Interchange in Houston is the same size as an entire city center in Italy - <AUTHOR> https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/highway-interchange-houston-same-size-city-italy/ <comment><USER2> > _But it wasn't strictly an "everything is bigger in Texas" ethos that caused > Houston to sprawl the way that it does. Rather, Cold War–era urban design > philosophy in the U.S. prioritized sprawl because older cities that had > urbanized pre–World War II—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit—were > seen as being susceptible to nuclear strikes. Less-dense cities such as Los > Angeles and Houston were less likely to be targeted for a nuclear attack. > Sprawl was a deterrent against Soviet aggression._

That's the first time I've heard this theory.

Would that have worked though? I don't know much about nuclear deterrence, but I'd imagine if the USSR already managed to evade the defenses and other obstacles and destroy the city center in a nuclear strike, it wouldn't be a lot of additional effort to send multiple rockets instead of only one and also target the suburbs.

Not to mention that fallout, breakdown of infrastructure, disease and hunger that followed a strike would affect the entire city in any case.

<comment><USER3> That would be a lot of ICBMs. The city center is not residential. Most people that work in the city center for city's like houston or LA commute from one of many different cities. Just to wipe out half of houston you would need to simultaneously strike at least a dozen different locations. The idea was, if there is a missile on the way or if other cities are being attacked, the sprawl would allow evacuating a lot of people.

I do think it is an effective strategy. Look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, tokyo and kyoto were spared for different reasons but they were spared. No sense in wiping out every single city. For the US, a nuclear attack would probably be against symbolic populated cities like new york, san francisco or chicago, ideally the US would surrender after that point and if there is no surrender, military targets would make more sense (hawaii,san diego,san antonio,anapolis,etc...).

The idea is, if you have a small number of targets to defend you can defend them better. Just like with infosec, you want to reduce attack surface so you minimize exposed services or inputs.

<comment><USER4> Sparing Tokyo worked because Japan didn't have the capability to retaliate. Any launching during the mid-to-late Cold War would have been a massive first strike and possibly a retaliation at the same scale. In the early Cold War it may have been a reasonable strategy, but as another poster notes that's a very narrow window for changing how a city grows.

Even if there was an effect, I'd be very surprised if the signal wasn't wiped out first by railroads and then by cars.

<comment><USER5> Also Japan was hit by bombs in the low tens of kilotons. Modern bombs are in the megaton range.

<comment><USER6> Tsar Bomb has around 50 Megatons. Radius of total destruction 35km.

<comment><USER7> scary, but not entirely relevant. most modern launch systems carry (sometimes multiple) warheads with a much lower yield: 500 kt or less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano It's interesting that protests generally happen in dense parts of cities. Now imagine a city without a dense part - protesting becomes more difficult. Myanmar's non-democratic military government actually moved their capital from a dense city to a new city so spread out and with no downtown area - potentially to prevent the ability to protest the government.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost- to...](https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/inside-burma-s-ghost-town-capital- city-which-4-times-size-london-fraction-population-a7805081.html)

I don't think that's why Houston is the way it is, and while there is still a downtown there, imagining mass protests in Houston seems much different than Hong Kong - due to the density.

<comment><USER8> "Some of Haussmann's critics said that the real purpose of Haussmann's boulevards was to make it easier for the army to maneuver and suppress armed uprisings; Paris had experienced six such uprisings between 1830 and 1848, all in the narrow, crowded streets in the center and east of Paris and on the left bank around the Pantheon. These critics argued that a small number of large, open intersections allowed easy control by a small force."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Pa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann%27s_renovation_of_Paris)

<comment><USER9> This is pretty widely thrown around, but it should be noted that the central purpose of Haussmannization was public health and beautification: tearing down the slums, building proper infrastructure like sewers and aqueducts, and pretty parks and streets. The article you link to emphasizes this.

The wide boulevards did very little to prevent the Paris Commune, for instance. Napoleon III just wanted to build a second Rome, not some martial panopticon.

<comment><USER10> The wide boulevards certainly helped the French Army in drowning the Commune in blood soon afterwards, though.

<comment><USER11> The Commune was also fairly unique among French revolts as it did not begin in Paris, rather it was Paris reacting to their emperor getting captured in battle.

<comment><USER12> There was a bit more than just Napoleon III getting captured. Paris was subsequently sieged and captured by the Prussians. Afterwards, the Prussian troops were kept nearby and occasionally paraded through the streets. The Commune arose also due to power disagreements with the new Third Republic and an attempted seizure of cannons in Paris.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The elephant in the room is the assumption that _everyone wants to be stacked on top of each other_.

I do agree that designing cities around cars has ruined a lot of nice places though.

<comment><USER14>
      >  assumption that _everyone wants to be stacked on top of each other_

It's also an assumption that everyone wants to begin and end every trip, no matter how trivial, with a parking spot. It's an assumption that people will want to drive in traffic for 20 minutes minimum to get to a supermarket, do anything with their kids, or anything outside their property line.

The notion of "stacked on top of each other" has unpleasant connotations, but there are many different ways to live in a dense city. Would you feel "stacked on top of each other" in a Parisian townhouse with a magnificent shared courtyard, 12 foot ceilings, and everything you could possibly want a short walk or subway ride away?

<comment><USER15> > It's also an assumption that everyone wants to begin and end every trip, no > matter how trivial, with a parking spot. It's an assumption that people will > want to drive in traffic for 20 minutes minimum to get to a supermarket, do > anything with their kids, or anything outside their property line.

I wouldn't be surprised to find some suburbs with some of the traits you mention, but it hasn't been my experience with them. I've lived in about 5 different suburbs in my life and a supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it's even within biking distance. Parks are by schools and there's usually an elementary school fairly close if you're looking to do something with your kid. Depending upon the suburb you can also play in the street, which I regularly did growing up.

The traits you are talking about sounds more like a rural area than a suburban one.

<comment><USER16> _supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it 's even within biking distance_

I'd consider that far, far away.

My walk to the nearest train station is about one mile, takes about 15 minutes to get there on foot, and that's irritatingly far, too, considering the trip is two way and repeats every day. Something like a grocery shop should be accessible within decent walking distance, a five-minute walk or so.

A rule of thumb is that if something is far enough that I have to take the car in the first place I'll be incentivised to drive further away to a big supermarket/other big stores while I'm at it.

<comment><USER17> American in Texas here - maybe this is a behavior encouraged by the very thing we're discussing, but going to the grocery store _every day_ is a big yikes to me. I go once a week and get everything I need for that week. Because I take my car, I can carry that amount of stuff.

<comment><USER18> It all just ties together. Going to the grocery store every day is a big yikes because you can't walk around the block to pick up fresh produce for dinner

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I live a block from my grocery store in SF, and I still only go 1-2 times a week unless I need something fresh for today / missing ingredient, which is rare since I plan ahead and only buy things that will last at least a few days.

Living in a dense city like SF is great for somethings, but it sucks when you want to leave, and paying almost $400/month for parking isn't good either. Both lifestyles have their advantages and I think it really comes out to personal taste and choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Siena's history dates back millennia. Houston, meanwhile, was founded in 1836.

Every time I am made aware of just how _young_ the US is, it blows me away. I've never been to Europe, I would really love to go some day, but I can only imagine the feeling of actually seeing these really old places/structures in person.

<comment><USER21> > I've never been to Europe, I would really love to go some day, but I can > only imagine the feeling of actually seeing these really old > places/structures in person.

European cities are also relatively young. If you want to see old cities, you should visit the Middle East or China.

<comment><USER22> Most Chinese cities are younger than Rome or Istanbul or Athens.

<comment><USER23> I suppose it's not a fair comparison, "most" chinese cities against the oldest european ones. How old are the oldest chinese cities? I'd love to know more about these

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> A lot of people seem to be reading the headline, getting upset and immediately heading here to complain and getting on the defensive. The article is actually pretty interesting and isn't just trying to attack Houston, Texas, the USA or you personally.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Rather, Cold War–era urban design philosophy in the U.S. prioritized sprawl because older cities that had urbanized pre–World War II—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit—were seen as being susceptible to nuclear strikes. Less-dense cities such as Los Angeles and Houston were less likely to be targeted for a nuclear attack. Sprawl was a deterrent against Soviet aggression."

That's the first time I've heard that. Interesting, if true.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure I buy it; it sounds like a 'just-so' story. Sprawl is popular because it allows for larger properties at lower prices relative to dense urban development. The vast majority of real estate developers have likely never seriously considered factors like probability of a nuclear strike as a criteria for selecting land for development.

<comment><USER27> I'm sure someone discussed it once, but Pentagon war planners don't set urban planning policy. People like single family homes, people like yards, people want racist neighbourhood segregation, people really hated urban centers for a long time in the US. All much better explanations.

<comment><USER28> Also people wanted to start building equity in their home and you largely can't do that in the city because all available properties are rentals.

