Ask HN: How important is Salary when accepting a Job Offer? - <AUTHOR>

I am a recent grad (graduated last Dec) and slowly all my friends have started getting job offers.
But one thing surprises me alot is, everybody judges their company / work based on how much he or she makes.
Is Salary really that important? <comment><USER2> A common problem with salaries is that most companies offer you something that's slightly over what you currently draw, not what you truly deserve. In a way, that's like blindly agreeing to someone else's judgement.

Keep that in mind since starting with a lower salary could mean that it might take quite a few years to get back to standard salary levels, no matter how good you are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's worth taking a salary hit, especially early on, if it gets you working on more interesting projects, particularly if they're relatively new and you're likely to have a lot of opportunity to take on responsibility and shape their direction.

In the longer term, though, unless you're gambling with startups etc. and equity, you should look to be making average market rates at least, because otherwise it will start to eat away at you and damage your morale.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you've just graduated, I'd say your first criteria should be the job profile - the work that you'll be doing, and the opportunity for you to learn and grow there. Also, make sure you negotiate a salary that can cover your expenses and you can live decently. Beyond that, don't stress too much on how others will judge you based on the salary you get - many people do that, but think about it like this, if right now you focus on doing things that you enjoy and that provide you opportunity to grow, you're likely to do well in such an environment...and in the long run (say in the next 4-5 years), you'll be in a much better & happier position as compared to your other friends who took up a job based more on the salary.

<comment><USER4> I just saw your profile. You work with Jackbe? I've known their bay area team for 4 years.. awesome guys!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. I love it. Awesome colleagues, Friendly environment. I'm learning a lot here. :)

<comment><USER4> good luck! and I hope you can negotiate a good salary with them :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For your first job, salary matters zero. Not even a little bit. Concentrate on doing what you want to do with the people you want to do it with. The rest takes care of itself.

<comment><USER6> Well, yes and no. The fact that my first employer lowballed me was a life lesson that I've never forgotten. I'm a professional, I'm here to do a job you need done, show me the money.

<comment><USER3> Eh, if you do well at your first company, and have selected for the interestingness of the work and the degree of responsibility you get to take on rather than salary, you'll have a killer CV and an employer who'll give you a fantastic reference etc. for your next job. Your next employer doesn't need to know what your previous salary was, certainly not before they've made the offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Salary is only important up to a point, especially for your first job. What matters more is down to you - do you feel you can grow in the prospective environment? Are the technologies used something you want to get into? Is the commute ok? Will you have to move? What are the people you're likely to be working with like? What's the atmosphere like at the place? (Don't worry, you'll get better at judging that in interviews as time goes on)

The most important thing is whether or not the job is likely to make you happy. I know a lot of people who make large amounts of money in jobs they hate - they then become dependent on the income and are trapped in a job or worse, a career they hate.

Likewise as a young 'un you might think a 3 hour commute will be something you could handle, but you can't keep it up forever.

The single most important thing to consider at your stage in your career is whether this is a stepping stone into another job or whether you want to be in for the long haul. A stepping stone is worth taking a lower salary if you're likely to command a better one in a better job later. In the long haul you're probably more concerned about raises in pay.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been out of school for five years, and it's amazing the degree to which my first full-time salary didn't matter at all in retrospect. In fact, it still doesn't, but now I have the perspective to know that.

Absolutely go for what will make you grow the most.

</comment><comment><USER9> Consider how job A will get you to Job or Place B -> over time, initial effects will be much less important than the kinds of opportunities you gain from the early work.

</comment><comment><USER10> Salary is the most obvious constraint for optimization during job hunting. So, it is probably also statistically likely to be the most frequently overweighted.

Constraints that I think are under-weighted by many engineers: Do I believe in what the company is doing? Do I mind working for a military contractor? If you join an institution that you question the validity of, you won't be achieving your peak performance and slowing your long term growth.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you are just out of school, salary doesn't matter that much as long as you are able to cover your living expenses. Far more important is opportunity for professional growth. I would say the projects that you work on and the people that you work with at your first job have more impact on your career than salary. Work on the right things with the right people, and the money will follow.</comment>


Giving up alcohol opened my eyes to the infuriating truth about why women drink - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/762868/giving-up-alcohol-opened-my-eyes-to-the-infuriating-truth-about-why-women-drink/ <comment><USER2> Typical think piece - someone's inability to manage their life while partaking in a substance is not a personal fault, not something that they alone must bear and abstain from, but a problem with society and the responsibility of others to fix.

I'm an alcoholic. Looking at my expense tracking from the first five years out of college and in a developer role shows that I spent more money on booze in those five years than I did on gasoline for my car and groceries. There was not a time when I was out of work (or when I needed to drive - amazingly even alcoholic me wouldn't cross that line) that I wasn't drinking some craft beer or a single malt whiskey or smoking a cigar and playing poker with some bourbon. Unsurprisingly, my personal life was a gigantic mess while I shambled along at my job as a functional alcoholic.

