Gmail design change.. could somebody explain? - <AUTHOR> http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZaGO7GjCqAI/TFMC6Ee1bvI/AAAAAAAAW5k/Q4HSClIbd6s/s640/gmail-googler-ui-2010.png I noticed that my gmail's design was changed a bit this morning... basically, tasks and contacts along with Mail have been brought at the top..a screenshot i found on net: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ZaGO7GjCqAI/TFMC6Ee1bvI/AAAAAAAAW5k/Q4HSClIbd6s/s640/gmail-googler-ui-2010.png Now, I don't really understand the changes. I am by no means a usability expert, but considering "Contacts" and "Tasks" are rarely used by any gmail user I know, what's the rationale behind bringing them up?
I found the design less intuitive than the basic one. So, I am really curious what would have been the designers motive? <comment><USER2> Part of it was they wanted to make the tasks and contacts more prominent. The contacts section was changed, in part, to account for things they had added to android. (Specifically the ability to add multiple arbritrary phone numbers.(

<comment><AUTHOR> well, I am no expert in usability, but I can tell that the new design is not intuitive to me as much as the original design, leave alone improvement.. I am really wondering what was the motive of the designer to put on the top something so sparingly used like Tasks, Contact! Any views?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> how it adds to usability?</comment>


Ask HN: Listing investor money on taxes? - <AUTHOR>

My company got money through Kickstarter.com to work on a project, but no one seems to have any idea how to list it on taxes. Just wondering what the standard procedure is for money received from investors/VCs, since that's the closest thing I can think of. Thank you in advance for any info. <comment><USER2> I don't think money from KickStarter is investment money. It sounds like you sold items, but haven't shipped them yet (of course). Investors would buy stock, which is completely different.

So you probably should book income (which you can't recognize as revenue until you have shipped it).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for replying. So income that is not revenue. That makes sense.

Some backers chose to receive nothing, though, so for them its not even a transaction, just a donation, I guess. It's more complicated than just selling items, even though it looks like that on the surface.</comment></comment>


The enterprise acquisition process hasn't changed - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/13/new-enterprise-customer/

<comment><USER2> There are some mistruths in the article - it states "Big Companies Don't Have Credit Cards Purchasing anything in a large organization requires a rigorous justification process that generally culminates in a purchase order (PO). They do not allow their employees to use their credit cards to buy technology off of the Internet. In fact, at many companies, doing so and attempting to expense it after the fact is a fire-able offense." Which is not true at all. The US Government uses credit cards, many employees have one and I know for sure that the US Border Patrol vehicles have a credit card assigned to each vehicle (with a no approval needed limit of $2500 per purchase). My wife works for a large university and also has a department issued credit card.

Also I object to "If you work in a startup, you might wonder why large organizations don't just trust their people to make smart purchasing decisions. If an employee needs a new technology, why wouldn't the company just let him do the right thing? There are many reasons:" In the case of my wife's most recent laptop she did have some restrictions - it had to come from the University computer store which limited her choice to Apple, Dell, Lenovo or HP. Some limit. Oh, and it had to be under $2000.

He also states "Some of the systems are outdated, complex, and downright arcane. Nonetheless, once deployed, enterprises develop great affection for the technology that runs their companies. They may complain about it, but like an old woman speaking of her spouse, the underlying love is far stronger than the criticism. And big companies expect you to love their old products too – by integrating with them." I believe that this is also incorrect. I don't think businesses love their old systems, just that they are stuck with them. The business needs to function everyday, it can't just try something new, it needs to keep going. So old systems become like a heroin addiction for the company. They would love to get off the 30 year old stuff, but they can't. So they adapt (or get you to adapt) and keep plugging along with the old setup.</comment>


No Maintenance Intended - <AUTHOR> http://unmaintained.tech/ <comment><USER2> A while ago I started an OSS maintainer community for exactly this purpose, I saw software that was in use, people wanted to contribute, the users were very active, but the developer had abandoned it, creating a hole. We all know how much more difficult it is to create a fork that will be discoverable over the original rather than just merge a few PRs.

I would like to ask anyone who currently has a project they don't want to maintain to spend the minute to add the project to Code Shelter:

[https://www.codeshelter.co/](https://www.codeshelter.co/)

This way, interested people can easily pick up maintenance and at least merge a few PRs/triage a few issues. Also, if you have some spare time or you see a project you'd like to help out with, please join Code Shelter as a maintainer:

[https://www.codeshelter.co/membership/](https://www.codeshelter.co/membership/)

There's no reason to have abandoned projects nowadays, it locks them in a state of "I don't want anyone improving this" rather than "I don't have time to improve it, but feel free to if you want".

<comment><USER3> I added one of my projects ([https://github.com/akavel/rsrc](https://github.com/akavel/rsrc)) some time ago, when codeshelter was announced for the first time; it has a "maintainer" listed; but noone seemed to either contact me or do anything with the repo, ever. It feels weird to me. I can understand that there's no requirement for them to do something; but it still feels weird as it is now — someone seems to claim to (want to?) be a contributor, but didn't seem to even try and reach out to me.

Thinking out loud, maybe there could be some form, where if a candidate maintainer clicks the button to "join a project" (or whatever), they'd have to compose some message that would be sent to the owner, to at least break some first ice and initiate some contact? I don't know what's going on with the person. If there was an easy way, I would be happy to reach out to them and ask them, like, "hey, howdy'a doing?" Also, it would be nice if I was sent an email with a notification when someone "claims" my project, and with a chance to connect with them. Maybe you could try and start contacting people to see how is this working, and if not, to try and dig down on the underlying reasons? maybe this could lead to some now ideas for improvements and helping people work together?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback! This was probably later than when you added the project, but we added a "note to maintainers" feature:

[https://gitlab.com/codeshelter/note-to- maintainers](https://gitlab.com/codeshelter/note-to-maintainers)

It's basically a text file where you describe how you want future maintainers to handle the project, give instructions, caveats, etc (whatever you want, basically).

I assume this specific maintainer situation happened because it's easy to click a button and be added to the project, so maybe the maintainer was planning to do something but didn't get around to it, or something similar.

About the communication, you're right, we encourage maintainers and authors to join our chat server ([https://codeshelter.zulipchat.com/](https://codeshelter.zulipchat.com/)) so they can be in contact.

Code Shelter was built with more of a long-term prospect in mind (obviously we can't guarantee that we'll find you a maintainer right away), maybe I should amend the copy to manage peoples' expectations, because I hear from a lot of people that they expected someone to pick up their project and were disappointed when it didn't happen.

<comment><USER3> That's... something. But it still feels very passive.

What do you think about the ideas I listed in the post above? I assume you know who are the people on both sides, and that you have their emails, so I'd guess you're in a good position to actively facilitate communication, no? Is there a way how I could actively reach out to a person that's listed as a maintainer on my project? Why not add a form that would let me do that? even without necessarily revealing their email, if they don't want to? though to tell the truth, why wouldn't they want to, if they claim to want to contribute? Similarly, how about a notification, so that I learn that someone joined my project, with their email so that I can reach out with a welcome? why passive encouragement to a chat server instead of an active facilitation of first contact over email?

<comment><USER2> Oh, I definitely agree with you that communication should be more active, it's just that right now this is more left to the new maintainer to do. On Github, everyone's email is public anyway, so the new maintainer could message the old one.

I don't think Github/Gitlab provide any automated way to send people messages (short of creating a new issue and mentioning people). Actually, creating an issue on a maintainer joining might be a good idea, I will look into it.

Other than that, we have to take many scenarios into account (many people don't want to talk to the new maintainer, for example, because the project is completely abandoned).

We should definitely add something, though. I'll see if we can automatically add issues that will be something like "Introduce yourself" with a body of "Hello @maintainer1, @maintainer2! @newmaintainer just joined, please say hi".

I have opened an issue if you want to contribute: [https://gitlab.com/codeshelter/codeshelter- web/issues/34](https://gitlab.com/codeshelter/codeshelter-web/issues/34)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I'd say "you're welcome to say hi" sounds softer than "please say hi", but other than that, sounds good to me!

