Most first-time visitors to Japan are struck by how clean the country is - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20191006-what-japan-can-teach-us-about-cleanliness <comment><USER3> I was cycling in Japan for about 2 weeks, just a few weeks ago. I was also impressed in most places by how clean it was, not only in the cities, but more generally speaking about everywhere.

At some point though, I was cycling along the coast of Mie then Wakayama prefectures, and although the scenery and roads were clean, I had a glance just behind the ramp walk, and realized that behind the trees, in the bush next to the road were hundreds of garbage bags, litter of all sort, really anything, just lying below. There was such a contrast from what my eyes were seeing until, I was shocked.

In another town several kilometres after (I forgot which place exactly, must have been while cycling up towards Wakayama city), I passed next to a big commercial area on my right. On my left there was a small patch of forest then the sea and again, that forest contained many many plastic bags, full but neatly tied up, every couple of meters or so, for several hundreds of meters.

I originally thought the first thrashes I saw along the road in the country side where "mistakes", like things flying off the window or pushed by the wind from another place (although there was a lot of garbage anyway). But when I saw these tied up plastic bags, they weren't there by chance, really people throw these bags away on the forest right here. That made me a bit sad, especially since it broke the original image I got.

(And I haven't spoke about the beaches and seafront all along that peninsula; I wouldn't walk bare foot there).

Then I came home in Switzerland, looked up the small water stream close to my place, and realized it wasn't as neat as one can see at first glance... So I should probably start with that before criticising other countries _sigh_

<comment><USER4> Interested in the cycling part of this. Any routes you recommend?

I did the short Shimanami Kaido over the inland sea which was, of course, wonderful.

<comment><USER5> Follow-up question: did you camp along the route?

<comment><USER3> I did 6 times but weather was a bit crap and many places were already closed (and I _really_ needed that shower at the end of the day :p). On the other end, I was practically alone most of the time (I shared a barbecue under a tarp under the rain with a Japanese guy on my last camping day) and most of the camp sites were just by the sea, which was pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sadly, this is the opposite of the UK cultural attitude. Kids here learn that cleaning up is someone else's responsibility. Littering becomes a habit from an early age.

Even compared to Americans, we are terrible litterers. You can see this in people's behaviours in fast food restaurants: in the US (as in many other countries), customers will bin their food wrappers and return their tray when they leave. Even groups of kids will typically do this: it's just habit. In the UK, typical customers will just leave their mess at the table when they leave. Cleaning is someone else's job.

<comment><USER7> Whoa, that sucks. Out of curiosity, do people in UK tip? In the states, if there's no tip, then it is expected for the customer to clean up after themselves.

<comment><USER8> >Out of curiosity, do people in UK tip?

Not in a fast-food restaurant, no.

You'll often see folks in cafés help out and return their trays, but it's not a guarantee - and in some establishments it's not even possible for you as a customer to do this. At the end of the day, you're paying to sit down - <USER2> clearing your table afterwards is priced into the food offer.

Fast food is a bit more of a grey area, since there's not necessarily table service. I'd throw away my rubbish at e.g. Burger King - there's usually bins provided for this purpose.

<comment><USER9> I tidy up or not based on whether there's table service. No table service = I do it myself, table service = it's somebody else's problem. I don't think anybody ever taught me this explicitly - it's just something I must have picked up, I suppose?

I don't think it's really all that outrageous to just leave the detritus on the table in either case. But when there's no table service, the tables won't be getting cleared so regularly, so it can make things inconvenient for the other patrons.

<comment><USER10> There area a lot of edge cases with this scenario. In some fast food restaurants (such as certain Burger King locations), you will get a number and the employees will bring the food to you, so there is a minimal form of table service. Also, the history of the country matters as well. In China, where there is no tipping culture, but fast food started out as fancy expensive foreign food not too long ago, the employees are expected to clean up, even as prices are now lower relatively compared with moderately expensive restaurants. On the other hand, in Korea, where there also is no tipping culture, fast food is now cheaper food, and you clean up after yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The cleanliness is impressive, but what impressed me even more was the efficiency.

One morning in Tokyo, I saw construction workers starting to dig up a street. It was a large operation, they were exposing some massive pipes, and there were a few policemen, politely pointing pedestrians to a way around the site.

In the evening I went the same way again, to see how far they had gotten with the digging. However, there was no hole anymore. They were already done, and the street looked like new, with hardly a trace of what had happened.

I felt kinda bad about my place (Germany), where this would have taken at least a week.

<comment><USER12> You don't know if it was:

A) just an inspection B) regulated to the same degree as in Germany (i.e. digging a hole and covering it up is easy if don't have rules) C) succesful D) done properly

<comment><USER13> Somehow, I suspect B, C, and D are spurious concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Undiluted orientalism.

I was in Osaka this weekend and litter is everywhere. By far one of the dirtiest major cities I've seen in East Asia. In the city I live in in Japan, the rice fields are full of coffee cans, plastic bottles, and bento packaging thrown out from cars. Streets are covered in cigarette butts and somehow I see natto containers in the middle of nowhere. Going hiking, I see tea bottles and plastic bags from convenience stores all over the damn place.

Most parts of Tokyo and cities with tourism are generally clean because there are heavy cleanup operations. People are still littering just like everywhere else.

> Invisible dirt – germs and bacteria – are another source of concern. When > people catch colds or flu, they wear surgical masks to avoid infecting other > people.

But you'll never catch people washing their hands and grandpas always pull down their mask to cough so as to not dirty it. I caught a news program during flu season last year telling people how to avoid the flu. Their recommendations? Keep your stomach wrapped and extra warm, and drink green tea since it cures influenza.

<comment><USER15> I live in Japan as well.

Hiking.. have you actually hiked anywhere in else in the world? Most places you can fill a garbage bag in an hour just walking on a trail. Took my climbing friends from Canada on a long Hike in Kita Alps, they brought a garbage bag as they always do to gather other peoples trash. We managed to find 2 empty water bottles in 3 days having covered close to 50km. See the campsites near huts after people leave in the morning they are EMPTY.

Try camping at a car camp sites.. now compare that to the clusterfuck of drunks, blaring music, trash, puke piss, shit that you get in NA. Went to Ishikawa for a week this summer camped by the sea, huge camp site tons of people actually very nice. Same thing in US? God fucking help you. This is why they actually don't have assigned lots for tents, in Canada people would get killed every long weekend if anyone was dumb to try that(car camping)

Of course there is garbage in cities in some places but compared to vast majority of the world it is clean. They actually clean public toilets.. it is a miracle.

<comment><USER16> Just want to say I've hiked significantly across the UK and there is extremely little litter

<comment><USER17> Agreed. There's very little litter in the UK countryside because (generalising) the people who litter don't go there and the people who do are included to pick it up.

British towns and cities aren't great, embarrassingly bad compared to the Japanese cities I've been to.

I spent a weekend in Lisbon recently and was fairly shocked at how bad the litter / rubbish was. The worst I've seen in Europe. Warm climate made it smelly too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> American (US) in Tokyo for the first time here. About an hour ago (10:30 pm here) I saw two men with a bucket and washcloth scrubbing the floor right next to Shibuya Crossing ("the busiest crosswalk on the world"). Moments before that a man was sweeping a walkway between passer-bys). The clothing store withers swept each changing room in between guests. Though a block away was the smoking area, littered with thousands of cigarette butts (not sure what conclusion to draw about smokers).

I was in Osaka earlier in the week, and Kyoto after that. And these cities were also quite clean and orderly, with Osaka being the most orderly (and much more relaxed and slow paced, which makes order easier).

One of my favorite parts of Japan's cleanliness is their cars. They are all sparkling. Even the delivery trucks are shiny and splatter free! The gas/petrol station near me had at least two attendeds at each car, one to pump, and the other to clean the car's windows and paint!

Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect!

Others in this thread don't speak too highly of Osaka, but it was definitely the most orderly and trash free of the three cities I've visited. Of course, these cities are quite huge, compared to cities in the US, so perhaps these conversations should be more fine grained, generalizing by prefecture rather than city.

I've found that I've been lining my things up neatly, and organizing my clothes and toiletries here in my in my hotel. It's been inspiring to see all the order here.

<comment><USER19> > Another fascinating thing is how escalators have two lanes, one for walking > and one for standing. Why doesn't everyone so this?! It's so perfect!

Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just having everyone stand. So not exactly perfect I guess.

But yea I agree in the general matter. When my MIL (a master organizer) visited Japan she thought that was great.

