Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/love-the-bus-save-your-city/559262/ <comment><USER6> I suspect the uncomfortable truth behind a lot of the problems regarding public transit isn't the transit itself, but the passengers. If you had the choice of riding a public bus with a large collection of the public or paying a few bucks and selecting a preferred subset of the ridership (e.g. chariot in SF, uber, lyft, etc.) I think most will choose the non-bus option to feel comfortable during their ride.

I'm not saying that this is a morally acceptable thing, I just suspect this is a significant reason why bus ridership has been declining.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes it's not even the passengers... it's the driver.

Riding the 152 in Chicago one snowy night (about seven years ago), the bus suddenly stopped and the driver made everyone get off into the snow because it was the end of his shift. When we asked when the next bus was, he said there wouldn't be once because he was the last bus of the night.

I ended up walking about a mile to the nearest Blue Line subway station, since the Blue Line runs 24/7.

<comment> munk-a That story sounds like it goes against intended policy, similar to complaining about a Barista throwing your coffee in your face isn't a really good argument against a chain of coffee shops.

If you reported the incident, do you know if the driver was reprimanded?

<comment><USER7> I didn't report it. It was very late at night and I just wanted to get home. Plus, I've only had one interaction with authority in Chicago[0], and after that I learned to keep my head down and stay off the radar.

[0]: On the day I moved to Chicago, I called 911 to report a drug deal in the alley behind my building. The cops arrived an hour later and the officer told me that I was wasting their time. I'll never forget him saying, "We don't do that in the big city."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The bus system has to make pretty aggressive tradeoffs in order to be useful to commuters. You can't make it stop at every block in order to make it take less walking to get to the bus stop. Similarly, you can't have parallel lines a block apart. You have to limit the service area so that you can afford to run busses every 5-10 minutes. And you'll want to improve streets so that busses can run down the center and pick up passengers from protected islands, rather than fighting with parking and turning traffic for space.

Like, I take the BART every day into work. It's fantastic. I walk for five to ten minutes to get to the station, a train comes every 5 minutes so I don't have to worry about the train schedule, then I walk another five to ten minutes to get to the office. If the bus experience could match that, it'd take over a lot of commuting.

<comment><USER9> That's exactly the problem, buses can never match that. They can't have too short a route or too fast an interval, it doesn't work when you have huge variance due to personal cars, lights etc. impeding them.

<comment><USER10> Citylab's push here is in response to South American cities doing exactly that with great success[1]. Initially developed in Curitaba, follow on initiatives in Bogota have been very popular[2]. Basically, treat the bus like a metro. Give them their own lane. Make sure the platform is level with pickup. And you've got a massively cost down subway system. For an inspiring documentary you should check this[3] video out.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/26/curitiba- braz...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/26/curitiba-brazil-brt- transport-revolution-history-cities-50-buildings)

[2] [http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/mar/21/bogotas-bus-rapid- trans...](http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/mar/21/bogotas-bus-rapid-transit- system-eyed-us-urban-pla/)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3YjeARuilI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3YjeARuilI)

<comment><USER11> I recall reading an article a few years ago about Bogotá's transit, where the mayor (I think) said something very interesting. Among other arguments, he made a moral argument about the dedicated lane for transit. Roughly, there's 40 or 50 people on the bus, vs 1-2 per car, and you get, what, 3? 2? cars in the space of a bus. He found it completely unjustified to let the convenience of those 45 people be outweighed by the convenience of the 4 or 5.

I'm not sure that it stacks up perfectly logically, but it's an interesting way to think about it. And it looks like they have a pretty good system.

<comment><USER12> > Roughly, there's 40 or 50 people on the bus, vs 1-2 per car, and you get, > what, 3? 2? cars in the space of a bus. He found it completely unjustified > to let the convenience of those 45 people be outweighed by the convenience > of the 4 or 5.

That's only true if the lane is as full of busses as other lanes are full of cars.

<comment><USER13> Yes, but if the bus is faster, more people will take the bus and so you will add more buses. In places like Quito with dedicated busways, there are buses basically non-stop. Buses can follow one another better than trains too because you don't have the signal system reducing headways.

<comment><USER12> For the record I'm a huge fan of busses and highly skeptical of trains. I'm sure that there are some places in the world where the Mayor's statement is true. Those places are rare.

In a downtown corridor during rush hour? Sure - I could totally see a lane full of just busses. However, most dedicated bus lanes won't be that busy. This isn't to say that there aren't good reasons for dedicated lanes - <USER2> that the reason the Mayor gave was at best hyperbolic and at worst maliciously deceptive.

> more people will take the bus and so you will add more buses.

In a well run business that would be true.

In the first world, most busses are heavily subsidized. This means that the more busses that are run, the more money the system loses (not strictly true, but roughly).

What you say should make sense, but it doesn't for important institutional reasons.

<comment><USER14> > In the first world, most busses are heavily subsidized. This means that the > more busses that are run, the more money the system loses (not strictly > true, but roughly).

So what? Transportation infrastructure for single-passenger vehicles is also subsidized in the US (the gas tax doesn't come anywhere near paying for roads, for instance), and it gets more expensive with more users too (in the form of increased wear on roads requiring more maintenance, or the need to expand roads to accommodate increasing use). But we do it anyway, because transportation infrastructure is a public good. I've never understood the inclination that public transit should stand alone among transportation modes and operate without subsidy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > such as L.A. and Denver, are watching transit ridership decline across the > board, in part because investment in buses has trailed so far behind the > commitment to trains

That's not completely true for LA (and for the record, train ridership in LA is on decline as well, while the population is growing).

Here's the actual reason [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-metro- homeless-2018...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-metro- homeless-20180406-htmlstory.html)

"People looking for warm, dry places to sleep have barricaded themselves inside emergency exit stairwells in stations, leaving behind trash and human waste. Elevator doors coated in urine have stuck shut. Mentally ill and high passengers have assaulted bus drivers and other riders."

"More than 1 in 5 current passengers has been harassed on the train. In a 2016 survey, 29% of former riders told Metro they stopped taking transit because they felt unsafe."

"Sim said she saw a man pull down his pants, squat over the edge of a platform and defecate onto the train tracks at Union Station. She said she has sat in urine on the subway, "hopscotched through peoples' feces" on sidewalks, and endured verbal and sexual harassment on the train."

"In one more serious case, Loew said, LAPD officers used a Taser on a man who was brandishing a knife and threatening passengers."

"He kept riding, until he sat down one morning on a seat that was wet and hot with urine. With no change of clothes on hand, he wore the urine-soaked pants to work. Then he started driving to work again."

<comment><USER16> Seattle is in a similar situation. Ridership is growing still, but mostly due to driving and parking being very expensive and inconvenient. We also have a program where major employers (including Amazon) will provide cards for unlimited transit use, but not re-imburse or provide for the full cost of parking.

Even so, it's very common for people to get on the bus without paying and make everyone else uncomfortable. I've seen harassers, people vaping and shooting up, obviously unstable people yelling and making a scene. That's not to say anything of the people who just bring an awful odor or take up a whole row with absolute junk. I've never seen feces or urine, but definitely seen vomit. There's no enforcement against this kind of thing most of the time, and riders are too afraid to speak up on their own.

If I'm given the choice between a 30 minute walk and a 10 minute bus ride, I'll almost always walk if it's not just pouring rain. Luckily Seattle sidewalks and pedestrian friendliness in general is pretty great.

It's a drastically different situation from my hometown, Charlotte NC, where the buses don't get much use and it really is due to service stinking and general perception of the bus being for poor people only. Also cars are fairly cheap and ubiquitous. I would frequently be the only white person on a crowded bus, but even though I sometimes got weird looks, I was never harassed or made to feel in danger like I've experienced in Seattle. It was mostly just working class folks or people and some people with DUIs going to work, city services, or community college (which was my reason for taking it, I just hated driving though). An improvement in service and getting some nicer buses probably would have helped, but now that light rail is a thing (just barely though), I do think they are putting all their resources there instead.

<comment><USER17> It's funny that you mention Amazon when referring to the ORCA card program since Amazon's outreach to other cities to kick in for transit improvements if its HQ2 is located there has caused one of the latest flare-ups of kerfuffle about Amazon's impact on Seattle. (The angst, for those unaware, is that while Amazon is offering private dollars to add transit stations or make service improvements in cities like Atlanta or Baltimore, it isn't making the same offer to Seattle / Sound Transit even though two of the new light rail stations are being built to serve the area that is effectively its campus.)