<comment><USER2> I've implemented your suggestion, thanks! Here's a sample issue that is automatically created:

[https://github.com/sirodoht/atom- pastery/issues/3](https://github.com/sirodoht/atom-pastery/issues/3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shouldn't the badge have a green checkmark to show everything's ok? Or is no maintenance intended supposed to imply your code is broken?

<comment><USER5> Yes, there should be green AND red! maintenance comes in two flavors, it's absence can be a sign of good or bad, depending on the project:

Very small projects given enough time can be cut almost perfectly up front, a few patches maybe then it's done. In this case lack of maintenance is a sign of stability and completeness.

At the opposite end of the scale, in very large and _dynamic_ projects, maintenance is a continual necessity. Not only because of it's own scope being so large it's difficult to settle on a coherent, complete and bug free solution, but because of how it also interacts with many other changing external projects, in short these projects are an ecosystem - In this case lack of maintenance signifies death, instability, insecurity and abandonment.

I find it particularly annoying when the latter is applied to projects fitting into the former category. Some package managers even auto-quantify package quality based on maintenance (release frequency) - looking at you NPM.

Some other phrase should be used to clarify this, maybe: "No maintenance needed", although that sounds a bit unrealistic, the point is the lack of release churn doesn't mean it's broken.

<comment><USER6> > Very small projects given enough time can be cut almost perfectly up front, > a few patches maybe then it's done.

Perhaps there needs to be a bigger distinction between "unchanging" and "unmaintained".

In your example, a project could be unchanging simply because there is nothing to do, it is "done". But if a bug was found, would someone fix it? That's when maintained vs unmaintained would matter, perhaps it is only possible to know how well something is being maintained until problems are reported...

<comment><USER5> Yes this is a better distinction, I suppose the problem is that inactivity tends to be equated with lack of maintenance - regardless of whether there are still people around that care but have nothing to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The badge color debate threads here are textbook bike shedding [1].

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

<comment><USER8> The badge looks like 90pc of the product to me. A bike shed at a nuclear plant is not part of it at all. It's fair to comment on the design

<comment><USER9> How many people are commenting here because the color of this badge meaningfully affects them? The debate on this post is happening because it's easy to have an opinion, not because there is anything of significance to be gained here.

From the wikipedia above: "...everyone can visualize a cheap, simple bicycle shed, so planning one can result in endless discussions because everyone involved wants to add a touch and show personal contribution."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The badge should be yellow. Implying a warning.

<comment><USER11> I'd go with a blue, implying general information instead of some point in the same single dimension where the "all good", "warning" and "error" points also lie on.

Also make this a PNG so it can be used outside of Github too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice idea! I think it would be great to add HTTPS to [http://unmaintained.tech](http://unmaintained.tech).

</comment><comment><USER13> I think one of the problems people have with free open source in general is that it's hard to get a bearing on exactly what additional risks come with it now and in the future.

Will it stay open source and free to use? Will it be actively maintained? Can I get support for issues in a timely manner? Will someone be there to helpfully guide or at least review and accept my contributions?

There needs many more dimensions to the categorization and it would be very nice if OSS projects could be graded along them all.

<comment><USER14> >Will it stay open source and free to use?

This is a concern of mine as well, so when I find a repo I want to guarantee future access to, I fork it. Then I have a copy that's licensed with the original open source license and which will stick around as long as I care to keep it around.

>Can I get support for issues in a timely manner?

IMO this should not be an expectation in open source. It's nice when it happens, but expect to DIY.

>Will someone be there to helpfully guide or at least review and accept my contributions?

Also nice when it happens, also by no means guaranteed in open source. If someone else isn't available, you can always carry on in your own fork.

Overall I think people place certain expectations on FOSS because they tend to align with the open source culture but strictly speaking, the reality of FOSS doesn't support those expectations in the long term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rust has a similar feature in Cargo.toml[1], though they define multiple degrees of maintenance (actively-developed, passively-maintained, as-is, experimental, looking-for-maintainer, deprecated, none).

[1]: [https://doc.rust- lang.org/cargo/reference/manifest.html#pack...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/cargo/reference/manifest.html#package-metadata)

</comment><comment><USER16> Alternatively, you can use the "Abandoned" or "Unsupported" badges from [https://www.repostatus.org/](https://www.repostatus.org/):

> Abandoned – Initial development has started, but there has not yet been a > stable, usable release; the project has been abandoned and the author(s) do > not intend on continuing development.

> Unsupported – The project has reached a stable, usable state but the > author(s) have ceased all work on it. A new maintainer may be desired.

repostatus.org is a project that defines eight statuses you can mark repos with: Concept, WIP, Suspended, Abandoned, Active, Inactive, Unsupported, or Moved. Each badge links to a short summary such as the ones above.

It looks like No Maintenance Intended might explain the project status better with its dedicated web page, while repostatus.org is better for being able to categorize the state of all of one's projects.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why would I need to link to this badge, or use it at all? Also, why would someone want to pay for bandwidth for these badges? I just don't understand the point of the badge or the landing page. I could just write "No maintenance will be done on this repo" in my Readme and call it a day.

<comment><USER18> For the same reason others link to licenses.

Because somebody wrote the thing, and expressed it better than they could, and the don't want to (a) be bothered to write their own version of this text, (b) just write a less good line like the above.

<comment><USER17> But most people copy and paste licenses into their own LICENSE file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Somewhat off topic but I thought when I clicked on the link that it would be about long-lived systems that didn't need maintenance. In an increasingly IoT world we'll have devices all over the place that can't afford to be visited between deployment and recycling.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does this badge imply that the project doesn't have any external dependencies? What if another Heartbleed or a vulnerability in the language itself is found?

<comment><USER21> Nope, the "no maintenance intended" explanation definitely does _not_ mean that the software is free from vulnerabilities. If you want to use an unmaintained project, you should look at its dependencies and assess for yourself whether it's a better idea to use the project or rewrite your own version. In many cases, it's best to fork the project and maintain it as if it was your own code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> an interesting feature would be to have either Github or a third party "ping" projects with issues to see if the author is still a) responsive and b) interested in maintaining the project.

obviously it would be best if Github itself implemented this, potentially along with an automated process to indicate that the author is no longer responsive/interested in maintaining the project (and potentially facilitate a transfer of "authority").

a third party system trying to determine the same might be ignored as spam by the author, and multiple third party systems (potentially jockeying for supremacy in the space) might exacerbate this.

if folks think this would be valuable, i might pursue this as a project (after petitioning Github to do it themselves)

</comment><comment><USER23> Nearly every week without fail, random people email me to ask random/dumb questions about projects I have on Github that are clearly marked Read Only/Archived. It's not worth my time to respond to assinine, pointless emails. I'm not their employees, and I owe these people NOTHING. Still, some of these people email me to scream their entitlement as to why I haven't answered their email to solve their problems. (LOL) They just don't get it. (LOL some more.)

<comment><USER24> FWIW I would never write an email like that to you. I would begin by thanking you for the work, then asking my question, then probably closing the email because I have successfully rubber-ducked my question, then days later rewriting the draft again with a better question, and finally ending the email with "If you ever get a chance, I'd appreciate you pointing me in the right direction" or somesuch.</comment></comment>


Trading a Real Market: What the Swiss National Bank Taught Retail Traders - <AUTHOR> http://mechanicalforex.com/2015/01/trading-a-real-market-what-the-swiss-national-bank-taught-retail-traders-today.html <comment><USER3> What the SNB really taught people this week is what emerging markets people have known for decades, and actually, developed markets traders really should know too. You should never trade a peg in the direction that is being defended by a central bank. You should almost always _fight_ the central bank.

Anybody who takes a cursory glance at history will know this: ERM 1992, Russia 1998, Brazil 2001, and yes, Russia H2 2014 (semi peg). The examples of peg breaks are numerous, and some recent. No excuses.

A "grid trading" strategy that was essentially recommending picking up pennies in front of a steamroller, was irresponsible at best. One should always look at the balance of payments of a country to see if it is in surplus or deficit, and trade the currency accordingly. Swiss was in massive surplus on the capital account. This guy was recommending selling swiss francs for a tiny, marginal carry trade in euros.

