Hacker News Reader

csboweon Why hasn't commercial air travel gotten any faster since the 1960s? (2009)

> “The main issue is fuel economy,” says aeronautics and astronautics professor Mark Drela. “Going faster eats more fuel per passenger-mile.

Pretty simple - we care more about air travel being cheaper and safer than we care about it being faster.

csboweon The Apollo 11 Moon Landing: Spacecraft Design Then and Now

The "From the Earth to the Moon" series is by far my favorite series/movie/documentary about the moon missions.

csboweon Apple announces Apple Card credit card

> There will be a physical titanium card, too, but there’s no credit card number, CVV, expiration date, or signature. All of that authorization information is stored directly in the Apple Wallet app.

Does this mean that the card doesn't contain sensitive information in the chip or mag stripe? Will only work if it's near your phone?

If so, this is quite different from status quo, and touches on what the Coin card failed to do.

csboweon How Twitter Became Home to the Teen Status Update

This article feels out of touch, as if it was written 7 years ago. I even looked for a published date to verify, but to my surprise, it was published this month! Instagram and snapchat have already dethroned Twiter for the de-facto social platforms of teens. Twitter continues to be a thriving community of activists (on either side of the spectrum) and media types.

Edit: I also recognize that my comment may also already be out of date, with a new platform having dethroned insta/snap.

csboweon UN: Facebook has turned into a beast in Myanmar

There's a cost (both time and money) associated with spreading knowledge through USPS or similar physical mediums. The cost of spreading ideas is virtually free on social media so there isn't much of a barrier to prevent the ideas spreading like wildfire. Good or bad.

csboweon FAA Issues Emergency Order of Revocation Against TapJets

It's more an argument of whether the flights are considered commercial or private. If the flights in question are judged to be private, they may not have skirted any safety regulations at all.

For example, on a private flight (and on some commercial ones) a co-pilot is not required. The student pilot in the right seat might as well be a passenger.

csboweon Why Am I So Lazy?

Agreed. Lazy is lacking the desire to achieve what one considers worth achieving. If tasks like cleaning and laundry are accomplishments worth less within one's mental value system than, say, the feeling of spending time enjoying an excellent TV show then choice is clear.

The key to turning around my perceived lazyness, personally, is about trying to control the value of what I spend my time on.

csboweon The History of the URL: Path, Fragment, Query, and Auth

It's base64 encoded and put into the header, according to the article.

csboweon How a car works (2012)

The section on how cars are designed is entertainingly out-dated.

csboweon Unhealthy Fixation

How is that? The way I see it, liberals consider both GMOs and global warming large problems that must be dealt with or fixed. Conservatives tend to not agree with the assessment that either is really a legitimate problem.

csboweon Microsoft Azure Outage

Maybe they unknowingly upgraded to Intel's latest SSDs in their storage array. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8626928

csboweon Microsoft Azure Outage

The page cannot be displayed because an internal server error has occurred.

Their error pages are less graceful than mine.

csboweon New Requests for Startups

Unfortunately, established players often means full of legislation protecting those players. There are plenty of ideas in the travel space - but they require the ambition to challenge governments and lobbying. Uber, Lyft, and AirBnB are a great examples.

csboweon Why are software development estimates regularly off by a factor of 2-3?

For me, a lot of underestimation is about motivation. I work best with looming deadlines. I feel like I will be motivated to work harder with a deadline that's less realistic, even if that' not always true.

csboweon How to Negotiate a Job Offer

There is really no way of knowing how much those options are worth without knowing the size of the pool and valuation of the company, anyhow. I treat these as monopoly money unless I actually know what percent of the company I'm being given. Lots of things, namely reverse splits, before an exit can greatly affect the value of those shares!