<comment><USER29> The notion of equity as an investment or savings is a pretty modern invention alongside the 30 year mortgage.

<comment><USER28> What? Passing down property has been the primary form of inter-generational wealth transfer since antiquity.

But the bigger issue is that you can't live inside of a 401k. Since housing is a requirement you might as well build wealth while you live in it. Assuming no massive disparity in monthly payments it doesn't make much sense to rent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One factor that hasn't been mentioned here is climate.

Siena seems to have a very mild climate. Its average high temperature[1] in August is 28.3°C (82.9°F).

Compare that to Houston's monthly high for August, which is 35°C (95°F). Houston is also very humid[3].

Most people don't want to take a 10-minute walk when it's 95°F and humid. You arrive at your destination panting and very sweaty. It's more comfortable to take a 10-minute drive in an air conditioned car. To some people, it's preferable even if the drive takes 30 minutes due to traffic.

\---

[1] [https://en.climate- data.org/europe/italy/tuscany/siena-1089/](https://en.climate- data.org/europe/italy/tuscany/siena-1089/)

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

[3] [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-most-humid- cities-090...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/america-most-humid- cities-090000494.html)

<comment><USER31> You say that as if there are no dense cities in places that have a similar climate as Houston. What about Taipei, for instance?

Houston has a July average high temperature of 34,7 degrees C with an average relative humidity of 74,4. The same data for Taipei is 34,3 degrees C with a humidity of 73.

Yet Houston has a population density of 1398,76/km2 whereas Taipei 9700/km2, almost 7 times as high.

Data from Wikipedia.

Actually, perhaps this map says it best: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/tkoekp0or12ppjc/Screenshot%202020-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/tkoekp0or12ppjc/Screenshot%202020-08-31%20at%2022.51.57.png?dl=0)

(If anything, building densely can create a lot of shade, which can be quite beneficial.)

<comment><USER30> Arguably Taipei could have the motive, but not the opportunity, not like Houston does.

The population of Taiwan[1] is 23.78 million, and its land area is 35,808 km^2. The population of Texas[2] is 29 million, and its land area is 676,587 km^2.

So Taiwan has nearly (82%) as many people but 1/20th the land.

Also, Taipei is boxed in by large mountains and the ocean, so there are lots of natural barriers discouraging sprawl.

Houston is near the ocean, but aside from that there are no natural barriers. The land around it is super flat in every direction. The closest hill of any size is probably 150 miles away.

\---

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

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> These highways suck to drive on and have as much delay as Illinois highways half the surface area. Its one of my least favorite parts about tx.

The reason is largely that they just scaled up traffic patterns which are fine for 2 lanes to 6-7 lanes. It's absurd. The local legend in Austin is that the highway designer later committed suicide. I bike to work.

<comment><USER33> Surely the traffic can't be worse than the humidity.

Kind sir I call your attention to the condensation on the outside of your car windows.

<comment><USER32> Austin is usually dry. Did you drive to Florida?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As someone who lives in Houston, the simple reason there is sprawl is because its flat and land is cheap. This makes it easy to live on large lots or on small average. It's also hot, so people spend more time indoors and drive everywhere.

<comment><USER35> I'm glad someone said this. The size of the interchange vs a small town in Italy is an odd comparison. Land and gas are cheap in one place and they're not in another. That's basically the end of the story.

<comment><USER36> (still working to articulate this all precisely)

I think a lot of these country to country comparisons bank off the fact that people presume they're dealing with an oranges to oranges comparison like two sporting teams or something equally sized. Evaluating two comparands on some single concept they both happen share in common without looking to the specifics is grossly inadequate.

Concepts like city, country, state, hospital system, etc, can indeed both be shared between two countries at a conceptual level. However those concepts can take drastically different forms with their reality on the ground. The two comparands' actualizations of these concepts can be huge simply looking at scale alone. As far as I can tell the US dwarfs pretty much any EU country in terms of population, land mass/area, and a bunch of other stuff too I'd imagine.

I'm awakening more to the fact that without highlighting from the outset any known differences in scale one can be lead to strange conclusions in the results of comparison. There's that common software architecture analogy regarding the techniques to build a single family detached house being woefully inadequate at building a skyscraper.

It would be nice to have some normalized terminology of city and country etc that speaks more directly to the population scale at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The comparison is entirely pointless. There are interchanges in Italy that are of comparable size; just outside my home town, there are medium-sized factory buildings that are larger than its entire historical center, complete with its 13th century frescoed palaces. The area of the Sistine Chapel - 560 m^2- is easily dwarfed by that of most small supermarkets.

The fact is that- unless scarce- space is valued- no, wait, it's _defined_ \- by what it contains and by your relation to it, not by its size. When traveling on a motorway you cross multiple times per second the entire length of your living room, a space where a centimetre-sized stain can give you nightmares. This beauty in the Netherlands ( [https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/maasvlakt...](https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/maasvlakte-luchtfoto-hbr-aeroview-20181.jpg) ) is more or less the size of Manhattan. The Mona Lisa painting is smaller than the patch in your backyard where you keep your garbage cans. And so?

</comment><comment><USER38> Thanks for taking the obnoxious "Yes, this" off the title.

Yes, it's one of the weirdest pet-peeve trends over the past 5-10 years. No, I do not like it, thanks for asking.

Wait, you didn't ask me? You mean _nobody_ was asking me, it's just something I decided to couch in a response to a conversation that wasn't going on?

But seriously, I wonder what's going on when we do this. My theory is that it originally caught on to lend credence to what we're saying when we pretend our statement is actually a response to an open question, though now it's just subconscious rhetorical device to emphasize a point, I would imagine.

As for the article, growing up 45min outside of Houston, that interchange is all I think about when I entertain the idea of moving to Houston or DFW. There's something grotesque about it and the feeling it gives me. Cars, traffic, and this need to slave away in a commute.

Austin keeps voting down highway extension proposals. I'm sure anyone who has to sit in Austin traffic daily hates that, but we can't have every damn city in Texas becoming a concrete metropolis.

<comment><USER39> I mean, "Yes, this" isn't as bad as starting with, "I mean".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is the intersection of East Freeway and East Loop. It occupies about 1.58 km^2. It is an older interchange reflective of relatively modest traffic volume that set a wide space to ensure room for future growth (which didn't happen on the eastern side of the city). Many newer interchanges operate at higher volume and density.

[https://email@example.com,-95.2664193,17.32z](https://email@example.com,-95.2664193,17.32z)

</comment><comment><USER40> So Houstonians have to live every single day (probability of occurrence of "a day": 100%) with an infrastructure optimized for a nuclear attack that happens effectively never. Well, it was somebody's best guess at the right thing to do 65 years ago. But that's the sticky issue with large-scale infrastructure like this. If you get it wrong, or if you get it right but conditions later change, the costs associated with it start to balloon & become astronomical. But the short-term costs of changing it are even greater, so nobody wants to tear the band-aid off, and you're stuck bleeding money and productivity forever. _(contrary mixture of metaphors there... heh)_

<comment><USER41> If they are right and there are a nuclear attack they survive, will your city? You fall for the same falicy as those who are saying covid isn't dangerous. (not that I disagree with you, but you haven't made a good argument)

<comment><USER40> As far as I know, I haven't made _any_ argument.

Regardless, the odds of COVID-19 transmission between two people standing together without masks must be at least 1000X higher than the odds that a nuclear attack will happen while they're standing there. That's enough for me to consider the two risks "different" shall we say, and guess which one I'm more likely to prepare for.

Nobody prepares for _every_ contingency. Most people look for some value of risk reduction divided by cost. If I decide to protect my house from school- bus-sized meteorites, the chance I will bankrupt myself trying to construct an adequate shield is near 100%, whereas the chance of such a meteorite hitting the house is pretty small. Given how much more likely plain old thievery is, and how cheap locks are, I should probably prioritize just buying a lock for the front door and remembering to lock it. Just like people prone to die from heart disease or just slowly waste their lives away in traffic should probably prioritize a simpler lifestyle above nuclear war prep.

However and nonetheless, note that even with the small purchase of a door lock, I've already agreed to take on a (more than zero) costly and (to some degree) onerous preparation for something that may never happen. Who knows what the chance of a burglary is; you could estimate based on crime rates. But with 100% certainty, locking the door will be a small chore every day and will ruin some number of minutes of my life. Whether it was ultimately worth it would largely be determined by the value I place on certainty.

Speaking of values, they're subjective. Let's say the school-bus-sized meteorite is confirmed to be coming right for my house, with 100% probability. But let's also say that I don't care whatsoever about the house. So I will still not do anything to mitigate. That's how I feel about a nuclear attack. The chance of a nuclear attack is (some number), but the chance of a nuclear attack happening, and my giving a shit about anything whatsoever afterward, is near zero. "Will I survive?" My answer is somewhere between "Who cares" and "I hope not." So obviously I'm not willing to undertake mitigations or live in Houston. But I will wear a mask during the pandemic for example because it's cheap and easy, temporary, and it works to reduce a risk that is pretty high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The assertion that Houston's layout is the result of Cold War nuke risk mitigation is a new one on me. The beltway opened in 1988.