And if you don't know what balance of payments means, you really should figure it out before committing money to the FX market.

Finally, all the bull about liquidity. Of course there is no liquidity when a market revalues suddenly. This is the same in equities: if an unexpected announcement happens, the price revalues instantly and there is no liquidity in between. It is a discrete event. Econ 101.

<comment><USER4> [Hi from Argentina!]

I agree, but usually the pegs in the other direction are more dangerous.

When the government has too many Dollars (or Euros) they usually have time to find a soft solution and change the conversion rate slowly. It's always easy to burn money.

When the government has too few Dollar (or Euros) the amount of reserved money go down, they exchange the real money for valueless internal bonds, and one day they get up and they don't have any money left in the treasure and they are forced to make an abrupt correction.

So this suddenly change is strange. YMMV.

<comment><USER3> Good point, and China has for years adopted this approach. Problem is, they are now long of a trillion dollars of US debt, and are as a result, at the mercy of their own debtor. I think the Swiss were wary of that scenario: becoming longer of European debt. If they had adopted a gradual approach, they would have been showing their spoof poker hand, days after having asserted that the peg wouldn't move. The market would have sold billions more euros to them which they didn't want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a good section about currency bands in Nassim Taleb's first book, Dynamic Hedging. It's a fairly technical book about risk management for options traders, but the section on Market Barriers is particularly germane.

I think it's valuable in the sense that it gives you a window into the way a skilled risk manager views the world versus the naïveté of retail traders. This was only a "black swan" event if you had no idea what you were doing.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=-5-OldaTjVQC&lpg=PA227&ots...](https://books.google.com/books?id=-5-OldaTjVQC&lpg=PA227&ots=L_7HVjyaVk&dq=options%20wizard%3A%20and%20ems%20war%20story&pg=PA224#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER6> His advice is all well and good but "skilled risk managers" can be just as dumb as everyone else. This has been proved multiple times in just the last few decades alone.

<comment><USER7> _His advice is all well and good but "skilled risk managers" can be just as dumb as everyone else._

I work at an investment bank and I can safely confirm that most professional investment managers and risk managers fall for this type of stuff all the time.

If you want an example, look as Nassim Taleb's idiotic moves. Here's just one from 2010:

[http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Nassim-Taleb-Shorting- Tr...](http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Nassim-Taleb-Shorting- Treasuries/2010/02/04/id/348993/)

So in 2010 Taleb's advice to short U.S. Treasurys. How'd he do in the last 5 years? If he followed his own advice then he lost almost half his money on that trade as US Treasury rates fell dramatically since then.

I'm not picking on Nassim Taleb. He's a smart dude. But everybody - <USER2> - makes dumb investment decisions.

<comment><USER5> Shorting treasuries in 2010 was a popular sentiment. I'm sure you could have found a similar suggestion in the WSJ at the time. It is extremely unlikely, given Taleb's background as an options market maker, that he would have expressed that trade simply as an unhedged position in cash treasuries or the futures while he sat bleeding money for five years straight. It's an important distinction to make and I think it comes back to my original point about risk management. It is one thing to make a prediction and it's a separate step to then formulate a trade that captures upside if your prediction is correct and limits your downside if your prediction is incorrect. From a trader like Taleb, I think that's implicit in his statement, but maybe it wouldn't be so obvious to a layperson.

<comment><USER8> Taleb was very precise in what he said, and he didn't say anything like what you are attributing to him. There wasn't any real nuance, he really just said it was a good idea to short treasuries:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=azLmk...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=azLmks3BmQm4)

[http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/of-brains-and- ball...](http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/of-brains-and-balls-nassim- talebs-macro.html)

<comment><USER5> Taleb has written literally hundreds of pages on risk management and if you don't consider any of that as context, I guess you could assume he literally meant to get short some delta one treasury product. I think that's a little bit naive but whatever.

You can watch the full video here: [http://2010.therussiaforum.com/news/session- video3/](http://2010.therussiaforum.com/news/session-video3/)

You have to switch it from Russian (ру́с) to English. He says you want an "active position" where you "benefit from rise [in rates]." The video then shows Hugh Hendry, who has basically the opposite position but for European government bonds. He is short rates (so long bonds) _but he has an options position which fixes his maximum loss at some known value._ Hendry spells it out, but I think given Taleb's background, he probably meant something like that (but in reverse).

<comment><USER8> Okay, I watched a bit of the video now (thanks for linking to it). I still don't see what's so ambiguous about "stay short Treasury bonds", he says it quite directly, and as far as I can tell from the video he means it, but maybe I'm wrong. He also says in that video says you should buy deep out of money options on gold/other metals in case hyperinflation happens.

So first, as far as I can tell, he really did say and mean those things.

Second, the suggestions, the bet on rising interest rates, as well as the bet on hyperinflation, are, I think, ignoring basic macroeconomics, and they pretend that some really implausible outcomes can happen. Maybe you would hedge the bet, and have other trades that bound your losses, but they would still have lost money. I don't think it matters _that_ much that with a cleverer execution they would have lost less money. The point is that they were wrong in the first place.

<comment><USER9> You talk about basic macroeconomics, the way someone might talk about 'basic finance.' I think that's the whole problem...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not everyone was surprised by the SNB's action. I haven't seen the following discussion reported widely. I only have a link to a video, no transcript. But it's short, little over 1 min in length.

Some smart money started moving into CHF last month. More interestingly, there was a lot of movement about one minute ahead of the announcement.

[http://finance.yahoo.com/video/traders-knew-snb-move- pro-060...](http://finance.yahoo.com/video/traders-knew-snb-move- pro-060000457.html)

Here's the ending:

       Announcer: despite everything we've heard about
       manipulation of foreign exchange markets, about
       the deep forensic look into these markets,
       you're saying there was action before the
       announcement which indicates there was some
       parties in the market that knew this. I want to
       be categorical about this.

       Guest: It definitely looks like that to us.
       There was a movement in the market well ahead
       of the headlines, and a huge flow throughout
       December, an unprecedented flow, in the leadup
       to yesterday's break of the peg.

</comment><comment><USER11> It was bad form for the SNB to say they were committed to the peg and then to scrap it a few days later. On the other hand it shows how entitled markets have become to having central banks telegraph their strategy to the world. Would monetary policy & markets ultimately work better if we didn't expect central banks to be so blatant about their future moves? At the very least it would shake out the dangerous complacency that leads to overcrowded trades & heightened contagion risk.

<comment><USER12> > It was bad form for the SNB to say they were committed to the peg and then > to scrap it a few days later.

I may be wrong, but I think the decision to get rid of the cap was ultimately the result of an ECJ's judge statement made the previous day: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11344253/ECJ- ru...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11344253/ECJ-ruling-paves- way-for-eurozone-QE.html) , so not much that SNB could do about it.

<comment><USER8> But that decision was about ECB's QE, I don't think this is as clear as you make it sound. SNB _could_ have chosen to continue the peg through any ECB actions, but instead they chose to scrap it. It was still their decision, although you can argue that they wouldn't have been successful had they decided to continue the peg.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So this is slightly deviating from topic, but still on it. Can someone explain why forex has looked like shady stuff for so long and there are so many get rich trading forex ads all over the web? I have never dug into this, so I am just genuinely curious. How does that industry work?

<comment><USER14> Pull people in, lose all their money via high leverage (stop them out when they lose), repeat with new sucker. You have to get new customers to pillage constantly, hence the advertising. Plus it is more or less unregulated (leverage is limited to 50x in US, unregulated elsewhere). The companies dont have to hedge the positions much, as many net out, and people will mainly be losing money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not a trader certainly not forex but the blood was in the water the day the Swiss decided to peg. Certainly they had their reasons - to keep the franc from becoming too strong - but as other commenters have already explained pegs are too difficult to defend and in this case, the EU was nowhere near a consensus on monetary policy. I like the "picking up pennies in front of a steamroller" analogy it fits the situation perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER16> And that is why you make high-risk trades with options, or not at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think I understand how currency trading works. If you owned EUR the value of the EUR only changed relative to the CHF. If you owned CHF you gained 15% against all currencies.

