Segmenting Customers with One-Click Surveys - <AUTHOR> https://canopylabs.com/blog/segmenting-customers-one-click-surveys <comment><USER2> If you could build this into weekly email newsletters and let others rent out the survey space, it would be huge for customer development.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting idea! We'll get back to you on that -- it would be a big shift from our regular approach/work, but I can see some companies willing to do this, especially those already selling ads on their newsletter e-mails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _> Click rates tend to be in the 15% to 25% range. Yes, this is not a typo! These are the most effective e-mails you can send._

That is lower than I would expect for a campaign giving away $5 with a click.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, the 15% to 25% range applies to almost any one-click survey we run. Not just ones that have an incentive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I previously ran a startup that was entirely based around one-click survey emails, inspired by Netflix's survey emails, which was around 5 years ago. We definitely saw huge response rates but we couldn't find any customers that cared. Nearly everyone we talked to wanted more info than a single question/answer, in order to segment responses. For big customers, they were happy with low single-digit response rates since they could spam thousands of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. How did you deal with this? What was your pricing model? If you're willing to share, I'd be curious.

We basically deal with this objection/request in two ways: (1) use the one- click survey as an entry-point into a bigger survey so you get at least _SOME_ feedback, or (2) simply ask people if they'd prefer lots of info on a few people, or lots of people giving a bit of info. A lot of companies will choose the latter in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Self segmentation is a big deal right now</comment>


What language is more expressive than TypeScript and works in VSCode? - <AUTHOR> I keep bumping up against the limitations of TypeScript's type system.<p>Which language is more strict and expressive than TypeScript and has reasonably good tooling (preferably works with VsCode)? It does not necessarily have to compile to JS <comment><USER2> C#

<comment><AUTHOR> Can C# express union types?

<comment><USER2> Yes

[http://boustrophedonic.com/blog/2012/10/21/union-types-in- cs...](http://boustrophedonic.com/blog/2012/10/21/union-types-in-csharp/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rust

</comment><comment><USER4> Scala</comment>


New price comparison tool for e-grocery launches in Brazil - <AUTHOR> https://zaply.com.br <comment><AUTHOR> A brazilian startup - Zaply - launched a new price comparison website that finds the best price for e-grocery shopping baskets, comparing many e-commerce websites at the same time. Expected to launch in the US in the coming months.</comment>


Don't use mod_python - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.python.org/moin/PoundPythonWeb/mod_python

<comment><USER2> This of course disregards the #1 reason to use mod_python (or mod_perl, mod_ruby, or any other fully-integrated scripting language Apache module): namely, because you're not just limited to generating dynamic content.

The Apache request-handling chain is much richer than simply passing off incoming requests to a CGI or PHP script. Using mod_{perl,python,ruby,etc.}, you can implement authenticators, URL-rewriting modules, log handlers, output filters, etc., and take advantage of the mature Apache infrastructure for such code.

Basically, if you want to be able to slice and dice HTTP requests at every stage of processing, not just the content-generation one, the Apache mod_* add-ons are a pretty powerful tool for doing just that.

<comment><USER3> You can get all of that by using mod_rewrite/mod_fastcgi/mod_wsgi to passthrough to a full-blown Python app server running behind the web server as a separate process. All of the other mod_* authentication and authorization hurdles will still be evaluated first.

<comment><USER2> While it may be _possible_ to get the same level of control over the request lifecycle using mod_rewrite and simple dynamic content generation, it can often be awkward and slow compared to doing the same thing via a full-blown Apache scripting module like mod_python.

Case in point: I'm currently working on an application that uses mod_auth_kerb to perform Kerberos password authentication on behalf of users, then fork a background server which has access to that user's Kerberos credentials, and proxy future connections from that user to the dedicated backend.

Doing that using mod_rewrite requires using the RewriteMap 'prg:' map type, which introduces a single choke-point in the application: namely, the single script responsible for spawning the backend servers. That script also runs in the _one_ Apache master listener, which means that no other incoming requests will be answered until the rewrite script returns its output.

If I were instead using mod_perl (as I suspect I will be, before this moves into production) I would be able to have each Apache child process handle its own forking of backends for requests it was handling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mod_python seems to be very promising and robust from the first sight. I've tried mod_python and it left me delighted for several reasons; some of them:

1\. You can get total control over the request.

2\. Mod_python provides a set of wrappers to mimic standart python CGI objects what greatly simplifies your life

3\. Basic load tests say that mod_python is robust and fast

4\. Installation is easy

The only thing that I've found confusing is unicode support (take a look at [http://www.modpython.org/pipermail/mod_python/2004-June/0158...](http://www.modpython.org/pipermail/mod_python/2004-June/015825.html))

The only thing that I need to know about mod_python - is the list of successful commercial deployments.

What about the cons, I would also like to know who are these guys from this PoundPythonWeb, they look like someone official, but I'm always feel suspicious when someone says: "Don't use this" (except the case when the person is the author :))

</comment><comment><USER5> A very unconvincing list.

1\. That's what package managers are for.

2\. If you're in the position of configuring your own web server then this probably doesn't matter to you.

3\. See #1.

4\. True, but your /usr/bin/python processes will be lighter because they won't exist.

5\. I have no idea if this is true, but no evidence is provided.

6\. My personal experience with mod_proxy has been...unhappy.

7\. ???

8\. See #5.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently just using mod_python for my Trac installation, but it's ridiculously slow. Any suggestions?

Edit: I switched to using fcgi and it's _wayyyy_ faster. So there's reason #9.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there any merit to this wiki? The author isn't known but does the stated reason worth abandoning mod_python? I don't think so.

<comment><USER8> The wiki is primarily discussing theory of administering a web system with a little bit about resource distribution. The ideas all have merit, but you need to decide how important they are. I, for example, don't mind having to upgrade a webserver, language and module simultaneously. I don't do this on production systems, so my services won't go down. I'll build the new system, test it, replace the old one and that's that. It's not really an issue to upgrade a few pieces of software together in the full scope of my testing processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Basically you should use mod_wsgi these days...

<comment><USER10> Yup. mod_wsgi is written by one of the core mod_python maintainers and is essentially a much more modern take on the whole problem of running Python code within Apache. It's powerful, flexible, easy to configure and it even works well with shared hosting (you can give each user their own process group which restarts when they "touch" a file in their home directory). I'm a total convert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought the whole point of mod_python was performance. Since it runs inside the apache process it doesn't have to spawn a new python interpreter for every page request. Am I mistaken? Does fastcgi and/or mod_wsgi solve the same issue?

<comment><USER2> All three work if your goal is simply to avoid forking a new Python interpreter for each incoming request, ala CGI.

The difference is in where they hook into the request-handling workflow within Apache. Both FastCGI and WSGI apps only receive the request after Apache (or lighttpd, nginx, et. al.) have finished doing access control checks, URL rewriting, header parsing, etc.

Code inside the mod_python interpreter, on the other hand, can hook in to any of those earlier stages of request processing, which allows it to do things like block a request, alter the Apache log format, or look up a vhost docroot in a database, all before any content is generated.

The downside is that each and every Apache process on your server has a full copy of the Python interpreter embedded inside, which can cost you a pretty serious chunk of RAM when you start dealing with servers running 25-50 (or more) httpd processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "...which makes wsgi applications (which can be deployed through several ways) very flexible..."

What are the preferred ways to deploy wsgi apps?</comment>


Show HN: Mysafe – Your digital identity, with true privacy and security. - <AUTHOR> Https://Mysafe.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, one of the founders here. We created mysafe as a way to help users take control of their online lives. We started mysafe 2 years ago and has been in development and now used by some small groups. The key concepts are: \- you control ALL the privacy of your data \- your data is encrypted completely \- data is owned by you, not anyone else

We would love to go through the technical way it works because it's imperative that the everyday person understands the privacy benefits of using mysafe.

In light of the recent Cambridge Analytica Facebool scandal, mysafe is the answer to manage your digital identity.</comment>


With friends like these - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.perl.org/users/damian_conway/2019/08/with-friends-like-these.html <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this article doesn't optimize a little further. If you want to compute σ(n), and you can prime factor n, there's no need to go determining all the divisors of n and then adding them up. The σ function is multiplicative, i.e., one has σ(nm)=σ(n)σ(m) when (n,m)=1. So if you've factored n = p_1^a_1 * ... * p_k^a_k, it suffices to compute σ(p_i^a_i) for each i and then multiply them together.

Meanwhile, while computing σ(p^a) can be done by summing, it can be done even more simply by noting that this is a geometric series and so sums to (p^(a+1)-1)/(p-1).

Edit: Actually, not sure how this latter way compares to just doing Horner. Probably about the same, I imagine. I guess Horner would be the right way to do it if division is expensive for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER3> > which we extract and store in an appropriate Unicode-named variable: pₗpₘpₙ.

Which my phone unfortunately doesn't render :(

<comment><USER4> Time to hack some more fonts into your phone.

<comment><USER5> Why "hack"?

<comment><USER5> Would love to know why my comment got downvoted...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rather tangential, but:

> Perl 6 aims to let us express ourselves in whichever notation we find most > convenient, comfortable, and comprehensible.

Is the reason I've always hated Perl once I started using it in a team context vs personal projects. The diversity of code styles even on your own Perl code over the years changes more than other languages I've used, let alone taking into account lots of other developers too.

