Ask HN: How do you handle server security/intrusion monitoring? - <AUTHOR> I've been wondering for a while now - how do owners of small webapps monitor intrusion attempts, scan for past successful intrusions, and prepare for the possibility of one?<p>Sometimes the effects of an intrusion are obvious (a blackhat takes down the site), I'm more worried about the case where someone plants something on the system to monitor and send info back out. How would you detect this? <comment><USER2> A really skilled intruder won't leave any obvious clues behind if he gets in. You are likely to encounter this only if someone is deliberately targeting your server for some reason.

That said, most intrusion attempts are unsophisticated, analogous to a person walking around a parking lot trying car doors to see if any are unlocked.

Tools I've used (it's been a while so some of these may be dated) include logwatch to check for suspicious log activity, portsentry to watch for suspicious connection activity, and tripwire to spot modified system files.

<comment><USER3> Tripwire is useful for post-facto detection - at least as long as the attacker doesn't get root - but logwatch defaults to letting stuff through, which means that any change in log formatting by any program means that your "security" suddenly fails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> sudo apt-get install rkhunter chkrootkit logcheck monit

rkhunter and chkrootkit will both look for insecure configuration, permissions, and known root kits. rkhunter will also maintain a database of the signatures of your system binaries. I assume there are overlaps between the two. I don't really care, I run both.

logcheck will watch your logs and email you when something shows up in a log that doesn't match a configurable set of regular expressions. When I add a new piece of software to a system, logcheck goes berserk. I go through the emails I receive and add in new regex's to ignore the harmless notifications until they finally taper out and disappear, only leaving me with the true exceptions.

Look over the documentation for all three of these, and make sure that they're actually running. Personally, I don't want an email unless something is wrong. If I get an email every day, I'll start to ignore it. I don't think I'd notice if an email I was ignoring didn't show up, so I optimize for no output unless it's something I should read. I chase down the cause of every exception in my logs. No excuses. If it isn't an exception, I add a regex to logcheck.

I run monit because it is pretty easy to set up, and it sends me an email when a server process gets changed or restarted. It lets me enforce limits on a server process, so I can potentially get warning of an attack as it happening. I suspect monit is nowhere near the most sophisticated tool for this purpose, but it meets my needs very well.

As for other basic security stuff... Don't use port 22 for ssh, use something much higher so that you won't get the continuous pounding on the front door that an ssh server on port 22 receives. Disable root login, as well as password login. Use certificates to log in to your machine. Configure servers to listen to 127.0.0.1 whenever you can. Install a software firewall to only allow access to http and ssh anyway.

Unless you've done something stupid with your web app, you've made it incredibly difficult to impossible for script kiddies. If you piss off an elite black-hat, it's probably safe to assume they can own you, and you likely won't know it. So make good backups, with regular offline backups that can't get destroyed by a hacker with a particularly malicious bent.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1 - use a minimal server base install. start with a linux/bsd install that has as little running as possible for your needs. I've found both ubuntu-server and FreeBSD work for me.

2 - Install things that you understand. I don't install large meta-packages. I also install most things from source: nginx, ruby, gems, postgresql. All these things make/install without much effort. When compiling, only include options you need.

3 - Lock down SSH. Login only with SSH keys, protocol 2. Also, change your sshd port to something less likely to be scanned. This way, your SSH log files won't have too much garbage in them and you actually can check them with little effort. You can find lots of tutorials on locking down ssh.

4 - Document _everything_. If all else fails, your docs enable you to recreate your server environment within a few hours.

If you do all this correct, when you upgrade your server, e.g.: apt-get upgrade, you will only be upgrading basic distro stuff, mostly security updates.

oh yeah, _little_things_ like making sure your ruby/blub app processes are connecting to your db with an "app" id instead of an "admin" one is a choice decision ;).

</comment><comment><USER6> FreeBSD handbook goes over some practices, treat security like layers of an onion peel.

[http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/security- intro....](http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/security-intro.html)

Some things we found useful

* don't have ssh bind to a public interface on. You need to VPN in first and then ssh to the private IP. we only have 80 and 443 open on public interfaces

* portaudit is awesome. it keeps you up to date if there is an exploit for software that you run, not just "is there an update". portaudit will tell you if there is an unpatched vulnerability out there so you can make a decision on what to do.

* paranoia - don't trust anything. we run WP on a DMZed box that doesn't have access to anything. we mod_proxy all requests to this box from our edge servers. jails are also great for this, give everything the least amount of permissions necessary to run

* monitor your servers, any weird cpu usage or bw. cacti is quite nice

You can also block all outbound traffic on your serves that isn't responding to a requests.

</comment><comment><USER7> * you use logs so you can be aware of suspicious events at network, system and app level

* you have scripts to analyze these logs and notify you if anything suspicious happens. This is faster, can be done more often and is less tedious for you

* you have some reference files somewhere so you can compare checksums

<comment><AUTHOR> Logs are great for forensic investigation after one has been alerted to an exception, my question is more about expanding alert coverage to various other suspicious activity.

Do most people just make a strong password and trust that that keeps the baddies away?

I think one thing that would be interesting would be a utility that checks the checksums of files and contents of directories of various installed components against canonical versions stored elsewhere. Does this exist?

<comment><USER8> Check out <http://OSSEC.net>, its a host based intrusion detection system. It does everything you described and more. I am slowly working on a better Web UI with real time alerts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that looks great. Any idea how it compares to the other tools mentioned? (tripwire, portsentry, logwatch)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Monitoring intrusion attempts is almost always a waste of time; secure the server instead.

Set up the server in a secure way, with many layers of defense. Any applications that accept data from the internet should be very robust. After that, add mitigating stuff like SQL permissions, a chroot jail for the web server, running as a totally unprivileged user (i.e. not nobody), and so on and so forth. Pick a secure kernel, too, and make sure that your software is compiled with exploit mitigation techniques (e.g. ASLR, W^X). Throw out anything that needs patching more often than once a year (once every ten years is a better goal). Don't pick a weak password and leave SSH password logins enabled.

If you are interested in detecting intrusions, a first layer may be a list of checksums of crucial files. This is built-in to my favourite OS, OpenBSD, but others can use Tripwire, AIDE or any of the other programs. Note that an attacker with root privileges can typically bypass this.

EDIT: Look at mod_security, too, if you use Apache and cannot trust the web developer (which may be you). Just accept that it will, in the end, not save you.

EDIT2: And don't store passwords in plain text. Or MD5.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is per-user salted MD5 not secure? I'm using SHA1 nowadays, but I have an old app using MD5.

<comment><USER3> There are no currently known cryptographic weaknesses in this application of MD5, and using salts is adequate protection against rainbow tables. But a weakish password can still be guessed far too quickly.

Using a proper key derivation function like OpenBSD's pessimised Blowfish (with a suitable numbers of rounds), John the Ripper tries about 60 passwords per second on my hardware. Against salted MD5, 3000. (Also see PBKDF2, which is also a good solution.)

SHA1 isn't really that much better here, sadly - the problem is not cryptographic weaknesses, it's weak passwords and a function that can be evaluated too quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heh... Basically, we don't.

Sad, really. It's mostly due to apathy and no mandate from higher-ups to pursue stronger security, but in general our farm is only strong enough to keep generic attacks at bay. 0-days, man-in-the-middle, hell even some SSL vulnerabilities are possible for us. We have a "security team" so we defer most of the security precautions to them and just keep our base software configured not to let anyone unauthorized in.

However, utilizing host-based as well as network-level intrusion detection tools, combined with kernel-level and userland-level security patches and mandatory security access control policies is the best all-around solution. Grsecurity for kernel patches, an OS base with strong security in mind (many new distros use things like stack-smashing-protecting patches to glibc), snort for network IDS, tripwire/portsentry/others for host-based IDS, SELinux configured for all your hosts to further enforce your access requirements.

And of course, diligence: monitor security lists (particularly the one for your distro/kernel) and update immediately when a patch comes out.

</comment><comment><USER10> Using OSSEC (open source).

Seriously, it puts rkhunter, logcheck and all these old tools in their toes..

Check <http://www.ossec.net>

It monitors your logs, file changes, etc all by default, simple to install, etc.. I love it.

<comment><USER11> +1 for OSSEC. It is my preferred one for sure. I use that to monitor my Apache logs, Wordpress, SSH and a few more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hello,

I'm the technical co-founder of a IT security start-up.

Here are my thoughts for comprehensive server security in the case of a server exposed to the Internet (typically a web server in a data center for example. Many tools etc refer to Linux but the ideas are the same).

Sorry about the formatting, some day I'll come around writing a blog article or something.

You need to consider many aspects of security.

In general measures will fall in one of the three classic Protection, Detection and Response & Recovery categories.

1) Protection means hardening your server (system and apps).

The three biggest exploits from the outside are: weak passwords, out-of-date or unpatched applications or system and running unneeded services or unsafe versions when other more secure versions exist.

There are the three main doors or external "attack vectors" in your network. If you protect these three doors then you are 90% or more secure than the average organization. There are other possible doors (for example, you may have a misconfigured server, or a web form that can be exploited with an SQL injection) but these three are almost always present in all exposed networks (in order of importance):

a) Weak passwords: login access with poor passwords (passwords that are words in a 'hackers dictionary', like a simple word or combination like 123456) are probably the single most vulnerability exploited in the Internet.

Solutions:

\- Use strong passwords. (most important) Also:

\- Log access

\- Filter the login access (in the firewall, based on IP origin for example).