I grew up here and I've read many articles trying to explain why Houston is the way that it is. The truth is incredibly human and boring and wouldn't sell display ads. Thus, the logical arguments that follow articles like this are complete nonsense.

If you want to know why Houston is the way that it is, fly down here and I'll drive you around and show you. You'll be completely underwhelmed, but the tacos will more than make up for the trip.

<comment><USER42> May come by soon looking for jobs; any taco leads?

<comment><USER33> Tacos A Go Go, Original Ninfas location, El Rey, Velvet Taco, Torchy's, Balderas, any food truck, hell just google "great tacos in Houston".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So a city of 30k people requires less infrastructure than a city of 6M people? Where are the examples of major metropolitan areas without big freeway intersections?

<comment><USER44> Just looking around Tokio on satellite view: there are a few highways, but nothing compared to the many-layered intersections you see in US cities like Los Angeles or San Diego.

<comment><USER45> Tokyo is amazing in many ways, but especially infrastructure. I was embarrassed when I went there for I felt like the countries I grew up in were lazy by comparison. The most popular type of vehicle on the road there (in my observation) was a concrete truck.

The subway system is unbelievable. They don't try to build huge line extensions every few years or decades the way we do, they are constantly expanding and improving it all the time. It's absolutely amazing what they have built there, and at the same time remained incredibly polite and gracious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The source. Plenty of other pictures and examples.

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/861832/Living_with_beauty_BBBBC_report.pdf)

<comment><USER47> Images and content about the interchange and the city center on pages 14 and 15

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I live in Texas. This assertion is true of most cities in Texas also. Houston is the largest population center in Texas with 6M+ in the city. Also Houston is a busy center for interstate and international commerce especially for trucking.

<comment><USER49> The Dallas-Ft Worth metro area is more populous than the Houston metro area by about 500k people.

<comment><USER48> Yes that is true when you combine those 2 cities. Also known for their large interstate highway interchanges. In fact one of the newest is in North Dallas aptly named the "High Five" interchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Did anyone notice how little green space Siena has? The Houston interchange appears to have 100x the amount of green space as the entire city of Siena! Quite ironic!

How was a city allowed to develop with almost no green space?

<comment><USER51> > How was a city allowed to develop with almost no green space?

Siena, like other Tuscan hill towns, was first settled in the time of the Etruscans (c. 900–400 BC)

Siena was built on a hill surrounded by some of the greenest valleys in Tuscany, the most notable one being the Chianti valley, home of the popular wine.

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

Trivia: the movie "The Gladiator" was shot in Pienza, in Val D'orcia, in Siena province.

This is a shot of the famous Cypress trees road.

[http://www.clickalps.com/stock/blocks/image.php?id=81499](http://www.clickalps.com/stock/blocks/image.php?id=81499)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Ex houstonian here, university of houston and everything.

Decently fun city, interesting history, cool people.

The road and traffic situation is nightmarish. I slowly came to this realization in college when I went abroad a couple of times. I found out that didn't have to be How Things Are.

The university of houston has a problem where students aren't attending classes because parking isn't available. Stories of trying to find a parking space for 40 minutes abound. There's lines of cars offering an air conditioned ride to parking spaces outside of classrooms, in return for their parking spot.

If you miss an exit near the i45/i10 merge, you've added 20 minutes to your drive, minimum, as the next local exit will be a good five miles away, and then after that the next on ramp for your give freeway could well be on the other side of downtown.

For some reason they built a light rail that criss crosses main street. For a great form of entertainment, search youtube for "Houston light rail accident." They're rarely really bad, more just stupid looking, some giant pick-up truck failing to see the train and getting booped.

There's no zoning (kinda) so the industrial zones are mixed right in with residential, budding up against UH. So about 1/10 of the time I bicycled to school, I would be blocked by a mile long train that decided to simply park and block every road crossing I could take to the university. I made a habit of throwing my bike between the nonmoving cars and clambering over until my dad sent me a video of someone getting cut in half doing that.

Growing up in the suburbs you'd have balls of steel to bicycle to a friend's house. Pickup trucks make a sport of fucking with bicyclists. Better to just wait for your parents to get home from work so they can drive you.

Lord forbid you have a friend in the woodlands or something. Thought it was obnoxious to visit your friends in San Jose when you live in the bay area? The woodlands is like a trip to Sacramento, but only because of traffic and a 610 loop as wide as a continent.

Public transit, lol. That's for poor people. I remember hosting a luncheon for our engineers (was a recruiter) and this old fart was talking about his 50 minute one way commute. It was a point of pride for these o&g engineers for some reason to measure their commutes. Then this engineer we brought in from mexico was like "oh, I live in that same neighborhood, why not take the bus? It gets on the HOV and gets me here in 30m." Old fart was flabbergasted. He didn't even know there was a bus. I don't blame him, they pick up at these huge ride share parking lots and it's not easy to figure out their schedule, or even how to pay.

Anyway Houston traffic sucks and my conspiracy theory is it's because Shell and Chevron have downtown offices and the CEOs sit at the top of the tower where they can see a clogged i45, i10, 610, and 59, and cackle maniacally at the hordes of people trying to justify their 1 hour one way commutes to eachother and the choking fog of smog clouding around the city.

<comment><USER53> How did you manage to ride a bicycle in Houston without getting sweaty and gross?

<comment><USER52> I didn't, lol. I was just always sweaty and gross.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> You can find as big highway interchanges in Italy too, e.g.:

[https://email@example.com,12.3911127,17z](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,12.3911127,17z)

And you can most likely find small cities with 30K people in the US too (though I had trouble finding one of this size near Houston when scrolling through Google maps because the cities there look less dense and don't appear to have a discernible center at least from the look of the grid pattern of the streets).

<comment><USER55> Your link only shows a simple cloverleaf design, typically used at the intersection of only two highways or as an exit from a highway. Those are everywhere in U.S. cities, in certain regions as not everyone uses the cloverleaf. They are not super common in Texas though, which uses different designs. But either way, it is not close to the same size and complexity as the exchange, of which Houston has many, in the original post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Out of curiosity, how much traffic does the SS674 and SS223 see per day? That interchange appears to be the eastern connection between I10 and the 610 loop around central Houston. I10 is one of the major arteries between the east and west coasts.

[https://goo.gl/maps/CyoAESVtEQFRa4zb7](https://goo.gl/maps/CyoAESVtEQFRa4zb7)

</comment><comment><USER57> Which interchange?

And this city (Houston) has so many problems I don't know where to start... Highways are one of them because nothing is dense, but its a brutally self reinforcing problem in a city that refuses to invest in any other kind of infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER58> > _is the same size_

What size, exactly? Is it a really big interchange, or a really small city?

</comment><comment><USER59> Most of these threads tend to devolve into attacking assumptions about how people want to live (high density vs low density, parking vs no parking, cars for every trip vs walking/transit most trips)

I'll list out what I view as the two dominant views towards the development of a metropolitan region (I loosely define metropolitan region as a city and all the places around that city which can plausibly commute to a job inside the city. Or in other words, all land housing the people you may see every day). Let me know if you think I've got the two sides nailed down correctly.

The urban mindset to developing a metropolitan region:

* Cars are a luxury (and often a nuisance) and should not be required for essential, everyday travel.

* The region expands both outwards (by adding high speed transit to surrounding neighborhoods), and upwards (replacing existing development with higher density development)

* Key transportation infrastructure: public transit (bus, tram, train, subway), in addition to feet and bikes

* (some amount of) Density is a key pattern: Having enough people per square mile to bring workers and customers, sustaining local businesses, as well as maintainable a taxable base large enough to pay for transit and other infrastructure

* Multi use zoning is king: local storefronts and restaurants are considered beneficial for quality of life. Sufficiently dense streets thrive off the mixture of people and business.

* "porous" neighborhoods (e.g. grid street layout) are a pattern: porous neighborhoods are more efficient on a mile-per-mile basis, helping to enable low-speed travel (read: foot & bike). This increases the amount of business-capable space within a neighborhood, which is beneficial to the local economy and quality of life of residents

* Suburban mindset seen as harmful: suburban mindset seeks to expand outwards. This adds people who consume local infrastructure (e.g. driving on local roads, creating noise and pollution) but who might not live in city jurisdiction (i.e. can't be taxes in a straightforward manner), and aren't interested in contributing to the well-being of the city. Suburban mindset seeks to limit legal expansion of density, mandate parking minimums, cut urban spending for necessary infrastructure like transit, reduce quality of life by widening roads, building highways, and increasing speed limits, and continue an outward suburban expansion that will just accentuate existing problems with traffic and with car noises

The suburban mindset to developing a metropolitan region:

* Cars are _the_ key mode of travel for the vast majority of destinations, and as such are a necessity

* The region expands outwards by purchasing and developing surrounding farmland, and connecting this land to the city with high speed roads. This keeps land absurdly cheap.