<3 Damian's articles and talks though, so this isn't meant as a detractor on him.

</comment><comment><USER7> With all the special characters in source code and attempts at a terse syntax for array-ish operations, it looks like Perl is trying to become APL. But statements like

        return unique flat small-divisors, big-divisors;

are ambiguous even to a human, because '-' is usually used for subtraction, but I guess Perl's parser somehow manages to disambiguate (between a single variable named 'small-divisors', and the subtraction of 'small' and 'divisor')?

<comment><USER8> Yes. Somewhat simplified, hyphens inside of identifiers are allowed and not taken to mean infix minus.

I remember when this was switched on. Larry Wall tried it out on the entire spectest suite, and nothing broke (or at most one random thing broke), because basically people already put whitespace around their infix operators.

Incidentally, apostrophes are also allowed inside Perl 6 identifiers.

Personally, I used to conservatively use underscore (`_`) in my Perl 6 identifiers for some years. Then I got used to hyphens, and it's hard to go back.

<comment><USER9> Hyphens and question marks in identifiers is actually the biggest feature I wish other languages would steal from Lisp. It does help that lisp doesn't suffer from the "is it an infix operator?" parsing problem, which exists for both programmatic and meat-based compilers.

<comment><USER10> Then you'd love FORTH. Why limit yourself to hyphens and question marks? The only character you can't use in a FORTH identifier is space.

        FORTH ?KNOW IF HONK ELSE FORTH LEARN THEN

        : C(-; LICK SMILE NOSE WINK ;

        \ FORTH PAPER TAPE PUNCHER:

        : PT# ( L --- L/2 )
          DUP 1 AND IF
            ASCII @
          ELSE BL THEN
          HOLD
          2/
        ;

        : PT. ( N --- )
          <# PT# PT# PT#
             ASCII . HOLD
             PT# PT# PT# PT#
          #> TYPE
        ;

        : CUT
          ." </comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-----" CR
        ;

        : PTAPE
          CUT
          BEGIN
            KEY ?DUP WHILE
            DUP ." |" PT. ." |"  SPACE EMIT CR
          REPEAT
          CUT
        ;</comment>


Mibbit now with twitter support - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mibbit.com/?p=164

<comment><USER2> I LOVE the idea! I'm sure you're working on these but if you could eventually add:

\- Links to usernames in the left pane, as well as on @

\- Let us know when we send a direct message. I sent one, but got no feedback (it went through though)

\- A simple "IRC like topic" in when I load it up, it shows how much direct messages I have and other Twitter stats that are easy to fetch.

That's all I can suggest, great feature .. Mibbit is the only irc client I use when away from home :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Mibbit is one of the few apps that I am actually impressed in. This is an app that simply makes sense as a web app, and it's excellently executed.

Does it run at a profit yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words. It's just about break even now, the targeted advertising is starting to work very well. I want to get the advertising 100% before I introduce any paid options.

Given the price that some of the competition charge to host webchat there is plenty of room there I think.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested in what long time twitter users think of this - it's obviously not the usual twitter UI design, but it works quite well IMHO. (It updates every 5 minutes)

Try at <http://www.mibbit.com/chat/>

<comment><USER4> looks good, just like twitter used to be when the gtalk interface still worked ( minus the realtime updating that used to happen )

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mibbit is impressively fast.</comment>


Time to rebuild the web? - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/its-time-to-rebuild-the-web <comment><USER3> I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem.

It's the business model.

No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

<comment><USER4> It's not just social media, and it's not just ads, about which other people responded to you.

The root of the problem - or at least the trunk very close to the root - <USER2> Software as a Service. It's the trend of turning software into services. Sure, it's nice for the vendors, and it's nice for corporate clients who can write off responsibility to a third party. But it also makes you no longer in control of your data, and the code that runs on it. The availability of your work becomes completely dependent on business decisions of third parties, which can - and frequently do - disappear suddenly. It's what leads to proliferation of ads, surveillance and growth strategies like dumbing down software to the point of almost complete uselessness.

If technology is meant to be - or at least is capable of being - empowering to individuals, then turning everything into a service is an exact opposite of that.

<comment><USER5> _> It's the trend of turning software into services. [...] But it also makes you no longer in control of your data, and the code that runs on it. The availability of your work becomes completely dependent on business decisions of third parties, which can - and frequently do - disappear suddenly._

Here's a thought experiment I'd like people to ponder: Suppose we had this decentralized hardware utopia where every homeowner had his own web server node ... such as a "FreedomBox"[1][2] or a hypothetical ISP smart router with builtin 16GB RAM and 10 terabytes of disk to hold Sandstorm[3] or whatever self-hosting app stack you can think of.

Even with those favorable conditions, I'd argue we'd _still evolve towards Youtube centralization_. I'd encourage people to think about _why that counterintuitive result eventually happens._ (As a hint, Youtube does things that localized technology installed in the home doesn't solve and _can 't solve_.)

 _> If technology is meant to be [...] empowering to individuals, then turning everything into a service is an exact opposite of that._

To further explore if eventual mass migration from home self-hosted videos to centralized Youtube is inevitable, we have to be open-minded to the idea that thousands of people will conclude that _" putting my video on Youtube instead of hosting it on my own server is what empowers me."_ Why would people think that opposite thought?

[1] [https://freedombox.org/](https://freedombox.org/) [2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html)

[3] [https://sandstorm.io](https://sandstorm.io)

<comment><USER6> > Youtube does things that localized technology installed in the home doesn't > solve and can't solve.

Are you talking about search and content discovery? Are you talking about replicating the most popular videos over many servers so that the system can efficiently serve all the demand to watch those videos?

Maybe existing, fully-distributed products don't solve these problems. But it isn't obvious to me that they _can 't_.

<comment><USER7> He is talking about monetization.

It's not even that counterintuitive with some capitalist forethought.

<comment><USER8> Monetization is easily possible, we just need a reliable way to transfer small amounts of money electronically at a low fee. Right now the large credit card players have a stranglehold on digital transactions, we just need something new that makes it not awful to pay someone a few cents online.

<comment><USER9> Consider that the people watching the videos have repeatedly shown in no uncertain terms (even when given the option and it is made really really easy for them), that they don't want to pay.

<comment><USER8> Really? I absolutely will not pay 8$ a month to read the occasional NYT article. I will not pay 4$ per episode of TV shows I watch (I have tried this multiple times and it sucks). I would absolutely pay 5 to 25 cents to read an article. I would absolutely pay 1$ per episode. Unfortunately, no one is offering their content at these realistic price points. Nor could they with credit card processors taking 30 cents per transaction. We need a new model that makes costs realistic. I bet a lot of people would pay 1 dollar a month for social media to avoid ads and tracking.

<comment><USER10> Facebook had revenue of about $40 billion in 2017. Facebook has billions of users, so if every user gave Facebook a dollar a month, that could add up to about as much as they made last year. (I don't think every user would do that, especially the users who live in developing countries and can't afford to spend a dollar, but let's use the best case for the sake of argument.)

What happens when a startup decides to take on Facebook by offering a social network that focuses on protecting user privacy? We would want that startup to succeed, but how could it ever get there by charging a dollar a month? It would start with a small number of users, so the total dollars per month would be small. If Facebook was only charging a dollar, this startup couldn't charge more than that -- a social network that has fewer of your friends on it than Facebook and costs more to use is not a very attractive.

In other words, I think the subscription model would make it difficult for social media startups to succeed.

<comment><USER11> I think the lock in effect of social networks is orthohonal to monetarisation model. It is difficult for social media startups to succeed regardless of how they (or facebook) make money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It feels like this is already a work in progress using Beaker Browser and Dat.

\- Beaker lets you browse entire websites (dat archives) and fork them.

\- It lets you create and serve your own sites directly from the browser and seed it from a server (like a torrent).

\- It lets other sites create templated sites under your name for user generated content.

\- Visitors by default temporarily seed your website which may reduce single point of failures, hug of deaths and costs.

With this peer-to-peer torrent-like approach, the web can become distributed again and feel more like a "web". There's still a lot of work left and maybe Beaker itself isn't the best implementation for this idea, but it's a good start.

[https://beakerbrowser.com/](https://beakerbrowser.com/)

[https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/)

<comment><USER13> It seemed to me that the OP was making a distinctly different suggestion: the real challenge is offering a better UX.

Emerging distributed tech won't fix a UX problem just because it happens to be technologically sophisticated (he calls out TOR, but I think he is making a general comment here).

Instead, he asks, why not spend some effort giving older tech like RSS a better UX?

I'm inclined to agree, but on the other hand it seems like the marketplace of ideas speaks for itself and we should be keeping our eyes on the future.

<comment><USER12> I would argue that Beaker _is_ providing a better UX for the web while solving the centralised nature of it. Its API allows websites to provide interfaces for creating and modifying websites tailored for specific audiences, owned by the user.

So you can have your own RSS subscriptions in a Dat, a feed reader in another Dat, click a button on a website to subscribe to it and add it to your Dat. The Feed reader can keep track of what you've read and store it in its own Dat or a different Dat (if you want client/data separation). Your mobile phone can sync to your Dat(s) so you have Desktop/Mobile sync all in a single place.

