Chromebooks Have an "Auto Update Expiration" - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/22/buying_a_chromebook_dont_forget_to_check_when_it_expires/ <comment><USER2> The article rightly points out how disaster it is due to lack of disclosure. You can't know how long you'll get updates until you buy it.

The article has this comment: "Example PCWorld have ACER 14 CB3-431 on sale for £179 its Auto EOS is June 2021 - so less than 2 years. Its also available on Amazon for the same price, neither highlight short support life, though at least on Amazon you can see its been for sale for more than three years, but again if you did not know of the Auto Update expiry you would be in the dark."

Can this product be legally sold in Europe and would someone have a warranty claim against it for lack of a maintenance for a critical security flaw?

</comment><comment><USER3> The chromebook should still be updatable. There is no reason to withhold updates just because it reached some arbitrary date.

A 10 year old windows computer still receives updates. As long as the OS is updated.

</comment><comment><USER4> My HP laptop is one year from its 6.5 years birthday party. Of course I upgraded it in ways that are probably precluded to a Chromebook, but is there really no way to install newer versions of ChromeOS and check if they work?

<comment><USER5> I flashed the rom to run linux before my last one expired (it was x86) as an alternate solution.

In theory, you can run chromiumOS directly if you disable signing and live with the warning beeps.. Perhaps it can be more easily done via neverware's builds, but I'm sure how realistic that is without installing PC style bios and running like a normal PC testing chromeOs, where that is possible.

<comment><USER3> I hope this article gets enough traction that Google changes its position. Even on the grounds of green technology.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, though I think its odd to focus on chromeOS having 6 years, when Android devices have 0-3 years from first manufacture.

Manufacturers of phones really seem to have set expectations so low for phones that it is uneconomic to make a product in a form with a history of greener expectations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 They should definitely make the expiration date more prominent. My Chromebook did work well for five years and I know this date would come, but the average consumer, buying an aftermarket Chromebook online might not expect this to happen.

I'll check if I can flash a different OS on mine and make it last a while longer and remain secure.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're running into EOL on your chromebook, strongly consider installing Ubuntu or GalliumOS on it to get a little more mileage. [https://galliumos.org/](https://galliumos.org/) Gallium is Xubuntu + some extra chromebook specific fixes.

I started using Gallium after ChromeOS updates had slowed down my Chromebook enough to be pretty much unusable. It gave me an extra year or so of happiness with my chromebook before I moved on. But remembering how much I liked Linux on my laptop, and didn't want to get another chromebook I would have to drop ChromeOS from within a few years, I ended up back at a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on it.

</comment><comment><USER7> One option to explore is CloudReady by Neverware [1], a third party supported Chrome variant. Their Home version is free and includes automatic security and feature updates. Disclaimer: I have no affiliation, and have not installed it yet.

1\. [https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Installing- Clou...](https://cloudreadykb.neverware.com/s/article/Installing-CloudReady- On-An-Uncertified-Device)

</comment><comment><USER8> I run an EOL Chromebook Pixel (seriously google, your naming conventions are trash) as my nighttime netflix/youtube device. Pretty nifty for $180, though battery life is only a couple hours. The nicer Chromebooks can run real Linux either side by side or completely replacing ChromeOS, but I haven't really found a need because I have a separate, full-fat, desktop.

</comment><comment><USER9> What is the official justification for this? Why are they unable to support these devices after a certain set of time?

<comment><USER10> Does it really matter what an official justification for planned obsolescence is?

<comment><USER11> It can be useful to know what specific brand(s) of corporate hypocrisy you're dealing with. And/or use it to properly ridicule the responsible parties.</comment></comment></comment>


Mobile Opportunities: not in the apps - <AUTHOR> http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/01/how-you-became-next-mogul-in-mobile-and-a-millionaire-the-new-years-blog.html

<comment><USER2> Can someone give TL;DR summary of this post? My, does it go on and on...

<comment><USER3> TL;DR: Mobile platforms can bring (Internet) technology to a global audience that is larger than any that we have seen. Smartphones represent a very small percentage of this audience, so there is more money in creating services that work on all mobile platforms, utilizing SMS/MMS.

Warning: Even speed-reading that post was painful.</comment></comment>


Lawmakers Leave Washington Without Renewing Expired Surveillance Powers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/lawmakers-leave-washington-without-renewing-expired-surveillance-powers-11585357621 <comment><USER2> too good to be true for long.

just like fisa, they will extend on monday after no deliberation.

<comment><USER2> LOL. downvoted with no comment pointing why it would not be.

alas, it was the rigth prediction and Exactly that happened.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Funnel Visualization in HTML/CSS/D3.js - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/inlineblock/raw/5557802/ <comment><USER2> The 3d effect doesn't really make sense in this case, since it suggests that all the segments have actually equal width.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if the 3D effect is intentional but I definitely agree. It makes it confusing as to what I'm looking at. I feel like it's a Wolfenstein 3D level.

Kudos on working on a better visualization of funnel analysis. The traditional bar chart that tools like MixPanel use is also confusing. It explicitly convey that you're looking at the flow of actions.

I wrote an open source behavioral analytics database and I opted for separating the action visualization and the flow between actions in my D3.js funnel analysis visualization. Animation also helps to show the flow.

<http://demo.skydb.io/gharchive/explore>

(For context, that's GitHub Archive data so it's showing the next immediate action after a given action -- e.g. pushes, repo creation, GitHub follows, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool work, I like the transitions, but I'd caution people on actually using a funnel chart as it has a tendency to be easily mis-interpreted. <http://blog.spark59.com/2012/why-not-the-funnel-chart/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting how it's only using one div and border hacks per segment. So I guess in theory this would work on older browsers, other than just content clipping in IE8, IE7, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially I wrote it using 2 div's (one for the segment and one for the gap) so it would work in ie8, but I opted to go with one div, since its cleaner DOM-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great job. Lose the 3D.</comment>


Show HN: Mountain Jumper - <AUTHOR> https://sacert.github.io/Mountain-Jumper/ <comment><USER2> Don't do this. It's awful.

Except if it is a programming exercise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't enjoy myself? Sure.</comment></comment>


Twitter pulls the plug on Summize.com domain - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-pulls-the-plug-on-summizecom-domain-2010-5

<comment><USER2> Why wouldn't they keep the domain and just forward it indefinitely to search.twitter.com? A renewal for 10 more years would only be $80...far less than the $15 million they paid for the company.</comment>


Google Puts Lid on New Products (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://articles.latimes.com/2006/oct/06/business/fi-google6

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a valuable lesson for all of us, but I believe can be stated differently, which will enable an even more profound result to take place for all of our ideas. People often ask themselves, what is it in for me, and if the product/service that you are developing can not answer this question in a appropriate fashion, then the user will become a non-user! How is the product or service going to benefit my life? This should be the first question that all of us entrepreneurs are answering on behalf of the audience that we are looking to capture…

</comment><comment><USER2> The most interesting part of this article is the date (2006). Nice find.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is what I found to be most intriguing as well...Do you think that Google is congruent with this message?

<comment><USER2> Yes and no. When I first read the article I hadn't noticed the date, and thought "finally!". But having seen the dateline, and with the onslaught of half-baked Google products continuing, it doesn't seem like the strategy has permeated.

On the other hand, they have been releasing a lot of "labs" features into existing products like Gmail and search, which previously might have become discrete products.

So I think they've got a long way to go on this strategy, but I think its a good one for them and they've made progress. I certainly don't think they should stop innovating, but I do think they need to pay more attention to their positioning.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did not realize the date until I read the first few paragraphs either! In my mind, Google has come closer than any company history to doing everything for anyone. With this being said, I agree with the focused innovation point that you made and the attention to positioning themselves as we progress...I find it to be rather exciting to think about what Google will become in 30 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I stopped reading at "Rob Enderle."</comment>


PGX: Write Postgres extensions in Rust instead of C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zombodb/pgx <comment><USER2> Guys, this is really really cool. Been looking to learn Rust and it just so happens I need to write a Postgres extension in the near future so two birds and one stone.

Btw - Also, I've seen ZomboDB and while I've not used it I must say it looks EXCELLENT. So congrats on that too.

<comment><USER3> _blush_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really cool! The only other similar thing I know of is WASMer's extension (which only supports Rust atm I believe):

[https://github.com/wasmerio/postgres-ext- wasm](https://github.com/wasmerio/postgres-ext-wasm)

One question though: If you built and compiled an extension with this, how would you deploy it on top of a Postgres Docker image?

