Boom (YC W16) – Supersonic Passenger Airplanes - <AUTHOR> http://boom.aero/ <comment><USER2> Hi - I'm Blake, Founder/CEO at Boom. After watching no tangible progress in supersonics since Concorde was shut down, I started Boom because I want supersonic flight in our lifetime. Not just as a private jet, but something most anyone can afford to fly.

Will try to answer as many questions here as I can.

<comment><USER3> Elon Musk says that eventually we will move to VTOL supersonic electric jets, but he is too busy with other projects to implement it.

Have you thought about this idea, and in what time frame do you think someone might try to implement it?

Elon's basic idea is that air-breathing jets are limited to altitudes at which oxygen tops out, and then are mostly fighting drag from nitrogen. Electric ones can go to higher altitudes and experience less drag at much higher speeds. However wings designed to do that won't help you get off the ground, therefore you need vertical take off and landing. Which eliminates the need for a large airport, allowing you to locate more conveniently to major cities.

<comment><USER4> The specific energy of kerosene is ~40 MJ/kg [0] while the specific energy of lithium ion batteries is ~1 MJ/kg [1].

Unsure how much energy you'd save from the difference in drag, but I'd guess that significant improvements in electric energy storage would be required to make an electric plane doable.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene#Properties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene#Properties) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium- ion_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery)

<comment><USER5> And yet Musk claims transcontinental range (NY-LA) would be possible with 400 Wh/kg batteries and mid-70% battery mass fraction.

[http://www.aviation.com/general-aviation/elon-musk-toying- de...](http://www.aviation.com/general-aviation/elon-musk-toying-designs- electric-jet/)

<comment><USER4> A 70% battery mass fraction seems like a huge engineering challenge for an aircraft. I did a quick calculation of fuel mass fraction for the various Boeing 777 models [0] which ranged from ~13% to ~36%.

Not saying it's impossible. Just hard.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Specifications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777#Specifications)

<comment><USER6> I don't see that the engineering is hard. You could just take an existing design and replace most of the cabin with batteries.

Building an economically viable mass-market aircraft with a 70% mass fraction might be another question, but if we're just talking about the engineering challenge of building it at all I don't think that's hard?

<comment><USER7> And on top of that, "refueling" wouldn't cost the 250k figure that usually gets thrown in comments. I imagine it being more in the space of a 1-2k$ ; in which case the reduced passenger capacity might still be worth the premium in batteries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Pretty amazing that materials science (lighter, carbon-fiber aircraft; hotter, more efficient/powerful turbines) has made this economic. Concorde never was.

NYC-LON seems like the one market where this enables something fundamentally new (well, Concorde did); single-day business trips between two major business centers which were otherwise a full day apart.

Transpacific flights would be nice, too, but cutting an already absurdly long flight in half doesn't make as big a difference. I personally would generally prefer an F cabin + great Ka-band Internet for 14h, vs. a coach/Concorde sized seat for 7h.

I wonder how long until there's a Business Jet variant of this, or a Government/Military/Scientific version -- the operating costs of commercial aircraft tend to be much less than purpose-built government aircraft, so there's probably a mission/role for it.

<comment><USER8> Very skeptical this little company can go all the way with this. Look at how hard it is to get a new automobile company up and running. Tesla almost went completely bankrupt more than once.

I do think there is a need and market for faster than sound air travel. We have the technology to even minimize the sonic booms for over land travel.

Still, it would take an enormous amount of capital to get a new company up and running. I would love to see an innovated tesla-like company in the aerospace industry though. It's badly needed, IMO.

<comment><USER9> I am not saying this is easy, but what they need to do is build one airplane, and get it to fly back and forth. That is nothing like the scalability and repeated reliability that building thousands of car is asking for.

I know several people (starting by my brother) who build their own plane (granted, it was a two-seater several several times louder than a grass-mower and seemingly slower, but you get the idea). One plane feels fairly doable as far as hard- to-predict financial issues go — if you have engineers who know super-sonic, and I can't imagine having the idea without.

<comment><USER10> Your brother's plane is likely an ultralight or light-sport category, and regardless as a kit-built is nowhere near the certification required for commercial operation. A key requirement of kit-built or experimental aircraft is that you can't ask money to fly passengers on them. He's not even allowed to ask for gas money if you take a trip together.

Commercial requirements literally start at "one aircraft that gets the wings overstressed (if not actually snapped off) during destructive testing" and the requirements continue steeply onwards from there. You can figure on having it built by FAA-certified mechanics as well.

The FAA likes having a paper trail if the wings fall off (an extremely common problem with ultralight/sport aircraft built by non-certified personnel). Not OK when you're carrying passengers for hire.

<comment><USER9> It was, originally but with some improvements since, and it got the wing- stress that you mention involuntarily and _while in flight_ (my mom & his wife were watching — fun times). He got out without a scratch and improved the next one further.

I can completely see the expected extra cost of having to make _two_ prototypes — and, yes, my first reaction to the article was: "please, please, let them have a billion in VC money". But the truth is, the success ratio of projects about "we want to make a plane that goes that fast" seems far higher than success ratios of any company.

The business side sounds a lot more doable, given how many people fly those destinations and would like to do it faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And the environmental impact is... what? Amazing that this is not a consideration, especially since we are now in emergency territory:

[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/21/global- wa...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/21/global-warming- taking-place-at-an-alarming-rate-un-climate-body-warns)

It's great for you to leave SF in the morning, go to Sydney to watch the opera and be back in SF by midnight. But is the environmental impact of you doing that worth it for everyone else?

<comment><USER12> Absolutely worth it. We live in the future. If you can fly half way around the world to watch an opera and be home by midnight, do it.

Riding your bicycle to work isn't going to save the planet, neither is reconsidering a flight.

Environmental concerns should be that of multi-national corporations and governments. The 1% flying around the world isn't killing the planet. It's industrial output from cattle and energy production for electricity (coal, nat gas, oil) and fossil fuels burned for industrial use.

I'm tired of the misplaced moral imperatives. Change needs to happen on a global, industrial scale, not in your decision to eat a locally-grown kale salad.

Wake up people.

<comment><USER13> Personally, I live in the present.

Snarkiness aside, I think you're mistaken. You can't say 'industrial use' or 'industrial output' and absolve yourself of responsibility. The electronics that you wrote this comment on were all built with yucky industrial machines, running on yucky industrial oil which had to pulled out of the ground by yucky, messy drilling machines. And the kicker is that people did all of that because they knew that you would buy the resulting device.

If no one bought them, they wouldn't make them! The industrial output is all there for your benefit. If we all decided that protecting the planet was more important and invested in making slower, more efficient travel more comfortable, then it would make a big difference.

EDIT: Also the kale salad thing - since you bring up industrial output from cattle farming being a major pollutant then surely you have just made an argument for eating kale salad instead of a tasty burger?

<comment><USER12> Fully agree with you on the kale salad thing. It's delicious, don't get me wrong, and eating more kale and less burgers will contribute to a reduction in cattle rearing, reduction in methane gas / deforestation.

My main point is it needs to be a national conversation, one the government is involved in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> After a certain point, airplane technology is no longer going to be the limiting factor, and we'll have to finally eliminate the TSA to get under 5 hours of total travel time.

<comment><USER15> 'eliminate the TSA' is a kill list phrase, I'm so sorry

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sorry, this is ridiculous, it just wont happen (not ever, just this company). From my experience in the aerospace industry, having a manned prototype aircraft of this scale fly within 2 years, supersonic no less (!!), is an impossibility. It is simply not possible, at least with any sane regard for safety.

Aircraft are hard, you need an army of experienced engineers, like thousands, and hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and resources to design a 21st century aircraft. It doesn't matter if you're Elon Musk or whoever, that's the state of the art nowadays. You need to run numerous (supersonic!) wind tunnel tests of a design (each test spanning months, with year long lead time before testing, and months of analysis and design in between tests). There are only a few facilities in the world (like the 10x10 at Glenn Research Center) that can provide such wind tunnel testing. Structural and aerodynamic work will take years of iteration to meet basic design challenges. Actuators, flight computers, air data sensors, etc... need to be chosen with very careful forethought via trades with big name suppliers, and lead times for these things can be 9 months to 1.5 years easy. The engine is as important as the entire airframe its self, and there are only three engine manufacturers in the entire world that could make an engine for a plane like this. One would need to be designed from scratch from one of these manufacturers and would easily take 3-5 years! Oh, and they would need a ton of capital and thousands of engineers to do it too. This doesn't happen from a scrappy looking start up with random engine parts sitting in a room with a whiteboard. This is a joke, investing in this company is a sure way to throw away your investment. Sorry, that's the cold hard facts.

Yea, spacex managed to succeed, at least so far, but look how big they are now and how long it took them to get where they are today. And I would argue that spacex's engineering challenges are easier than those needed for a 21st century supersonic jet transport.

Sorry, that's just the state of aerospace engineering today. Major new aircrarft are only developed by the big boys with the experience and resources to make it happen over a 10-20 year time frame with continued but small investments in R&D, and incremental leaps in technology.

<comment><USER17> I sadly agree. I would love to see a supersonic business jet but the regulatory requirements alone to get a new aircraft certified takes years.