* Key transportation infrastructure: roads (with sufficiently high speeds and capacity), parking lots

* Density is a key antipattern: More people per square mile brings congestion and noise, consume available parking, but offer little communal benefits as residents generally don't need to work or shop locally (no need to sustain local businesses)

* Single use zoning is king: businesses want to locate on large roads with lots of traffic, people want to locate on small subdivisions with little traffic. Zoning enforces this to maintain everybody's quality of life.

* "porous" neighborhoods are an antipattern: stores are not on local streets, so any porous neighborhoods mostly bring in through-traffic (which gives noise and pollution but no economic benefit). Thus a tiered freeway/highway/boulevard -> neighborhood -> subdivision pattern to residential space, in place of a city grid

* Mandatory parking minimums useful, as parking is a valuable public good

* Urban mindset seen as harmful: urban mindset seeks to build higher density housing in centralized places that already have bad traffic during rush hour, which will just make it worse. Urban mindset seeks to make more use of urban space with less parking, which offers a worse quality of life to suburbanites who wish to drive into the city. Urban mindset seeks to limit legal restrictions on density, which threatens to see multifamilies or apartment buildings in quiet neighborhoods that currently have low traffic and low noise (but won't when population density goes up). Urban mindset looks to spend on public transit, which is not useful at all to all the many people who live in the suburbs (but suburbanites may face state taxes or consumption taxes to fund transit, as well as increases in traffic due to construction)

<comment><USER60> Thank you for this comment. Your comment is the only one on this page that gives a fair look at both sides and is a breath of fresh air compared to all the negativity in the rest of the comments. I wish that everyone could live in an area that matches their preferences without someone else trying to destroy everything they love about their home because it doesn't fit a preconceived notion about what a proper city should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Now compare Manhattan.

<comment><USER62> DFW Airport alone has 80% of the total land area that Manhattan does, which is always an interesting little bit of trivia.

<comment><USER63> Well, no one was using the land at the time[0]. Everything has grown to touch DFW airport - I lived literally across the street from it in Euless.

Also, a lot of the land there is used by businesses like UPS, Fed-Ex, etc.

0\. I'm sure someone was, but not very many people.

<comment><USER62> I'm not saying it's a waste of space or anything. Just that's it's interesting how large it is in comparison to Manhattan. It's about as useful a comparison as the one made in the article, frankly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Ok? And?

It's interesting trivia but it doesn't mean much. A well packed slum could fit 10x that amount in that land. Or you could have a vineyard or you could have a train station.

It's an arbitrary comparison.

Land gets used in many different ways that make sense for the local people. Some seem "better" but that requires certain "assumptions ". Is arid desert "wasted"?

<comment><USER65> The article goes on to discuss the issue of sprawl and how cities like Houston are building themselves into a corner by constantly expanding infrastructure like this. The ironic part of this comparison is that Siena is a much older community than Houston, which, like most of America, embraced a sprawl mentality in the 50's as a Cold War risk mitigation strategy.

Climate change is arguably a more pressing threat to Houston than thermonuclear war, but the city doesn't have many other options than to continue sprawling.

<comment><USER53> There are lots of options for Houston to evolve. The city is mostly how the electorate wants it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'll never get the US fascination with highways and ugly interchanges.

</comment><comment><USER67> fair, but try driving 85mph through the italian city in a giant cadillac with cow horns on the front bumper while blaring your favorite tunes and drinking something from a drive-through liquor store. ;)

<comment><USER68> You mean swangas aren't well-suited to european streets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I disagree with the notion that space is better used if it exhibits greater density of population.

I don't believe it is very easy to drive in Siena, Italy. I also don't believe it is very easy to live under a highway interchange. To each space its own.

<comment><USER70> I bet it's also not necessary to drive in Siena, Italy

<comment><USER69> And yet it's necessary to drive in Houston.

Imagine judging Siena based on the ease of driving. That would be equally as arbitrary as judging Houston by its space allocation to roadway interchanges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I think that 30,000 is an exaggeration, and if so, I just don't like when people sensationalize figures and bend facts to their liking.

The problem would lie in this report [0], which is cited by the article and by the person tweeting about it.

Happy to be proven wrong; but I know the area quite well (I grew up in Italy), and I immediately thought that the satellite picture of Siena depicted in the article, and in the tweet, does not contain 30,000 people.

The entire "Comune" of Siena (roughly equivalent to a "County" in the UK or US) is ~53,000 people [1].

However, I would be surprised if the part of Siena depicted in the article, the city center, houses 30,000 people.

See for yourself. Here's Assisi, roughly with a similar density as Siena, which has ~4,500 people living in the city center [2].

Here's Siena [3]. Just by approximation, I'd say that Siena's city center is in the range of maybe 15k? Not more than that.

Also, it would be unfair to consider the fact that Siena's city center is also house for students, which live in different conditions than normal people. In that sense, even Harvard's dormitories have a high density, compared to any road structure in Texas.

Anyway, just trying to make you reflect on the numbers - I hope my calculations are correct; or at least, the reasoning behind it should be good enough. As said, happy to be proven wrong.

[0]: [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/861832/Living_with_beauty_BBBBC_report.pdf)

[1]: [https://www.comune.siena.it/Il- Comune/Servizi/Statistica/Pop...](https://www.comune.siena.it/Il- Comune/Servizi/Statistica/Popolazione/POPOLAZIONE-RESIDENTE-ANNO-2018)

[2]: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/53100+Siena,+Province+of+S...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/53100+Siena,+Province+of+Siena,+firstname.lastname@example.com,12.6070871,2650m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x132a2cbf34bf5313:0x5d731212f12343e3!8m2!3d43.318809!4d11.3307574)

[3]: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/53100+Siena,+Province+of+S...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/53100+Siena,+Province+of+Siena,+email@example.com,11.3236881,2642m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x132a2cbf34bf5313:0x5d731212f12343e3!8m2!3d43.318809!4d11.3307574)

</comment><comment><USER72> Siena pop 30k

Huston pop 2.3mil

</comment><comment><USER73> Now let's compare the GDP each supports.

</comment><comment><USER74> What an incredible waste of space, fuel, and human time. Driving is the bane of American prosperity.

<comment><USER75> And yet not only is Houston quite rich (on average anyway), but it consistently ranks #2 for happiness among major metro areas in Harris Happiness polls. [http://www.city-data.com/blog/646-satisfaction-life- happines...](http://www.city-data.com/blog/646-satisfaction-life-happiness- u-s/)

<comment><USER74> And? Can't aspire to a better future where we don't sit in traffic for hours to get across the city, choking our skies with car smog and carbon dioxide that'll ruin the environment for future generations? Our design philosophy around cities are the biggest mistake made of 20th century American politics, and I'll die on that hill.

<comment><USER76> Don't live there if you don't like it?

<comment><USER74> We all live in an interconnected world. The choices made around the country to prioritize cars have led to negative externalities for all of us.

<comment><USER76> The world is fully of negative externalities caused by others. That alone is not a good enough reason to force them to change their behavior.

Sure, incentivize a dense urban area if that's what you want. But you should realize a lot of people want a suburban environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> GDP:

Houston, Texas = ~$500B/yr

Siena, Tuscany = ~$11B/yr

<comment><USER74> Is that the GDP of this highway interchange?

<comment><USER78> While I don't think this direct comparison is valid (at least let's also have the per capita numbers, which I believe is around 60% higher in Houston if Google snippets are to be believed) one could argue that a portion of that GDP is enabled by road infrastructure such as this interchange.

<comment><USER74> America is the richest country on earth. It's such a kneejerk reaction of our countrymen to defend our insane way of life by bringing up GDP numbers instead of stuff like life expectancy, quality of life, access to equitable transportation. America being rich is known fact already.

Edit: From your own happiness survey link - "The U.S. GNI per capita income is actually higher than in most of the countries ahead of the U.S. in the global ranking of happiness. There are about 130 countries that showed up as less happy than the U.S. in 2013. Despite our outstanding technological and economic progress over the past half-century, we are without significant achievements in life satisfaction and the subjective happiness of our population. In contrast, uncertainties and anxieties are high, social and economic inequalities have widened considerably and social trust is in decline. There is an impression that the U.S. has not been very effective at turning its great business capacities, human resources, productivity and natural wealth to the best aim: increased happiness."

Don't give a damn about GDP.

<comment><USER76> _Don 't give a damn about GDP._

Really? Because it's GDP that funds all those government services and social programs.