I see instructions for installing and testing locally, via the cargo command, but couldn't find anything on this.

Does it spit out a static asset that you put in the project folder, and copy over during the build pipeline? Something like:

      FROM postgres:12-alpine
      COPY ./my-rust-extension /some/container/directory
      RUN install-command-here

<comment><USER3> That's a great question, and one probably best answered over on pgx's GitHub page.

But! I plan on adding a command to "cargo-pgx" to package up the extension for you into a directory structure (or tarball, maybe).

The idea is that you'd just run: cargo pgx package

And it would just build a --release library, and create the proper directory structure (based on what pg_config) says for the shared library and the associated .sql.

I actually need this ASAP for supporting ZomboDB proper, so... Coming Soon!

<comment><USER4> Awesome, look forward to it =D

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/zombodb/pgx/releases/tag/v0.0.7](https://github.com/zombodb/pgx/releases/tag/v0.0.7)

!boom!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting, it makes coding a postgres extension seem delightfully simple. I have been looking for something to try using rust on! Thanks for posting this.

<comment><USER3> Thank you!

If you decide to jump into it, definitely let us know any pain points you have.

It takes a bit of time to work out the kinks in a thing like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just out of curiosity, what sort of requirements compel a person to write a postgres extension? I know of things like PostGIS but I'm not well versed enough in this world to know the totality of the problem.

<comment><USER3> Author of `pgx` here.

We developed pgx so that we could rewrite "ZomboDB" ([https://github.com/zombodb/zombodb](https://github.com/zombodb/zombodb)) in Rust. ZDB is a custom "Index Access Method" for Postgres. Think btree index, but stored in Elasticsearch.

So that's definitely a thing.

Other ideas might be custom data analytics/transformation/processing engines that you'd prefer to run in the database instead of externally.

Custom data types to represent, for example, street addresses or genetic information.

The only limit is yourself! ;)

<comment><USER7> > The only limit is yourself! ;)

For folks who don't get the joke, please visit zombo.com before Flash is finally dead :).

<comment><USER8> Alternatively, there's [https://html5zombo.com](https://html5zombo.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Recent similar thing in the Ada world: [https://github.com/AdaCore/gnatcoll- db/tree/master/pgxs](https://github.com/AdaCore/gnatcoll-db/tree/master/pgxs)

</comment><comment><USER10> Also of interest: rpgffi - [https://github.com/posix4e/rpgffi](https://github.com/posix4e/rpgffi)

"R(Rust) PG(Postgresql) FFI (Foreign Function Interface)"

<comment><USER3> That is interesting.

pgx does a lot of that too, but for only pg10/11/12\. And then it post- processes the bindings and builds a "common.rs" for symbols that are identical across versions.

That way you can target all three versions at once, and then you can use Rust's #[cfg(feature=)] directive to opt into support for specific versions.

pgx has also done a little bit of work to mask differences between the three versions so they appear as part of "common.rs" anyways.

I wanted a framework that let me know, at development time, if I was trying to do a thing that isn't supported (or the same) across various PG versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has been on my back burner for about a year now...glad someone has gotten to it. It already looks full featured. I've been thinking that with the right library subset (just like libcore or no_std), it would be a very safe possibility for a trusted language...accessible to users that are not superusers. That would be extremely valuable to RDS users that would love to use something fast, as opposed to the standard trusted languages like pl/python.

<comment><USER3> I've noodled the idea of a pl/pg_rust, but the whole "Cargo.toml" and downloading dependencies from the internet seems bad.

I see what you're saying about no_std tho. Could be doable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> At first I thought it is a Postgresql driver for Go that has the same name

[https://github.com/jackc/pgx](https://github.com/jackc/pgx)

<comment><USER13> Yes, it's always mess like sqlx.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be awesome if someone with some Rust knowledge could make an extension to create a compressed string type like Antirez Smaz [1].

I know Postgres compresses TEXT types by default, but only when the data exceeds TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD (default 2 kB)

Some examples on the project page [1] show reduction of size between 10% and more than 50% for some small strings (less than 100 bytes).

[1] [https://github.com/antirez/smaz](https://github.com/antirez/smaz)

<comment><USER15> I think the existing C API would be a better fit, and the work would likely be a fairly simple modification to the citext extension found in contrib section of the PostgreSQL source if anyone is game.

<comment><USER3> I'd be inclined to agree.

That said, it'd be easy to prototype with pgx, assuming that compression library exists in the Rust ecosystem too?

<comment><USER14> I guess this compression library should do the trick [1], but I haven't tested it yet.

[1] [https://docs.rs/compress/0.1.2/compress/entropy/ari/index.ht...](https://docs.rs/compress/0.1.2/compress/entropy/ari/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there any way to make custom types using pgx?

<comment><USER3> Yes there is. It's not documented/example'd yet tho.

There's a derive macro called #[derive(PostgresType)]. Combine that with serde's Serialize, Deserialize, and you're gtg.

I'm going to be working on more docs and twitch streams over this week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Typo in the title: oc->of

<comment><USER18> Fixed. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Best of Draw Something - Wow. Some people have too much time. - <AUTHOR> http://bestofdrawsomething.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, the Mario one is insane. Must be a tablet, because I don't have that kind of precision on a phone...and no artistic skills to come up with that!</comment>


Show HN: Sborex, a minimal-code visual service designer with web builder (POC) - <AUTHOR> http://sborex.com/poc/ <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote a visual flowchart execution engine with multiple machine protocol connectors. You can also hang a web page here and there on the diagram to provide the means of interaction with human users.

The demo app contains a proto-CRM and a quick implementation of a SIP server. It runs on Java 8+.

Please tell me what you think about this thing. Are there any services or apps that you would draw with such a tool once it's ready?

</comment><comment></comment><comment>=

I was exploring the existing visual process design toolkits like BPMN execution engines for my work (fintech), but I quickly learned that they weren't working as I was expecting.

They were aiming on orchestrating the workflows as business processes, without focus on real-time execution. For integration purposes a developer would need to embed and configure some different tool along with the process engine.

So I started coding, implementing the engine from scratch, redefining slightly the meaning of BPMN elements to my understanding:

\- Message Event became an Apache Camel endpoint consumer or producer - basically waiting or issuing an external system call via some API. The user, with an Apache's extensive component list and their docs as a cheat sheet [1] would define the app's integration points: reading files, listening to restful requests ans so on.

\- User Task instead of being just an input form became a full blown web page or page fragment. The user is presented with the process-bound data in a legible form to make a decision and to complete the user task.

\- I added web page templates to the processes themselves. Now you may design a complex web page with dynamical parts that are represented by the currently waiting process User Tasks page fragments.

\- The "multi-instance" elements will work with long streams sequentially splitting them in chunks;

\- Some other less obvious things were made like the "stream parallelizer" to direct the stream bytes to different consumers simultaneously. The process, for example, will be able to send audio to the user and in parallel to the speech recognition software (and then to the user in a form of text).

So what do you think this may grow into?

[1] [https://camel.apache.org/components/latest/](https://camel.apache.org/components/latest/)</comment>


So much for academic freedom at UCLA - <AUTHOR> http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/aug/21/so-much-for-academic-freedom-at-ucla/ A more detailed source, which I should have posted to begin with. My mistake. Unfortunately I can't edit the URL, so here it is.<p>http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2010/08/ucla_researcher_james_enstrom_not_reappointed_to_position <comment><USER2> Digging a bit more, it seems that this editorial isn't nearly the whole story. The professor's main area of interest appears to be in studies showing that particulate matter in secondhand smoke isn't at all harmful.[1]

Completely coincidentally, I'm sure, he has also taken significant payments from Phillip Morris and other tobacco corporate interests.

[1]: His own website, which is dedicated to defending his research on secondhand smoke: <http://www.scientificintegrityinstitute.org/>

<comment><USER3> And most of the research showing harmful effects of second-hand smoke has funding from either the American Cancer Society or similarly interested bodies.

Indeed, the whole question of second-hand smoke is sort of microcosm of what's wrong with science today. We have two large biased bodies of research, almost no reproducible conclusions or event truly independent analyses, and a popular wisdom which treats the question as `settled' based on which set of conclusions is more in line with the political mood of the times.

I don't know this professor or his work, and I don't have a dog in this fight -- but I don't see why a grant from Phillip Morris would be any more or less suspect than a grant from the American Cancer Society; both are large organizations which depend for a lot of their livelihood on one possible outcome of such research.