<comment><USER20> > Turns out, strangely, that it actually reduces throughput compared to just > having everyone stand

Wait, what? How can this be true?

Imagine an escalator w/ both lanes filled with people just standing. Now imagine the left lane starts walking: clearly, higher throughput.

Now, maybe you're imagining a scenario where people don't want to walk. Now everyone stands on the right, and the left lane is completely empty. OK, now we've reduced throughput by half compared to "everyone standing".

So as we consider moving between the extremes of "no walkers" and "walker saturation", there will be some break-even point of throughput. And beyond that having a walking lane will be more efficient.

(Also, besides raw throughput, having a walking lane gives you a better "fastest possible traversal time", which is also valuable, for people in a hurry.)

<comment><USER21> Transport for London experimented with this, and found higher overall throughput during rush hour with two standing lanes:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/it-is-faster- to-s...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/it-is-faster-to-stand-on- the-escalator-rather-than-walk-6-month-london-tube-study-finds-a7616871.html)

> Standing-only escalators had a "throughput" of up to 151 passengers per > minute, while an escalator where commuters were still allowed to walk saw > around 115.

Your thought experiment's completely right, but in real world circumstances, once an escalator is above a certain height, people rarely use the walking lane:

> But a 2002 study of escalator capacity on the Underground found that on > machines such as those at Holborn, with a vertical height of 24 metres, only > 40% would even contemplate it [walking up]. By encouraging their preference, > TfL effectively halves the capacity of the escalator in question, and > creates significantly more crowding below, slowing everyone down.

(from [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube- at-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/16/the-tube-at-a- standstill-why-tfl-stopped-people-walking-up-the-escalators) , which has a great graphic showing the two systems)

<comment><USER22> Transport for London should politely refrain from any statements like that, I believe. They hardly can allow people to enter the platform because there's no space to fit the crowd. There's sea of heads almost every morning in front of most popular stations' gates. Not because they have a gates issue, or any other unusual problem - they are just regulating flow that way. So, I'd kindly ask them start modernizing platforms to allow more throughput in the first place. Then let them experiment and play with statistics, by all means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, as a Korean, I think that this is due to the difference of importance of how other people think me. I've heard that the western world is very individualistic, and people in general don't care much about how other people acts.

In Korea (and AFAIK Japan too), people very care of what other people think about them. They consider the consequences of every action carefully. One of the results is that people generally don't litter in front of other people, and that makes the city clean. The places without much people, they are dirtier than others because there aren't other people around them.

<comment><USER24> Having lived in 세종시, and Seoul, I strongly disagree with your statement.

Sejong is a brand new city, made in 2014, yet there was litter everywhere, especially right near bus stops. I distinctly recall seeing empty coffee cups tossed in the planters/hedges nearby.

There were almost zero trash cans so what do you expect. The bathrooms didn't have tissue or anything either, you had to go to one of the nearby stores or cafes and get some.

Seoul has plenty of dirty areas just like any other enormous city.

People litter everywhere. Some Japanese people may be more conscious about not littering, but so are some Americans! This article reeks of orientalism.

<comment><USER25> Japan has a lack of trash cans also. The idea is to get people to think about their waste and carry it home. It goes hand in hand with their hyper recycling culture, which I could never really figure out what bin to put stuff in on my last visit.

<comment><USER26> The idea is they got freaked out after the 1995 sarin gas attack and in a knee-jerk reaction took away all the rubbish bins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Because people clean it constantly. I still find it amazing how many people I see cleaning when I'm in Tokyo. I was in a store mid-morning and a man was vacuuming. I walked by again in the afternoon and I noticed he was vacuuming again. In the west, that happens once/day after the store closes. There it was continuous. But nothing blew my mind more than when I was on a dirt walking trail and there was a man sweeping twigs and leaves off the trail.

As much as that surprised me, it also kind of didn't because there are people working everywhere on everything all the time. The number of concrete mixers driving around was amazing. Infrastructure is never finished and always seems to be well funded. I feel kind of embarrassed when I see Japanese people visiting my city, like they've come to some kind of pioneer town with our litter everywhere, far too many cars for the available roads and with our laughably inadequate public transit infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a Dane travelling abouts I have been stuck how clean the following three countries seemed compared to my home country: Australia, Singapore, and Japan.

<comment><USER29> As a German I can assure you Denmark is far above the average in Europe in public space cleanliness :-)

<comment><USER30> As a San Francisco resident, I can say almost any major Western city is cleaner. SF is filthy, at least in the downtown areas. Every sidewalk needs a good power washing and there's poop everywhere.

<comment><USER31> Yeah...I don't much bat an eye anymore as often as I've seen someone urinating on the side of a building in a US city, but it's only SF where I regularly see someone cop a squat and take a dump on the ground. Just lucky, I guess...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> These sort of articles about Japanese cleanliness and homelessness are intellectually dishonest if you don't mention massive factors like the fact that Japan eschewed the deinstitutionalization process that most wealthy countries went through toward the end of the 20th century

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation)

and as a result, they have _four times_ the rate of involuntarily locking people up for mental illness as the average:

> For the last 40 years mental health care has shifted from hospital-based > settings to community-based ones in most countries. As a result the number > of psychiatric care beds has fallen considerably internationally (Glasby & > Tew, 2015:106). More and more people with mental disorders are living and > being cared for in the community. In contrast, Japan still has a very high > ratio of psychiatric care beds per capita among member countries of the > Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with 269 beds > per 100,000 population compared to the average of 68 (OECD, 2014:11).

[http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S...](http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0037-80542016000400002)

<comment><USER33> This implies that the main cause of trash is homelessness. Although homelessness probably causes an increase of trash, I think it's clear that a culture of littering also causes trash, which is clearly not present in Japan.

Bringing in the subject of homelessness seems tangential to the topic at hand.

<comment><USER32> It certainly doesn't imply that this is the main cause, it suggests that it's an important cause (say, > 10%) that has to be acknowledged in a 10k word article. I also think dwelling on a "culture of littering" is much vaguer and less likely to make falsifiable predictions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are street cleaners in Japan. I used to visit Tokyo often and I would go running just before dawn. I saw plenty of people (usually elderly) collecting trash and sweeping up.

<comment><USER35> A lot of shop and home owners clean the street infront of their land. After a typhoon recently I saw what I assumed was the manager of the Louis Vuitton (or similar) store sweeping the front of the shop as a ton of branches had fallen (probably took him 30 minutes or more, it's a very wide sidewalk).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think it's worth noting that all of Japan isn't as clean as many of the cities are. A lot of people's homes are still rather dusty and when I visited in 2012 the outskirts of Osaka and the countryside looked pretty similar to Europe in terms of how much trash there was in the ditches next to the road.

The cities were noticeably cleaner than Swedish cities though, a lot fewer chewing gums and cigarette butts from what I remember.

</comment><comment><USER37> I lived for a year and a half in Hyogo-ken, Japan during uni, mostly with a host family so I didn't criss-cross the country or anything but one of the grossest washrooms I have ever been in was in Kobe near the train station. It was like built into the wall and was just absolutely disgusting with no sink or anything. And I lived in China for a half a year and saw some pretty nasty toilets, but nothing as gross as that. Also, pretty much all combini washrooms are nasty too... But yeah, on the whole Japan appears cleaner - they learn to clean in school since they take turns being on duty for it and have to clean their own stuff, not just in high-school either. I joined the tea ceremony club at my uni which took place in this little traditional style house behind the school and once a week I was on duty in the morning to scrub the tatami. I think other countries should take that lesson and build in cleaning duties.

<comment><USER22> And it's not only kids. Grown-ups are supposed to do it at work, too. When casually I suggested in my office, London, that we should swipe our desks weekly people laughed at the idea, others were surprised and upset. It's not their job, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Most first-time visitor to Paris are struck by how dirty the city is.

<comment><USER39> This is a documented condition, especially among Japanese travellers:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I really admire the cleanliness, I wish the US had more of this. (It should stop short of the face masks, though. That's a step too far for me.)

<comment><USER41> I don't know, during flu season I wish the folks who won't stay home would wear some masks. They don't always guess right with the flu shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> On a trip to Japan last year I posed a similar question to a friend-- why restrooms so much cleaner in Japan? I'm constantly amazed at how few many in the United States don't flush the toilet in public bathrooms.

My friend concluded that much of it had to do with collectivism vs individualism. Either way I think Americans need to improve their bathroom etiquette.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've been to Japan two times in the last year and I was shocked at this too.

