Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists - <AUTHOR> http://bicycletimesmag.com/if-you-build-it-they-will-ride-pop-up-bike-lanes-prove-that-demand-exists/ <comment><USER3> That's how bicycles came to the Netherlands. Many think bikes always existed since the beginning of time but that's not true: during the rebuild in the immediate post-war cities were designed around car-based transportation. Only after a couple decades, raised awareness about street safety , accidents causing death of children, the first Oil-shock and general tree-hugging '60s eco-friendliness did the country evolve into the cycling paradise it is now.

That is to say: anyone can do the same, anywhere. So get on with it.. :)

<comment><USER4> > anyone can do the same, anywhere.

I love Holland and I love biking but you guys have it easy compared to, say, Seattle where I live part-time. The hills make it a very different problem. I bike a lot but will still drive/uber when I can't deal with being crazy sweaty for a meeting or something.

I was very disappointed when they decided NOT to install electric bikes in the bike share system here. Electric bikes are the only way you'll get the ridership numbers needed in a place with the topography of Seattle. I also suspect it rains more in Seattle than Holland.

<comment><USER5> AFAICT Seattle has fewer hills than Aarhus, Denmark. 47% of commutes in Aarhus are done by bicycle.

<comment><USER6> It also does not appear to rain more in Seattle than in, say, Amsterdam:

[https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall- Tem...](https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature- Sunshine,seattle,United-States-of-America) [https://weather-and- climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem...](https://weather-and- climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Temperature- Sunshine,Amsterdam,Netherlands)

This is a cultural and legacy infrastructure problem mostly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a biker in Boston; I cycle 5 miles to work and 5 miles home on a daily basis. I think the city is doing an amazing job with what they are given but so many of the roads are just too narrow for dedicated bike lanes. Most streets have "sharrows" which is great but honestly what it comes down to is a lack of understanding on how to share the road. I'm constantly honked and shouted at for commanding full use of the driving lane when no bike lane is present, which is perfectly legal but often results in aggression from drivers. I've even had cars tailgate me and hit my back tire with their car.

<comment><USER8> It is pretty frustrating to be forced to go 10 MPH on a 30 MPH road. The roads also aren't designed for traffic to go 20 MPH slower than it ought to be, traffic starts to build up, causing more delays and frustration. I think we should be more accommodating of bikers, but asking them to share the road and be treated the same as cars is not the answer.

<comment><USER7> I mean, if we're talking about Boston then the roads weren't originally designed for cars either: they were created for horse drawn carriages. [http://www.mass.gov/eea/docs/dcr/pe/historic- parkways/4d72bd...](http://www.mass.gov/eea/docs/dcr/pe/historic- parkways/4d72bd01.pdf)

They have been engineered to accommodate cars, so now they're undergoing a renovation for bikes.

<comment><USER8> > so now they're undergoing a renovation for bikes.

Good! Renovate them to accommodate bikes. That's great, do more of that. But "sharing the road" is a terrible solution, which leads to the honks and dangerous situations the OP described. Neither the biker nor the drivers in the OP's post are in the wrong. It's just a really terrible situation that really should not happen.

<comment><USER9> > Neither the biker nor the driver in the OP's post are in the wrong

In the OP's situation, the drivers that exhibit aggressive and dangerous behavior are clearly in the wrong. You could argue that their frustration is understandable, but their behavior is certainly wrong.

<comment><USER8> So is the guy who steals an unlocked bike. What are you going to do? You're going to not create that situation in the first place. You're going to use a bike lock. "Share the road" is a dumb solution, as evidenced by the OP. It simply _does not work_. Find another solution.

<comment><USER10> To be clear: you think that someone stealing an unlocked bike is not "in the wrong"?

<comment><USER8> I agree I phrased that poorly. My point is humans are predictable. If you leave an unlocked bike, it will get stolen. Yes, it's the thief's fault and the thief is wrong, but you could have done something to avoid it, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Easily the biggest problem in the US with biking is that the infrastructure is, nearly without exception, absolutely atrocious.

Nobody would accept having only 'painted walk lanes' on busy streets to get around, much less having them appear and disappear from the road seemingly at random, and yet that's the default state of bike lanes in nearly all US cities.

If biking had as much infrastructure as even walking -- meaning, physically protected lanes on most streets -- Americans would bike in enormous numbers.

<comment><USER12> Minneapolis, MN is one of the exceptions. The city has invested in good bike lanes and as a result, people do bike in big numbers. Some folks bike year round, even when the temperature is well below freezing.

The city benefited greatly from some disused rail right-of-ways and turned them into completely separated bike highways. Many of the on-street bikeways that have been set up use plastic divider posts to signal to drivers separation. It's much cheaper than building grade-seperated lanes, but gives a real sense of protection to the bikers.

<comment><USER11> The thing is though, even for Minneapolis, the total length of bike lanes/paths amounts to what, _maybe_ 5% of the total length of sidewalks/walking paths? (spitballing here looking at Google Maps)

Which just strengthens my point: even quite modest efforts can result in big biking gains. And that's in Minneapolis, who nobody is going to accuse of having great weather for biking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This in Milan, Italy three weeks ago: [https://www.wired.it/lifestyle/mobilita/2017/06/01/milano- pi...](https://www.wired.it/lifestyle/mobilita/2017/06/01/milano-pista- ciclabile-attivisti-guerrilla-biking/)

It's on a narrow bridge quite dangerous for cyclists as cars tend to cut the turn to the left. After years of asking somebody decided to help themselves.

<comment><USER14>
        > i milanesi hanno percorso in media 18,6 miglia
        > in bici per andare al lavoro...
        > velocità media a Milano 14,8 miglia all'ora

"The Milanese cyclist averages 18.7 miles per day to go to work... at an average speed of 14.8 mph". Is my translation okay? That seems improbable [time & distance, not speed]: the _average_ Milanese cyclo-commuter takes over an hour each way? Currently 36C/97F in Milan.

Or is this per week? Is it current to talk in "miglia" in modern Italian? (though even km would be high IMHO).

<comment><USER13> That's so weird: nobody uses miles in Italy (or Europe, except the UK). I checked the article and the source is Strava Insight which probably defaults to miles. The journalist copied and pasted without converting the units into something readers would understand.

14.8 miles per hour is 23,68. I usually do 20 when I move in the city because I don't want to sweat and I don't see many bikers going faster than me. Maybe that's because only fast bikers use Strava and it skews distances and speeds.

<comment><USER15> I would never log my daily 3km ride to work in Strava, and I've had it count my after work singletrack romps as commutes. How strava thinks it can be a good source of commuter data is beyond me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The arguments for segregated cycle tracks (physical barriers) rather than cycle lanes (paint) can be answered by one question: "Would you let your child cycle here?" [https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jun/15/urban- planner...](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jun/15/urban-planners-let- child-cycle-here-denmark)

However the argument against cycle tracks focuses on resident car parking and becomes extremely political. So a key part of developing a good end to end cycle network, given that a network is only as good as its weakest link, is parking control. This is where paint fails and you create these bitty networks where drivers feel happy to park their cars in the cycle lanes, because they can.

A more interesting approach is to look at road capacity. A typical road consists of:

footpath|parking|lane|lane|parking|footpath = 19,000 pedestrians + 2000 drivers per hour => 21,000 people.

Converting this to: footpath|cycle track|lane|lane|cycle track|footpath = additional 14,000 cyclists per hour = 35,000 people

Providing a 67% increase in road capacity while protecting pedestrians, reducing congestion, and making a population healthier is a big win for any urban environment. Politcally this is finally becoming easier, but it is a fundemental recognition that our roads are not there to store private property.

More interstingly is that many cities are focusing on routes to centres of employment. The focus needs to be more on connecting schools to communities. An immense amount of congestion is caused by parents dropping their fat little kids off at school.

Analysis I did on UK Census 2011 data looking at range traveled across 112 towns and cities in England and Wales indicate 6 million residents drive to work in the city/town they live in. 1 million live within a 20 minute (2km) walk of work 3.5 million live within a 20 minute cycle ride of work.

Looking at Bath,UK that's about 20,000 local car journeys in a city that is 3miles in diameter. Add in the 5,000 kids being dropped off at school and you end up with 40,000 local car journeys.

BUT unless people feel there is a safe alternative choice this is not going to change and for some reason the UK seems fixated on strategic networks and hub centric public transport systems. Not actually fixing local journeys.

<comment><USER17>
      The arguments for segregated cycle tracks (physical
      barriers) rather than cycle lanes (paint) can be answered
      by one question: "Would you let your child cycle here?"

Where I live, when segregated cycle tracks meet T junctions the layout is often like so:

                                        |  C  |
      </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----|  a  |</comment><comment>--
      Cycles                          ◅ |  r  | ▷
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----|  s  |</comment><comment>--
                  divider               |     |
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----  Δ  </comment><comment>---
      Cars
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

This means cyclists using the segregated path have to stop to give way to cars at every T junction - whereas cyclists who don't use the segregated path can maintain a constant speed, with joining cars giving way to them.

This leads to a demographic split in cyclist behaviour. For children and cyclists who aren't in a hurry, the segregated path is more friendly - but for 'serious' cyclists and people in a hurry, staying on the road makes more sense. Especially if there's a high density of T junctions, which isn't unusual in some urban areas.