I'm always confused when people don't give a damn about economics (i.e. during the Covid shutdown debate) when without economics you wouldn't have a functioning society.

<comment><USER51> Is US society working according to their very high GDP though?

Estonia GDP is measured in billions and yet their infant mortality rate is half than US despite their trillions of dollars of GDP

<comment><USER76> Be careful with your cherry picked stats. Countries don't measure infant mortality the same way.

Not to mention Estonia's lower infant mortality doesn't actually disprove my comment.

<comment><USER51> It actually does

I cherry picked infant mortality rate because I didn't want to pick the most embarrassing US stats, like life expectancy (lowest in the west despite the highest healthcare spending per capita) and homicide rate (4 times the Nigeria, 6 times China, 10 times Europe)

The fact that even little Estonia can handle infant mortality rate better than a superpower like USA it's kinda revealing

I'm also quite sure that if I picked China and its almost double infant mortality rate you wouldn't have though I was cherry picking

US is good at making money, but it's not a good indicator that they know how to spend them the right way

> _The numbers in the U.S. are partly driven by gun deaths. From 2001 to 2010, > 15-to-19-year-olds were 82 times more likely to die from gun violence in the > U.S. than in other wealthy countries. Thakrar also attributes the higher > U.S. child and infant mortality rates to a lack of preventative care._

Thakrar is _Ashish Thakrar, medical resident at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System._

<comment><USER76> I'll repeat myself. The definition of infant mortality is not the same across all countries. For example, if a baby is born at less than 1 lb or before 21 weeks, it's a stillbirth and _not_ counted as infant mortality in many countries (I have no idea about Estonia). In the US, is _is counted_.

Regardless, let's get back to my original comment.

GDP _is important_. It's what pays for government services, you may not agree that the US does enough, but _that doesn 't change the fact GDP pays for it_.

<comment><USER51> OECDs countries use the same stats everywhere

USA ranks 34th on 36 countries

> GDP is important. It's what pays for government services

It depends on what you buy with it and how much of it goes back to society in the form of government services for the public

For rich countries in the G20 it shouldn't matter as much as how you redistribute it

I'll repeat myself, despite the highest GDP in the World USA can't even pay for the citizens' right to not be shot in the streets

What is it good for then?

<comment><USER76> _OECDs countries use the same stats everywhere_

No they don't. They collect the same stats, but they aren't necessarily comparable.

<comment><USER51> even if it was true, it's still the 34th position over 36 countries

The richest country in the World is 34th

I think you have a problem there, no matter how much you try to find excuses for it

> _Metodology Membership in the OECD was used as a proxy for similar nations > to the U.S. The group was narrowed to OECD members with 50 years of high- > quality data, minus the U.S. It includes: Australia, Austria, Belgium, > Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, > the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the > United Kingdom._

<comment><USER74> Most Americans cannot deal with knowing our government and society is a trainwreck that exists to print cash</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook scraps in-video links to other sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36586021 <comment><USER2> Just another brick in the wall. Facebook's anti-web agenda, and restrictive eco-system is at the heart of its entire operation.

Recently I noticed they made a change for non-Facebook users trying to view a page. After about 2 seconds of viewing, a pop-over appears bugging you to sign in or sign up to keep viewing the page. This is a new low, as it happens even when the page owner sets their page to public. They've finally done it... to simply read a Facebook page now requires a signed-in Facebook account.

No announcement or anything, just a silent change they hoped nobody would notice. Except if you run a business and care about non-Facebook users being able to access essential basic information from a web link, this is no longer possible as the pop-over is too obstructive.</comment>


It's science, but not necessarily right - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26ideas.html?src=un&feedurl=http://json8.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.jsonp&pagewanted=print

<comment><USER2> Interesting article. It links Richard Feynman's _Cargo Cult Science_ <http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~slu/on_research/fayman_science.html> regarding the importance of repeating experiments with John P. A. Ioannidis research, _Why Most Published Research Findings Are False_ [http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal...](http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124)

</comment><comment><USER3> This isn't really a condemnation of science as much as its a condemnation of scientific journals and the human process surrounding the scientific method, both of which are well known problems to anyone who follows science at all. This seems like the kind of article that gets written and stashed away to use on a slow news day.</comment>


Canva Data Breach Affects 139M Users - <AUTHOR> https://sensorstechforum.com/canva-data-breach/ <comment><USER2> Is it normal that they repeatedly mention in their status report/blog post that they've contacted the "FBI" ? Is that normal practice?</comment>


Microsoft Teams Adding Virtual Green Screens to Teams - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/fqc6hs/comment/flq3lpm <comment><USER2> This is something that Zoom has, and was mentioned on a recent call. People were using random backgrounds (including a photo of a prison..) and the message from leadership was "We need to have a corporate background for everyone to use."

<comment><USER3> I think the green screens are one of the best parts of Zoom!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, this is at best a rumor, not sure why it was posted here.

<comment><USER5> I work at Microsoft. It is true that the Custom background is already a feature of it's internal "Elite Program" versioned Teams. Also, access to AOE 3 Definitive Edition is available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gallery view would be nice</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone have Aurous source code? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking about doing something similar for learning purposes and would like to have a look under the hood. <comment><USER2> [https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4m33noxhsd188/Streaming_Bac...](https://www.mediafire.com/folder/4m33noxhsd188/Streaming_Backups)

There you go

</comment><comment><USER3> You mean [http://aurous.rocks](http://aurous.rocks)? Why would you need source code?

Just check out the Echo Nest API and you're probably halfway there.</comment>


Naval Ravikant on Reading, Ego, Decision Making, Habits, Honesty, Ego and More - <AUTHOR> https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2017/02/naval-ravikant-reading-decision-making/ <comment><USER3> Fascinating discussion on thinking, reading and happiness - <USER2> interesting!</comment>


Brexit could deny UK access to EU-wide GPS project Galileo - <AUTHOR> https://thestack.com/cloud/2017/02/13/brexit-could-deny-uk-access-to-eu-wide-gps-project-galileo/ <comment><USER2> No it won't in much the same way non American's can get access to GPS. Equally ignores how UK paid for this system already and whilst production aspects may be a part of this, it does get down to contract law and with that, business as usual.

With that the title is clickbait incarnate.</comment>


Show HN: DomTerm – a web-based rich terminal emulator and console - <AUTHOR> http://domterm.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> The article at [https://opensource.com/article/18/1/introduction-domterm- ter...](https://opensource.com/article/18/1/introduction-domterm-terminal- emulator) is a good overview of what DomTerm is about. I've long been interested in how we can improve terminals/REPLs/consoles - I wrote the Emacs term mode in attempt to integrate shell mode with a real terminal emulator (though the attempt to replace shell mode did not "take").

(I reposted at the encouragement of moderator Daniel - thanks!)

Some of the things I've been working on since the opensource.com article include:

\- better input editing: most of the functionality of readline with mouse/selection/clipboard integration. Main thing to be worked on is command (tab-) completion. I'm mulling the best way to do that.

\- more generally, I want the functionality of UpTerm/FinalTerm. But writing out own shell is a mistake (well, I'm thinking about that, too ...). Better to use an existing shell - possibly fish as it has builtin auto-completion.

\- Menus (menubar and popup) for "generic" (non-Electron non-Qt) front-ends: [http://per.bothner.com/blog/2018/jsMenus/](http://per.bothner.com/blog/2018/jsMenus/)

\- better display of complex nested data, integrating show/hide buttons with pretty-printing, wih dynamic re-flpw on window re-size

<comment><USER2> Thanks for DomTerm!

I am pleased with the current ascendancy of Jupyter notebooks, interactive sessions of data manipulation.

When I first encountered Mathematica notebooks in early 1990s, I thought that this would be the way forward. A few years later, XMLTerm with Mozilla.. and it doesn't find an audience.

I was thinking of an uncanny valley between CLI and GUI, but I am writing this in a web browser on an iPad, which is better than any interaction paradigm we might have held in 1990.

We need more work on DOMTerm, notebook-style interaction design. I'm a bit surprised that Windows PowerShell does not play in this space.

<comment><AUTHOR> A main goal of DomTerm is to support "rich" REPL environments, similar to Jupyter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> First, very cool.

Second, now that we've got the terminal in a browser, we've got a linux subsytem for WebAssembly ([https://github.com/cervus-v/cervus](https://github.com/cervus-v/cervus)), and we've got QT for WebAssembly, we seem to be ~2 years out from someone pushing a real "web os" – as in an adult could probably boot to WebKit and perhaps not know that they're in a WebBrowser. Sure that's an opportunity for Google and Facebook to finally "compete" against the incumbent OS market.

The snake will inevitably eat itself again in some 30 year supercycle.

This is along the lines of the "birth and death of javascript" slides. But as it really is happening, are we really gaining anything? Anything at all?

And again, not to take away from DomTerm which seems really cool.