<comment><USER4> _I don't see why a grant from Phillip Morris would be any more or less suspect than a grant from the American Cancer Society_

Doesn't Altria have a long history of pushing fake science about the health effects of smoking on smokers that directly contradicted its own internal research? The American Cancer Society has no equivalent scandals in its history. The fact that Altria spent many years actively lying to the public about the health effects of a dangerous and highly addictive drug it was selling seems relevant in assessing its credibility.

 _both are large organizations which depend for a lot of their livelihood on one possible outcome of such research_

This comparison seems...not right. If we invented an absolute 100% cure for lung cancer tomorrow that cost almost nothing, the American Cancer Society would still have plenty of funding. There are a great many cancers that have nothing to do with cigarette smoking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure linking to an editorial is a good way to present this story...

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have googled for other sources rather than just posting the link I was forwarded. The email also had information not contained in the link, and I didn't think before submitting. My bad.

Here is the college paper, which goes into more detail: [http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2010/08/ucla_res...](http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2010/08/ucla_researcher_james_enstrom_not_reappointed_to_position)

Also a mainstream news site: [http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/31/pc- professors-firing-fu...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/31/pc-professors- firing-fueling-exhaustive-debate/)

(I wish I could edit the URL of the submission, oh well.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aside from the particulars of this case, I just got through reading a book recommended by another HN'er: "Wrong: Why experts keep failing us--and how to know when not to trust them" <http://amzn.to/aNY2rL>

And while I have always been a skeptic of just about anything, even I was struck by the perverse disincentives there are for reporting scientific malpractice. If you're a student, then you're side-tracked and black-listed. If your'e a colleague, you're shunned. Even professional publications get in on the act -- positive findings outrank negative findings when it comes to publication by a factor of 10-1.

Good book. A little over-the-top, but powerful and relevant.</comment>


Hololens facial recognition prototype - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/UoA-eResearch/hololens_facial_recognition <comment><USER2> Perfect, I'm looking forward to a world where everyone has their name floating above their heads like in World of Warcraft. Saves you having to remember stuff.

<comment><USER3> Link it to other information from my contacts as well.

"Hello ... Dave. How is your ... wife ... Kelly? And your ... dog?"

<comment><USER4> Just reading those slight pauses makes me think of Black Mirror

<comment><USER5> And see their status score which is a result of their credit score, Facebook likes, linked in profile and Google searches.

Then you get a whole generation who is obsessed with this score and go to extremes to manipulate them.

Yeah it's going to be awesome /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This detects a face and displays the attributes it calculated about it. That's pretty interesting though from the title I thought it was something that looked up people and displayed their name, etc.

Pretty cool though ultimately it just takes the Halo Lens input, sends it to the Microsoft Face API[1] and displays its results.

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/face- api](https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/face-api)

<comment><USER7> It does try to identify names, actually. Looking at the source[1], once it has used the Oxford API to find where faces are in the frame (and their approx age and gender, etc), each individual face is then also queried against the MS emotion API and an OpenFace[2] instance. Given the source, it looks like that instance is meant to be trained on staff members and report their organizational hierarchy.

What would be super neat would be ripping out the OpenFace query, and replacing it with a lookup via Facebook[3], so it could actually just show the names for anyone I was FB friends with.

[1][https://github.com/UoA- eResearch/hololens_facial_recognition...](https://github.com/UoA- eResearch/hololens_facial_recognition/blob/master/Assets/Scripts/GazeGestureManager.cs) [2][https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/](https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/) [3][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836884)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking at the picture, I love "Mustache: 0" haha

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what caught my eye as well. Wondering if it is boolean or perhaps decimal. Mustache: 0.13

<comment><USER9> What I want to see is a .05 next to 1.0 mustache and then try to reverse engineer the criteria from there

<comment><USER10> Who on earth are you to judge what a 1.0 mustache is?

</snark>

<comment><USER9> It is not my call, I defer entirely to The Machine. We can not understand its reasoning, only attempt to understand how it became what it is. Serious question on this topic though, does anybody know if this facial recognition library has been completely open sourced? Apologies if the answer is glaringly obvious or has already been answered in this thread.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/face- api](https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/face-api) isn't open source, but [https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/](https://cmusatyalab.github.io/openface/) is

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if any of the researchers evaluate the ethical decisions behind this. Right now it looks naive.

We have a president who is very anti-muslim and Pro-surveillance. What if this falls in the wrong hands? What if it classifies the wrong person?

Snapchat filters are already racist with dark color tones.

I'm arguing that widespread use of advanced facial recognition will be detrimental to society.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm honestly astounded that this works. The color camera on the Hololens is 1280x720, making it useless for most tasks. I love this device so much, but man, such a misstep.

Super neat prototype though.

<comment><USER13> What "most tasks" are you referring to? Just curious since the applications of Hololens don't seem very solidified to begin with.

<comment><USER12> Well, "most tasks" here is really just the things I've wanted to do -- not exactly an unbiased sample. Things like tracking objects, reading QR codes, matching more complicated hand gestures (than the built-in ones). Unfortunately, a lot of the really interesting things that could be done involve the high-res IR cameras, which aren't exposed in any way to userspace.

<comment><USER14> Object tracking[1] and QR code reading are definitely possible at that resolution. For QR codes it's going to depend on the distance from it though.

[1] [http://introlab.github.io/find-object/](http://introlab.github.io/find- object/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <sarcasm>Yes, I'm glad people panicked about Google Glass possibly allowing for this, but by the time Hololens gets to try it, it's inevitable and cannot be stopped.</sarcasm>

<comment><USER16> Google specifically disallowed apps from doing this (though you could sidelide them I guess), and lots of people complained that it was a useless gesture.</comment></comment>


After developing ~8 products, I just wrote my first sales letter. Your thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.instahero.com/?t=l

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't very aware of the concept of a sales letter, even though I had seen those long, rambling pages trying to sell some scammy ebook.

However, I was recently told that they can help a lot, and that they don't _have_ to be scammy. I feel like not many people know or talk about them in the startup world.

Has anyone written/used one? Did it work or not? What are your general thoughts about it?

<comment><USER2> They don't have to be skeezy. Even Apple has a sales letter: <http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/features/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, wow. I definitely wasn't aware of that. Maybe it's because I didn't know what a sales letter was, and now that I'm aware of it, I'll start seeing it everywhere.

<comment><USER2> It's a /really/ good one too. Even I like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it does a great job of selling Instahero.

Also I think if you cut out the excess words you get down to even more concise, compelling reading.

So for example your bold headers span several lines. You could go from...

"You want to know the core metrics of your business at a glance"

to

"Core metrics in an instant"

Repeat with other headers too. Simplify = amplify :)

</comment><comment><USER4> Look into AIDA: [http://www.seobloggingsolutions.com/copywriting-formula- the-...](http://www.seobloggingsolutions.com/copywriting-formula-the-aida- formula/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that, those guidelines look very helpful. Would you say I haven't generally followed it with this letter? I was careful to follow roughly this order.

<comment><USER5> test

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lots of comments but no upvotes? Karma still at 1point? Common folks, show InstaHero some more love!! I like the sales letter. Will comment some more later but right now I gotta go!</comment>


Why we are not afraid of Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://blog.freshdesk.com/why-we-are-not-afraid-of-microsoft/ <comment><USER2> Is there any otherwise-vanilla SaaS out there that generates more controversy than Freshdesk (at least among the HN readership)?

Already on this article (8 comments posted as I write this) we have a FUD comment saying their post is "smug" and their customers should be worried, and then another talking about how you need to "be careful" about criticising the company because their employees victimised the commenter by "down voting them in groups".

Add to this the backdrop of ridiculous comments by Zendesk founder calling them a ripoff, and just the general FUD espoused by almost everyone whenever an Indian tech company is in the picture, and it's a bit sad.

We don't use Freshdesk, although we're considering moving from Zendesk to them due to some missing features, and I'm not Indian, but I really do think it's interesting how this company is just constantly and vaguely looked down upon by people who should know better.

FD seem to be scrappy, they're growing quickly, their product looks good, they give discounts to startups, and they just happen to be based in India - what's not to like?

<comment><USER3> I read HN daily and this is my first encounter with Freshdesk.

>FD seem to be scrappy, they're growing quickly, their product looks good, they give discounts to startups, and they just happen to be based in India - what's not to like?

Regardless of the quality of their offering, I'm personally turned off by the David vs. Goliath click bait being my introduction to the company. Maybe that's unfair, but so it goes.