\- Use a password policy that enforces strong passwords

\- Carry your own password brute force / dictionary attack.

b) Unpatched software. Exposed services (web, mail etc) and applications (like a web-based CRM application etc) that are not updated usually ahve well-known vulnerabilities that mallicious hackers look for and have the tools to exploit.

Solutions:

\- Update system and application software (ideally automatically, periodically)

\- Subscribe to the software security newsletter (if it exists) or keep track of its development

\- Run periodically an external vulnerability assessment

c) Unnecessary or unsecured services running. Exposed services or applications that are not used or needed are just other ways for intruders to get in. Sometimes the organizations don't even know that they are there; especially in the past some server installations would by default install unneeded services. Another side of this is to run unsecure applications when there's a perfectly similar solution that is more secure. For example an FTP server transmit all information (including passwords) in clear text over the network, so an encrypted solution like SFTP/SCP is preferred.

Solutions:

\- Remove unnecessary software packages.

\- Run periodically an external port scan (see nmap for example)

\- Run periodically an external vulnerability assessment (see Nessus, Qualys or have an independent third-party to do it).

\- Look for safer alternatives to server software.

As other protection and hardening measures:

\- Use firewall to block by defaults all ports that are not in use, implement basic safety measures (for example avoid spoofed addresses; no connections from the outside pretending to be from an internal IP address) and rules to mitigate DoS (limit the maximum number of connections at a given time from a particular IP address). Linux' netfilter (iptables) can do all this.

\- Protect management login pages (including ssh) with port-knocking and/or source-based IP filtering.

\- Web server (apache): take off its signatures, deny / access, explicitly allow access, uninstall unused modules, limit upload/post sizes, check with benchmark tool (ab etc), check vulnerabilities with specialized tools (nikto, others), consider mod_security, optimize web server (this helps in case of high traffic or DoS): enable compression etc (see YSlow).

\- Security by obscurity: this is fine as long as you know what you're doing. For example, change the ssh port from 22 to something else as other people suggested.

Besides the server you also want to protect its availability. Probably the simplest and cheapest thing is to have a backup server and use DNS fail over (the hardest part is synchronizing databases).

2) Detection.

There are several general tools and ideas for intrusion detection:

\- Logs. Logs are a sysadmin's best friend. There are auxiliary tools or whole systems to manage/archive logs etc, from parsers to complex apps like the ones offered by intellitactics for example. Tools like Linux' logwatch can email periodically status messages.

\- Monitoring tools. Sudden unexplained big increases in CPU or bandwidth may indicate a security problem. Monitor your server from the inside (there are many tools for Linux: cacti, monit etc) as well as from the outside with an uptime server monitor (pingdom, mon.itor.us, wasitup.com etc) as well as a change monitor (ChangeDetection.com etc).

\- Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). I don't recommend in general using a network IDS (like snort etc) for a server basically because you'll get all these alerts and you won't know what to do with them and at the end you'll ignore them. Do install a host-based IDS like a checksum application (tripwire or afick for example).

\- Rootkits (rkhunter etc): they will detect basic exploits.

3) Recovery. This is arguably the most important aspect. For a single server it means mostly having a good backup strategy. I like to use VPS' and have daily and weekly backups of the whole VPS snapshot both in the data center as off-site. Recovery with a VPS is in principle (barring un-committed db data etc) as simple as restoring its snapshot backup.

Also: I have licensed tools and experience in security assessments; I can do a quick check of your web server and give you some recommendations at no cost.</comment>


PayPal Test Program Will Let Home Depot Shoppers Pay at Checkout - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-06/paypal-will-let-home-depot-shoppers-use-system-at-point-of-sale.html <comment><USER2> Someone should show Home Depot the recently destroyed violin, at PayPal's direction in lieu of return.

How _do_ you destroy a circular saw, anyway?</comment>


Show HN: I wanted a fat-free, bare-bones wget for Windows so I made Nugget - <AUTHOR> http://trax.x10.mx/nugget/

<comment><USER2> Strip VirusTotal out of it, or make it an option, not a default.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I might end up making two separate builds actually - or just add an option, I don't know yet. However judging by the number of downloads I'm getting (about 500/day), the current implementation seems to appeal to quite a few users.

<comment><USER3> Lots of people like McDonald's. That does not mean that it is high quality food.

At the same time, the number of fires in a given country is undoubtedly lower since the rise of McDonald's, as there are surely thousands of cretins who would start fires by attempting to cook for themselves.

So yeah, I recommend making the VirusTotal thing an optional feature or remove it entirely; you say you don't like bloat, well that's a bit of bloat right there for many users.</comment></comment></comment>


Are we merely AI fuel? - <AUTHOR> Have we crested a threshold where technology is beginning to advance faster than us individuals will be able to keep up with? Humans are slow. We go to college for 4+ years. That's more time than the next paradigm shift could take, and college itself is already becoming irrelevant. Eventually no one will be able to keep up. Students will learn whatever there is to learn, contribute years or perhaps months of work, and be discarded. Will we somehow oscillate from employment to 'study time' and back? <comment><USER2> Even after reading the text of your question few times, I have no idea what are you asking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you read Superintelligence? It is a great read</comment>


What's the Impact of Hackerporn? - <AUTHOR> http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-impact-of-hackerporn.html

<comment><USER2> If this article makes it close to frontpage, I wonder if he's going to write a post about the impact of a post about the impact of his posts being "hackernews-ed" on his baseline traffic on his baseline traffic...

I think it's turtles all the way down on this one.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I do Y Combinator On Tourist Visa - <AUTHOR>

Hey Guys,
I'm planning on coming to the USA in particular Silicon Valley for summer (at least) so ~3 months.
I have applied to Y Combinator but regardless of investment, I have decided to pursue this idea and will be hacking away at it.
I'm from England and I'm wondering can I do Y-Combinator on the tourist visa for 3 months or is that not allowed? If not, what visa should I apply for...
Also if I can do it on a tourist visa... what visa should I apply for afterwards (I can't sponsor each other like some people have done as I'd still have the majority)
THANK YOU GUYS. <comment><USER2> I just went through the visa process as my wife is an alien and we had to apply for her green card. Before that she had B-2, F-1, and originally a J visa. All of these visas are very strict. You cannot work on a tourist visa. You're not even allowed to volunteer(!).

I know the process can be very time-consuming, so do it ASAP. Check out this PDF from the State department for more information: <http://travel.state.gov/pdf/BusinessVisa.pdf>

In regards to the specific question of YCombinator, I'm not sure. If you already have a company set up abroad I believe you might be able to get a B-1 as it's akin to finding investment. I'm no lawyer though, so please do as much research as you can.

</comment><comment><USER3> We need details. Do you have a degree, how old are you, how many years of experience do you have in the industry?

When did you graduate from university?</comment>


We changed our apply page to no longer allow students from windows - <AUTHOR> https://higher.team/images/windows.png <comment><USER2> Do you require students to wear a hoodie too?

Since back-end web applications run on a server, not on laptops, it makes more sense to work in that environment from the beginning. A web-based IDE like Cloud 9 or CodeAnywhere with the LAMP environment (or whatever) already set up would allow your students to get right to coding, without having to jump through your phony hoops. You are imposing your idea of how "real developers" work based on a small sample of hot VC-funded companies in the valley.

I know lots of serious developers and none of them run real applications on their laptop. Few of them use desktop Linux. Web servers don't run GUI-based operating systems. Forcing everyone to try to get your idea of a programming environment running on their own laptop is just wasting time. It's the same as being forced to install Flash to use a bank or airline web site.

Dismiss "legacy IT departments" all you want but there are 1,000 times more jobs with real companies making money than there are at VC-funded startups in SV. Maybe you don't think those jobs are sexy, but you're teaching people habits and career strategies, not just programming.

I think you are already behind the curve with your Mac/Linux laptop requirement. Google engineers use Chromebooks (so do I). Chromebooks and iPads are the default in many schools. Those devices can be great for learning programming and actually writing code.

Regardless of technical arguments about operating systems or stacks or what venture capital firms fund (you really think they base those decisions on what laptops the developers use?) your "amirite" dismissive tone is off-putting. Good luck with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> gregjor, sir, I ask you, if you had 100's of people applying to your school and you could filter it by a simple regex to remove all the non-serious students from the list so you could pay attention to the serious students wouldn't you use that filter? I'm not saying I won't help people on windows machines. I'm saying their 1st assignment in our school would be to install linux on that pc.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps, if I thought anything in the browser headers indicated a serious or non-serious student. I don't think user-agent meets that criteria.

If I had hundreds of people applying to my school I'd have a standard development environment set up for them so they could connect to it remotely, regardless of what brand of laptop they own or which OS they happen to have. That way they could start learning to program -- what they are paying for -- rather than spending a frustrating hour or two trying to install Linux, or in the case of MacOS trying to deal with the versions of Apache and PHP and MySQL Apple installs.

I've been to classes that start with "install Linux" and what happens is the first day is wasted while one or two people struggle getting wi-fi or their mouse to work, or don't have enough disk space, or whatever. It's a waste of my time. That's why public and private schools are adopting Chromebooks.

If you look around you'll see quite a few developers using a Surface Pro these days, since it's lighter than a Mac and can run Windows apps, which is a requirement for a lot of jobs and some schools. Two of my kids must use Windows for their college classes and job. Should they (or I) have to buy a Mac just to go to your school?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can't google how to install [https://www.virtualbox.org](https://www.virtualbox.org) on your windows machine and get a linux VM up that'a okay. But that's step 1. And I will help the student do this. But stop pretending like it's bad teaching to make this step 1. This is great teaching. Getting a degree from HDT means when you graduate you will be a linux expert. You can't become a linux expert without taking that 1st baby step of leaving windows.