Even the new Pilatus PC-24 (small business jet) announced in 2013 is not expecting to ship until 2017. The second prototype just went airborne. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilatus_PC-24](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilatus_PC-24)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It describes their values as something like 'fly long distance in the morning, do a bunch of meetings there, and be back before the end of the day'. Does it make sense to travel 20,000km on one day to make a bunch of meetings, spending 15,000$?

I feel that better tele-presence just makes more sense.

<comment><USER19> You have just described a huge fraction of my adult life. Take my word for it, being there in person is still the only way to close critical business deals.

<comment><USER20> This. That's why silicon valley. That's why working remotely doesn't work very well for most people. Non verbal communication is very important for trust.

<comment><USER21> Now I'm imagining a meeting in silicon valley where participants are using only sign language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems nice, but there's no way 6 guys in a hanger in Denver are going to build a viable supersonic passenger aircraft that meets FAA standards for mass passenger travel, is fuel efficient enough that tickets aren't $20K and somehow also turns a profit.

I know "never say never", but this is about as confident a statement I or anyone with 3 minutes of reading on the airline industry can make. Margins are _razor thin_ as it is.

A much better option (IMO) would be to research a Citation/Learjet sized supersonic aircraft. If you think of the market, the rich would be much more comfortable leaving from a smaller/private terminal in their private jet, zipping to London in 4 hours, and then zipping back on their own time, than they would going through the main terminal and all that nonsense just to save 3 hours in the air. Hell, being in the air in first class is the best part of the entire trip!

These guys (No connection whatsoever) [http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/](http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/) have been trying to do the latter for 13 years. Thirteen. They just got their first order.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was lucky enough to fly on Concorde in 2002, when they were offering steep discounts to get passengers back after the crash in 2000. It was clear at the time that the service was totally uneconomic. The seats were comparable to economy (although service was champagne and caviar).

I'll always cherish my memories of seeing the curvature of the Earth and the windows feeling hot to the touch (as well as my Concorde cufflinks).

</comment><comment><USER24> Sorry but is "Boom" really a good name for an aircraft company? I get it's supersonic, but my first association was an exploding airplane.

<comment><USER25> "Bad" names can attract lots of attention. Perhaps they're more interested in turning heads than setting up the best possible brand connotations.

<comment><USER26> The best possible brand connotations are an interesting way of putting it. When you are trying to get a company off the ground (figuratively) that is experimental in nature and will require a lot of capital investment, why hinder yourself with this 'bad' name right out of the gate? There are any number of edgy names they could have picked that people didn't associate with the last thing you want to have happen on an airplane. It is just unnecessary, and not well thought out. Even if the intent was to get attention, I wonder how many people at Boom talked to the founders and said: "Are we sure about 'Boom'?"

<comment><USER27> I didn't associate it with anything negative the first time when I saw the headline. Didn't even think about it being a bad name till I read the comment.

Not sure as many people will think it is negative as you think.

<comment><USER28> Well, what they think when they first see it, and what they think after it's made the rounds of the late shows (Kimmel, Colbert, Fallon, etc) might be entirely different. This is low hanging fruit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Look no farther than Bombardier, a relatively small but nonetheless very experienced company that's sadly nearly bankrupted themselves by simply trying to develop 787-like version of a regional jet. It doesn't appear like this kind of commercial aircraft development is suitable for anyone other than Boeing and Airbus.

</comment><comment><USER30> Fastest jet in the world still doesn't solve tarmac delays at JFK.

<comment><USER31> Correct-- the real problem with air travel isn't the flight time but the terrible and inefficient process on the ground with security, customs, baggage claim. I'd much prefer a longer flight in a slower, less aerodynamic plane that was safer and roomier.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if there's a market for premium private air terminals, or even entire airports.

<comment><USER32> That's what private planes are for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Huge cost delta for transatlantic vs transpacific flights on a commercial aircraft vs a plane which can deadhead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Hey Blake, I'm Salim. I like what you guys are doing :)

Interested in understanding more about how you plan to tackle cooling and heating when gaining altitude and hitting supersonic speeds respectively through materials different to the Aluminium used on the Concorde (you mentioned carbon fiber), which considering you're planning on reaching M3 will be important

Also interested in understanding more about what you're base case assumption for affordability is / what mitigants you've put in place for any change in these assumptions (rise in oil prices, airlines being able to charge crazy amounts due to product exclusivity (clearly will be just a handful of player who have access to this engineering in our life time I imagine) etc...). Would be nice to hear a bit about what engineering thinking has gone into the cost saving..are we still looking at the same delta wing we saw previously?

From what I've seen so far very cool and exciting - look forward to following your story!

</comment><comment><USER34> As tangent, instead of focusing on NYC to London, a Mach 2.2 travel actually will make travel from Americas to Asia more comfortable. US to India and US to China routes benefit the most, and perhaps where people will be interested in paying top-dollar vs. Europe.

<comment><USER35> I believe the problem with those was always the sonic boom created by flying at > 1 Mach. It shattered windows on the ground.

Could be wrong tho

<comment><USER36> Supersonic flight is banned over populated areas. I'm not sure if it's from shattering windows or not.

<comment><USER37> Is there any reason you can't fly subsonic over land, then accelerate to supersonic over the ocean?

<comment><USER38> Supersonic-capable aircraft tend to be absurdly fuel-inefficient when operating subsonic (for aerodynamic reasons I don't really understand).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish you the best. Would also like to see this in my lifetime, sooner than later. Calling it "Boom" seems super facepalmy though, for the obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER40> Great idea, but even with optimistic assumptions it will require a lot of capital. Something in order of SpaceX $100 mln to get first commercial plane.

<comment><AUTHOR> We live in a world right now where interest rates are bouncing off zero and sometimes going negative. Capital is probably the least limiting factor here, assuming there's a viable plan and clear market.

<comment><USER41> The world is only awash in capital if you can convince people you can repay them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> There's Aerion.[1] They were going to build an 8-passenger supersonic bizjet. Top speed Mach 1.5, cruise Mach 1.4, price $120 million, first flight planned for 2021. They're still talking about where to build the factory, but they're already taking pre-orders.

[1] [http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/](http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/)

<comment><USER43> Since the founder is in the thread, why did they target cruise > Mach 2 and a 40 passenger size? The business jet segment makes a lot of sense for high speed flight, but this seems like more of a stretch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> That's good news for ozone layer. Luckily this seems to be only a few guys, a wish, and a rendering.

<comment><USER45> > That's good news for ozone layer. Luckily this seems to be only a few guys, > a wish, and a rendering.

Sorry, what connection does this have with the ozone layer?

The most sense I can make of your comment is that you're concerned about CO2 emissions from supersonic flight and don't understand the difference between global warming and ozone depletion.

<comment><USER46> The problem is not CO2, but reactive chemicals such as nitrogen oxides released near the ozone layer, which is a particular concern with supersonic transport because of the high cruise altitude. See: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/270/5233/70](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/270/5233/70)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> There are many reasons why Boeing and Airbus have not entered the supersonic market, the most important being that there is simply very limited appetite for supersonic travel other than for novelty purposes. It's much more economical to build big, subsonic airliners but increase the comfort and level of service.

<comment><USER48> The Concorde is the most uncomfortably small aircraft that I've ever been aboard.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone over 5'9"/180lbs...though I guess that's a non-issue now (except for as a museum attraction).

<comment><USER49> My dad flew it once because he got "bumped up" from First class on the flight he normally took. His reaction was more or less "meh." First on the 747 was more comfortable and arriving a few hours earlier meant he had to grab dinner in London when he arrived rather than having a nice meal in First on the plane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Be interesting to see how they manage to increase range and payload substantially where Concorde wasn't able to.

Interesting from a tech point if they manage to build and certify a brand new supersonic airplane based on new materials. From a customer's stand point though, hardly anything new.

<comment><USER50> One advantage they might have over Concorde is that design began in the 2010s rather than the 1950s...

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I really like how this talk summarizes the reason supersonic air travel never took off: [http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm).

</comment><comment><USER52> How can they discuss cost and dates when it sounds like they don't even have firm plans on the engine? The promise of Boom is very compelling and good luck to them, but it's just a dream right now.

If it was as easy as the founder makes it sound, Boeing would already be doing it.

<comment><USER53> I agree, this is an insanely hard problem to solve. There are dozens of companies with tons of capital and massive R&D budgets that haven't already done this, presumably because they either think it's too hard, the regulatory hurdles are too high, or the market is not ready. Why can this startup do what they can't?

<comment><USER54> ...because they really want to do it? If there's one thing I've learnt, looking at what the big companies are doing/didn't do is a really bad metric for things like this.

If this was a company started by Elon, perception of this company would have been totally different.

<comment><USER55> That's partially because Elon was already massively rich and was able to attract even more money because he was investing so much of his own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Super smart - make good margins on a use case for the wealthy to subsidize R&D and development of scale economics, hopefully eventually get that price down so we can all use it. Hope it works!

(Writing this just to pre-empt the inevitable $5,000 THIS IS ONLY RICH PEOPLE comments :) )

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Already, this is way more affordable than private jets or Concorde. We'll keep innovating on fuel efficiency, so prices can keep coming down.

<comment><USER57> The major difference here is the Concorde was real and actually flew. A few guys with a cardboard mockup of a cockpit can toss out any number for what it will cost for a ticket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> One issue with this is the "boom" (from their name). It only works across non- populated areas due to the noise as their sample routes show. It's going to severely limit the opportunity.