It's interesting that years back there was a man with mental health issues who carried out attacks by putting chemicals in garbage cans in public places. After this Japan got rid of garbage cans in public. Most of them, at least.

You walk downtown Tokyo and there are no garbage cans and no garbage anywhere. Every once in a while you come across a small convenience store with a very small can inside or every 10 or so vending machines will have a small bin for bottles or cans. But for the most part Japan is EXTREMELY clean. The city can be old, but it's all still clean.

Go to Shibuya, the famous crossing with thousands of people. Show up there in the morning before rush hour and you'll see very few people, and the streets are all clean. No garbage anywhere.

<comment><USER44> Now that's a lie - go to shibuya around 5am right when the trains open, right at the crossing and look at Shibuya-Gai.

There's your trash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The only time I ever really noticed litter in Japan was in Ueno Park during Sakura.

There's a good chance it was tourists as they had brought in skip bins that were all overflowing to the point where the skip was sitting in a mound of rubbish.

Seems not having bins in public places cuts down littering as there is no expectation that you can dump your rubbish and someone else will deal with it. A similar thing happened in Brisbane when they removed all the public bins for the G20. The few remaining bins were all overflowing with litter everywhere or people dumped rubbish where they used to be.

</comment><comment><USER46> > You stop blowing your nose in public

Is it to stop germs from spraying in the air or is it more a polite thing? Or maybe to avoid having to carry the soiled tissue.

Do they hide in an alley to do it?

</comment><comment><USER47> The thing that struck me when visiting there (Kyoto mainly) was not only the general cleanliness, but that there were semi-delicate public displays and works of art that were not defaced/demolished. Eg, some city street sculpture that if was in the US would probably not last a weekend before some kid or drunk thought it would be clever to knock it over.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is a similar situation in Austria too. Well... Vienna to be precise as it was the only place I visited there.

</comment><comment><USER49> Because everybody does their 5cents here... not 50dollars or 5 dollars. Just THEIR 5cents

</comment><comment> hollsted-ifbit my first time in DF mexico visiting palacio de las bellas artes! There's a huge park next to it and I remember seeing nothing but trash all around it like a maze :(

</comment><comment><USER50> it's a beautiful country and people. Others have so much to learn from it about how to be civilized.

</comment><comment><USER51> Japan is on declining population and when it chokes enough to bring people from all over the world, things might change.

</comment><comment><USER52> Q:Why is Singapore so clean and tidy?

A:Because there is a horde of foreign workers doing the cleaning up.

<comment><USER53> Aren't violators caned as well? Singapore was awesome when I visited. Incredibly clean. Even lower class areas like around Orchard Towers (four floors of _____) was well above board compared to a clean US City.

<comment><USER52> no they are not caned. instead they are made to put on the high visibility vests with the words 'Corrective Work Order' and made to pick rubbish. But they are a rare occurrence. Usually only a composition fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Further proof, the solution to every problem is not more taxes and more legislation.

</comment><comment><USER55> You can thank the countries conservative men for that. Chaos v order.

</comment><comment><USER56> Insert mandatory "Don't forget that [Country other than the US]'s [positive traits] comes at a cost of loss of [american value]" here.

What'll it be this time? Communism? Authoritarianism?

<comment><USER57> When I was in grade school, students took turns cleaning and maintaining the school. It was also a lesson in democracy, since we had a meeting every month, run according to regular procedure, where students were elected to the various jobs such as sweeping the floor, washing the blackboards, cleaning the erasers, emptying the wastebaskets and burning trash, maintaining the outhouses, and pumping and bringing in drinking water.

Alas, this is one of the American values we have lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> That sort of cleanliness sucks. This is basically a step towards human extinction from the Earth.

</comment><comment><USER59> Except Shibuya, we walked there yesterday after the typhoon and had to avoid the big rats that normally live in the big trash piles, probably they were looking for food since yday there was no trash. I've seen similar situation with crows.

This is a mostly invisible issue for tourists since trash collection happens in the morning and people take the trash out the night before, so the piles of trash and animals are visible at night mostly.

And they then enter the convinis (warning, gross rats inside convini):

[https://twitter.com/Ginkai19990324/status/115807601769873408...](https://twitter.com/Ginkai19990324/status/1158076017698734080)

<comment><USER60> I don't think putting trash out at night and picking it up early in the morning is an exception to cleanliness. What else would they do? No one's trying to say Japan produces no trash.

<comment><USER59> But I'm taking about having big trash bags piled on the street for 12+ h practically everyday. For instance, an easy solution would be to put them only 2-3h before the trash trucks come (I've seen them before the last train at ~11pm, the truck comes at 9am). A cultural-change would be to have big metal containers to put the trash away so that animals don't have an easy way in.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple's Cash Hoard - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/14/apples-cash-hoard-it-just-keeps-on-growing/

<comment><USER2> I think this is one of the reasons Apple makes hardware products that are so polished when they finally are released. It lets them try things until they get it right, and if they haven't gotten it right then usually they just keep on working towards it.

I just read the book about the making of the Segway "Code Named Ginger" and in it there is a Jobs quote where he says "Screw the lead times. You don't have a great product yet! I know burn rates are important, but you'll only get one shot at this, and if you blow it, it's over." <http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html> In my opinion this is how Apple operates for a lot of products where they are seen as innovative and the cash in the bank allows them to do this.

<comment><USER3> Great quote. Blizzard has seemed to operate that way as well (taking a very different example).

<comment><USER4> I believe, and I might be wrong, that Blizzard were on the brink of serious financial woes before world of Warcraft came out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure why this is so important; it's a bit of a fluff/filler piece.

Every major software company hoards cash. MSFT, GOOG, APPL, everybody. So Apple's got a lot of cash... so what?

It's a lot of cash, but they've been doing well lately. :)

<comment><USER6> i know i'll be downgraded for saying this and i'm ok with that because most of the hackers are apple lovers and this is hackers community and not marketing forum :) but anyway if you think that apple charges reasonably for their products then you've no clue how apple is doing in other parts of the world - marketing research says that companies like apple had made money from westerners ONLY !!!

yes, apple offers quality products

yes, apple charges for premium

yes, apple has all the innovation working for them ....

But

Apple is a hit in western world only where people spend blindly .... look at the success rate of apple in 3rd world countries (where population is huge) - you will know that they are nowhere in top 10 --- surprised? let me give you an example:

ipod: a music player that is a huge hit in north-america is a super-flop product amongst south-asians!!! WHY? Why people who are known as a smartest consumers in the world don't buy ipods? the reason is not only the price of an ipod but also the lack of features in ipods ... the other mp3 player offer way more features than ipods ... and sound quality is as good as ipods .... So why one would pay more price for less features and get a same quality of output???????????? this is not me who is saying it, its a huge market research for all the premium products that has a good following in western countries but no takers in other parts of the world.

So the same product that we call "premium" in america (or western world) is labeled as a "rip-off" in other parts of the world where a person is called as a foolish for paying more price and getting same quality output but way less features...

<comment><USER7> yes, a lot of us here are partial to apple's products. but we still like to hear opposing viewpoints, so long as it's done respectfully. telling us that we 'have no clue' is _not_ respectful. that's why you're getting downmodded, _not_ because you're taking an opposing view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> onreact-com Well, no wonder, they sell their exploding crap for double the price while producing Made in China as everybody else.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps, BUT: Designed by Apple in California.

<comment> onreact-com Even better - Design stolen in Germany: [http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the- secr...](http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secrets-to- apples-future)

<comment><USER9> Very interesting. I had not seen that before. Some of those Braun designs are lovely (I've looked further at this). Even if Jonathan Ive has borrowed from this design, the Apple designs do look lovely in comparison to many of the other computer company designs out there. I must admit to being conflicted though as to whether this should be treated as inspiration or not. Thanks for sharing this

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To those that think Apple's products are reasonably priced: Where do you think they got all this money from?

<comment><USER11> I think they got all this money from selling lots of products at a price people were willing to pay.

<comment> onreact-com And other people to work 60h+ a week for Chinese minimum wage (a dollar a day).

<comment><USER12> Are you suggesting that this is different with _any other_ electronics manufacturer?

<comment> onreact-com No, but like I pointed out in my first comment on this post Apple sells the same products for twice the amount of money: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=762944>

<comment><USER8> The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco Approves 220-Square-Foot 'Micro-Apartments' - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2012/11/san-francisco-micro-apartments/all/

<comment><USER2> San Francisco has got to have the most frustrating and puzzling housing policy I've ever seen in this country.