I would like to also mention that my experience doesn't match yours. I ride the bus almost exclusively (there's no light rail near my house and never will be) and have only, rarely, encountered what you describe. I'm certain it exists, but not to the extent of calling it very common. Two routes, RapidRide E and route 7, stand out as being the most likely "culprits," which is, I think, less of a function of riding a bus and more of where those two routes happen to serve. The streetscape of the part of Aurora that the E runs down looks a lot like the inside of the E's bus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the bus because it runs express from my Chicago neighborhood directly into the loop.

I get on, play with my phone, and get off 25 minutes later. I don't have to fight traffic driving myself and I can multi-task if I choose.

The problem comes when trying to take the bus to any other part of the city. It's slow, stops at every block, and is unpredictable when it arrives. It's a mode of transport that supports everyone and that inherently makes it less useful to the individual.

Personally I'd like to see bus systems get more fine-grained about their routes, timing, and size of vehicle. We should be able to model some optimizations that improve service while remaining accessible for everyone.

It'd be a shame if over the last several years major cities haven't been collecting the required data to make this possible. If not, now would be a good time to beging recording this data.

<comment><USER19> Exactly this.

When I moved to Portland (from NYC, unfortunately), I hoped that I would have access to the MAX, but if not then I'd be able to take the bus to work. I ended up being about 20 blocks from the nearest MAX stop, but there was a bus stop right outside my apartment. I took the bus maybe a dozen times before I realized that it really is a non-option; what takes me ~15 minutes (20 on a extremely rare bad day) in a car takes me at least 45 minutes (to an hour) on the bus.

It's really all about what bus route you're on, and your ability to find housing on the bus with the most direct line to your office (in a city like Portland). That's usually not super easy. I have coworkers that have 15-30 minute bus rides from farther out because they're on efficient bus routes.

<comment><USER20> Part of Portland's problem is that its transit is built to move people into and out of downtown. Very little of it is built to move people between neighborhoods or across routes. That's somewhat understandable since downtown is the most common destination, but plenty of people (like you) end up without many options.

<comment><USER21> Some cities I've lived in have a star model. In Munich I'd take the subway downtown, change trains and head into a different suburb. Because the train was quick and the stops reasonable spaced resulting in a decent experience. In Portland the MAX stops so frequently downtown that taking it for example from the west side to the airport is way too slow. You spend way too much time just slogging through downtown. It starts to suffer from the same problem like most US buses that stop every fucking block. What's up with that insanity?! The T-Line in SF suffered from the same problem and I ultimately stopped taking it in favor of a kick scooter.

<comment><USER20> Yep, the MAX is sluggish enough downtown that it's often faster to bike to the other side of downtown to catch it. Say you want to get to Beaverton from the South Waterfront: you could take the Orange from there to Pioneer Square, then the Blue to Beaverton, but it would be faster for you to just bike to the Goose Hollow station. All because the Orange Line takes 12 minutes to travel the 1.5 miles from the South Waterfront to Pioneer Square. It takes 25 minutes to traverse downtown.

I've long been an advocate to bury the MAX downtown (via cut-and-cover, not tunneling), but obviously even that could cost billions of dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The challenge here is riding the bus is inferior in convenience and comfort, fundamentally, vs other options. Unless price (likely by eliminating any subsidies for other methods; today even a $0 bus fare would still not be enough) or other features (bypassing traffic) make up for it, why would a rational person take the bus? There are probably places on the margin where buses are more acceptable right now (in a downtown core area where they replace a long walk, where other methods are inconvenient), but if the goal is wide usage, this has to be addressed.

Private bus networks with access limited to certain people (employees of companies or groups of companies, universities, etc) seem to work ok; what generally doesn't seem to work are public buses.

Is the problem density (I doubt Google employees across Bay Area are denser than bus riding public overall within SF) — probably not.

A lot of the unpleasantness is other riders. Without the ability to ban certain riders (either via a whitelist or blacklist), bus ridership will remain limited. BART is bad enough, but whenever I've taken muni or peninsula bus service (very rarely)it made the case for this.

Transit agencies are also highly political — unionized labor, political appointees running it, expensive contracts for everything, inflexible policies — so I doubt they could provide the same service as private bus companies.

The solution is probably not public transit, but possibly is multi passenger vehicles. Something like Lyft Line with more passengers, dynamic routing, etc, plus some core routes with scheduled higher capacity service.

<comment><USER23> > Private bus networks with access limited to certain people (employees of > companies or groups of companies, universities, etc) seem to work ok; what > generally doesn't seem to work are public buses.

This sounds like an argument for restricting transit access to the most privileged members of society. The real reason private buses are successful is because they have a limited amount of stops, it's more like riding a train than a local bus that stops at every block. If anything cities should be investing way more in BRT, as the private sector has proven that high quality buses can work.

<comment><USER24> Diesel buses are very energy efficient. Electrified rail is surprisingly inefficient.

Building bus rapid transit lanes makes more sense than spinning up a light rail infrastructure almost any way you measure: capital costs, energy, maintenance, flexibility...

I also wonder how much sense intercity rail even makes for most trips. If you could set aside a lane for buses only on I-95 Boston to DC (for example), you could have a bunch of routes that go directly from various neighborhoods to other neighborhoods at mostly 110 mph.

<comment><USER25> >"Diesel buses are very energy efficient. Electrified rail is surprisingly inefficient."

I would really like to see a citation, because I find that _extremely_ hard to believe.

<comment><USER22> Really depends on ridership. There's also pollution other than just energy inefficiency; old diesel buses with low ridership put a lot of particulates and other pollution into the air, compared to the same number of passengers in the newest petrol (or cleaner diesel, or obviously electric) cars.

<comment><USER25> Sure, an older diesel bus with just 2-3 people on board is obviously less efficient than a car with 2-3 people on board.

But you also have to factor in that most buses run for a lot longer than the average car, sometimes decades and millions of kilometers. Most of the time they're not even "put to pasture" because they're worn out, but because newer buses are more efficient and have more creature comforts. So the older buses are brought in when for instance there is rail maintenance and you have to replace a train line with buses. In comes the old stock, still pulling its weight.

This also ties in to the environmental load of producing new cars/buses, you need a lot less raw material to make a bus that moves 60 people, compared to the cars needed to move 60 people.

That's why old stock is cycled out regularly, to improve efficiency and reduce pollution on the busiest lines. The the older buses get moved to more sparse routes, with less busy schedules and less stop-and-go.

Where I live, a surprisingly big problem is actually that _too many_ people ride the buses during rush hour. Sometimes you just have to wait for the next bus to come and hopefully have some space for you. I'll admit that's really a luxury problem to have.

Public transport is vastly better for the environment and for congestion, unless nobody uses it. That takes investment, but politicians are way too quick to say "well no one's using it now, why should we invest?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Me: I would ride the bus if it was available more than once every 30 minutes. At this point it's faster for me to Uber.

City councilmember: why should we allocate even more funds to the busses? Nobody's riding them!

<comment><USER27> God I would love it Manhattan banned Uber and all non-commercial traffic (exile all civilian traffic to the highways and parking garages alongside them) and upped the number of buses. Clean new yellow cabs too and tougher requirements to drive them (raise the fares, I don't care).

<comment><USER28> It kind of works for Venice, it's so nice to be in a car free town with a slow but nice public transport (the vaporettos) so I started to dream about if it would be possible to a similar thing with buses, combined with the existing subway and trams, and just exile all cars.

The thing is that where I live, the bus network is heavily funded and I'm suspecting that it's probably operating already with too little efficiency most of the day and most lines - basically a lot of buses driving around nearly empty at times.

Since I bike in the city, I can't fail to notice that buses also seems to generate most of the dust, if not all of it - sometimes you basically have to stop and wait a few minutes if you are biking behind a bus, since it's not possible to neither see or breathe. Even on an at least nominally clean tarmac road. I haven't noticed that behind a Nissan Micra.

Further, large diesel engines running heavy start-stop duty cycles like buses probably generates unproportionally more particles than just about everything else.