Fortunately, in my country there aren't any laws that force cyclists into bike lanes, so it generally isn't a problem. But any urban planner who wants 100% of cyclists segregated from traffic is going to have a difficult time on their hands :)

<comment><USER18> This is solved in the Netherlands, pretty much universally, by making the cars coming in from the side wait for the bike lane as well:

                                            |  C  |
          </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----Δ Δ Δ----
          Cycles                               r
          </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----  s  </comment><comment>---
                      divider               |     |
          </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----Δ Δ Δ</comment><comment>---
          Cars
          </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

So _if_ there's a bike lane, it counts as part of the car road in terms of right of way, even if it's separated by a divider.

<comment><USER19> This is how it's done in my area of the US, but I can tell you American drivers almost universally ignore where you're supposed to stop at a T junction, especially when turning right. It's maddening, multiple times I've had to leave the bike lane into traffic to get around a vehicle that isn't where it's supposed to be. I've never seen anyone get pulled over for this either because cycling isn't recognized as a "real" thing police need to take care of.

In short: The issue in the US anyway I think has a lot more to do with culture than with road safety and structure. If people gave a shit we'd make it work, but few here do (at least around where I live, northern midwest.)

<comment><USER20> Vehicles turning right is a big problem in the Netherlands as well. Not so much that they block intersections, but that bikes going straight have priority over the vehicle turning right, bikes take priority and then get in an accident. It doesn't matter who was right if you are dead.

In my experience, separate bike lanes are great for long stretches of road without intersections. Also quite safe on intersections with traffic lights if the bikes have their own dedicated time slot. (That's not always the case)

But when bikes going straight are encouraged to pass right turning vehicles on the right, it becomes a serious risk.

<comment><USER21> Actually, turning right is _mostly_ a solved problem in the netherlands. If you ever run into a situation where it's dangerous they just haven't upgraded that intersection yet. The solution here is to make sure a car has the space to make the full turn to the right _before_ encountering the cycle lane. That way the car driver doesn't have to look behind them for bikes, but can see them clearly out the front window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my day job I have simulated the effects of segregated cycle infrastructure on demand

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692316...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692316307256)

(above is out of date, more recent work under review: [http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/sdna/european-transport- conference-...](http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/sdna/european-transport- conference-2016/) )

So far I have shied away from simulating on-road cycle lanes, e.g. where motor vehicles and bikes are separated by a line of paint.

Firstly because the quality is so variable - hilarious examples about on the internet, and many cyclists would argue that a bad cycle lane is worse than none at all as it creates an expectation they should be riding in it rather than sharing the road.

Secondly because data on what's there - width, quality, obstructions - is so thin on the ground. (any time anyone wants to use deep learning to harvest this from streetview please go right ahead!)

Where am I going with all this? It's heartening to see a case where lines painted on the road actually made a tangible difference. I wonder how much came down to the temporary nature though - like some kind of campaign - <USER2> cultural effects are known to have a huge impact on cycling as well.

<comment><USER23> There have been a lot of lanes going in around Dublin, and frankly, most of them are useless.

Some of them are grade separated from the main road by a inch high curb. Just high enough to catch a wheel and cause a wreck.

Most of them just collect road debris like the shoulders.

Some of them are de-facto parking lanes.

Some of them are confusing enough that it's seriously unclear what the lane actually means. (I say this as someone who had to go through the whole driver licensing scheme here after 20 yrs driving in the US, so I've seen all the rules from the POV of an experienced driver.)

For example: [https://email@example.com,-6.1934201,90m/data=...](https://email@example.com,-6.1934201,90m/data=!3m1!1e3)

What the hell are those cycle turn boxes in the middle of the car lanes? They have a solid border, so they're 'mandatory'. They're unavoidable by cars. And if you're in one, you better have right of way already, because squishy. (and fwiw, the one other cyclist I saw at that junction was using the crosswalk).

And then there's the cycle lanes near Greystone where they exist for one block, then there's something that looks like a crosswalk for bikes, and they dissappear for a block, then they reappear again.

At some point, you just have to assume that some one with a can of paint is taking the piss and you just ride in a straight line like any other vehicle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ironically (perhaps?) I think in the US the cities are often doing a good job but suburbs are awful.

At least where I live, I can bike in my own neighborhood but to get from my neighborhood to the commercial districts where the actual jobs are I need to essentially go on a highway and share the road with 40 MPH cars.

When neighborhoods are spread out it makes biking hard. Where I am at least, neighborhoods tend to be connected to main (high speed) roads like Christmas lights. Thing is they aren't even far away... work to my house is 5 miles. An easy bike ride. Except part of that ride is a highway that I'd need a death wish to bike on and there are no back roads.

<comment><USER25> In my state it is illegal for anything but a motorized vehicle to be on the highway (and rightfully so as most traffic is 70 mph+ outside of rush hour). With rare exception I've seen cyclists on most of the busy multi-lane surface streets where it is 45+ and traffic is going 10-15 faster than that.

What metro area are you in? It seems odd that there are no surface streets at all between two points just a few miles away.

<comment><USER24> I'm in New Hampshire. Part of the Manchester-Nashua metro region or the Boston metro depending on which survey you use.

I think the word highway might have some regional nuance. Around here there are often open highways (highways with stop lights and connected side roads) and bikes are allowed to go on them. Although I wouldn't feel safe doing it. Bikes are not allowed on the kind of highway you are thinking of here either.

The speed limit on those roads tends to be 35 or 40 MPH. Not 65 like it would be on a large highway.

Edit: Here's an example from Nashua, NH (for privacy I found a place similar to where I live but not actually where I live).

Notice how the residential on the left is completely separated from the commercial on the right by "Daniel Webster Highway"... one could easily bike on that road if there were bike lanes but it is an extremely busy road and there is no safe way for a bike to take a left hand turn to get to the other side.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Daniel+Webster+Hwy,+Nashua...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Daniel+Webster+Hwy,+Nashua,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-71.4611499,2521m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x89e3ba75d16d96f7:0x261a0b96112fbe5b!2sDaniel+Webster+Hwy,+Nashua,+NH!3b1!8m2!3d42.7225921!4d-71.4440401!3m4!1s0x89e3ba75d16d96f7:0x261a0b96112fbe5b!8m2!3d42.7225921!4d-71.4440401)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> London has been doing a great job lately at improving cycle infrastructure. There is a new concept of a "cycle superhighway" \- sometimes that means a segregated bike path, like CS3 that goes from The Tower Of London, straight through to Westminster, sometimes it is paint on the ground. However it is much clearer to motorists as they paint the entire line bright blue.

What I've noticed too is you get increasing returns the more you build. Given a scenario where a chosen route is covered 50% by acceptable infrastructure, it makes you think if it's worth taking a bike. Improve some strategic junctions and roads, and the coverage of acceptable infrastructure may increase to 90%, at which point it's a no brainer taking the bike.

<comment><USER27> In SF there are plenty of bike lanes that are painted a vivid green (the whole lane, with a white lane marker line). I think it's fantastic. It's really very difficult to not notice that the bike lane exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That hypothesis does not seem to apply to Lisbon, Portugal so far. We have now around 60km of dedicated bicycle paths in Lisbon (not just cycle lanes, but actual separated paths) all built in recent years (and plans to double that very soon).

But, simply put, they are barely used.

A few things are different in Lisbon from a lot of Northern Europe cities: it's very hilly and windy, it has temperatures close to 40 degrees in the summer (we have AC throughout the tube network) and in the winter, when it rains it really pours (not that drizzle that you get in London for example).

I may be too early to call it, but not all cities are alike and many people here are very skeptic about whether general adoption will ever be reached.

<comment><USER29> I was just in Lisbon (lovely city). Hills aside, the metro is so good, it seems like a bike is just unnecessary (you have to store a bike, can't easily walk into shops, etc etc).

<comment><USER30> That's a problem that can be solved easily just by having a good and cheap city bike system. Oslo is also really hilly and the weather isn't the best, but since the city bike system was revamped in 2016 biking has exploded here.

[https://oslobysykkel.no/en](https://oslobysykkel.no/en)

One thing I really like about the Oslo system is how startup-like it is, unlike a lot of other systems which feel arcane.

The apps are flawless (there's no card), the design profile is fantastic [1], the bikes are good and light and they do a good job of communication [2].

[1] [http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo...](http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo_and_identity_for_oslo_bysykkel_by_heydays.php)

[2] [https://www.facebook.com/bysykkeloslo/videos/144834624185549...](https://www.facebook.com/bysykkeloslo/videos/1448346241855498/)

<comment><USER31> Cheap bike sharing schemes usually don't have gears. If you've ever been to Lisbon you'll know that will be an issue. Lisbon needs electric assist bike for a bike sharing scheme to work.

<comment><USER30> The Oslo city bike system costs 249 NOK/3 beers for a year and has 3 gears. More gears could likely be implemented if needed for not much more.

I don't see why city biking would be any different than other biking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting. For the cyclists out there, would you pay out of pocket for a bi- directional elevated bike/walk-run track, with access from every street intersection, Japanese-style underground bike garages and automatically- cleaning showers/toilets at public transit intersections? If so, how much? I would, at $0.25-0.50 per mile, $0.25 per hour storage, and $2 per use of showers. I don't know if that would pencil out even in heavy cyclist commuter traffic, though.