No, let's not build any more housing, let's completely stonewall any attempt to redevelop any land whatsoever (except Mission Bay, because it's the San Francisco Yuppie Quarantine Zone). Instead, let's subdivide existing housing into increasingly tiny units.

Because gosh-durnit the cute colorful Victorians are sacred and override all other concerns, including economic stagnancy, transportation nightmares, unprecedented rent increases, destroying traditional neighborhood demographics, and very fundamental quality of life.

Nope, none of that matters, because we're basing a housing policy on whether or not this neighborhood can pass for one from the early 20th century!

<comment><USER3> I think your concerns are way overblown. But in a broad sense, yes, San Franciscans have made a conscious decision to pay a premium so that their city doesn't turn into New York.

> economic stagnancy

It's not some god given rule that cities HAVE to keep growing ad infinitum, especially ones that have limited land. Most San Franciscans are happy with the size of the city as it is.

> transportation nightmares

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. MUNI is very abundant and isn't too expensive (compared to NYC it's really cheap). There is generally plenty of parking outside of downtown.

> destroying traditional neighborhood demographics

Lol. The Chinese are doing just fine, but I guess you're referring to the former ghettos (Lower Filmore, Hunter's Point, the TL, etc.) that had huge drug problems and violence (It's still there, but siginificantly reduced) Yes, gentrification is unfortunate - but building high rises everywhere would ruin the "culture" much faster (though I would argue the Tenderloin doesn't have much culture to lose) and wouldn't solve the poverty among "traditional neighborhood demographics". What needs to be done, is a lot more needs to be spent on schools and city college and less on low income housing (where people are locked into poverty).

> very fundamental quality of life

That's just a vapid hyperbole. Not building high rises is preserving the quality of life SF is known for. The NewYorkification of SF (started by the Gavin Newsome) is what will ruin the quality of life.

In my experience the people that whine and moan about there not being enough housing in SF are people that don't live there. I think what they're thinking is if there were more teeny tiny apartments then they could afford to live there. While that may be true, then SF wouldn't be SF anymore - and it would only be a short term fix as SF would become just as crowded and expensive as Manhattan.

<comment><USER4> I disagree, I think potatolicious was pretty on point

> It's not some god given rule that cities HAVE to keep growing ad infinitum, > especially ones that have limited land. Most San Franciscans are happy with > the size of the city as it is.

You have a source on that stat? Rents in San Francisco are up something like 25+% year over year in many areas. Does that sound healthy to you?

> I'm not sure what you are referring to here. MUNI is very abundant and isn't > too expensive (compared to NYC it's really cheap). There is generally plenty > of parking outside of downtown.

Nope, MUNI is awful. Unless you live relatively close on one of the train lines, you are in for a world of hurt. The average speed of a MUNI bus has been going down continuously over time (due to extra traffic), to the point where it is now like 7mph. That means it takes an hour to go from one end to the other (vs 25 minutes tops to go a similar distance on BART). That means more people get cars, which means the buses get even slower. I'd happily pay the NYC monthly rates if I had an equivalent transit system.

> Not building high rises is preserving the quality of life SF is known for

San Francisco doesn't need to build high rises everywhere in the city, it needs to allow taller buildings (6-7 stories) in more areas without forcing developers to jump through all the hoops they have to right now. Lots of cities in Europe are filled with buildings of that height and it doesn't seem to hurt their quality of life too badly. Vancouver is consistently rated as having one of the highest quality of life scores in the world and has tons of high rises

<comment><USER5> > Lots of cities in Europe are filled with buildings of that height and it > doesn't seem to hurt their quality of life too badly.

It's actually pretty common for European cities to limit high-rise condos/office buildings in the city centers (usually with limits around 5-8 stories). To still achieve dense housing, tall condos and office buildings are usually built close to public transit somewhere a bit outside of the city center, plus the suburbs don't start as close in, so there's a bigger urbanized area. The Manhattan/Chicago/Vancouver style of a downtown characterized by skyscrapers isn't very common in Europe; more of a North American invention, particularly in the Chicago/Vancouver form where there's a high-rise downtown that quickly turns into suburban homes within a few kilometers.

The SF equivalent might be to not allow condo towers in SF, but to urbanize the areas a few BART stops out: why are there single-family homes, not denser housing, in San Bruno, West Oakland, and Daly City? But of course, the Peninsula is even _more_ anti-development than SF is, so politically that just trades one source of opposition for another one (to take another example, people have been trying to convince Palo Alto to allow more dense housing near downtown/Stanford/Caltrain for years, but Palo Altoans want to keep it suburban).

<comment><USER6> I think that's happening to some extent in West Oakland and Oakland more generally, at least. West Oakland's been getting some development, and there's the MacArthur Transit Village being planned at MacArthur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Although 220 square feet isn't a _great_ living environment and certainly not one I would want to be forced to live in long term, I don't think it's unlivable especially if you're only "living" there when you're not at work or school. I live in England and space is quite expensive here if you want to have quality too, for example I pay $2500 per month for ~<600 square feet apartment, an apartment I was looking at in London was ~$4200 per month for 800 square feet (it was a high quality residence). America is very spoiled with space, it would be impossible for me to get a 1500 square foot apartment anywhere in England unless I was willing to live in the middle of nowhere (the only apartment I found this big was 20 miles from the nearest city in a questionable area).

The issue may be that this will raise prices of bigger apartments, but if they're reasonably priced ($1000 per month?) I can't see how this is a big problem. For someone that spends all day inside they might not be ideal, but someone who treats their apartment as their "base" for sleeping and eating and nothing more it shouldn't be a problem.

<comment><USER8> I understand the appeal of living in a big city with... people and all, but honestly your dollar goes much further outside city limits. $1,000/month for a 220 sqft living space would be met with absolute disbelief around where I'm from (Rochester, NY, USA).

Location really is everything. Around here, you'll get about 2,200 sqft of living space in a less than 10-year old colonial house with a 2.5 car garage, 2+ acres of landscaped yard, for about $1,500/month. That's ownership, and only about 30 minutes from a large-ish metro area (1M in Greater Rochester). Traveling to NYC / BOS / PHL? By car: 6 hours, by plane: 1 hour.

With telecommuting being as accessible as ever, I have a hard time understanding why people pay these prices for such abysmal living spaces.

<comment><USER9> One of the things I think people who haven't spent a significant amount of time living in dense cities miss is that you do very little "living" in your apartment.

I spend maybe two hours a day awake in my (reasonably large for SF) apartment during the week, tops. The rest of the time I'm at work or out in the city somewhere; I treat the local downstairs basically like my living room.

It's not a lifestyle for everyone, but I consider the entire city my living space and I don't think it's abysmal at all.

<comment><USER8> That's a good point, and you're probably right about folks who haven't lived in large cities like that. Everyone's experience is different, I guess I was just expressing my own personal experience against the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's nice and all, and I definitely don't mean to sound like the tough New Yorker I am not, but if that's a "micro-apartment" then I have seen several "nano-apartments" in NYC that wouldn't fit a queen-size bed comfortably, let alone a nice kitchenette like the one in the article.

They're still livable, mind you, for some value of 'livable'.

In other words, if that is considered "micro" nowadays then my standards must be awfully skewed (which they probably are) and I'm looking forward to being pleasantly surprised when I move out of here.

<comment><USER11> I was going to say - that apartment is definitely larger than many in downtown Manhattan (if you live in one of the older buildings - particularly the old tenement buildings).

That might be 'micro' for Queens or even Washington Heights, but that's certainly not 'micro' for Chelsea or the Village.....

> I have seen several "nano-apartments" in NYC that wouldn't fit a queen-size > bed comfortably

My friend had a tough time figuring out how to fit his _full_ -sized bed - ended up deciding that it wouldn't work, and opted for a futon instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Take that, Tokyo"?

Are you kidding? Tokyo is laughing at SF's face, with its 80 square feet (4.5jō) rooms [1]!

(not that I'd want to live in this kind of arrangement again...)

[1] 1jō = 17.79 sq.ft. 1jō is the standard area for one tile of tatami. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_units_of_measurement#A...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_units_of_measurement#Area)

<comment><USER13> pssh, 4.5jō? You can fit like seven people in there!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not advocating taking this to commune-like extremes, but I'm surprised I don't hear more about taking advantage of sharing certain items to maximise living space and minimise costs. Two candidates that spring to mind would be vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Surely it's cheaper to have one industrial-quality version of each shared between 10/15 residents (with some sort of online booking system) than for everyone to have one each and lose the space?

<comment><USER15> Are you by any chance European? A lot of US apartments do have a shared laundry...I can't think of any of my American friends who have a washing machine.