Since this city have one of the highest count of both PM10 and PM2.5 - <USER3> could be either oil or dust - this also have got me thinking.

Where I live, the focus on buses is driven by a political agenda - <USER4> the environmentalists and the left have defined buses as "good" and cars as "bad" \- and I suspect regardless of any facts in the matter, exemplified in an interview where one politician admitted that they'd really love to ban cars even if the had no environmental impact at all.

I'm not particularly fighting for more cars and less buses, but I like my facts straight before implementing public policy. I haven't been able to find any official published statistics in fuel consumption per passenger mile for the public transport in the region - should be somewhat trivial to calculate now that every passenger conveniently carries a tracking device with them.

I also haven't been able to find any studies about particle emissions for buses and if it's possible to find any correlation between the ratio of buses to other traffic and particulates.

Unfortunatly, I suspect that research on topics like those is probably heretical and a thought crime in most Universities' departments for environmental studies.

Still, electric buses on the larger streets instead of vaparettos on the Grand Canal is a lovely thought.

<comment><USER29> _" Further, large diesel engines running heavy start-stop duty cycles like buses probably generates unproportionally more particles than just about everything else."_

The good news: electric busses are coming. City busses will be huge winners from electrification, both for economic and environmental reasons. Greatly reduced fuel and maintenance costs, improved ride quality, less noise and pollution.

<comment><USER30> Electric cars are coming too.

<comment><USER25> The problem with cars in cities is not just the pollution, although that is a _huge_ factor.

It is also the fact that they are grossly inefficient space-wise. The majority have only the driver (and maybe, _maybe_ a single passenger) in an otherwise empty car. Congestion would be vastly reduced if we could get most of those people on public transport or bikes instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I find it much more intimidating to take buses versus rail. For example, unlike most rail systems, buses will skip stops unless a passenger requests that the bus make a stop. Well, when I'm riding the bus for the first time or at night, it's quite easy to miss when I should request a stop. Meanwhile, if I take a train, I know the stations will stop at every station in its route and their are prominent signs at each station so it's much easier to figure out when I should exit the train. Plus often the same bus line may have different types of routes, such as an express route, so if I'm not careful making sure whether the bus has an X at the end of its name, I sometimes end up taking the wrong route that skips my stop.

<comment><USER32> _Well, when I 'm riding the bus for the first time or at night, it's quite easy to miss when I should request a stop._

I always thought it odd that MBTA buses announce the stop they're currently passing (too late to ask the driver to stop there) rather than saying which stop is coming up next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Buses have two main problems as I see it.

Number one is an image problem - they aren't sexy. Here in the States, we are obsessed with the 'European' way of life. Most major European cities have some form of streetcar system or underground metro, if not both. To us, those are sexy. Nevermind that those cities have buses, too.

The bus _could_ be more sexy. BRT with dedicated lanes, priority signaling, clean & modern interiors, at-grade egress, and most importantly, consistent and reliable service. Those changes would go a long ways towards making the bus 'cool' enough to ride.

The other is that because buses are inherently at least a little inconvenient, there has to be an incentive to use them. For most people, the main driver is financial. Ten years ago when the economy was shaky, I, a consistent multi- modal commuter, saw a huge uptick in the number of people riding the bus. When the economy got stronger and more surefooted, buses started to empty out again. Now I see fewer and fewer people of 'means' on the buses - the ones that remain likely don't have other options. When people can afford _not_ to be inconvenienced, they won't be - whether that means buying a parking pass, ponying up for gas & insurance, or taking rideshare everywhere.

<comment><USER34> I recently moved to Marin county and use the bus to commute to SF. The Golden Gate Transit buses are pretty amazing. They come on time, the seats are clean and comfortable, and they have (usually fast) wifi. The clientele is clearly professionals commuting to the city in the morning and evening, and it works.

Honestly, if more bus systems simply got wifi and nice seats, that would be a huge step forward. I've taken the Muni buses before, and they are frankly disgusting. I actually look forward to my bus commute each morning now.

<comment><USER35> Comparing those buses to those that serve other areas seems a little bit like admiring charter schools that only accept rich smart kids...

<comment><USER34> Why? Golden gate transit buses are public buses paid for by tax payer dollars and fares, like every other bus system. They are not private systems. What an odd time we live in, when being proud of our public civil infrastructure gets one labeled an elitist. Should I be ashamed of our schools as well?

<comment><USER36> I think it is reasonable to point this out. When I lived in Seattle, I took the express buses between Seattle and Redmond on a daily basis. They sound like the ones that you describe. However, the buses within the city of the Seattle were a completely different situation. Messy, smelly, and often carrying people who could be upsetting or at least make you feel uncomfortable. Taking a bus originating from the second-wealthiest county in the United States should not be regarded as a typical experience.

<comment><USER34> But the government funding these systems is the same -- the state of California.

Also, the Marin system still deserves commendation. First of all, while it is a rich county, there is still a large wealth gap. There is a substantial number of obviously poorer people on the buses as well. Some routes mainly serve disadvantaged areas. Yet, the buses serve everyone, and people still want to ride them. And they're still pretty nice. Why punish people who may already be struggling with an awful bus ride?

Secondly, the counties to the south of San Francisco are pretty darn rich (probably richer than Marin, TBH), and their public transit options suck. I spent many years in south bay, and despite all the money people throw around there, the bus system was awful.

There are certainly poorer areas in the United States where the main factor limiting adoption and tech improvements is a lack of funding. However, there are also plenty of really rich counties (in California at least) where the lack of a good bus system is simply due to a complete unwillingness to invest in good public infrastructure.

<comment><USER36> [http://time.com/money/3014512/richest-wealthiest-highest- inc...](http://time.com/money/3014512/richest-wealthiest-highest-income- counties-america-united-states/)

It seems that there aren't many counties richer than Marin. And, a large wealth gap may just mean, there are some rich people, and some really rich people. Are the "obviously poorer people" still on iPhone 6's and 2015 MacBooks? (ok that part is sarcasm).

The point is, if you are getting the bus in Marin county, you are getting on the bus with others who are also in Marin county. That is going to heavily bias the experience because of the people, not the quality or cleanliness of the bus.

<comment><USER37> Marin City and San Rafael's Canal district are generally poorer. Also less well served.

Many people in San Rafael and Novato are fairly solid middle class. Outlying areas range from redic wealth to rural poor.

There's wealth, yes, but as with that future of Gibsons, there are somme kinks in the distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Buses are the public transport of last resort for very good reasons.

They go through all the busiest areas to maximize passenger numbers, which is what makes them slow.

Delays compound; since per-stop timetables are unpredictable due to traffic, buses normally just try to make the best time they can. Which means you wait for the bus, possibly for a long time. So a late bus becomes later, as it takes longer to board the extra passengers, and then the next bus catches up, and you get bunching.

You're much better off walking or cycling to a rail option if you have it. Buses in busy cities are barely faster than walking at the worst of times, especially when you add in waiting time.

As a result, the bus works best for those people who can't walk or cycle - <USER5> people, mothers with buggies - and poor people who have little choice but to sit in a bus for an hour or more as it crosses town.

Point to point longer distance, special purpose buses that don't need to follow main routes can work much better. Airport shuttles, work shuttles, that kind of thing.

<comment><USER25> You really should come visit Copenhagen sometime. Our buses work amazingly well :-)

The only times it gets a bit busy and bunched up is during rush hour, but I've rarely had to wait more than 10 minutes for the next bus, even in the worst cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I keep hearing a lot of anti-car sentiment on HN, and a lot of claims that cities with good public transit are wonderful. Amsterdam is often cited as an example. So I decided to find out for myself. I went there.

It convinced me more than ever that I will always prefer car/uber/lyft to public transit. Wait, hear me out.

Yes, buses and bikes were wonderful. But, they do not stop at my door, and they do not stop at where I want to go. Sometimes they stop close, sometimes a few blocks away. Lots of people will argue that this is OK, but it really is not when the weather is a freezing rain. So basically to subscribe to your vision of the future city, I have to subject myself to walking and waiting in freezing rain?

No thanks. Car/Uber/Lyft for me.

PS: I am not saying let's stop having buses. Just that everyone who claims that _everyone_ should be on buses and we should ban cars from cities is delusional or a masochist.