I envision a high-tech track that uses redox batteries around its foundations, replaceable solar panels around the sides, is very brightly-lit, uses every 10 meters PTZ lenses on fiber optics leading back to a centralized, multiplexed bank of 2K and 4K video cameras backed by a deep-learning vision system, and easily-accessible emergency boxes every 20 meters to put female customers at ease. Emergency boxes vend bike repair kits (tire, chain, hex wrench, _etc._ ), vend first aid kits, have an omnidirectional microphone listening for calls for aid, and of course a Big Red Button. Water is captured, filtered and stored for a cleaning robot to use later to maintain the track, solar panels, and awnings. Clear awnings automatically come out of housings, then raise and lower to shield from excessively-hot sun and inclement weather. Cleaning robot runs along a high-speed rail hanging on outside of track, multi-purposed to perform simpler replacement-style maintenance duties (replace vending supplies, replace awning, _etc._ ).

<comment><USER33> What are you talking about? Can you define some of the problems you're trying to solve? It feels like you're writing a parody of something. The post is about keeping bike lanes simple and cheap so we'll just build them already. Yours is the opposite, no?

<comment><USER32> In the US, obtaining right-of-way to build bike lanes in metropolitan areas is infeasible. I've sat in neighborhood meetings with my state's Department of Transportation engineers and planners discussing main artery expansions, and they explained that there isn't sufficient demand for bike paths to include them in any new planning funded by taxpayers; whenever they've tried to include dedicated bike lanes in the past, they were shot down first by politicians looking to curry the fiscal conservative votes, then by special interest groups protecting a car-based culture (housing developers, chambers of commerce, _etc._ all see dedicated bike lanes as yielding less traffic to their planned projects). However, obtaining right-of-way to privately build an elevated path, they conceded, while not easy, was more feasible because someone else foots the bill. The problem is no one has figured out a design that can feasibly pay off.

If you can obtain the right-of-way for an elevated path, then what would you design for it that makes it pay off at least a little above break-even?

Generally, I take this as a sign that in the US, unless you deliberately attract a demographic to a specific concentrated area that consciously chooses biking as a major transportation mode, namely, a master-planned community/town built around biking and public transit, cyclists are SOL to comprehensively expand biking for the foreseeable future in most US metro areas outside of "bike ghettos" where there is a strong cycling culture. I'd love to see as much biking for normal daily activities as we saw in mainland China before they opened up to the West, but in the US in many areas it is legitimately risky to bike (despite the actual risk of fatality on a bike gradually dropping over the past three decades).

So a related hypothetical is, if you were in a high-density (say, 30K per square mile scale density) city designed from the beginning for walk/run/bike/public-transit transportation, what kind of bike paths would you want?

The article describes intra- and inter-neighborhood scale at best, but doesn't address efforts to solve US commuter distances, which invariably involve highways. That seems an insoluble challenge at the moment in the US.

<comment><USER33> I hope this isn't too unfair an analogy, but your idea reminds me of trying to get wealthier people to ride buses with wifi and frills, when it's consistent, frequent, reliable service that they want (just like everyone else; the difference is the poorer people on the bus don't get to fall back on anything else.) In the same way, the staples for biking are probably safe/moderately convenient access to many places (not a single or even a couple of linear paths) and safety from negligent drivers.

Like buses, I'm afraid that you're just throwing yourself at a wall as long as our development pattern provides such an enormous subsidy for cars. Also like with buses, I would love to be proven wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This doesn't really prove anything. My observations from Vancouver where a lot of time and money has been spent on bike lanes over the last few years: (I'm a non car owner, mostly pedestrian)

\- Pilot projects are not representative of actual long term use. When Burrard bridge lost a footpath to a temporary cycle lane, as a regular pedestrian commuter I saw a brief spike in cycle traffic but then a big drop off again.

\- Cycle lanes have a negative impact on both car and foot traffic. The Burrard cycle lanes increased the length of my commute on foot (footpaths were converted to cycle lanes that went empty much of the time) and disrupted car traffic causing delays to drivers.

\- Expensive but poorly thought out physically separated bike lanes made intersections more dangerous for cyclists (who would go faster and slow down less for cars) and pedestrians (cyclists are silent and frequently ignore traffic lights)

\- On street parking is frequently lost to new cycle lanes that frequently sit unused.

\- There are a lot of 'fair weather cyclists' who only ride in good weather. Pedestrian traffic seems much less weather dependent.

A pilot project like this doesn't necessarily reflect actual long term usage and also ignores the many negative effects and costs associated with cycle lanes. Existing cities that grew up around mixed pedestrian and car traffic are not necessarily well suited to increased bike traffic. Bikes are dramatically more dangerous to both cyclists and pedestrians and take up disproportionate space relative to their contribution to transport options.

<comment><USER35> You don't cite a single source for any of these propositions.

Frequently sit unused? Brief spikes and big dropoffs? How do you know? I'll bet your local department of transportation is conducting traffic counts though. I know mine does.

"poorly thought out physically separated bike lines made intersections more dangerous"? You really need a cite on that because this study--conducted in Canada--says the opposite: [http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2012.3...](http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300762?journalCode=ajph&)

"Bikes are dramatically more dangerous to both cyclists and pedestrians" Really? How many pedestrians were killed by cyclists in your city last year? How many by motor vehicles?

<comment><USER34> The original article is also entirely free of statistics or sources which was kind of my point. My comments were intended as a counterpoint to the unsupported assertion in the article that the increased cycle traffic observed in a two week trial would translate to a sustained increase and to the unspoken assumption that increased cycle traffic is clearly and obviously a good thing and worth the costs and negative impacts on other road users.

The dangers of cycling itself are pretty well known I thought, it is far more dangerous than driving, e.g. [http://www.bbc.com/news/uk- england-39856219](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-39856219)

I don't know of any figures comparing the relative risk to pedestrians of cyclists vs cars. I would expect that pedestrians are less likely to be killed if hit by a bike than a car but I would also guess that adjusted for relative miles traveled you are more likely to be hit by a bike as a pedestrian than a car. Certainly as a pedestrian in Vancouver I am more concerned about bikes than cars due to the silence and lack of respect for the rules of the road I mentioned.

If the changes made here were based on solid research, I never saw it presented to the public. It was just 'Cycling is great! And green! Yay cycling!' and PR shots of the mayor on a bike to justify the money spent and disruption to other road users caused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For anyone who has even read a bit on infrastructure, this is a no brainer. The problem with alternative transportation is you have to go all in to see the benefits. Half assing it won't work. But half assing it is what a lot of places do, and then they say "see, ridership didn't increase, going further is just a waste of money."

</comment><comment><USER31> Anecdotal I know however my wife only learnt to cycle properly this year. She is (rightly) terrified of riding on the road. If we had a better dedicated cycle road network (not paths but actual bicycle dedicated roads) she would be able to use it as a mode of transport. She has expressed interest however the network, while pretty good in Singapore (the park connector network is a good safe cycling option), is not continuous enough to allow commuting as an option.

<comment><USER37> As someone who didn't bike as a child and won't bike on a road, I suspect that there isn't just about anywhere one can commute on a bike and totally avoid roads with cars on them. Including places like Amsterdam or other cities with a lot of dedicated lanes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> They could have at least made a better effort to keep cyclists and cars separate.

In the photo a cyclist is still on the road which should not happen.

I also remember seeing a video where a guy got some kind of ticket for not cycling in a cycle lane, so he made a point by cycling only in the cycle lane and deliberately crashes into a police car because they were parked in the cycle lane...

</comment><comment><USER39> MVP-infrastructure, interesting. There are always pilot-projects, but they cost a lot of money, takes a lot of time, and are set in stone.

</comment><comment><USER40> What was the temporary bike lane made of? Chalk?

<comment><USER41> Road marking paint, looks like.

Normal white lines etc are made by melting plastic onto the road. They're very thick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That cheeky Field of Dreams reference

</comment><comment><USER43> One of the problems with more bicycle infrastructure I see is the current regulatory environment promotes the extremes only.

A nice intermediate step would be if states would make moped registration less onerous. As it stands most states require a motorcycle license ($), insurance ($) and registration ($) for anything more than a bicycle with an engine kit. If more people rode those parking would be less of an issue and it would be easier to get support for bike infrastructure since bike infrastructure is common with moped infrastructure in many cases.

Edit: I don't care how the moped is powered. I'm just pointing out that a moped that can keep up with 30mph traffic is a huge increase in utility over a bicycle while not taking up appreciably more space.

<comment><USER31> Having been in Taipei where mopeds were illegal until ~20 years ago and then unleashed on the city like a plague I can only hope that if any city were to do this they would add the caveat that the mopeds must be electric.

<comment><USER43> Or just incentivize electric by discounting public transit passes for people with electric mopeds, etc and let attrition of old stuff run its course.</comment></comment></comment>


We're destroying our kids, for nothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2015/10/31/were_destroying_our_kids_for_nothing_too_much_homework_too_many_tests_too_much_needless_pressure/?utm_content=buffer6c25a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> brilliant article, though personally very painful to read, like a gunshot wound to the chest.

the opening sentence: "My own awakening to the toxicity of the achievement race came the way it does to many parents: via years of trying to keep up with it."</comment>


Ask HN: Why do we have to pay to read research funded from public funds? - <AUTHOR> How did the academic and especially the medical sector come to a point that studies conducted by university hospitals and phd doctors are behind paywalls when it's a matter of public health?<p>Is anyone doing anything about it? YC? <comment><USER2> Officially there is a policy that NIH funded research must be publicly available on the NIH repository (pubmed) within 1 year of a papers acceptance [1]. How this remains enforced is a different question. Not sure how relevant it is to other government funding sources. Also, a surprisingly, large amount of academic research is not strictly publicly funded.