How do people lose money on this? Are people somehow trading on the CHF/EUR exchange rate? And is so, why? The CHF was pegged to the EUR.

It reminds of when people were still trading shares in Genentech for years when Roche had an option to buy all GNE shares at a certain price, which they of course did eventually.

Is this another example of people trading without full knowledge?

<comment><USER18> The issue is leverage. [1] [2] In order to trade $1mm worth of EUR vs CHF, you didn't actually have to have $1mm. So, if the CHF, for whatever reason, increased above the SNB peg of 1.2, you could then trade $1mm for, say, $10,000 in your account (100:1 leverage). Then, if there is a 1% move back to the Peg, you profit 0.01 x $1mm, or $1,000.

The reason brokers will give you this much leverage is that ForEx (up until a couple days ago) was one of the most liquid markets on the planet. If you hit a margin call, your broker could instantly liquidate your entire portfolio to cover any loss, with very little risk.

And then, the SNB walked away from their Peg, and the earth collapsed underneath all these traders (and brokers in some case) - All these traders/brokers who thought that a position could be liquidated at minimal loss, ran into a market with a scarcity (absence) of buyers, and were wiped for the entire value of their accounts (and more - lots of traders ended up with a negative position)

This is a wakeup call that people will remember or a very, very long time (and should have been learnt in the 2008 Mortgage collapse) - the potential for a black swan event is _everywhere_.

[1] [http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/forexleverage.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/forexleverage.asp) [2] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/08/margin- leverag...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/08/margin-leverage- forex.asp)

<comment><USER19> A 1% move would net you $10k, not $1k. That's why it's so alluring. You can gain (or lose) a lot when you're leveraged at 100:1 (as most retail FX brokers allow) and the currencies move just a small amount.

<comment><USER20> FX for the common man is recent. It's the new housing: access to leverage.

<comment><USER21> This makes me wonder. Aren't those retail investors all indebted to FXCM now ? They mostly made the bets using the platforms, (I assume) very little bets were made by FXCM itself.

<comment><USER22> Correct. "FXCM Inc. (FXCM), which handled a record $1.4 trillion of trades by individuals last quarter, said clients owe $225 million on their accounts after the Swiss National Bank's decision to abandon the franc's cap against the euro roiled markets worldwide." [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-16/fxcm-faces- losses-o...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-16/fxcm-faces-losses-on- franc-trades-as-swiss-shock-spreads.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How could FeedBurner be better? - <AUTHOR>

We are getting close to launching a new analytics tool for bloggers that measures attention to both web and feed attention (http://statzen.com).
I have heard quite a bit of griping about FeedBurner lately and I am curious about how the HN community thinks we might be able to better meet the needs of those who are dissatisfied.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I can think of two things, right off the top of my head, that FeedBurner could do better:

#1. Accurately measure subscriptions. That seems obvious but FeedBurner is actually terrible at one of their core features. It's not uncommon for your subscriber count to bottom out to zero from one day to the next as their system fails to work.

#2. Find a way to find and eliminate the cheaters. FeedBurner's subscribe-via- email feature is a great way for people to scam the system and raise their subscriber counts. All you have to do is make a bunch of dummy accounts, which is trivial for anyone with any kind of decent hosting package, and then use those accounts to subscribe to your feed.

\---

Subscriber counts are an important metric for both ego and site valuation. The fact that FeedBurner has such a struggle with accurate counts hurts their credibility too much.

<comment><AUTHOR> You hit the million dollar question.

The problem is that the "subscriber count" metric is bullshit.

First I will explain what that count is. Then I explain what we think people want from the subscriber count and how we are working to address that need.

The subscribe count is based on the feed reading tool and the IP address (if it is a desktop client like NetNewsWire or FeedDemon). FeedBurner has explained a fair amount about this number and this post provides some good background ([http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2006/09/a_pe...](http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2006/09/a_peek_inside_techcrunchs_100k.php)).

The problem is that "subscriber" is supposed to equate to "person", but it does not. In email marketing this works because we have a person identifier (the email address). There is no similar identifier for feed. What that means is that out of TechCrunch's 100,000 subscribers, I as an individual represent 5+ subscribers (once on Google Reader, once on bloglines, once on NewsGator, once with NetNewsWire at home, once at NetNewsWire at work). I am a pretty typical TechCrunch subscriber so it is possible the number of "people" is actually 20% of the number of "subscribers".

The converse is that many corporations and Universities have only 1 outgoing IP address. So all FeedDemon subscribers at Belmont University here in Nashville show up as 1 subscriber.

Why this is important is because of what people want the "subscriber count" to be. They want it to be an apples to apples comparison to compare popularity across blogs. It is just too inaccurate to be that measure.

We initially had this count and as we looked at the data we felt that it was inaccurate at best and sometimes completely misleading. This was the driving force in our decision to remove this feature. It is a risk, but I think it represents an intellectual honesty that our customers will appreciate.

The other reason people like the "subscriber count" metric is to measure growth and decline in their individual blog. This is why having the number fluctuate so wildly in FeedBurner is so frustrating.

We have not solved the apples to apples comparison yet, but we have some promising progress.

As for measuring growth, once you break that out as a goal it is easy to see that there are other ways to answer this question.

As you said "The fact that FeedBurner has such a struggle with accurate counts hurts their credibility". Hopefully our willingness to find a better way, even if it may be perceived as a shortcoming in the short term, will help our credibility.

What do you think about our strategy here? (I really appreciate the feedback we are getting from HN. This is such a valuable resource!)

<comment><USER3> _The problem is that "subscriber" is supposed to equate to "person", but it does not. In email marketing this works because we have a person identifier (the email address). There is no similar identifier for feed. What that means is that out of TechCrunch's 100,000 subscribers, I as an individual represent 5+ subscribers (once on Google Reader, once on bloglines, once on NewsGator, once with NetNewsWire at home, once at NetNewsWire at work). I am a pretty typical TechCrunch subscriber so it is possible the number of "people" is actually 20% of the number of "subscribers"._

Do typical TechCrunch subscribers subscribe using _five_ different feed readers? I don't subscribe to it anymore (I do follow @techcrunch on Twitter though - TC posts too often for my feed reading habits) but when I did I used, well, _one_ feed reader. I assume that is pretty typical. Besides, your e-mail example doesn't work either if someone has five e-mail addresses!

Going off of the stats on several of my feeds (ranging from 18,000 "subscribers" down to about 1000) I see that in most cases Google Reader accounts for 50%-70% of subscribers. The numbers Google provide _should_ be pretty accurate.. and so while there might be a slightly inaccurate swing in the remaining 30%, if the Google Feedfetcher number is showing 10,000 subscribers, I am pretty much guaranteed that's 10,000 unique Google users.

As a publisher with a significant audience for my niche, I find the subscriber count _very_ useful and it provides much of the reason why I've stayed with FeedBurner despite the issues. It makes it easy for me to prove I'm the biggest in my niche because the closest people have counts over 30% lower than mine.. and I can't see the swing being that much considering how popular Google Reader is now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do expect that we will get some push back on this. Especially until we provide a simple metric to show advertisers (which we are working on).

It is a pretty nuanced issue. For instance, do TC subscribers USE 5 readers? No. But web-based readers that people quit using still report subscribers. I don't use 5 readers either, but I have multiple readers reporting me as a "subscriber". This comes from trying different web-based clients as well as using multiple IPs in a single day with my desktop based client.

While you are absolutely correct that Google Reader is going to report accurately how many people have subscribed to your feed using their system, that doesn't give you any indication as to how many of them have read a single item in the past 6 months. This is why FB started to add "reach". In the article I referenced, TC had over 100k subscribers while "reach" was topping out at about 25k.

So, all of that is to say, you are right. We are going to have to provide a way for bloggers like yourself to easily convey the worth of ads on their blog. Personally I believe everyone wins with accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My blog (<http://www.maximise.dk/blog>) uses blogger, but they can't tell me how many RSS subscribers I have. By asking Google I found out that I could get this number by redirecting my feed to feedburner and back, and let them count it.