<comment><USER2> Did you post on HN to get comments and criticism from other professionals? To drum up business for a $50K programming course? Or to troll?

If anyone wants to sit next to me for two years learning Linux, PHP, MySQL, HTML, Javascript, etc. I'll teach you all that for less than $50K, and you can live in a fun exotic city that costs 1/5th LA prices. You'll get to work on REAL applications for REAL companies and even learn how to freelance and get customers. I'll even make an (unaccredited) degree for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> go for it! I'll be happy to list your school on [https://higher.team/tier1-tier2-tier3-code- schools](https://higher.team/tier1-tier2-tier3-code-schools)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a blind person I'm glad I have no need for your course since I already know how to program. Linux accessibility is a giant pain for most blind people. While the Mac is accessible your looking at a $1000 entry price compared to $500 for a Windows laptop with a free screen reader. Never assume you know best, people like me have good reasons for using Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Never assume you know best" well I'm sorry but I'm not trying to make a school that caters to every single person's personal issues. I'm trying to create a leading silicon valley / silicon beach code school where the best of the best go. Being blind has lots of limitations I'm afraid. I would tell my own son this if he was blind too. And I do know the best about _this_ issue. I've taught 100's of people coding and trying to do it on a Mac is much more efficient. I have not had a single blind student yet.

<comment><USER3> Please list the limitations you know so much about? Your sample size is far to small to make any generalizations about what blind people can and can not do just because you have not taught any blind students. Also read up on WSL, it's pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an educator, your lack of empathy for your (potential) students would greatly concern me regarding your ability to teach people from where they are, instead of what's easy for you. But that's fine, I'd be happy to teach folks who simply want to learn, regardless of what their hardware situation is.

<comment><AUTHOR> I aded this to page: BTW This is not saying we will not teach you. We still want you to apply. And installing linux on your pc is a great first assignment. Seriously, our teaching style is we through you into a working web company as an intern. If you were to show up for your first day with a windows laptop, your very first assignment would be put linux on it. You will learn a lot doing this. But this thread on hackernews makes it seem like I hate windows people and don't want to teach them. This is not true. Just complete assignment 1 and you can apply.

<comment><USER5> This is the height of arrogance. I cannot express how offensive it seems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice.

I'd change it, though, so it would disallow both Windows and OSX.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do believe this is the first positive comments on this thread! 3 points here we come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Developer, and long time BSD user who has dabbled in linux. I keep trying to get away from Windows, but it keeps being something I have to use for work. So many businesses use C# and Microsoft SQL Server for their back ends, and IE 11 support is the bane of my existence for web development. Maybe it's different in southern California, but everywhere else Windows is still king.

<comment><AUTHOR> anyone who gets VC funding from a major Silicon Valley fund, uses linux and mysql, and no ms sql server or IIS or any of that _legacy_ stuff. I want to teach people coding so they are ready to go for work major Silicon Valley companies, not legacy it departments.

<comment><USER8> With all that funding they might as well afford a proper PostgreSQL license.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's your site, do what you want.

Wamp.

I don't dual-boot or open a VM to browse HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's just the /apply url that does the windows check. the rest of the site can be viewed from any os.

<comment><USER10> You should probably change that to the entire site, so people know about this idiocy immediately and don't waste time with you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you are missing the point. 100s of people are applying. When they get into the school 10% have a pc not a Mac. It's not worth that 10%. I'm going to teach the other 90% that have Macs already. That's plenty of students. Why would it be wasting time with me? I'm a great teacher and coder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty hardcore.

<comment><AUTHOR> it's just not worth it. if they are serious about learning to code, step 1 is linux or Mac not windows, am I rite?

<comment><USER12> "learning to code"

I didn't know specific OSes were required to learn to code.

"am I rite?"

No. Clearly you need a source and I have a feeling you're not going to find one.

Your childish tone may prove to gain you favor with other myopic people, but you sound like the people I wouldn't want as a teammate, don't worry, you'll get some interested people, but they'll be just like you, but maybe you won't notice.

<comment><AUTHOR> dude, wtf? I've worked all over the industry and hating on windows is just normal. Like everyone uses Macs and a few geeks use linux but no serious programer uses windows. this is just fact. Our biggest competitor [https://www.turing.io](https://www.turing.io) sells students new macs.

<comment> house9-2 > Like everyone uses Macs and a few geeks use linux but no serious programer > uses windows.

This statement is false, you might need to take a look outside of your bubble - it is a big wide world out there.

> dude, wtf? I've worked all over the industry and hating on windows is just > normal.

And this makes it ok how?

I haven't 'worked all over the industry' but I have been building web applications for over 15 years using various technologies and on different OS. They all have their warts and they all shine in different ways.

<comment><AUTHOR> anyone who gets VC funding from a major Silicon Valley fund, uses linux and mysql, and no ms sql server or IIS or any of that _legacy_ stuff. I want to teach people coding so they are ready to go for work major Silicon Valley companies, not legacy it departments. it makes it ok because this is what students needs to be taught to the right jobs. I cannot tell a student it's a good idea to learn C# or MS SQL Server when I fundamentally don't believe it is.

<comment><USER13> Andrew, nothing to do with windows or the article. But your attitude in the comments.. You seem to have a very close minded and insular view, it disturbs me that someone with such a view is in a position to teach. Perhaps try and think outside of the silicon valley VC startup web-app bubble, otherwise when it pops (which it has in the past) you will be in for quite a shock.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added this to the page: BTW This is not saying we will not teach you. We still want you to apply. And installing linux on your pc is a great first assignment. Seriously, our teaching style is we through you into a working web company as an intern. If you were to show up for your first day with a windows laptop, your very first assignment would be put linux on it. You will learn a lot doing this. But this](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13399445">this) thread on hackernews makes it seem like I hate windows people and don't want to teach them. This is not true. Just complete assignment 1 and you can apply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> they think people browse to their /apply page from a webserver?

<comment><AUTHOR> huh? we think people goto our /apply page all the time from browsers. those browsers send a field called user-agent that contains information about what operating system that browser is running on.

<comment><USER14> not that. say my webservers run centos or rh. my desktops are mostly windows. i remote to my webservers, dev or staging or production, to do stuff. and actually they don't have desktops installed. none of my machines can visit that /apply page then. if someone runs windows on their desktop and uses vagrant to launch their dev/test instance it'd probably be headless too. windows desktops have ms office and can play direct x games. unless u want to force people to choose between a linux desktop and not applying. thats ok too.

<comment><AUTHOR> think of it like a test. Say you are on windows and goto higher.team/apply and get the windows message and really want to apply to the school. How could they quickly get around the user-agent check? [https://www.virtualbox.org](https://www.virtualbox.org) and [https://elementary.io](https://elementary.io) would work right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Replying to an old thread of yours: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13188673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13188673)

That item handles mains voltage. Do not modify it. If you really need to modify it find a competent person to cut off the 3 prong mains plug, shorten the cable, and fit a new plug. The new plug will be ugly. A competent person is anyone who repairs electrical items - washing machine repair people for example. But, mostly, don't modify it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree I know very little about electricity and current, voltage, amps, all that stuff. I don't really grok it. But code I get. Why are you replying to an old thread of mine here?

<comment><USER15> I didn't want you to kill yourself or others by electrocution or house fire because you fiddled around with a cable designed and built to meet some important safety specifications.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you! it was a close one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Could wireless replace wearables? - <AUTHOR> http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/could-wireless-replace-wearables <comment><USER2> So someone could make that motion tracker thing out of Alien, which works through walls, just using wifi and an LCD screen?

I want one. Where's the app?

Actually, reading the original paper, it needs quite a bulky antenna array, looking like a TV aerial (photo on page 3: [http://126.96.36.199/bitstream/handle/1721.1/86299/MIT- CSAIL-T...](http://220.127.116.11/bitstream/handle/1721.1/86299/MIT-CSAIL- TR-2014-008.pdf?sequence=1))

I still want one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Similar, a camera can also be sufficient to measure heart rate: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5QVm8M9PE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA5QVm8M9PE)

The method is actually quite interesting. By exaggerating slight changes in color you can actually visually see someone's pulse (and other small changes in the environment.)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if this technology will eventually become good enough to measure the heart rate of lying politicians from just video records. Bill Clinton would make an excellent example. Makeup might fool it though.

<comment><USER5> You don't need to name a politician to imply lying. Naming one you believed _didn 't_ lie would be more interesting. The problem may be similar to the lie detector problem: if so much of what you say is false and, in some way, you really believe it, it may be indistinguishable from the truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "But events such as Fitbit's recent recall of more than 1 million fitness bands over user skin irritations,"

Weird that they pointed this out as a flaw in wearable technology. Isn't that just poor choice in material? Seems like a solved problem to me.

<comment><USER5> When you are trying to hype the _Next Big Thing_ (tm) it helps to denigrate the current big thing. Also, how big a deal the FitBit recall is is a question of how impirtant that material is to their sensors.

Besides for little 3 month old Annie, you don't want to have to strap something on her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let me guess this can have a wide range of applications outside of baby monitoring as well...