[1][https://publicaccess.nih.gov/faq.htm#753](https://publicaccess.nih.gov/faq.htm#753)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17651419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17651419) and many more in recent HN posts...

</comment><comment><USER4> Because shitty companies like Elsevier still want to stick around even though their purpose was obsoleted by the Internet, and are using their influence to try and achieve that.

</comment><comment><USER5> How? See [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-b...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable- business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science)

</comment><comment><USER6> If there's a particular paper you're interested in, you can usually email the lead author(s) and just ask for a copy. I've never heard of someone saying no, especially since it's as easy as emailing a PDF.

As for the why -- just DuckDuckGo "why is science behind a paywall" and you'll get a million hits, each author giving a slightly tweaked definition of "it's a holdover from the days of publishing in print journals".

</comment><comment><USER7> Capitalism turns public funding into a way to extract private profits.</comment>


Understanding Apple's Decision with Reason - <AUTHOR> https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-10-11/Understanding-Apple-s-decision-with-reason-KHHPwakYRW/index.html <comment><USER2> CGTN = China Global Television Network

> ... we must understand that corporations and businesses will always assign > priority to complying with local laws and regulations, which will never > change in any context.

F __* people</comment>


Webshell.io: the shell for scripting and combining APIs in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://webshell.io/home <comment><USER2> Funny there is already a (less advanced) open source application that does this... with the same name :)

<https://github.com/hbbio/webshell>

Disclaimer: I'm the author of the open source webshell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice to meet you ;)

We would be glad to talk with you.

Contact us team[at]webshell.io if you are interested :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool interface but I'm not sure what sort of value you're going for here.

Is it a set of APIs that make it easier to get stuff done in a repl? If so, it doesn't seem more useful than console so far (looking at the Google Maps and HTTP call examples). Or is it a lightweight IDE -- if so, would this be better done as a browser extension that could circumvent security restrictions? (and also operate on any document, including those served from localhost)

I really like it intuitively, but also, I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our idea is to help web and mobile developers

\- to sandbox API workflow (server-side APIs and/or client-side APIs) into the REPL interface "prototype"

\- and then create a new API based on this API workflow(or "prototype")

\- use this new API in production into their own application and share it with other developers

we want to bring fast API discovery and exploration, easy multiple API mashups or scripting, then new API creation for use in production. We make for them maintenance, and one-line-of-code authentication and some cool builtins.

This with server side APIs as Client side APIs, in the same shell interface, Javascript, Coffeescript, or even Typescript.

But is seems not obvious apparently... ;)

Can you share with us what and why you did'nt understand it when testing the tour?

PS: Everybody can also brings to Webshell API explorer its own API (you can read the doc on how to add your own API to be scripted and used by developers)

<comment><USER4> Ok, but why should I use your service instead of writing JavaScript in Vim? Apart from the fact of seeing the output more or less on the fly the result is the same (but I'll never abandon my editor for that).

What do you mean by "to sandbox API workflow"?

Why should I get a script from your server in my production application instead of serving it myself? It's one dependency more.

The only real value i see is the fact of having a library that gives me some syntactic sugar to query third party apis (like twitter, foursquare, gmaps, ...) but for that I would need only a very little part of your service, and maybe I'd prefer an open source solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use it as an IDE but it's not the Webshell's job ! Our job is to make an "API mashup factory" for people which want to make fast applications based on APIs.

It would be impossible to make a lib which maintain all third party APIs (arround 8000 today), it's for that we made it as a platform where everything is always working.

Please note that Webshell is an API too, and you can call scripts as a REST/JSON API.

"Sandbox API workflow" : we have a REPL prototyping part for helping you to see very fast a result of API scripting results, as for server side API (Facebook, Spotify...) as for Client side (GoogleMaps, Youtube player etc...)

After you have two choices.

\- Make it again by yourself, with the different API protocols, Oauth1.0 or Oauth2.0 , manage rate limits and keep an eye for maintenance on all your APIs in your application.

\- Or push the "create API" button on top right of the Webshell prototyping REPL, so generating a new API of your mashup, use it in production and share it with other developers which would like to use it too.

Our job is to keep an eye for you on API maintenance, easy Oauth integration, APIkeys and rate limit management, analytics. We will be implement each feature step by step during the public beta.

Dependancy? We are an API like other APIs. We behave like Back-end-as-as Service as Parse for example. You could do it yourself to not be dependant, but if you implement it fast for your application, with lot of integrated tools, you will keep it in production.

You can see us as a kind of API-as-a-service backend... ;)

<comment><USER3> I think you need more examples of something complex that is made easily accessible. And _show_ some of the advantage involved in using you as an API around third-party APIs.

Plainly, _show, don't tell._

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on it. We gived some explanations because each people wasn't not understanding the same value, we are in a step by step explanation of what we've done.

You're definitively right.

Follow us, more examples soon.

Thank you for your advise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This does seem to need more of a sell. Intuitively it feels cool - but then I'm not sure of what I'd use it for.

My first thought was that it's the other half of the <https://www.webscript.io/>

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is more to be an IFTTT/Zapier for developers but without limited inputs and outputs by Graphical User Interface.

With the expressiviy of an all language as Javascript and a console interface to explore API and check easilty data response, developers may not be limited when combining APIs and make exactly what they wanted to do.

But Webscript.io is nice too, some similarities but not the same usefulness, not the same paradigm and not the same language : Javascript ;)

<comment><USER5> > The idea is more to be an IFTTT/Zapier for developers but without limited > inputs and outputs by Graphical User Interface.

Is a great description - a very clear value statement there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. We will use it to explain better the value next time. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The prototyping shows an example with Twitter but the API Explorer doesn't have Twitter as an option, why not?

Also, with only eight services available having both Latest and Popular tabs in the API Explorer is probably premature. Until all the services need a second screen/page down just show Everything.

Use the hover event to show some sort of highlights box about the API, otherwise make the service icons smaller so more fit for page and at least use the Bootstrap tooltip component to show the service name.

Once you have more than that perhaps add tabs and show the four most recent additions as Latest as the second tab.

Once there are more than 30 or so Popular might be a useful third tab.

Price: What is this going to cost? Can't be free for all uses forever, even if that's true now so at least state that it's 'free while in beta' or similar. Most HNers will agree that a service that's useful is worth paying some amount for to ensure it stays around, after all.

Robustness: You aim to have developers build in a dependency on Webshell but have nothing posted about your infrastructure, uptime or security policies, not even links to privacy policy and terms of service pages.

Bottom line for me is that I think this is very interesting and potentially very useful but beyond using as a playground there's a lot of work yet to do before IMO there can be serious adoption.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey I think it's a great idea. I'm a developer evangelist at TokBox and I love playing around with APIs so I think I'll be using this tool quite often. Personally, I think you can create alot more value by opening up a platform so that API companies can write their own interactions into WebShell. This way it's more scalable and we'll be able to do cool mashups with other APIs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you're right, we are already working on this platform for easy API integration to Webshell. News about it soon.

But for the moment you can share with us your API by sharing a WADL of it and make a pull-request on our Github <http://github.com/webshell>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is blasphemous to capture Command+L in a webapp.

</comment><comment><USER9> I want a self-hosted version. Badly.

Seriously, if you sold this as software that I could run anywhere, it would absolutely make my day. The libraries you guys have written are seriously impressive.

You could use this kind of technology for a more meaningful way to teach code - when you're done, you've written yourself a website.

Also, providing an external "API to rule them all" would be pretty cool, as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> We want to be an API of APIs, so we are an API for using and combining others ! api.webshell.io

In our doc , you can read how to already use it on webshell.io/docs/reference

      "In the programmable web where APIs lie,
      One shell to rule them all, one shell to find them,
      One shell to bring them all and in the cloud bind them"

;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Typos, "program the web", I'm not sure what all this means.

edit: I think what we have here is a library that unifies a bunch of APIs, which is cool, and a programmable service which can run scripts for you. You offload API calls to to this service and then can call them from your app and get your customized data. That could be useful.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is quite cool to play with - nice work.

May I suggest you give the tutorials a solid proof read? There are quite a few typos in the first few pages.

"This APIs is really simple" "Webshell make it simpler."

Also, waaaay too many smiley faces.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great service guys! Good luck I think you are up on something big

</comment><comment><USER13> Ahah, let me make Siri in 10 hours.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nitpick: "example" is misspelled as "exemple" a bunch of places.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mistakes between french and english. We fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks promising. I am thinking to give this a try.

</comment><comment><USER16> type that for me faster!