I eventually completely gave up alcohol due to the problems I experienced, and I went through about a three year phase that this writer describes, where I ascribed to other people the reason why I personally drank. What I found through that was that I personally drank for unhealthy reasons. When I was unhappy or things were rough, I'd pop open a beer. After a hard day at work I would drain half a bottle of bourbon. Over a long Thanksgiving meal with my overbearing and judgemental family I'd down a bottle of wine myself.

I was personally using alcohol to cope with my problems instead of facing them. That does not mean that everybody else in the world does so. Several of my friends can have one beer with dinner and a scotch and soda on poker nights and be perfectly fine and sober to drive home. Most of the people I know can moderate their drinking, except for the other alcoholics in my group of friends who have given up alcohol.

So perhaps the writer of this piece should introspect instead of project and fix the issues in their life that are bothering them and learn to let others make mistakes and learn from them instead of taking part in the "silent four- way exchange of dismay, irritation, and bitchiness" they were so proud of.

<comment><USER3> but it's so much easier to blame it on the patriarchy!

Not to mention she's a sexist: "Uber driver who might possibly be a rapist".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> On one hand, I agree with other comments that the author may be overly alert to alcohol dependence signals in society. It has become somewhat of a social norm to joke about using alcohol to get through unpleasantness, but most people I know don't take the jokes literally. That may be difficult to see when you've had difficulty with alcohol in your own life.

On the other hand, the challenges she writes about women facing aren't fabricated, and she's giving herself as an example of someone who used alcohol to deal with those challenges. She sees signs that others are doing the same, and is disturbed by it. Even if there's some projection going on there, obviously there are _some_ other women in a similar situation, and maybe this post would be helpful to them. In some professional and social circles, I don't doubt there is also significant pressure on people of both genders, but women especially, to drink with the guys to fit in; perhaps reading this first-hand account of the effects that can have could change behaviours. It may not be perfectly unbiased, but I don't see it as worthless either.

Reading some of these comments, I can't help but notice the parallel to the men on the panel discussed in the post. Commenting on the points made is one thing (ideally while trying to understand where the author is coming from more fully), but dismissing the author and her thoughts outright because you feel you know better seems counterproductive at best.

</comment><comment><USER5> The thing that most bothers me is she conflates her alcohol addiction with sexism.

I know that as a male, I'm generally asked if I want to have a drink if everybody else is having one, and they don't look askance at me if I don't.

Trying to bring gender into this thing is pathetic.

<comment><USER2> It appears the author cannot accept that her alcoholism (or "ethanol dependency" as she likely called it) could be solely her fault. She's trying to lay some of the blame for her personal inability to consume alcohol safely and in moderation at the feet of society - society made her do it.

That's the thing about being a special snowflake, you have to be unique and perfect or you're just another wet lump.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This actually sort of reads like she was just an alcoholic. Everyone's got problems. Every class of people even have problems (men, women, children, white people, black people, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER7> There are so many deeply unhappy and unsatisfied men and women in the world it is truly astonishing.

<comment><USER8> It's astonishing why?

<comment><USER7> 4000 years of writing, thought and guidance seems useless to some people. Life is as simple as you make it. Nothing is really new.

I speak to as many people in their 70s and 80s and 90s as I can and more often that not they are quite lonely, scared and sad.

Obviously I'm not immune to such feelings!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have no idea what is the premise of the article and what is the problem that the author wants to bring up to the light. The author jumps between anecdotes and some situations from her life that ultimately lead to no conclusions. I stopped reading here:

>Is it so hard to work ten hours for your rightful 77% of a salary

as this is definitively not true, unless she's okay with this kind of discrimination and did not take it to the court.</comment>