<comment><USER8> Did you mean "baby making" monitoring? ;)

<comment><USER9> Just as illegal as when you try it with a thermal camera?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I read somewhere ages ago about researchers measuring pulse and respiration of a mobile phone user from the data available to a cellular base station.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't this just RADAR applied at higher resolutions and indoors? I'm sure they've done some really interesting stuff if you dig deep but this doesn't seem like "Wireless" as much as it's transmitting and observing radio reflections[1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar)

<comment><USER12> The article mentioned that there was a ton of noise and the researchers had to use customer filters to remove them.

I wonder how well this technology would work in the real world. There will be a lot more interference and random, unexpected obstacles than in a lab environment.

<comment><USER11> I guess I object to calling it "Wireless" when it's really just RADAR. It feels like they're trying to use the term wireless to make it less innocuous? I mean if they said they were working on High Resolution hand-held RADAR systems then the public would freak out thinking about the kid in the picture. Meanwhile calling it "wireless" seems to make it ok because we're all exposed to "wireless" with our wifi and wireless phones.

In the end it's all radio with all it's pluses and minuses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I see the future of purchasing intent based analytic solutions, and it is scary! Now in store mechanisms will not only determine the customer's intent and object/area of interest (this is the current "big thing"), but assess heart rate and infer excitement too!

There you are, beset by a horde of sales people who recoil in horror when they find your elevated heart rate is the wrong kind of excitement, making the potential sale an awkward one:

       "Arghh! Get back! Get back! He's in the adult section!"

We live in interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER9> The goal of wearables is a focus on the self not the environment - i.e. my digital environment extends out from me, I don't configure my environment to project it onto me.

It's interesting technology, but in a totally different domain to wearables.

</comment><comment><USER14> Shudder to think of the military applications of this

<comment><USER15> With autonomous robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Direct link: [http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/could-wireless-replace- wearab...](http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/could-wireless-replace-wearables)

<comment><USER17> Thanks. We changed it from [http://gigaom.com/2014/06/13/mit-can-now-track-a- heart-rate-...](http://gigaom.com/2014/06/13/mit-can-now-track-a-heart-rate- through-a-wall-with-wi-fi-signals/).</comment></comment>


US firm says handheld puke ray is ready to go - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/01/laser_energetics_puke_ray/

<comment><USER2> So, do sunglasses that block green wavelengths render this ineffective?

<comment><USER3> "No mention is made of tactical possibilities involving mirrors, reflective sunglasses etc."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do they test this technology? Where do they get the people to test on? How large was the test group? How about group diversity? (Children, elderly, pregnant women, people suffering from epilepsy, heart disease, etc)? Have the test results been validated by a third party? Ah, the list goes on and on.

<comment><USER5> Usually we test this on our own soldiers. So you have a valid concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Don't puke me bro!"

</comment><comment><USER7> Ok, I'm sure this isn't going to get abused. </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't a taser be less messy?

</comment><comment><USER9> "Set Phasers to Stun!"</comment>


We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/10/micromobility-urban-design-car-free-infrastruture-futurama/600163/ <comment><USER2> What I see a lot in this thread is people's either/or opinions. Love cars / hate bycicles or vice versa.

No. It is a balancing act, where cars, bycicles and public transport co-exist, and infrastructure is developed strategically in smart ways and in a prolonged effort.

When I was young in The Netherlands for the most part the cars still dominated the streets. Over time I've seen cities and road networks gradually being transformed to what I now consider a Walhalla for cyclists. Public transport plays a big role in that too, and the Dutch still love their cars.

I highly recommend reading this article: "No helmets, no problem: how the Dutch created a casual biking culture" [0] which interviews the American Bruntlett family that wrote the book "Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality" [1]

See also the great discussion on HN at the time [2].

[0] [https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2018/8/28/17789510/bi...](https://www.vox.com/science-and- health/2018/8/28/17789510/bike-cycling-netherlands-dutch-infrastructure)

[1] [https://islandpress.org/books/building-cycling- city](https://islandpress.org/books/building-cycling-city)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861803)

<comment><USER3> As a Dutchman who's lived in a few places abroad, the cycling 'problem' is quite simple: it needs to be the norm. No helmet, because neither do you require them for pedestrians. You can cycle in all weather, just as you would walking (a hard mental one, my non-Dutch partner can't get over the idea cycling is for sunshine). Public space design must start with safe (no sharp turns, looking at you France!) and separate cycling lanes. Perhaps the fact that urban cycling infra is a much cheaper/efficient use of public land could be more emphasized. In urban areas, cycling is faster, and electric biking is expanding your reach a few times over. There are people who bike a 30km commute without breaking a sweat (see bike highways).

Sure, there will always be situations where it will be difficult, such as steep areas (electric bikes can do a lot here, as well as accepting a little sweating which is normal in NL) or heat that exceeds body temperatures which in turn makes expiration impossible (no easy solutions for this one). But that leaves most of the urban areas on this globe perfectly suitable for cycling, which would be in everybody's favor, and their own first and foremost.

<comment><USER4> I live in a very mild clime, but still don't bike when it's rainy. What do you suggest gear-wise for bicycling in say 5-10C but wet? I have a 30 minute bicycle commute that I'd like to do more often. A typical waist-length jacket leaves most of my body wet, but a longer jacket is awkward to bike in. If it's over 10C, I can just wear shorts that don't absorb water, but under 10, it gets quite uncomfortable.

<comment><USER5> 5-10C but wet is easy mode. Use a rain jacket, rain pants, and rain spats (optional). It's harder when it's warm and wet, as you can choose between getting wet from the rain, or sweating under your waterproof gear.

<comment><USER4> Warm and wet is easy because I just change clothes at work. There's a shower at my office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in Christchurch, NZ. After a massive earthquake in 2011, I had high hopes that we might redesign the city for the next 100 years instead of the previous 50 (i.e. for people, not cars).

Instead the city council built a few bike lanes and even then people lost their goddamn minds.

"You're taking away parking space!" "All these bike lanes are slowing traffic" "No one wants to bike into the city"

Meanwhile, cyclists are steadily increasing in numbers and the centre of town is actually seeing some signs of life for the first time in decades.

But heaven forfend we actually do something radical and pedestrianise the city.

<comment><USER7> The biggest counterpoint here is what about families? A mom with three young kids in tow pretty much needs a car to get around. Or elderly people? I can't really take my 90-year old grandma out to dinner if it requires her to bike her way to the restaurant.

Thinking about non-car based transportation methods is great. But the reality is that large segments of society are always going to need some sort of car- based option. You can't just ban cars from a city center without totally excluding a lot of young people.

<comment><USER8> Ask the Dutch. How do they do it? Or do you assume they do not have young kids or grandmas?

Why is it that whenever people talk about designing cities for pedestrians and bikes, someone on hackernews thinks it means eliminating all cars entirely forever. For a forum ostensibly designed for entrepreneurs, it shows a tremendous lack of imagination.

Answer: * Public transportation inside cities such as buses and trams

* Trains to rural areas

* Park-and-ride garages for people to drive in, and park next to transportation hubs

* Underground parking garages at the edges of pedestrian zones, or even underneath them, coming up directly above them

* Ubiquitous bike storage and bike attachments such that yes, in fact, a mom with 3 young kids can tow them from a single bike - moms in Amsterdam and Berlin do it all the time.

<comment><USER7> The difference is that Holland is entirely flat, has an average high of 71 in the summer, and rarely if ever gets icy.

The Dutch experience simply doesn't translate to most of America because of the terrain and climate. Elderly people people will die if you make them walk in the Florida summer. 7 year old children lack the leg-strength to bike up California hills. Both groups are likely to slip and crack their heads open in the icy Boston winter.

<comment><USER9> I actually appreciate you pointing this out. I get rather tired of smug assertions that America can just do everything like it's done in Europe or something when the landscape and population density are so very different.

But I don't think that means we can't borrow any lessons at all from them. The biggest lesson we can borrow from the Dutch seems to be that they set out to intentionally make their cities more pedestrian friendly and bicycle friendly starting in the 1970s when people became extremely fed up with children dying due to being hit by cars.

<comment><USER10> From the reverse argument: it's really very tiring that the ultimate defense from any American on any topic ultimately boils down to American Exceptionalism.

Yes you have a wide variety of population densities and climates. So does Europe. So does everywhere else in the world.

It's the most boring and lazy argument to make, and it never actually answers anything. Exactly what is so different about LA compared to Paris that it can't have good cheap internet and cyclists must die at 5 times the rate?

<comment><USER9> What's far more tiresome to me is someone picking a completely pointless fight with some detail of some comment as if the rest of the comment did not exist.

I've lived without a car in the US for over a decade. I no longer have a driver's license. I would like to see America become more pedestrian friendly and bicycle friendly.

I don't think you accomplish that by arguing that "Well, you just do everything exactly like the Dutch!" I think that's a lazy, unhelpful and disrespectful answer that actively ignores real and meaningful differences between the literal and figurative landscapes of the two countries.

It's not good communication to say "Just do everything exactly like the Dutch." If you want real solutions in the US, you need to think in a more nuanced way about what pieces of the Dutch experience you can reasonably use in the US, taking into account real differences between the two places.

Ignoring the differences between Europe and America very often comes across as open contempt for Americans and their presumed stupidity and laziness. It's not an effective means to promote actionable ideas.

No one is likely to take advice that they are just wrong and stupid and lazy and should wholesale copy a system that works well elsewhere without bothering to examine differences between the two places and trying to make some alterations that will hopefully result in a better fit.

Based on the comment I replied to, I feel like San Diego, California could try to borrow ideas from the Netherlands without a lot of critique beforehand. But LA has vastly different weather from Paris and a very different landscape and history of development. So, no, you aren't realistically going to replicate Paris in LA.