<comment><USER4> I found it to be a great response. A competitor gets acquired, a news article says your company will be put out of business by it, and voila! An opportunity to rise above it.

And yes, when was the last time Microsoft put somebody out of business?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft didn't have to acquire anything to compete with most SaaS businesses:

They have Excel.

Small businesses have tighter budgets, but often the owner is the person doing certain tasks that in a big corporation would be given to interns. Because they do the work themselves, they're more open to try new software to improve their workflow. They're willing to pay $50 every month to be able to do something in a more efficient or enjoyable way, even though they could pay $500 (a fictional figure) once and buy Office or some established software to manage some aspect of their business, but feel miserable doing it.

However, many small business owners, after researching the competition, decide to do as the big guys are doing, and go with bloated, clunky software in hopes of eventually becoming big too.

That's why, it seems to me, it's relatively easy to run a simple SaaS with 200-500k yearly revenue, but hard to scale it to millions.

* * *

The target audience for this post is probably Freshdesk customers, not me. If I were a Freshdesk customer, I'd me more confident if the reasons listed were a better customer support, better user experience, being likely to stay in business for longer... instead, they went with "the competition is crappy and slow to act".

<comment><USER6> "If I were a Freshdesk customer, I'd me more confident if the reasons listed were a better customer support, better user experience, being likely to stay in business for longer..."

Fair points, but our existing customers already know about our user experience and customer support. And if I am going to talk about that, it is not going to be very credible anyway as I am biased :) But a quick review of our Google apps marketplace review will tell you that's exactly what our customers love about us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dynamics CRM requires consultants to install, servers to run, etc. etc.

It's bizarre anyone would say something so colossally stupid and be so ignorant of reality to say an add-on to an expensive and complicated CRM system will put standalone offerings out of business unless they were a Dynamics consultant.

Oh, Gene Marks _is_ a Dynamics consultant.

No news here, no news in the original article, it's all just advertising.

<comment><USER8> Consultants - probably. Servers - nope, not for about 6 years, since CRM Online shipped in January 2008. [http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=252780](http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=252780)

Your bottom-line takeaway is spot-on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the face of certain despair, it's humorous that Freshdesk pulls off the "I'm so smug, come join us" pitch. If I was a Freshdesk customer, I'd be a little worried about the political pow-wow being played. It's quite clear that Freshdesk is looking to get acquired by Microsoft. One of the prerequisites is to smacktack the ol' Microsoft 'legacy' and then whistle dixie.

<comment><USER10> Also, watchout when you bad mouth them on HN, they use shady tactics to downvote comments written against them (I was a victim once; their employees downvoted me in groups). I don't trust this company nor their employees at all - In fact, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this blog post was posted by one of their employees and the blog post is just a glorified landing page.

        "We're not scared of Microsoft, so signup right now"

<comment><USER11> What makes you so sure you were downvoted by freshdesk employees and not just HNers who thought your comment was ineffective at portraying a useful point?

note: I am not nor have ever been a freshdesk employee

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First sign of being not afraid is creating "I am not afraid" blog posts.

<comment><USER13> /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The hubris in this post is on par with the classic tales of the Greek gods. Microsoft may not sink Freshdesk, but Freshdesk may sink Freshdesk.

</comment><comment><USER15> Unless the blog post has been updated before I read it I find it difficult to understand the hostility being expressed towards FreshDesk.

Someone wrote them off as being good as dead because a competitor was acquired by MS, they wrote a rebuttal, what is wrong with that?

</comment><comment><USER16> I have to say, this HN thread is super confusing to me. There are plenty of good points in this article, none of which come off as smug to me.

The fact of the matter is that the helpdesk software market is huge, and the notion that there isn't enough room for multiple companies to succeed in it is just wrong headed.

Very rarely, but especially with niche software, is there ever only one winner. Usually there's lots of room for many companies to succeed.

As a happy Freshdesk customer I pretty much agree with everything written in this post, and think they'll be just fine.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not smugness, it's sensationalism, and it's a valid PR tactic. I think the old saying "there's no such thing as bad publicity" applies in spades here. Look at the controversy in this thread: some people think it's bad, some think it's good, but the number of people with Freshdesk on the brain has jumped by an order of magnitude—if half of them are turned off it's still a net win.

</comment><comment><USER18> Slightly off topic but what is better about Zendesk?

I've been using Freshdesk for a few years and originally chose it because the price was so much less. To me the major benefits of Zendesk appear to be a better mobile experience and a json api (vs Freshdesk's XML). Out of those 2 thing the XML api has been the more annoying to deal with.

It looks Zendesk may have dropped their prices a little and may be worth reconsidering.

<comment><USER6> Freshdesk has had both XML and JSON APIs from day 1. Maybe it was not so obvious as the documentation was done for XML and it was probably assumed that since it is exactly similar for json it was not required. Thanks for the feedback. We will fix the docs.

<comment><USER19> Hey, a bit late to the thread but I wanted to ask a question about your service (I couldn't find a "send private message" button in HN):

My company is evaluating several Helpdesk systems (both SaaS and Open Source). FreshDesk is one of those we have in mind. However I would like to know how possible is it to "tweak" Freshdesk to meet our needs.

For example, being able to add HTML elements (forms) or "dashboards" made by us would be a plus. Also, how "mature" are your APIs? (i.e. what % of the functionality can be accessed via API?).

Basically, we need to use a HelpDesk/Ticketing/CRM system, but must tailor it to our business need which is more on the financial side of things (we are looking to make the HelpDesk system our one-stop-panel for managing).

is there anyone @ your company I can contact to discuss this more in private?

Thanks a lot!

<comment><USER20> Hi,

Thanks for your interest in Freshdesk. If you can email me: firstname.lastname@example.com, I will be glad to get on a call, understand your requirements and take the discussion further.

Best Regards, Saurabh Prabhuzantye

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Such kind of blog posts are best written a year or two, where you have evidence that Microsoft will not be able to kill your business. In fact, I hope it happens and wish you all the best that your business grows and thrives.

Otherwise, no one really cares whether you are afraid of Microsoft or not.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm always wondering why journalists "kill" everything. There is room for more than one player - in nearly every market.

</comment><comment><USER23> I see now why the moderation on hn prefers titles that match the original article.

</comment><comment><USER24> So brave of them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nobody is anymore.</comment>


Generation XXX: What will happen to kids raised on porn? - <AUTHOR> http://yourbrainonporn.com/generation-xxx-what-will-happen-kids-raised-porn-canada

<comment><USER2> One would hope they'd be better in bed, but that's probably hoping for too much.</comment>


Sex At Dawn Is Right - <AUTHOR> http://euraeka.com/articles/7783673-Sex-At-Dawn-Is-Right

<comment><USER2> Actual URL: [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/10/sex-at-dawn-is- right.h...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/10/sex-at-dawn-is-right.html)

<comment><USER3> All the submissions from euraeka.com seem to be redirects with clickbait headlines.</comment></comment>


SPI with a Blindfold On- speed up by letting go and trusting the machine - <AUTHOR> http://wp.josh.com/2015/09/29/bare-metal-fast-spi-on-avr/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of an unfortunate bug I was debugging the other day that had the same solution but a different problem on different hardware.

Here's the setup: I have a weird SPI device that has two different CS lines: one for accessing the control registers, and one for accessing the data buffer. Because of this, I have to handle CS manually and can't just let the SPI peripheral handle it. Fair enough, not a big deal. So I pull CS low, stick some data into the output register, and wait for TX_BUSY to go to 0 (i.e. done transmitting). Unfortunately, TX_BUSY goes low after the rising edge of the last bit, but before the falling edge of the clock back to idle. Despite the device saying that it's active on the rising edge of the clock, it totally disregards input data if CS goes back to idle before the last falling edge of the clock.

Solved by adding some nop cycles. Easy to count how many are necessary because the peripheral and CPU are deterministic as described in the article, but damn what a debugging nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's the cost one has to pay for using antiquated slow hardware which does not even have DMA.

<comment><USER2> DMA is nice, no doubt, but it's not the ultimate solution to every problem. Have a look at my problem above... DMA wouldn't have helped. In fact, I'd probably have ended up starting with a DMA implementation, reverted back to a non-DMA implementation while debugging, and then would have stuck a bunch of nops into the DMA interrupt to make sure that I waited enough cycles before de-asserting CS.</comment></comment>


How To Avoid Getting Kidnapped In China - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/28/china-kidnapping-guanxi-leadership-managing-hui.html <comment><USER2> It is common practice to take collections into your own hands in China. I have found it is not common for people to hold you hostage when you do not owe them money. Rule of thumb: pay your debts, don't screw over your creditors.