I've not tried this, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

<comment><USER14> How does a mobile phone sync dats? The main drawback I see currently with beaker is their is no mobile version (for iPhone)

<comment><USER15> Mobile as a whole is an unsolved problem for decentralized systems. The mobile revolution is and has been by far the most powerful driver of centralization in the last 10-15 years.

Mobile devices are slower, have less memory, and must consume less power than desktop, laptop, or server devices. To achieve good battery life they really need to be in an almost-off state most of the time. Add to this the fact that cellular data plans limit bandwidth and cellular networks are a lot slower than most land-line networks and you also have to be very efficient with the use of bandwidth.

This means that decentralized systems that rely on peer to peer participatory propagation of data or distributed compute just don't work well on mobile. Anything with P2P data propagation will use too much data plan and run the radio too much, shortening battery life, while anything with distributed compute will destroy battery life and turn your phone into a pocket hand warmer.

Mobile devices really are thin clients. I call them "dumb terminals for the cloud." Since the cloud is mainframe 2.0, mobile devices are the "glass TTY" (e.g. VT100) 2.0.

The best solution is probably not to fight the nature of mobile devices as thin clients but to tether them to stationary devices. But _which_ stationary devices? Laptops are themselves mobile and are off half the time, and most people (myself included) no longer own desktops. I have a personal server but I'm a geek and a huge minority. Most people just do not own an always-on device.

Farming this out to random always-on devices is a security nightmare or at best is no better than the vertically integrated silo-ed cloud.

I see only three solutions:

(1) Create a niche for a personal always-on server type device and successfully market one to the end user. It would have to be open enough to allow the server side of 'apps' to be installed. Many have tried to do this but nothing has caught on.

(2) Create a mobile device that's designed to be a "real computer." With 5G coming the bandwidth for this might be on the way, but you'd also have to contend with battery life and heat dissipation. One avenue would be to split the CPU in two: a high-power burstable CPU and a low-power slow always-on CPU. Require the always-on parts of decentralized services to run there and as a result to be very optimized. The problem is that a mass-market mobile device is a huge undertaking. Another route might be to sell a snap-on case that carries an extra battery and also includes a mini-server CPU, RAM, storage, etc. This would make your phone a bit bulkier but if there are benefits / killer apps it could catch on.

(3) Solve the security problems inherent in appointing random stationary nodes to serve random mobile devices. This would probably involve a major innovation like fast scalable fully homomorphic encrypted virtual machines or really tough security enclave processors.

<comment><USER16> I really enjoy your thinking.. Do you have some kind of blog where I can follow you? :D As you already mentioned, contributing whatever resources you consume is relatively unreasonable on mobile devices, because it would pretty much double data and battery usage. So while there is most likely some kind of overhead connected to the third solution you suggested, I still think it is probably the easiest one because it doesn't require any new specialised hardware.

Maybe regulation can solve some of the problems with the current systems, but the idealist in me really wants to see provably transparent (open source) and secure solutions which don't require trust in the hardware so we can still make use of modern, efficient (federated) server farms without having to giving up control over our data.

<comment><USER15> My seldom-updated personal site is [http://adamierymenko.com/](http://adamierymenko.com/)

It's actually worse than doubling. The nature of distributed systems means that participating in resources consumed normally triples resource consumption _at least_. I'm not aware of any approach to decentralization of services like Facebook, Twitter, etc. that would merely double it.

Your typical desktop or laptop has a lot of resources to spare. Your typical mobile device has none. Mobile promotes a client/server mainframe/dumb-term architecture for fundamental technical reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is somewhat ironic to see such an article coming from the VP of a large publisher. How can he seriously suggest to use Feedly as tool for finding relevant and high-quality content? Where one of a publisher's main services is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to guide the reader to content useful for them.

The whole issue I see with these articles is that they view the Web mainly from the content producer side. However, the majority of Web use is consuming content. And also the problem of the few walled gardens is on the consuming side. Everybody can nowadays put content on the Web with ease outside of these gardens. It is just hard to get attention for that content.

So if you really want to make the Web more distributed again, you need to come up with models for distributed relevance assessment, spam filtering, quality checking, etc. Work on a new 'Web infrastructure' totally misses the point.

(context: I have worked in P2P research for a while)

<comment><USER18> It's doubly ironic to see such an article from a VP of a large publisher that recently shuttered its own digital bookstore that sold unencumbered PDF copies and moved it's own content into walled gardens of concentrated content.

<comment><USER19> They still operate their subscription service, Safari Books Online. Other digital sellers, like Amazon Kindle, can and do sell books without DRM, if the publisher wishes it. The only thing lost seems to be per-book purchases in PDF, instead of EPUB or Kindle's format. Doesn't seem like much of a loss, an EPUB can be converted to PDF anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When I ask friends and family who use Facebook daily, privacy and security never come up as pain points. Media is blowing everything out of proportion.

Replacing Facebook with RSS or Feedly is nonsense. My friends and family have no idea what those are. Facebook makes it easy for people to connect with old friends and family members through active human interactions: like this, follow her, read that. By doing so you do tell Facebook about you and others. Its interactive and solves a pain point - keeping in touch and interacting with others, your community. Feedly does not do that.

<comment><USER21> it's also a fault of the websites themselves. In the off chance that an average facebook user uses google to search and end up in a website outside facebook, they 'll be typically be pestered with signing up to a newsletter and then with a popup to get browser notifications (along with a cookie popup in europe). The User experience will be usually atrocious, with content hidden way behind the ads. At that point the user is not only lost in the UI, but has lost all trust to the website itself and runs back to its trusted facebook. Why would they ever want to subscribe to such monstrosities? It's a tragedy of the common monetization "secrets" that marketers promised equally to everyone.

If webmasters and bloggers realized the benefit of a honest , dead simple user experience, they might earn themselves a bookmark (which is currently the only alternative to social media that average users can probably understand)

<comment><USER22> yeah, wholeheartedly agreed.

and it is also sometimes the peoples fault when they forget civility and humility in discussions and behave like a$$holes.

othertimes sane and healthy online communities fail to defend themselves against those and against more sneaky trolls.

on top of that communication manners seem to degrade more and more with social media usage. I am often appauled by the tight lipped one line responses to contact messages on $craigslist-like-service. a friendly message asking about the availability of an item on sale is met with "yes it is still available.". no "hello", no end greeting, nothing along the lines of "if you'd like to buy, give me a call at $number".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b These articles are annoying. They completely miss the point.

The web as it was in the early 90s was an alternative to major content delivery platforms (TV, press, mostly). So there was these massive systems that were the press and the TV who would own most of our attention span. And then there was this cute alternative technology with a great community that was yet unpolluted by the big guys.

Today, the big content guys colonized the medium, so it no longer feels like the web is "a cacophony of different sites and voices" to quote the article. But in fact, we're in the same situation: big guys with money and loads of content on one side and small guys with communities on the other side.

The web as it is today doesn't prevent you from spreading your ideas to the world on your very own server... And websites like reddit and hacker news are great amplifiers of small voices.

I would probably never have read this article if it had been published in the 90s. Since it's #1 on HN, perhaps 50k people have read it today! The way I use the web feels very much like the 90s: a few aggregation sites, a lot of excellent content written by independent guys, links between them...

Who cares about the centralized internet when the internet that we've loved since the 90s is still there and thriving?

<comment><USER9> Which works great, until ISPs start offering subsidized plans for Facebook, Gmail, Spotify, Twitter, and expensive plans for everything else. When that happens, there is very little economic incentive to have smaller websites, smaller e-commerce websites end up being part of Amazon, and Google starts providing more and more of its own content.

<comment><USER23> EU is about to enforce GDPR. Net neutrality seems to be American problem, while rest of the world is moving to the opposite direction.

Which economy has better prospects in the long run? Currently internet is very U.S. centric because most of the big players are located there. That could change if European legislation is more supportive for small agile companies to evolve.

<comment><USER24> > EU is about to enforce GDPR [...] if European legislation is more supportive > for small agile companies

Surely you see the contradiction there.

> Currently internet is very U.S. centric because most of the big players are > located there. That could change if [...]

That's not just a coincidence and I don't believe it's any kind of first-mover advantage. It's about the environment in which you operate and passing more and more laws and rules, regardless of the intentions, is the opposite direction. One can lament the digital lawlessness, but we can't pretend it didn't have value or that tailored laws could have a similar effect.

<comment><USER25> Not necessarily a contradiction - GDPR could have many possible effects; it's too early to claim that these effects will disproportionately harm small companies.

One possibility, of course, is that larger companies will have more resources to tackle GDPR compliance, and thus be better able to respond effectively than small companies. However, it's also possible that, by taking privacy / security seriously from day one and storing the minimal set of user data needed to operate, a smaller company will have a distinct advantage over some BigCo that must now migrate sprawling, inter-tangled distributed systems never designed for GDPR compliance. After all, that small company now has a compelling legal reason to avoid feature / data warehousing bloat and save their limited engineering resources, whereas the larger company most certainly has that bloat baked deeply into their stack due to years and years of "Big Data" hype.

<comment><USER26> It's not strictness being the problem, it's the uncertainty. GDPR seems like a framework to take out anybody at will, because nobody can really conform to the laws due to that uncertainty. If you do anything really disruptive/innovative, you're probably gonna get problems.