[bring on the downvotes, thanks for proving the point that no rational debate can be had here]

<comment> et-al > _But, they do not stop at my door, and they do not stop at where I want to > go. Sometimes they stop close, sometimes a few blocks away._

I think it's reasonable to expect a commuter to walk 4-5 blocks on either end of a ride unless they happen to be handicapped. And winter jackets, boots, and umbrellas are available for the conditions you've mentioned.

No one is saying we should ban private cars from cities. Those will be needed, but they should definitely not be the default mode of transportation for most urban dwellers.

<comment><USER36> From this same thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17034959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17034959)

> God I would love it Manhattan banned Uber and all non-commercial traffic > (exile all civilian traffic to the highways and parking garages alongside > them) and upped the number of buses. Clean new yellow cabs too and tougher > requirements to drive them (raise the fares, I don't care).

<comment><USER40> Manhattan is not a city, it's the smallest borough of a city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I love light rail, not the bus:

[http://setosa.io/bus/](http://setosa.io/bus/)

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

<comment><USER42> In Portland, OR, the light rail does 'train bunching', with the exact same consequences (inconsistent schedule, overcrowded trains followed closely by empty ones, etc).

<comment><USER41> Yup!

The fix is to prioritize trains over _all_ other street traffic, especially cars. (I suppose you could do this with buses, too, but people don't really see it that way because they have rubber wheels just like cars...)

<comment><USER43> Buses in my country have priority over all other street traffic. They never have a red light, it goes to green automatically when the bus arrives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> There is a huge problem here - we are designing cities around the manually operated car, focused on the commute to and from work (and lesser extent school)

But these are dying trends - but they will be baked into our cities by concrete and tarmac for decades.

I travel by coach from outside London (basically they drive round a commuter belt town picking up about 30 people then hop on a motorway. Dozens maybe more of similar coaches run each day). And I work in the City and right now there are, I kid you not, a major 50+ storey building going up on each point of the compass at work. London is adding major office space.

But the jobs will become more remote working - and the infrastructure can barely take it - funnelling millions of people from suburban beds to inner city offices is what half the infrastructure of a city is _for_.

When this stops, it will stop suddenly.

Remote working is _nicer_. you spend more time with your kids, you walk, take part in your community, see people.

It wins hands down.

So when something shifts, and remote working hits that tipping point, what happens?

My last position almost everyone did one day a week from home. Turn that into three at home and 2 in meetings and coffee and ...

I'm sorry there is a point i am making but it's late and i need to think on it

</comment><comment><USER45> Nah how about we all work from home 2 or 3 days a week. People will actually do that and it saves not only the city but whole bunch of other things for the employee and the employer.

<comment> munk-a People remoting might have a detrimental effect on cities. Some business (especially restaurants) make the majority of their money off of regular customers during business hours, these are extremely healthy businesses for a city economy.

I don't disagree that we should probably all remote more, but don't think it it all up sides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Here's a possibly dumb proposal: don't support wheelchairs on buses, instead give them a city/state-run uber-for-wheelchairs service. The problem is that supporting wheelchairs adds an inordinate burden to buses and makes sticking to a schedule completely impossible even if there is no traffic. If you want to take the bus 3 miles, a wheelchair user getting on could double your ride time. So would giving the wheelchair users their own service actually even cost much on the net? Presumably the bus service could save money by not handling wheelchairs on the bus while still sticking to a given level of service and reliability.

I'm not sure it's economically feasible but if service to wheelchair users improves too then it might be something you could sell as a good thing above and beyond the improvements to the bus service.

<comment><USER47>
      instead give them a city/state-run uber-for-wheelchairs service

The San Jose area has that: "Paratransit". It was supposed to serve mobility- impaired people who have difficulty using buses (although all buses have lifts).

As it turned out, they just let anybody ride who has the gall to call them. 90% of their trips amount to a taxpayer-subsidized cab service for the self- important.

The award of the contract was suspect, too, and the subcontractor had to be dumped at great expense... just like the county's ambulance contract with Rural/Metro.

<comment><USER48> That's unfortunate. However this sounds a lot more like corruption and a shady business issue "fulfilling" a contract, or a /very/ poorly written contract.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I ride the bus every day and honestly, if it's not crowded, it's usually more comfortable than sitting in a car. You don't have to strike up conversation with anyone or anything either. You can usually bust out your laptop too. I sometimes avoid taking the express buses to work because I know I'll get a seat on the local bus, even if it takes an extra 10 mins.

My biggest issue is I systematically underestimate the time it takes me to get to the stop (I use bus trackers and leave with the minimum amount of time required to make it to the stop), so I often end up running or sometimes barely miss the bus.

</comment><comment><USER36> One thing that seems to have not been addressed here is noise. I was just on a quick walk in downtown Sydney, Australia. It was so loud on the sidewalks, with buses seeming to contribute a huge portion of noise. Additionally, the diesel exhaust can be stifling particularly in these urban corridor situations where the buildings trap the fumes. I would much rather be walking next to 50 Prius/Camry taxi cabs and a few private vehicles than 10 loud buses. I agree with the idea of bus utilization in cities but there are certainly some downsides.

<comment><USER49> Electric buses and CNG buses are already here, and they are quieter. It might take some time for Sydney to retire old diesel buses, but they won't be that loud & fumey forever.

<comment><USER50> CNG buses don't seem to do as well as diesel with hot weather and lots of hills, two things Sydney has an abundance of. A few have also caught fire. That said, Sydney's CNG buses are pretty old now so maybe the tech is updated.

<comment><USER49> Ironically, that makes it sound like Sydney is a great place for cable trolley. No engine whatsoever, works great on hills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can someone explain why it's so common for buses in the US to stop every damn block? In SF even some subway lines do this. This seems like the surest way to render the mode of transportation entirely useless.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm of the opinion that buses are the best candidate for the first mode of road transport that can eliminate road deaths for passengers.

They're driven by professional drivers who don't drink, have strict rules about the amount of rest, don't speed and typically (far more than amateurs) drive in a predictable sensible manner.

Certainly in Belgium it's down to single figures per year. The crashes that do occur are usually caused by amateur drivers in cars, the driver falling unconscious or something like a tire blowout.

I think passive neural networks can be trained to take over if the driver becomes unwell (this was one of Musk's claims for the Autopilot in the Tesla Semi) and I think they can be trained to handle the situation of a tire blowout better than a human.

The final issue is amateur drivers. Not much can be done about them until we reach level 4 automation.

</comment><comment><USER52> I have mixed feelings towards the bus. The light rail is okay, the underground is great, but the bus experience is...greatly variable.

<comment><USER53> Getting to the underground platform and getting back to street level adds 5-10 mins of wasted time which the bus makes up for but the problem with buses is traffic. It's taken me 1 hour to go a mile and a half in London more than once in areas where there is a congestion charge (toll to discourage private cars) in place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Similar to lyft line we want these services to be convenient to the passengers at the same time there is a pool. Based on location and time we might need to change size of the bus and also reduce the number of stops. Unless this is solved no one is going to use it nor going to be profitable

</comment><comment><USER55> With the push for self driving cars, I'm surprised I haven't heard anything about self driving buses. It seems like it would be a slightly simpler problem to have a self-driving vehicle along a predefined route.

<comment><USER51> There are, Mercedes has built one [0]. But this suffers from the same problem as Autopilot/Uber crash that it's not fully autonomous so the bus driver has to stay alert whilst doing nothing.

[0]: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/18/self-driving-mercedes- benz...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/18/self-driving-mercedes-benz-bus- takes-a-milestone-12-mile-trip/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> My favorite line ever from any kids book of all time "The Bus is For Us" [https://www.amazon.com/Bus-Us-Michael- Rosen/dp/0763669830](https://www.amazon.com/Bus-Us-Michael- Rosen/dp/0763669830) "The bus is the best, the best is the bus, the bus is the best because the bus is for us!"

</comment><comment><USER57> We need to start planning cities and towns in terms of foot traffic and stop assuming the need for other forms of transportation.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would if it didn't smell terrible, have extremely limited routes across the state and ran a little more often...

</comment><comment><USER59> Buses fucking suck.

Buses make you wait in the rain.

Buses get stuck in traffic very easily.

Buses create traffic and make it worse with their size.