<comment><USER3> That's a good rule anywhere outside of China as well.

You only have one reputation, you can lose it in a couple of weeks after building it up over a lifetime. Word does get around, and between archive.org and google if you screw someone over chances are it will leave a trail that a future contact will easily be able to find.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anybody rent ergo keyboards? - <AUTHOR>

I've been starting to have RSI pains, and have been looking into ergonomic keyboards. I've been contemplating the Kinesis Advantage and the Truly Ergonomic, and have also considered the Kinesis Freestyle.
Given the cost of each of these keyboards, I'd really like to get a feel for these before I bought one. Would anyone know if there's anywhere to rent any one of these?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Right there with you on the keyboard shopping; it's an expensive potential mistake to make.

I'm reading a very helpful book (It's Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome) that is showing me the root causes of my RSIs, and the keyboard is only part of what for me is a pretty ugly picture that's developed over several years. If you go to the author's blog - rsirescue.blogspot.com - and look on that page for "Our Theory in a Nutshell" you can get a quick overview and see what I mean.

I realize reading a book won't provide an immediate solution for your problem, but since I've been trying to sort through the keyboard issue myself and only stumbled across the book (which has so far been extremely helpful) I felt I should mention it. The book helped me realize a better keyboard will address some of my symptoms but not all of them and not all of my problem.

If you've just started having RSI symptoms maybe the right keyboard would provide some quick relief and you can use the "Not Carpal Tunnel" information to keep it all in check. I have spent too much time and money chasing after solutions I hoped would be a silver bullet, only to find that they were either harmful or only partially helpful. RSI relief is turning out to be a puzzle with many pieces.

All that being said, I stumbled across this page because I searched for the same thing you were looking for. The authors of the book provided a resource list that included a link to a site that did rentals. Now it's just a linkfarm :( I found a couple of other results that led to sites with rental programs, but they were only local. Would love to find a rental but if that doesn't happen within the next few days I'll pick one and buy where there's a good return policy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was a co-worker with two people who started using the Kinesis. It took them about a month to get back up to normal typing speed (starting at about 5 WPM!). So make sure you rent for at least a month.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't know about renting but perhaps check the return policy on a few websites (Amazon is usually pretty good) and try one of those after buying it and if you don't like it return it.</comment>


Star Wars just had 10 min event in Fortnite - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JuiceboxCA/status/1205972418876993536 <comment><USER2> I'm amazed that there's a Star Wars movie coming out this week and there's practically zero buzz. Haven't heard anyone mention it in real life, and even online it's barely a topic of conversation.</comment>


Bill Gates warns that nobody is paying attention to gene editing - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-says-gene-editing-raises-ethical-questions-2019-1 <comment><USER2> Wouldn't help that a large part of the "educated" population seems to be under the impression that genetics is some kind of spook.</comment>


Beautiful illusions: the economics of uberX - <AUTHOR> http://justin-singer.org/blog/2014/06/beautiful-illusions/ <comment><USER2> I've been lyfting full time for 4 months now, I estimate my annualized income at around 45k, not 90k. It's still better than being a postdoc. (less hours, more gross pay)

Incidentally, at 4 months, I've already put on 30k miles, although ~25% of that is personal and of the remainder, 50% are profitable, 50% are not.

I drive a honda insight (35 mpg while lyfting) and including maintenance, I estimate operational costs to be around $0.30/mi, my average income floats between $1 and $1.5/mi. I also get a $0.55/mi federal tax income deduction, which means that about a third to a quarter of my income will not be taxable... I consider that to be a reward for having the foresight to purchase a hybrid years ago.

<comment><USER2> In an additional benefit over being a postdoc, I set my own hours and don't wake up to an alarm, which I think has resulted in a marked improvement in mood and health. Although I work from 11pm-3am many nights out of the week, I get to sleep in _every day_.

The biggest challenge is that the hours when friends are likely to want to be social are also prime money earning hours, so I'm constantly assessing opportunity cost when choosing when to be social. And I've already taken one vacation, a week and a half, I thought making no money would be stressful, but it turned out to be less of a problem than not having my laptop (which got left behind in the TSA line). Like many things in life, it just takes careful planning and saving money beforehand.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't the lack of intellectual challenge in your work stress you? I don't think I could do such a mundane job and still feel fulfilled. (I mean that without an ounce of judgement—just remarking about the shift from academia / high education to "unskilled" labor)

<comment><USER4> It sounds like being a postdoc stressed him.

<comment><USER5> Being a PostDoc has its highlights, but mostly, it sucks, especially in life sciences, due to pathetic pay, unstructured hours and the suckiness is generally impossible to convey to someone who has never been one. Just 'cause it's research don't mean it's rainbows and ponies.

Source, I'm one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been riding Uber since October 2010, and I've chatted with plenty of drivers. Many of them used to be taxi drivers and have told me about how much they prefer driving for Uber. They also tend to be very happy with their income. I remember in particular one recent driver's big grin as he raved about Uber and praised Travis the entire ride for letting him, his wife, and his two kids live such a great lifestyle. His wife would even take the car out and do some Uber driving once in a while while he spent time with the kids.

The calculations in the article seem to be based on just a couple numbers -- such as the 40,000 miles per year that Uber gave for the purpose of cost of ownership calculation, which is used to try to calculate the hours drivers work and the fare they earn per hour. Some real numbers about fares earned would help here. The conclusion is not clearly stated in the "Conclusion" section, but here's my interpretation: If you make certain assumptions about an uberX driver, you find they make about as much as a typical taxi driver. This suggests that driving uberX instead of a taxi does not automatically put you in a completely different income bracket, but I think the devil is in the details. Obviously the spread between different drivers is much, much larger than the spread between taxis and uberXs. If we made a histogram of income for each and superimposed them, they would be two humps with a lot of overlap. It would be more interesting to know, for example, how the jobs of top-earning uberX drivers and top taxi drivers compare.

Then there are implications that Uber is another Groupon, and its financial success is dependent on a steady stream of investment dollars. Well, Uber is making plenty of money. They write software and do operations and the money just pours in. Every user is a paying customer, and the vast majority of users come away satisfied and happy to have a better way to get from point A to point B. The drivers make money and are thrilled. Some people take Uber literally every day. Seems like a pretty good business to me.

<comment><USER7> You're arguing strawman points the article doesn't make. The primary claims I see are

1\. Uber drivers don't make as much as Uber PR claims (based on data Uber provided).

2\. Uber the business doesn't seem to be wildly profitable, or at least not in a defendable way (based partly on data Uber provided).

3\. The large amount of capital being injected into Uber are not indicators of growing real value, but instead indicators of a weaker-than-acknowledged business.

It's possible for all of the above to be true but for drivers and riders to both be very happy with the service. Especially since UberX seems to be offering rides for below market prices but the drivers are getting switching bonuses and per-hour guarantees (see elsewhere in this thread).

<comment><USER8> Also, "I talked to somebody currently working for this company while they're at their job, and they told me it was great" is not exactly a very reliable way to get data.

<comment><USER9> No, having them voluntarily start gushing about how great it is is better.

Also, who is the boss/supervisor who would fire or penalise the driver for saying it's not great? More importantly, since there no strenuous and expensive licencing going on, it's simple to just stop being an Uber driver if it doesn't suit you.

<comment><USER10> > Also, who is the boss/supervisor who would fire or penalise the driver for > saying it's not great?

From the view of the driver it could be you: It's not that uncommon for corporations to test employees like that using HR people disguised as customers. I have no idea whether Uber does that, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This guy gets his supposedly objective information about taxicab deregulation from a handful of studies of the taxi deregulation done in the 1960's and 1970's. In particular, he quotes from a paper [1] by Paul Dempsey from 1996 to come to the conclusion that taxi deregulation yields poor results across a variety of metrics.

Well, I actually read the Dempsey paper after reading this blog post, and I have come to the conclusion that the poster is deliberately misrepresenting the contents of that paper. Nearly every negative effect mentioned does not apply to Uber/Lyft.

For example, an increase in rates is mentioned in this blog post as being an effect of deregulation. In the Dempsey paper, this is attributed to new small time cabbies taking fares at cabstands, hotels, etc. These drivers, in an attempt to overcome the increased competition due to deregulation, would raise their rates. Riders had no easy way to compare rates or get an alternate ride. This simply doesn't apply to Uber/Lyft, as you can see the price right away even before the car shows up.

