are describing the projects that are on our roadmap. :) We felt that the initial conceptual map would be an essential backbone for data-driven guidance services that we could then build upon it. So, we invested a serious amount of effort into creating this first pass. The math and science maps were created through a collaboration led by our Education Director, who has taught in middle-school and high-school classrooms, and now teaches at the University of Pittsburgh down the street. The other partners in the collaboration were alumni of International Math Olympiad teams and scientists from the Hertz Foundation Fellowship program. :)

We're continuing to iterate on our concept maps, but in the meantime, our Engineering team is moving forward on more projects which successively build on our growing structure.

Your encouragement means a lot to us, and we'll keep on trucking!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We created this interface so that curious people could explore and see how everything fit together. :)

<comment><USER4> Any idea why BlueCoat would categorise your site as "Suspicious"?

<comment><USER3> This is a really good question! We don't think we're doing anything suspicious, and there aren't even any payment gateways anywhere on the site. To be honest, we weren't familiar with BlueCoat. Do you know what tends to make them rate a site as Suspicious?

We're just trying to create a valuable free resource, through crowd-sourcing. :)

<comment><USER4> [https://sitereview.bluecoat.com/sitereview.jsp#/?search=expi...](https://sitereview.bluecoat.com/sitereview.jsp#/?search=expii.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like physics and calculus has to be more intricately linked together. Due to how the recursive disjoint partitioning works, science and math gets disconnected right off the bat.

Also within each topic, having a directed acyclic graph of concepts is useful for modeling how one might encounter them in school. But outside of formal mathematical proofs (where something must be true before it can be used to prove something else), the way people learn things is a lot of more circular and definitely not a DAG. For example, I understand arithmetic which let's me understand the purpose of peano axioms which let's me "understand" arithmetic. If it is a DAG then it's only a DAG of the atomic units of knowledge. After forming clusters of these units, the edges between two cluster aren't uniformly in a single direction anymore (even if they are mostly going in one direction).

Sidenote: You guys don't seem to have anything on graph theory. Is this only aimed at highschool level?

Anyway, just thought the topic of how to model how people understand science/math topics can go beyond simple taxonomy by committee or traditional course syllabus prerequisites. But what you have definitely works and is a very practical first step! [http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/loci/joma/subject- taxon...](http://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/loci/joma/subject-taxonomy)

EDIT: Khan Academy has a very similar knowledge map that somewhat clusters in terms of layout, without explicitly partitioning or labeling the clusters of topics: [https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard](https://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard). And here's another example that clusters, but don't hide or merge intercluster edges: [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/127182](http://math.stackexchange.com/a/127182)

</comment><comment><USER6> Once you actually get to an article, having to click "continue" after every paragraph is mildly annoying.

Edit: I am also not a huge fan of the choice to organize the topics by the "high school class" they were introduced in. There is absolutely no reason to break algebra up into "Algebra 1" and "Algebra 2"

In particular, this means you're putting "basics of matrices" arbitrarily with "Algebra 1" when knowing how to add and multiply matrices has literally nothing to do with the other topics in that group.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! All feedback is really useful to us, as it helps us to continue to polish the product. The articles themselves are crowd-sourced, and they certainly show signs of being a community that is still growing. It's possible to create richer articles like this one: [https://www.expii.com/t/gravity-weight-642](https://www.expii.com/t/gravity- weight-642)

The main point of our post tonight was to share the current product of the Topic Map. As the rest of the site continues to grow, we hope that you will soon learn about it as a useful resource.

Regarding the split of Algebra 1 and Algebra 2: we fully agree that math should be more connected. We actually experimented with that here, in the "Theory" section of "Math". You can find that by clicking into "Algebra Revisited", which you can also find by first going here:

[https://www.expii.com/t/2829](https://www.expii.com/t/2829)

and then clicking on "Topic Map" to see a fully connected version of Algebra. This is much more theoretical though, and does not align so easily with standards used in mainstream schools. We chose to make the main sections of our maps align with standards so that they could be more immediately useful for the mainstream audience. However, we ourselves are a bunch of enthusiasts who love to think about how to push the envelope. :)

<comment><USER7> Yep, in regards to the parent comment, categories like "Algebra 2" don't really have much significance outside the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Minor formatting problem. I cropped out most of the screenshot, it's really on a 1920 width screen. [http://imgur.com/uvZLELW](http://imgur.com/uvZLELW)

I like to think of these as a kind of hierarchy but I'm never quite sure where to put some things like philosophy, or how much overlap the titles have with each other (I guess it's not constant anyway).

Math -> Science -> Engineering -> Technology

I've tried to organize them with a mindmap before, but I am never satisfied with the results.

<comment><USER9> Hey there, I'm the lead developer at expii. Thanks for finding that bug! Would you mind telling me what browser you were using when you encountered it?

