Best airport mental hack for last-minute types: Get lounge access beyond Priorty Pass
Even though most domestric lounges are hit-or-miss, it's a way to trick myself into getting to the airport 30 to 45 minutes earlier than I would. That way, if I'm running late, worst case I miss the lounge or cut short the time.
For those complaining that lounges are overcrowded with mediocre food, it's true and getting worse. However, it's buffet style - select a healthy salad option with a reasonable protein. Non Priority Pass options are somewhat worthwhile -- United Clubs have gone through a massive upgrade post Covid and so far haven't been too crowded. They also allow access upon arrival, if you really need to fire off some emails and hydrate upon landing.
As for in-flight, for former gaming geeks, try classic emulators. They won't require internet and drain very minimal battery life on your latop.
The adjacent hack is to bring an empty water bottle in your carry-on, which you fill once you clear security. Then, you have a full bottle of water and can decline everything from the "beverage cart" on your flight, meaning you never need to worry about managing a precarious open cup of liquid and ice sitting on your in-flight tray.
I’d struggle to ever pay for lounge access. Even when I’ve flown international first class the lounge is still usually quite disappointing in food, comfort and ambience. It’s better than sitting at the gate but maybe only $10 better. The one exception would be if I had a long layover.
When you are overseas you realize how mediocre things are here. You can make claims about excess and such, but even business class lounges like Qatar in Doha - chef made meals done restaurant style, with a wide menu, beautiful shower suites you can book a 45 minute slot (for free), etc, and very comfortable chairs and a huge amount of space…
Lounges of U.S. carriers in U.S. airports serving international flights that are about as busy as overseas counterparts have a nearly universally poor showing when compared to those overseas lounges. I’ve read this comes down to the financialization of those U.S. carriers who dilute lounge exclusivity chasing those sweet credit card profit centers while overseas carriers are not under those dynamics; U.S. carriers don’t usually get to have a hand in the design and layout of airports so their lounges are less spacious and amenity-filled; overseas international hubs tend to cater more to long-haul multi-hour layover itineraries than the short turnaround domestic traffic that is more common in U.S. airports; and U.S. cost structures against wage stagnation trends are more prohibitive to the more lavish splash outs in overseas lounges.
The best part of the lounge for me is that you don't have to shlep your luggage into the restroom. I don't care about the food, just the seating, chargers and ability to leave your luggage safely while you use the facilities.
My home airport is MCO - Orlando - where most travelers are either infrequent fliers, flying with families and international vacationers. I use every hack that’s available not to be caught up in that and we fly a lot.
This includes - Clear, TSA, status for priority check in, lounge access and status for earlier boarding so I can already be situated in my seat with my luggage if I just have carry on.
In ATL, my former home airport it’s not as bad because you have more business travel.
> The one exception would be if I had a long layover.
That's what I did for a day-long layover in Istanbul. I took a short self-guided tour of the city via tram, then returned to the airport in the evening and paid for the lounge until my 1 am flight. It was like 20 Euros, absolutely worth it (this lounge had a shower).
I've taken the freebie lounge access on those rare occasions I have a business class ticket, but only if there is no line. If it's a zoo, what's the point? I can sit in one of the empty gate areas with no one around me until it's time to get on the plane.
Concur. Amex plat or equiv is a good option. Important caveat that their lounges tend to fill up, so you may not get in. If you do, it's step up from Delta lounges etc; food's good, relatively.
That’s just the opposite from what I have found. Given the choice between the Delta lounge and the Amex lounge, I always choose Delta lounges. They also seem to be less conveniently located.
That’s especially true in ATL with a lounge at each gate for delta more or less. I still don’t know where the Centurion lounge is in LAX as often as I’ve been there.
Yea def at Atl. The centurion there is full 50% of the time I go, is in a weird spot, and it's crowded a good portion of that. (But it's beautiful) And the Delta at each term is nice. May be a bit of an exception as its a Delta hub.
