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Jun8
For those of you who are as ignorant of this as me: BASE is an acronym (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASE_jumping). I don't really understand what exit refers to in this context, anyone care to enlighten? It's surprisingly hard to google info on this, must be a really fringe thing.
tmoullet
I assume it meant "jumpable cliff" i.e. a cliff/tower high enough and smooth enough that you could jump off and deploy a parachute and land safely.
jackcarter
"Exit", short for "exit point", just refers to the place someone BASE jumps off.
kej
The exit is the edge where you jump off to start your fall. You "exit" the building or cliff or whatever.
yan
As others said, exit is where you jump from. Exits matter because not all are safe vertical drops, some are way more stylistic than others and in case of BASE wingsuiting, some lead to specific lines. A line is the flight path a wingsuit pilot takes after jumping. Recent times, proximity flying has been getting more popular, where a person wearing a ram air wingsuit tries to get as close to cliffs, ground, trees or other natural elements as possible. As you can guess, lots of people die doing this.

For an example of a safe exit that immediately leads to a very spicy line, check this video, at 0:40 specifically: https://vimeo.com/82949889

hfsktr
My palms got sweaty just watching that video. I don't think that is something I could do.
BrandonMarc
Agreed. I'm so glad the people who do record helmet-cam videos of it, and post them for me to watch instead.
adwf
Thanks, my first thought was some super-secret underground lair...
rjknight
What fresh hell is responsible for the scrolling on that site? I realise that he's used to seeing the world flash before his eyes at nauseating speed, but I'm not sure it makes for a great web interface.
cocoflunchy
Scrolling doesn't work at all for me, I have to manual click and drag the slider...
GigabyteCoin
Scrolling works 100% in my latest firefox 27.0
anyfoo
But it behaves... strange. You'll notice it if you use a touchpad and kinetic scrolling. It seems too fast and somehow not very, well, kinetic.
josefresco
Read the article in FF 26 and mouse-wheel scrolling was indeed way too fast and "slippery". Reminded me of all those Flash scroll bars in the 00's that just worked... horribly.\

I pulled this quickly from the source: http://areaaperta.com/nicescroll/

Curiously, the nicescroll website itself seems to behave a bit better. Maybe it's this implementation that went wrong.

keehun
It works terribly on the nicescroll site itself. Why do they feel like they need to mess with the scroll behavior? Why break the expected behavior?
bentcorner
Oddly enough it's not even necessary. Site works fine with NoScript on.
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solidsnack9000
What is meant by the last sentence?

> For us came on the probable cost of one big awesome flying ride off the majestic Ulvetanna.

kzrdude
The failure of the group to work well cost them mission success (they couldn't do the jump).
frodopwns
Not very relevant to hacker news.
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dvere
Every time I see one of these videos I have two thoughts. One, insane never could do. Two, that's what flying in my dreams looks like, I can completely see why they do what they do.
BrandonMarc
What's a interesting about the article is what it doesn't describe: namely, the nature and details of the conflicts which led to the abort of the mission. I expect the writer is being polite, and considers this an open letter to both sides of the conflict(s).

That said, with all the buildup, it feels a wee bit unsatisfying to not know what went wrong. Perhaps the writer doesn't quite know for sure, since everyone (themself included) is biased.