<comment><USER59> I would guess this mostly designed for ocean crossing flights. Their example is NYC to London, as soon as you take off from NYC you're over the ocean. By the time you accelerate to mach 1.12 and are at the appropriate altitude, you'd be far enough away from the city for the boom to not matter.

<comment><USER2> That's correct. We're starting with overwater supersonic because there's no regulatory barrier to launching service. You can make a much quieter sonic boom than Concorde, and eventually supersonic overland will be allowed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Feel like their tagline should be "We're making supersonic flight a reality. Again" :P

Looks interesting though

<comment><USER2> Good point. It's so sad that Concorde came and went without a replacement in place. (FYI, I'm a founder at Boom).

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm reminded of the first half of "Web Design: The First Hundred Years"[0]. Commercial planes have not gotten faster and have in fact gotten slower.

I personally agree with the sentiment of the blog post, that a 5 hour flight across the atlantic is fast enough but it's still neat to see startups getting in to this space.

0 - [http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm)

<comment><USER54> I don't agree. Faster travel is always better - whatever the mode of transportation. Once you hit a certain speed and price point, it will radically change the lifestyle of people. For example, the hyperloop with 30 min travel time between SF and LA would mean that people could literally live in one city and work in another city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> So are they building their own plane, and launching a new airline? Will they also sell the plane to other airlines? Or is this trying to be vertically integrated, like Apple / Tesla?

Also, I echo the other sentiments here about the name, really don't want to fly on an airline named "Boom". Nor "Explode", "Kapow", or "Blast". And god forbid if one of their planes crashes during test flights, the PR nightmare that would result.

<comment><USER63> Boeing tried that and it was banned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I hope they have billions of dollars in the bank. Concorde production was stopped for a reason.

<comment><USER65> Given SpaceX's well documented experience, I would not trust any cost estimates from the legacy aerospace industry. It's a deeply moribund field as a result of decades of stagnation and dependence on government/military funding.

Still I would be absolutely floored if they could do it for under $500mil, so what you say still applies-- maybe just not quite to the point of billionS with an S.

<comment><USER66> There's a steep difference in the acceptable safety of a space vehicle and of a commercial airliner.

<comment><USER65> There's also a steep difference in the tolerances you can permit. A rocket -- especially one with any hope of reusability -- is something that can't be built without getting very very close to the maximum tolerances possible within the bounds of physics. Look at the temperature differentials in a rocket engine for example... it involves nearly instantaneous transitions from deep cryptogenic temperatures to ones far beyond the melting point of any known material that can only be sustained with constant active cooling. The fact that we can achieve any level of reliability with a device this insane is really a testament to human ingenuity, but it doesn't give you much margin for error. Screw up just a tiny bit and the rocket is going to do what the laws of thermodynamics _really_ want it to do: explode in every direction instead of just downward.

An airliner, even a supersonic one, is more forgiving. Over-engineering goes a long way toward adding nines to your reliability. We've been doing supersonic flight with reusable craft since the 1950s, and there aren't a whole lot of unknowns remaining. That means it's mostly a manufacturing and operations optimization problem.

<comment><USER67> It is easier to build a rocket, than supersonic commercial airliner. Soviets build many rockets, but practically failed on commercial airliner. Americans gave up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> This is perhaps the best thing about income inequality: Things with initial high cost, low volume are doable until investment dollars, etc, can reduce the cost.

I'm really excited to see this!

However, there's no indication as to what kind of seating you're going for. Will these be economy, premium economy (aka, US-national business), or business (aka, lie-flat) seats?

</comment><comment><USER69> Naming aside this seems to be positioned really well. 5k NYC/London in that time is quite the game changer. I like how they position it to cater to the busy executive who'd love to spend more time with their family.

How can you position it so well and chose such a bad name :D Either way really excited for this even though I'm likely to fly on it 0 times.

</comment><comment><USER70> Looks interesting. Anyone know what kind of tech the IT systems are built on? I'd be interested in sending a resume. I actually used to have a valid A&P mechanic's license. Always wanted to do software development for airlines but the large enterprise style environment has always turned me off.

</comment><comment><USER71> I wonder if petrr theil is an investor. He uses the deprecation of the concord as an example our socoety is slowing down technologically (literally & figuratively).

I have to imagine demand for international biz class flights have gone up since the concord retired given that global is a given for almost all industries.

If you are an executive (even a well paid employee) it could be worth your time to do this. It is ~1200 usd for a roundtrip flight from NYC to LON.

By the time these guys launch, it will likely be much more. The opportunity cost/math will be simple. I think that there is a high correlation of people who value their time > $200 that need international flights.

Depending how prices shake out I could see this working. Obviously, super hard to do an airline company.

sentiment: cautiously opyimistic

</comment><comment><USER72> There is negative chance this project gets off the ground. If the Boeing 2707, which even with heavy government funds, still failed to make it out the door I don't think these guys have a chance in hell.

</comment><comment><USER73> I think what you guys are doing is amazing and the world is due for airlines like Boom. I'm also happy to see that this venture is backed by YC. This is a huge step forward. Your prices bite a little and will likely be out of range for typical travelers but I'm sure this can be worked on. Is the airplane designed completely from scratch or will you be basing your engineering work on the designs of Concorde planes in some way, shape or form?

</comment><comment><USER74> """While carrying a full load, Concorde achieved 15.8 passenger miles per gallon of fuel, while the Boeing 707 reached 33.3 pm/g, the Boeing 747 46.4 pm/g""" It's like an SUV for the sky. We have to get antropogenic carbon dioxide to 0 until 2050 if we want our species to survive and people come up with less energy efficient transportation?

</comment><comment><USER75> No where does it mention proposed range. This is a big deal: with thirsty supersonic cruise, your fuel mass fraction will exponentially grow according to the Rocket Equation. Simply put, the more fuel you carry, the more fuel you must carry to bring that fuel along.

Flying twice the distance will mean >>2x the fuel. LON-NYC might be attainable, but tran-pacific will certainly be difficult.

<comment><USER76> The rocket equation applies when you're continuously accelerating your fuel to ever higher speeds.

The work in supersonic flight is fighting drag, which while many times larger that for subsonic does not have an appreciable weight dependency. Why would flying longer require more than proportionally additional fuel?

<comment><USER75> My assumption is that drag (esp lift induced) is a function of weight. The more fuel you must carry, the more drag you incur. The more drag you incur, the more fuel you must carry to over-come it.

I know this is certainly true of subsonic flight. How much it affects supersonic flight it unknown to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> looks like an investors-bait.

</comment><comment><USER78> Has the FAA given any indication on what the decibel threshold might be to potentially reverse the overland ban on supersonics? You had mentioned in another comment that the tipping point might be the feasibility and eventual popularity from going LAX/SFO - Tokyo but that in and of itself may not be enough satisfy residents and other groups.

</comment><comment><USER79> Very interesting and relevant article about the American Concordes which never flew: [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160321-the-american- concor...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160321-the-american-concordes- that-never-flew)

</comment><comment><USER80> I would be very interested to see their YC application. Maybe an unfair competitive advantage?

</comment><comment><USER81> This sounds awesome. However I'm a bit saddened that there is no mention of CO2 or climate change in this discussion. What about building solar planes vs just faster planes will do even more harm to the environment if people start flying more because time is now shorter?

<comment><USER70> Just think how much C02 you'd produce if you took a ship across the ocean for days on end....

<comment><USER50> Like, a sailing ship?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> The airline industry, stagnant since the 1960's is ripe for disruption.

</comment><comment><USER83> I hope your company motto is "Move Fast and Break Things."

</comment><comment><USER84> This is cool but I would love to see research and investment going into making planes big enough and (more importantly) efficient enough just to comfortably sit in.

</comment><comment><USER85> Can you carry enough fuel to do a non-stop flight from NYC to HKG or SIN or SYD? (You give SFO-SYD as an example, so NYC-HKG should be possible I suspect.)

<comment><USER85> Oh, I guess the issue is the boom. What about flying subsonic over populated Canada, and then (slightly shifting the conventional NYC-HKG route) head over Hudson Bay to accelerate to supersonic velocity?

The return route is often done over the Pacific (because of prevailing wind patterns), so there would not necessarily be a need to sonic boom over southeast China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> $5000.00 and I can be there in 3.4 hours. $900 if I decide to go slow.

Hmmm... I'm not that impatient.

But then, I'm not that rich either, so maybe that's my problem.

</comment><comment><USER87> I didn't realize the left-right arrows in the hero show other possible routes.

Are you planning on operating as an airline or selling to airlines?

</comment><comment><USER88> Beyond the name, seeing the parts of the plane, with green garage sale price tags, sitting on a table doesn't instill confidence.

</comment><comment><USER89> Mark Kelly on the advisory board, not bad. It's the only person on the team page that I've heard of.

</comment><comment><USER90> The photo of the engineer in what is clearly a cardboard mock-up: [http://boom.aero/assets/boom-3-cd0822d52cb5c9ecaac404d5cfd09...](http://boom.aero/assets/boom-3-cd0822d52cb5c9ecaac404d5cfd0982c.jpg) .... does not inspire confidence.