</comment><comment><USER4> Always great to see my layoutmanager ([https://golden- layout.com/](https://golden-layout.com/)) in the wild. Thanks so much for using it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - GoldenLayout is a great package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is either my isp, or this site got some malicious js that reidirects me to wierd places from my android device

<comment><AUTHOR> No reports of anything like that before. DomTerm.org is hosted under my DreamHost account, which also hosts my personal stuff, including bothner.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a bad (malicious) .htaccess file. I've removed it, but there remains the question of how it got there.

Added: The domterm.org directory in my home directory on DreamHost (from which domterm.org is hosted) was group and world-writable. Don't know how that happened (probably my carelessness), but I fixed it.

<comment><USER6> [https://discussion.dreamhost.com/t/malicious-htaccess- reappe...](https://discussion.dreamhost.com/t/malicious-htaccess- reappearing/56998)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this compare to Hyper?

[https://hyper.is/](https://hyper.is/)

<comment><USER8> Or good old XMLTerm [http://www.xml.com/pub/2000/06/07/xmlterm/](http://www.xml.com/pub/2000/06/07/xmlterm/)

<comment><AUTHOR> XMLTerm was an inspiration to me, and you can think of DomTerm as my attempt to combine the ideas of XMLTerm (graphics, logical structure of output, smart interaction) with a solid xterm-compatible terminal emulator. The most important difference is that XMLTerm is long dead! (However, XMLTerm's author more recently wrote GraphTerm as a more modern take on XMLTerm - however, that too is unmaintained.)</comment></comment></comment>


How you got your first 100 paying users? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Appsumo's got this website full of stories of how people got their first 3 customers. I think that first step is much harder than going from 3 to a 100.

[http://www.howigotmyfirst3customers.com/](http://www.howigotmyfirst3customers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Create an amazing free trial and give them some real value. They will always want more at the end of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> some success stories about getting first users - [http://vusal.me/handbook/](http://vusal.me/handbook/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Find 100 people who want what you're offering enough to pay you. Find a need, then offer a compelling solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you find 100 people with the same need ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> pay them to pay u</comment>


Byzantine Laments - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n05/barbara-newman/byzantine-laments <comment><USER2> " _Neville observes that in the 18th century, when the tale of attempted fratricide took shape, historians were less sensitive to the rhetorical strategies of their sources. In Anna's case, however, the problem was not that Gibbon, Diehl and the rest failed to note Choniates's bias, but rather that they shared it. A woman so intrepid as to write history, that most masculine of genres, must have been power-hungry enough to wish, as Choniates claims, that she had 'the long member and the balls'. Paraphrasing the words he put in her mouth, modern historians took them not only as fact but as the key to her character._ "

" _But for modern historians, Anna's histrionic grief for a father who had died thirty years earlier seemed so excessive that they sought a different explanation for her 'bitterness' – and hit on disappointed ambition._ "</comment>


BackdorOS is an in-mem OS written in Python with: in-mem fs, I/O hooks, and REPL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SafeBreach-Labs/backdoros <comment><USER2> Sadly it is still python 2</comment>


Ask HN: Can a Corporation have its own army? - <AUTHOR> In the scenario of corps getting huge, owning vast territories, creating their own culture and social facilities, having more budget than some countries. Could they just train their own army? Is this happening? <comment><USER2> Alas, it's nothing new. Cf. the various East India Companies from the 17th century.

</comment><comment><USER3> >owning vast territories, creating their own culture and social facilities, having more budget than some countries

These are already true.</comment>


Learning Rust with Entirely Too Many Linked Lists - <AUTHOR> http://cglab.ca/~abeinges/blah/too-many-lists/book/ <comment><USER2> That was very well written and very informative. Thank you!</comment>


Backbone.Paginator – New Pagination Components For Backbone.js - <AUTHOR> http://addyosmani.com/blog/backbone-paginator-new-pagination-components-for-backbone-js/

<comment><USER2> Quick bug report for ya. If you visit the "clientPager" demo, and navigate to any page but the first, before clicking on "show 9", or "show 12", it will break.

[http://addyosmani.github.com/backbone.paginator/examples/net...](http://addyosmani.github.com/backbone.paginator/examples/netflix- client-paging/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> ?skip=N in the API is inefficient — from yesterday's discussion on infinite scrolling: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3764518> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3765665>

</comment><comment><USER4> I wrote something similar to this, but I use pushState so that it can be bookmarked. It creates some ugly urls, but it works.

Have you considered using pushState to achieve the same purpose?

</comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a simple Backbone module to add infinite scrolling to any view a few months back (<https://github.com/joneath/infiniScroll.js>).

It's good to see a classic paginator implementation though. I will take a look at the source later. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER3> Seems like this one does both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> very very useful. Was just about to write my own code for this, but now gonna look into using this. Thanks for considering all major variations of pagination.

</comment><comment><USER7> The live examples aren't working. Is it just me?

<comment><USER6> yes. Working for me.</comment></comment>


GlobalSign Root Certificate Problems - <AUTHOR> https://www.globalsign.com/en/customer-revocation-error/ <comment><AUTHOR> Dear Valued GlobalSign Customer,

As most of you are aware, we are experiencing an internal process issue (details below) that is impacting your business. While we have identified the root-cause, we deeply apologize for the problems this is causing you and wanted to ensure you that we are actively resolving the issue.

GlobalSign manages several root certificates and for compatibility and browser ubiquity reasons provides several cross-certificates between those roots to maximize the effectiveness across a variety of platforms. As part of a planned exercise to remove some of those links, a cross-certificate linking two roots together was revoked. CRL responses had been operational for 1 week, however an unexpected consequence of providing OCSP responses became apparent this morning, in that some browsers incorrectly inferred that the cross-signed root had revoked intermediates, which was not the case.

GlobalSign has since removed the cross-certificate from the OCSP database and cleared all caches. However, the global nature of CDNs and effectiveness of caching continued to push some of those responses out as far as end users. End users cannot always easily clear their caches, either through lack of knowledge or lack of permission. New users (visitors) are not affected as they will now receive good responses.

The problem will correct itself in 4 days as the cached responses expire, which we know is not ideal. However, in the meantime, GlobalSign will be providing an alternative issuing CA for customers to use instead, issued by a different root which was not affected by the cross that was revoked, but offering the same ubiquity and does not require to reissue the certificate itself.

We are currently working on the detailed instructions to help you resolve the issue and will communicate those instruction to you shortly.

Thank you for your patience.</comment>


In the Trenches: Pierre Minault's First World War Diary (1914) - <AUTHOR> https://notevenpast.org/life-in-the-trenches-in-world-war-i-by-pierre-minault/

<comment><USER2> I really enjoyed this story because using the letter of her grandfather the author made this piece both about history and personal experience. It makes it more enjoyable to the reader.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for sharing this fascinating, never before published first-hand diary account of WWI. I very much wish I'd known Sergeant Pierre Minualt.</comment>


Postmasters were prosecuted using unreliable evidence - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52905378 <comment><AUTHOR> The latest salvo in a case that has been rumbling on for years. A salutory lesson for all of us. Big integration projects are complex and difficult, and will more that likely have critical holes. Don't put too much confidence in systems that weren't rigorously engineered. Lives were destroyed over this.

<comment><USER2> The problem seems less about software failing (which is expected) but the fact that certain people lied about it not being able to fail most likely to protect their own asses and that caused a miscarriage of justice. These people should rot in jail.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do applications survive new platform features? - <AUTHOR> There are apps like TimeHop[0], that use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram data.
However, when the main platform decides to implement the exact same feature (like Facebook's "On this day") what happens to these apps?
Did this happen to you, did you pivot? Was this considered in your business model, did you close shop?
[0] : https://timehop.com/ <comment><USER2> Some startups are "feature startups". They add a functionality to a bigger corporation and grow along the corporation. Usually, if they do their job right, the obvious exit is an acquisition by the bigger corporation.

However, if there is not high barriers to entry or if your startups is too expensive (eg. Snapchat), it's easier for the bigger corporation to just build a similar feature.

If the main platform decides to implement the exact same feature, you are likely to close doors. You can still pivot but improving the feature will not make you more valuable for them. They will just copy your improvement if it's worth it.</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good guides for non-techies to avoid Google/Facebook? - <AUTHOR> In light of the Facebook 'revelation', many less technically-inclined friends have asked how to avoid giving data to Facebook and Google.<p>Is there a good guide that tells non-technical people how to use Firefox with ublock, provides alternatives to Gmaps/gmail (that don't require complex setups), how to protect their smartphone from Google surveillance, etc.? <comment><USER2>
      alternatives to Gmaps

[https://www.openstreetmap.org](https://www.openstreetmap.org)

<comment><USER3> OSMAndroid from [https://f-droid.org](https://f-droid.org) works. It's nice being able to download entire states for offline access, very fast when looking around, awesome for offroading.