Thanks

<comment><USER8> Of course! Mozilla Firefox 41.0.2

OS - Linux Mint 17.2 KDE

<comment><USER9> Hey, would you mind taking another look at the site to see if that bug is still an issue? Unfortunately, I wasn't able to reproduce it locally, but I put out a fix that I'm hoping should fix the issue you were seeing.

<comment><USER8> Looks okay now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


As the USA and UK turn away highly skilled migrants, AU and CA are capitalising - <AUTHOR> http://www.opennetwork.net/the-new-global-talent-race/ <comment><USER2> One country's net immigration of talent is another country's brain drain.

How do developed nations expect developing nations to develop if the young trained people just leave after being trained?

Gold coin 'remittances' don't construct a nation, and they don't continue over time. If you've moved from Smallville to Metropolis, you'll know this. How much do you send back?

Taking talent from developing nations is just a continuation of imperial colonial appropriation in a new form. There are severe moral implications.</comment>


A full list of blogs, groups and video channels to promote your indie games - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiepusher.com <comment><AUTHOR> I've just compiled the best blogs/channels/groups that may want to cover cool indie games. It could help indie games devs/studios. H</comment>


Ask HN: Is the following a poosible privacy issue in the WeChat app? - <AUTHOR>

One of my friends uses WeChat. He shared with me how certain phrases entered into the chat rextbox trigger a certain animation on the screen. Phrases such as "I love you", "I miss you" etc trigger it, but not normal phrases.<p>This must mean that the app is monitoring the text being entered into the textbox. Isn't this a possible privacy issue? If yes, why isn't this being discussed yet? <comment><USER2> If it's just some processing happening on the client side i believe you are safe. Of course there is no reason they couldn't be checking for other phrases and having it take other less noticeable actions.</comment>


The Machine Learning Algorithm with Capital A - <AUTHOR> http://gromgull.net/blog/2010/03/the-machine-learning-algorithm-with-capital-a/ <comment><USER2> The Normalised Compression Distance stuff was neat, I hadn't seen that before. Thanks!</comment>


Why companies don't invest in customer service solutions? - <AUTHOR>

Recently I called comcast and AT&T for some issue with account related stuff, in both cases they transferred my call from one person to another and every time end up repeating my name, account, address, etc. If its part of the same call, why can't they have a system which pass that information after the first interaction and save time and customer frustration. Is there something I am missing? (may be some privacy angle?) <comment><USER2> Because they really don't care that much. Comcast in particular, is often the only game in town so unless you are willing to go without TV and/or internet, they know you won't stop paying them.

<comment><USER3> I came here to write exactly this, but after logging in, saw your comment. Comcast and AT&T are exactly the kind of companies who aren't going to invest a dime in any kind of customer convenience features besides an automated bill payment system.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think if they make some small changes, they would save so much money for themselves as their employees won't be spending that much time (by asking repetitive questions) on each call. Its so frustrating to keep repeating even the last four digit of social to each of those person and repeating address. If the call goes off because of network issue, they don't even bother to call, so you have to call again and go thru the same pain.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but MBAs are idiots and don't see this. The MBAs will try to save a few pennies on customer service but fail to realize investing a little in one area can save more in other areas.

(Which is why seeing an MBA on someone's resume is an immediate "toss into the trash" signal.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


At Work, Expertise Is Falling Out of Favor - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/ <comment><USER2> There is nothing worse than working with an engineer that gets pissy when they have to learn something new.

Being able to learn new things is an absolutely critical skill for an engineer and I would think any knowledge worker.</comment>


Ask HN: Startup wants me to join in 3 months? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interviewing at a startup in SF. They say they really like me but they want to bring me to start at the beginning of April. Their reasoning is that they "don't want to grow the team yet".
Is that really what it sounds like or are there other things I should be aware of? They haven't launched yet but I think they will in a couple months time. The option % they've offered me would only rise in value until then so I don't think that that's the reason. I'm still quite inexperienced so maybe they want me to do some unpaid preparation beforehand (they actually recommended I do Rails freelancing in the meantime).
What should I be aware of? <comment><USER2> It's quite likely they're telling the truth. Hiring people is a distraction, and that is the last thing a startup can afford early on.

The only shady explanation I can imagine is that they don't have the money to pay you, but they hope to raise it between now and April.

<comment><USER3> Try to understand their funding situation first and foremost, but if that's in line then I'm sure they're telling the truth.

Startup founders are optimistic creatures, and 3 months seems to many like plenty of time to launch, get traction, and finish a raise. All 3 startups that have tried to hire me have wanted to do in two-three months, and upon prodding, had to admit that was because they were still in the middle of a raise that wasn't going as well as expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They've given you a free put option, haven't they? You can sell to them in April, or to anyone else in the intervening months. After all, even if you "accepted" for real and started tomorrow, a compelling offer in March could still move you. I'm having trouble identifying the downside here.