<comment><USER91> Presumably they're just testing the ergonomics of their seat/cockpit layout, or something along those lines. Unless you're worried that they're _actually_ going to try to build an airplane out of cardboard, I don't see what the problem is.

<comment><USER92> "Unless you're worried that they're _actually_ going to try to build an airplane out of cardboard"

I dunno. They do say "carbon fiber" a lot... and that _is_ a description of cardboard....

<comment><USER93> Carbon fiber is incredibly strong when engineered properly:

"During the test, the wings on the 787 were flexed upward "approximately 25 feet" which equates to 150 percent of the most extreme forces the airplane is ever expected to encounter during normal operation. The test is used to demonstrate a safety margin for the design and is part of the certification process to show the airplane can withstand extreme forces."

<comment> david-given I don't know what a foot is any more, but here's a video of the A380 doing its wing flex test:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B74_w3Ar9nI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B74_w3Ar9nI)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Do you foresee any special challenges in keeping nitrous oxides emissions down?

</comment><comment><USER95> I have a feeling they will eventually acquired by SpaceX.

</comment><comment><USER96> Short version: NYC-LON in 3.4 hours.

</comment><comment><USER97> It doesn't talk about the sonic booms, which was the main problem with Concorde (and the fees resulting from it)

</comment><comment><USER98> Excellent job of trolling us.

</comment><comment><USER99> didn't YC also invest in a nuclear startup? how's that going?

<comment><USER100> Two of them. Helion got some VC [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/helion- energy](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/helion-energy)

UPower less so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Half the comments on here are like:

The plane is made of cardboard and that just doesn't make me confortable....

</comment><comment><USER102> Is it just me or "Boom" sounds like the worst-name-ever for an airline?

I'm serious. My immediate association for "boom" is an explosion sound, not a sonic boom. I would feel just as comfortable flying an airline called "Bang", "Crash", "Kaboom", "Blast" or "OhMyGodWeAreGoingDown".

Please, do rethink that name, I dream of shorter trips to Bora Bora every single day of my life (not serious now).

<comment><USER103> It is absolutely the worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> I'm not sure "Boom" is the word I want to mentally associate with aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER105> People do pay 5K for just a meeting?

<comment><USER106> No, the company does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> this is just a PR disaster waiting to happen. who in their right minds would trust this small team to design a supersonic plane vs army of aerospace engineers at boeing and airbus?

I'd rather enjoy the comfort of flying with Boeing. Track record means a lot and they have the balls to say they are working on a prototype like they are building an Android app.

loool, the article highlighting arrogance of SV is real.

tldr: no way I'm getting on this plane and neither should you, it looks dangerous as fuck.

</comment><comment><USER108> I dont have a good reason to go to london but you bet your ass im going to fly on this

</comment><comment><USER109> Will it use up 25% of its fuel taxiing to the runway like the concorde?

Cause fuel aint cheap like it used to be.</comment>


Ask HN: How to improve memory? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I have bad memory -- always has been. I tried some of the memory tricks, it works briefly for, felt it was too much work to try to learn all the memory systems out there.
So, what good advice can you give me and what works for you if you happen to overcome your memory problems. <comment><USER2> It depends on what you're trying to remember...

I'd say for most things Spaced Repetition works pretty well: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition>

</comment><comment><USER3> Practice remembering things for 10,000 hours. Then you'll be an expert. ;)</comment>


Path to enlightenment - <AUTHOR>

If someone was interested in learning about hacking, what would be the ideal path? Courses than hands-on? Learn from an expert from the start? Read about protocols and OSes before trying anything or just be a script kiddy and try to understand later?
Everyone had a different learning path, but what is THE best one? To start the discussion, I propose:
1) Go to school in computer science to learn the basic
2) Work as a server administrator or a network specialist
3) Read or take courses on network protocols
4) Start hacking your own personal network
5) Learn how to prevent the attacks you have made on step 4
6) Interact with other hackers (now that you know something...)
7) Practice in the open world!
8) If you want to work on computer security, go get a certification or something that will help you get a job
So, what would you change in this list? <comment><USER2> <http://norvig.com/21-days.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Heh, I once made a list like that. Let it go, it doesn't work like that. You will never be able to plan your learning path exactly. Pick something, anything now, and devote to it and new topics will /naturally/ emerge over time.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hear you guys and thanks for this great article. I will let it flow and focus on having fun while learning instead of following a plan.

Thanks again</comment>


Raindrops splash before they hit the ground  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227055.400-raindrops-splash-before-they-hit-the-ground.html

<comment><USER2> I understand the significance of something like this from a physics perspective, but I'll be honest... "splash-suppressing materials for use in kitchens" made me question the importance of this study.

<comment><USER3> I think that's just an attempt to make it easy for people to relate to. Think how useful a similar system might be in a hospital or lab setting, to say nothing of the more abtruse applications that only a physicist might think of. It might have relevance for things from inkjet printers to the way chemicals are deposited on wafers for chip fabrication.

Remember that the physic are independent of the medium; water is the reference liquid because of its ubuity, but with this information you could equally well predict the behavior of other liquids by just altering the coefficient of viscosity and the density of the surrounding medium. I'll hazard a guess that it plays a role in cloud formation as well on a much slower scale.</comment></comment>


Relativity behind mercury's liquidity (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/relativity-behind-mercurys-liquidity/6297.article <comment><AUTHOR> It seems this Wikipedia article on why Gold is yellow was posted a while back:

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

</comment><comment><USER2> >"In the 1960s, Pekka Pyykkö, now at University of Helsinki, Finland, discovered that gold's colour was the result of relativistic effects. He showed that the lower energy levels of the 6s orbital of gold means that the energy required to excite an electron from the 5d band lies in the visible rather than UV range of light.

This means that gold _absorbs blue light_ , while reflecting yellow and red light, and it is this that gives the metal its characteristic hue."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So are even heavier elements more interesting. I would expect more coloured elements, more liquid elements at room temperature for heavier elements.

Can the number of neutrons in an isotope make a big difference, there are a few elements which have a wide range of isotopic weights, if a property was quite delicate I'd expect such changes to be quite apparent, tricky for millisecond half lives.

<comment><USER3> One thing that comes to mind is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_isotope_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_isotope_effect) , although this seems to mostly affect elements that only have a few protons, like hydrogen or oxygen. Still, it adds up enough so that replacing most of the water in your body with heavy water (D₂O) would be fatal.. But, you'd have to drink exclusively heavy water for a long time to actually reach a toxic dose.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes thanks for reminding me about Heavy Water ice, and how it sinks in a glass of water too.

Also I have subscript envy, and shall scour the Internet as to how to do subscripts in HN.

<comment><USER3> I used the subscript 2 unicode character (U+2082). As far as I know, HN's formatting doesn't include anything to do subscripts. (At least, [https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc) does not mention it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I understand electrons are a probability cloud but suddenly

> The larger the nucleus gets the greater the electrostatic attraction and the > faster the electrons have to move to avoid falling into it

and now they're moving (and in this case, faster). So how does a particle with no attributable position move faster? This doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER5> It's a probability cloud of different possible locations, but also it's a probability distribution of different permitted possible speeds, as well. This probability distribution has a peak (a mode). When he writes "the faster the electrons have to move", he means this mode for a heavier nucleus is larger than that of a lighter nucleus.

Please let me know if I'm not being clear enough.

<comment><USER4> Actually thanks, that's very clear at that level, however that leads to a further confusion (of mine) about what _speed_ implies, that being that the electron is moving (obviously) from x to y, which apparently contradicts the _probability cloud_ concept of probabilities of a position at instant x, and only for that instant.

That is, if it's moving from x to y (because it has speed) then it's more likely to appear on some vector between x and y.

Please feel free not to answer that question, as I may drag you down the rabbit hole - but if you can, I'd love to know.

<comment><USER6> If you have a probability distribution of position.

Then increment time by one tick. If you have a second probability distribution (assuming some time dependence) then you have now a distribution of distance travelled and therefore a distribution of speeds.

The alarming thing about QM is that it is fundamentally probabilistic and yet a little classical at the same time.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's right. If you increment the time by one tick, you have the _same_ position probability distribution. That is, the wave function didn't change. Why should it?

But that position probability distribution has a very specific energy. And at each point of that position distribution, the electron has a specific electrical potential energy. So at each point, it also has to have a kinetic energy. It has a kinetic energy probability distribution to match the position probability distribution. And now we can talk about velocity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why should i learn Go? - <AUTHOR>

Kindly help me understand these questions.
what are the benefits ?
why should a person learn Go
Thanks <comment><USER2> I don't mean to be flippant, but is there any particular part of go you are curious about that isn't answered in the FAQ? [http://golang.org/doc/faq](http://golang.org/doc/faq)

<comment><AUTHOR> its just that their is alot of hype, of which i am wondering what is so special about this language..</comment></comment>


Jon Stewart with Bassem Youssef in Egypt - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEO2Rd3sJbA i know this have nothing to do with tech. but i love this community, and i thought you will like it <comment><USER2> I always think that when the comedians can speak, there is hope for us all.</comment>


Looking for a team of developers - <AUTHOR>

We are a group of entrepreneurs and investors looking for a team to help build a new facebook application. We are fully funded, we have a provisional patent on the idea, and the business resources to bring it to market. What we don't have is any developers on our team. This is a strange case of guys with money and an idea but no way to build it. We are looking for two to three co-founders to develop the application. We can pay small salaries during development and provide resources, as well as an equity share. We are marketers,entrepreneurs, and experienced startup mangers, but have no software development skills to speak of. That is where you come in. Please contact us firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> What kind of app are we talking about ?? Could you disclose that at this point now that you have a provisional patent ? Just curious.</comment>


Focus on Making Meaning Not Money [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.success.com/videos/youtube/10-tips-to-help-you-innovate

<comment><USER2> Many meaningful things aren't worth any monitary value. Its better to focus on money (the life blood of any company) so you can hopefully create meaning.</comment>


Show HN: Host your own open source Slack-like chat platform - <AUTHOR> https://rocket.chat/

<comment><USER2> The login page seems to have taken over the back button of the browser. Pretty annoying...