Launch HN: Latchel (YC W19) – Rental Property Maintenance as a Service - <AUTHOR> Hi HN!
We're Ethan, Jullian, and Will. We're the founders of Latchel (https://latchel.com/). We handle 24/7 maintenance for residential property managers and landlords across the US.
Ethan was Director of Product at One Planet Ops, the creator of websites like contractors.com, homegain.com, and many other lead gen marketplaces. Jullian is a self-taught developer and designer who has built mobile and web apps, most recently at picmonic.com. Will comes from Amazon, where he helped design and deploy the last mile delivery operations for Amazon Fresh, Prime Now, and Amazon Logistics across the US and the world.
Will started the company when his family needed help running the family rental properties. His grandfather managed the properties full time all the way into his mid 90s! Sadly, his age caught up with him and he could no longer take care of the family business after getting diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The disease progressed quickly and unfortunately the family did not have a succession plan in place (advice to anyone with a family business: plan the succession early, you don't want to spend energy worrying about the family business when you want to focus on taking care of a parent's medical or end of life care). Will helped his father with the properties as much as he could while working full time at Amazon but was quickly overwhelmed by the maintenance dispatching and follow-up. He saw that the overall process was very similar to the logistics and delivery problems he was solving at Amazon. After looking for solutions online and calling Ethan to see if he knew of any solutions they couldn't find any. Ultimately, we teamed up to build what we couldn't find on the market: a service to handle rental maintenance problems and ensure work orders don't slip through the cracks.
Maintenance coordination is a difficult problem to solve because it is fundamentally a communications problem that isn't easily solved by software. First, most contractors are third party and take jobs infrequently from a property manager, so they're extremely unwilling to adopt a new process for reporting that work is complete or for getting paid. Second, tenants also interact with their managers rarely, so mobile applications (and even online portals) have low adoption rates among renters. Lastly, property managers face an agency problem: ultimately it isn't their properties, it is their clients who own the property. The property manager is responsible for its care and maintenance and wants to be able to have all of the details of what happened and to know why certain decisions were made in case something went wrong.
We sell monthly subscription services to property managers to take all of their maintenance calls. We have two paid subscriptions: 24/7 Emergency and a premium option where we handle both emergencies and non-emergencies. We also have a free software tier that gives property managers an online web portal for tenant maintenance request submission. This online submission tries to detect emergency scenarios and our software automatically calls the property manager in case of emergency. In addition to the monthly subscription services we also take a 10% referral fee from contractors we source for the jobs (we cover the credit card processing fees).
The HN community is full of people working on simplifying the oftentimes ugly interface between the real world and idealized technology systems. We'd love to hear your questions, thoughts, and concerns about this problem space. <comment><USER2> [https://www.yardi.com/products/rentcafe- connect/](https://www.yardi.com/products/rentcafe-connect/)

[https://www.appfolio.com/blog/2015/01/appfolio-contact- cente...](https://www.appfolio.com/blog/2015/01/appfolio-contact-center- new-247-maintenance-answering-service-now-available/)

This type of service has existed for a while with the larger vendors. What differentiates your service?

Licensed property managers are on the hook for the decisions you make. How do you and they manage that liability? Is it even legal to have an unlicensed third party field a call and assign a contractor? I know states where it is not.

If you've been small, you may have flown under the radar but getting attention could change that. The difference between Appfolio/Yardi and what you're doing seems to be the assigning your own contractors bit. That's legally questionable IMO. Maybe less so for first-party but definitely for third-party managers - it technically makes you an unlicensed property manager.

<comment><USER3> There are several states that don't require a license to be a property manager. Massachusetts is one example.

<comment><USER2> That's incorrect.

[https://www.mass.gov/service-details/re42r05-property- manage...](https://www.mass.gov/service-details/re42r05-property-management)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any plans to automate property management? If so, when?

I posted this request for an Uber for property management 7 months ago. After that post, I reluctantly hired a property manager and it has been a nightmare. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656752](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656752)

<comment><AUTHOR> We're staying focused on maintenance right now because maintenance is usually the biggest single headache for landlords and property managers.

There are so many problems to solve with generalized property management that we feel it's much better to stay focused on what we know.

<comment><USER4> Makes sense. Just as a thought experiment I was trying to figure what would be required. You've solved the maintenance issue, here's what I see is left:

1\. Placement. A system that posts to Zillow, Craigslist. It seems like photo or video walkthrough is an all but done deal. With keycode locks a real estate agent could escort a potential tenant through once they've been validated via credit score.

2\. Payments. Seems easy enough to build this software.

3\. Evictions. This seems like an entirely legal process, so having a lawyer on retainer for a metro might work here.

I think the biggest issue with property management companies is simply that their incentives aren't aligned with the owners. If they have a maintenance person on staff they have to pay that person somehow. I've talked with other indie owners/managers and keep hearing the same thing: "imagine you are in that business. Do the math, and property management doesn't earn much." It seems ripe for disruption.

Edit: the only thing that is missing is someone to keep an eye on the property in general. Not quite sure how to handle that other than have one person who handles an entire metro.

<comment><AUTHOR> The real value of a property manager is having someone who is invested in increasing the value of your rental property asset. In multi-family this is easier because the value is directly tied to the net operating income. Increased rents and lower operating expenses = higher property value.

Single family gets more tricky because the value is more closely tied to the property value and not the rental income. I think this is where the inventives are often misaligned. Even so, the best property managers will handle a lot more than just filling units, collecting rent, and handling maintenance. They understand the goals of the owner and will adjust their management strategy to meet those goals (eg income property or a quick sale in a few years).

To add to your list: tenant retention (highest cost is actually unit turnover), setting rent to the right amount based on local comparables, and keeping in compliance with the ever changing rental laws.

<comment><USER4> Great insight!

Tenant retention, while an issue, is a very minor one in comparison to peace of mind regarding the aforementioned issues. With scale and automation, I'd expect to save on the placement fee. In any case, I wouldn't even mind yearly turnover if I had my other issues solved. Perhaps it's just me. (My time is valuable and I've spent way too much of it dealing with the property manager and contractors when the property manager failed to deliver.)