I will also note that they have been rioting in Paris. Paris is not some perfect paradise that has figured everything out and never has any problems.

Claims of European superiority are frequently overblown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really think the concept of bike boulevards is one that needs more attention than bike lanes. Take a network of side roads and make them inconvenient for large vehicle through-traffic via bollards and other obstacles. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard)

The result is a quiet, safe setting for 'micro-mobility' bicycles and scooters with decreased bike-car interaction. You don't even need bike lanes, because almost all of the traffic on those roads is bike traffic.

The article talks about bus + bike roads, sort of like Market St. in San Francisco, but I don't think that's optimal. For one thing, buses should be able to go much faster than bikes, especially Bus Rapid Transit, and as such pose collision danger. Also, BRT should be upgradeable to light rail, and rails are very dangerous for micro-mobility devices with small tires. Buses and cars coexist easily on the road. Buses should have their own lane, next to the cars.

<comment><USER12> I don't think this would solve much. In the UK at least, side roads are plenty safe enough for bikes. The issue is the big roads that people want to actually cycle on (because they are the fastest route).

<comment><USER13> Yeah, here in Munich the side roads are generally safe for bikes because they're narrow, much narrower than side roads in the US. But that by itself wouldn't make for a ton of biking if we didn't also have many protected bike lanes on arterial roads, as well as off-street walk/bike paths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's excellent to see momentum building like this. Cycling:

\- Has lower cost-of-entry in terms of purchase/rental

\- Keeps you healthier, which can also contribute to remaining active and mobile in older age

\- Provides easier self-maintenance for most common faults

\- Requires less fuel (particularly combustible/fossil)

\- Can be just as fast, or faster, for transit from A to B in urban environments (especially with e-bikes)

\- Is more social and human - cyclists can chat to each other while commuting or in transit, rather than being isolated in glass bubbles (which sometimes leads to misunderstanding and road rage when a simple conversation - even if a little confrontational - might resolve things)

\- Requires less physical space - which eventually will make it _easier_ to park cars, once we reclaim this inefficient use of our environments

\- Pollutes less

\- Is more easily portable within other modes of transport (trains, aircraft, or cars)

\- Is, in the presence of good bicycle infrastructure, simply a much more pleasant, enjoyable, and self-directed way to travel

One remaining issue perhaps is large load-carrying; and that's certainly somewhere where cargo bikes and cargo e-bikes are innovating. And also a situation where the physical distribution of goods is changing (for example, via on-demand delivery services, some of which themselves use bicycle couriers).

It's really time to get people shifting towards bicycles in a big way. The arguments against it broadly do not stand, especially in the presence of e-bikes. Cars aren't going to go away, but they're way overused currently.

<comment><USER15> So many great points. Bikes are the number one carbon cutting technology we need to scale up.

<comment><USER16> And working from home. Just no commute at all!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious as to what planet you'd have to be living on to think that if we have billions of dollars to spare on huge transport infrastructure projects that aren't cars, that it should go to bikes and not public transport + walkability.

I'm guessing it's a special magic planet with startlingly good weather year- round, without disabled people, where everyone gets to age into spry Euro- oldsters.

Not wanting to kick off a unproductive circular firing squad vibe - in an ideal world, we'd do both, and more public transit frees up existing roads for cyclists. But public transport _has_ to come first.

<comment><USER18> This "good weather" argument against biking is so bizarre and disconnected from reality... Have you ever noticed that the most biking friendly places in the world are in middle-to-northern europe? Copenhagen isn't a particularly sunny place. Many people don't care, if you give them good infrastructure they'll cycle with every weather.

<comment><USER19> It's a regional statement, not disconnected.

The reality is that many people in North American live far from their workplaces and some of us live in areas of extreme cold. This is where 15m of exposed skin can result in frostbite. We bundle up, but by cycling we've turned the commute into an unnecessarily dangerous adventure.

The same applies to cities further south: a non trivial amount of days are extremely hot and you're risking heat strokes.

Edit: don't get me wrong. Bike infrastructure is awesome and I wish there were less cars on the roads, etc. We just have very different variables to play with so we need to come up with different distributions of mass transit vs personal transportation. Comfort is important!

<comment><USER20> I live in Edmonton, North America's northernmost major city. I've been cycling year round for about 15 years. It went down to -42 in February, and I was out riding.

I've never had frostbite. I've still got all my fingers and toes. Although it isn't enough fingers and toes to count all the people I've known personally who've been killed or crippled in car accidents.

<comment><USER19> It's definitely not impossible, but it's riskier.

My point is that we default to easy and comfortable when given a choice, and cycling in -42 is neither. We won't see mass adoption of cycling in these areas, regardless of infrastructure, unless we forced people to do it... and I don't think pushing the majority of people towards enduring that kind of weather is something we should do, when there are alternatives.

<comment><USER20> Learning to read isn't easy or comfortable, so we force everyone to do it, because most would default to illiteracy if we didn't. Not destroying the planet is even more important than literacy.

<comment><USER19> Sure, no disagreement there. I'm not arguing against bikes but we should also be heavily investing in other forms of mass transit.

You bike in during the dead of winter, and that's amazing. But how long is your bike ride in? How far out of the city do you live? Would you still do it if your commute was double?

Additionally, in Ottawa, many people live far out of the city and commute in via the highway for 30-40 minutes by car because it's more affordable than living in the city. The bike ride is well over two hours. They will need other solutions as well.

<comment><USER20> My commute for a long time was 16 km each way, now it's 1/3rd of that. I've been hearing about climate change since I was a kid, so I've had my whole life to set my life up accordingly. I didn't make decisions that made commuting by bike unfeasible.

I don't think I've met a bicycle commuting advocate who doesn't also advocate for improved mass transit and walkable development. We stopped building neighbourhoods that way and razed many of the ones we had in the second half of the 20th century, so there's a huge supply and demand imbalance for walkable neighbourhoods in North America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While it sounds preposterous right now this problem will soon solve itself with already built "bike lanes". And bicycles are not the solution.

The solution, as this article touches on, is light weight electric transport using the existing road structure. There's a strong indication of this future in the fact that last year the Dutch bought more electric bikes than normal bikes in total. And they paid twice as much for their electric bikes ($2000) than they did for their pedal bikes. Let that sink in: The Dutch are already starting to abandon their pedal bikes. This is the future of urban transport: lightweight electrics.

One underappreciated, but critical aspect of electrics is their lack of exhaust fumes. This will allow much more of city roads to be covered or even inside. With electrics you could park inside almost everywhere.

Electrics will soon start to invade the "slow lane" of cities with bikes and mopeds. Even a cheap electric bike already feels much safer in urban car traffic than a pedal bike because it has super fast acceleration from a dead stop and therefore can ride in regular traffic without being an impediment or needing its own lane.

If you want to lead this revolution forget about city council; buy yourself an electric bike and ride it in regular traffic with a hi-viz vest. The more people that do this the sooner the transition will happen. The current urban roads are the 'bike' lanes of tomorrow.

(One thing city councils could usefully do right away is to immediately ban any fossil fuel motors under 125 cc from their roads.)

<comment><USER22> Even electric bikes are not the solution, at least not in many parts of the world. What happens when it rains / snows? I don't know what the solution is though, maybe small electric cars, self driven, as part of public transportation service?

<comment><USER23> I regularly ride my "normal" bicycle (including 2 little kids in a trailer) in the rain in Berlin (where it rains for 167 days per year on average, which is ~45% of the year).

You just need the appropriate clothes & gear.

<comment><USER24> _where it rains for 167 days per year on average, which is ~45% of the year_

Well, neighbouring country in which it rained on 199 days on average in the past 20 years or so, but since it doesn't rain all 24hrs of those days, a more interesting figure would be that it apparently only rains about 10% of the time here. Meaning about 90% of the whole time there is no rain.

<comment><USER23> my point was that rain is not unusual here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I lived in Palo Alto, CA, (heart of Silicon Valley) and commuted by bike to work. (I even took my bike on the train for a few weeks.) Once I met my wife, we were able to bike to each other's homes and also bike to work.

It was great!

Then we moved in together, and because she had a dog, Palo Alto became prohibitively expensive, and we had to move a few miles away. I only used my bike three times after that. Even worse, my job then moved in the opposite direction, so I ended up with a commute that was only possible by car.

This is why I laugh at these kinds of articles. There's a lot we can do to encourage many forms of transportation, but the nature of a large world is that a car lets you drive 20 miles from point A to point B in a manner that's prohibitive by foot, bike, or train.

IMO, I think extremely large, subsidized, easy-in, easy-out parking lots on the edge of population centers makes sense. Within the population center, vehicles should only be for public transportation, deliveries, and people with physical disabilities. It's a great compromise that works for people who just can't bike 60 miles a day, or for people who live in areas where trains don't make sense.

<comment><USER26> If more people used them trains and buses would be able to run much larger networks thus making the 20 mile commute via train reasonable. However until people use them the network cannot be that large.

If the transit network was that large the freeway network in cities would not be worth it, thus further biasing trips to the train. However there is no easy way to get there from here.

<comment><USER27> Build it and they will come - you can't expect everyone to get out of their cars and start using public transport, then somehow use the slight increase in ridership revenue to sponsor huge infrastructure projects. Simply put: the government needs to throw down SERIOUS capital and political will to build out 20 miles of trains all around a metropolitan area.