</comment><comment><USER3> Visited, but not tested yet. submit it to [http://betapage.co](http://betapage.co)</comment>


Animate.css - <AUTHOR> https://daneden.me/animate/

<comment><USER2> Yup, that's a great lib! But it's plain css, though, not very customizable. Check out this port to Sass, available as a SCSS Compass ruby gem: [https://github.com/Sewdn/animate.scss](https://github.com/Sewdn/animate.scss)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very Nice!</comment>


DevChix - <AUTHOR> http://www.devchix.com/about/ <comment><USER2> What exactly is the point?

<comment><AUTHOR> They've got a pretty solid technical blog, which is how I discovered it. For example, here's a primer on using Ragel State Machines with Ruby as the target language:

[http://www.devchix.com/2008/01/13/a-hello-world-for-ruby- on-...](http://www.devchix.com/2008/01/13/a-hello-world-for-ruby-on-ragel-60/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Georgia Tech Alum++</comment>


Gestures as a New Dimension in Mobile Design - <AUTHOR> http://theindustry.cc/2012/12/05/gestures-as-a-new-dimension-in-mobile-design/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting, but gestures in general have a major discoverability problem. I do not know that it is an unsolvable problem, but until it can be solved in a more general way, it's going to be hard to push them much harder than they already are.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh god…the rewind on Paper.

Makes me want to punch myself cause it makes me feel so damn stupid when I can't get it to work. Then I'm stuck with more random scribble marks when the rewind fails.

Please, no rewind gesture unless a failed rewind doesn't activate other stuff. It's horrible to have a rewind feature where you can accidentally draw on your pad, causing more issues.

Other than that, decent article. (And the Paper app is awesome, just I hate the damn rewind function. It'd be so much better if it was like a slider like a video)

<comment><USER4> Does that really happen that often? I consistently use Paper and maybe a few times in months of using it do I mark a bit when trying to use it, but it's usually because I didn't have two fingers on the screen. And even if you do make a mark or two, you can go ahead and rewind those as well.</comment></comment>


China Standoff Cost the NBA 'Hundreds of Millions' - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-standoff-cost-the-nba-hundreds-of-millions-11581866522 <comment><USER2> We should applaud the NBA for this. Very few orgs are ethical enough to lose this much money on principle.</comment>


Ask HN: What books have helped make who you are today? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently reading a book that my brother found while browsing YC, "Life would be easier if it weren't for other people." I was also turned onto "G.E.B." by this community.
I was wondering what books really helped you develop into the person you are today. I'm really not after just books, but any sources of information that are really at the fundation of who you are as a person today.
Kind of a broad question, but I am hoping that a broad spectrum question will provide interesting, broad spectrum answers.
:) Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> _A Brief History of Time_ by Stephen Hawking

_The Way to Wealth_ by Benjamin Franklin

_The Book of Job_ by Job, from The Bible

_Meditations_ by Marcus Aurelius

_The Prince_ by Niccolo Machiavelli

_The Bill of Rights_ by James Madison

_The Gospel According to John_ by John, from The Bible

_The Gospel According to Luke_ by Luke, from The Bible

_The Acts of the Apostles_ by Luke, from The Bible

_The Song of Solomon_ by Solomon, from The Bible

_Heimskringla_ transcribed by Snorri Sturluson

These books have combined to make me the free-thinking, reactionary stoic that I am today. Most of them are old, but they contain much wisdom about life, work, politics, gender relations, spirtuality, and history. Please let me know if you have questions. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse is a big one. Ecclesiastes is also excellent, and you shouldn't shy away just because it's in the Bible.

<comment><USER2> _Siddhartha_ is my mother's favorite book. I find that Buddhist and Stoic philosophy deal with many of the same subjects, specifically, gaining peace with the trials of life. I, however, prefer the Stoic's emphasis on discipline and perseverance over the Buddhist's emphasis on acceptance and understanding. I don't think that one is qualitatively superior to the other, it is just that Stoicism works better for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The Myth of Certainty_ by Daniel Taylor

_Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing_ by Soren Kierkegaard

_The Invisible Computer_ by Donald Norman

_Death March_ by Edward Yourdon

_War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning_ by Chris Hedges

_What Do You Care What Other People Think?_ by Richard P. Feynman

<comment><USER2> Do you have any recommendations on what to read first in order to be introduced to Kierkegaard's writings/thoughts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The C Programming Language

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Lord of the Rings

1984

</comment><comment><USER6> _The Ecclesiastes_ by Solomon, from The Bible

_Start From Scratch_ by Wes Moss

_The Facebook Effect_ by David Kirkpatrick

_The Millionaire Mind_by Thomas J. Stanley

_Secrets of the Millionaire Mind_T. Harv Eker

</comment><comment><USER7> Inner Experience by George Bataille The Complete Short Stories by Jorge Luis Borges (especially The Library of Forking Paths; The Library of Babel; Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote and The Aleph) and his essays. Poems by William Blake especially the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Anything by Mircea Eliade (especially the myth of the eternal return, Anything by Frances Yates (especially The Art of Memory (GET THIS BOOK)), the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, the Tao Te Ching, the writings of Chuang Tzu, Currently: Zen Mind, Beginner's mind. Much much more really.

</comment><comment><USER8> In chronological order:

      - Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Kiyosaki
      - PG Essays/ HNews
      - Happiness by Matthieu Ricard
      - Walden by Throreau
      - Zen and the art... by Pirsig

</comment><comment><USER9> 1.) Bhagavad Gita "Celestial Song" - Hindu bible 2.) Cosmos - Carl Sagan 3.) Alchemist - Paulo Coelho 4.) Think and Grow Rich - Napolean Hill

</comment><comment><USER10> Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Building Websites is Easy (html book for young teens)

<comment><USER2> <spoiler alert>

I also liked _Ender's Game_. It was the first "big" sci-fi book I read while growing up.

My only complaint with it is that it seemed a little too Joan of Arc to me and I was thinking, would they really have let a "kid" command their space fleet?

</spoiler alert>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Selected Poems by e.e. cummings

A Chorus of Stones by Susan Griffin

Anything that makes you think about something a little differently can change your life forever.

</comment><comment><USER12> Cosmos - Carl Sagan

1984 - George Orwell

Tao Teh Ching - Lao Tse

</comment><comment><USER13> iWoz The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Hackers The Great Gatsby</comment>


Const: The Final Chapter - <AUTHOR> http://newobj.net/post/2353843756/const-the-final-chapter

<comment><USER2> _What is the use case for actually wanting to alter function parameters?_

In scientific programming, you often need routines to change values in more than one data structure (basically because the routine's invariants relate physical values that are represented in different data structures, typically arrays). So in a language like Fortran, where functions can only return one thing, you often call subroutines, passing in a number of mutable data structures whose contents all may need to be updated.

In case you're interested in more details on Fortran (take these with a grain of salt, since it's been a few years since I used it daily)... In general, if you pass in "Type x" you're really passing in what C would call "Type _x". The language makes this opaque, and some compilers will actually copy in and copy out if [Type] isn't too large. You can tag the ones that the function can't change with "parameter", which acts like the first "const" in "const Type_ const x". Subroutines allow you to change those arguments, but functions treat every argument as a parameter, and a conforming compiler should complain if you try to modify them. Finally, modern Fortran also provides explicit pointers, though they don't act quite like you'd expect if you come from a C background.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am convinced that const correctness in C++ is so useless it's actually harmful.

I can recall spending the sum of many hours tracking down various compilation errors due to missing consts. Invariably the problem is miles away from the actual error message (which itself is usually long, cryptic and involving std::allocator).

And without fail, each time the error is either a complete fabrication, presumably invented by the compiler in order to spite me, or a genuine bug that I would have fixed in a great deal less time _by actually running the fucking code_.

If only const gave warnings, not errors, then we could eat our cake and have it too.

</comment><comment><USER4> The code I'm working on right now is littered with functions which take "url" as a parameter, and normalize it with this line:

        url = url_normalize(url)

It's often convenient, for the sake of clear code, to be able to modify the values of the function's argument variables.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a decent use case, and one that I'm surprised I forgot, given that I've written that same line of code so many times. :)</comment></comment>


Berlin Startup Map - <AUTHOR> http://berlinstartupmap.com/ <comment><USER2> There are so many entrepreneurs and startups in Berlin. There are probably even more startup events there than in San Francisco, it's a very vibrant scene.

However, there is just noooo money in Berlin. The reason for that is that there are no successful tech entrepreneurs who have been successful previously to fuel the ecosystem.