Buses idle diesel fumes as they stand in traffic.

Buses are noisy and idle outside of homes.

Bus stops in front of homes are filled with noisy people.

Buses that permit requested stops go nowhere slower than ever.

Buses are a half measure.

Buses fucking suck.

<comment><USER60> And, where I'm from (Cambridge, UK), they also:

Are more expensive than driving.

Are regulated in such a way that prevents a competitive market.

Are run by profit making companies that demand subsidies from government.

Don't run at night.

Are full at rush hour.

Spend ages at the bus stop while everyone buys tickets, argues with the driver, asks which bus this is etc etc.

A single ticket can't be used on buses from two different companies.

I cycle. The buses seem like a threat to my safety because they are too big to overtake safely on a busy street. Also their engines are at the back, so I can't hear when they're sneaking up behind me.

Once they don't need a driver and are electric, most of these problems could be solved. I'll re-assess then.

<comment><USER25> Come to Copenhagen and see how a unified public transport system is _supposed_ to work. My tickets work for _all_ buses and _all_ trains equally.

Don't blame public transport as a concept, blame private profiteering and corruption.

<comment><USER60> I've been to Copenhagen. I noticed you have a lot of cyclists! But no, I agree with your point. I think that is the main problem.

<comment><USER25> I've been told by a US expat that we must have "the fittest fat people in the world", since everyone bikes here. Young, old, fit, fat, everyone bikes :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Transit ridership is down across the country:

[https://www.nationaltransitdatabase.org/national- statistics/](https://www.nationaltransitdatabase.org/national-statistics/)

I just don't see how you convince people to ride the bus vs rides haring. The bus is virtually always incredibly inconvenient and slow. It really is a last resort mode of transportation. It's no surprise that virtually all transit agencies across the country are seeing dramatic declines in bus usage since 2014.</comment>


Boris Johnson Asks Queen to Suspend UK Parliament Ahead of Brexit - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/brexit-parliament-suspension-gbr-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> Really interesting that the Queen of England got involved in this. I do hope they get a deal. Currently here in Ireland and we don't know which way they will go.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the Queen has much of a choice. I think it is a binary choice and she has been forced into it - she can either give her consent or not give the consent, she cannot abstain from it. Either way she would be accused of aiding the other side.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can my girlfriend get plugged into a startup? - <AUTHOR>

tl;dr:  My amazing, beautiful, and talented girlfriend is really interested in the startup world but can't code or design.  Does anyone have a void in their startup she could fill?  Maybe a customer interacting, support, organizer, or assistant type role?
HN has been the source of several jobs and work for me and I thought I'd put this out there to see what the community thinks.  In a more general sense, how can we include women that can't necessarily code or design?  If we need more women in tech, there has to be a good way.  The women who may start out not being able to code or design may spark their interest and inspire them to learn when they are in that environment.
My girlfriend would love to be in the same realm as I, but isn't sure how she can be of use.  Too bad we aren't in SF or close-by either.  Does anyone have any ideas?  If you'd like to know more about her I'll send her information onto you and you can chat. <comment><USER2> I believe it would be easier for someone to reply if she (you) can identify at least some areas she can be of value, has any type of experience or even interest alone. Usually startups are about optimizing value each one adds to the total. For some ideas of areas/skills she could be helpful look this post from today: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5210184> Not that she (or someone else even) has to master all items listed there, but shows what some startups may be looking for (or need help with).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, good call. She's 19 and currently in school to be a teacher of little kids. In the meanwhile and even after she graduates she said she wanted to explore startups and finding a role that uses her personality traits that are good with people such as being very empathetic and a good communicator. Blogging, social media, public relations, customer service, organizing, handling and giving feedback, etc are all things I could see her doing.

Edit: Also I've been seeing people that hire interns that can be users for early stage startups. Stuff like that as well. It wouldn't have to be high wages either for starting out or interning.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you don't have a position available, but know of where to even look for these types of things, that'd be good too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A better question might be: What would you pay someone a thousand dollars a month or less to do for you that would allieve some headaches that you have that are fairly straightforward?</comment>


Global spam e-mail levels suddenly fall - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12126880

<comment><USER2> Maybe a lot of people bought new PCs for the holiday season, crippling the botnets that used to rely on older (less secure) versions of Windows?

<comment><USER3> It's not as sudden as that.

For reference, I admin a mail server for a small charitable organisation, and our mail graph for the last year looks like this:

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4957647/mailstats/mail.png>

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4957647/mailstats/rejected.png>

Where the grey is spam filtered by spamassassin and the red is obviously spam rejected outright due to an invalid recipient or an impossible sender or whatever.

The previous year's trend looked sort of similar - I think 2007 or 2008 was the peak in terms of spam we receive and it's been declining on average since then.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for showing some actual data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have noticed an absolutely huge decrease in the amount of spam arriving at my main domain. Right now I'm receiving 15-20 spams a day, which is a tenfold reduction. My domain's hosted by Google, and the decrease has been so noticeable that I have an entry on my to-do list to start hunting through GMail's help and blogs to see if they've implemented something new. It looks like I've found my answer!

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I noticed the same, not on my own domain but on my gmail account. Since old spam is auto deleted from the spam folder at 60 days age the counter next to the folder is a good proxy of a 60-day moving average. A couple years ago mine was close to 10,000 spams for 60 days, currently it is at 1,444 (which is up from a week or two ago when it was at 1,310).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any chance that someone has started to terminate the botnet owners, rather than the botnets themselves?

<comment><USER8> This would explain the "Became a Gmail Ninja" marketing: www.google.com/mail/help/tips.html

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because the resources are now dedicated to SEO?

<comment><USER10> What people don't like to admit about spam, is that it created value for somebody. This is why some people clicked on the ads and why others profited.

SEO Spam creates value. Unfortunately, it also degrades value for a great many others. There is opportunity here. Google or some other search engine needs to figure out how to capture the value in SEO spam. (Perhaps by finding a way to identify "original pages" like those on StackOverflow and then act to enforce their terms of service?)

<comment><USER11> > What people don't like to admit about spam, is that it created value for > somebody. This is why some people clicked on the ads and why others > profited.

By this same logic, you can justify the heroin trade, the slave trade, and the child pornography trade.

<comment><USER9> Yaye for libertarianism! Oh wait, these things are a net-negative for society and those involved. Never mind, argument is null.

<comment><USER12> Obvious trolling, but the slave trade and child pornography probably wouldn't be down with most libertarian principles. The core I've seen from most libertarian folks is "Do what you want to yourself, but don't harm other people." Slavery and child pornography are fairly obviously harming others. Heroin is trickier.

<comment><USER9> Agreed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Perhaps, the Daemon(<http://thedaemon.com>) has been activated?

</comment><comment><USER14> Weird, I've started getting more spam in my inbox than ever before. My gmail used to be entirely clean, and now I get a few messages daily that sneak past the filter.

<comment><USER15> I've noticed this too, with spam that doesn't look too different from the usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if the rise of gmail's (and other) spam filtering has made the practice of email spamming less lucrative and thus less popular among the spamming folks.

</comment><comment><USER17> Could also be a side effect of government efforts to close any security holes that have been or might be used by Wikileaks. Wouldn't have to be limited to US govt, could be others too. All speculation until more evidence comes to light.

</comment><comment><USER18> Looking at some mailserver spam filtering log.... spam levels have dramatically dropped, but they also dramatically rose before that. At this point what I'm looking at is only slightly lower than things were in early december.

</comment><comment><USER19> Once enough people have switched to Facebook as their main means of digital communication, the spammers will finally give the rest of us a break.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it a sure sign of the effect hacker news has had on me that my first thought was "ooo... a hole in the market, I wonder if I could write something to fill that niche"

Meh - spam email has too many legal headaches. I'm sure you can make money doing it, but I tend to think it's a bit more trouble than it's worth.</comment>


If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/dont-use-google-allo <comment><USER3> "Let that sink in for a moment: The selling point of this app is that Google will read your messages, for your convenience."

If that's the author's objection, it's like the author never heard of Gmail.

[https://developers.google.com/schemas/tutorials/google- now-c...](https://developers.google.com/schemas/tutorials/google-now-cards)

<comment><USER4> Gmail? What about Google Search? It knows more about a man than his wife, doctor and lawyer combined. But Google convinced us to happily give up our privacy, for the amazing advantage (no sarcasm) of searching the internet. Maybe it was worth it, but Alo doesn't offer any ground breaking service.