I've heard varying things about setting rent. An investor/manager in the Bay Area told me setting rent too high is bad, and I think his reasoning was you wouldn't have a pool to choose from. Another person had a system of just setting the rent ridiculously high and lowering it every week until it was filled. Comps can be tough, and usually the market speaks loudest here.

Keeping in compliance with laws seems to confirm there'd have to be a full time employee familiar with the region.

<comment><USER2> The issue with turns is turn cost plus lost income. For anyone without multiple properties, the cost of a turn is usually significantly more than they would recover with a high turn rate but increased rents. This is why institutional investors push rents aggressively but mom and pops don't. To a mom and pop, a long term renter is valuable. As where a large investor isn't concerned about cash flow issues from turns because they can spread it over many units. Look at the public REITs, some have near 40% turn rates, which is insane. But that's what you get when you ask for a 5% rent increase every year. As where the mom and pop is just happy that you renewed and they don't have to worry about a cash pinch.

<comment><USER4> Your comment and x0x0's are informative, thanks!

I guess I'm just optimistic that there is a solution which won't require such high cost of placement fees, in addition to other costs. It seems hard to argue that the current PM system is efficient. Maybe it's just the case that there are good PMs and bad ones.

<comment><USER2> The companies I worked with never paid placement fees. You don't really need incentives when housing supply is tight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anecdote: There was a brief time when I took a break from tech project management working for software development companies, and did a brief stint as a project manager for a small handyman startup in the real estate business. I ran my own handyman company for beer money in college, sold it after college, and have seen the handyman services industry grow and evolve with technology. It's been very exiting to watch.

The work itself was a cakewalk. Dealing with property managers, contractors and laborers was less of a cakewalk, but still manageable.

Where I saw an opportunity for the RE business I worked at for two years (because of business decisions now even the owner has admitted were not just stupid but "f--king stupid") was to try doing exactly what Latchel is doing for property managers. We had all the resources, we had the people, we had the market and we had the local reputation to actually get two management groups with over 20 buildings interested enough to say "Show us your proposal and we'll take it to our owners".

That idea died because of someone high above and their ego, and even though I eventually returned to tech[1]--I still wonder what it would have been like had I pursued this exact idea on my own.

Good luck Latchel, as other comments are showing here: this is definitely much needed, and if you do it well, congratulations on your future riches, heh. The demand for this is _HUGE_.

\---

[1] Me, returning to tech after two years in real estate [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ5nV9aKthU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ5nV9aKthU)

Edit: If you ever start operations in Chicago, or plan to, I can likely make some introductions to a couple of large property managers I have a good, personal relationship with that may be interested to at least hear your pitch.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've built our operation to be largely geographically agnostic. Our customer base follows population density. Today we operate out of 41 states and have a decent Chicago portfolio. Warm introductions are always greatly appreciated :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do you vet contractors? What's the fee per month? Is the subscription a lock in? Do you find and vet and place tenants? I'm interested: Alex at alexandarnarayan dot com

Basically if you can beat the 8% per month and 50% first months rent my current manager takes I'd jump easily. Even more importantly I've a tenant that pays religiously on the first of the month. But I don't get a deposit until the 11th or the 12th. Can you guys beat that?

What are the chances I can get on the phone and talk to the person that would be overseeing my property? How do you convey trust to owners when you don't live in the areas you serve?

Edit: the fee structure is insanely attractive.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do not take over property management duties at all outside of maintenance (i.e. No rent collection, no filling of units, evictions, advertising, etc)

As far as vetting contractors, we ensure they have appropriate licensing, bonding and insurance per local requirements and also vet their existing social media reviews (looking for 4+ stars). Most of our clients provide us their rolodex of contractors to work with and we can vet their responsiveness and quality that way.

<comment><USER6> Ahh so only maintainence. Dang. Still a nice service but I don't get a discount from the current property manager for him just collecting rent on my behalf as I used him mostly to get my current tenant but now the 8% a month is torture.

<comment><USER2> You have to look at it like a retainer charge. Most of the time, what they do is minimal but when something happens, they will give your property a ton of time. I think property managers are chronically underpaid because the barrier to entry is so low. The best run firms I've seen are one or two people that charge a premium but cap themselves at say 150 units. Then you get their full attention and care all the time. The hard part is they're never taking on new clients because they're never losing old clients.

It's a lot like good CPAs, good lawyers, or good family practice physicians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a headache for me too. Some questions for you:

Do you handle common area maintenance? Snow shovelling? Cleaning? Sidewalk maintenance? Do you have a requirement on the minimum num of units per building? How do you handle tenants that don't speak English? What is your pricing?

Aside from maintenance, do you have plans to get into full-on property management?

<comment><USER8> This is Ethan, one of the founders here. Yes, we handle common area, snow shoveling, cleaning, sidewalk maintenance, etc. We even handle unit turn inspections and punch list creation.

No minimum number of units. In fact, 80% of our units are single family residence.