I never figured out how to do it. There were two problems involved for me:

1) I couldn't tell whether it worked or not before I posted something on the blog, thus sending a feed out in the ether.

2) I didn't try very hard.

I don't know that much about RSS feeds and how they work, and frankly I don't care either. I just want it to work.

A straight and simple approach that doesn't require me to have any prior knowledge would work wonders. I think there are many people like me that have a blog, but don't really have the time or expertise to get acquainted with how feeds work and what you can do with them.

Btw: I love this:

 _Can statzen handle a very high traffic blog?

We think so. Maybe. Hopefully. [write me]_

Hope you didn't post it anywhere else than HN where people will understand that this is pre-launch :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Max,

I know what you are saying is 110% true. RSS works best when it just works and people don't need to know "how". We are trying to make the feed integration part as easy as we can for each specific scenario.

Some people want to know how it works, so how would this work for you...

Simple step-by-step instructions that have no clutter to sift through, but a "?" link at each step for people who may want more information.

Would that have reduced the barrier to installation?

And yes, this is only posted here. I am glad you got a kick out of my placeholder copy :)

<comment><USER4> Yes - depending on how well it's executed of course ;-)

I'm currently thinking about the exact same thing, links to small help-boxes scattered around the place where users might have trouble, for my own project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The graphs for "All time" loads slower than before the move to google.com.

Often times, I find I just check which of my posts people like reading, and it gives me a tingle bit of feel-good before I close it and go look at something else. However, I often have to do 4 clicks to get there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent feedback.

FYI, we have post specific attention data for both web and feed right on the first page after logging in. screenshot: <http://flickr.com/photos/jaxn/3121401122/> (blue is web, orange is feed)

It is our feeling that post-centric analytics is really what bloggers want. It also allows us to do topical analytics as well.

Also, I don't currently include an "all time" view, but I am going to rethink that decision.

Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Out of interest, how do you know which posts in the feed get the most attention?

Do you include an invisible 1x1 picture in each RSS item so you get that data? (That would have been my first idea)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's perfect if only it would work as advertised.

Or rather, it was perfect until Google bought it and then it tanked.

</comment><comment><USER8> I recently quit using Feedburner. Why? While it was a pretty good service, it got bought over by Google.

Personally, I'm planning to get rid of Google in my life. Entirely. And Feedburner was just the first step

<comment><USER9> > Personally, I'm planning to get rid of Google in my life. Entirely.

Please do keep an account of your efforts on a blog or something...

<comment><USER8> Indeed I do intend to. Perhaps either to help others who wish to do the same or just for those with academic interest.</comment></comment></comment>


Slack's $2.8B Dollar Secret Sauce - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@awilkinson/slack-s-2-8-billion-dollar-secret-sauce-5c5ec7117908#.avbawu5py <comment><USER2> Wow, that's some shameless self promotion if i ever seen some!

I don't think you can attribute slack's success to design of their apps alone, but there's very little actual concrete design info, except for a vague "it's fun", "it's colorful", and "sounds cool".</comment>


Rental car companies have been waging a quiet legislative war against start-ups - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/03/30/airbnb-for-cars-is-here-and-the-rental-car-giants-are-not-happy/ <comment><USER4> Over the last year, I've really changed how I think about "tech giants," their competition with other parts of the economy, and what it all means. The realization we'll see 3-5 trillion-dollar tech giants very soon triggered it.

Let's take Thiel's startup = monopoly statement seriously for a minute. He didn't mean monopoly in the traditional/legalistic sense. He meant dominating some niche, so that ordinary "margins trend towards 0" rule doesn't apply. 0-marginal costs helps. Network effects too. MSFT are a platform, distanced from market forces by network effects and lock-in. Google & Amazon are middle- men, aggregators _and_ platforms distanced from market forces by network effects. FB is all network effects.

The reason Uber could raise so much money was because they seemed to have a good chance of "dominating" a market, and playing the middle-man between taxis and passengers everywhere, forever. A 1% chance at a one trillion dollar market cap.. that's worth ten billion.

For a _chance_ at a piece of a thiel-monopoly on cars, investors will happily bankroll big loses. Big enough to sink competition. When you are playing for a trillion-dollar monopoly, losses don't matter.

I dunno what to think of competition like this, at scale. This is a different flavour of capitalism.

In any case, neither side wants normal, textbook laissez faire markets. One side is playing for monopoly. The other side is playing for structural stasis via legislation/regulation.

<comment><USER5> >playing the middle-man between taxis and passengers everywhere, forever. A 1% chance at a one trillion dollar market cap

Investors in Uber had to be hoping for either a larger than 1% chance, expanding beyond taxis, fundamentally growing the taxi market, or all of the above. The existing taxi market has a total market cap of well under a trillion dollars, even including companies like Uber. The total US stock market only has a combined market cap of about 30 trillion, so I think you're overestimating the number of trillion dollar market cap industries that exist and the extent to which investors are gambling on success having payoffs quite that high.

<comment><USER6> I don't know... Uber (et al) opened a lot of people to the "lets a hire a driver" mindset. Outside of some major urban centers, the idea of taking a cab was just weird. Uber came a long and suddenly people were taking them everywhere. Not just people who would have otherwise taken a cab, but people who otherwise would have driven themselves.

This is just anecdata from my observations and discussions with others who had similar observations. But it would be interesting to find real numbers on this.

<comment><USER7> My experience is that outside of "major urban centers," Ubers are pretty thin on the ground. I live about 40 miles outside of Boston and the couple of times I've looked, there's been little or nothing available around me.

<comment><USER8> Are your local taxi services better than Uber?

<comment><USER7> I assume they're not very good although I've never used them. But given that Uber doesn't seem to be a practical option, I guess they're better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> These are 2 different business models. Centralized one with scale effects and decentralized one where participants take care of different aspects of car maintenance on their own and platform creates network effect. You can't apply the same rules to these systems as regulation mechanisms are different.

Funny bit: we trust Uber's driver rating MORE than the fact that official taxi drivers are "pro" and comply with regulations i.e. the value of this regulation is negligible. So enterprise car rentals need to ask following question: where in the process of making money we forgot about delivering value to customers.

<comment><USER10> I haven't used Uber, but I have used Lyft. I wouldn't trust these drivers' ratings. My experience is that the conditions of the cars are generally better but about 20% of the time a driver will be at the wrong spot for pick-up. I've had to cancel and demand a refund way too many times. Also the driving isn't any better than the taxi drivers' I've had.

On the other hand I can get a new, clean, well-maintained and current-year car to myself for an entire day from a rental company for a 25% premium (inclusive of all the taxes and fees) on the cost of a round-trip Lyft between my home and my commute train station. When my family travels the weekly rate on such a vehicle is only about the equivalent of 7-8 such round-trips. That's an incredible value, in my view.

<comment><USER11> If you're in an area with free parking, the value of Uber/Lyft is substantially reduced. Alternatively, the total cost of rental cars needs to include $ spent on parking during the rental.

Rentals still come out ahead sometimes, which is why it's great we have both options.

<comment><USER12> That's a great point, and clarifies why I have never used these services. Where I live, I park for free anywhere, or at most $1/hr at a street meter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used Turo once, during a visit to SF. The owner didn't meet me (it's optional on their part), and the process of "checking out" the car didn't seem any easier than renting a car from Budget. It's an elaborate sequence of taking pictures and uploading them to the Turo app in the right order. The cost was not too different from Budget either.

I used Turo simply because the closest "traditional" rental car office that was open was many miles away; while the Turo car was parked close.

I haven't used Turo since. Usually when I need a car it's because I'm flying somewhere, and getting a rental car at the airport just does not seem difficult to me.

<comment><USER14> There's one actual great case for Turo: Pre-purchase test drive, especially for oddball stuff.

You can likely find a car very similar to what you're going to buy, and drive it for a weekend. Luxury car dealerships will do this (esp. when you go into very high pricepoints), but they take convincing. For a lot of people, it's a better way to find out that something isn't quite what you wanted, without having to deal with depreciation after the fact.