<comment><USER5> Ooh, a rare disagreement: your "put option" scenario makes sense if there is an enforceable contract which obligates them to actually hire him in April. Would you be blocking off April for a consulting engagement in these circumstances?

This sounds a lot less like "contract signed and PO for pre-payment cut" and more like "strong interest in resuming discussions with you several months from now." That isn't a no-op in terms of negotiations, but you're well aware (and I learned the hard way, multiple times) that there is a very-much-nonzero probability that the discussion in April begins with "Well, startups move fast. Conditions have changed and we can't bring you on. [Optional: But we're really really interested in talking to you in July. (+)]"

\+ Newbie consultant mistake which I'll confess to: this basically happened exactly when a potential client slow-rolled actually getting a contract signed for three months -- I need CEO approval for this, your point-of-contact turns out to be swamped in the engagement month so let's defer for a month and so we'll defer signing for a month, hang on the contract will be signed any week now but the CEO is busy, hang on we just hired someone and need to get him to speed on this before bringing you on, etc etc -- and only then expressed negative interest in an engagement, after the date had slipped multiple times. This, naturally, has downsides for the business, both because it consumed a lot of my time in stressful will-they-won't-they admin and because I blew several weeks of availability on the "Sorry, can't work with you in $YOUR_DESIRED_TIMEFRAME, it's already committed" basis.

Older-and-wiser me would have a) been more aggressive about getting them to commit to a contract (rather than a weekly or semi-weekly ping which practically oozed with "I don't _really_ need you to take immediate action on this."), b) released the optimistic lock on the schedule the first time the client had any issue, and c) if that particular client were to contact me again, they'd get a two line email with a contract and wiring instructions for their 100% deposit attached, to assist them in efficiently administering their vendor relations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would be weary. Most startups don't wait on making the right hire. If you fit the bill, and they know what they are doing, they wouldn't wait b/c of the high cost of finding another you.

It sounds to me like they might be delaying based-on raising new funds, as mentioned in other comments. However, I don't see why they wouldn't just say so. Unless, they think you might go elsewhere. If that is the case, you should know that there is a huge difference between raising a round and money in the bank. Which means, that in 3 months, they may not have the money then either.

It sounds like they aren't being transparent. But, in all fairness, when raising a round, they have a lot of vulnerability just by circulating that they are looking for money. Be careful.

</comment><comment><USER7> why not just ask them? i think it's completely reasonable to do so. you may say something like, "i'm really excited about working at your company. it sounds like a great opportunity and the interviews have been promising. i'm willing to wait until april for the right opportunity, but would you be willing to share the reason you wish to delay? this would help me since otherwise my imagination may run wild with explanations, and with any good long term relationship openness and communication are valued. thanks!"

or whatever phrasing you like.

</comment><comment><USER8> Did they offer you equity or stock options? If it's options, then the value of the stock options won't rise since the price of the options is priced at the value of the stock the day you start.

<comment><USER9> What you say makes sense if the stock was publicly traded, but that does not seem to obtain here.

<comment><USER8> Please elaborate.

<comment><USER9> Sure. I think the information you have applies only to options on publicly- traded stock because the value of stock that is not publicly traded is sufficiently hard to determine to prevent it from becoming a routine or traditional part of an employee's compensation package. One way to value a non-traded stock is to use the valuation used in investments, but there are not enough investment events for the phrase "the value of the stock the day you start" to make sense -- especially when you take into account that the terms of many investments are never published (with the result that the employee would need to take the startup's word on the terms).

That's how I conclude that the information you give in great grandparent does not apply in the current situation :)

<comment><USER8> From my experience, stock options are priced based on start date(correct me if this is not standard). While the price changes less frequently for private stocks compared to public stocks, they still change (Typically through investment events as you mentioned). Thus, if this particular startup raised a seed round in the coming months, then the value of the stock options would not rise as op mentioned - "The option % they've offered me would only rise in value" - since the pricing of the stock options would be different.

<comment><USER9> Oh, well, if you have direct knowledge of employers actually disbursing private-stock options this way, then never mind what I wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's weird.If they "really" like you then they should hire you as soon as possible.Or at least give you a temporary position.

</comment><comment><USER11> Might be a matter of funds... They might be closing their Seed funding round and until they do so they might want to reduce risks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They are 2 founders + 3 engineers.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you see value in a marketplace specifically for used Apple products? - <AUTHOR> http://www.macmesh.com

<comment><USER2> I think it will be tough to add unique value because it's such a limited range of products with very wide availability. You can buy recent-generation refurbished stuff directly from Apple, and then there's eBay, craigslist, Amazon etc where you can buy just about anything they've ever made.</comment>


Show HN: Playing with exceptions inside lambda expressions in Python - <AUTHOR> http://baruchel.github.io/python/2018/06/20/python-exceptions-in-lambda/ <comment><USER2> kudos!</comment>