We have Spanish speakers on staff, but all of our automated texts/emails are in English. So that come some times be an issue for Spanish only speakers. Generally we have to get on the phone with them.

We charge $25 + $1/unit per month for handling all tenant calls, troubleshooting, and emergency coordination. For $25 + $10/unit we do coordination for every time of job (snow shoveling, cleaning etc.) The monthly subscription does NOT include the cost of the handyman/contractor going out to do work.

No plans to go into full on property management. We feel like maintenance is a big enough headache to solve for now!

<comment><USER2> How familiar are you with state laws? Performing walkthrough inspections as a third-party without being licensed is illegal in many states - a felony, even. I'll source it for you shortly.

EDIT: Here: [https://azre.gov/LawBook/Documents/SPS_Documents/SPS_2017.01...](https://azre.gov/LawBook/Documents/SPS_Documents/SPS_2017.01_Unlicensed_Assistants.pdf)

"An unlicensed assistant shall not perform the following activities:

\- Perform a walk-through inspection or Tenant Vacate Inspection

\- Provide advice or negotiate with anyone regarding a property

Pursuant to A.R.S. 32-2165(B) A person who performs acts that require a license under this chapter, other than a broker's or salesperson's license, without being licensed as prescribed by this chapter is guilty of a class 5 felony."

Arizona is not unusual in this regard. I helped build a publicly-traded REIT with an internal manager and worked with general counsel on these issues. Some of the laws seem silly but if you can do what a property manager does then what's the point of having property managers be licensed? And I for one think they should be. People complain of property managers now but imagine if there was zero training or licensing. I also deal with HOAs, which require no training or licensing, and they make property managers look like geniuses. They manage HOAs when they don't even know their own CC&Rs, let alone the law.

<comment><USER8> Yes, we're definitely more restricted in AZ than most other states on what we can/can't do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a much needed service, and I feel like I've seen a lot of people enter this space but I wonder what happens to all of them after a few months. They seem to disappear.

The main question I have is: which cities do you operate in?

The secondary questions: How do you handle the workmen? What if you customer thinks that you charged too much?

<comment><USER10> We currently service properties across the entire US. We have built Latchel to be geographically agnostic so we can service rentals in any city without having to establish a presence or build density. As for contractors, we will work with our customer's existing contractors if they have any, and find new ones if they dont. We work with our customers to set default budget limits for individual properties or portfolios, and then seek either their approval or their owner's approval (included with Premium service) for an increased budget if we cannot find a contractor within their budget limit. This helps prevent surprise contractor invoices and keeps budgets under control.

<comment><USER9> That is great. It seems like a lot of work. I have often wondered how hard it would be to find an honest, reliable contractor if I were to get a property in a distant city.

I would be happy to outsource all that work to you, and I hope you succeed so I can hire you. But how would you guys find one?

In other words, the issue with finding someone long distance is that you can't check them out in person, or see their work etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have existing contractor networks in most of the cities we service. Whenever we enter a new area we often have to source on-demand. We vet people based on social media reviews and ensuring their licensing etc meets the local requirements.

When we send someone out from our network we are implicitly standing behind their work. The good new for us is you can tell a lot by a person's phone demeanor and business professionalism. If someone is rude or curt over the phone with us they certainly won't be polite with tenants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats on the launch! Do you imagine scaling up to work with larger properties like condominium associations? I ask because the property management company at my current complex isn't that great. We have many outstanding projects in the queue and they never communicate onsite issues such as when the hot water went out. From a tech perspective, the website they lease to us is so old, not mobile friendly lacks notifications and doesn't have a CMS to allow our HOA to make updates.

<comment><USER8> Yes, we hope to get into associations soon. Right now they are a much smaller percent of our customer base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a great idea. A friend of mine actually pitched this idea to me a couple months ago.. and while I thought it was great it was too far out of my wheelhouse.

</comment><comment><USER13> In France, this kind of work is proposed by a lot of real estate agencies. Real estate agencies can even collect the rent for you and "guarantee" you the amount you will get each month. This point is very important as it is a nightmare to evict a bad tenant.

Do you have the same issues in the US? If so, do you plan to manage the rent payment as well?

<comment><USER10> Part of our long-term vision is to increase the number of tools we provide to our customers to help with the other tasks associated with managing a property. These tools may include tenant background checks, rental payment solutions, etc. Right now we are laser-focused on tackling property maintenance and making the most efficient processes possible. Most of our customers currently use other solutions alongside Latchel that help with tenant management and accounting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are the differences between your services and SMS Assist? ([https://www.smsassist.com/residential-repair-maintenance- ser...](https://www.smsassist.com/residential-repair-maintenance-services))

<comment><AUTHOR> SMS Assist targets commercial and large residential (eg 5000+ single family homes). Their customers include Dollar Tree and the US Postal Service.

We offer similar services for mom and pop property managers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great idea! Wish there was something like this in India! It is becoming increasingly strenuous on my Dad who owns a few rental properties, to always be at the beck and call of our tenants and their problems.