<comment><USER25> I _really_ dislike this use of the term "disruptive / innovative" \- it's almost a circular definition in this context, since it's effectively being used to mean "anything new that has a high chance of running afoul of the law". English has better words for this sort of thing: criminal, negligent, etc.

Launching a new product / service does not give a company carte blanche to do whatever they like, no matter what Uber et al. may prefer to believe. Suppose I want to create a "gun-share" app, because, you know, sharing economy and stuff. I should fully expect that, where laws exist that make this infeasible (e.g. background checks, transfer of ownership laws, etc.), those laws will be enforced. I should also fully expect that those laws might change.

If I've been paying attention to the broader world - something that Silicon Valley isn't historically that great at - I should probably have seen this coming for _years_ , since that's how long it takes to build support for legislation. GDPR didn't come out of nowhere; data privacy, security, and ownership concerns have been building for a while now.

In the case of the GDPR: my personal position is that it gives EU citizens rights we should all have had from the start with respect to our data. Good on them for passing it, and for giving it teeth. If that tramples on some service that can't be bothered to respect those rights, I couldn't care less - and I say this as a small business owner who's fully aware that, yes, someday I too may face a GDPR compliance request. Maybe I'll be prepared, maybe I won't, maybe it'll never happen; that's part of doing business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's weird that the author mentions the 90s and how the web was not meant to be walled gardens, but then decided to omit AOL from the story.

AOL was one big ass walled garden back in the 1990s. It was pretty popular back then.

The funny thing is, back then, it was popular for 2 groups of people. First were younger kids who wanted to stir up trouble on the network (AOHell, etc.). The second were old people.

My uncle is ~70 and still has an AOL account because he thinks it's "the internet". That's how strong AOL's walled garden / marketing was. Although, it didn't help that back then you would have to dial an AOL phone number on your modem to connect, so I could see how it could be confusing.

<comment><USER28> That's a pretty US-centric take on things though. AOL didn't exist in any great form in the UK certainly, and the walled gardens that did (BBSes, CIX, Compuserve etc) pretty much evaporated by the mid-90s.

<comment><USER29> Microsoft got in on the walled gardens with MSN, and that wasn't until 95. I think it's fair to say the first half of the 90s was walled gardens, although by 1995 holes were opening up. A whole generation (or two) wanted to email Terry Wogan and see the webcam, which started in 1996. By the time freeserve launched in 1998 the walls had crumbled -- it was a very fast moving time in the UK - over the course of 5 years we went from a few people on dial-up compuserve to almost the whole country knowing what the internet was, even if they didn't realize it's potential.

I'm not sure the internet is much different now than it was in 2013, or even 2008. I suppose the accessibility (always on phones), and the increase in online media (video/audio streaming as the norm) is the biggest change from 08 to 13, but last 5 years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article is more of a longing for the past than any concrete idea on how the web should be rebuilt. Not only that, but it sounds like the ramblings of someone who isn't merely longing for the past but stuck in it.

Is not being able to copy code from Facebook using view source killing the web? Of course not. If you are just starting out there are more resources available now than ever.

And I hope to God we never have a web built on block chain technology.

<comment><USER31> My thoughts exactly. It's constant complaining and referencing old tech.

<comment><USER32> That reference to old tech may be there because the old tech was sufficient and the new tech has left a gap.

Right now there are two webs and they're interwoven to the point that it has become hard to see, but there is the 'web of applications' and the 'web of information'. There is no particular reason why the second should be implemented using the tools for the first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not buying it. Web development complexity grows but so does desktop software, kernel development, etc.

You used to be able to have a small program written in BASIC or whatever that would give you a simple popup alert on desktop. Now you need to worry about backwards compatibility, different OSes, etc. But guess what? You can still write simple programs, without all the complex stuff, if you want to. The exact same thing applies for web. You can bundle megabytes of javascript, for some fancy stuff, or you can have simple static index.html with just text.

"The web was never supposed to be a few walled gardens of concentrated content owned by Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and a few other major publishers. It was supposed to be a cacophony of different sites and voices."

It still is. Facebook, YT and Twitter are simply more known than your local pet owners forum but that doesn't mean the pet owner forum doesn't exists. It's similar to supermarket chains and your local grocery store. Both still exist.

<comment><USER34> It's still possible: [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

When I made All About Berlin, it was just HTML and CSS. Nothing complex there. I eventually added Disqus and Google Analytics, but it's still possible to build simple websites.

<comment><USER35> Fixing the internet is hard. There are so many things wrong with it. Take your website for example:

1\. No encryption, meaning any intermediate router could have altered the contents or at the very least surveilled them.

2\. Illegible line length without me boosting the font size or browser width.

3\. No protection for the reader that this is actually motherfuckingwebsite.com and not some .com with a Cyrillic character instead.

4\. No protection for the reader that what is on this site hasn't been fingerprinted somehow (zero-width characters, Cyrillic, etc).

5\. Even if the site was encrypted the DNS lookup would have exposed that I was looking at it anyway.

6\. It's on the root of the domain which has a number of headaches at scale and roots vs www in general complicate things like understanding certs, CORS, etc.

I agree that we need something simpler and locked down and I've even thought through not just the web portion, but the underlying portion as well, but it requires a _massive_ change to get something that is both secure / trustworthy, not prone to spam, useable by the non-technical, and resilient against well funded mal-actors like warring nation states. And none of the replacement makes the world better for most of the worlds well funded corporations. Silicon Valley and Hollywood would both take a real hit because their business models both rely on insecurity. Hollywood is reliant on surveillance to enforce copyright and SV is reliant on surveillance to supply targeted ads.

<comment><USER36> doesn't address all of your points, but: [https://bestmotherfucking.website/](https://bestmotherfucking.website/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york The web reduces the cost of information transfer to pretty much zero so anyone can publish, with no gatekeepers (of old).

Scale matters. Information inequality was inevitable.

Free trade led to growing concentrations of economic power and rising economic inequality. We also have information inequality to go with it, and because information transfer is much lower cost than trade, information inequality will be much higher and power more concentrated (social media stocks should thus be valued higher than companies which make real things)

Not sure the article understands that inequality is inherent in the structure of the web.

If you wanted to reduce inequaliy there are two options: 1\. redistribution 2\. raising the 'transaction' costs

In economics we know what those look like:

1\. progressive taxation and a welfare state 2\. legislation to raise environmental standards, increase minimum wages, etc.

What's the equivalent of a social welfare state and higher minimum wage when it comes to information?

Another way of looking at this is in terms of externalities: free social media generates both positive (connecting with old friends) and negative externalities (fake news, election mischief, etc).

One way of internalising both would be for Facbook to charge users. That is never going to happen. Carbon credits and the like make polluters internalise the costs that society would otherwise incur. So, what kind of legislation (and it will have to be legislation) would get social media companies to be pay for the negative externalities?

</comment><comment><USER37> > The web was never supposed to be a few walled gardens of concentrated > content owned by Facebook, _YouTube_ [...]

What are the numbers on views of original Youtube content vs. views of clips of material that infringes copyright? My guess is that the latter still makes up a significant portion of clicks.

If someone makes a serious P2P alternative to Youtube, not only will infringing content be there-- such content's existence will be a measure of how successful the platform is.

Either that, or you design something like the unexplained decentralized internet on the show "Silicon Valley" which somehow still has a single company controlling the pipes.

If not that, then "P2P-tube" has to house Silvestri's "Back to Future" theme[1] just as it houses impassioned vlogs of walled-garden escapees. If you don't have both you'll end up with a bunch of walled-garden escapees rationalizing the virtues of housing unpopular, homogenized content.

Anyway-- as passive onlookers its easy to dismiss Youtube's infringing content. But it's a lot more difficult when its a fledgling service that content owners cannot monetize. I think we've been through this before with Bittorrent. What was O'Reilly's opinion then?

[1] The first Youtube link that popped up was obviously put together in a consumer video editor and currently has over 9 million views:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8TZbze72Bc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8TZbze72Bc)

Edit: clarification

<comment><USER38> "Peer-to-peer-YouTube" already exists btw: [https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I attribute the issues the web is having today with one simple fact: We never democratized home servers. If routers came out with home-server capabilities that were standardized for data transfers we would not be here today. Simple as that. Is that to say that adoption of home-servers is impossible because users would have never adopted them? That's a non-technical issue I frankly have no idea what the answer is. I'd like to think that if people of all walks are capable of plugging in a wifi router and logging in/signing up to social media websites, they would also be capable of managing their home server (as long as the UI was nice enough.) but I have no way of knowing if that's true or not.

<comment><USER40> Most people I know never plugged in their wifi router, the ISP tech did that for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> What I miss in the article is tax. Yes, "Much as we may complain about Facebook, selecting relevant content from an ocean of random sites is an important service". Same with google, they do a terrific job with providing YouTube and the Search infrastructure.

But YouTube, Facebook, Google destroy (a.o.) the 'normal media' as they oligopolize advertising. They hinder progress/competition as they cross- subside their ventures with ad-money.

The simplest solution imho would be to tax advertising strongly. This could be done independently by countries. E.g. every single advert in Germany would bear a tax of 30 - 70 %. This gives a country the power (and money) to steer in directions which benefit the country as a whole, i.e. support traditional media, public broadcaster, culture.