Another example: the paper also mentions increased congestion and pollution due to the increased number of taxis on the road. In the 1960's and 1970's this made sense as taxis would cruise the streets looking for people to pick up or possibly wait with their engines on at taxi stands. Again, modern ridesharing services don't have this problem.

The Dempsey paper also mentions many negative effects from new entrants into the taxi business during deregulation not being radio dispatched due to its high startup cost. But every ridesharing service is "radio dispatched".

I could go on like this, but in general ridesharing services increase the amount of information that consumers have, thus allowing the market to work in a way that it couldn't 50 years ago. This blogger completely ignores that, and just skips to the conclusions.

[1] [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2241306](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2241306)

</comment><comment><USER12> > I should point out that the insurance costs here are surely low — although > Uber encourages its uberX drivers to find "standard vehicle insurance" as > opposed to livery insurance, the coverages required are nearly impossible to > find, especially for someone with poor or no credit working 70 hours a week > as a cab driver. Meanwhile, taxi insurance in NYC can run $7,000 – 10,000 > per year...

<comment><USER8> Also, while those coverages might be difficult-to-find-but-available now, that could change in a hurry. Once most insurance companies catch on to the fact that people are paying for regular insurance and then operating essentially a taxi service, they'll add clauses to their contracts specifically forbidding it, and charge something more in line with commercial taxi insurance. It's a lot like what we see with AirBnB, where as it caught on more and more, landlords started fighting back against tenants who were using it.

<comment><USER13> _" Once most insurance companies catch on to the fact that people are paying for regular insurance and then operating essentially a taxi service, they'll add clauses to their contracts specifically forbidding it..."_

My car insurance policy has prohibited using the car for commercial purposes for as long as I can remember. There are also probably state laws requiring commercial drivers to carry commercial insurance, just as it requires them to have a different class of drivers license.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Let's go out on a limb and assume that the median full-time uberX driver doesn't have fantastic credit and would rather forego the credit check."

A paragraph later:

"Meanwhile, a trip to bankrate.com will reveal that today's market rate for a 48-month loan is under 3%"

Not that it invalidates the piece, but this bit of handwaving bugs the heck outta me.

The under 3% loans are available to people with "excellent credit", which it was _just_ assumed didn't describe UberX drivers. myfico.com indicates, for instance, that people with a FICO score under 620 are looking at a rate more like 10-15%.

<comment><USER15> He was using this to point out the discrepancy between the lease rate from Uber's pre-selected finance company (15%) and the best possible rate one could get - 3%.

It's just to illustrate the range of finances, and note that the finance company is literally charging 5x!

In terms of credit, yes, better credit helps, but also since it's a secured loan, it's not like a credit card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a really great post.

We are talking a lot about regulations, consumers but it's the first time I see a post about the drivers themselves. As it is correctly identified by the OP, it's the main and only asset for Uber.

That being said, I would love to read an AMA with a Uber driver.

<comment><USER17> Two ama's:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ypjd5/hi_reddit_iama_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ypjd5/hi_reddit_iama_uberx_driver_in_the_washington_dc/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ztruj/iama_uberx_driv...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ztruj/iama_uberx_driver_in_los_angeles_orange_county/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Uber's numbers actually seem a lot more believable. The author didn't even appear to be trying to be "reasonable" or "fair".

The two biggest problems I see are 1) author doesn't acknowledge that Uber behavior is probably very different from regular yellow cab behavior (ie, has the author even heard of the airport or surge pricing?) and 2) I don't think it's appropriate to allocate all of an auto's expenses as "business" since it's almost always a personal car.

<comment><USER8> For (1), how do you think it applies? The situation analyzed is taken from Uber's numbers, and is for an "average" driver that works 70 hours per week. If you're working 70 hours, you're not gaining a huge advantage from surge pricing.

For (2), again, this is a vehicle being used 70 hours per week, 40,000 miles per year. If you were looking at the case of a part-time driver it might not be appropriate to allocate all the expenses as business expenses, but in this case I think it is.

<comment><USER18> We don't know that they drive 70 hours per week. That was made up by the author. The author is fixated on the 10 mph in Manhattan when we know that Uber drivers have more flexibility on time and geography (they do drive outside of Manhattan, of course).

The car still provides for 100% of the owners personal driving needs so completely inappropriate to allocate all costs to "business".

<comment><USER8> To me all his assumptions seem pretty reasonable. Since Uber isn't providing a detailed breakdown, all we can do is estimate. And if we're willing to accept the basic assumption that people respond to economic incentives, remember that Uber's incentivized to be as misleading as possible in their favour. Even if it turns out they're completely lying, there's a reasonable chance that the economic benefits from building network by doing so are significantly greater than potential future costs if someone found out they'd lied. Given that context, I think the author was actually being _overly_ generous and deferent to Uber's stated numbers.

My father-in-law's an NYC taxi driver, and before that (in the 90s) worked for a black car service. So I can tell you from inside experience that you make more money in Manhattan than anywhere else, period. The fact that Uber drivers have the freedom to go to New Jersey or Far Rockaway or wherever doesn't mean that they actually get any benefit from doing so.

<comment><USER19> the average speeds they are posting are only calculated during the day. uber does WAY more trips at night, when there is less traffic, so the cars can go much faster.

source: used to work at uber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is no one discussing the downward pressure on price if more and more drivers get involved? That's part of why cities cap medallions after all right?

</comment><comment><USER21> > Market equilibrium in a wholly deregulated taxi industry comes only when the > desperate have driven out the good.

And that's kind of my whole "can't quite express what is wrong here" issue in a nutshell.

<comment><USER22> That argument could be made for _any_ service industry. Do _all_ service industries require regulation? Aren't there some services we can just trust the consumer to choose?

I'm not saying that the use of automobiles doesn't require some regulation (although it isn't clear that commercial use requires more than other use), but this particular argument for regulation is weak.

<comment> vertex-four I think most service industries where the customer may be subject to any sort of personal harm are regulated to some extent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think the author is wrong about the possibilities for UBER raising prices. One such option combining trips of 2 passengers(or more) who seek a trip from similar starting locations to similar destinations.

Such option could easily increase demand, be more cost efficient and higher margin and be highly dependent on market reach , which makes it very difficult to replicate.

And i'm sure UBER has some data to demonstrate this and other attractive options to investors[1], which make it much harder for us non-insiders to truly evaluate UBER.

[1]A similar example is the nest acquisition, which raised many eyebrows and guesses, but it appears they had a "secret" way to monetize their service - selling demand response services to utilities.

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure if ride-sharing (in the _actual, non-bullshit_ notion of the word) would count as raising prices though.

It would increase per-driver revenue, certainly, but probably decrease Uber revenue fairly significantly. Taxi services, whether in the old fashioned way our the glitzed-up smartphone way, are pretty commodity.

The success of budget competitors like Lyft and Sidecar is testament to this. The perpetual expansion of UberX too. It seems most people are more concerned about getting from A to B cheaply than any kind of premium lap-of-luxury service.

A ride-splitting service would be pretty great for consumers and maybe for drivers, but from Uber's side it would be a pretty substantial price _cut_.

<comment><USER24> I think what he's trying to say is that Uber could raise prices "per-trip", split the cost of those trips with 2+ passengers, and actually decrease the cost "per-user" of each trip. If the decrease in price increased demand enough, overall revenue could go up while the consumer feels like they're getting a price decrease (albeit, they now have to share most of their rides, which may feel like a service decrease).

<comment><USER23> I get that - I just don't think it'll happen. Instead you'll have 2 people who had a price ceiling of $10 each being transported for $16.

Great for the driver, great for the two passengers, bad for Uber.

<comment><USER17> On a $10 fare , UBER gets $2(or $4 for 2 trips) , the driver gets $8

For the $16 trip, let's say UBER gives $10 for the driver(instead of ~$8), and takes $6. UBER still comes ahead. And don't forget the huge lockup it gets - which is valuable in and off itself, esp. in the long term as a basis for self driving cars service.

There's of course the issue of decreased traffic for drivers, but there's probably a strategy to make it work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Last time I asked a driver if Uber was better than X: he told me that 20 to 30% of people calling for a ride with the regular system don't show up.

<comment><USER26> Funny how that roughly mirrors my experiences calling taxis the old fashioned way: about 1 in 4 won't show up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's amusing to see how much skepticism Uber seems to generate. Apparently it's super-hard to understand how a tech company could possibly do something better than the decades old taxi industry, and that the resulting business could have major network effects.