Though if you want to give a childhood dream a fair shake before actually plunking money down on one (and going through PPI, etc.) Turo is great for that. There's no shortage of high-end sports cars and "common" supercars on the platform, especially in large metro areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Rather ambivalent about this tbh. We've seen many times how the online marketplaces initially targeted at grassroots providers evolve into professional domains again. Ebay, Uber, AirBnB, in the end casuals are pushed out and you get fulltime sellers, drivers and purpose rental properties driving the market. Only this time most of the profit ends up with members of a one pool party somewhere in California.

They want to disrupt the market, well be ready to bust your asses this time.

<comment><USER16> > in the end casuals are pushed out and you get fulltime sellers, drivers and > purpose rental properties driving the market.

Have casuals been pushed out of Uber? Maybe my market is weird, but I tend to talk to every Uber driver I have and I take a lot of them: I'd say less than 50% are full-time drivers.

<comment><USER17> Really? I don't recall meeting an Uber driver who didn't do it all the time.

I think GP's point is valid. To start with, it's beneficial and fair that lots of little people can rent out their cars for some extra change. But when it ends up being a loophole to sidestepping existing rules to make essentially the same service with fewer rules, it's worth paying extra attention to. Not saying it needs to be outlawed, just that it's not obvious what to do.

<comment><USER18> It'd be very easy to have legislation that regulates small-timers (only owns one or two cars, rents it out less than 30% of the time, etc.) differently from professional operators, even if they advertise on the same platform.

Some jurisdictions have started doing this for AirBnb.

<comment><USER19> we already have too much of this type of regulation which does just what you state, keeping small timers out to benefit the established interests. occupational licensing sounds beneficial to the public as a whole and at one time it was but once established businesses found they could use it to block competition its original focus was lost.

It really clobbers low income workers and fattens pockets of companies which "train" for licenses and the like. Nearly a third of all jobs are regulated as such and many are prohibited to former convicts which is yet another road block. You can end up spending more money gaining your license to braid hair than serve as an EMT.

<comment><USER18> I'm proposing the opposite: regulate big operators more heavily than small- time amateurs.

If you want to rent out a spare room in your own house a few weekends a year, the government probably doesn't need to be very involved in that. On the other hand, if you're a company that owns 50 condos and lists them all on Airbnb, you should be carrying insurance, you should be subject to inspection for bedbugs, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Taxi company that isn't a taxi company. Hotel company that isn't a hotel company. And now, car rental company that isn't a car rental company. And, as always, all the regulations are somehow bad.

The PR person compares this to lead paint certification, but I'd argue that the bulk rented apartments need that too. Instead they're fighting sales tax on the rentals. Besides this, cars are far more dangerous to others when maintenance gets lax.

<comment><USER21> Few would claim that all regulations are bad. But regulations often age badly. Regulators and the companies they regulate are both motivated to freeze the state of the industry over time. So when new technologies like smartphones allow doing something better, the regulations often prohibit it (as they did with taxis.) Established players don't want change because change costs money, and regulators aren't motivated to make changes either.

What we see is that unregulated industries (say, dog-walking on demand) can quickly adopt the new technology, while regulated ones like car rental have trouble.

Car rental should be much better with smartphones. I should be able to get a car brought to the airport in front of baggage claim. The fact that I have to schlep my luggage on shuttle buses to a rental area is an artifact of a business model that no longer makes sense. But if we wait for the incumbents to do it, it could take any amount of time.

<comment><USER7> >The fact that I have to schlep my luggage on shuttle buses to a rental area is an artifact of a business model that no longer makes sense.

Well, it's also an artifact of the reality that the rental volume at major airports is such that the activity needs to be moved well away from baggage claim. Honestly, I don't find car rentals to be that big a deal. I have priority cards for a couple of companies so I basically take the bus/train, grab a car, and checkout at the gate. Admittedly, I don't usually have much luggage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anecdotally the only people I know who have used Turo are young people - <USER2> doesn't have a you must be 25 or a young driver surcharge policy for driving if aged between 21 and 25, which is typically the case at a conventional car rental desk in the US.

Personally I would feel pretty uncomfortable if greeted by the private vehicle owner when picking up a rental (I know this doesn't apply to all vehicles on Turo) - people are often extremely attached to their personal vehicles in my experience. At least at the rental desk the staff could care less what I choose to use the rental for, or how I drive it.

<comment><USER23> > people are often extremely attached to their personal vehicles

And for good reason. Cars are expensive to maintain even when driven and cared for responsibly. No idea what would be considered a reasonable listing price on Turo, but to hand my keys over to a 21 year old stranger in town for a weekend vacation, I dunno... maybe I'd do it for >$100/day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There have been many comments here in the past about how sticking a digital intermediary into a traditional business model doesn't somehow magically absolve you of regulations on that business model.

This article doesn't actually present any unique obligations on Turo (the rental car Airbnb). As far as this article presents, the legislation is to explicitly make clear that if Turo is going to work in the rental car space, they can't just ignore regulatory burdens that all their competitors are subject to.

I see no problem here.

<comment><USER25> Do you also feel that Uber and Lyft should constrained from day 1 not to operate without following all the regulations for taxi services like a requirement to have a medallion and to only allow drivers who have undergone an extensive background check?

Do you also feel that Airbnb, if it is going to work in the room rental space, should be required to comply with all of the regulations for the hotel industry (including collecting of hotel tax, posting of room rates on a placard affixed to the door, and installation of better-than-consumer-grade fire suppression systems)?

It sounds good to say "innovators can do whatever they like but need to follow the same rules as everyone else". But perhaps the existing rules are specifically tuned to the existing business model and will not be rewritten to support another business model unless that business model has been proven in practice. Or perhaps the existing rules are just excessively restrictive.

<comment><USER24> I see your point, but I think it's fundamentally flawed: I think the very reason we can look at this and go, "it's just rental cars with an app" is because it's not all that innovative. Beyond that, these regulations exist for a reason, and if they're going to be argued against then it's on the part of the "innovator" to build a business model that distances them, in granular operational detail, sufficiently far from the old model to make those regulations irrelevant.

e.g., Do I also feel that if someone creates an airbnb for food production that they should still be required to comply with all the regulations of the food prep industry? Yes, I do. They're still putting food in people's mouths, and the bulk of the regulations exist to protect people who are eating strangers' food. IF their business model is so divorced from the old restaurant model that the risks the regulation addresses no longer exist, I'd be more sympathetic, but I've yet to see that be the case.

In this case, for instance: I'm interacting with you, the app, and buying a ride. You're selling me a ride. For the same reason we have food safety regs, you're required to make sure your fleet is safe and up-to-date. Why, precisely, would you be exempt from that just because you source your fleet differently than a traditional rental car company? There's nothing about the app/service that negates that concern. The business, in the relevant respect, is the same - so why should they get a free pass on the regs? Because they've chosen a different model for sourcing cars?

Fundamentally, no one is owed a business model. IF your business model is "same old business, peer sourced supplies, and an app" \- that is to say, in most functional respects the same business that is already regulated - <USER3> yes, you should be subject to those regulations. The very fact that these business are so very easily slotted into existing regs is _because_ they're so similar to existing businesses. AirBnB didn't have trouble with regs when it was actually people letting spare rooms; it ran into trouble with regs when a large percentage of their rooms came through single owners of multiple dwellings dedicated to airbnb. That is, when they became a hotel.

<comment><USER26> I dunno, you're sort of assuming that all regulations are equally important for safety, I think most people would agree some regulations are only there to protect existing businesses from competition. But all regulations have to be followed, so what do startups do about that?

When AirBnB and Uber started they ignored all the regulations except the ones they wanted.. and it wasn't that bad. It was just, do you trust that a random person will let you sleep in their house or give you a ride without having a bad experience. All the existing regulations that applied said "no, of course you need taxes to pay inspectors and check all these boxes to protect people", but it turned out... yeah, you could just let people do their thing and it would turn out ok and not cost that much.