So all the money you have is money from Angels that are lawyers, dentists or who have a big family business.

Also, German young entrepreneurs just can't think big. There are a few that do, but the "taking-over-the-world" mentality in Germany is just not there as in the U.S.

They more like to create a cookie delivery business. (this just got six figures in funding)

<comment><USER3> > the "taking-over-the-world" mentality in Germany is just not there

The last time we've tried that, it didn't end so well…

<comment><USER4> slow clap for this lame joke.

<comment><USER5> On the other hand, I find it hilarious. Face it, what Germans did in WWII was so horrifying that it will be remembered and associated with them for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sweet. I actually just arrived in Berlin today, starting as a product designer for EyeQuant tomorrow. Looking forward to this. Any designers in Berlin here that wants to grab a coffee?

<comment><USER7> I'm tempted to up sticks from London and see if there re any interesting startups to join there.

<comment><USER8> The startup/tech "scene" in Berlin seems a bit immature compared to London. There seem to be a few companies doing interesting things, however the scale doesn't seem to be anywhere near London at the moment, which has a good mix of startups and established companies and massive amounts of capital flowing through the city. Berlin is great city though, and looks like things might take off in a few years!

<comment><USER7> it sounds like an interesting space apart from the tech. the artistic city and culture has a lot of buzz, but I've only heard this second hand because I've never visited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something's broken. The map disappears when I click on a pin.

<comment><USER10> Even when it wasn't broken, the user interface is pretty bad. When you clicked on a pin you couldn't do anything else until you closed that pin. So to open a new pin you had to close the previous one, whose popup box might have been outside of the map region you were viewing.

I am voting up because I like this sort of aggregators and I would pretty much like to see it fixed - or open sourced maybe?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always had the feeling that 9 out of 10 startups in Berlin are founded by business students from private universities like WHU. Is this a misperception or is the hacker-businesspeople-ratio really better elsewhere?

<comment><USER12> I can not answer your question, but I want to add that Berlin might be the city with the highest hackerspace density: [http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Berlin](http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Berlin)

The whole Bay Area has.. not that many (well, they have one biohackerspace).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What are salary ranges for experienced engineers in Berlin and in Germany in general? Startup vs stable company is also interesting in this aspect.

Maybe someone with enough karma could create a poll...

<comment><USER14> If you do it for the money, ignore German startups. The chance for an exit is 1% and usually employees don't get equity. The pay is low and you're forced to burn out. You will not work for the next Facebook, Twitter etc.

Instead join Siemens, Allianz or other blue chip companies to easily earn 60-90k with all benefits you can imagine.

Berlin is even more desperate as most of the German "tech" scene is. No money, no users, bad execution except the successful copycat-business of the Samwer brothers.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. Regarding burning out - I thought the overtime work was banned in Germany, no? (Quite recently actually, if I remember correctly).

Yes, I'm aware about non-existent exits, but I was hoping for more like a revenue sharing or similar agreement.

For a C++/systems/desktop engineer (no web), do you think other cities in Germany would be more suitable than Berlin?

<comment><USER14> Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Köln — that's where the money is made. Just look for job offers of large well-known companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you want to see an area startup aggregator that's both beautiful and useful, check out Silicon Shire (Eugene/Springfield OR) [http://siliconshire.org/](http://siliconshire.org/)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for sharing. I've heard great things about Eugene but didn't know it had much of a startup scene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I moved to Berlin from London just about 18 months ago. The startup scene here is very good, it's a whole different feeling in terms of the spirit and the people.

Come visit us if you're in town, we often have people in to say hello :)

[https://www.somewhere.com/suttree](https://www.somewhere.com/suttree)

</comment><comment><USER18> Great timing, I actually started researching moving from Colorado to Berlin yesterday. This only adds fuel to the fire.

<comment><USER19> Ha, awesome! I moved here from Colorado last April, and I'm loving it so far. I highly recommend it. =) Get in touch if you want some pointers—I'm happy to help! (My email's in my profile.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here is a London equivalent: [http://roundabout.io/](http://roundabout.io/)

</comment><comment><USER21> When selecting one of the startups map disappears and I can't make another selections.Looks broken...

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. Definitely a lot going on over there. I almost expected to see all the markers centered on a handful of cafes in Kreuzberg[x] :)

[x] not that I've been to Berlin in a few years - just seems like the right place for the culture (ps, I _love_ berlin)

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know a good immigration consultant in Berlin? I've been planning to move my side projects (now full-time projects) there for a few years... and they are now big enough to sustain me.

Cheers,

[email in profile]

</comment><comment><USER24> I was in Berlin this weekend and absolutely loved it. Somebody knows some nice resources for jobs in Berlin? Im a Rails / Javascript / iOs developer.

<comment><USER25> This looks helpful: [http://berlinstartupjobs.com/](http://berlinstartupjobs.com/)

<comment><USER2> Yes this site gets a looot of traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was done in Paris 1 or 2 years ago. Some folks found the map and broke in those places to steal computers and stuffs.

</comment><comment><USER27> Netherlands: [http://dutchstartupmap.com/](http://dutchstartupmap.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Israel: [http://mappedinisrael.com/](http://mappedinisrael.com/)

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Why not use OSM as the mapping layer? It's good enough already to avoid depending on Google.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's the source from a similar project to make your own map [https://github.com/abenzer/represent- map](https://github.com/abenzer/represent-map)

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe you must look outside of Berlin to look for investors but the "Taking over the world" mentality is definitely (t)here. At least that's how we at Somewhere think.

</comment><comment><USER31> The person creating that list was a bit too "greedy". I certainly wouldn't have added a well-established café like St. Oberholz to that list.

<comment><USER32> It's listed as a coworking space (there is one above the café), not a startup.

<comment><USER31> That place is a café, and a fairly noisy one at that. Calling it a co-working space is quite a stretch. It's just that a lot of people with Apple laptops frequent it. I don't think anybody gets serious work done there, by a definition of "serious work" that does not include Facebook and Twitter.

<comment><USER19> There's a coworking space above the café: [http://www.sanktoberholz.de/?page_id=1514&lang=en](http://www.sanktoberholz.de/?page_id=1514&lang=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was in Berlin. What I've found is that the most famous startup in Berlin is a todo-list. Jawohl! Make sure to visit the c-base if you're there.

<comment><USER2> Yeah the only innovative ones are Soundcloud and Gidsy. Then there is www.workhub.com, they are awesome and awesome founder, but they are still in beta. ResearchGate is also big, but they are more a data startup.

Wooga and Hitfox are the other two big ones, but they are game development companies, not a "real" startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Moving out next week to work on a tool for academics. Anyone up for coffee? Mail awesome[at]bohrresearch.com

Link: beta.bohrresearch.com

</comment><comment><USER35> Visas for Canadians, Americans?

<comment><USER36> [http://www.bluecard-eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/](http://www.bluecard- eu.de/eu-blue-card-germany/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> same here in Chrome and ie</comment>


Verizon's Thoughts on SpeedTest.net - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/CyrisXD/status/489950468483731458 <comment><USER2> It gets even better when you realize that Verizon's site ([http://my.verizon.com/services/](http://my.verizon.com/services/)) is built off of Ookla's platform.

</comment><comment><USER3> Heh. I'd question the accuracy.

Using their speedtest I get 8Mb/s up and 237Mb/s down. On a 10/100 (non- burstable) connection through another provider.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds legit.</comment>


New data shows NYC taxi usage down 11% in H2 '15 compared to previous year - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/todd_schneider/status/698160429374300160 <comment><AUTHOR> TLC just released 6 additional months of trip-level data (Jul-Dec 2015): [http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/about/trip_record_data.shtm...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/about/trip_record_data.shtml)

GitHub repo updated to process additional data: [https://github.com/toddwschneider/nyc-taxi- data](https://github.com/toddwschneider/nyc-taxi-data)</comment>


Ask HN: # of Followers = function of avatar size? - <AUTHOR>

I'm going to toss up a wild postulate.  Over the entire Twitter ecosystem, my observation is that the larger your profile pic is (full size e.g. click on square avatar to view), the larger # of followers you have.
Anyone want to prove/disprove this?
I'll be the baseline:
http://twitter.com/grantschultz ... pic: http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/1160716843/Day5-2.png <comment><AUTHOR> This may be a result of:

1\. Higher resolution photos go hand-in-hand with professional branding. Professional branding brings a more integrated online strategy.

2\. Bigger = More Handsome/Pretty

3\. ....</comment>


PyDark – 2D Game Framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.pydark.com/

<comment><USER2> I wish people would stop building things with pygame.

Its a terrible, buggy, crash prone obsolete framework.

Learning pygame may teach you basic skills you can transfer to other better frameworks; but it teaches you 10 year old skills that are largely irrelevant on modern hardware, and gives you a rubbish introduction to python (welcome to segfault hell).

<comment><USER3> What do you recommend, then?

<comment><USER4> Can't speak for @shadowmint, but I would recommend Kivy, or else leaving Python altogether and using Haxe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this offer any performance advantage over vanilla pygame? Because I found myself pushing the limitations of it very quickly and had to move on to other frameworks and languages other than Python.