<comment><AUTHOR> done. :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Salesforce still successful? - <AUTHOR> I was looking for a good CRM and Salesforce seemed like the unquestioned leader.
We've had a meeting with a sales rep in their luxurious offices at the foot of the Eiffel tower. Despite 2 hours of phone interview before, the sales rep had no understanding of our business and the product demo was extremely disappointing.
The platform is not user friendly at all and the transition to the new 'lightning experience' makes it even more terrible, forcing the user to go back and forth between the two interfaces and to cope with outdated documentation.
They have a large number of complex solutions with as many different pricing plan and limitations, a closed platform, no big enthusiasm around the community, a high pricing (130€/user/month for the sales product only). They claimed to be the "most innovative company in the world" but want customers to sign a 24-month contract. They do not provide any help in setting up the platform. And I could keep going…
To me it seems that Salesforce is buying growth by investing heavily on sales and very little in product development. The only benefit of Salesforce over its competitors comes from its monopoly position. Salesforce remains the only platforms to have integrations with the software we use (integrations which they did not develop themselves of course).
I had a quick look at their financial statements which reassured my opinion: negative earning, growing capital surplus, growing goodwill… In the annual report, the company is fond of separating out "non-GAAP" earnings to show adjusted positive income. But the reality is that long periods of GAAP losses means the company should not be worth 46$Bn.
In the SaaS industry 'fast eats big'. Salesforce can only afford so many acquisition of overpriced start-ups and hopefully someone will come with a great product that they can't kill in the egg.
Why do you use Salesforce? Can you recommend a cheaper and better alternative? <comment><USER2> Someone will disrupt Salesforce but it will take real innovation in how information systems are built and interact with each other. A few years ago, when "cloud" wasn't as buzz worthy necessary in marketing copy as it is today, Salesforce's main marketing message was "No-Software". Anyone who has used SF (Or Netsuite, or I assume any ERP systems customization features) knows that those customization features are such a pain in the ass that hiring expensive consultants to set it up for you was the only sane option for actual companies. So No-Software was actually "Spend months getting your specs correct and getting some self appointed SF expert to set things up for you and then be at the mercy of their support staff when it all goes wrong because no one actually knows what the hell was built in the first place".

No one has actually solved the "No-Software" problem yet. We arn't living in that utopia yet where I can build a business IT system without writing a line of code or wanting to kill myself (Building Customizations in SF/Netsuite will do this to you). Someone will figure out, and then SF along with all the legacy apps, along with all the old ERP systems will finally be left in the dust.

<comment><USER3> I'm finding things like a combination of something like Podio, Zapier and other integrations are what are going to finally unseat salesforce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've spent the last 3 years searching for a really good CRM solution. I've tried many, many different suites including the well known names and the not so well known ones.

If your requirements are fairly simple you might like SalesWise. Slick UI and minimal data entry although a little sparse on feature set and integrations but that will get better during the course of the year. The biggest takeaway for me in all this time has been that ultimately you have to build your own CRM that adapts to your workflow. That doesnt mean you have to code it ground up though. The 3 platforms that seem really promising in this area -- depending on your needs -- are AirTable, Pipefy and Podio. Check out their pre-made templates.

</comment><comment><USER4> We just spent a year getting off of Salesforce. Our account was closed Friday. I feel a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

Also, I say "year", but it was really 2 months to write our own CRM system that exactly fits our workflow and then another 2 months making sure we had all of our data synced out of Salesforce and correct.

Bad things about Salesforce \- the UI is terrible. \- development of anything custom is slow and cumbersome \- their API limits are strict and not very well documented. If you go over your limit you are locked out until the next hour and there seems to be some hourly limit on calls you can make even if you have those requests available. You can only send 1000 email messages a day programmatically. Etc. \- Support is an absolutely terrible experience. They give you none of the tools you need to debug your own problems, they have 8+ hour response times for urgent requests. You have to go through 2 levels of support before you can even get to someone who can help you. You can only have 1 support contact for your entire org and God help you if they are on vacation when you need support. The list goes on. \- I can develop the same features in our own rails app at least 10x faster than I can in Salesforce and I've spoken to some other people with similar experience (team of 2 rails devs outpacing a team of 10 Salesforce devs on the same features significantly)

Things to do if you do go with Salesforce. \- always always always keep the canonical source of your data in house. Sync things up to Salesforce with the API and back with outbound messages (which don't get called in triggers, so try to avoid using those too). There will come a day when you want to leave Salesforce and if your data is half in house and half in Salesforce you'll spend 6 months trying to get them synced correctly. \- try /not/ to build too many custom workflows in Salesforce. They are hard to develop, hard to test, extremely more limited than a "normal" we app. \- make sure you stay on top of your API request usage and be ready to ask Salesforce for more ($300 for 10,000 more requests a year iirc) because it will take them 12+ hours to actually increase your limit even if you explain to your rep that you're going to lose more business in the next hour then you pay Salesforce per year. They just can't make that change quickly. \- find a quality experienced Salesforce developer to teach your team about developing for Salesforce. It's a huge tangled mess and professional guidance is critical.

Basically, if you have a competent engineering team think really really hard about choosing Salesforce. Most of Salesforce is simply handling a few database tables and basic workflows. Any engineering team should be able to handle that. If you really can't live without that one integration try to use Salesforce as lightly as possible. It will save you lots of time, frustration, stress, and heartache later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insightful answer. I will definitely keep this in mind. Problem is that we are a young startup and engineering teams need to focus on product development. Before the meeting we were thinking of using Salesforce as our main data source but this is no more a question. I guess we'll go with a temporary light integration.

<comment><USER4> We chose Salesforce when we were tiny too, and it worked ok for 2-3 years and then it became a huge liability.

I definitely understand the feeling that the main product is top priority, but if you are building a company to last your internal tools are going to play a huge role in your success. As an example, by writing our own CRM to match our process instead of the slow, crappy, hard to use, hard to maintain thing we built in Salesforce we basically immediately got a 3-4x increase in our sales teams production. It took 2 engineers 2 months to build that, but if we had started with our own system in the beginning it would have grown organically with us and we wouldn't have had to spend that time all at once. Oh, and your going to have to spend time developing in Salesforce if you do any more than their out of the box experience and that is going to take 2-10x as long as just doing it yourself anyway.

I'm sure Salesforce is right for some teams. But a small agile startup is diametrically opposed to how Salesforce makes you work, imo at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We used Salesforce because it was forced upon us. We initially had an in-house solution and there were issues extracting data for the sales team. Probably the brand name itself and the fact that the sales team were familiar with it led the management team to go with it. In the end, we wasted countless developer hours trying to integrate it with our systems.

</comment><comment><USER6> _" Salesforce remains the only platforms to have integrations with the software we use"_

If you identified the software you need to integrate with, it might be easier for people to suggest alternatives to Salesforce that would be useful to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, thanks. We use Front [1] and need something that integrates with a soft phone (we use Aircall [2] but we could switch to something else).

[1] [https://frontapp.com](https://frontapp.com) [2] [https://aircall.io](https://aircall.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who recently started working at a place that relies on Salesforce, I too cannot believe how prevalent it is. I feel like we could accomplish basically everything SF does on a Shared spreadsheet, Streak and Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are a ruby shop, I'd look at fatfreecrm:

[https://github.com/fatfreecrm/fat_free_crm](https://github.com/fatfreecrm/fat_free_crm)</comment>


Librem 5 Smartphone: Massive Progress, Exact CPU Selected, Shipping Adjustment - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/massive-progress-exact-cpu-selected-minor-shipping-adjustment/ <comment><USER2> Communications pro tip: if you've got bad news to report, just lead with the bad news, don't try to soften it by wrapping it in a bunch of unrelated positive-sounding stuff. All that does is leave the reader with a feeling of whiplash and a vague suspicion that you were hoping they'd miss the bad news inside all the fluffy packaging. It's better to just report the bad news up front so the reader can get past it and then you can both move on.

(How this advice applies to this post will be left as an exercise for the reader.)

<comment><USER3> What bad news are you talking about? The overheating that was solved by NXP releasing a new software stack for their chosen CPU?

<comment><USER2> That the ship date on the Librem 5 has been delayed (sorry, "adjusted") to Q3.

<comment><USER4> They wrote "the previous Q2 estimate is now confirmed for Q3 product shipping."

I haven't gone back to see what they said/estimated in the past, but going from an estimate to a ship date that's only off by 1 quarter seems acceptable to me.

<comment><USER5> It was moved from January 2019 (in the original kickstarter), to April, to Q2, and now finally to Q3.

That's a quite significant delay, but I personally don't mind as long as the final product arrives by the end of the year.

<comment><USER6> I answer here because I'm sure it's ommon amongst HN reader. If you think this :

>> I personally don't mind as long as the final product arrives by the end of the year.

Then it's useless to complaint that :

>> That's a quite significant delay, but

If freedom is at stake, then a few months later is of no importance.

<comment><USER7> >>If freedom is at stake, then a few months later is of no importance.

It didn't get delayed because of freedom though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Q3 is in my opinion too optimistic. Based on the status of hardware (TBD) there is probably no chance to start shipping parts in Q3. The design should be locked today. Will they be able to source the tools, get reliable suppliers to source enough components in 3-4 months timline ? The rest of the time till Q3 should be used to ramp-up the production and sort out quality/production issues. Probably will be out of stock for at least till Q3/Q4 2020.

Good luck !

<comment><USER9> Q3 ends in August, not in 3 months. I agree it's still optimistic but that looks doable.