Agree completely, between myself and my wife as an authorized user, I gladly pay the almost $2000 a year in annual fees for the Delta Reserve and the Amex Platinum for lounge access in almost every scenario.
The Reserve easily pays for itself with the once a year round trip companion pass good for anywhere in the US, Caribbeans, Mexico or Central America and the hotel credit and the Platinum the same with the credits.
My wife and I have averaged around a flight per month since Covid. With a lot of random trips back home to ATL where Delta has nine lounges
I don't pay for lounges but I find that arriving at the airport affords a peace of mind that is priceless (iv'e seen how flustered the hurried get in security or baggage desks) . If I'm working or hanging out at the airport - I'd just be doing the same thing at home.
I had Priority Pass for a few years when I had a premium credit card for other reasons. I think I used a club a few times when Star Alliance/United wasn't available. Nothing special. And the meaningful meal discounts were few and far between.
Years ago I asked my teacher what percent of street merchants or high school kids would know how to write some of the more complicated, uncommon characters from the advanced textbooks. She replied street merchants maybe 50%, but high school students 100% -- during high school every student will be at their lifetime peak literacy, because they will be cramming and memorizing how to write every possible character in preparation for the college entrance exams.
I tell locals I can "speak, read, and type", but only have 1st grade writing abilities in Mandarin. The key is typing -- you can chat on Line, WeChat, email, or any mobile apps to accomplish day-to-day tasks. But the typing is phoenetic either via Roman pinyin, zhuyin, romaji, etc.
So yes, this problem only comes up in languages where drawing the characters are mostly independent of the pronunciation. You don't need to type individual words, you can type phrases and the input tool presents choices sorted by most commonly used. Therefore, even sending communication is closer to a reading exercise rather than a writing exercise.
Totally playing devil's advocate, does this loophole work in Twitter's defense?
The WARN act requires large enough employers "provide at least 60 calendar days advance written notice of a plant closing and mass layoff affecting 50 or more employees at a single site of employment."
Ok, so say everyone laid off clearly worked from home for the past 12 months. There was no single site of employment with 50 or more employees. It was just 1 or 2 employees cut from each of 3000 different sites of employment... their own homes?
Obviously, this logic has little chance of working, but I welcome more clarity around whether every w-2 employee needs to be tied to a company office address, and how labor laws might need to change for remote-work situations.
Chess.com has the "personality bots" that supposedly play with the style of various well-known players, streamers, and GMs.
But I remember watching Hikaru Nakamura stream once playing through each of these bots (and beating them fairly easily). He commented that several of the bots were doing things the real players would never do, both in style and even the opening move (1.e4 for a player that almost always opens 1.d4)
It was fairly early after the personality bots came out, so maybe they've fixed it by now.
Chessmaster 3k had that feature. But I was never good enough in chess to evaluate how well it worked. Still, I thought about the simplest method:
- get a chess playing algorithm (I think it will probably well with minimax or mcts) with many tunables,
- use a genetic algorithm to adjust the tunables of the first algorithm; use how similar it plays (make it choose a move on positions from a database of games from said player) as a goal function.
Doesn't seem terribly complicated to do, but don't know how similar to a human it would play.
Fair enough, but that implies there may come a day when mortgage rates are much higher and then housing for new buyers is not at all affordable.
Homeowners that locked in 30-year fixed rates might not be too concerned at first. But eventually, even they may need to move or sell someday. Wages or buying power will need to catch up to avoid some downward price pressure.
Reading the ending hits closer to home and made me more sad than expected!
Andrew Welch was uneasy about the idea of scaling up, especially when they could survive as they were just fine off their utility products
Way back in the day, YC always said not to worry about competitors raising tons of money (not sure if that's still the rec). The 2008 DHH boostrapping talk during Startup School is still one of the most influential videos on my career as a founder. But that path is increasingly less popular!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY
Lastly, for all the bolo comments out there, I remember the huge transition from modems to school ethernet that made it playable - it was honestly one of the reasons I was looking forward to dorm life!