I run [https://lineageos.org](https://lineageos.org) and have no problems whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really don't understand this. Social media is by its very nature, social......

It's an asinine question.. It's like someone asking, "how do I keep smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day and completely eliminate my risk of COPD and lung cancer". Yeh um, you either keep enjoying those cigarettes and accept your shitty ended of life consequences or quit.

If you don't want google or Facebook siphoning your data, don't log in with them. You can still use many of the services google offers without logging in, it just Won't be very convenient..

There are tons of alternatives. None of them are easy, some of them aren't free. Because you pay somewhere, nothing is free. Proton mail is a great alternative to gmail, but it costs. Hosting your own social media is harder, mastadon or hubzilla is great for friends n family, but it costs time. Ejabberd for messaging.

</comment><comment><USER5> you can't easily protect your android phone from google. "google play" service is basically a process running as root. you can run custom ROMs but by installing gapps you're pretty much in the same situation.

There's an alternative but getting it done is not for the average user [https://microg.org/](https://microg.org/) Google did a great job locking down users with android. I'm pretty much googleless and it's like dieting

<comment><USER4> You didn't and don't have to run google play or google services..

I use an LG V20 and have never once used play services. It's completely disabled.

Almost all my apps I get from 3rd party app stores, mainly fdroid and a few others. As well, I've had an old google account linked to a prepaid card and a phone that is rooted, and I used to download apps from play store with it, use an apk extractor, and send the apps to my new phone.

The days of this happening are not long for this world though, as more and more app devs are implementing safety net and forced play services checks. This really started happening around the pokemonGo time period. Some don't implement it correctly and you can still bypass it, but it's a real hassle..

A recent update broke a scanner app that I use to get alerted if a police scanner gets really busy.. I emailed the dev to ask why, they implied google is really pushing these safety checks now. Wonderful security, keeping us safe..

Even still, you only have to use play and play services if you plan on using the play store apps... I realize I'm an outlier, but then again, I've never been bothered by the few minutes longer it took me to login via mobile browser instead of just getting the app. Everyone makes choices about where and what they spend their time on.. I've always valued my privacy I suppose..</comment></comment>


Show HN: Checkly – Active Monitoring for Dev and Ops Teams - <AUTHOR> https://checklyhq.com <comment><USER2> So, how does this compare to RunScope and PingDom? Any other competitors out there?

What is it that differentiates this product and should make me want to use it instead?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Brad, sorry for the late reply. Checkly focuses on giving just as good an API monitoring experience as the competition you mentioned while treating browser transaction monitoring as a first class citizen. The Node.js based scripts are a factor more stable and easier to run than other proprietary tech. This is also reflected in the price point.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I'm Tim, working solo on an active monitoring SaaS tool called Checkly. Checkly monitors API endpoints and browser click flows from a single, simple dashboard.

During my career as a sys admin, developer and later engineering manager I worked a lot of monitoring tools. I was always looking for a simple active monitoring solution that was still deep and comprehensive. Something that could give me one simple dashboard that told me how my services were doing from a customer and/or end user perspective, while not dumbing down the control I had over what and how my services were checked and validated.

Checkly gives a lot of control to the operator:

\- Extensive validation and customisation options on API responses \- Complete control over checking browser transaction by writing Node.js scripts

Of course there is alerting via the usual suspects when things go pear shaped.

I'm super early stage, just finishing a small private beta period, learning every day. Any feedback would be awesome.

Thanks, Tim

</comment><comment><USER3> APIs</comment>


Ask HN: Hackers in LA? - <AUTHOR>

I grew up in Los Angeles (Pasadena/Glendale), transplanted to Honolulu almost 3 years ago, and now I'm ready to come back. I'm wondering where the startup/tech scene is right now in Southern California? I'm out of touch with my homeland, and would love to have the hackers here give me the heads up before I return.<p>Also... are there any HN meetups or groups in LA? <comment><USER2> After seeing a few of these kinds of posts over the last few, ahem, years, I am going to take a stab at organizing a Los Angeles based Hacker News group. Let's start really small. Send me your email address if you are interested in

A) being on an email list B) getting together in person (only one meeting for now)

iphpdonthitme of gmail

</comment><comment><USER3> Just moved to Pasadena myself. I'm hoping to go to a Mindshare event soon, my friends rave about them - <http://www.mindshare.la/>

</comment><comment><USER4> The Dorkbot community is pretty cool:

      http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/

There also used to be events called "Geek Dinners" but they were mostly attended by "social media gurus" and the like. Not really my cup of tea.

I'm on the westside and am always looking for hacker events. My company is a big sponsor of Drupal events in Boston and Los Angeles and that's where much of my focus has been.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm on the Westside. It's not an HN group, but this group is pretty hackery: <http://socal-piggies.org/scp>

Send me an email at iphpdonthitme gmail if someone actually manages to rope people together brave enough to endure LA traffic.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are and I've been to a few but I'm guessing it doesn't compare to a meetup in San Fran or Boston. Anyone else care to comment on this..?

5 hours on the 5 to SF and 4 hours to Palo Alto isn't that far =)

<comment><USER4> In my experience, the startup scenes as you know them in the Bay Area and Boston are _massive_ compared to the one in Los Angeles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work in Altadena @ AdventureLink. i'm happy to arrange for a light meetup at my building most anytime. It sounds like we could actually create a descent local chapter. shamenski of Gmail

</comment><comment><USER7> I am in NoHo (lankershim and vineland). I would love to have a local meetup. My email is nkhdev at gmail if anyone would like to contact me.

</comment><comment><USER8> i'm in LA -- i've been trying to attend meetups that interest me. they're mostly out in the westside, though -- i'm in arcadia. getting out there is difficult.

there isn't a specific event to attend, but i signed up for startup weekend, which is coming up. hopefully there will be some cool people there :)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, they're mostly in the westside (Santa Monica area), but it's actually not that bad to get there. Takes me 30 minutes from Pasadena. Choose wisely between 101/405 or Sunset depending on the time of day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm in LA but it really does not compare to startup scene in SF.</comment>


Thunderbird and end-to-end email encryption – should this be a priority? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2015/08/thunderbird-and-end-to-end-email-encryption-should-this-be-a-priority/#comment-939

<comment><USER2> I think this misses two main arguments for increased use of end to end encryption.

1\. It reduces the behavioural entropy of people who really need it (journalists, lawyers etc)

2\. It makes mass surveillance much harder.

Yes, if the NSA/FBI are after you, they can access your devices directly. But ubiquitous strong encryption is still a Good Thing.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Imho, the true nuances of the outrage over NSA collection were never that they could do it. That was assumed. It was that they could and were doing it to (for all intents) _everything_.

Herd encryption isn't intended to make it impossible for them to gather intelligence. It's intended to make it impossible for them to indiscriminately gather dragnet intelligence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the end-to-end encryption of email is an important problem, but even more important (IMO) is that email is no longer decentralized by any reasonable standard.

The reason, if I had to guess, is probably primarily because of spam. But these days, with ubiquity of high quality encryption standards in place in most other realms of the web, why not in the validation of email transmission between servers?

Here's an idea. Even if we generally still only have encryption at the protocol level in email, why not incorporate a new header into the email message itself (let's call it signature). Now anyone who deploys their own email server can deploy their public key(s) for email in a TXT record in DNS, and any recipient of email can now (for most practical purposes, without substantial work on the part of the malicious hacker) guarantee that the message was sent by who the sending server says it was sent by.

I think a wide-spread open standard as simple as this could help re- decentralize email while not causing additional fear that spam will again make our lives miserable.

<comment><AUTHOR> isn't that exactly what DKIM is?

"DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) permits a person, role, or organization that owns the signing domain to claim some responsibility for a message by associating the domain with the message. This can be an author's organization, an operational relay, or one of their agents. DKIM separates the question of the identity of the Signer of the message from the purported author of the message. Assertion of responsibility is validated through a cryptographic signature and by querying the Signer's domain directly to retrieve the appropriate public key. Message transit from author to recipient is through relays that typically make no substantive change to the message content and thus preserve the DKIM signature."

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6376](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6376)

<comment><USER4> Yes :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to admit, I had to look up JMAP. Seems like it's a bit of a one-off solution, though there are promising benefits that I can immediately see over IMAP.

I think it should be a data driven call - how much call is there for JMAP support, and how much call is there for Encryption? Multiply each by some factor, say, the inverse of an estimated cost to implement, and you should have a rather reliable answer of which is a higher priority.

Perhaps more importantly, don't trust "The overwhelming consensus" when it comes to security - we laymen either don't understand the implications to our society, or feel it's a reasonable tradeoff since they have "nothing to hide". Trust people who specialize in security. Send an email to Schneier, tptacek, and others and see how important they believe it is for the world to have easily accessable end to end encryption for communications.