<comment><USER10> Hopefully with time we'll be in India, too ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this different than rabbu.com? They just raised a round near me and I have some experience in real estate, and have some concerns about the model scaling. Happy to discuss more if it'd be helpful.

<comment><USER14> What do you think are the most significant issues re: scaling the model?

<comment><USER16> It's really really hard to coordinate contractors in short time increments. I did a consulting project with a measurement company (measures sqft of homes) and their model is stressed coordinating and moving around in 1 market at near max utilization. I helped them scale into 2 additional markets and it's just massive headaches. To the point I was thankful I generally work on software and can operate with way higher margins. 15% margin on 3-$100 services a year. Makes it really really hard to grow business, pay well, make mistakes (you're always going too and with such a small margin they hurt way more). Happy to talk more in private if it'd be helpful. I am watching them hurt bad right now trying to add market 4/5\. They're at about 750k run rate

<comment><USER2> Homee helps address this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can Latchel be utilized by a homeowners association with an existing list of preferred vendors?

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. We organize vendors by trade category and customer contact preference on a per-property or per-portfolio level. This allows us to structure property and vendor relationships in a large number of ways that accommodates almost any customer type

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How do you plan on dealing with competitors? what do you think your 'moat' is?

<comment><USER10> I feel like many of our competitors focus on either a pure software or pure human operations solution to property maintenance. We approached this problem by combining the two, leveraging the strengths of both to provide a more efficient, and more scalable product. We use our technology solutions to automate the tasks that can be automated, and use a skilled operations team to either pick up where our automation hits snags (e.g. a tenant or contractor doesnt respond to an automated SMS asking for their schedule) or where their knowledge is required to make a decision that a computer may not be able to. It's hard enough to build a quality product with either solution, even harder to meld the two into an efficient engine. We believe this keeps us competitive and makes it hard to replicate our processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd be curious to see whether this expands into the BuildingLink market.

<comment><USER8> I'm not very familiar with BuildingLink. What market is it for? Larger multifamily?

<comment><USER20> Lots of big multiunit apartments use it, its terrible, if anyone wants a run down on current services like this I'd love to tell you why these are doomed

<comment><USER10> I'd love to know more about these services and what specifically you find terrible about them. Our team is always focused on building a good user experience, part of which comes from learning from other services mistakes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How do you solve for quality control in the contractor network?</comment>


Xkcd style graphs - <AUTHOR> http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/11350/xkcd-style-graphs <comment><USER2> For people like me who would like to make PDF-reports with this kind of graph- style without resorting to Mathematica, take a look at this TeX-solution[1]. It utilizes the random step-decoration in Tikz to achieve a similar result.

[1]: [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74878/create-xkcd- sty...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/74878/create-xkcd-style- diagram-in-tex)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's always the xkcd technique to get an xkcd-like graph that looks like it was drawn by hand: draw it by hand.

<comment><USER4> By "by hand". I assume you mean using some sort of Intuos tablet with various pen and brush tips and some sort of curve-smoothing software so you can trace over the output of GNUplot, yes?

<comment><USER5> Unless he's changed his ways, I thought xkcd was still drawn by pencil and paper, then outlined with pen, scanned in, then touched up via a paint program?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This question reminds me of the work Microsoft Research developed to automatically create 'hand drawn' maps for Bing. The process relies on four steps: data selection, data simplication, layout and decoration. The tool seems to be offline now, but when I tried it, it worked well for simple direction sets, but like the charts problem, it sometimes needed human curation to ensure that the selection and simplification steps were meaningful.

Details: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/news/features/destinatio...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/news/features/destinationmaps-012510.aspx)

Example: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/kopf/destinati...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/kopf/destination_maps/results/html/map_007.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hang on people... The whole 'Randall Rocks/cool factor' aside, let us not forget the purpose of information visualisation.

I don't see much discussion about the ability of these charts to condense large amounts of data into compact spaces. No mention of these devices ability to encode a concept into a visual experience... Not to put too fine a point to it but... What Would Edward Tufte Say?

<comment><USER8> A "hand-drawn" plot compared to pixel-perfect one communicates an important message that error-bars are unknown and a model the plot is based on might be wrong. It stresses the plot is qualitative: a general shape of curves might be right and numbers might have correct order of magnitude — nothing more.

<comment><USER7> I'll allow it.

...good point, like to see more of this type of comment in this thread.

Sounds like what you are saying is along the lines of (paraphrasing here) almost correct as opposed to precisely inaccurate.

I hope others will add more along the same lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Where I could _really_ enjoy this is in the context of textbooks and tutorials. Sometimes a hand-drawn figure is able to convey an abstract idea much more clearly. When I see figures representing manifolds (e.g. the many figures in Roger Penrose's Road To Reality), it's easier for my mind to understand them as abstract notions rather than 2-d geometric entities on the page.

The problem is that good hand-drawn figures are _hard_ \- xkcd just makes it look easy.

So awesome work!