<comment><USER5> The demo showed only some use cases which mostly look like first world problems, but i personally see a huge need for this. I mean there are millions of people who plan things over chat and Google showing search results for movies, restaurants, flight ticket prices etc in the chat which can be viewed by all the users is very huge IMO. Also, if they open up the platform for other bots like Google, basically we are seeing a FB messenger bot like platform. I will just open the incognito mode they are offering if and when needed.

<comment><USER6> Why not just install a keylogger on all google devices?

<comment><USER3> Lack of useful semantic context to guess at the meaning of the keylogged strings making it more difficult for the data to be combined with the user's existing data to help them solve problems.

... but I know you were just being facetious. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the usual privacy hysteria knee-jerk reaction: "Watch out, the big companies are going to get data on you!".

And people are going to react exactly like they've done before: if the service is worth it, they'll be happy to trade a few bits of privacy about themselves in exchange for the benefits.

Also, I'm not sure the author of this piece understands what encryption is about since he laments that most people don't search with https on. Er... what? If you want Google to search something on your behalf, they have to be able to read the words you type. Encrypting these words so Google can't read them would be comically useless.

<comment><USER8> Of course you have to send Google search queries. Of course it would be a whole lot more elegant on their part to have a simple SLA: "We use the search queries for the express purpose of answering your queries. We do not hold on your personal information for more than XX minutes, neither in personalized nor in aggregated form." It's not that hard, a 30 people organization can pull it off, [https://duckduckgo.com/about](https://duckduckgo.com/about).

Even better if there were a law that would require internet service providers to provide such a guarantee for people that want it. Make the tradeoff between a few bits of privacy and the benefits realistic, not "either you surrender your privacy, or live as an Amish".

<comment><USER5> And in this case, what do you think would be the motivation of companies like Google who uses data to monetize for any innovation and provide better service? Companies have to sustain and the only way to be sustainable at that scale as Google is to monetize using the data. You can always go incognito.

<comment><USER9> > _And in this case, what do you think would be the motivation of companies > like Google who uses data to monetize for any innovation and provide better > service? Companies have to sustain and the only way to be sustainable at > that scale as Google is to monetize using the data._

How about we don't allow companies to monetize any other way than directly? E.g. by having paying customers for their services?

Killing all ad-supported BS will make the internet so much better.

<comment><USER10> For rich people at least...

<comment><USER9> Poor people are the one's who suffer the most from advertising.

First, it's calculated that a hefty sum of most product purchases is there to cover its advertising campaigns.

If you're rich of course those are peanuts -- what's 10% or 20% more on your groceries and other such purchases? Instead of, say, $40,000 you'll spend $45,000 but no big deal, since you make $1,000,000 per year anyway. But for a poor person, $500 vs $600 is a much bigger deal.

Second, most people (even if they think otherwise) would buy less stuff, and less pricey stuff, if it weren't for advertising. That's what sells a $2 dollar bottle of water that's basically glorified tap water over a 50 cents one, or even regular tap water. Without ads, it's mostly buying what you need, and based on utility, not rushed purchases because some ad hit some subconscious emotional strings.

Let's put it this way: if you're worth $N dollars to Google, those are $N dollars (and more) that Google ads will get you to spend. Advertisers (and companies getting advertised) are not doing it to lose money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I pay cash for all my transactions.

I don't own a car because I fear that the registration systems for licensing and taxes will gather information about me and we know that those government data systems are most vulnerable to attack.

When I travel, it's by bus only - requiring a form of identification at the airport is a front to government spying. Unfortunately, the bus systems are starting to require too much information as well and when this fully happens I'll have to stop traveling by this means too.

Voter registration is unfortunately a front for other malicious activities - such as jury duty, a state-mandated intrusion into my most private information and thoughts - not even bringing up electronic voting - so I stay away from those booths.

I find that just renting an apartment requires too much sharing of my personal information, I try to provide the minimum, but I still find my address on the web and you can see where I live on google street view which is very frustrating.

I don't talk to others and when I do, I don't tell folks anything about me, I'm concerned that they may tell others and pretty soon everyone is going to start showing up at my home and my job and frankly I don't want to answer my door buy their stuff - or worse - they could be hiding violent tendencies.

Today's society makes it extremely difficult to be a nobody. If I could crinkle into a ball and fade away, I would, but, unfortunately, I'm still breathing.

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry, but the obvious sarcasm expressed here is all too common among the slightly younger engineers and related tech company people I work with. They believe that trading traditional notions of privacy for the shiny, novel conveniences of Uber and Google Now is totally worth it, and they see no downside. There are a lot of reasons, I think. The biggest is that for most, there really isn't a downside, yet. How many people are now identifiably being turned down for jobs, apartments, dates, and airplane tickets based what the four or five companies that define our identities online record, store, calculate, and sell? But does anyone doubt that the private civic space in the real world is being slowly paved over by digital identity robber barons? All these friends of mine care about is getting into Google IO to help that company build Larry's libertarian island (look it up), without wondering why they might have been turned down for a ticket.

<comment><USER13> > How many people are now identifiably being turned down for ...

There's the rub. For the most part you'll never know, unless it reached epidemic proportions.

"Sorry the apartment's gone" \- Google told me you had financial problems 15 years ago.

"" (silence) - We infer from the internet you're gay so won't be offering you a job interview. It's illegal discrimination but can't be proven.

The effects of losing privacy in the scenarios you list are mostly invisible. The chilling effect on having legal but fringe or unpopular views has already been demonstrated.

So there is a downside for many. They just don't realise it.

<comment><USER14> ... but there is no downside for the vast majority... so, winning?

<comment><USER13> You can't infer that, just as I can't infer there is for the majority. There's not enough data.

I suspect there is downside for far more than is generally believed.

How many jobs carry some googling of candidate? Nearly all of them.

You can now discriminate against just about anything you can dscover in search. Politics, religion, "too many" photos of parties, pro or anti any topic. None of these things are the business of an employer or landlord and would never come up pre-google unless you _chose_ to share them in your application.

It's naive to assume none of these occur extensively. Gender discrimination has been illegal for years yet is still widespread.

<comment><USER14> But you are conflating two things. The data companies collect on me without me knowing is not related to the data that can be googled on me. Because I know about the later and have a level of control over it.

... what does your point have to do with allo ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Google would be insane to not offer some version of end-to-end encryption in a chat app in 2016, when all of its biggest competitors have it enabled by default._

Who are all of its biggest competitors? Messenger sure doesn't do this (does it even have E2E at all?), Skype doesn't, either. Telegram, even if you considered it a big competitor, did they finally enable E2E by default? Or do you still have to open a "secure chat" for e2e? Kakao, WeChat, ... who else?

Honestly, aside from WhatsApp, I can't even think of one which anybody would consider "big".

That's indefensibly different from "All".

EDIT: Cool, I just learned iMessage is encrypted e2e! That's "Two" :)

<comment><USER16> I think this is the most important to me. On Android, this is only the second app that is likely to have a large userbase and e2e encryption for chats. The fact that its opt-in is a non issue to me.

Didn't know WhatsApp had default e2e encryption. Might install it and check it out. I imagine it sends some sort of personal information back to the facebook mothership, though.

<comment><USER15> WhatsApp doesn't just have e2e encryption by default; they actually hired (or just contracted?) Moxie to implement the signal protocol:

 _Over the past year, we 've been progressively rolling out Signal Protocol support for all WhatsApp communication across all WhatsApp clients. This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10._

 _As of today [2016 /4/5], the integration is fully complete._

\- [https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp- complete/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/)

<comment><USER17> So did Google for Allo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I very much agree with the principle of restricting and monitoring the access law enforcement has to communications.

In practice, I weep for a third party that has to read the dumb shit I chat about.

If we do succeed in building a hell where a preference for Metallica in 1997 is grounds for any sort of consequences at all, I'm not going to blame my past self for foolishly broadcasting that preference, I'm going to blame my current self for cowardly compliance with the hell machine.

<comment><USER19> The issue with surveillance isn't that boring stuff might be surveilled. It's that the small fraction of people with interesting things to surveil will be surveilled.