We need to get away from the myth of single people and their small steps changing the world...we need our governments to actually invest in their own society's well-being and structure.

<comment><USER26> Be careful, reality gets in the way.

Right now transit construction costs are out of control in the US. (Road is only slightly better). Spain is able to build subways for about 1/5th the cost of New York city. Nobody knows why - we can find people doing nothing, high wages, and more harder rock, but all these together are just a fraction of the cost difference. Until this problem is solved we are better off building roads because we can afford them.

Thus if you want to advocate for build more, you should first advocate for figuring out how to build cheaper. (whatever this means - though if you sacrifice safety I'll oppose you)

<comment><USER28> A substantial part of the problem in the US regarding transit projects is also lack of practice and atrophy of experience and capability.

In the past 50 years, we didn't build those sorts of projects frequently. When we did, they were often one off projects in one city not repeated until another 10 or 20 years passed, and there have rarely been these sorts of projects going on in many places around the country at once.

As such, you've got:

\- A very small number of suppliers for anything, especially with any track record of succeeding at contracts in North America, because the market has been unable to sustain more. Competitive bidding isn't when you get 3 bids and only 1 or maybe 2 of them fully meet your needs/requirements.

\- Very few people with any real depth of expertise on building these projects on your management side, so running them effectively is unlikely at best. International hires may have more experience building a subway in the abstract, but that doesn't help them navigate very different regulatory/permitting/planning/contracting environments.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>--

I'm not necessarily saying "just throw money at it and eventually they'll figure out how to do it better", but to some extent we're never going to get to faster/cheaper construction until we're actually doing it consistently.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article paints the interstate highway system as some sort of evil incarnation without even giving so much as a breath to the idea that the Interstate highway system is one of the largest and most successful civil works projects of all time. The Romans had their aquaducts. The Americans have their highways. Prior to the Interstate system, it would take as much as two months to travel coast to coast. Eisenhower was part of an Army convoy in 1919 that did just that. It took them 62 days. With the interstate system, it can be traversed in just a few days. You have no idea how blessed you are to live in an age where transportation is so freely available. While our passenger train network may suck in the U.S. and rush hour traffic is awful, we have a phenomenal road and air travel network.

Meanwhile, I support bike/scooter lanes in dense urban core areas. They're not a solution for most people though, unless you can afford to live in the densest and usually most expensive parts of a city.

Autonomous buses should be within reach this decade. I can't think of a better mass transit solution more easily fitted into the existing systems than autonomous buses or micro buses that could fill more niches and provide reliable service 24/7.

<comment><USER13> But Eisenhower wanted the interstate system to go _between_ cities, not _through_ cities. And it's the latter that's the real problem.

That we have freeways between cities is no real issue for bikes, in Germany they have the Autobahn system and they still have reasonably bike friendly cities like Munich. Similar situation for Dutch cities IIRC.

But the autobahn system doesn't cut through the middle of cities in Germany nearly to the same extent as it does in the US. Actual high speed parts of the Autobahn basically stop a certain part of the way into Munich, and you have to get off onto surface streets.

But anyway, that's just one problem among many for car dominance in the US.

<comment><USER29> Germany has a fraction of our population. In 1950 the U.S. had 150 million people. Today it has 320 million. The interstates were largely built outside of urban cores but sprawl often took them over. Most European cities were built before the car. Their grid and design is totally different than U.S. cities.

Autonomous buses are an ambitious but realistic solution to people's transportation needs based on the reality of American real estate, roads, and commuter needs.

You won't get there with bikes in the U.S.

<comment><USER13> It's a fixable problem, long term. Bikes aren't super dependent on high density like a subway, even the relatively low density of many US suburbs can work okay if the infrastructure is good, and you allow POI (like shops/restaurants) within a reasonable distance. That would necessitate zoning changes, but it's easier to achieve than overall density changes.

If you look at cities that DO have good infrastructure, they have relatively high bike rates even without being particularly high density, like Davis, CA, or Portland. The idea that it just can't happen in US cities is not borne out by the facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've thought about this a lot having lived in Chicago and now London and seen two very different types of infrastructure.

Chicago arguably has a true "cycle superhighway" with its 23 miles of continuous bike lane on the lakefront I was able to commute 10 miles to work very fast and with little exposure to cars.

London is a work in progress, with lots of infrastructure slotted in.

What I've come away with being a pretty committed bike commuter is that a good bike network should incorporate routes that are disassociated with the road network where possible. Like the lake path in Chicago, these routes are much safer, accessible to new cyclists, And fast (with few intersections). Also see Chicago's elevated bike path the 606 for another example.

London could develop something similar along the river Thames (it does exist in parts, but it needs to be continuous, wider, and better developed), and improve routes along its canals. London could also develop and allow more routes through its parks. This in particular is low hanging fruit as routes through many parks are limited and have just been added to roads that cut through parks in many cases (another issue worth debating is whether roads should be cutting through parks to begin with).

</comment><comment><USER31> I cycle 24km to work across the city each way on an ebike. It's the fastest mode of transport available to me, even limited to 25km/h.

The bike takes an hour, the bus 90 minutes because of its indirect route, and the car about the same with morning gridlock. You could do it in 35 minutes with no traffic.

When I take the bus I arrive to work tired and groggy. When I cycle I arrive energised. I don't drive because parking on campus is usually impossible.

The problem is that there are limited shower facilities and the ones in my building are extremely grotty, so much so that some colleagues have stopped cycling. Appeals to facilities has only resulted in them locking one of the showers permanently. If more people cycle that's great but it'll have knock on effects on other infrastructure and organisations need to pull their finger out and make changes to encourage cycling.

<comment><USER32> 24km? What's your bike's range? Over here ebikes are just about limited to 25-30km on full charge. Do you charge it at work?

<comment><USER33> So I don't own an ebike but I've rented an MTB ebike a short while ago and was able to comfortably do 70km while still having over 1/4 battery left. That being said, I did not have it set to the max the whole way. Mostly spent in eco mode which is more than enough

<comment><USER32> Wow, 70km! Where I live that's crossing almost half the country. I didn't know some ebikes had such a range.

<comment><USER34> Some are pretty good, I think the last one I rented had 80 to 160km range depending on the power setting/terrain. I used it to visit around my home town, climbed hills (paved and in the woods), visited small towns 35km away, climbed the steepest road (7km, 600m height difference) in the area on full power, &c. and never worried about the battery. If I ever move back to the country side I'll get one for sure. You can even remove the 25kph limit and make it go up to 50kph if you get a license plate / insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _Cars are the slowest, lowest-bandwidth forms of urban transportation._

This is the kind of thing I read a lot in micromobility advocacy articles, but it seems like it can't be true. How can a bike, scooter, or moped be either faster or higher-bandwidth than a car?

Also, serious question: if electric SDCs became widespread, would it still make sense to advocate things like bikes?

You can't transport a family of three or a baby as safely in a vehicle smaller than a car (as they lack things like walls and air bags), and the many obese, elderly, and disabled people in the US can't use micromobility easily.

<comment><USER36> I'm faster than a car in downtown SF on my jump bike. Even on market I'm even because no one makes a green from one green.

<comment><USER36> Honestly didn't think I said anything weird. I imagine throughput is high because lots of us can do this. I'm not a hater, I actually have an SUV. I just also ride electric downtown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Rarely I take bike lanes, they are less fast and irregular

The road should be used by bikes in my opinion (lower infrastructure/maintenance cost, and the separation between road and bike lanes is actually how I broke my right clavicle), and bikes should have priority against individual cars (not urgency and shared transports of course)

<comment><USER13> This will never work except for the tiny percentage of people who are extremely confident riding with cars. You're never going to get grandmas and grandpas and 8-year-olds comfortably riding in car traffic on regular roads.

I don't understand why people keep suggesting this when bikes generally already _can_ use the road, and this is clearly a failure as far as getting more people biking.

Meanwhile, basically everywhere that implements protected bike lanes and off- street bike paths aplenty gets tons of people biking. But we shouldn't do the thing that's proven successful, because...?

<comment><USER38> A "simple" change could affect the way cars and bikes interact on the roads.

It's always the cars fault.

If the law were to change to favour the smallest, lest protected vehicle at all times then those driving cars would take much greater care when driving around them.

<comment><USER13> That would be a good, but insufficient change. People _will_ drive fast on the wide, straight roads common in the states, for example, the road geography itself encourages it. Enforcement changes alone are not enough.

Parents are never gonna feel safe letting their kids bike just because hey, if they get hit by a car it'll be the driver's fault!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wr tried. People threw them in the ocean and got cities to ban them.

It's going to take me a long time to get over how broken hearted I am about people's reactions to various bike and scooter share programs. I understand not using the services, but people were openly hostile to them.

<comment><USER40> the problem here with these services were that there have been just too many and around popular spots/bars/etc these share bikes just piled up to a point where it was nearly impossible to use the sidewalk especially for people with impaired vision

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Might as well ask here, but why do bicyclists always seem to blow past stop signs and red lights? Whenever I am on a motorcycle, I always feel more endangered by a bicyclist coming out of nowhere than a car. Can anyone give me insight into this behavior?

<comment><USER42> The common refrain I've heard is that it takes quite abit of effort to completely stop and then get back up to speed on a bike

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Dreaming bigger than bicycles would be helpful as well. Electrification, and having more than two wheels is a big step up in terms of practicality.

There's a real sweet spot somewhere around where electrified pedal tricycles, electric three wheel mopeds, and small electric cars like the Renault Twizy, that has huge potential.