Concentrated advertising money is dangerous. It should be regulated. The same approach is being done with e.g. cigarettes and gas. Tax is here to contain an unwanted action (smoking) or to build infrastructure (roads). Couldn't the same approach be taken for the internet?

<comment> noir-york I think you're on to something.

A thought which came to mind would be for a country to levy an access charge (think of the BBC license fee) to access social networks based on usage. The money would then be used to clean up the negative externalities caused by the social network in that country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> > While many of the technologies I'd use already exist, rebuilding the web > around blockchains and onion routing would require a revolution in user > interface design to have a chance; otherwise it will be a playground for the > technology elite

We've been working on proof-of-stake and blockchain scaling/interoperability infrastructure since 2014. It all starts with a classical BFT algorithm which provides simple light-client proofs and fork-accountability. Your mobile phone can verify transaction finality in 5 seconds, with no need for an hour of block confirmations as in Bitcoin proof-of-work mining.

      https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint <-- blockchain consensus engine
      https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk     <-- blockchain framework in Go
      https://github.com/keppel/lotion         <-- blockchain framework in JS
      https://github.com/cosmos/voyager        <-- blockchain explorer
      https://github.com/tendermint/go-amino   <-- blockchain codec derived from Proto3
      https://cosmos.network
      https://tendermint.com

The Cosmos Hub will launch very soon. Lets build stuff! Onion routing for Tendermint would be a great addition. And DNS/name-resolution on Tendermint can actually solve Zooko's triangle.

While we're at it, lets fork Go too. [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/e-lang/cQiXS_GnKS4/Zsk...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/e-lang/cQiXS_GnKS4/ZskTifaoBgAJ)

Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder of the Cosmos project, cofounder of Tendermint, and long-time HN lurker.

<comment><USER43> It's generally considered good Hacker News etiquette to declare affiliations on your posts.

<comment><USER42> Thank you, does that look good?

<comment><USER43> Thank you :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I agree that having a few walled gardens is a problem, but having more smaller walled gardens probably won't change much. Bad actors can still sign up, post, spam, harass, etc. on several small walled gardens. What we need is a way to better identify and handle bad actors.

The internet in the 90s seemed more fun and more open. Perhaps it's because the only people really participating were not interested in abusing sites or people. It was mostly nerds sharing nerdy things. Once money got involved, and free everything was available, it turned into this soup of bots, trolls, AI, fake this and that, big money, swaying public opinion, and gross content.

Smaller sites and discussion boards have been at a disadvantage recently trying to fend off spam, bots, and sock accounts and very often lose out to the big sites. Effectively controlling abuse and doing it a cost-effective way can be very hard.

RealPerson.io ([https://realperson.io](https://realperson.io)) was created as a way for websites to verify that a user is a real person, but without disclosing personal details about the user. Each person can create a single account on RealPerson.io and then can create separate, randomly-generated codes for each site they use. Websites register on RealPerson.io and then for each user signup on their website they simply asks the user for their RealPerson code for their website. A backend REST call to RealPerson.io with the user code for the site returns "yes" or "no." Sites don't share codes so you can't track across websites. No shared logins or authentication code. Bots would have to pay for a code for each account which would be cost prohibitive to run a bot farm.

The first implementation of this approach was done with RealPeople.io ([https://realpeople.io](https://realpeople.io)) which uses RealPerson.io to verify that the user is real.

<comment><USER45> > Each person can create a single account on RealPerson.io

That web page doesn't explain how they guarantee uniqueness of users or pay for the required ID checking?

<comment><USER44> It doesn't really guarantee uniqueness. It also doesn't verify identity (that this is really "John Smith"). It essentially verifies that the user has paid for an account on RealPerson.io, which is currently $9/year. This was to strike a balance between having to divulge too much personal info to RealPerson.io (like an identity verification service), but at the same time making it highly unlikely that the user is a bot. RealPerson.io doesn't try to drive the percentage to 0 that the user is a bot, but rather make it cost prohibitive for bots, while at the same time making it cost effective for real people, and still protect privacy.

Also, a user only gets one RealPerson code per website, so a user can't create multiple codes for a website and hence create multiple accounts on that website. And if that website bans the user, that user would need to get a new code for that website, which would mean creating a second account on RealPerson and paying again and face the scrutiny of RealPerson detecting that the user has two accounts on RealPerson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Unlike in the past, people don't build websites for fun anymore. I remember I used to visit topsite ranking sites just to explore what other had built. Nowadays, it's all templated design hosted in a walled garden.

<comment><USER47> Sadly, I don't think many people do anything for fun anymore. Feels like every site/channel/project/venture now is done with the possibility of a career in mind, and nothing online is made without some sort of extrinsic benefit to the creator.

Seems like the idea of a hobby in general has died off sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Who's played with Glitch.com already? The author of the linked article credits Anil Dash's plan to reintroduce the building blocks of the web as having a greater chance of success, and one of those building blocks is glitch.com.

Playing with Glitch.com, it's possible to see a way forwards that isn't just iterating a better UI on top of an RSS reader. It's still lines of code as opposed to trying to push some GUI-based programming language, but does very well to promote the idea of building blocks for the web.

If most of us are basically plumbers but for data on the Internet, glitch.com is the consumer hardware store where they sell all the various fun pipe connectors that you'd use for building an epic ball machine as a kid. (Github.com would be is the store with a catalog that has table after table of parts in every possible variation.)

</comment><comment><USER49> >We'd also need to avoid many of the privacy and security flaws that were rampant in the early internet, and for which we're still paying.

How many third (and first!) party trackers would you guess were blocked by my privacy and security flaws-preventing browser plugin when I clicked on the link to read the story?

I'm sure they "add value" to my experience and I am missing out on all of the incredible opportunities that they present, but that's a chance that I'm willing to take.

That website even (attempts to) logs when and where you click and what text you highlight, and then tries to send that info off to a third party.

The Vice President of Content Strategy for ORM, Inc. seems to be advocating against content strategies he has implemented.

Is "society made us do it" still a thing?

</comment><comment><USER50> The problem usually lies in UX.

Most projects attempting to "fix the web" as admirable as it be, suffer for pretty bad UI. Usually because the UI designer was also the developer.

I'm also guilty of this.

A recent project that got around this was Mastodon and Pleroma, both have pretty decent UI/UX.

<comment><USER22> zeronet has a pretty decent UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> We did it. Started in 2011, and it took us 7 years, and over $500K invested from our revenues but we did it.

Shameless plug for our solution:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI)

It's FOSS so download and use it just like Wordpress. Feel free to email me at greg (qbix.com) if you want any help getting started and I will either personally help you or connect you with one of our developers on the team.

Tim Berners-Lee is leading another project called Solid, that started about 3 years ago. We are a bit ahead because we started much earlier.

</comment><comment><USER52> One big problem is search. Search determines what we see (outside of what we learn of from our peers or primary sources of info).

A "cacophony of different sites and voices" may be more fair, but it isn't very useful. Most people shouldn't have a public voice, because most people don't have anything valuable (or accurate) to say.

This includes me, of course, on many subjects. But here on HN, if many people think that my comments are garbage, they vote me down and at least new readers will be somewhat forewarned that my content may be of questionable value.

Search was first supposed to help us find things. But when there were too many things to find, it should have helped us identify the good stuff. Instead, search is now 90% bogus results that are generated to help steer people to a particular product or service.

So honestly, some walled gardens where people reasonably knowledgeable about the local subject can affect the visibility of the content within the silo, at least visitors less able to discern good from bad will probably see more good than bad.

Of course, sites need money to operate, so then comes the corruption of the system. Even sites that try to be neutral still end up making some concessions in order to get funded by some source (and the corporations or political groups have the money, so they end up with influence).

</comment><comment><USER53> I feel like he's worrying but he isn't sure about what. I don't think the problems of the internet are related to how easily people can make their own sites. It's just that the feeling that your content might actually be seen and appreciated is gone. In the 1990s if you published something online it felt good like some people are going to read this and care. Now it feels like "hey another ball tossed into the massive gaping void".

Part of this obviously is about search and curation. Part of it also is probably just the massive loss of intimacy on the web now that it is so big. It's easy to _feel_ less relevant when you get a few hundred views, even though in the 1990s you might also have got only a few hundred views.

So what I'd like is to have a new intimate internet. It would be effectively searchable by a Google equivalent that only indexed a small subset of the internet. How exclusive it would be, how exactly it is curated and managed I have zero idea. I'm just saying that is what I would like.

Now HN: unleash your list of stuff like this that already exists.

<comment><USER54> You want an "intimate Internet" with its own search capability to restore the feel of the early web? Probably we should make sure it's easy for less technical people to use. Needs a good story around mobile and rich media.

Oh dear, we've reinvented Facebook!

Seriously though, I think this is more about community than technology, and more about channel saturation than centralization.

I think the best shot for what you want is the re-distributed web and niche social networks (subreddits?). The peer-based web stuff will give you that feeling of being ahead of the masses on tech, and subreddits for your favorite hobby will let you connect with people who care about your random thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> "The web was done by amateurs." \- Alan Kay

<comment><USER56> The context of that quote had nothing to do with what this article is about.

<comment><USER57> I really don't care, because it's important enough to repeat in any discussion about rebuilding the Web. Involve some real systems people. Design a real app platform, with multi-language support, especially compiled languages. Have a cohesive end to end development story.