I don't care if the NSA sees my communications. There's no real chance of them thinking I'm a terrorist. I emphatically __do __care if the NSA sees the communications of the next Malcolm X or Mohandas Gandhi or Harriet Tubman. Or worse, if that person is so afraid of surveillance a priori that they don 't bother becoming an activist at all.

<comment><USER18> I literally said _I very much agree with the principle of restricting and monitoring the access law enforcement has to communications._ in my comment.

People that are worried about the NSA (hopefully!) aren't making their choices based on this dude's article, which _is_ actually premised on it being important to protect your boring stuff from teh Google.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I didn't say you were wrong, just expanding on the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Turning on E2E encryption by default and using your chat data for commercial purposes doesn't have to be a zero sum game...

You can always extract important words from a "block" of chat messages, and feed that into your advertising engine, while keeping the exact sequence of your words and messages encrypted.

Now if the AI bots require the exact sequence of your words to do NLP processing, then yea, you're SOL until the mobile devices become powerful enough to do that processing locally on the device.

<comment><USER21> Well, it isn't truly end-to-end if Mallory is at both ends with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't come up with a sane reason why opt-in privacy is acceptable. Signal is handling the issues that may arise without any issues and whatsapp is just hiding complicated errors from it's users per default so they aren't confused, but they still get encryption by default in both cases.

Opt-in end-to-end encryption is an anti-feature.

<comment><USER3> Anti-feature for your use case. Plenty of people prefer to trade convenience for anonymity.

<comment><USER22> How is whatsapp not convenient?

<comment><USER3> In the future, "because it doesn't integrate with my email and search tools to make it easy to get metadata on what I was just talking about with my friends." Maybe. Seems to be what Google is betting on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I find it super interesting that this is on the front page at the same time as a ex-Google design ethicist is talking about respecting the user ahead of commercial interests.

<comment><USER24> It's always good PR to talk about doing things for the users. Then there's business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not so worried about it. I think Google Allo will get about as many users as Google Plus.

<comment><USER26> I think you're underestimating the amount of "integration" Google will do with this product to make it the default everywhere.

Google Plus started being integrated into the search results, Picasa, Youtube comments, Android app reviews, and every other place they could think of, basically making it the default Google authentication.

They eventually de-integrated Plus after tons of user complaints (and possibly seeing how horrible the product itself was).

<comment><USER27> You're right, but I would argue that the insane amount of over-integration was one of the main reasons that Plus failed. For once, here's to hoping that history will repeat itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Most people don't care, which means that if you want to chat with most people, you'll need to use mainstream tools.

If you don't want the features, then don't use them, but saying not to use the tool because you'll want the features that will take away privacy makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER29> What bothers me more than the lack of privacy or encryption is the idea that we are giving our voice to machines. We are moving to a society where we let technology speak to our friends and loved ones as if they were us. Something essentially human is being lost in that process.

<comment><USER30> On the bright side maybe we'll get to the point where the bullshit social media conversations are all done by bots. Then we can devalue and ignore them and only have to actually participate in actual conversations.

My bot can just continuously post variations on "Here is a belief, validate it!", "Accept this high status social posturing as true!", "My worldview has been questioned. Outrage! Let us form a mob and bully the outsider into silence!", "I have performed a meaningless I-am-a-good-person ritual, please reassure me that although my employment is based on doing harm to people I am still a good person". And other bots can respond with messages of vague support/retweets/likes/whatever.

Since we seem determined to allow others to control and influence our private conversations let's at least get something out of it.

<comment><USER5> Exactly! This is how we should we look at it. You don't have to type the obligatory "How Cute" kinda messages and rather spend time on other important things:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> After the Snowden stuff, I still find it hard to entrust Google and Facebook with the data necessary to provide the super-personalized experience despite the things they have done to try and win back confidence.

Since I still use Google and, to a lesser extent, Facebook products, they have lots of data on me already but these kind of products still give me pause as I think about what could happen. If my experience is like many others, that could make it harder for these types of new products to find the adoption had all the NSA stuff not been revealed.

From a marketing perspective, it could be a really interesting study into the impact of a brand violating the customer's trust and the government's role in forcing the behavior.

</comment><comment><USER32> I find the outrage about 'yet another chat app / why did you start over from scratch / why not replace Hangouts' interesting relative to this statement from the article:

> Allo is fundamentally different in this way than Hangouts or Gchat.

So either Google can merge Hangouts/Gchat into Allo, and this Vice author gets upset, or Google debuts 'yet another chat app' but then everyone's confused/annoyed there's so many chat apps from Google.

</comment><comment><USER33> Bad article. There is technological constraint that leads to inability to use _end-to-end_ encryption when using bots (note that they are not only Google's but also 3rt party's). Same is true for other messaging platforms that use bots including Facebook Messenger. Individual messages are encrypted inflight. If you need end-to-end encryption then use incognito mode. IMO this looks like a perfect balance of privacy and functionality.

</comment><comment><USER34> Make end-to-end encryption the default, with an obvious opt-out for those that want to take advantage of the AI assistance.

Alternatively make opting into incognito mode super obvious and easy as well (but in a way that preserves security) and allow an easy option to always keep it the default, too.

And if Allo is going to be the AI-enhanced messenger from Google, then why not make Hangouts fully e2e encrypted like Facebook made Whatsapp?! Unless they plan to kill Hangouts soon? But I doubt that's even a medium-term plan.

I think Hangouts is here to stay for at least another 5 years, unless they intentionally deprecate it in favor of Allo like they did with Gtalk. However going by the current reception of Allo, that also seems unlikely at the moment.

I plan on moving to Allo myself from Hangouts and the _only_ reason for doing that is the end-to-end encryption of Allo, considering Hangouts has none. So if they want more people like me to switch from Hangouts to Allo, then they'd better strengthen not weaken the Incognito mode (not just security wise, but usability wise as well).

Hopefully in the next 5 years we'll see AI-accelerators embedded into smartphone SoCs, so that most of the AI assistance that Allo can do now can be done locally, but I don't expect Google to push too hard in that direction, so someone else would have to take the lead (probably Apple, and I think they've already started doing stuff like that).

Also, this is somewhat wrong:

> _However, turning off location history means you have to type in your full > home address every time you want directions home._

You can set your home location in Google Maps, so then you won't have to use it as a "remembered location" through the location history system. I also think the starred locations will be saved similarly, and not through location history. So go ahead and turn off your location history.

</comment><comment><USER35> Opt-in encryption is no encryption.

<comment><USER18> It's the end-to-end part that is opt in. Normal messages are encrypted in transit and while stored and only the machine learning system has access to them otherwise.

[https://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2016/05/security-and- privacy-i...](https://vnhacker.blogspot.com/2016/05/security-and-privacy-in- google-allo.html)

Of course that means it is just Google policy protecting the messages internally and it probably isn't resistant to a warrant, but the messages are protected from other access.

<comment><USER36> > Normal messages are encrypted in transit and while stored and only the > machine learning system has access to them otherwise.

This is what stood out for me when watching the Google IO talk. It's about as encrypted as sending a plaintext email from one GMail user to another. Which is to say it's not "encrypted" in any meaningful interpretation of the term: Google has the plaintext, Google can change what systems access the plaintext and how; which includes complying with warrants - but also "becoming evil", if they find they have a business need to do so in the future.

It is nice that they at least provide some e2e encryption, but it's hardly much of a selling point of the service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> You can't have Allo's friendly and useful features AND have end to end encryption. Allo has struck a good compromise. Allo's secure mode is enabled by OWS, which has a very solid reputation for privacy. This along with new security features in Android N make Allo likely to be impervious to threats short of an NSA TAO full-on attack and/or a black bag job. It would be dumb to discourage use of such a tool.

<comment><USER38> You could have your server doing the search and aggregation job Google has centralized. Google could have sold those servers as home appliances, each of them spidering only those parts of the world our phones know we care about or we will. Travel next week to Berlin? Start downloading maps and transit schedules for there. I'm sure that it could be engineered to be as effective as what we have now. A centralized search engine would be ok. IMHO it would be a much better world but it's not how it turned out to be. Probably Google won't be as powerful as it is and they rationally made the choice, or they never considered the option. I bet on the latter.