Doing the same thing slightly differently and claiming the regulations don't apply is risky, but ultimately whether you win or not is if you can deliver better service for lower prices safely. If so, the public will back you and you'll eventually be allowed to operate but with some negotiated subset of regulations that will emphasize the safety parts (because the public likes those) and limit most of the anti-competitive stuff (because the public hates those parts). That's exactly what happened with Uber and AirBnb. There's really no other way to change regulations these days.

I think we need companies like that to come along and show just how badly entrenched businesses can regulate their way to being protected against competitors and capture higher prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I was rooting for disruption for a while, but after signing up for one of the loyalty programs I mostly just don't care anymore. My major gripes have been fixed, I can just walk up and take a car at most airports and unless there's a major event going on the pricing is very cheap.

I can't imagine wanting to go through the hassle of something like Turo unless I was trying to rent an unusual car for a special occasion. The last thing I want to do after getting off a plane is jump through hoops.

Update: I should also add there are often promo codes available on the likes of Retail Me Not that can make things even cheaper. Combine with a loyalty program which results in frequent upgrades and it's a great combo. I recently drove a brand new BMW X5 for a week for something like $30 a day after fees.

<comment><USER28> > My major gripes have been fixed, I can just walk up and take a car at most > airports

Maybe we have very different patterns of flying, but this has never been my experience. It's always exactly the opposite: there's a line of ten families at the rental desk, each person takes at least ten minutes (!) to process, and the desk has one, maybe two people, for a total of half an hour in line or more. It's so phenomenally aggravating once you've finally gotten off the plane and just want to get to your hotel that it has left me with no sympathy for these rental companies whatsoever.

Which I suppose is the real brilliance of both Uber and Turo: if you're going to disrupt an industry by breaking the law, pick a business that absolutely no one is going to go to bat for. Despite how brazenly illegal Uber was in many cases, nobody cared because the taxis were just that awful.

It's possible that things will turn out differently for Turo now that people are wise to Uber's game, but the rental companies would still do well to remember that one of the things that helps these illegal disruptors prosper is when people are so sick of the status quo that they happily turn a blind eye to the law-breaking. Make your business suck less, and then maybe people might actually stick up for you.

<comment><USER27> > It's always exactly the opposite: there's a line of ten families at the > rental desk, each person takes at least ten minutes (!) to process, and the > desk has one, maybe two people, for a total of half an hour in line or more.

That was me until I signed up for the loyalty program (it's free, like frequent flier programs). Now at most airports I just go right to the vehicle (they email the parking spot number) or special booth in the parking lot or choose any vehicle in a special lane. Not only do you not have to wait behind families, but you don't go through that whole pitch where they try and sell you insurance and gas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Someone tell me what I'm missing.

From this article it seems that the appeal for renters is that it's a more friendly process to rent from Turo than e.g. Hertz. A renter doesn't care if the car is owned by average Joe or by Hertz.

So can't Hertz and others simply fight this by improving their renting process? What's stopping Hertz from coming up with an app and completely destroy Turo? They already have the cars, they already have the distribution, they already have the compliance. Now just get an app.

<comment><USER30> It is a lot more than that. I have spent last month doing quite a bit of sporadic rentals and it is a pain in the neck.

(a) pricing is not transparent what so ever. I can get estimated price but I cannot get the total out of the door price. It makes _zero_ sense in 2018.

(b) i can never get a car that I am "ordering". I fail to understand why a Zipcar can do it, but neither Hertz nor Enterprise nor Budget can. If I'm getting an Tahoe, which is expensive which you claimed you have, I'm baffled why the barely coherent employee thinks that a minivan is a "similar vehicle".

(c) daily insurance scams - luckily it does not apply to me because $25/trip premium insurance via Amex is easy, automated and just pure awesome but oh my god people who do not know about it are just getting screwed.

(d) And finally... why is it that I still cannot search _all_ the locations within a certain area for the cars and prices that I need? Why do I have to repeat the searches for the twenty Hertz in NYC when with a Zipcar or Maven i can just scroll through the map or get a list?

If rental car companies were to fix this 99% people like me won't be likely to use "peer-to-peer" because there's nothing worse than driving someone's non- standard, modified, coolant-gauge-may-not-actually-work car.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for this. Could you explain (c)? I don't understand what you mean.

Regarding the rest, it sounds like they got used to offering a poor service because they don't have enough competition or something. You might have a point there, but for a competitor to take advantage of that they just need to execute better on those points. They don't really need to source their cars from average Joes...

I'm not saying that Hertz isn't shit, I'm just saying that I don't understand how where the cars are sourced from is a real differentiating point. EDIT: I just re-read your last line and it seems you agree.

<comment><USER31> Rental car companies always try to sell you liability coverage for accidents and damage for about $25/day. Almost every major credit card already includes the coverage for free, so when you opt into the rental coverage, you're needlessly paying a significant premium for something you likely already have.

<comment><USER32> This is not true. _Most_ cards do _not_ cover at fault general liability, most cover the damage to the car and that's usually secondary coverage, which is to say if you have insurance already, you will have to utilize that first in case a claim is required.

If you fall asleep and drive a car into a house or hit a pedestrian, you better have to have some third party liability coverage. If you have car insurance already you probably have this coverage, but if you don't... you don't.

This is a pretty complicated topic and I've done some deep dives into it and found it's not as clear cut as most people seem to believe. What kind of card you have matters, whether you have insurance already matters and even with both of those you need to understand what exactly is covered by who and when. If you don't have insurance you should always get liability. If you don't have insurance and rent a lot you should call up Progressive or National and request a quote for non-owner liability coverage.

What one shouldn't do is go around telling people to waive all coverage and that rental car insurance is a scam.

<comment><USER12> Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day. Most personal auto insurance and even many credit card liability plans will not cover this. I have a State Farm Visa for the sole reason that if I rent a car using that card I am fully covered including for loss of use.

<comment><USER33> > Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car > is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day.

This is much more than the cost to the consumer of renting the car. How can they possibly defend it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Having rented a number of cars recently I can attest that this is an industry that is in major need of disruption. Renting a car today at any car rental company I know of is phenomenally inefficient:

1\. Long rental lines at airports. 2\. Asking for information that could be provided ahead of time via apps. 3\. Having to make your way to the car rental facility.

What I would like and I would be willing to pay a premium for is order the car of my choice via an app. Have said car delivered to my location by a driver that then takes Lyft/Uber back to headquarters. Also it seems like the car rental companies could benefit from economies of scale by having a small number of large lots instead of numerous little lots peppered throughout a geographic area. If this existed, I would use it all the time as I only need occasional use of a car.

<comment><USER35> Check out SilverCar. They are mostly app based.

<comment><USER34> SilverCar sounds promising, but from my research you still have to travel somewhere to get the car. I want the car to come to me. :-)

<comment><USER36> SilverCar is amazing. Traditional rental agencies look like garbage in comparison. SilverCar also has shuttles at most major airports so you don't have to go far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have mixed feelings about this. Uber is a horrible company but they created real competition for a lazy industry that sorely needed some.

Turo is doing the same. When I wanted to rent a Tesla for a few days Turo was the only viable option. The majors all wanted around $1000/day; I found one on Turo for a little over $100 and the free fuel brought that down to around $80. It was a delightful experience.

<comment><USER7> The majors are really in the business of mass-market utilitarian rental. And they mostly do a competent job of that. To the degree they offer anything outside that framework, they do tend to charge a huge premium if they offer the option at all. (For example, good luck renting a 4WD Jeep.)

I would question the wisdom of someone renting their Tesla out like this but that's their decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> From what I've noticed here in Los Angeles, Turo is exploiting the greymarket of wildcat car dealers. There are lots of people here that own 10+ late model economy cars at any one time and there are areas where you'll see 5-6 cars on the street with For Sale signs.

A friend of mine who's car was totaled used Turo for a month or so until she bought the car from the guy.

<comment><USER23> This is the first thing that occurred to me after browsing the cars available in my area. Nearly all of them look like they are listed by boutique / independent used car dealers (like the one I drive by every day: [http://imgur.com/J3yi9qL.png](http://imgur.com/J3yi9qL.png) ).

This is interesting given that...