<comment><USER28> It's actually a centuries old industry: taxis were already regulated in 1636[1]. I think the point is, though, not whether they can do it better (they are certainly a driver for innovation in the space), but how successful that particular company is going to be.

Given that in most cities you could pick up a phone and get a taxi for over a century, or hit some buttons on your mobile phone and order one for the last 20 years, this becomes a question regarding two aspects of Uber: deregulation and brokerage, which are Uber's two differentiating factors. The author claims that deregulation has been tried numerous times -- and failed pretty much everywhere (although, maybe this time it's different) -- and that brokerage of a commodity is not too profitable[2].

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#History)

[2]: [http://www.quora.com/Uber-1/How-big-of-a-deal-is- Uber/answer...](http://www.quora.com/Uber-1/How-big-of-a-deal-is- Uber/answer/Justin-Singer)

<comment><USER27> I've ordered taxies by phone, and I've used Uber, and I can tell you that I have no doubt as to which is the future.

As for network effects, is it really that hard to see that a larger network of vehicles will have inherent advantages over a smaller network? (think about distance to the nearest available vehicle, especially as the network expands outside of dense urban areas)

<comment><USER28> Everything you say is true, but none of it predicts tremendous success _for Uber_. It may well be that there's little advantage to being the first mover brokering commodities. We might soon see meta-Uber apps, or Uber aggregators, that optimize the selection of car across several providers. Uber will probably just be a big, successful, taxi company, but not one that is worth billions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > that means our hypothetical driver is covering 40,000 miles in 2,000 hours, > for an average speed of 20 mph. Meanwhile, the average speed of Manhattan > traffic is barely 10 mph

A lot seems to hinge on this, but I don't think it's a fair assumption that a NYC Uber never leaves Manhattan. A couple of trips to the boroughs (airports!) and 20 mph average on a regular 40 hour week seems perfectly plausible.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm wondering how do Uber investors think Uber will do in a, not too distant, future where driver-less cars are readily available. Or even as public transportation improves.

It looks like this Uber vs. traditional cabs is a battle with an expiration date.

</comment><comment><USER30> It is so much fun to reverse engineer financials.</comment>


Creativity for Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/08/nine-ways-to-light-your-creativity-on-fire/

<comment><USER2> I don't know that we are all "creative people" -- very few of us are really creative. Mind you that may not always be a bad things for Entrepreneurs: For example Disney had to be creative to be what he was -- but I honestly can't call Bill Gates creative. In fact when Bill Gates would do something creative like Bob or his stab at the tablet he always seems to fail. Yet on the other hand think of all of the creative folks in Hollywood who seem to never get tech. Just be yourself!</comment>


DJI Mavic – with and without this new anamorophic lens - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/xfrYO23boGA <comment><USER2> Impressive how different this lens looks vs normal. This frame really illustrates it: [https://youtu.be/xfrYO23boGA?t=124](https://youtu.be/xfrYO23boGA?t=124)

</comment><comment><USER3> So funny, the aspect ratio is really the difference, not the lens characteristics.</comment>


Roomba maker iRobot plans to sell digital maps of your home - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/24/roomba-irobot-sell-digital-maps-home/ <comment><USER2> Discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14842705](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14842705)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good thing I didn't buy the wifi enabled model I guess.

<comment><USER4> Information could also be exchanged while doing a "firmware update".</comment></comment>


Illinois might start charging $1k per year to own an electric vehicle - <AUTHOR> https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-electric-vehicle-fee-illinois-20190509-story.html <comment><USER2> Political might-or-might-not stories aren't substantive enough to be on topic here. They're cousins to announcement-of-an-announcements.

Note how they had to give this one a booster shot with 'It's outrageous'!

</comment><comment><USER3> > _The justification for the dramatic hike? Electric vehicles don't provide > the state with any gas tax revenue._

Oh, that's just farcical. Americans drive an average of slightly less than 14k miles / year. At that 44¢/gal tax rate, that's ~$200 of tax / year; nowhere _near_ the proposed $1000. And this comparison assumes that the state doesn't tax electricity at all.

This smells like someone's representative has been bought and paid for.

<comment><USER4> its more than that though. gas "tax" helps pay for road building and maintenance. These cars are still using the roads and still expect more to be built. the money has to come from somewhere...

In Australia they're having a very similar conversation about people going "off grid" and still having to pay utilities, because those services are needed by the greater community (hospitals, water and sewage and those not yet fortunate enough to be able to afford going off grid)

Really takes some of the shine out of the renewable scene...

<comment><USER3> > _gas "tax" helps pay for road building and maintenance. These cars are still > using the roads and still expect more to be built. the money has to come > from somewhere..._

That's the point: I'm not saying that EVs shouldn't pay for their fair share of road maintenance. But the hike heavily implies that's _not_ the case here: EVs are paying _more_ than their non-electric counterparts (see the math in the post you're replying to). And not just a little more, several _times_ more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since people are finally realizing that electric vehicles can be superior to internal combustion engines, let's talk about the real problem, how do we extract taxes from them? </s>

Seriously though, many states are all pushing these EV taxes at once. It almost makes you wonder if there is a concerted effort to make EVs less attractive. If you were a state representative, wouldn't you first want to see tangible tax revenue decline before slapping a new tax on a thriving industry?

<comment><USER6> Or perhaps they're realizing that, as EVs become more popular, the roads still need to be maintained and want to get ahead of the problem.

<comment><USER7> If every penny of the gas tax had to be spent on public road and infrastructure improvements, then there'd likely be broad based support for raising and - as with this proposal - expanding it as needed. However I'd be willing to bet that the majority if not the entirety of this tax increase will be spent on legacy pension bailouts instead.

<comment><USER8> According to this[1], Illinois state gas tax goes all over the place.

\- 2½¢/gallon to the State Construction Account Fund.

\- $420,000/month for boating safety

\- $350,000/month to improve railroad crossings

\- A "sufficient" amount to legal fees

\- A "sufficient" amount for the administrator and supervisor

\- $30 million/year for vehicle inspection

\- "Amounts ordered paid by the Court of Claims"

\- Fuel tax payments to other states

Then, of what's left...

\- 17% to road construction

\- 28% to a road and bridge program

\- 27% to all municipalities, divided by population

\- 9% to Cook County (Chicago)

\- 10% to counties other than Cook, based on the number of drivers licenses issued

\- 9% to the townships and road districts, based on the number of miles of road

Sounds like Illinois to me.

[1] [https://idot.illinois.gov/Assets/uploads/files/Transportatio...](https://idot.illinois.gov/Assets/uploads/files/Transportation- System/Manuals- Guides-&-Handbooks/T2/P032_0731MFTSourceUseDistributionMunicipality.pdf)

<comment><USER9> > \- $350,000/month to improve railroad crossings

Unless I missed something, this number is incorrect according to [https://www.icc.illinois.gov/railroad/](https://www.icc.illinois.gov/railroad/)

> Each month $3.5 million in state motor fuel tax receipts is transferred from > the Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) fund to the Grade Crossing Protection Fund. This > amount provides the GCPF with $39 million annually to be used for safety > improvements at highway/rail crossings on local roads and streets.

Off topic, but this seemed like an enormous amount of money to me. And that doesn't seem to include crossings on state highways which come out of a different fund.

So the state of Illinois is spending at least $117,000 per day on railroad crossings. According to the same page, Illinois has 7,600 railroad crossings so that's at least $15 per day for every railroad crossing in the state.

Edit: I just reviewed your source and it is also cited at 3.5 million.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personally - since I rarely drive - this would keep me on gas powered cars indefinitely. There's no way my driving habits amount to $1000 in gas taxes every year.

I can see how they'd think it was reasonable if they just did the average of cumulative gas taxes per person, but it doesn't account for use in any way.

<comment><USER7> Illinois wants to raise their gas tax to 44 cents per gallon. Assuming 20 mpg you'd have to drive about 45,000 miles to hit $1000 in State gas tax. If you factor in the Federal gas tax too, it drops to about 30,000 miles. The average American driver drives less than 15,000 miles per year. So a fair equivalent in terms of EV tax would be $500 or less, especially if you consider that the drivers racking up the most miles per year are probably the least likely to buy EV vehicles due to range and charging station limitations.