<comment><USER3> Why would you bet on the latter?

[https://www.google.com/work/search/products/gsa.html](https://www.google.com/work/search/products/gsa.html)

<comment><USER38> I was thinking not about search but about a Google Now appliance running at home. My bet is that the general mindset at Google is about centralization. I can be wrong. But knowing everything everybody does is easy to convert into money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Don't Use Allo"

Wasn't planning on it. The people I communicate with use either Hangouts or iMessage. I don't have room for YAMS (Yet Another Messaging Service).

Google now has what? half doesn't ways to send messages? This time next year, how many will they have shutdown? I'm not moving until Hangouts is one of the victims.

<comment><USER40> *half dozen

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Gboard only receives search data, and they make a really big effort to tell you that.

</comment><comment><USER42> This kind of thing doesn't work. "Don't use X" is not advice most people are equipped to follow, and most of us who aren't trying to avoid prosecution from a state actor mostly end up wanting to talk to other people and so follow the herd no matter what our own preferences may be.

What's the solution? Instead of writing "Don't use X," write "Use Y." Don't use X, on its own, isn't actionable advice. Use Y can be.

</comment><comment><USER43> Well, hopefully google will have an option to turn off this predictive response stuff. I know I don't want it.

Frankly, about duo (the video chat app), I don't want the other side to see me without picking up... seriously what? I'm probably not their target demographic though with these apps.

</comment><comment><USER44> You can use google more or less via startpage.com

Supposedly this should provide more privacy. Email is a different story. Even hosting your own does not solve much. You could host yourself and use GPG but even this does not solve the problem with the metadata.

</comment><comment><USER45> Relax; it's a Google side product. With 95% certainty, it'll be dead within one year.

<comment><USER46> I consider myself an optimist, but it's hard to look at Google's history and not agree with you.

[http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google- projects](http://www.wordstream.com/articles/retired-google-projects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> With that logic - that the intent is only to gather data about you and the assumption that few will bother with privacy features - then nothing is stopping google from using an open protocol and client to promote transparency.

</comment><comment><USER48> "If you care about privacy, you shouldn't use your voice. Because the default is talking instead of whispering, if you aren't careful when discussing sensitive things, you might be overheard."

OK, reach and permanence are far greater with internet chat than with voice. But what we really need to teach our children is to be careful... full stop.

I like Google's suggested short reply options in Inbox, and look forward to the convenience of Allo's bot tech. I also applaud Google for providing a simple and easy way to switch to a private channel if it is needed - <USER2> that is something to celebrate instead of denigrate?

Edit: Small grammar fixes.

</comment><comment><USER49> Not knowing anything about the author's background, I can only assume he is not very technically knowledgeable, especially when I read:

> but how many people use Incognito for every search?

and then later:

> Likewise, it's smart to turn off location history in Google Maps because > once Google has that data, it's out of your control.

By providing inputs to either service mentioned (Google Search or Google Maps), you are already providing them with your "private data". That's the entire point: you give Google a set of keywords, and it gives you answers. If you didn't want Google to know what you're looking for, why would you tell them?

</comment><comment><USER50> > If you care about privacy, you should not use Google Allo

"set the fox to guard the henhouse"

It is not that Google is evil, or anything. Quite the opposite, it is probably as good as a corporation can get in that respect.

But they do have a vested interested to learn as much as possible about the users, so they can sell ads, so they can still continue offer amazing products and drive innovation.

Having said that, I would, and do, trust them with all my private data. Things that I would trust only to good friends.

However, if I really wanted something to be absolutely private, Google would not be my first stop. A combination for GnuPG and TOR, maybe, but not Google for sure.

</comment><comment><USER51> This, from a site with Facebook and Twitter buttons?

If you care about privacy, you should not visit Vice.com.

</comment><comment><USER52> One too many words. Should be...

"If you care about privacy, you should not use Google."

lol, it had to be said.

</comment><comment><USER53> Thank goodness some people are seeing this.

</comment><comment><USER54> Why are we worried about a chat app that hasn't been released yet?

</comment><comment><USER55> Gryzzl is real</comment>


Any good tutorials to learn hardware development for beginners? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "Nand to Tetris" is quite instructive.</comment>


Alaska Air Acquires Virgin America - <AUTHOR> http://www.differentworks.com/?eml=EML-_VX_20161214_DealClose_20161214:A1_Greeter_1a_%7C%7C20161214_ASVX%7C%7C&utm_campaign=20161214&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=TRANSACTIONAL <comment><USER2> Previous discussion, when the merger was initially announced, here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11421894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11421894)

<comment><USER3> Something similar to the Branson foreign ownership issue: Rupert Murdoch had to give up his Australian citizenship to be allowed to own US television stations.

</comment></comment><comment> the-dude If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline ( Richard Branson )

</comment><comment><USER4> Annoyingly, though, the two companies still don't talk when it comes to reservations. Recently I missed a flight from Portland, and since it was very close to the time the flight left they rebooked me on another flight. I asked both the Virgin and Alaska desks if I could get a flight on Alaska since it was earlier than the next Virgin flight (the next morning) but they don't communicate in that way and couldn't transfer it. They also said it'll be a year or two before the two systems merge to allow such a thing.

However, besides that slight inconvenience (which would rarely matter anyway) both of the company's customer services are great. Alaska is always great, on and off board, and Virgin is a pleasure to fly with because of their newer planes amongst other things. Hopefully the merger makes them both better than the already good level they are.

</comment><comment><USER5> So the merger made this new "entity" 5th largest airline in the U.S. after AA, Delta, United, JetBlue, Southwest. I guess it is considered an achievement for some.

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't that make it 6th?

<comment><USER5> Oh I didn't put that list in any order :) I am not sure if JetBlue is bigger than SW or vice versa.

<comment><USER6> I meant you listed five airlines bigger than Virgin/Alaskan, which would make it 6th.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now everything Virgin America will get much worse. Time to find a new miles credit card I guess.

<comment><USER8> I highly suggest you wait and see. I moved from LA--where I flew almost exclusively Virgin because they were fantastic--to Seattle--where I now fly exclusively Alaska and have an Alaska credit card.

The credit card is fantastic, their mileage program is generous, their partner network is wide, and in my experience, they've got really good customer service, both on the phone and in the air. They do a low-price guarantee so that you can call in and get refunds if the price of already-purchased tickets drop. Combine that w/ TripIt Pro, which gives you notifications when the price drops, and you can save a ton of money.

The downside? They're much lower tech than Virgin: typically no screens on the backs of seats (especially for shorter flights), less of the fancy check-in stuff, the app isn't SO slick. But I really think the value combined with a sense of "wow, that was actually a pleasant flight" more than makes up for it.

So I'm actually excited to see if we can get the best of both worlds: the technical innovation of Virgin with the no-nonsense customer experience of Alaska. :fingers crossed:

Either way, I'm stoked to have more places to earn/burn miles.

<comment><USER9> United is a better airline than Alaska if you're flying out of SFO... United.

Alaska doesn't even let you pay for E+ seats. Or have IFE. Or... working WiFi half the time.

<comment><USER10> United is hands down the worst airline I've ever flown. American, Virgin, Alaska are much better. Even Delta.

<comment><USER11> Baseline United service is deplorable. But they've become quite clever at providing better variants for people who fly them a lot. It's almost like being a party member in the old Soviet Union. You get the equivalent of your own, better-stocked stores, etc.

The private United lounges are quite nice. Tasty buffets and excellent coffee machines, at no additional cost. Lots of space and outlets to get some work done. Plus the staff at those lounges have access to all sorts of better tools to get you re-routed, improve your seat, etc.

I'm a mere MileagePlus Silver foot-soldier in their world. But the United Explorer credit card gets me a couple lounge passes a year. On occasions when weather has disrupted my intended flights, the Lounge Wizards have managed to get me astonishingly better arrangements, just because they can.

<comment><USER12> Not just for the baseline flier. My last flight out of SFO with United, I watched as the gate agent _called the police_ on a _first-class passenger_ for getting on the plane without first putting his standard-sized carry-on in the stupid little metal thing. I vowed to the gods in the heavens at that moment that I would never fly United ever again. I should mention here that three out of my last eight flights with United were delayed at least four hours, and we sat on the runway for most of that time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>