I cycle everywhere but I'm realistic about the issues with mass adoption. Bicycles are fundamentally unstable and they are too narrow to expect road discipline by cyclists to be an emergent property. There is also a very narrow band of weather conditions, especially as a function of how hilly it is, where most people can cycle without overheating.

Electrification is a game changer but there's no two ways about it: these are now literally motorbikes, with all the same potential for antisocial behavior (pavement riding, traffic weaving, shortcuts through pedestrian only areas.) Not being quite so efficient with the amount of road space used might benefit cyclist behavior _and_ force the authorities hand into providing first class infrastructure for non-car travel.

My personal solution is a bit of a hack: ride a cargo bike with a large front bucket. Keeps me slow and riding safely :)

</comment><comment><USER44> We need to build bike lanes as their own adjacent network of lanes on our streets, with stop light integration within the city- meaning separation of cyclist and motorist, but adjacent -and bike lanes that run parallel to but removed from major thoroughfares.

Aka the copenhagen model.

Nobody is gonna ride a bike if it's unsafe or difficult or if the bike paths are disconnected.

So yes, we should be dreaming beyond bike lanes, because we ought to be building proper ones right now!

</comment><comment><USER45> I love micromobility. I think it's the future of human transportation, in combination with better, more efficient, more _convenient_ , mass-transit.

But this "let's dream big about bikes" is like saying "we should feed the planet". Well that's a great notion, and we can totally do that. But who the fuck is going to pay for it?

The car lobby had lots of money, and was able to seize on an abundance of necessity and want: the military needed to be able to move things, cities needed to be able to expand housing out to suburbs, the country needed work, and politicians needed an answer to these problems and a big win. Interstates were a _godsend_ to all these various issues, and the car lobby's funding made that an easy argument to make.

What the hell does the bike lobby have? Chump change. A _lack_ of necessity. Hopes and dreams. Nobody's going to build a Futurama world based on that. You need more than dreams; you need a _cause_. And you need to be able to provide real value for everyone, not just people who like to bike. That means businesses, politicians, etc

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm always wondering why it is the environment that has to change. I'm also living in a city and I neither own a car, nor a bike nor am I using public transport. I just walk everywhere I have to go.

Think about why you can't just walk everywhere and if the answer is that you don't have the time, maybe you should consider just taking that time or reconsider life choices. Why can't you live near the things you need to regularly visit? There's nothing really preventing you. You just don't want to, right?

So maybe everyone should think hard about themselves first, before dreaming about remodelling the environment.

<comment><USER47> There are a lot of different types of cities. European cities tend to be more dense and walk-able for historical reasons. Not everyone has the luxury of living in such nice environment or even moving places.

Even as a walker, cities would be so much nicer to walk into without the threat of cars and the pollution that they generate. Imagine walking in the middle of the road, fresh air, you have the space to cross people, some space could be reclaimed for plants and benches. Why not create the ideal environment if we can?

<comment><USER46> Personally, I wouldn't want to live in a city without cars. And that comes from someone not even owning a car. Simply because I enjoy walking while not meeting many people. So if as many people as possible can just drive to where they want to go that leaves me with more leisure while walking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Make several separate but interconnected transportation networks.

Peds; Bikes; Light EVs (scooters, kick and seated, small cargo movers, narrow (1 seater) cars); Buses & Cargo Trucks; Trains;

Take advantage of grade (slope). Roads should have short ups followed by long downs (in both directions, it's possible) to let people take advantage of gravity. I once saw a fascinating pamphlet advocating for graded runways: planes taking off head downhill, landing, uphill. The idea was that you would save a ton of fuel.

<comment><USER49> >I once saw a fascinating pamphlet advocating for graded runways: planes taking off head downhill, landing, uphill. The idea was that you would save a ton of fuel.

It doesn't work, unless you build double the number of runways, at huge expense, because you'd have to have runways going both uphill and downhill in the same direction.

Runways in real airports go both directions, not just one. They change direction depending on the prevailing wind direction. You never land with a tailwind, or take off with one. So a graded runway wouldn't be usable part of the time, unless you built two of them like I said, or made the runway much longer.

Honestly, this idea sounds like something dreamt up by someone who's never piloted an airplane. I've seen other proposals for airport/runway design like this which also were dreamt up by people who had never flown an airplane, and the reasons their ideas made no sense were easily pointed out by actual pilots.

<comment><USER48> Build a mound and put the airport on top with the runways radiating?

I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to argue the point.

<comment><USER49> Ok, but now you have an airport that takes 2-4 times as much space as normal ones. Airports already consume an incredible amount of space; most places don't have that much space to spare.

This reminds me of someone's crazy proposal not too long ago (I think it showed up on this site) to make an airport with a big circular runway around it, with the idea that planes could be continuously taking off and landing. It didn't take long for some pilots to chime and and call the whole idea utterly insane and stupid because it's incredibly dangerous to take off or land while turning.

<comment><USER48> Fair enough. It was just a pamphlet I found on the ground in Boulder CO one day.

Circular runway made me LOL. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> >As if that weren't enough, they also stole our primary public spaces in cities: the streets.

The irony of this feelgood narrative is that cyclists don't want pedestrians on their ways, either.

<comment><USER3> And for good reason: safe travel means separating speeds. Here in NL, the average cycling speed is about 20kph. Walking is about 5kph, 3 for the elderly. It's not a very good idea to share spaces. If space is the problem, it would be better to merge car and bike traffic [1][2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard#Netherlands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard#Netherlands) [2] [https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fietsstraat](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fietsstraat)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think there is a bit of a catch-22 in regard to ridership and using already limited city roadway resources. I am privileged to have a protected bike lane for a about 50% of my commute to work, but can't deny the argument that it is vastly underutilized in comparison to roadways. Unfortunately this seems to further polarize cyclists and non-cyclists when I do need to share the roadway. It is a difficult problem that large scale public works cannot solve alone.

</comment><comment><USER47> > Too ambitious?

Not nearly enough. What we need are breathing cities. Cities that are more friendly to humans and that function well.

The problem with cars is that they are dangerous. On top of that they also create air and noise pollution and take a lot of space. Is it really worth living in a hostile environment when we have better alternatives available?

The article is too focused on bikes. There are a lot of different aspects to a breathing city and bike lanes are an implementation detail.

</comment><comment><USER52> Interesting how the author seems to think that cycling advocates have only a marginal impact on our built environment because they "ask for twigs".

I would have assumed that the lack of cycling infrastructure in cities is more influenced by the people who have power over our town councils and planners -- wealthy developers and transport lobbyists. How likely are these people to use bicycles over cars themselves?

</comment><comment><USER53> It seems like we need a cultural shift here in America, but I just don't see it happening. People here expect to be able to drive their car anywhere and get there in a reasonable amount of time and be able to find parking nearby. That's been our reality since post-WWII, but I think people need to come to grips with the fact that the gravy train is over for personal cars.

</comment><comment><USER54> Part of the picture of why bike lanes lose is because those same cyclists frequently turn to cars/public transport during inclement weather, rendering those bike lines useless and the system inflexible to repurpose the space for the additional automotive load.

</comment><comment><USER55> Cities should build elevated bike "superhighway" loops. The weight and material requirements must be a miniscule fraction of an elevated road, and they can probably be mounted to multistory buildings or other tall infrastructure, or even suspended.

</comment><comment><USER56> > Now, almost anybody can go for miles fairly quickly without breaking a > sweat.

Yeah. Cars do that. Congratulations, you understand why people prefer motorized, individual over public or non-motorized, individual transportation. And btw, elevated freeways were one of the solutions for car traffic in the past...

In a dense city, if you want to "reclaim" your space, you have to invest massively. And I'd say the inhabitants need to pay. So tax everyone close to a city center by 50% of their current rent/mortgage and you can build the infrastructure of your dreams. It's not the commuters that profit from that investment, so they should not pay. If you merely want to protect the air quality, just forbid ICEs inside the city limits after, say, ten years. But please be consequent and apply that to your buses, taxis, delivery vans etc. as well.

</comment><comment><USER57> I happen to live in an area where roads have been slightly overbuilt and there's plenty of roads and hardly any traffic on them. I'd say the existing infrastructure is perfect for bicycles we just need to get rid of the cars.

</comment><comment><USER58> I love bikes. Obsessed bike commuter for many years. Anyway...

Maybe the big engineering project he's looking for is parking garages to get the parked cars off the street. Maybe also block side streets to reduce intersections.

</comment><comment><USER59> Renegotiating the basics so that bicycles (and other light vehicles) get similar status to cars and buses was always going to be an uphill battle.

It's possible that a shift to driverless cars is an opportunity to do it. If driverless cars do succeed, there could be a shift away from private ownership.

At that point, there's an opportunity to be encourage much narrower, slower, lighter vehicles in cities. You don't a 2 ton car to transport one person 9km @ 25kmph. The cars we have are so big because they occasionally need to transport a whole family long distance on a highway. With self driving taxis this could (plausibly) be handled by a different car.

The conflicting road needs of bikes and lightweight vehicles (say <25kmph & <200kg) are much more manageable than bikes and pickup trucks (or buses).

</comment><comment><USER60> A bit off topic: but what I've asked myself since I'm biking through town daily. Is there an increased lung cancer risk for city bikers with all the car traffic out there?

<comment><USER61> The BBC did a video a few weeks back showing that you're exposed to more pollution in a car: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-south- yorkshire-499...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-south- yorkshire-49960950/how-do-you-breathe-less-pollution-on-school-run)

Not sure how that translates to cancer risk but came as a surprise to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> When I see pictures of cities with lots of bikes, they are usually cities in South and East Asia.