This is in contrast to the UK, where it's culturally the norm for every flat to have its own washing machine (normally a condensor combi dryer, another thing not so popular in the US). Sames goes for heat: heat if often shared in the US, but here in the UK almost all apartments have individual boilers.

I am sure somebody here must have an explanation for exactly _why_ this cultural difference has developed, because I have no clue!

<comment><USER14> Yep - UK, and neither of those things are common over here (I don't know of any at all).

How would the shared heating work, financially? Over here our energy costs are very high so a lot (most?) of our energy bills go on heating and hot water; if you want to save money, you put a jumper on and have a shower rather than a bath. With shared heating you don't have this option, but do the overall savings from greater efficiency (an assumption) make this a moot point?

<comment><USER16> <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heizkostenverteiler>

<comment><USER14> Thanks to you... and to Google Translate :) Love living in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here in Paris, if you're under 30 a 220-square-foot apartment is considered spacious. And it will not be "carefully designed".

<comment><USER18> These SF "microapartments" are 220 square feet for $930/month. There are 10 square meter (108 square foot) apartments in Tokyo for which the rent is $750/month. This is nothing.

<comment><USER19> For a one year lease or a month-by-month? My room is about 100 square foot, for 10,000HKD ($1200) per month short-term. Once you go for an annual lease you get twice the space.

<comment><USER20> Where is the bathroom then? Shared?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For a kilobuck a month, you can buy a 4-bedroom, 2-story, single-family house on a half acre in a lovely suburb of Minneapolis. Of course, you'll also have to buy a down parka, a car to get you to work, a snowblower, a lawnmower, gas for the foregoing...

...and you're not living in San Francisco, which is a deal breaker for some.

</comment><comment> walnut-tree I am not a fan of narrowly-proportioned, single-aspect micro-apartments. I understand that space is at a premium but should we really consider 220 square feet as acceptable? The size of homes (be they apartments or houses) can have a profound effect on the quality of life for their occupants. Is this type of housing really a long-term solution?

I live in the UK where the design of new build housing is generally poor. England and Wales have no minimum space standards for housing and we are very much the worse off for it. This is in contrast to many European countries that do have minimum space standards. (The exception in England is London which has recently adopted minimum space standards for any homes built with Government money.)

I completely agree that it's not just the size of an apartment that is important but the quality of the space. There's much that can be done to make better use of space in homes: it all comes down to design.

Housing is a topic that's very close to my heart. I write a blog about housing in the UK and wrote some thoughts a while ago about the size of a dwelling and the quality of the space:

[http://homesdesign.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/space- standards-...](http://homesdesign.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/space-standards- and-housing-design/)

<comment><USER22> _should we really consider 220 square feet as acceptable?_

Yes. If you don't make much money but want to work in SF/NYC/Boston/etc, your only option is to spend a lot of time driving/commuting from somewhere with cheaper housing. For some people, the choice to waste three hours of their life driving in traffic every day is worthwhile because they get a big house with a yard. But others would be happy to sacrifice lots of living space if it meant that they didn't have to blow 3 hours of stressful commuting.

When cities declare "you can't sell a 220 sq ft apartment", they force that choice on everyone, even people who wouldn't choose it for themselves.

Minimum area standards basically impose a floor on the cost of living. In some American suburbs, this is often explicitly used to keep out the undesirables; you require that each house have at least an acre of land and that the structure take up less than X% of the lot so that prices rise to the point that low income folk or recent immigrants can't afford to live in your town.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If they're going to make them that small at least do it right

[http://www.ted.com/talks/kent_larson_brilliant_designs_to_fi...](http://www.ted.com/talks/kent_larson_brilliant_designs_to_fit_more_people_in_every_city.html)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak>

There's nothing "smart" about SmartSpace :-(

<comment><USER24> The 'SmartSpace' is a pretty abysmal design / use of space

There are other examples around of similar sized spaces that are much better used

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I run an SRO Hotel[1] in SF; my rooms are comparable in size to the thousands of other SRO units throughout the City and are as small or smaller than the units in the article. The only difference with these new units is that it won't be poor people who live in them.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy>

<comment><USER6> Interesting--I've always wondered who runs SROs, especially since they get a spectacularly bad rep. Have you considered doing an IAmA or something?

The SRO analogy immediately came to mind--I wondered what would prevent these from having the same issues residential hotels have. Is it really just the (reasonable) expectation that setting a artificially high price will drive away the poor?

<comment><USER25> The bad reputation they/we get is almost entirely due to the (comparatively) low rent. Our client base consists of the poor, students, and people with mental or substance-abuse problems (who tend to be very poor indeed.) Those tenants with addictions or mental illness are the most visible (and obnoxious) of our tenants even though they aren't the most numerous.

Simply: these new units are more of the same, but for wealthier people (and I _will_ be sending in my resume, TBH.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> More like Western Micro. I agree with the comments, $959 a month doesn't seem like "low income" rent to me either.

<comment><USER27> If the alternative is studios for $3000 and up, that's a pretty sweet rent though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Man increased urban density flows on to everything including public and private services. I see why these decisions make sense in a vacuum but wonder what they mean in the broader context.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wish my 1-bedroom in Noe Valley was this efficient. One room could have everything useful stacked on top of each other, and the living room could just include badassery.

</comment><comment><USER30> The housing unit looks very sterile. Almost like a hospital room. Some of the character of SF wil be lost.

</comment><comment><USER31> My place is under 200sq ft in Seattle.

</comment><comment><USER32> We need this in NYC.

<comment><USER2> We're getting it: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/nyc-apartment- size-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/nyc-apartment-size- bloomberg-micro-apartments_n_1660396.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think it looks fantastically fun. I want to retire when I'm young and get one of those tiny houses that I could drive around the country. I have a lot of gadgets but otherwise live very minimally (when you move three times a year, every year for 5 years you avoid acquiring "crap").</comment>


In 2019, Americans went more to the library than to the movies on average - <AUTHOR> https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits-outpaced-trips-movies-2019.aspx <comment><USER3> Just post the actual results: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library- visits-outpaced-...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits- outpaced-trips-movies-2019.aspx)

Also, the results don't show at all that "more Americans went to the library than to the movies" but rather that Americans went more to the library than to the movies (on average), which is not very surprising given that only one of them is free.

In other words, if 100 Americans went to the movies once, and 1 American went to the library 101 times, the results would still rank libraries higher than movies despite it being obviously not true that "more Americans went to the library than to the movies."

<comment><USER4> Libraries are not free, just subsidized. Someone pays for them, and they're not cheap. Also, they rely heavily on contributions and donations.

Just saying.

(council person)

<comment><USER5> The original poster means: given that you have paid all your taxes, etc, the marginal cost for you of going to the library and taking out a book is 0.

Of course the infrastructure costs money to maintain, and the people working there are paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Movie going is something that has been on the steady decline for years. The reality is, people aren't replacing movie watching with reading, they are just watching movies in a more private setting. Media consumption is at unprecedented levels today so it's still dominating our focused time.

That said, it's wonderful that libraries are still relevant and that many people still find them incredibly useful. The act of going to a library is what's so amazing... you are actively leaving the comfort of your home and leaving all of the distractions to visit a place that transitions your focus to learning. Building that habit/ritual for young people is so important because it will build a foundation for a love of learning.

</comment><comment><USER7> Our library (Eldersburg branch in carroll county MD) is vibrant!

I work from it M-F to get out of the tiny apartment and away from the kids. The library runs "story times" a couple times a week for the kids. There is a small kid play area that we frequent during winter or rain when we want to kill an hour.

The coolest part is that there is a STEM center with robot, 3d printing, Legos & Julia/Scratch machines. I also work from the "teen" section (because it allows for talking and I have zoom meetings all day) which has: comics, xbox one, and study rooms available.

There are always people tutoring out of the rooms and kids hanging out gaming with switch/xbox fortnite. It's really cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds incredible! I wish we had something like that here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That doesn't mean Americans watched less movies (maybe even the opposite given Netflix) or that Americans went to the library in 2019 more than they did in 2018. Going to the movies is probably a dying activity, comparing it to going to the library is useless (or even worse: misleading), in that it pushes people to think Americans are reading more by going less to the movies.

<comment><USER9> I went to the library a couple times in the last few weeks, different locations, and both had quite a few people in them. I haven't been to a movie theater in quite some time.

I think part of what is going on here, is that the real movie junkies are watching movies at home, whereas the real book junkies still go to the library. So, both figures may be influenced by the most-frequent users, but in different directions.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure about that, with things like Kindle and Kindle unlimited, book junkies have a Netflix equivalent.