<comment><USER11> They are also raising the same fee for standard vehicles to $148. So, it's an extra 852$ a year for electric cars, or a little over 25k miles including federal taxes at 20MPG, or 50k miles at 40MPG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not surprised coming from the state that wants to tax Netflix [0]. Who's in charge of coming up with these technologically-regressive taxes anyway? I guess they're looking for any way they can to prevent bankruptcy, but these kind of things really rub me the wrong way.

[0]: [https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-bill-would-expand- ch...](https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-bill-would-expand-chicagos- netflix-tax-statewide/)

<comment><USER13> What's wrong with taxing Netflix?

Internet companies have been able to avoid paying a lot of taxes, but that's not going to last forever.

<comment><USER12> > What's wrong with taxing Netflix? Internet companies have been able to avoid > paying a lot of taxes,

You're mixing two different concepts here. There is a sales tax that applies to any purchase, which many internet companies did avoid for a while - although now you'll see that Amazon does automatically apply a sales tax on purchases depending on your ZIP. Although it would be more accurate to call it a use tax, since conceptually it's the same tax that you _should_ pay if you had gone and bought the product in another state and brought it back home (although no one does this). The idea is that this tax compensates for the loss of business that a local company may have experienced due to you buying the good out-of-state.

In the "tax Netflix" case, it's not a sales tax being proposed (your monthly subscription fee _already_ includes that). It's almost like a vice tax, which is traditionally used to discourage certain behavior (i.e. cigarette tax), except movie theaters in Chicago aren't suddenly going out of business and there's nothing harmful about consuming Netflix.

So it's hard to make an honest argument that there is any socially positive reason for this tax, and I can't see a "Netflix tax" as anything other than an opportunistic cash grab by the city. In my book, that's "wrong", but I guess it depends how much latitude you personally believe cities should have in creating arbitrary tax schemes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> your-nanny The article would be more helpful if it provided estimates of what gasoline- vehicle owners typically pay each year.

If it is equivalent, and I doubt it is, then a more effective strategy would not be lump sum shockers like this.

<comment><USER14> The same bill proposes a 44c/gallon tax, which means an EV registration prepays for about 60-70k miles of driving.

Since neither gasoline nor electric cars or light trucks do any damage to roads compared to commercial trucking, it doesn't make sense to talk about either kind of car paying its fair share. That is just a rhetorical method of selling the public on a new tax.

<comment><USER15> In Illinois most of the wear on the asphalt surface occurs via ice and snow causing potholes. This happens over time regardless of heavy traffic.

<comment><USER16> While this may be true, big rigs and other ultra-heavy vehicles cause a disproportionate amount of wear as well.

[0] [https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle- weigh...](https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs- road-damage-levels/)

<comment><USER8> The source for that data is a bicycling blog in Colorado which no longer exists. Without verifiable data, I'd ignore it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For different reasons, there's been articles in years past about high-end EVs having high car registration fees. This isn't due to them being electric, it's due to some models being fairly expensive (e.g. Model S/X, i-Pace) with a taxation system that determines registration fees based on vehicle value. This is also very particular to cities, where their intentions are encourage and fund more public transit use.

Links specific to WA state / Seattle:

[https://komonews.com/news/local/drivers-facing-sticker- shock...](https://komonews.com/news/local/drivers-facing-sticker-shock-in- latest-car-tab-renewal-bills) \- King County (includes Seattle, WA) car registration tabs can be rather high to fund transit initiatives.

[https://www.geekwire.com/2019/sb-5971-ev-registration- fees/](https://www.geekwire.com/2019/sb-5971-ev-registration-fees/) \- WA state has charged 100/year for EVs, set to be 150/year in the future. The intent is to cover state-level road maintenance.

It's worth remembering the high fee concerns may change as more EVs get cheaper, and factor in Federal / State tax rebates that occur upon purchase. I don't own an EV, but personally I worry a bit less about the govt-imposed fees and more about the higher insurance costs for certain EVs (Tesla models).

<comment><USER18> > This is also very particular to cities

It's not, because registration fees being locality discursiva isn't a thing in all states; also, a large minority of states have adopted registration surcharges on electric and sometimes hybrid vehicles for road construction to offset some of the gas tax losses.

[http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/new-fees-on-hybrid- and-e...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/energy/new-fees-on-hybrid-and-electric- vehicles.aspx#map)

<comment><USER17> I was talking about value-based registration fees (which tend to be particular to cities - particularly those whose tax revenue is primarly based on comsumption/sales tax like WA), not EV-specific fees (which are generally statewide).

<comment><USER18> > I was talking about value-based registration fees (which tend to be > particular to cities

Lots of states have value-based registration fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "I thought Illinois was progressive and would want to encourage EV ownership."

Illinois just pretends to be progressive because it allows politically connected people to steal more money.

<comment><USER8> An Illinois Democrat will have many of the same views and votes as a Republican in another state. (Examples: Almost every Chicago mayor since the 1950's)

It's one of the things that made me realize that there is no longer Democrat/Republican Progressive/Conservative in American politics. It's all just people aligning themselves with whichever tribe they think will propel them the farthest in their particular geography.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's envision a world where only electric vehicles are driven. How is a tax collected to keep the roads in good shape - an electricity consumption tax?

<comment><USER21> Is there a reason income + property + sales taxes can't maintain roads as well? You don't need to tax cars to fund roads, you don't need to tax paper to fund schools.

<comment><USER8> In states without a lot of taxable land, vehicle registration pays for schools.

It's why a car that costs less than $100 to register in Illinois costs $600 or more to register in Nevada.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's obviously problematic but the impetus: missing tax revenues to pay for infrastructure - is a very real issue.

If as it turns out fuel taxes were major contributors to paying for the roads that make cars possible ... well, this issue has to be addressed.

Ecological issues aside, the underlying economic impacts are real, and we should consider them enlightening in a way because they help us understand just how much things cost, how they get paid for, and what we're going to need to do if we want to realign everything.

Without knowing the breakdown ... maybe it's just possible that good chunk of 'gas savings' is really just 'not having to pay taxes which pay for roads'.

Maybe as a commenter above pointed out, it's only closer to '$200/year' \- fair enough, but I think even a $200 tax might be unsettling to us as well.

I don't know what the answer is, but whatever it is, we can't ignore some of these realities.

</comment><comment><USER23> Since gasoline taxes for road improvements are actually a scam (good luck proving where the money actually goes) , they should just change it to a registration fee for everyone. Eliminating a tax saves a lot of money and I imagine a gas tax is rather complicated to administer.

<comment><USER24> The other possibility, and this has already been floated in Illinois, is putting a tracker on every vehicle and taxing drivers by the mile.

A gas tax increase, in comparison, doesn't look so bad.

<comment><USER25> My suggestion is considering the negative externalizes from gasoline powered cars it would be better to make up the revenue with an excise tax on new ICE cars.

IE, don't tax fossil fuels, tax products that commit us to consuming fossil fuels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would prefer they attach a use tax to the electric chargers (both home and elsewhere). This $1k per year tax is going to make sure no lower income person buy an electric car. The at-the-pump taxes are gradual and not a catastrophic hit. At some point we will get charging technology close enough to have them replace gas stations and folks won't have to have a garage / upper class apartment parking to own an electric car.

Although we are talking politicians, I am pretty sure someone can come up with a formula involving the weight of the vehicle and range to match it to the tax of ICE vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yeah, I mean, how many new taxes can we get put on us? It's insane. How about fixing the budget instead. We already have the highest property taxes. No wonder people are leaving in droves.

</comment><comment><USER28> Americans spend $50k for a car and want their roads for free.

</comment><comment><USER29> Federal government gives rebates for electric vehicles. States tax electric vehicles. Fantastic.

<comment><USER30> The article says that the state is giving rebates as well ...

> $7,500 in federal incentives and $4,000 in state incentives

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Disgusting abuse of taxes.

</comment><comment><USER32> Illinois is a case-study in the cancer that is party politicians, unfulfillable promises, and decades of iteration thereof.

<comment><USER33> Illinois is a case study of the cancer that is Mike Madigan, the shadow governor of the state for more than 30 years. He is perhaps the last of the old-school Democratic machine bosses, although he would operate exactly the same way if he was a nominal Republican. Until the man dies, the state will continue to rot.

<comment><USER8> _the last of the old-school Democratic machine bosses_

If only. There's plenty of others in the background waiting for their chance.</comment></comment></comment>


The Premium Branch Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://premium-branch.org/

<comment><USER2> Bullshit of the year:

        > If this balance of power is not corrected
        > I fear FLOSS will actually die.
        > © Zed A. Shaw 2012</comment>