<comment><USER58> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second- system_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect)

<comment><USER57> If current web stacks aren't bloated and over-engineered, then I don't know what would qualify.

<comment><USER58> Imagine it would get even worse ;-)

<comment><USER57> It'd be nice if there was a possibility of real competition at the basic platform level. The browser model is so entrenched, yet it still amazes me that we've been stuck with it for two decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> View Source still exists, the presence of JavaScript and CSS means that HTML is more meaningful (as it's it's free of display information and behaviour). But looking at the DOM is the inspector is even more useful to undertsanding the tree structure.

I agree with the sentiment of the article, but developer tools are better, not worse, than they were 20 years ago.

<comment><USER32> Developer tools are better mostly because webpages are 100's of times more complex now than they were in the past whereas the typical amount of information on the page is still roughly the same.

Understanding how a modern webpage source in combination with a browser results in what you see is a pretty complicated affair, in the past you just did 'view source' and it was obvious what went where.

The web is now much more machine-to-machine than it was in the past when the humans could process the pages roughly as easily as the machines could.

<comment><USER59> The point I was making was that web pages in terms of HTML _aren 't_ more complex than they were in the past. An HTML page now often has a smaller amount of elements and element attributes than the equivalent page created using older tech because every element doesn't have styling hacks and behavior added to them. HTML (stuff like GAE or BEM aside) is purer than ever.

<comment><USER32> Unfortunately removing the 'styling hacks and behavior' has split the pages up into many different components that all interact in quite complex ways. The HTML being 'purer' has not made things simpler at all. Now there are many places rather than just a few where style and functionality can be modified. And that can obscure intent quite quickly. As opposed to <b>this is bold text</b> which any fool (this one included) could understand.

There are obvious benefits to separating layout, style, software and content. But it isn't categorically true that this will always result in something that is easier to understand by a human.

<comment><USER59> > Now there are many places rather than just a few where style and > functionality can be modified.

Styling is done in style sheets, functionality is done in JavaScript (with the exceptions already mentioned). Trying to create, say Hotmail in 2018 would result in a much better to understand and debug app than the 1998 version was.

<comment><USER32> For a seasoned programmer, sure. But a layperson had a much better chance of understanding an early 90's webpage with the exact same content as a modern day one.

<comment><USER59> I specifically mean for a layperson.

        <div class="inbox">
          <div class="summary">
             <q>Hi John how's things?</q>
        (close all the things)

Is way better than

        <td key="value">
          <td key="value">
             <img width=1px height=1px class=shim/>
             <td key="value">Hi John how's things?</td>
        (close all the things)

<comment><USER32> Actually, it isn't. Because it left out all the moving parts that are now in the CSS. That second example is complete, the first one isn't, the second one gives me a fair idea of what the result should look like, the first could look like anything (even a blank page...).

<comment><USER59> Yes, it seperates style from presentation. That's a great way to get an understanding of the structure and content of the document and seperate concerns. 'Table data holding table data' does not do this well at all.

Not responding further after this because `Actually, it isn't.` isn't a setence typically found in a polite adult conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> "Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves," the New York Times editorialized in October 1963, as demolition of the old Penn Station began.

I suggest a corollary:

"Any web community gets what it admires (fancy UX and feeds that work like magic), will pay for (=nothing), and, ultimately, deserves."

</comment><comment><USER61> SPAs have made almost all desktop applications obsolete. DevTools have deprecated view source. Through progress and innovation the web can do a lot more than 20 years ago.

Sure the web is being abused for tracking by Google and Facebook but that was also possible 20 years ago with a single img-tag.

<comment><USER62> > SPAs have made almost all desktop applications obsolete.

Meh, Office and Adobe products still have widespread use, as do various code editors and related tools, along with specialized applications like SPSS or Matlab. Also, things like Slack are desktop, even though they utilize web technologies. And there remain plenty of PC games which still get made. Some things you don't want to run in a browser.

<comment><USER63> Isn't it office already a "local webapp", under the hood? You can open any document in-browser through SharePoint server, have (almost?) full functionality, all documents are XML... There are lots of little signs that Microsoft is rewriting everything to be seamlessly used through a browser, and that when you open it locally you just don't notice that you are using an "office browser". Even Visual Studio has also web tech under the hood, I think.

<comment><USER62> You still download and install Office 365 as applications and run them independent of a web browser and can do so without an internet connection. They also have their own updater. Yes, you can run them on the web from the Office 365 portal, but that's the html version.

The installed version is still fundamentally a desktop platform. I'm pretty sure it's written C# or C++ and runs on dotnet.

An SPA is a web page run in the browser over http(s). Anything else is desktop, server, or mobile app, regardless of what tech it's made from.

<comment><USER61> > An SPA is a web page run in the browser over http(s).

I'd argue that if they are using web technologies (like vscode) they are still profiting from web innovations. Isn't electron just a way to distribute SPA on the desktop (plus some integrations).

<comment><USER61> > Sure, but the way I look at it is if the application runs on the desktop, > server or mobile OS, then it's not a web app.

Yes perhaps your definition is clearer. But the point remains that "web technolgies" have expanded tremendously in scope. And that it does not suffice anymore to look at "View Source" to become a web developer.

Because today the field of web development includes things like electron and you want to bring your application to as many devices as possible, with as little development overhead as possible. And this is what users expect, it's just not possible with the 90-style web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It all breaks down to the problem: Everything today runs on Money , Power and Control, instead of Collaboration and Sharing. We we'll get there eventually. The world like it's running today is not sustentable and will collapse. Just a matter of time.

</comment><comment><USER65> > Few walled gardens

That sounds surprisingly like how our economy ends up working.

Perhaps we need a broader view?

</comment><comment><USER66> Entities that aren't media corporations tend to suck at holding a crowds' attention relative to media corporations.

You can't <airquotes> fix </airquotes> that by "rebuilding the web".

</comment><comment><USER67> If the value network of a market evolves different than the way it was "supposed to be", the problem is with your assumptions, not the technology.

You're not going to fix the problem by changing the technology.

</comment><comment><USER68> Isn't WebAssembly basically moving the web in the opposite direction?

<comment><USER69> yes... WebAssembly is even worst then Angular (They both obfuscate the web)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> While we are reinventing the web, why don't we have independent accreditation institutions which regularly verify the truth behind websites ? Finance seems to have solved this problem.

</comment><comment><USER71> There's an amusing parallel between housing in major tech cities and the net. In both cases you've got the people who were there earlier and want the character of the place to remain mostly small entities like it was when they got there, and the people who came later and want to change the place to be dominated by large entities that will change most of the place's character.

It's amusing because the tech crowd are opposing the NIMBY people in meatspace but _are_ the NIMBY people in cyberspace.

</comment><comment><USER72> > You can't become a web developer by viewing Facebook's source; but you might > by looking at a new site that isn't weighed down by all that CSS and > JavaScript.

I agree that web bloat is a problem, but why is it the responsibility of web developers to teach users of their site how to code? Is there any other area of software development where that's the case? Even major FOSS projects aren't designed to easily enable new developers to "copy the code they want".

</comment><comment><USER73> That's the narrative you get if you say that the internet, the web and its users are broken: "Does it affect me? No. Does it still work for me? Yes. Is the internet broken? For users who don't know how to use it, yes."

So, why even bother arguing? Everyone lives on their special little islands of some niche web/IP semi-commercial projects and do not particularly care about ads or cookies, because whatever.

</comment><comment><USER74> It's almost as if someone's feeling bad for having given up their own indipendent e-store to favour a certain DRM ridden publisher.

</comment><comment><USER75> I just came back from China. I could not message my loved ones, check my mail, update my social media, or listen to internet radio. This was not Facebook's fault, it was not even China's fault (though they were the ones blocking me). It was the fault of the way we use existing technology.

So Facebook is banned. Fine. That shouldn't stop me from being able to at least send data somewhere that will end up at Facebook. And I should have been able to send an e-mail that bounced through intermediary relays without connecting to Gmail's servers.

A lot of the web that _could_ be peer to peer isn't. And it's not because it is difficult, but because we simply haven't decided to use it that way. Email is the oldest, most successful distributed decentralized application. It does not require complex consensus. It does not use distributed databases. And it just works. You don't even need to be connected to the end server. There's no reason the web couldn't work like this. It is feasible today.

On top of this, where your web content is stored should be simple: it should be stored on a device in your pocket, and cached and distributed on servers around the world, just like email already is. Again, no complex algorithms are needed for this. A very simple design could accomplish this with existing technology, and perhaps an extension to a protocol's RFC and an update to some core software.

<comment><USER76> _This was not Facebook 's fault, it was not even China's fault_

Absolute shite. It's 100% China's fault. Given the widespread, damaging, lingering ramifications of the lack of security on the Internet in general, the _absolute last thing we should be doing_ is promoting the idea that this information and these connections should be less secure.

I am baffled that anybody could even propose this idea.

<comment><USER75> Well, I propose it because 1) HTTPS is a tiny aspect of what makes one secure on the web, 2) I just want to talk to my loved ones on the web, 3) I don't care what China does with my data, 4) "lingering ramifications" of this are very manageable.