<comment><USER10> I agree. I had once started off to make such an application. A virtual pen- and-paper, whiteboard-and-marker. Also, instead of using mouse pointer, one could _draw_ on the touchpad. There is a subtle difference, but one that could make drawing less awkward.

A similar application is awwapp.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone needs to make a JavaScript graphing library that looks like that; I'd definitely use it :).

<comment><USER12> I imagine it's only a matter of time before Mr Bostock catches on to this and creates an example: <http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock>.

d3.js should probably have you covered.

<comment><USER13> d3.geo has most of these projections now, as a start: <http://xkcd.com/977/>

<http://bl.ocks.org/3764187> <http://bl.ocks.org/3739752>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It isn't in the same style as Xkcd graphs, but the OmniGraphSketcher program lets you hand draw graphs like that, without data.

[http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraphsketcher/overview...](http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraphsketcher/overview/)

<comment><USER11> > lets you hand draw graphs (...) without data

If this ever gets popular, I think we'll be in trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Working as an animator, we found that a pretty good way to mimic wobbly lines like this was to use a 2d fractal as displacement map. Does anyone know of any algorithms for 2d displacement? Would be quite fun to port it javascript

</comment><comment><USER16> Would love to see implementations of this for R or anything else that isn't Mathematica.

An online tool would be awesome.... :)

<comment><USER17> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12675147/xkcd-style- graph...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12675147/xkcd-style-graphs-in-r)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I often find a need to have "mockup" graphs that actually are easy to produce from real data, packaging this up seems like a win for me.

One for the backburner list.

</comment><comment><USER19> Would it be possible to do something like this in Wolfram Alpha? I'm not sure how complicated you can make the input there, but it's using the same Mathematica engine, so I imagine it's possible somehow...

<comment><USER20> In the works...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> how about using gimp effects rather than a programmatic solutions. For example. Animation -> Rippling.

<http://postimage.org/image/5ki873h2v/>

<comment><USER22> That's definitely an easy way to do it. it's got too much of a wave feeling to it, though. You can tell that it was applied globally.

<comment><USER23> Just select and split off all the text to a new layer, then apply the distortion to the plot layer and not the text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _Any tips on how one can create xkcd-style graphs? Where things look hand- > drawn and imprecise._

Umm, draw them by hand? I don't want to seem to be stating the obvious, but ...

Options:

* Take some fine-point felt pens, draw the chart on paper, and scan it.

* Use a drawing program that has a freehand option, a mode where you can sketch using a mouse or other pointing device.

* Take an art course, fail the course, but succeed in getting the requisite materials.

</comment><comment><USER25> I dream of the day we can do this in javascript... it'd be the coolest graphing library, in the world!

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not used to Mathematica and before I spend some time deciphering this: Are they distorting the whole image, or picking parts of it? It kinda looks like the former, which exaggerates some parts a bit, compared to xkcd.

<comment><USER27> The first solution (Chris) first defines a function that takes a pure function and makes it wiggle, then goes on to draw the graphic elements of the plot (axes, legend, the curve). This way everything is still a fully symbolic graphic object and can be exported as pdf.

The second solution (Simon wood) uses rasterzation and image processing to do the trick, thus losing vector data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So.. What _exactly_ does the author of xkcd use? Is it a secret or something?

<comment><USER29> I assume Randall draws them by hand. The humor / inventiveness of this question consists of trying to replicate the hand-drawn style using code.

<comment><USER30> He doesn't specifically talk about graphs, but he says his usual workflow is sketch in pencil, then draw, then scan and postprocess:

<http://www.maa.org/Mathhorizons/MH-Sep2012_XKCD.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Your move, Mr. Munroe...

</comment><comment><USER32> #creative

I like this idea, but the results have what I would say is "very low momentum" in them (not speaking with any kind of terminology here, just ad hoc) meaning that just as when you write L E T T E R S e..x..t..r..e...m...e...l...y... s-- l---o---w---l---y you get much more wiggle in them, the two images on this page are very very wavy, as though the pen that drew them had no momentum.

isn't there a way to have lines be drawn by a hand that has inertia/momentum and is trying to follow the logical curve, but just wavers a certain percentage and correct as it goes along? This is what gets (in my opinion) the result we see. Someone drawing at a good pace by hand and correcting while he does so. not a "random deviation" around the logical path, whch is what these results seem to be more like.

<comment><USER33> Why do you put #creative on every comment?

<comment><USER32> only a few, as i explain in one of them. some of my other comments if they are extremely technical and analytical might instead contain a rational tag :)

<comment><USER34> Have you considered using two accounts instead?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Printing ASCII Art with an Arduino and a Vintage Printer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEMUWPn05PM&t=71s <comment><AUTHOR> I love Emily's Electric Oddities, she has many other interesting projects. If you liked this you may want to check out her The Lissajukebox build, too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=466xZ3cexMg&t=43s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=466xZ3cexMg&t=43s)</comment>


What Is Property? Do We Own Our Data? - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/property.html <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting discussion on what we should consider property and what we should expect remuneration from.</comment>


Quixey is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinformation.com/alibaba-backed-quixey-shutting-down <comment><USER2> These paywalled sites should be banned from HN. At least other sites you can click "web" link to view the cached version, this website doesn't even let you do that.