<comment><USER8> February 2019 --> no design freeze, 3 to 4 months to source components and make tooling (very optimistic). May/July 2019 --> start of production. June/August 2019 --> debug, SOP, build stock, start shipping

Optimistic.

I hope they are very determined, I like the product/idea but they started a very hard task.

I would rather take the most sold Android flagship device, reverse engineer the hardware and build a linux/bsd distro on top. Would not match their requirement (modem privacy etc.), but would take the really hard job of designing an up-to-date phone hardware.

Early adopters will pay a lot to get performance, good camera, battery life, screen quality. I will use it as a toy instead of a daily tool if too many compromises are made in the name of privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It appears to be at least a 150ms lag from the motion of the finger to the scroll animation in the demo video.

Can someone who has a devkit do a detailed breakdown of the CPU usage during that 150ms? What processes are involved, who is waiting on whom, and how could it be improved?

<comment><USER11> That is absolutely brutal lag! It would feel like using a 10 year old phone with today's bloatware!

<comment><USER12> It's a devkit running in-development software, for all we know there's thousands of lines of logging being written somewhere while interacting with the display.

What's important to take away is that the devkit is stable enough to demo, the touchscreen, display, and backlight control are all working.

<comment><USER13> One one hand: Of course.

On the other hand: How good will it ever be? I'm really concerned about the UX.

<comment><USER12> Doesn't the ability to trivially iterate on the entire software stack running the device allay those concerns?

If a good chunk of the GNOME/free software community ends up with a librem5 in their pockets I think userspace progress should be pretty well covered.

<comment><USER10> That you can potentially read the code for the entire software stack doesn't mean you can trivially iterate on it.

For example, suppose the latency culprit were Firefox's CPU-based repainting. (I don't think it is as I can scroll just fine on my Chromebook with FF.) Changing Firefox to fill the scrolled area using the old Iphone checkerboard- style as someone mentioned above is non-trivial. There's nothing Gnome devs can do to make that happen, short of stopping work on Gnome, becoming FF devs, and submitting a large patch to FF.

On the other hand, having access to the entire software stack _plus_ specs (and firmware?) for the entire phone definitely gives them a higher probability of cutting into that touch latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I will buy this because it's the only device aligned with the principles of Free Software. I hope many here will do the same.

<comment><USER15> For those like me not willing to throw $600 there may be an option in the Pinephone [0] for $150. I expect that the Librem 5 will probably be better overall, but I also expect that for at least the first year both will be around beta level at best. With this in mind I'm more willing to give the cheaper option a chance, because it will not be my daily driver for some time.

Whatever will come from the next revision of both projects will probably be very interesting.

Either way they will share software and improvements in whole stack. So it's a win-win!

Also I'll probably buy the Pinebook Pro on the day it's available.

[0] [https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7093&pid=43850#p...](https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7093&pid=43850#pid43850)

<comment><USER12> What's the binary blob / firmware / accelerated gpu driver support story on the pine64 devices?

<comment><USER15> They say "mainline Linux". Lima the open source driver for Mali GPUs is mentioned. I don't know if it's already in Mesa. I would say WIP, but seems doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love Purism, and have preordered a Librem 5, and this all sounds great, but I wish there was an update on the current state of the final hardware design.

It just seems like there's an awful lot of work left to do to get from a working devkit to a finished device shipped to users.

</comment><comment><USER17> For me the librem 5 is to android what GNU Hurd is to linux. Why don't they do something more similar to what linux-libre is to linux to replace android rather than recreating the wheel.

AFAIK, android is open source, so why don't they just build on top of it while removing all non-free code/binary blobs from it.

<comment><USER18> Android is a bad operating system, for one. Second, it isn't, by any measure, a free one. Google has an iron grip over Android, OEMs are forbidden to produce phones that fork it, and most apps for Android won't run without Google's proprietary components.

Trying to build on Android is constantly following and fighting Google's changes. Purism is building on Linux, which is truly free from top to bottom.

<comment><USER19> > OEMs are forbidden to produce phones that fork it

Actually, OEMs are allowed to produce phones that fork it but they're forbidden from including gapps ( the google apps suit e.g play store, maps)

>most apps for Android won't run without Google's proprietary components

This isn't the case if you only use free software e.g. most of the apps on the fdroid main repo

<comment><USER18> This isn't true. OEMs have been forbidden from publishing "incompatible forks" of Android. Incompatible being: Not having Google's apps, which are required to pass the CTS. This is one of the reasons the EU levied it's record-breaking fine against Google for anticompetitive behavior. (It's likely EU MADA contracts have been revised to remove this requirement, but I wouldn't be surprised if they still enforce it elsewhere.)

F-Droid has a very tiny portion of apps, similar to as many as Purism itself will likely handle using it's own Linux-based system with an app store. Most common apps people expect require Google services on Android, as Google has let the open APIs languish and pushed everyone to use, for instance, Google Location Services, which is proprietary. Apps like Uber or Lyft, for instance, require Google. Hilariously, a lot of Microsoft's apps, such as Skype, require Google, despite being a competitor.

As long as Android's app library is primarily built on Google proprietary code, there's no point in bothering to maintain compatibility with a slow and sluggish, locked down Java-based OS.

<comment><USER20> > This isn't true. OEMs have been forbidden from publishing "incompatible > forks" of Android. Incompatible being: Not having Google's apps, which are > required to pass the CTS.

I'm writing this message on a Fairphone 2 running an incompatible fork of Android that has all Google services removed. This fork is provided by the manufacturer of the phone.

<comment><USER21> That's not an incompatible fork; that's just AOSP with a few apps preinstalled. Likewise vendors like Samsung are able to add their own interfaces on top of Android, but that wouldn't do for Purism.

<comment><USER20> What's the definition of an incompatible fork then?

<comment><USER21> I'm not completely sure, but I think it's when you have to actually modify Android code, rather than changing some default settings - i.e. a fork of Android, rather than a distro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh my God... That user interface is trash. It's so laggy!

<comment><USER23> This will be the downfall of this device. The kind of work required to provide a UI experience that even remotely resembles that of modern smartphones is a monumental task. It's one of the reasons desktop linux lags so far behind: the folks who have the time, interest and ability to do this work are not interested in using the platform.

<comment><USER24> I agree that the device _looks_ like trash. But what's wrong with desktop linux? We have compositors, hardware acceleration from nvidia and AMD, and WMs that are just as good, if not better, than windows. What more could you want?

<comment><USER25> >What more could you want?

Consistent UI, consistent configuration schemes, working suspend-resume, reliable WiFi, reliable auto mount of USB storage, and easy file sharing over LAN for starters.

None of these things was I able to achieve on my ThinkPad even 3 years ago when I last gave Linux a try.

<comment><USER24> I mean, I've been using ThinkPads for years and have always ran Linux on them, and personally haven't had any problems with them. ACPI, touchpad, screen, audio buttons, all worked out of the box or were just a few package installs away.I don't like auto-mounting of drives, but I know it's pretty easy to setup with hotplug. WiFi drivers are _very_ good at this point, supporting pretty much any WiFi cards in any laptops. File sharing over LAN can easily done with Samba or SSHFS.

Linux has pretty good drivers at this point, and in my experience, often better and more complete than Windows.

Not saying you're lying or incompetent or anything, but I do think you had a very atypical. Maybe you're not familiar with Linux? Not trying to put you down, but maybe I find that Linux works Because I've been using it for over 15 years at this point.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure I could have got most of those things working by fiddling with fuse or xorg.conf or some other silliness but I don't count that as "working".

The number of times I've had network manager simply refuse to connect after opening the laptop lid makes me think we're just living in parallel universes.

<comment><USER24> I don't use a network manager, and I don't run a DE, I just have a simple window manager and the command line. Btw, I use Arch Linux which is of much higher quality than Ubuntu or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Video looks like the interface is choppy. Debug build or something else?

<comment><USER27> This is strange. While MNT Reform still uses the i.MX6QP which is much older, I haven't seen such bad UI performance on it. I've seen consistently better perf from Qt apps or SDL/GL stuff than Gnome on this platform, so I hope this won't become a problem.

Edit: What I wanted to say is that much better UI perf is _definitely_ possible on this chip.

<comment><USER12> Isn't the promise of gtk4 GPU-acceleration? Since that's still a WIP I presume the stack from the video is gtk3, so it's all being CPU-rendered except hopefully the compositing in phosh at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wish "compact" version of Librem 5 Smartphone existed: 4.5" screen, slower CPU, half or even quarter of storage. 200$ or lower price would attract more users and developers.

<comment><USER29> The BOM isn't likely the driving factor in the price, but rather the small number (relatively speaking) of units they'll sell. They have to amortize the cost of all the design and engineering over however many units they end up selling which is probably going to dominate the costs. Not just the labor for the finished product but every blind alley they've gone down, every failed prototype board etc. Then they have to mark the whole thing up (i.e. profit margin) to make it all worthwhile and allow them to do version 2. Version 2 or 3 is probably when they can start thinking about driving down costs.

<comment><USER21> For some interesting insight in this, Fairphone has published the cost breakdown of their phone [1]. It's quite a bit more expensive than similar phones, but only about €5 of that is justified by the "fair" part of the phone - most of it is just source materials being more expensive due to their small scale.