Most seafood you eat that you didn't catch yourself was frozen. Properly prepared and frozen seafood can taste better than unfrozen. And yes, their unfrozen foods that are going bad get turned into soup, but that is a normal restaurant thing.
I just don't get it. Who can respond positively to the continuous 1/2 second fast-cut edits and obnoxious "hard rock" music of videos like this? It's like everybody involved wants to advance from producing cruise ship documentaries to working for early 1990s MTV or something.
Of course it's not the most in-depth rigorous study of on-board ship operations, but what do you want / where else are you going to get a glimpse inside the ship for a popular audience? It has enough info to be useful I think.
Consumers can buy seafood at the grocery on, say, any given Thursday because they know the delivery truck makes periodic visits. And if they learn that schedule on a Tuesday they can wait it out two days until the phase wraps back around with fresh(ish) lobsters.
The phase reset on a cruise has the intended effect of re-supplying the fresh(ish) lobsters but with the unfortunate side-effect of dropping you off at the shore.
Lobsters are a weird example because they're usually alive in the tank (at grocery stores around here they're the only live animals sold) so I wouldn't think "fresh" would matter much?
It is a mix. Resupply depends on many factors. Remember ships are stopping at different ports - and often different countries every day (except for cross ocean cruises which of course which don't stop). Thus they look into local taxes, availability, and such. Meals are planned which means they know what they need - but also means they can look at what will be available. They have the ability to load at any port. If they can get X cheap at some port they will buy it there. Thus if they can contract a local farmer to supply something cheap in one port they will. If shipping means some non-local food is cheaper in one port than another they will buy at the cheaper one. If labor is cheaper in one port they will try to use more of that labor.
Supply management is important to a cruise line. They are very good at getting the best prices. They take advantage of the ship moving to get the best prices.
My undergrad was a super nerdy school grinding largely solo in the CS lab. Later I did an MBA program to take me completely out of my comfort zone.
I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose. If it was the chess equivalent, I fall into Fool's Mate on move 2.
Unfortunately, there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquaintances that you are legitimate and worthwhile for further collaboration. But most of the time, best to turn it off.
I can tell you I grew up extremely poor, to the point of homelessness, and if you think for a second I give a shit what bob thinks of me, you're wrong. Those sorts of experiences give you a different perspective. It's one of the major reasons why I've situated my life in such a way that these same people's disapproval isn't going to affect me. In fact, I had a company inadvertently learn that lesson late last year, and it hurt them way more than it hurt me. They made the mistake of evaluating my worth by how I play that game.
We all value different things, but we all have the same core needs that make us value security. Food, water, shelter. In my head right now I cant think of one status signifier that doesn't also signify security. Gold toilets included.
Well none of us have eternal security. Money is just a buffer. Network is a part of it. Health is apart of it. Education is a part of it. Network and health and education are hide things to hide when living your life, but they are signals of security and that one can afford to invest time, effort and money into them.
If you met these millionaires next door, they signal this security in many different ways outside of material wealth.
please stop moving the goalpost. I stated that people like us value different things, and that remains true whether or not you want to argue that people who don't display the typical social status behavior do display behaviors of some sort (of course, but it's not interesting).
> I gravitated to those who were chill, and perplexed anyone who tried to play the Status Game by losing on purpose.
I think this is also a sort of power play, but also an amusing one that I too enjoy - e.g., it's quite fun, when questioned about what I do by someone who obviously cares about social status, to not mention my well-paid job working at a FANG company but instead talk about working as a dance teacher.
Reminds me of how in high school, there are kids that are smart and want to show it off (raise their hands, answer teacher's questions), and there are those that are on the "next level" -- they don't even need to prove to everyone else that they know the answers, so they never raise their hands.
In personal conversations some are eager to share that they are doing something amazing, but those on the "next level" don't try to impress the others :P
> there ARE times when it helps to be able to quickly convey to new acquaintances that you are legitimate
There was a thread on HN about shibboleths. It was kicked off by someone who pointed out that tech support took them seriously and skipped the basic "have you tried turning it off and on" steps when they saw XCode was installed.