</comment><comment><USER6> can someone provide a compelling reason why the SMTP protocol does not have a command to retrieve public key certificate for a given recipient email address? Or a weaker alternative that provides the same cert for all addresses in the domain?

<comment><USER7> The SMTP server that the submitting client talks to is almost always not the SMTP server for the recipient's domain.

There are some drafts that do this using DANE ([https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dane- smime-08](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dane-smime-08), [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dane- openpgpkey](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dane-openpgpkey)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yes.

<comment><USER9> Betteridge's law would disagree</comment></comment>


4-10% of encrypted web connections are man-in-the-middled and intercepted - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2017/09/13/weakening-security-for-securit.html <comment><USER2> Money quote: "capitalist bootlicker apologists"</comment>


Lazyscope updated tonight (cool Twitter client that uses RSS - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/05/first-look-lazyscope-updated-tonight-cool-twitter-client-that-uses-rss/ <comment><USER2> The new changes are solid. While I understand the reason behind using Air, I share Scoble's opinion that this becomes a lot more useful when I can use it in a tablet or mobile environment as that's where I do most of my content consumption right now.

With that said, I've been a Lazyscope user for a while and it currently handles my desktop consumption needs adequately. Kudos to the team on the update!

<comment><USER3> > this becomes a lot more useful when I can use it in a tablet or mobile > environment

Air is already available for a lot of mobile environments and should be a pretty good universal cross platform technology across nearly every mobile and tablet environment soon. I would have picked that as a big advantage of using Air rather than a downside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm using this with @HNFirehose ( www.twitter.com/HNfirehose ) added and it's working great. What do you guys think about using Lazyscope for subscribing to Hackernews articles?

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool interview by Scoble! I've been using this for a while now and I read so much more simply because it saves me that one important click, love this thing!

</comment><comment><USER6> A clever use of RSS without explaining to the users that this is driven by RSS. Very nice but the software is proprietary... maybe alternatives will pop up.

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate on what you mean by proprietary?

<comment><USER7> Maybe he/she is referring to the fact that this is running on Adobe AIR?

<comment><USER4> But aren't all desktop applications built on proprietary technologies? I am curious.

<comment><USER6> Firefox (without proprietary plug-ins), vim, gimp, Pidgin, GNOME, Inkscape, Evince, F-Spot, VLC, MPlayer, Thunderbird,... are not built on proprietary technologies.

<comment><USER4> Aren't they ultimately all built on top of Windows and Mac? (Which are proprietary technologies)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Wikipedia is not so great - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Wikipedia_is_not_so_great <comment><USER2> By jove, that Wikipedia page is accurate and well-written!

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://22.214.171.124/search?q=cache:A9H3pqjznZwJ:en.wikipedi...](http://126.96.36.199/search?q=cache:A9H3pqjznZwJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Wikipedia_is_not_so_great+Why+Wikipedia+is+not+so+great&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us)

This page has to be deleted and undeleted by admins, yes? So editors with privileges are helping to write this and reinstate it from time to time? Interesting.

<comment><USER4> Someone killed the redirect because it was in article space.

The original article is here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_is_not_so_great)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only problem for me is its so complicated; if I found obvious vandalism which hadn't got caught by any of the active members, it'd take me 10 mins to work out how to revert it correctly — it'd not be much harder to use it from the command line!

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I think that MetaWiki is overly complicated and heavily lacking in ease of use.

Maybe someone could treat Wikipedia as a back-end and implement a cleaner, simpler, and more powerful UI on top without having to fork the entire database?

<comment><USER7> My preferences --> gadgets --> editing gadgets.

Between the various gadgets there, I'm sure you can find what you want. And you can write your own too. There are a variety of user-contributed stylesheets and scripts listed elsewhere on the site.

Unless you're trying to do admin tasks, I'm not sure what you mean ease of use. Just click the edit button and start typing. If the formatting is wrong, someone will clean up after you.

<comment><USER6> I had no idea that was there... I'm sure most people don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's great for math.

<comment><USER9> Except for the inaccuracies. I find MathWorld to be a safer bet.

<comment><USER10> I second MathWorld. Sometimes I spend hours reading it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> although i agree with the points raised here, am inclined to be critical of the uh, critic... when all is said and done, wikipedia provides a lot of info we can use and THAT is what matters...

ps: it would be to wikipedia's own good if it could reflect on the points raised by the "critic"... aren't we all for self improvement, eh?

</comment><comment><USER12> So basicaly wikipedia reflects the society we live in and the many varied views and tactis we humans use. Intresting.</comment>


Trump administration pulls back curtain on secretive cybersecurity process - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/national-security/trump-administration-pulls-back-curtain-on-secretive-cybersecurity-process/2017/11/15/f9a2e3ec-ca16-11e7-aa96-54417592cf72_story.html <comment><USER2> > The Trump administration has mostly not altered the rules under which the > government reaches a decision but is disclosing its process.

So nothing has really changed in how the FBI/NSA take advantage of zero-day vulnerabilities.</comment>


Supreme Court Rules That Pre-Miranda Silence Can Be Used Against Defendant - <AUTHOR> http://jonathanturley.org/2013/06/17/the-price-of-silence-supreme-court-rules-that-pre-miranda-silence-can-be-used-against-defendant-to-prove-guilt/

<comment><USER2> The article slams Alito, but the judgment was 5-4. Whenever rulings are this close, it suggests that there are nuances and rationale arguments on both sides.

As disconcerting as this ruling is, there is likely more to this than the headline. For example, it seems that one's 5th ammendment right against self- incrimination is preserved in this ruling so long as one verbally invokes it, i.e., "I plead the fifth".

No, it's not ideal, and it gives a great deal of power to law enforcement, which will sometimes be wielded irresponsibly. But, destroyed? - that's a bit hyperbolic.

<comment><USER3> That's not a new ruling though. Having to claim the right to not self- incriminate was ruled in Minnesota v Murphy, 1984. This is specific to cases where "invokers" have not been read Miranda because they're not under arrest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What does this have to do with search and seizure? Maybe you meant the 5th amendment? Even so, it doesn't seem that the defendent was forced to witness against himself and there was definitely a jury involved.

I don't agree this violates my 4th, or even 5th, amendment rights. Maybe someone else can explain the importance of this to me?

<comment><USER3> Actually, the opinion is pretty short and I'd recommend reading it.

[http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-246_7l48.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-246_7l48.pdf)

The long story short is that the plaintiff had not actually been arrested, so he hadn't been read his Miranda rights, and then his silence was used against him in court when he went silent after certain questions.

This opinion says that the 5th is not simply a "right to remain silent", nor is that phrase even in the 5th. If he wanted to claim his rights, he needed to explicitly say so. That's not new, but this case reiterates that point in non- arrest situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't this imply "you don't have a right to remain silent until you're told that you do"? In other words, the Miranda reading GRANTS you that right rather than INFORMING you of it?

</comment><comment><USER6> 5th Amendment, not 4th.</comment>


Scheduled Bulk Delivery Is the Future - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yunfangjuan/scheduled-bulk-delivery-is-the-future-7112fdee6fe <comment><USER2> Unrelated to this article about 'dark' restaurant bulk delivery, I often think that wouldn't my neighborhoods be oh-so-much quieter and less smoggy if UPS, FedEx, and USPS only delivered there for residential deliveries X number of days per week?

If someone really needs it ASAP, too bad. Delivery schedules should be set in stone or else the party in question can go to a pickup center or an Amazon locker, etc.

What's really funny to me is all these people desperately loving their Prime memberships and then just letting their boxes pile up on their porches or inside their houses unopened.

No amount of money for a Prime membership should require delivery vans to swarm a neighborhood every day of the week. You get your boxes on M/W/F or T/Th/Sa depending on the delivery company.

Cities like London are leading the way on reducing unnecessary traffic in their inner circles, but what about our quiet neighborhoods? We need a break. It's turning into a commercial district in some neighborhoods because of the insanity of daily (sometimes multiple times per day) deliveries.

Same with the USPS. If it's so desperate for cash, switch everyone to 3x per week for residential. I can't think of a package or piece of mail I've ever received that couldn't have waited until the next day. Quite honestly, it would be reclaimed time in my week not to have to "check" my residential mailbox 6x/week. Yes, I often forget or decide not to, but I'm lucky I don't have mail thieves poking into boxes in my area. Not everyone has the luxury to ignore their residential mail.</comment>


IE Memory Leak – jQuery Fix - <AUTHOR> http://kossovsky.net/index.php/2009/07/ie-memory-leak-jquery-garbage-collector/ A very nice fix for all those memory leaks in internet explorer. <comment><USER2> I can't help but feel like this should be submitted as a patch - anybody know if he's done so yet? I was unable to find anything.</comment>


VRGO-the missing piece to your VR puzzle - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vrgo/vrgo-the-chair-that-redefines-movement-in-virtual/comments <comment><USER2> It's an arse-based controller!</comment>