As one example of its shortcomings, Pygame doesn't seem to support hardware rendering and the maintainer seems to think this is an advantage [ [http://www.pygame.org/docs/tut/newbieguide.html](http://www.pygame.org/docs/tut/newbieguide.html) ]

<comment><USER6> Tried Kivy?

[http://kivy.org/#home](http://kivy.org/#home)

<comment><USER7> In particular, in the game context there is kivent ([http://kivent.org/](http://kivent.org/)), though it's at an early release stage.

Edit: To be clear, you can make games in vanilla kivy just fine (and it's probably much more performant than pygame), but kivent is a dedicated game engine with more efficient graphics internals and nice things like chipmunk integration.

<comment><USER6> Cool, thanks for the heads up.

I wish bundling Python was easier. I read this morning in the Kivy docs that you can't even bundle python 3 at all yet.

Many years ago a friend of mine wrote a Python binding to the PopCap engine. It was so great, the exe and the script. Thats all you needed and you could just whack those two things in a zip and you're done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having to write your own event framework and network functions every time you write a game in PyGame is kind of a pain, so I can see how this would be really useful. I think I've written the same event handler about a half dozen times at this point for various games I've written.

It wasn't clear to me how hard it would be to incorporate something like Pymunk for physics though. One thing that I find a pain when using Pymunk and Pygame is having to keep track of the your rects when things are bumping off of each other, spinning, etc. It'd be cool if Pydark had built in support for some kind of physics engine.

</comment><comment><USER9> Discussion on reddit[0] leads to this gem: [http://docs.pydark.com/PyDark.net- pysrc.html#ServerProtocol....](http://docs.pydark.com/PyDark.net- pysrc.html#ServerProtocol.lineReceived)

Who thought that could possibly be a good idea?

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/2ufo9y/the_2d_game_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/2ufo9y/the_2d_game_framework_for_perfectionists/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Personally the code is confusing to me - the author jumps between OO and non- OO. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing - but from what I've seen is that stuff he has as functions might be better suited for a class.

I do like the concept/design of it though.

</comment><comment><USER11> Based on pygame, stopped looking.

<comment><USER12> I initially thought the same thing, but this _does_ address a few things Pygame is lacking for people that are still __learning __programming /Python. A common question I get is "How would I make a UI with Pygame?" or handle input for different scenes versus the UI, and this seems to abstract it well for those that just want to jump in and get a working game (as opposed to a working game engine...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So does it work on pypy</comment>


Guide to x86 assembly - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs216/guides/x86.html

<comment><USER2> This is a useful tool to view the assembly of code in the browser.

[http://gcc.godbolt.org/](http://gcc.godbolt.org/)

<comment><USER3> This is indeed pretty awesome. I wish I had this 20 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With ARM used for mobile, would it make more sense to learn it because these less powerful processors might provide more opportunity to use assembler?

<comment><USER5> Two questions come to my mind: which "flavor" of ARM? And what hardware would it run on? There's no "standard ARM" computer like the x86 has the de facto PC standards (peripherals, firmware, etc).

Perhaps the R.Pi could do it, but it's certainly easier that you can just run the code on the desktop computer you're working on. The university behind OP probably has a lab full of Linux x86 desktop computers ready to use. They probably don't have a bunch of R.Pis or ARM devkits around.

I don't see any advantages in ARM over x86 for taking your first baby steps in assembly. Either will do but the latter is probably easier to set up.

<comment><USER6> The RISC "core" of the ARM instruction set is both simple enough to learn (sixteen registers of which the last two are special, almost all instructions work equally on all registers) and works unmodified across a range of systems. It's a popular choice in "intro to assembly" courses for this reason.

By comparison, x86-32 has more baggage from x86-16 and is less orthogonal. It also suffers from nonstandardisation of the vector instructions like ARM does, although you can reasonably assume FPU and MMX these days.

AMD64 might be an interesting choice to start with these days.

<comment><USER5> Well I agree that the ARM instruction set is more elegant, but I don't see it as a big enough improvement to warrant the extra hassle of getting set up. It's too easy for the student to get confused with all the tools and spend less time on the actual matter at hand.

When learning assembly, what matters is getting used to instructions, registers, control flow and explicit memory accesses rather than statements, expressions, functions and variables. It really doesn't matter which ISA you're learning, the actual skill you learn is how to read the documentation of a CPU architecture and tools to write and debug assembly code.

> It also suffers from nonstandardisation of the vector instructions like ARM > does, although you can reasonably assume FPU and MMX these days.

This is not correct. ARM has at least 7 different FPU ISAs: 5 versions of VFP and 2 versions of NEON. I have devices at hand with three different float units (all consumer devices). In x86 world you can rely on SSE2 safely, it's been around since Pentium 4 (1999) and is required on all 64 bit architectures (by contrast, NEON is rather new). But this is kind of a moot point since introductory assembly courses don't go too deep on floating point units anyway.

Additionally, in the ARM world, there's several revisions of the ISA/architecture being used, ARMv7 (32bit) and ARMv8 (64bit) and a dozen different variants for embedded products. And two different instruction encodings (thumb). It's not at all less confusing.

> AMD64 might be an interesting choice to start with these days.

For basic user space programming it probably doesn't make a difference but for bare metal/kernel programming, the AMD64 architecture is more, not less, confusing than the x86_32.

But in my opinion, it really doesn't matter what you learn first. The details of the ISA itself is of secondary importance, understanding how to read the documentation of the architecture and getting some hands on experience is way more important.

<comment><USER6> I meant "you can assume an x86 system will have a floating point unit and MMX", and you've explained that SSE2 is also a reasonable assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's an updated PDF version at [https://github.com/aaronbloomfield/pdr/tree/master/book/x86](https://github.com/aaronbloomfield/pdr/tree/master/book/x86)

</comment><comment><USER8> Also recommend:

[http://www.drpaulcarter.com/pcasm/](http://www.drpaulcarter.com/pcasm/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh wow. This thing is what we used over 10 years ago when I was a student there. I loved how you could call assembly code from a C++ routine.</comment>


Myths of Robust Systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.verica.io/top-seven-myths-of-robust-systems/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to draw from this- the 7 "myths" being busted here aren't being shown to be wrong, just not the entire truth 100% of the time, and AFAICT no alternative approaches are suggested.

For example, item 2 ("Simplify") tries to debunk the notion that simpler systems are more robust. The author seems to be trying to say, "simplifying a system isn't always going to make it more robust". Likewise, item 1 ("Add redundancy") tries to debunk the notion that redundant systems are more robust. Item 7 ("Remove the people who cause accidents") tries to debunk the notion that if you have someone who is always screwing stuff up, getting rid of that person will help you.

But...OK, I get it, none of these things are silver bullets or sacred cows or whatever. But what's the suggestion? Make systems more complicated? Avoid redundancy? Keep people around who always screw stuff up? This would make a lot more sense if it was presented as things which might help, but shouldn't be thought of as silver bullets that will automatically fix everything. Instead it's presented as myths being debunked, implying that the "myths" aren't just imperfect, but wrong, which doesn't make sense to me. Simpler is better than overly complicated. Redundancy doesn't solve everything but can certainly help. Getting rid of terrible employees who never seem to improve is generally a good idea. The way the list is presented seems not actionable at best, and misleading at worst.

<comment><USER3> The article seems like contrarian clickbait. Take a bunch of things that are well known to be true and challenge them in an intelligent way - except the stuff really is true and the challenges are just "sometimes not true" and "even a good thing can be overdone". It's a completely opportunistic, low- quality discussion framework even if done by a qualified person saying a bunch of technically correct things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is written here is sometimes wrong, sometimes over-simplifies what is needed to build robust systems.

If look at the list:

7/ You absolutely must remove people who demonstrate they are not skilled for the role assigned to them in the system. Role / skill match is one of the first thing an assessor will look at.

6/ Documenting best practice is the only way we have to ensure a system will survive the demise of its creators. This is captured in a quality management system and again, will be scrutinized by an assessor. Check EN 50126 in railway (my field)

5/ This is ridiculous. Failure is the greatest teacher. It shows us where we failed and by analyzing failures we progress. Dismissing this is hubris. Many safety techniques have been introduced due to prior incidents (e.g. collision avoidance systems in planes, etc)

4/ Procedures are not meant to make anyone feel clever, but ensure robust / safe operation. While you can wish procedures to be made as smooth as possible by automation, you can't just ignore them. Some procedures are simple and save lives routinely (e.g. stop at red when driving your car)

3/ Risks must be analyzed, quantified and mitigated. But when a risk can be eliminated entirely at acceptable cost, it should. EN 50126 is again a good read here.

2/ Simplicity is said to be achieved when you cannot remove anything. But it is not necessarily exempt of complexity. Saying something complex is inherently more robust does not make sense. The simpler a system, the better it can be understood by others and thus made more robust by peer review and contributions.

1/ This is not black and white. Sometimes redundancy is needed, sometimes it's a rotten idea. Reliability (MTBF, MTTR, MTBSF) calculations are needed to determine the right balance.

</comment><comment><USER5> Much of this is so overstated as to be wrong.

> runbooks, etc actually provide little value in preventing incidents.

There's a great deal of evidence that checklists have value in preventing accidents of omission. In some systems we can build around needing checklists by adding automation, but in others we can't (or it's not worth it). Runbooks are good, but you shouldn't have too many of them.