[1] [https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/09/09/cost-breakdown-of- th...](https://www.fairphone.com/en/2015/09/09/cost-breakdown-of-the- fairphone-2/)

<comment><USER29> Thanks for posting this and it is quite informative re: BOM pricing. I suspect that Librem is having to do quite a bit more work on the software side than the Fairphone as their development costs appear pretty minuscule. Even so, based on this breakdown it's probably not as big a piece of the final price as I had guesstimated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm really excited about this. I'm not wealthy enough to preorder but I would love to have this as my next phone.

I wish Librem would let us vote on the features of the phone we wanted. I think they'd have more of a chance of success if they worked towards things that were most important to users instead of their assumptions.

For example, i've been saying it for years, but I would buy a phone with nothing but an e-ink touch screen in an instant. The only thing it wouldn't be suited for is movies, and phones aren't really suited for that anyways.

<comment><USER31> An e-ink display isn't a very good example of a feature they're overlooking without a democratic process.

I use an e-reader every day and I'd say half my friends and family don't even understand why you'd want to read on one -- they just read on their phones/tablets.

<comment><USER30> This is very true. I have family members that just read on their phones while sitting on the beach, and when I explain to them why my kindle is better suited for the task they don't seem to understand why. "I just invert the colors and it makes it just like that." They say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Q3 2019 still seems way too optimistic to me.

<comment><USER33> Even if they really know what they are doing, that sounds like a great way to create a lot of painful technical debt that will affect both end-UX and app devs. One one hand, maybe this is also a great way to get _something_ in the hands of users, learn, and get it right in the next generation. But it's hard to go back on API design.

<comment><USER34> The software will (I believe) be a rolling release, so they only really have to get the hardware right before shipping.

What API design is there, beyond "Linux apps, probably GNOME with libhandy"?

<comment><USER35> > The software will (I believe) be a rolling release, so they only really have > to get the hardware right before shipping.

PureOS is based on Debian testing so it is a RR. Aside of hardware there is a problem with baseband firmware because there is no way to change it after phones are built without attaching to the chip itself.

> What API design is there, beyond "Linux apps, probably GNOME with libhandy"?

None. Every internal part is supported in mainline kernel, the only thing not there is the library for calls, UI has 3 options as of yet.

<comment><USER36> The baseband they're using is PLS8, which offers firmware updates via its USB interface.

"Library for calls" is there - three options actually. ModemManager, oFono and freesmartphone.org. I've personally contributed PHS8 support to the latter a few years ago when preparing for a different PLS8-based project ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jo-wol No RAM spec provided, also is it possible to connect an external display?

<comment><USER37> It's one of the core features and they have monitor and keyboard kits for preorder already.

[https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5-24-inch- kit/](https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5-24-inch-kit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Does anyone here have one of their laptops? How does the hardware compare to similarly priced products from mainstream vendors?

<comment><USER39> It's quite expensive for the specs, but it's a niche product. You're looking at a 1.5x-2x markup for hardware prices. What you get is mainly a new laptop that can run coreboot. Other than chromebooks, there aren't any other devices that do that right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> What are their plans for application development? Will developers be expected to write their apps in C/GObject?

<comment><USER34> Essentially, it's GNOME. The shell is phosh instead of the GNOME Shell, but you can see from the video that the look and feel is intended to match GNOME Shell.

The default apps will be GNOME apps. You should be able to run other Linux apps just as easily, assuming they fit the touchscreen and CPU architecture.

<comment><USER41> Even if they don't fit the touchscreen you can run the thing as a desktop machine with a monitor. At that point it's just an ARM linux box.

<comment><USER42> > At that point it's just an ARM linux box.

Fondly remembers Nokia N900

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is there any list of apps expected to be available for PureOS soon after launch?

The closest I found was a few logos in the HTML5 Apps section of the product page[1]. Those look good, but I'm wondering what we can expect in terms of GPS/navigation and also ride-sharing services like Lyft.

[1] [https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)

<comment><USER35> It runs FSF's guidelines-compatible Debian fork so it could run any Linux app with arm64 support + there is a project called Anbox which runs Android apps in containers. It has some GPS support via qemu virtual device but I don't know if it supports the real trackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm a fan of Purism for what they do, even though I don't own any of their products yet.

But how do they even justify this sentence, given that CPU design and fabrication are full of compromises?

"The i.MX8M Quad is the most powerful CPU that has both a good operating temperature and a good battery life."

<comment><USER45> That statement acknowledges the compromises within itself? There's also the unstated "freedom", "availability" and "documentation" constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the worst of the delay in the browser really comes from actually scrolling the content instead of rasterizing beforehand, like most smartphones tend to do. The rest of the UI seems decently smooth.

It also seems to be running GNOME, which even manages to lag on my upper mid range laptop.

</comment><comment><USER46> Wonder if they considered Sailfish? [0] And if they rejected, why?

Agree with other posters that building both hardware and UX from scratch is incredibly ambitious. Jolla tried to do the same and it almost killed them. They're still alive, now focused on Sailfish licensing (including, it would seem, the new Psion-like Gemini pda[1]). But they've exited the hardware business.

Both Purism + Jolla seem aligned on values: pro-privacy and open source. From an outsider's point of view, they'd seem like a good match.

Either way I wish Purism the best of luck. If they do deliver a phone that both respects privacy and is properly usable as a daily driver I won't hesitate.

[As a side note, looks like the Gemini is shipping now. Great result for them]

[0]: [https://jolla.com/](https://jolla.com/)

[1]: [https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/gemini- pda](https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/gemini-pda)

<comment><USER47> > Both Purism + Jolla seem aligned on values: pro-privacy

Even if Jolla says they are pro-privacy, they are nowhere near as pro-privacy as Purism. Jolla happily licenses their OS to makers of bog-standard mobile phone hardware that use binary blobs and where the CPU and cellular modem share memory. Purism, on the other hand, aimed from the start at having the cellular modem separate from the rest of the system, and at offering hardware kill switches for the microphone and connectivity.

Also, a good amount of Jolla's OS is closed-source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> "5.5" \- 5.7" HD display" \- they've removed the resolution again. I wish they'd just call it a 720p display.

</comment><comment><USER49> Hope they dont fall into the trap of pleasing everyone. People who are complaining about polish / fit / finish are likely to not switch to the first few iterations of this device anyway. I just hope that they actually ship (unlike Jolla), and dont end up delaying too much, while keeping the device mostly free(as in freedom).

</comment><comment><USER50> People preorder something like this with missing specs? I like the philosophy of it but I'm not handing over $600+ without knowing all the hardware info. I'm not interested if all the specs don't exceed those of my Pixel 2, which will be at least two years old when the Librem 5 is released.

<comment><USER51> Yes, I did. And I fully expected the schedule to slip. And I fully expect it to slip again. (Hardware is hard, been there, collected the scars.) And I fully expect the software to be glitchy. And I fully expect the user experience to underwhelm.

So why preorder? Because I want to support the mission of a security-first, user-freedom-first, phone. I want to support the idea of a Linux phone. Unless those of us that want something like this, and can afford to front $600 to help the first iteration happen, do so, there will never be a second iteration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > Front Camera TBD > Back Camera TBD

This isn't good.

</comment><comment><USER53> When you compare this to what Samsung just announced yesterday it's so hard to justify this device. I want to use it, but I don't think I could deal with the sluggishness of the UI (if that is actually an issue at launch), what will presumably be a poor build quality, and all of the other bugs that will likely exist.

I need my phone to just work. I love the Linux desktop, but I just don't see how they can get a new mobile platform able to compete with iOS or Android.

<comment><USER5> > I need my phone to just work. I love the Linux desktop, but I just don't see > how they can get a new mobile platform able to compete with iOS or Android.

Who says they need to compete with them at all? This isn't a big company relying on VC money that it needs to pay off, this is a small team that raised money from backers.

They need to provide a viable alternative for those of us that give enough of a fuck about privacy and... that's it. As long as they have a demand to keep up the supply, the product is successful. Their target group is willing to make _some_ sacrifices for sure.

Not every company aims to be a trillion-dollar company and absolutely dominate its sector, and that's not a bad thing.

<comment><USER53> If they can do it, then it's great! I'm just skeptical that we will see a second iteration of this device. I hope they do succeed! I want to be able to use a device like this someday, but it's not ready for me yet. I hope you enjoy it!

<comment><USER54> It hasn't shipped yet, so that's good.

It's not ready for anyone, yet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Here's Our New Policy On A.P. stories: They're Banned - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/16/heres-our-new-policy-on-ap-stories-theyre-banned/ <comment><USER2> This is essentially the same as <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218496> (without the login needed for those who don't want to sign-up with _another_ site)

...and some reasoning is explained at [http://broadstuff.com/archives/1031-Why-would-Associated- Pre...](http://broadstuff.com/archives/1031-Why-would-Associated-Press-wish- to-redefine-Fair-Usage.html).

</comment><comment><USER3> Well I don't like the TC stories, but upvote for wanting other people to avoid using AP. The problem for me with AP started long before the last week, if you read a lot of news you realize that most of it comes from the AP so there are no differing view points. You get one side of the story, whatever the AP reporter writes is what you get.</comment>


A Google-Ford Self-Driving Car Project Makes Perfect Sense - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/12/a-google-ford-self-driving-car-project-makes-perfect-sense/ <comment><USER2> They all make sense if only because you can get note things done.....