I read a lot but switched to ebooks almost entirely 2 years ago

<comment><USER11> Ebooks can be quite expensive or very inconvenient.

Reading a book a week from a major publisher usually costs more than a month from a digital streaming service. Borrowing books requires some planning ahead since much of what's worth reading has a wait list, assuming that it is even available to libraries. Contrast that to print titles. You may be stuck placing something on hold if you are looking for a particular title, but there is usually something worth reading available.

<comment><USER10> Mh, I hardly read books just as they come out - there's plenty to read and there's kindle deals all the time. So I often end up paying between 1-5 dollars per book.

So that's somewhere between 4-20 dollars a month, and netflix spotify/netflix both are about 15 dollars. So some months my kindle will come out cheaper, sometimes more expensive.

But yeah, sometimes they are as expensive as print-book. Which is silly imo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know if Americans are going to the library more, or shunning movie theaters because of price increases and Hollywood's creative bankruptcy and a lack of decent films.

<comment><USER13> I stopped going to the movie theater because the movie going experience has become garbage.

They upgraded the sound system of every movie theater near me without also upgrading the sound proofing. Now you can't watch a movie without hearing the music and the sound effects of every other movie around you.

Ushers stopped enforcing rules so texting and talking has become normalized. And a lot of people don't go to the movies to watch movies but to hang out with their friends.

Some theaters "upgraded" to narrow seats to fit more people. You now sit shoulder to shoulder and fight over who gets the arm rest.

I don't expect the situation to get better for two reasons:

1\. A local movie theater company has a total monopoly so they don't have any competition and thus no need to improve.

2\. Teens are the largest movie going demographic and this new normal is to them, normal.

<comment><USER14> Wow, this is really surprising to hear because literally the opposite happened around here, the experience has drastically improved in the last ~7 years. Now multiple theaters have been converted to "luxury"-style theaters with huge reclining seats, giant aisles, and dedicated arm rests with a swiveling side table.

<comment><USER13> We have those too.

You get to enjoy the same noises and distractions while drinking wine and reclining on a bigger seat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can totally understand. I want to go to the movies but every time I look at the actual movies they are running it seems they are trying to scare customers away on purpose with bad repertoire.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I find comic book movies boring, so that removes a lot of options. I did go to the movies for the first time in ~3+ years to see 1917. Great movie. But, even with a movie I liked, the theater tried to ruin the experience by showing ~30 minutes of ads/preview prior to the movie.

<comment><USER17> Most theaters have reserved seating now. If you show up "on time" you're gonna get ads and previews. Go 20 minutes late; if you're early, walk out and chat or go to the little arcade they always have b

<comment><USER18> Oh really? That'd be awesome, when I moved to Germany a few years back where reserved seats are more standard it was such a big improvement for the experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess I'm one of those frequent visitors to the library, and as strange as it might seem I don't believe I have been to see a movie at the theater in more than 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER20> Regardless of article's accuracy in results, this trend I did not see coming 10 years ago.

Given the popularity of ebooks and internet, I thought libraries will slowly go down. This is fantastic!

<comment><USER21> I would guess that low-income families go to the library to use the computers or wifi.

Possibly even for IT classes - especially the older generations

<comment><USER20> Doubt people really go to library just for wifi. Everyone has smartphones now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This just more of a case of the decline of movies and rise of streaming

<comment><USER23> That's not something you can hide behind a "just". As streaming becomes the main source of funding for films that represents a _huge_ change to the Hollywood and indie cinema landscape, and it'll have an impact on much more than just the film industry (end of DVD retail, massive impact on multi- entertainment venues like malls that have an attached cinema, impact on branding as there are far more streaming film and shows dilutes the pool of celebrities to endorse things, less likely to see merchandise tie-ins due to that dilution... etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how much outliers like college students scew the data. I practically live at the library.

<comment><USER25> There's an age breakout here:

[https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits- outpaced-...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits-outpaced- trips-movies-2019.aspx)

I'm still surprised at the results. I'm in the 30-49 bracket, as is everyone I interact with, and I'd be shocked if someone I knew has been to the library in the past year. They would most likely use the internet for information.

<comment><USER26> Wild. I'm in the same bracket, and I'd say half of my friends and co-workers in the bracket are library people. It's not a matter of going to the library for information that is really available for free on the internet. I'm there for the free books. If you read 40 books a year and are patient enough to ensure the sometimes months-long waitlists for new and popular books, using your local library could easily save you ~$400 per year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's weird to see going to the library referred to as a social activity. While in many cases it may be a social activity that involves a stay, in most of the cases I observe, it's brief and transactional, akin to visiting a convenience store or a short-duration service provider (like a car wash).

I went to the library about eight times last year, and in every case I was there solely to use their printer or fax machine (because if you don't work in an office, this is about the only place to access these things; certainly the cheapest). While there, most of the people I observed were either doing the same thing, or were stopping in to briefly browse and check out books or media. These aren't "social activities" unless buying a pack of gum at the corner store is a social activity. A haircut is far more social for me, and I had more of them last year.

My mother takes her great-granddaughter to the library a couple times a month, for various fantastic events the library puts together, which are highly social. They're well-attended, so I have no doubt that there are a decent number of people who do legitimately socialize there, but I wouldn't count most library visits as social events.

<comment><USER28> I think it depends. In the libraries closest to me, any events are squirreled away in conference rooms and other areas that wouldn't disturb people who are in the same building to study, read, or use the facilities available. It makes sense that you'd never encounter a social group if you only go to a library to access a part of the library that would've been separated out.

<comment><USER27> The libraries near me are much smaller. Obviously my anecdotal observations are a limited data set. Also, I just realized the article says "cultural activity" rather than "social activity", which changes things a bit, but my anecdote still stands insofar as I'm not really sure that much of the use I see counts for that either.

Libraries are great. I'm just not sure we should be patting ourselves on the back based on the usage I observe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The ever-powerful pause button is what keeps me from going to move theaters; for many years now. (Also the ridiculous pricing of theaters nowadays, even though i support paying artists for their craft and work.)

Stepping back a bit...A few years ago - after we cut the cord on our (stupidly/unnecessarily expensive) cable tv subscription, but before there were several, decent streaming service offerings - my family and i would borrow DVDs from our local library (including an odd book here or there). It was wonderful! Sure, sometimes a desired movie would be out/booked by someone else for weeks...But there were always other options, plenty of films to see from classics to more recent stuff. Also, it felt nice to support our local library. After a few years of this of course - when more streaming services beyond only netflix became more prevalent - we stopped leveraging our local library. The content of these streaming services became compelling enough, and - provided that you don't over do it with too many services at once - <USER2> pricing has been decent enough. So, for me whether it is borrowing media from our library or subscribing to some decent streaming service, it is the fact that i can enjoy all this content from the comfort of my own home __AND __pause it (for me to take a food break, bathroom break, etc.) however /whenever i wish is what keeps me away from move theaters. (Also, the cost has a little impact...but by far and away, it is the pause button that drives my behavior.)

In this day and age, I'm wondering if i should cancel 1 or 2 streaming services, and go back to supporting our local library...even if only to help prop up a decent institution for our society?

</comment><comment><USER30> That makes me happy. I live in a small town (Sedona Arizona) but we have a fantastic library, probably because we have several billionaires living in the area so there is money for libraries, medical facilities, etc. that is unusual for a small town.

I wonder how peoples' perception on the state of the economy affects the library vs. going to the movies decision. For many people in my social circle they are doing better than ever financially and for some, worry about high inflation (currently well over 6%, ignoring the big lie also known as CPI) and reduced social security and Medicare benefits in the future.

Libraries are wonderful places to hang out and they are usually free.

</comment><comment><USER31> No need to go to the movies when most libraries have a media room with a fat plaque on the wall stating the contract they have with pretty much EVERY movie company, allowing them to screen films to the public.

Why pay when I can watch for free at the library?

</comment><comment><USER32> Now if only we'd fund libraries that way.

<comment><USER33> I pay about 700$ per year in property taxes to my library. Thats much more than what I pay for movies including netflix per year.

<comment><USER32> You pay $700/yr in property tax total? Or $700/yr to the library specifically? If the latter, what's your total property tax? And where do you find info about what amount of it goes to the library?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Now that I have children, the library is a regular weekly stop.