Maybe I have a skewed point of view, but after being involved in computer security for 15 years, I literally have two cases at all where I care about the data I'm sending over the internet: logging into my bank, and making a purchase with a credit card. Virtually everything else, I don't care about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Everything gets centralized when there are economies are scale, technology stack fixes can't change that.

Look at the ultimate "decentralized" technology, blockchain. The majority of mining power is now centralized in vast centralized farms with custom hardware and cheap access to power and half the Bitcoin is held by about 1000 people.

</comment><comment><USER78> Nice that this website doesn't respect opening in new tab. Is this some ironic take or what?

<comment><USER79> Worse, linking to Amil Dash's article on medium [1], of all things, makes complaining about oligopolization of the Web kind of inconsequential.

[1]: [https://medium.com/@anildash/the-missing-building-blocks- of-...](https://medium.com/@anildash/the-missing-building-blocks-of-the- web-3fa490ae5cbc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> I'm curious whether such behavior of the web follows some formal law. Is there a relevant proposition in graph theory, Ramsay theory may be? Is the probability of decentralization bounded by system's complexity?

</comment><comment><USER81> They could start the ball rolling by adding an RSS feed to their own website.

<comment><USER40> [http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/radar/atom](http://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/radar/atom)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> "That project is only likely to succeed if the rebuilt web is compatible with what we have today, including Facebook"

Yeah the ONLY way forward is to get everything compatible with FB. Sure.

</comment><comment><USER83> So the technologies such as blockchain are too complicated and require significant UX work, yet "view source" and copying and pasting HTML code is somehow a better user experience?

</comment><comment><USER84> I find these articles a little ironic. I absolutely agree with the message, but they are always published in walled gardens themselves. Maybe that's how you get reader counts and views but there is is really nothing that stops anyone from building their own.

It's easier to use Wordpress than building your own, even easier to write a blog entry for O'Reilly.com but if your message is a decentralized network of enthusiasts, then maybe you should publish on your own platform, you know, to be the change you want.

<comment><USER85> Uh? In this case I'd say it's published in the correct place. The guy works for O'Reilly, the post is about his work, it's published on O'Reilly's website.

I would have agreed with you if it was published on Medium or Blogger or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I'm predicting a bleak, dystopian future which will make our current imperfect web look like a golden age of tech.

</comment><comment><USER87> Raw HTML pages would instantly become 10x more palatable if browsers would make the default font sans-serif

</comment><comment><USER88> If you want the internet for the wealthy (and Western) technocratic minonority then that's what you do. If you want the internet to be used by 7 billion people, then Facebook (or something like Facebook) it is.

I've become a believer of 'walled gardens' after watching my elderly aunt struggle with PCs and websites for years, until I set her up with an iPad, Facebook, and Skype.

</comment><comment><USER89> I've always felt that Google Reader held RSS back by not supporting feed authentication. It was the defacto reader when RSS was growing, so what it supported defined what was possible with RSS.

Feed authentication would allow for a variety of potential services business models.

        - Paywalls: Whether subscribing to a newspaper to supporting a blog through
          Patreon, it lets user directly pay for content provided through RSS.

        - Customized curation services: Whether manually curated by an editor, or
          using algorithms, you could build a business around providing content to
          individual users.

        - Social network integration: Instead of joining one or two massive Social
          networks, I could be involved in dozens of small, focused ones, all
          collected in a single RSS reader.

I'm sure there are plenty of other possibilities. But for it to be useful, it has to be available and easy to use in all the major RSS platforms.

</comment><comment><USER90> Blockchain mentioned! Where are other useless buzzwords ?

<comment><USER91> cloud, deep-learning, robotics, augmented reality, computer vision, actionable analytics, RUSSIAN BOT, Internet of Things, big data, agile, design thinking, freemium, gamification, incubator, lean, SaaS, thought leader...this is enough because thinking about this is making me lose all respect for humanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> What happened to the Seif Project?

</comment><comment><USER93> there is nothing new under the sun. We must pay more attention to new and validated technologies, like blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER94> Conway's Law

</comment><comment><USER95> I've been toying with the idea of creating a web 0.5 that consists mostly of a meta tag and a piece of css (body:after{...}) that hides the contents while directing users to use a textmode only browser. Rules would be page is valid if it doesn't contain css or js. I think this could be an incredible fun experiment somewhat in the same style as the tilde club. If it became popular enough who knows... maybe the community could even create some sort of web rings :O

<comment><USER96> I like the idea of a text-only browser, back to the basics. Oh and I miss web rings!

<comment><USER97> I'd kinda like to reinvent the "web" as a TUI. Like, every site is just a program compiled to a portable bytecode that interfaces in terminal codes and you'd "browse" it with a modified telnet client. No more bullshit styling you can't read supported by 200 javascript dependencies that refuse to let you click buttons if you have the audacity to be behind a dns filter, no more style over substance, no more animated gifs, no more advice animals, no more endless over-engineering to see who can do the least with the most resources.

<comment><USER98> Sounds a bit like Gopher. Which didn't really catch on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> PiperNet

</comment><comment><USER43> The article mentions the demise of Google Reader (rest in peace) as a turning point for the spread of fake news. I agree that there needs to be some counterweight to the deluge of news designed to influence public opinion. However, I don't think the tool to build that with is RSS.

I recently learned about jsonfeed [0] from Hacker News and built a news aggregator for my own personal use. I believe the future of news content is in aggressive, hackable aggregation tools for a variety of content. jsonfeed is a solid foundation to build on :).

[0] [https://jsonfeed.org](https://jsonfeed.org)

<comment><USER100> That makes no sense.

RSS and jsonfeed are just containers. Both may contain real or fake news.

Everybody can put up a feed in RSS or jsonfeed without any trouble.

<comment><USER43> jsonfeed is a much simpler and more hackable protocol than RSS. It's much easier to build scalable and sustainable aggregators that filter fake news in jsonfeed without the cognitive overhead of RSS. Without hackable tools we end up with the walled gardens of Facebook and Google Reader.

<comment><USER100> You sound like a buzzword machine.

A simple RSS feed can easily be hand written. But of course, you don't do that because there are so many mature tools to create or manipulate an XML feed already.

Whereas with jsonfeed there is not much yet because it is so new.

If you can hack JSON, you can hack XML as well. Even programmer novices can do this.

Edit: Reworded the last sentence that could be interpreted as a personal attack. Wasn't meant as such, I was going for the impersonal you.

<comment><USER43> Please be civil :). Avoiding ad hominem attacks is more conducive to discussion.

I have already justified my preference for jsonfeed. XML has proved many times to decrease developer productivity. To my knowledge open source projects that have dropped or diminished their use of XML have only become more popular over time. Extrapolating a little bit, switching to JSON can only be a good thing.

<comment><USER101> A key difference now compared to the early days of XML and RSS is there weren't great libraries out there to handle the processing, both output and input. Many people were rolling their own. That definitely wasn't great. It was similar to using JavaScript prior to the widespread adoption of JQuery. However, that's not the case anymore. I think there are possibly a lot of benefits to recommend jsonfeed over RSS (or, a better solution, in my opinion, Atom), but you can build yourself a bit of a straw man by ascribing the problems of early XML usage with the situation today.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stubborn and ignorant use of int where size_t is needed - <AUTHOR> http://ewontfix.com/9/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure the number of bugs actually encountered by users would decrease if everyone started using size_t tomorrow. What value is more likely to be found: INT_MAX+1 or -1? Even something simple like iterating backwards over a string is bug-prone with unsigned types.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really wish people would stop using int instead of size_t. Even if they used a literal long instead of a size_t that'd be a vast improvement.

Stop trying to micro-optimize your C, you can't win here anymore on 99.9% of your code.</comment>


ESPN is thinking like a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/12/editorial-espn-bypasses-corporate-red-tape-with-ipad-and-xbox-3/

<comment><USER2> While this is certainly a statement on the entrepreneurial spirit within ESPN, I think it is actually indicative of something else - the absolute homerun that Apple hit with the iPad. The iPad is flexible yet simple enough to be used by your mom on the couch and an ESPN announcer at the same time. That is no small feat of hardware and software engineering!

<comment><USER3> I think even more surprising than that was the hackish way that they put together the telestrator system. Instead of digging into a native iPad application they loaded on a VNC client and connected it to preexisting software.

I respect and admire their ability to see the simplest way to do things and do it, but I'm also worried that my World Cup viewing experience is held together by duct tape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ESPN is just now starting to get it's act together with espn3, which was espn 360 and horrible, it is not a little more open. What I'd like to see is them get more open like the MLB and start showing up on all kinds of devices, at a high quality, and with a paid membership.

ESPN and other sports channels hole the key to the Internet/no cable future, as they own the holly Grail of live sport events. Once they have a serious multiformat solution the cable guys better watch out.

</comment><comment><USER5> I found this article to be a rambling mess. While I agree that the ESPN stuff is cool, the author seems to ramble around the premise too much. Usually Engadget is pretty solid in the writing department, not sure what happened. Way too long too for a point that could have been made in a paragraph or two.</comment>


BMW to Let Car Owners Rent Out Vehicles Like `Airbnb on Wheels' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-25/bmw-to-let-car-owners-rent-out-vehicles-like-airbnb-on-wheels <comment> UVB-76 Such an unbelievable number of ways in which this could go wrong.