That's a great way of describing it. I'm a lets focus in what matters style of worker, with status bit flips only when facing clients (the degree of bit flio is so drastic that it catches colleagues off guard).
Wikipedia: "In linguistics, code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation."
Maybe a dumb question from a non-medical guy: are medical images considered "stationary" from a stats viewpoint?
That is, will medical images of diseases we diagnose in the next 20 years look a lot like the ones from the past 20 years, or is there a danger of over-fitting on an evolving data set? Could either the technology or the biology of the disease evolve?
In a prior life I was a quant trader, and financial market data is notorious for having the non-stationary problem. On top of market rules and structures changing all the time, once someone discovers a profitable trading idea, their own actions change what the data looks like for everyone else from that point forward.
There are always potential issues when a machine learning algorithm is applied over time.
Example #1: Let's say that cancer rates are increasing over time and cameras are improving over time. You might end up with a weird artifact in your model that higher resolution images are more likely to indicate cancer.
Example #2: Let's say that cancer-detecting algorithms are widely successful and so someone makes an app that lets you upload images of skin and the app tells you the probability of you having cancer. Suddenly a model that was trained on suspicious lesions is being used on normal freckles that people uploaded for fun. You end up with a lot of false positives. Maybe you try to combat that by including images uploaded to the app (that you somehow obtain labels for). But now you have a model that predicts that photos taken in brightly lit medical offices are likely to be cancer and blurry images taken in bathroom mirrors are not cancer.
You could argue that Example #2 is more about the difference between training data and data to be scored, but the fact remains that outside of tightly controlled scenarios, the way data is collected nearly always changes in time and ends up affecting model performance in unexpected ways.
> One difficulty in such a comparison is that Gleason grading standards have shifted over time, so that scores below six are now rarely assigned, and assigning a higher grade has become more common
Stationarity isn't really the issue here, as you don't typically analyse this data as measurements from a single stochastic process.
However - you have hit on a very real problem. Imaging systems have got better over time, imaging quality even on the nominally same system can be different from different sites. Image coverage can change by both policy and system capabilities, etc.
It's worse the more sophisticated the imaging systems are. Consider MRI, which is perhaps better thought of as equipment to perform physics experiments than as an imaging device. In that case, nominally equivalent scans from different vendors (even different generation from the same vendor) can have significantly different characteristics. And there is a ton of processing going on, there is no such thing as "raw" data here - even the vendors themselves may no longer be able to really (or at least easily) characterize what is being done.
So yes, in any machine learning applied to these data sets, you have a very real risk of learning odd characteristics of the sample data and hurting your generalization.
Biology isn't as likely to be a problem I think, but biological response to changing treatment protocols, sure.
My guess is largely no. The diagnosis and actions taken are in isolated environments e.g, a cancer in person B is not impacted by a diagnosis and treatment in patient A. This is not the case in trading where everyone is analyzing and influencing a single messy environment.
Even though most domestric lounges are hit-or-miss, it's a way to trick myself into getting to the airport 30 to 45 minutes earlier than I would. That way, if I'm running late, worst case I miss the lounge or cut short the time.
For those complaining that lounges are overcrowded with mediocre food, it's true and getting worse. However, it's buffet style - select a healthy salad option with a reasonable protein. Non Priority Pass options are somewhat worthwhile -- United Clubs have gone through a massive upgrade post Covid and so far haven't been too crowded. They also allow access upon arrival, if you really need to fire off some emails and hydrate upon landing.
As for in-flight, for former gaming geeks, try classic emulators. They won't require internet and drain very minimal battery life on your latop.
The adjacent hack is to bring an empty water bottle in your carry-on, which you fill once you clear security. Then, you have a full bottle of water and can decline everything from the "beverage cart" on your flight, meaning you never need to worry about managing a precarious open cup of liquid and ice sitting on your in-flight tray.