> Unfortunately it turns out catastrophic failures in particular tend to be a > unique confluence of contributing factors and circumstances, so protecting > yourself from prior outages, while it shouldn't hurt, also doesn't help very > much.

Things have causes. In complex systems there can be many causes, and the causes themselves can be systemic and complex. That doesn't mean that it "doesn't help" to defend against some of those causes. You shouldn't try to paper over every single little gap, but at the same time it's worth fixing some things. Adding mechanisms like runbooks, for example. Or backpressure. Or timeouts. Or unit tests. Or whatever.

There not being a single root cause shouldn't be taken to mean that you can't fix anything.

> The end result is that the additional bureaucracy inhibits the adaptive > capacity of the organization and ultimately makes the system less safe.

Again, overstated. Of course too many procedures and too much bureaucracy is bad. But no procedures isn't the solution - depending on people's good intentions to do things is extremely failure prone, even if people have the best intentions in mind. Procedures are mechanisms that can help us avoid those failures.

> They prevent people from interacting with the risks in a system in a way > that teaches them where the safety boundary actually is.

Just letting people break stuff is a great way to help them learn, but can also be an extremely expensive one.

> So rather than trying to simplify or remove complexity, learn to live with > it.

I don't even know what to say about this. Sure, complex systems are complex. But accidental complexity is bad and adds risk.

> The number one myth we hear out in the field is that if a system is > unreliable, we can fix that with redundancy.

This one seems right. Redundancy adds complexity (and hence risk), and only fixes unreliability if the cause of the unreliability is uncorrelated across the redundant systems. Is the cause of your unreliability uncorrelated? If it's random system failure, maybe. If it's software, no.

</comment><comment><USER6> The writer is trying to convey issues in Reliability Engineering, Human Factors and Systems Theory, but with a lot of shortcuts that muddle the message.

7 /I believe the intent was to talk about holistic problem solving, not suggesting low performance get a pass. The most contemporary understanding of human error is that although people can introduce errors, in complex systems (software included) most situations go downhill due to multiple issues. In many industries people do get fired as a way to fix the 'cause' of an incident. The Silicon Valley equivalent would be firing the human closest to the faulty configs that interacted with a bug and caused Google Cloud's June outage, without addressing the issues that allowed the network to come to a halt; or firing a Cloudfare engineer who pushed a change that led to Cloudfare losing most of its traffic for a while in July instead of digging deep into the reasons that brought their system to its knees.

6/"...we have a strong case that thorough documentation...actually provide little value in preventing incidents." There are 2.5 ideas conflated here: 1/ complex systems are dynamic, and documentation/practices have to to be just as dynamic otherwise will documents a past state. 2/ complex systems are dynamic and incidents will be most likely caused by unexpected interactions not covered in runbooks. 2.5/ Expertise involves explicit and implicit knowledge; translating implicit knowledge is a challenge.

5/ The central issue with RCA is that in complex systems there is not a single, isolated 'cause'. There are often multiple reasons an incident happened, and these reasons ripple through the whole organization. Adding mitigation strategies to address a prior incident can worsen a situation (or create a new one) especially when the choice of mitigation strategy does not address the actual reasons that created the initial incident.

4/"...people designing the procedures have a theory..." Whenever reviewing incidents, find out how the work is _done_, not written. Chances are the written procedure has mutated to make it more efficient. That change can now have highlighted a previously-unknown weakness in the system design. (Corollaries: procedures are a living document; people doing the work should write the procedures)

3/This is not about operational risk mitigation... It is about knowing how systems work at their safety boundary. One idea is that not having to deal with the system at its safety edge leads engineers to solutions that ignore that boundary or to a decrease in skills.

An example from aviation is automation diminishing a pilot's ability to aviate manually.

2/ A slight edit would have helped here. Basically some systems at their simplest work ok but will work better if complexity is added, for a particular vector of 'better'. So simplicity is not always best. There may be an assumption that all complexity is unnecessary. While complexity limits observability, there is such a thing as thoughtful system design without unnecessary complexity.

1/"...redundancy is often orthogonal to robustness,..." This item is conjoining system reliability, robustness, observability. The super short version: redundancy is one aspect of robustness. It alone will not make your system robust or reliable.</comment>


When reviewing somebody else's code, what is it that you usually find most disturbing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.noop.nl/2008/04/the-perfect-job.html

<comment><USER2> Inconsistent (or lack of) coding style. Yes, I'm serious.

A lack of coding style doesn't just make it hard to read code; it is indicative of the mindset of the author. It speaks of being sloppy; of not caring; and of not expecting people to read the code. (It also tends to be an indication that the code was revised many times without any clear vision; but that's a secondary point.)

The author of this article writes " _If I ask a real estate broker about a house, his first reaction should not be his opinion on the quality of the paint, because that is not going to help me as a prospective buyer. I can easily have someone else repaint my house, but I cannot easily change its foundation._ " Maybe he takes a different view, but if I turned up to look at a house and saw paint peeling off the sides, I'd probably drive away without even looking inside -- not because I care about the paint, but because I care about the general neglect which the paint indicates.

I don't care what style you use; but if you don't care enough to have any style at all, odds are that the foundation isn't very solid either.

</comment><comment><USER3> Comments. I've gotten used to dealing with (and refactoring) sub par code and bad architecture, but I'll never get used to comments saying things like "add one to x".</comment>


The Secret Sorrows of Over-Achievers - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebookoflife.org/the-secret-sorrows-of-over-achievers/ <comment><USER2> Being an over-achiever has also been linked to developing chronic fatigue syndrome:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022399995...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022399995000089)

My own view is that everyone is prone to burnout and CFS after chronic stress, but over-achievers tend to be more likely to push through the negative symptoms of chronic stress, which then results in CFS.

</comment><comment><USER3> > But these over-achievers are all the while trying to secure something far > more tricky, unusual and unmentioned: they are trying – through their work – > to correct an aspect of a troubled emotional past.

Umm, _non sequitur_ much?

I'm supposed to believe every kid who finds they're good at something, decides to pursue this thing and then reaches success over their peers (who are also good at this thing) are secretly running away from daddy issues or whatever?

My "troubled emotional past" turned me into a complete slacker – though I do over-achieve at that so maybe they're on to something after all?

<comment><USER4> There's a distinction from achievement and being an _over_ achiever.

<comment><USER3> Who makes the distinction of how much achievement is too much?

For some strange reason _The Song of the Lark_ by Willa Cather pops into my head as a counterpoint to TFA.

<comment><USER4> That's not the distinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah, I see that this is by the terrible "The School of Life".

They constantly produce videos that claim to have distilled philosophical works into something practical for everyday life. They often give bad advice alongside comforting you that those grapes you couldn't reach were sour anyways. There are many critiques of this company, but I've linked a critique here

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0uKnF_6E0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0uKnF_6E0Q)

<comment><USER6> That video is unimpressive. It "takes down" SoL for not being athiest, for not being liked by the "real" philosophers at [http://reddit.com/r/philosophy](http://reddit.com/r/philosophy) , and for giving practical advice on how to live a good life instead of constructing abstract metaphysical theories of the Universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A facile assessment. We all have our demons, over-achiever or not.

<comment><USER8> That's even more of a facile cop-out.

We all have our demons, but some have more demons than others, and this includes over-achievers, junkies, and other such categories of people more than the general population...

<comment><USER7> Cop-out from what? I'm not the one posting an article diagnosing the psychological problems of a broad and ill-defined class of people, I'm responding to one specific article that I think is bollocks.

To be clear, it's not that I don't think there are a lot of over-achievers that are overcompensating for something, of course there are, but what do I gain from trying to analyze them in the abstract? It's an impotent form of mass-judgement that I can see no use for except as a crutch for one with fragile self-esteem. Everyone needs to live their life as they see fit, and it will go better if they can be honest with themselves, but I'm not going to sit in judgement of someone who is not harming others merely because they exhibit obsessive behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That article didn't have any sources and blamed pathological perfectionism on psychic wounds. Ok, it's not a bad theory, but remember when we figured out that some peptic ulcers came from H. pylori, not just being uptight?

Behold some really fascinating research on perfectionism, OCD, and Tourette's:

1\. Perfectionism predicts OCD symptoms. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005796795...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000579679500017R)

2\. Tourette's, OCD, PANDAS share immune disregulation link. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174185/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5174185/)

3\. Yale: Mice with grooming tics cured by giving them histamine [https://news.yale.edu/2017/06/05/tourette-tics-vanish- mice-t...](https://news.yale.edu/2017/06/05/tourette-tics-vanish-mice-treated- histamine)

4\. Oxford: Connection between basal ganglia, histamine, and OCD & friends [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4917894/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4917894/)

I know the article was about personality/perfectionism not tics/OCD, but I find this idea that issues around "obsessiveness" could have an immune/histamine/basal ganglia cause so fascinating, since I myself have OCD and would very much enjoy not having it, even if that took the edge off my high-achieving/driven personality. They haven't teased it all out and there is no medical treatment based on all this yet. But maybe someday?

</comment><comment><USER10> Where's the evidence? Why is this being upvoted?

<comment><USER2> Here is a lay overview with links to references:

[https://www.healthcentral.com/article/personality-types- pron...](https://www.healthcentral.com/article/personality-types-prone-to- depression-which-one-are-you)</comment></comment>