If we could only read all we used to read when we used public transport. .....</comment>


P90X After Many Failed Attempts - <AUTHOR> http://franklinphilips.com/p90x/

<comment><USER2> I've started doing DDP Yoga (<http://www.ddpyoga.com/> \- warning, autoplaying video) along with push-ups, squats and a bunch of stuff with a pile of dumbbells. With the help of an in-home personal trainer, I've gone from weighing 265 pounds (and getting shin splints going up a steep flight of stairs) to 215 pounds in 7 months. I took January off to rest up and give my ankles some time to relax (I broke both of them in 2000 and they sometimes hurt), and only gained 5 pounds.

Now I've added the yoga to my routine, I'll be going pretty strict on the diet starting this weekend (yes, I still drank pop and alcohol and ate chips and occasional McDonald's during those first 7 months). My goal is 190 pounds by June 1 - here's hoping!

So good luck to you, sir! It can be done :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey man, thanks for your detailed feedback. You brought up a lot of good points, and I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

I am definitely going to focus a lot on my diet (substituting veggies instead of rice, eating more fish/chicken, cutting out fried foods etc). I plan on sticking to 1600 calorie intake, and I'm tracking everything on MyFitnessPal.

I do however disagree that P90X is a complete waste of time. There are tons of people who follow the program and get great results. It might not be the most "ideal" way, however it is very systematic, measurable, and goal oriented (90 days). It's also a mix of not just strength training, but also yoga, plyometrics, and Kenpo-X. In Plyometrics, you do a ton of squats. You're also doing a lot of pushups (which is an alternative to bench press).

It's overall a great workout that I can essentially do anywhere without the convenience of a gym. I plan on sticking it out and monitoring my progress. If I do get a little extra hungry, I plan to snack on healthy fruits/veggies, almonds, or drink a protein shake. Good idea about the negatives. I'm going to try that out. Thanks again for your feedback.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry but P90X will NOT make you ripped. A standard barbell Starting Strength protocol is FAR superior and will stimulate muscle growth WAY more than P90x with WAY less effort.

"It shows that my BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) is around 1900. That means I need to consume around 1900 to stay where I am today." - No this is wrong. You need to add your activity multiplier to get your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), which is probably (assuming sedentary) ~2050Kcal/day @1900BMR.

"It also helps to note that P90X burns on an average of 700 calories per day" - This is not even TWO Starbucks cookies. What a total waste of time, it's WAY easier just to eat 700kcal less a day. Even then I would bet $1000 that a p90x workouts is not burning anywhere near 700kcal a day.

Also you added "(that means I can eat up to 2290 if I exercise)" which means that the p90x is even more useless, it's going to be your excuse to eat more, and it WILL make you really really hungry.

The good news is if you eat 1600Kcal/day you'll lose about 30 pounds (~15 pounds of fat and the ~15 pounds of water bound to those stored lipids) by the end of May, and that's with ZERO exercise. I'd drop the p90x completely. It's only going to make you really hungry and threaten the most importnat part (by FAR) of losing weight - net calories consumed.

I LOVE pullups/chin ups. Kudos for sticking with that, they're super hard at first. I'd try negatives to get you going though. That's were you get to the top of the pullup with assistance (chair, elastic band, etc), and then lower yourself on your own as slowly as you can. This will get you to full range of motion pullups/chins really fast. Once you can do 10-12 on your own, put on a dip belt and hang free weights between your legs.

If you want to get seriously ripped YOU MUST do full ass-to-grass squats and dead-lifts with the heaviest weights you can handle, and keep pushing that weight up every workout. In fact all you really need to get big is the squat, deadlift, bechpress, and chinup and eat/rest correctly. Basically buy Starting Strength book and do the program. It's incredible how well it works. I took my squat from 85 pounds to 190 in 6 weeks.

Oh, couple more things: Firstly if you're looking for something to boost your weight loss, I bet you'd see rapid results in dramatically reducing your carb intake for a few weeks. This will empty out stored glycogen in your cells, and with it LOADS of water-weight (every gram of glycogen is stored with ~3-4g of H2O). Secondly, hunger is the enemy of a diet, and protein is the ultimate weapon. Nothing blunts hunger as well as protein. If you're hungry, eat more cottage cheese, whey protein, lean-meats, etc.</comment>


ClojureScript + VueJS: Why so painful? - <AUTHOR> http://mnn.github.io/blog/en/2017/Rant-about-experience-with-VueJS-ClojureScript-Pug/ <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know how to get ClojureScript working with VueJS? Specifically with .vue files?

I want to be able to write:

      <template>
        ... some HTML ...
      </template>

      <script lang="cls">
      (def app (js/Vue. (js-obj "el" "#app"
                                "data" (js-obj "message" "Hello Vue!"
                                               "articles" articles
                                               ))))
      </script>

      <style lang="stylus">
      ... some scoped CSS ...
      </style>

Turns out, this is really hard! What's the proper way to set this up?

I'm surprised ClojureScript doesn't have a Webpack loader. People have been asking about it: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clojurescript/HNuYCf...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/clojurescript/HNuYCfPRtQw) (May 2017)

Is this fundamentally a bad idea for some reason?

ClojureScript devcards are awesome: [https://github.com/bhauman/devcards](https://github.com/bhauman/devcards)

[http://rigsomelight.com/devcards/#!/devdemos.core](http://rigsomelight.com/devcards/#!/devdemos.core)

But if ClojureScript can't integrate with Webpack, it seems like a no-go. Is it possible?

(The `(js/Vue. (js-obj ...` is annoying, but macros can easily fix that.)</comment>


5 myths about Android monetization - <AUTHOR> http://www.avocarrot.com/blog/5-myths-android-monetization/

<comment><USER2> I would agree that successful apps must shine on adding value to their end user. That's why some apps can cost more than $10 and still have some orders of magnitude more downloads from similar free apps.</comment>


My first Ember.js and Node.js app - <AUTHOR> http://blog.markwatson.com/2013/03/my-first-ember-js-and-node-js-app/

<comment><USER2> Can you add some information other than "I did this"?</comment>


Mammals Made By Viruses - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/02/14/mammals-made-by-viruses/

<comment><USER2> Utterly fascinating. But the last paragraph in the article puts the lie to the title -- pigs and horses don't have this feature. Last I checked, both mammals.

<comment><USER3> _But the last paragraph in the article puts the lie to the title -- pigs and horses don't have this feature. Last I checked, both mammals._

There is no indefinite plural article in English. The title is perfectly consistent with the content of the article, if potentially a bit misleading.

<comment><USER4> i think he means to say the last paragraph contradicts the first:

"If not for a virus, none of us would ever be born."

if horses and pigs are a-ok without it, then the assertion that in its absence we would have no chance of existence seems a bit odd

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a reason our immune system doesn't simply keep all viruses out of the body. Any organism that did so would have offspring without as much random variation. That would greatly decrease the chances of surviving random threats including new viruses.

So when going back in time, don't change anything. And should science ever make it possible to design offspring, don't make it impervious to viruses.

</comment><comment><USER6> Or viruses are made by mammals?

<comment><USER7> No. (But you can strech definitions a bit if you want to. Biology is weird)</comment></comment>


Why We Should Learn the Language of Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/04/st_thompson_statistics

<comment><USER2> _> Of course, snowstorm spin is possible only if the public (and journalists) are statistically illiterate._

The inability or unwillingness to do statistics, especially on the part of the media, is indeed a problem. However, it doesn't require statistics to clear up the motivating example-- confusion between weather and climate.

Fifteen years ago, one could laugh or feel sorry for those who couldn't make this simple distinction. In 2010, it feels more like willful ignorance. In other words, Inhofe's family built an igloo as a political act, not as a result of statistical illiteracy.

<comment><USER3> _In 2010, it feels more like willful ignorance._

It seems that willful ignorance is increasing. I would also posit that willful ignorance is often based on flat-out ignorance. Scientific fact won't change just because you are more fervent.</comment></comment>


Apple leaks new MacBook Pro with touch strip - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/25/13408862/apple-new-macbook-pro-with-touch-strip-leaks <comment><USER2> It is unclear if the ESC key is now a virtual key on the touch strip. That might take some getting used to.

<comment><USER3> Sounds at least quite inconvenient for developers, which use ESC a lot. Some for the function keys.

However another thing that is concerning from this pictures are the other keys. If they now use the same ones than in the 12" Macbook the whole keyboard experience might be really a lot worse for many users.

<comment><USER2> I'm concerned about that as well. I've played around with that keyboard in the Apple store and it's not good for me. I have numbness in my fingers (cervical spine issue) and I need good tactile feedback from a keyboard. My 2014 Macbook Pro keyboard is usable, but even then, at home I have a mechanical switch keyboard I use with it. I'm not sure I could effectively use the new super- thin Macbook keyboard. There is a cost to all thinness obsession.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So Apple has decided that innovation now means tacking on gimmicks from iOS. Neat.

<comment><USER5> One leak feature from an article; not an official Apple press release. And you made that conclusion.

I'm not apple fan boy. But sure, Neat?

<comment><USER4> What was the biggest feature upgrade for the new OSX? Siri.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Your every release should be crazy so you can get attention.</comment>