We've only been to one or two movies in the past year. There's enough on Prime, Netflix, and Disney+ to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER35> What's the criterion to be included in this list? They compare visiting the library to live music, theater, casinos, theme parks or zoos. But all of the other activities demand payment per visit, while going to a library is free, so it's a bit unfair comparison.

I would also compare it to cafes and restaurants, those are also cultural activities. I suspect that then libraries would fall behind.

<comment><USER36> Going to a restaurant is a cultural activity???

<comment><USER35> Nowadays? Definitely. People don't go to eat out "just not to be hungry", they go for the experience.

<comment><USER37> <rant>

Honestly this is such a weird growing expectation. I don't think it's what people want anymore (they did previously) but companies are riling this up, they are making people expect more and care about trivial things to justify their existence and increased pricing. There's simply no single day I don't get by without seeing, _care about the experience_ , _it 's all about the experience_, _it 's all about how your literal USB cable makes someone feel about themself_, etc in startup eco chambers.

<rant/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I go to the library far more frequently than the movie theater. There's just something magical about libraries for me. So much collected knowledge and creativity, yet unexplored. The smell of old books and the general atmosphere seem to prime me for reading. The fact that I my wife and N kids tag along probably helps the attendance numbers.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's a nice place to do remote work on

</comment><comment><USER40> I am from the UK. But the last movie I watched in the Cinema was in 2014. It is expensive and unnecessary. I bought in the new year a 60inch 4k HDR TV for less than £400 from toshiba.

Why would you bother when you can get a similar experience at home without the hassle?

</comment><comment><USER9> Odd that, although they mention it's an update to a 2001 survey, they don't link to that 2001 survey to compare. Were libraries going up since 2001, or were movie theaters going down, or both? Google is not wanting to show it to me, either.

</comment><comment><USER41> Maybe dead malls should be turned into libraries. Really Big libraries.

<comment><USER42> Unfortunately, locally its a stereotype that they turn every dead mall's anchor store into a movie theater.

Also, locally, most dead malls die when they can no longer afford to maintain the roof, and water is pouring out of the ceiling everywhere until the occupancy permit gets yanked and leases are broken, and flooding is exactly what you don't want for books.

<comment><USER41> > Unfortunately, locally its a stereotype that they turn every dead mall's > anchor store into a movie theater.

That happened at our local mall back in 2007. It's a bit of a triumph that the mall is still around. The Target on the end is worth more than the rest of the mall combined, I understand (Target owns that space rather than leasing it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> They might have gone to the library, but it probably wasn't for books. My local library has a bigger selection of movies (and television shows) than the last time I went to Blockbuster.

</comment><comment><USER44> Lots of people doubting the stats here. And while I generally approve the inquisitive nature of HN we maybe should take this time to be optimistic.

Good for Americans for breaking stereotypes. Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER45> I go to library almost every day - it's free office space essentially when you're running a startup, with WiFi and printing.

I can't say the same about movies.

Seems like apples to oranges essentially.

<comment><USER46> The downside is you need to pack up and lose your spot if you need the toilet

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if people actually opted to a library instead of movie. If so, I wonder what would be the number of people who opted to a library instead of TV/Netflix?

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm curious if this is actually conflating homeless people who spend time in the library as one of their only safe places, rather than actual library patrons.

<comment><USER3> It is not. The original article has a breakdown based on income, which shows similar trends for every income bracket: [https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits- outpaced-...](https://news.gallup.com/poll/284009/library-visits-outpaced- trips-movies-2019.aspx)

But in any case, the conclusion in the title of the article is wrong and not supported by the results.

<comment><USER49> Sorry hadn't seen your comment when I posted. I agree the title of the OP's article is misleading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Might be related to the rise of Netflix and binge watching, though. Movie- goers go down, the library/movie ration goes up. All is well.

<comment><USER51> ...or go watch movies on netflix at the library!

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Are the results segmenting for penniless students who went to the library to study out of "obligation" rather than leisure?

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd read more into the libraries are more popular than the popular opinion would think rather than knocking the movies.

</comment><comment><USER54> Not going to lie, I definitely pirated a movie or two at the library.

</comment><comment><USER55> Should we conclude about libraries or about hollywood output ?

</comment><comment><USER56> they are not reading books in the library, they are working on computers or even streaming movies. I am in a library all the time, so this is what I observe.

</comment><comment><USER57> Yes, because Netflix.

<comment><USER58> Dirty loud theater, were the screen is too dark because they want to save the life of the bulb vs. being able to start a couple of movies if one is bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> > Women Visit Libraries Nearly Twice as Frequently as Men

Doesn't surprise me. It is pretty hard to "cat call" someone at a library with the whole silence thing.

</comment><comment><USER60> how many went to use library broadband to watch videos and movies? that's what i see all the time.

</comment><comment><USER61> in my times, we used to go to the library to read books, wonder if that is still the attraction

</comment><comment><USER62> More Americans who answer surveys went to the library than to the movies.

<comment><USER63> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER62> Fair enough. I was mostly just annoyed at the title, I'll make sure to keep this in mind and bite my tongue if I don't have anything of value to add. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> if you have kids, its an awesome place to go

</comment><comment><USER65> Even more watched porn on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER66> You have to pay to watch movies at the movie theater. The movies you rent from the library are free. And if your library is part of a network of libraries, then you probably could find any movie you want to watch.

Mix that with youtube, netflix, prime, etc, and you really have little incentive and time to go to the theater.

</comment><comment><USER63> Url changed from [https://lithub.com/in-2019-more-americans-went-to-the- librar...](https://lithub.com/in-2019-more-americans-went-to-the-library-than- to-the-movies-yes-really/), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER67> ...went to the library, to check out a movie?

</comment><comment><USER68> Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER69> How many went to watch porn on library computers

<comment><USER70> 102

<comment><USER69> People took what I said as a joke but they should talk to some librarians and tech support of public libraries.</comment></comment></comment>


Automation Insurance: Robots Are Replacing Middle Class Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.good.is/post/automation-insurance-robots-are-replacing-middle-class-jobs/ <comment><USER2> The notion that automation is somehow reducing the number of jobs is a flawed one. Did automating farm work have the same impact?

The amount of skills and capital equipment, including robotic systems, a society has determines how wealthy it is.

If you can produce with a machine what ten men could produce ten years ago, and no one else has this advantage, all this means is that YOU get to spend those nine saved salaries on extra things nine other people will be paid to provide.

Or you can save those nine salaries in the bank where they can be loaned out to hire 9 people on some new venture.

But if everybody has access to the same technology, the price of the thing you're making will just drop 90%. You'll only get those extra 9 salaries while you have a technological advantage over your competitors.

And history bears this out. Automobiles were very costly until mass production, then costs were slashed and the average middle class person could afford them.

And automakers armed with the technology were not able to rest on their laurels. If they did not continue to chase technological advantage successfully, they eventually fail. Unless bailed out by government, of course.

So there's nothing to fear from technology. It is the source of middle class well-being, not its scourge.</comment>


NASA grants $125K to create a prototype of a universal food synthesizer - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/86685/the-audacious-plan-to-end-hunger-with-3-d-printed-food/ <comment><USER2> I feel like hunger is much more likely to be solved with innovative economic thinking than with innovative engineering. We should be able to grow enough food for everyone as it is. That's not really the issue. The issue is getting the economics worked out so that we _do_ grow enough food, and so that we can distribute it to everyone who needs it without breaking all of the economies.

<comment><USER3> Yes, this! People keep trying to solve a problem they don't understand, that doesn't really exist. We have enough food in the World to feed our population. Countries like North Korea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo have starvation problems not from a lack of food in this World but from monsters running their government that won't allow their people the freedom to live their lives.

In spite of a growing population, farm land in the USA is declining. "In 1990, there were almost 987 million acres in farms in the U.S., that number was reduced to just under 943 million acres by 2000, and then reduced to 914 million acres in 2012." <http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/ag101/landuse.html>

<comment><USER4> Politics aside, there's an appalling amount of food waste in developed countries. It's certainly not as simple as "send all the not-pretty produce to Africa" or "ship all the no-longer-perfectly-fresh bread to North Korea," but there is a huge potential target for reducing what we throw away and getting it to people who need it.

The major problem, of course, is interfering with people's lifestyles, if only in marginal ways... we as first-world countries just don't handle having our convenience messed with very well.

<comment><USER5> You just touched all of my buttons wrt food and economics here.

First of all, just because food isn't used doesn't mean it is wasted. I don't like to go to the store all the time so I buy more food than I may end up using -- but I still consider it worth it.