 _Title 13 California Code of Regulations, section 260.02 states: (B) Former taxicabs, rental vehicles, publicly owned vehicles, insurance salvage vehicles and revived salvage vehicles shall be clearly identified as such if the previous status is known to the seller._

If the used car lot owner is renting-out his cars on Turo, it seems like they are required to disclosed this to potential buyers. I highly doubt this is happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Just like Airbnb is a hotel business, Uber is a taxi business (meaning a ride- for-hire business and nothing else) having a car rental business is having a car rental business regardless of whether the cars are "shared" or whether there is an app involved.

And just like Uber has to follow any regulations surrounding rides for hire (regarding taxes, insurance, accessibility, right to deny service, ...), so must this company with regulations surrounding car rental.

I don't see how making sure startups don't get away with some loophole is a "legislative war". It's no different from cities where Hotels say AirBnb should pay hotel taxes and have hotel level fire security.

If the regulations surrounding the established market is too rigid then address that. But don't "revolutionize" markets by using some loophole and an app.

<comment><USER40> Your examples aren't helping to prove your point though. It makes zero sense to require single-family houses or duplexes to have hotel level security. Requiring a homeowner to retrofit sprinklers and fire doors, or provide 24-hour video surveillance or an onsite security guard?

A hotel is fundamentally different sort of facility than my house. Insisting they be regulated the same is pure rent-seeking on the part of the hotel industry.

<comment><USER39> If you rent it out you _are_ a hotel. Or, possibly, a landlord (which comes with different but quite burdensome regulations in most countries).

What a lot of these startups do is expose areas of markets that may be too rigidly regulated. Perhaps the reasonable level of regulation for Airbnb renting is just working smoke detectors, a basic escape plan map and good insurance? Perhaps most of the remaining hotel regulations could be lifted? It's very likely that the advent of "not quite hotels" and "not quite taxi" calls for new regulation. But what the established players "war" against is newcomers completely dodging regulation on account of being "not a hotel", "not a landlord" or "not a taxi".

<comment><USER40> > "If you rent it out you are a hotel"

This kind of semantic conflation isn't helpful. A house, rented or not, has almost nothing in common with a typical hotel with dozens of rooms and unrelated guests, complicated egress paths, commercial kitchens, industrial services and controls, etc.

It absolutely makes sense to require hotels to have automatic fire suppression systems, heavy fire doors in every room, video surveillance, or 24-hour guards. And then there's ADA, a whole other conversation.

Hotels aren't pushing for hotel regs to be applied to houses out of some even- handed desire to prevent loopholes. The AH&LA is a cartel trying to have their competition outlawed.

<comment><USER41> > Hotels aren't pushing for hotel regs to be applied to houses out of some > even-handed desire to prevent loopholes. The AH&LA is a cartel trying to > have their competition outlawed.

Sure, but the opposite is equally true. AirBNB, Uber, and others aren't blatantly lying about their core business out of some even-handed desire to prevent loopholes. They're doing it exclusively to illegally escape regulation -- regulations their competitors are all bound to by law. They're trying to replace a cartel with _their cartel_.

The question to the public at large is: would you rather have an existing cartel that is subject to regulation, or a new cartel that also believes it is above the law.

<comment><USER42> You make it sound like the regulations somehow bind and constrain the existing cartels. Another point of view is that the regulations are the mechanism by which the cartels keep competitors out.

I'd rather have "above the law" cartels than "makes the law" cartels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Almost nothing in this article seems unreasonable. If I give you money for your goods for X amount of time, that is renting. You are engaged in commerce and fall under the laws and regulations of commerce. Not sure why it's being called a war. None of the legislators have called for an outright ban.

<comment><USER44> I think enforcing by legislative means the profit-sharing system traditional players have with the airports is completely unreasonable. They go out as far as to call it a safety issue.

Yes, the playing field is not level, but that's what competition means: the sharing companies have found a way to go around the onerous taxes imposed by airports and there is almost nothing the airport can do to stop a private individual drop a car in it's short term parking lot for another individual. There's no safety or congestion issue, it's the entire point of the short time parking spaces.

<comment><USER45> There's no obvious reason why airports charging people who use the airport as a transportation hub is unreasonable or onerous by definition.

<comment><USER44> For a completely private airport that builds its own road and transit infrastructure, sure. Most real airports have massive public investment and infrastructure and enjoy a strong local monopoly - with the specific purpose of acting like a public transportation hub.

Therefore, any charge that moves from services provided, on a needs basis, to an indiscriminate tax, on a per person basis, can be seen as onerous in light of the public investment.

<comment><USER45> But if there's a precedent that people landing in the airport and renting cars pay a tax why should some companies be able to avoid it and not others. This argument is nonsensical.

<comment><USER44> Because the new players don't need the services airports provide. Which turns into a tax or a monopoly rent, there is a long a list of such "precedents" that the market and regulators shut down.

<comment><USER45> If they don't need the service the airport provides they can meet people arriving on planes somewhere that's not an airport. Otherwise it seems to me that they need the service the airport provides.

<comment><USER46> The service the airport provides is the fact that lots of people are there. In other news if I meet you in starbucks to buy a laptop from craigslist they aren't getting a cut.

If they meet the car at Walmart do we expect the walton family to get a cut? If they drop the car off at their home do we expect the HOA to get a cut?

At some point we could acknowledge that the airport isn't a party to the transaction.

<comment><USER45> Yes, if you set up a commercial for-profit business selling things, or delivering rental cars, in a Starbucks or Walmart parking lot they would certainly expect a cut, or otherwise stop you from doing it. This concept is spectacularly non confusing.

<comment><USER46> Meanwhile in reality people seem to be dealing drugs regularly in walmart parking lots and I bought my Craigslist laptop in a coffee shop. I didn't give the coffee shop a cut and I'm pretty sure the shady characters meeting in the walmart parking lot aren't giving the waltons a cut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I don't understand the appeal of Turo. I hate car rentals, but can't believe renting from a random to be a superior experience to them.

SilverCar on the other hand, is amazing. They just need better accessibility at airports.

</comment><comment><USER48> Although car rental user experience is not perfect, it gets the job done well enough. Not every type of business in the world needs VC funding, react.js SPA, chatbot and "sharing economy".

</comment><comment><USER49> Ctrl-F "insurance" \- no results. If I use a startup to lend my car to someone, and they're involved in an accident, whose insurance covers it?

<comment><USER50> The reason I rent from Enterprise is that I don't have to worry about insurance or breakdowns. My financial loss is set at £100 maximum and the cars are nearly always brand new so unlikely to breakdown.

To start using some unregulated operation like 'AirBnB for cars' I would need do be paying virtually nothing as an incentive. And, from the examples I've seen so far, this is no way the case.

<comment><USER51> I must be super unlucky. I find their maintenance well below par. They're the only company that attempts to rent me cars/vans with: oil service lights, bald tires, cracked windscreens. This isn't limited to a single branch either.

Also £100 is not their standard excess, so you're paying for the reduced liability. (Also, they like to tell you every time in the hard sell that the £1,000 excess is for each and every incident and the full amount will be taken immediately... ?! Not sure how true that is)

However, they have the most branches in the UK of any rental company, so they're often extremely convenient.

<comment><USER50> Never had the hard sell, tbh, but I find the standard £1,000 excess a bit too much of a risk. Having rented a dozen or so times my only damage, thus far, has been a scratch on the door which, likely, only cost £100 to fix?

In theory then, I'd be better off taking the bigger risk but there is also Murphy's law to consider.

Maybe I have been lucky but I've found them to be much better than the alternatives and a lot more laid back about stuff like fuel levels and return times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> How feasible is it that companies like Turo can route around this issue by offering things other than cars to rent/lease from their owners? Like, if that F150 came with a bunch of shovels for schlepping soil, for example ... or if the Tesla came with a tour guide in the passenger seat?

Wouldn't that make the whole "a duck by any other name" more of a "well, its a platypus really" kind of issue?

Or are there regulations which preclude this kind of bundling of services?

</comment><comment><USER53> Taking on a CARtel will never be an easy process.</comment>