Renters could mess up a vehicle in any number of ways, from making a mess with food and drink, to damaging parts of the interior, to getting in accidents and causing serious damage. Are owners expected to do a full damage assessment pre/post every rental? Nobody will accept any liability otherwise.

That's overlooking any "drive it like you stole it" issues which can ruin the mechanicals.

Think of all the nefarious activity a renter could get up to. Road rage incidents, motoring offences. Drug dealing or trafficking. Congratulations, your car is now on a watchlist.

Imagine the disputes over how much gas is left in the vehicle. Let alone what type of gas a renter puts in there.

There's no way any ordinary insurance policy would cover this kind of scheme. Your premiums can, and should, skyrocket.

Then contemplate the practicalities of all this. A renter will have to pick the vehicle up from a location, then presumably return it to the exact same location. If that requires payment for parking, who pays?

Don't get me wrong; I can't wait for the future where nobody owns a vehicle and we all travel in autonomous electrical vehicles that are efficiently utilized, monitored and cleaned automatically as needed. But this halfway house is a nightmare.

<comment><USER2> That's not even the worst of it. Not even a million-dollar policy would save you from the effects of renter having a serious accident: [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/101013...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal- finance/101013/beware-liability-sharing-your-car-strangers.asp)

In the above case, the survivors sued the car-sharing company, the estate of the (deceased) driver, and the _vehicle owner_. I would not expose myself to that kind of liability without _very_ well established law around it.

<comment><USER3> Pretty sure BMW would manage this.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps manage in the sense of providing legal representation, indemnifying, etc. However, I would still be concerned with having to deal with the hassle (if nothing else) of dealing with a lawsuit--especially if there were the remotest possibility of criminal charges related to maintenance or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This already exists as GetAround and I used it all the time when I was in San Francisco. Similar pricing to ZipCar, but I found that there was typically better options/availability (YMMV). The other big plus was that I was able to get approved by GetAround within something like 24hrs, where ZipCar I had to wait to get my key delivered (~2 weeks) or pickup my key at their office (during business hours only).

[https://www.getaround.com/](https://www.getaround.com/)

<comment><USER6> Yep, and if anything, BMW is going to struggle because it's yet _another_ asset sharing service.

They'll likely get some BMW fans and aficionados, but given the small marketshare that BMW holds, most users are not going to use this as their go- to for getting a car.

<comment><USER7> Could it turn out to be something similar to AirBnB where it starts out as niche and blossoms from there?

Other thing - if you look at this service as a marketing channel to sell more BMW vehicles... then it doesn't really have to be a dominant service.

<comment><USER5> > if you look at this service as a marketing channel to sell more BMW > vehicles...

I think that's almost certainly what it is. Getting a BMW is a status symbol or a dream for many early drivers. There are lots of ways to get a beamer for cheap, certified pre-owned being a well known one. Maybe being an Uber driver is another way people have tried to finance their cool purchase, but this channel seems like a much more direct one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This could be the first "pimp your car out" service I'd consider using. If the manufacturer were behind it, on a leased car, and absolutely guaranteed any damage would be restored, plus compensated me enough to cover depreciation/lease mileage fee/etc., the only inconvenience would be "make sure your car is totally empty when you leave it parked".

I tend to buy/keep cars ~forever, so it wouldn't work as well for me now, but if I could lease ~3-5 BMWs for ~20-30 people to share (at a remote company office or something which has a lot of people cycling through, and where some cars are needed), and then add them to a fleet pool otherwise, I'd be in. That's somewhere between Zipcar, Uber, and leased company cars.

Managing maintenance, cleaning, insurance, repairs, etc. for them for me would be great, too.

<comment><USER9> But at that point, what are _you_ offering? (Genuinely curious. Capital? Taking on the risk? Insight/market research?) And is that worth the overhead that goes into your pocket?

Sharing economy type stuff makes complete sense when it's something you share often enough to want first dibs, but not often enough that renting it out from time to time is an inconvenience. But if you're renting it out full time then I'm not sure I understand how the incentives line up. Seems like if they notice you're doing well they could just swoop in and under-cut you next time the contract is up.

<comment><USER8> Guaranteed demand, parking (there are legal issues where being an individual or first party business owner of vehicles is easier than being a ZipCar). You're leasing cars for ~$500/mo for 36mo each. That gets paid regardless of demand. If your stable gets used enough to bring in >$500/mo in external customer net revenue per car, that would be pretty exceptional. Most likely you'd make $100/car/mo and get a bit of extra professional maintenance for the fleet vs. just owning them and having a dealer service.

What's interesting is if car manufacturers start to develop vehicles specifically for this kind of market. I'd love to have personalization settings (nav, seat, climate, driving controls, etc.) which follow me as a driver across a fleet of identical or related vehicles. You might also have a "valet mode" (some cars do now), "renter mode", and "owner mode", with different performance limits (I can ruin a $1-2k set of tires in 10k miles of spirited driving, but if I ran the right profile on the car, I could make them last 30k miles). Might also make some maintenance/safety things non- overrideable for renters -- you can't start the vehicle if the brakes/tires/fluids/etc. are not good, for insurance and vehicle-damage reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very courageous and visionary. BMW is canibalizing their sales as this will cut down on car wastage. Short term pain for long term positioning. This could be the tipping point as it forces other manufacturers to follow suit.

Likely they are getting ready for self driving cars business model that come will come at a press of a button.

I can see Tesla probably the next to do this.

The world is a changin'.

<comment><USER10> Or it'll enable BMW owners to make enough money on their rental car, to buy another separate car just for personal use, boosting BMW's overall sales and expanding their market reach.

<comment><USER3> IF they had that kind of money, they'd just settle for the simplicity of one car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > 'Never, ever will I lend my car to strangers.' Then there'll be others > who'll love the idea of halving their leasing rate."

For luxury cars it appears that it would tend toward "never ever". Having a luxury car isn't for practicality and you tend to feel very possessive about what you have and it possibly being damaged. Having it tarnished in some way lessens the joy of arbitrary non essential ownership. The idea that someone might have some heavy perfume or cologne or smoke in or near the car (however prohibited) would be enough to give many people pause. Also what if someone drove the car and by accident left some contraband in it?

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious to see how this plays out (how much of the logistics will be handled by BMW vs outsourced?)..

I also wonder if the stack fallacy could be coming into play here: [http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep- fail...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/18/why-big-companies-keep-failing-the- stack-fallacy/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Who would think this is a good idea? Who thinks Airbnb is a good idea? Strangers leaving pubic hair all over your car and home--sounds great!

<comment><USER9> Airbnb is great if you're out of town for a week to a month or more (for business travel, vacation, etc.). The $ you make more than covers a professional cleaning service for when you get back, which leaves the place cleaner than when you left.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://en.drivy.com/](https://en.drivy.com/) is another "Like AirBnB, but for cars" I recently learnt about, which is available in some European countries. I like the idea, unlike AirBnB which eats up the rental market, there are too many cars not being used.

<comment><USER15> > there are too many cars not being used.

What do you mean by this? Do you mean too much infrastructure dedicated to cars or inefficiencies in the average cars' usage?

<comment><USER16> The latter, I think. I owned a car when I lived in Manhattan. Its rent was an appreciable percentage of mine. In retrospect, I should have sold it, and rented. But I was emotionally attached ;)

<comment><USER15> Right, I see. I think that's a completely different issue, especially given where you lived.

The idea that cars sit idle too much does not hold water. Cars age through usage, not over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most issues people cite are easy to solve by recording all car drive parameters and several cameras - inside and out. Combined with a reputation system this makes sure no one will wilfully abuse the car more than once (and even then they will pay for it).

</comment><comment><USER18> That's pretty interesting. I remember some years ago there was car sharing service like Zipcar (do they still really exist?) where you could rent out your car and they would pay you for the miles driven. Not sure how that worked out.

<comment><USER19> Zipcar was acquired by Avis for $500 million in 2013.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873243740045782171...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324374004578217121433322386)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article seems to indicate that the non-owner drivers would not be the end users of the service, but would be Uber-like drivers. This is not a great article.

<comment><USER21> The last two paragraphs are about a Uber like service which is different from the main subject of the article. However if I want to get my car back to where I parked it and not on the other side of the city, the last user must drive it back or BMW will. The first option will make the service totally unappealing, worse than all those failed parking to parking car sharing services. The second one costs money to BMW. So maybe the only users of this service are Uber drivers. They get my car for some hours, make some profit out of it, park it where I left it, go get another one. The cost of the rental must be low enough for them to make a meaningful profit though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> BMW "let's" owners rent out cars that they _own_? Why do the owners need BMW's permission?

<comment><USER23> Most likely it's for vehicles financed through BMW, which has a financial interest in the vehicle and whose financing might otherwise not have a sub- lease / use for rental / whatever clause. Or maybe it's just the language of an "offering" \- "a new service that lets Mini owners do x, y, z".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Will there be a launch control disable when the vehicles are rented out?

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't this what Turo (formerly RelayRides) is doing?

</comment><comment><USER26> Little known fact: The Germans in the BMW marketing department at first wanted to name the new "ReachNow" service in Seattle "ReachAround".

<comment><USER27> Having a worked with BMW Marketing I instantly believe that.

<comment><USER26> "I'll be there in 15 minutes but first Bob has to get me a reacharound"</comment></comment></comment>