How did they become so successful? Is there anything to learn from their experience?

</comment><comment><USER63> Not just bike lanes. Ban private car traffic from cities completely. Only allow private cars between cities.

</comment><comment><USER64> An idea i have is bike tubes.

<comment><USER65> You joke, but I've kicked around the idea of bike tunnels with collimated air blowing down them at 20mph to make riding at that speed more comfortable, and make loitering uncomfortable. Microautonomy might make that feasible.

<comment><USER64> Yeh, it's basically science fiction. But they can be light-weight, and thus less expensive then highways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Travellators everywhere....

</comment><comment><USER67> US Federal highways were built for homeland defense first, then commercial traffic, then individual automobiles. The infrastructure is built on government credit and maintained via gasoline taxes. A 50 mile segment of freeway might move more than $50 million worth of cargo and labor each hour. The same is true for city streets, on a smaller scale.

Bikes, by their nature, are rather terrible at moving things around like cows, refrigerated goods, building supplies and such. They are excellent at moving around people, and providing them healthy exercise in the process.

The demonstrable economic impact of a road closure in terms of real wages, purchases, freight, and more is analyzed with incredible depth here: [https://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/nextrans/assets/pdfs/Fi...](https://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/nextrans/assets/pdfs/Final%20Report%20053PY03%20Estimating%20the%20Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Disruptions%20to%20Intermodal%20Freight%20Systems%20Traffic.pdf)

From an economic standpoint, the value that bike transportation facilitates is the aggregate value of the wages, production, and consumption of its riders. They represent 0.6% of urban commuters, with 86% in automobiles and 5% in mass transit. Even in Portland, OR only 3.5% of the workforce commutes via bicycle, and certainly less on the rare snow day.

Many would argue that our transportation infrastructure is the cause of this disparity. I think that they are in fact a reflection of economic reality. In places where bicycles carry lots of economic value, such as a highly compensated workforce, they have more infrastructure. In places where they convey relatively little economic value, they receive virtually no accommodation. In agricultural areas, roads have special accommodations for tractors, and rail is extremely valuable.

I could imagine, as many have and the article suggests, a vision for urbanism that is centered around human-first transportation networks. In a place where knowledge work dominates, this is entirely possible. Its happening now, in NYC where roads are being closed off to cars block by block. The roads themselves still exist because people still need things that are most efficiently moved by trucks, such as refrigerated goods, construction equipment, and so on.

A pedal-powered utopia would need to have a robust solution for moving kilotons of things like food if people want to eat, building materials if people want shelter, stuff if people want stuff to put in their shelters, and raw materials if people want to make things instead of just consuming stuff.

Bicycling provides plenty of recreational value, which is in itself economic value, and that should not be discounted.

If we're envisioning things, I'd like to see integrated networks of airborne, ground-level, and subterranean conveyance, each with macro, micro, and intermodal transit solutions that have maximal economic bandwidth and minimal environmental impact. Better yet, technology that eliminates the need for transit, like localized manufacturing and recycling... ie, instead of a garage sheltering a car, it could hold waste materials, shredders, extruders, 3d printers/fabbers, etc for anything from plastics to proteins. If everything we needed to transport could be transported via bike or drone at the last mile(s), if everything we needed came in small packages, if labor happened in place, if everything we made came from commodity components and openly shared designs... roads would vanish rather quickly.

Until then, bikes will get the infrastructure budget commensurate with the value they transport, and the same goes for each other mode. At least cyclists don't have to pay gas tax.

<comment><USER13> Nobody's suggesting getting rid of roads for cars entirely. Munich is radically more bike friendly than any big US city, but they still have trucks and stuff. Even in the city center portion that's off limits to regular cars, businesses can get deliveries.

And you can do some deliveries with bikes, I do see people doing it for DHL here on electric cargo bikes for that last mile. Doesn't work for everything of course, but I don't think the goal is literally zero cars ever, it's reducing the unnecessary usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Binatesatjvoj

</comment><comment><USER68> Hgiok

</comment><comment><USER69> You know what? Fine. I think the increased trend in cycling in day, San Francisco is neat. I have questioned the sanity of those who thought plastic pylons were adequate "protection" wherever I've seen them.

Streets are typically city-owned and managed though, and if you're in a place with a tax regime like California's, then you're in a place that relies heavily on things like sales taxes and capital gains taxes which tend to go down the gutter, because good old fashioned property taxes, while extant, are not nearly adequate enough when 1. the assessed value of a property is completely disconnected from the market value which 2. leads to an illiquid property market which artificially inflates prices and 3. the actual property tax rate is largely outside the hands of the people who need to draw up a budget(supervisors, councilors, legislators).

So you want more and better bike infrastructure? I want more and better bike infrastructure. I know! Let's pay for it! But how are we going to? We could tax and spend, but now you need to see if voters would like more and better bike infrastructure. Oh I know! We can tax the future taxpayers! Sell bonds. Kick the can down the road. I'm sure there is nothing wrong with that.

So now we know how we're going to pay for it, how much are we going to pay? Well, how much do you like unions. If you're a union guy, you have no incentive to get the job done any faster than on time, and plenty of incentives to not get it done on time. Well what about contractors? Small business owners have every incentive to get the job done on time because after this, they've got their next job to move onto. The more projects they can work in a calendar year, the more money they can make.

Ah, but you don't want them to just go in wily nilly, make a mess of things and disrupt the flow of traffic and business, wake up the neighborhood and just make things generally unpleasant! You've gotta have rules! Sure, you've gotta have rules. In fact, you've gotta have an environmental impact report, confine portions of the project to certain days, confine actual work to certain hours, have adequate signage posted everywhere, and marketing fluff posted all over about how all this "stuff" is going to make life worth living (here) even better! All of which costs time and costs money. And quite a lot of this really just extends the time it takes a project to complete.

Like Irving Street, San Francisco. An extensive project to kick two or three bus stops down the road and extend the sidewalk a few feet on a couple of street corners which has taken, I don't have a number on this, but well over a calendar year and has either just wrapped up or is about to wrap up. Actually I take that back, I just remembered part of the project is to move a couple of stops to 5th or 6th Avenue, the ones at 4th and 7th precisely are to be consolidated in the middle, and last I checked _that_ ain't finished. To say nothing of the numerous public meetings that must have gone into this project.

It was even a good plan, it just took too damn long. But hopefully we can repeat this process block by block, and create dedicated bike infrastructure of the kind that would make a Dutchman feel right at home, and if it takes 30 years and enough money to fund a train between San Francisco and Los Angeles, then who cares because we're rich and therefore time and money don't mean anything at all! Even if you only have the same 80 or so years to love and live as everyone else.

So let's dream big, and maybe tackle the crisis or more like tragedy that is well, every single part of a modern day public project from start to finish so we can maybe build some bike superhighways from here to six blocks down the road within one human lifetime and only a little bit over budget.

<comment><USER70> None of this extended, anti-American rant has anything to do with bikes in particular. You're just complaining about doing anything at all with the government and with unions.

So, build some private bike infrastructure. If Elon Musk wants to make Hyperbike, sure, let's see if it gets built and forms part of a functioning network.

Also - how come your arguments don't apply to building roads themselves? How did Central Freeway get built? How did the Bay Bridge get built and rebuilt?

<comment><USER69> I was too young for the Central Freeway, so no comment on that one. Feel free to pull in the relevant data yourself though.

The Bay Bridge was built in a different time under a different regulatory regime and with fewer rules. The Eastern Span, because the Western Span hasn't been "rebuilt", much like the Central Subway (Not Freeway, I'm intentionally switching gears here) was built in a more modern regulatory regime, over budget, in more time than planned, and with defects which will limit the effective life of the new span (near as I'm aware the Subway doesn't suffer this particular deficiency).

Let me be clear, I _support_ building more bike infrastructure, but if we start tomorrow without addressing the regulatory and public budgetary issues of _today_ , it will take more time than necessary and cost more than necessary and not by small amounts. I don't want to privatize our bloody Streets, I want a sane taxation and budgetary regime that doesn't depend on the will of finicky voters, worse: a supermajority of them in the case of California under certain conditions.

Oh and my friend, not _all_ criticisms are inherently Anti-American. This is just that regular kind, the kind or a dissatisfied taxpayer dissatisfied with the level of service provided by the State and Local government, and the conditions which ensure that ain't changing anytime soon. It's the thing that guarantees that if you dream big and imagine every City an Amsterdam, you're going to be disappointed. The more friction there is to _doing stuff_ , the less stuff that voters have the stomach for to have done.

tl;dr Ballot box budgeting (to say only the least!) is insane, and ballot box budgeting for bikeways will net you more twigs than bridges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Urban sprawl and planned cities are a pox on humanity. Look at this thread and tell me that these layouts don't look eminently more livable than the modern grid layout city.

[https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1186129107408392194](https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1186129107408392194)

</comment><comment><USER72> I feel like this person is an optimist, envisioning a future that is never going to happen. I envision a future of rapidly decreasing revenues as the boomers die off and the population size plummets, while simultaneously climate change starts to wreak havoc, resulting in city infrastructure not being maintained at all, much less being improved to the extent the author is recommending.</comment>


Google Dart - Should JavaScript be Replaced? - <AUTHOR> http://clubajax.org/google-dart-should-javascript-be-replaced/ <comment><USER2> the fundemental thing that's needed is static typing and unboxed primatives.</comment>