Second there is not an limited amount of food in the world and there is no reason we have to cut down on our use in order to feed hungry Africans -- we can, as GP correctly pointed out -- feed the entire world.

At this point the only reason there is hunger anywhere in the world is bad governments and failed states -- Haiti is hell on earth (and has been before the recent earthquake), but it borders the Dominican republic, which is much better (if still far from the western world), NK is the worst place on earth with street urchins scavenging for single kernels of rice in animal dung, SK, which it borders, is a pretty good place to live and has basically no starvation.

It is one country today, but the same difference (albit to a lesser degree) could be seen between East and West Germany.

Finally, take the recent hunger situation in Africa -- people had to walk miles through the desert, leaving their dead and dying children behind in the sand because they couldn't carry them. They had to walk until they came out of Somalia and entered Kenya where they would receive held and food -- because the warlords of Somalia didn't allow the food aid into the country as they believed it was a western emperialist attempt to make Islam look bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As others have pointed out, this probably won't be all that useful in solving the worlds hunger problems.

I'd think the actual motivation for this (and especially for NASA to be involved) is having a durable, easy to transport yet not completely monotonous supply of food for long space flights.

This is probably rather long term thinking, so "solving world hunger" is the typical feel good, not completely untrue yet slightly bullshit line you'd use to sell this as a good investment to the more short sighted "why are we spending money on X if there is still hunger/poverty/illness" crowd.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder whether the economy involved in manufacturing these cartridges, and the printers themselves, wouldn't all but guarantee this costs more than the worlds' poor could ever afford. The article suggests they could buy the cartridges at a local store ... this assumes, first, the existence of a 'local grocery store' and, second, that they have enough money to buy the carts (and, of course, the 0th assumption that there are enough carts to stock the shelves with.)

If they could do that then, presumably, they could already afford whatever else was in the store to begin with, and it would end up being cheaper for the poor who can afford them to just boil the food carts up into soup. I guarantee a synthetic food cartridge is not going to be cheaper than, say, a sack of flour or rice and beans or what have you. And if you're requiring a crowd of people to queue up at the public replicator for their three square meals a day, you've got a recipe for political disaster on your hands.

Now you could couple this with some kind of government sponsored food program, so it's "free" I suppose, But what about regions without any real infrastructure, or stable governance, or even hostile governments?

I'm not dismissing the idea of the printer per se, but I don't see how it solves world hunger. If NASA wants to revolutionize the quality of life in poverty-stricken areas of the world, they should focus on improving global sanitation, water quality, waste disposal, etc.

</comment><comment> DanI-S If anyone is interested by the edible insects concept touched upon here, check out our company Tiny Farms (<http://www.tiny-farms.com>). We're one of a handful of US companies doing real work in this area.

Alongside our research, tooling and outreach work, we've actually managed to feed Dave McClure a waxworm-filled Baklava: <http://www.tiny- farms.com/2013/04/tiny-farms-in-zagat/>

<comment><USER5> I suppose maybe one day we will see people eating insects as a regular part of their diet.

But personally insects on food makes me vomit, not salivate.

<comment><USER8> I tried to re-frame it as eating arthropods instead of eating insects. We already eat crabs and lobsters, which are just very large wet bugs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author questions the tastiness of algae - I wonder whether he knows what Maki rolls are made out of. Ever tried Japanese or Korean seaweed soup? Easily one of the tastiest soups because of all the Umami flavor in Seaweed.

</comment><comment><USER10> Printer ink, being hugely marked-up and inefficiently wasteful, is not a good analogy for the stated goal:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/04/printer_ink_seven_ti...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/07/04/printer_ink_seven_times_more/)

</comment><comment><USER11> On the solving world hunger meme, check out 'Permaculture', which could be reasonably summarized as applying the same type of systematic thinking we deploy in the computer world to natural systems for the production of food, energy and other resources. This movement is fairly old (late 60s/early 70s) but is experiencing a renaissance at present. Coupled with the greater geographic reach of the internet and the cheaper price of off-grid power supplies today, it is really something many hackers might enjoy taking a look at. After all, vast expanses of natural land you can live on and still derive income (eg. with a long-haul wireless link) are undervalued by the rest of the population. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture>

Oh, and injecting 'nutrients' is not realistic in the range we require. For a somewhat loaded example, a typical mushroom has hundreds of organic compounds that we have no idea about, but are rapidly discovering have great benefit to us. Fungi and animalia have recently been confirmed in mainstream science to be the same evolutionary lineage; as such they possess millions of years of evolution producing great anti-bacterial and anti-cancerous properties; they can even eat radiation!

</comment><comment><USER12> In 30 Years:

       Son: Mum, my Food toner is empty!
       Mum: I'm sorry we can't afford a new one, share with your sister!
       Imperator: Let's invent chips for food-toners that force stupid consumers to buy new ones before their toner is actually empty!
       Ministers: Yes, Oh Lord! Can we also throw out a new toner model every quarter that is incompatible to the last one.
       Imperator: I agree my followers! Keep the technology the same, renovating our fabrics is out of question.
       Ministers: Oh great Imperator this is a great idea, we order it to be done by this month.
       Dad: Oh world, why did our Grandads trust the Sci-Fi paroles of the United Companies Associations and didn't see the slavery it brought us coming..
       Grandpa: Dear son, it looked so promising and fascinating when the foundations of this technology were born. We were simply confirmed in our dreams by reality, this feeling was too strong to become aware of it's implications.

I don't want to sound too skeptic, because I actually hope that they invent the universal replicator, tricorder, warp-drive, universal-translator, deflectors, AI, Isolinear-Chips, etc. but we all know it is very important when an invention is born and who is belongs to. Remember E=mc²

</comment><comment><USER13> That looks like a perfect match for this guy's idea for efficient nutrient production, presented at Google's Solve For X: [https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/efficient-nutrition- prod...](https://www.solveforx.com/moonshots/efficient-nutrition-production)

He thinks he can provide the protein requirements of the world's population from an area the size of Rhode Island, cheaper and healthier than agriculture.

</comment><comment><USER14> Food sustainability is my passion area. Although the technologist in me thinks this is an awesome endeavor, the sustainability advocate in me thinks this is a step in the wrong direction. Agriculture is an area that I think needs to stay relatively low-tech. However, the cultural boundaries preventing that are pretty massive.

<comment><USER15> Modern agriculture is very, very far from 'low-tech.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to see a 3-d printed compost-able seed planter that holds the exact seed, the exact depth, printed with spacing (or attached to a string?) with printed fertilizer and all that. Shove this stake into the ground for a perfect "whatever" planting environment.

Doesn't help with floods / droughts / windstorms / frosts but at least it would remove some planting variables.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A line from the first paragraph says it all:

      Systems & Materials Research Corporation, just got a six
      month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of
      his universal food synthesizer

</comment><comment><USER17> "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"

<comment><USER18> Was just about to write the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Someone has to ask: Is there any chance of turning feces into food with this thing? Obviously it can't supply all our needs, there's a reason we got rid of it. But for actually helping people with low resources eat, it might cut down on trips to that "corner grocery store".

</comment><comment><USER20> Sweet, but ending hunger is incompatible with profit, and this will therefore die a sad little death as it gets legislated into oblivion, if it gets anywhere near gaining traction (which it won't, you just know Monsanto and friends will run a massive PR campaign about how synthesised food is terrorism, GMO is freedom, etc.).

<comment><USER5> Ending hunger is quite likely to lead to a nice profit as dead people don't buy anything.

The only reason we haven't ended hunger yet is that the poor people are too poor and have too horrible governments to be able to produce things we value enough to buy from them.

<comment><USER20> This isn't the view taken by the worlds agribusinesses - they want enhanced shareholder value, NOW, not in 30 years time, not in a century. It's utterly irrational, but the current global stratagem seems to be:

1) Ruin the planet 2) Profit 3) ???

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Soylent green here we come... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green>

<comment><USER22> See also: <http://www.soylent.me/> TLDR: Guy is living off a drink he formulated that provides all his nutritional needs. He's three months in.</comment></comment>


Ammonia, a renewable fuel, could power the globe without carbon - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon <comment><USER2> Active discussion on same topic here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17711717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17711717)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do they realize that, in a car crash where the ammonia tank is punctured, everyone around it dies a horrible death?

<comment><USER4> From the article:

> [...] turning them into a commodity that can be shipped anywhere in the > world and _converted back into electricity or hydrogen gas_ to power fuel > cell vehicles

<comment><USER3> Puncturing the hydrogen tank is pretty bad too. The death is less horrible and much quicker, however.</comment></comment></comment>