What makes it even more annoying is how they somehow got many 'influencers' to share their articles to their followers, but no one can read them unless they pay up. I'm sure these "influencers" know that no one can read their shared links, so I assume there's something fishy going on there.</comment>


Ask HN: Link to Dev or VC Blog with great reviews of business/tech books? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a blog authored by a well known techie or VC (can't remember) who also scribed great abbreviated reviews of meaningful business books that he's read (pretty sure it is a he).  Failed to bookmark and desperate to locate...<p>Anyone help? <comment><USER2> Derek Sivers maybe? <http://sivers.org/book>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, thank you!</comment></comment>


Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-high-quality-camera/ <comment><USER2> This is an awesome development for building out machine vision or microscope cameras. It'll be great to adapt the Pi to an Amscope or Dinocam for inspecting small part features in an industrial setting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_mount](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_mount)</comment>


Israel confiscates visiting iPads - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/14/ipad_banned_in_israel/ <comment><USER2> I found this out yesterday and submitted <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264183>

I don't understand the wifi issue. This screwed my plan for my father's 50th birthday gift. I have been hiding an iPad in my dorm room, still in its original gift wrapped packaging. What do I do now?

<comment><USER3> I'll gladly take it... actually forget that, Vietnamese customs would probably hold it forever before loosing it in someone's pocket...

So, Israel, Apple? First they shoot Macbooks, and now block iPads from entry? What's going on there‽

<comment><USER4> Bureaucracy.

Israel, like my own country, has laws in place which forbid the sale of any RF-capable devices until they have been expensively and painstakingly approved by some central regulatory authority. This sort of thing is common in state- heavy countries. The Israelis are just more competent about enforcing their laws and regulations.

<comment><USER5> So does the US - the agency responsible is the FCC.

In general regulating broadcast RF is a good thing, because it only takes one badly behaving device to spoil the air space for everyone.

You might think that it would be possible to rely on foreign certifications but standards are not totally harmonized between regions and governments worry that _local_ inspection and certification is required to avoid having B-grade out of spec product sold in their market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _American standards, with which the iPad does comply, allow for lower wireless power levels than do the European standards. Because of this, Haaretz quotes unnamed ministry officials as saying, "the broadcast levels of the [iPad] prevent approving its use in Israel."_

They're confiscating them because they support _lower_ power levels? That seems weird. Typically radio-like devices run into trouble for being _too_ powerful for local regulations.

Not that that should be an issue. My Airport Extreme lets you turn down the transmission levels from 100% to 0% in 25% increments anyway.

<comment><USER5> They got it backwards.

IIRC the max effective power on 2.4ghz is 200mW in the US and 100 mW in the EU. Changing the limit is a software/firmware configuration issue plus a little calibration with a signal meter so it won't have any impact on a worldwide launch date.

A lot of people in the EU load US firmware to get more range, even though it's not permitted.

The lower default power is actually a good thing. 100mW is fine to cover an average European house/apartment, and it helps cut down on interference and boost total available capacity in densely populated areas.

<comment><USER7> Loading US firmware has issues - you are going to lose channels 12 and 13 (I found out the hard way - I bought an Airport card for Powerbook in US and had missing channels ever since).

<comment><USER5> In practice nearly all WiFi in London is on channels 1-11 because there are enough tourists who would otherwise complain.

Some personal WiFi is on 13 because it buys you two-channel separation for free. (13 and 11 still conflict, but not as badly as 11/12 or 11/11.)

I feel your pain though. Apple are horrific about regional settings. Mine Macbook is a US model so it's missing 12/13 and there is no region crack for the DVD drive so it's permanently stuck on region 1. Next time I'm going to buy a Thinkpad.

<comment><USER8> Be aware that region free DVD drives don't work with Windows 7 - at least, they don't play DVD movies, but they do work with data DVDs - unless you're using VLC.

Some drives have firmwares available which tell the OS that they only support a single region - the region that's on the DVD, which resets upon every disc entry.

A bit of a PITA, since region locking isn't really a copy protection mechanism; DVDShrink or similar still work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not accurate. It is all initiated by few who tried to smuggle it through the customs at the airport and got caught. Those who paid the fine, or alternatively declared about it and pay the custom fee, managed to bring it in.

Yet, iPad being that hot topic in the news woke up some clerks in the communication ministry saying we did not approved it at all, as if it is nothing like any other iphone/ipod or just standard iphone.

by the time it would be available by Apple distributor in Israel (as we all know, it will not be available outside of US before the end of May) I believe the regulation thing would be sorted out.</comment>


Ask HN: What Framework to choose for a prospectivly ill maintained SPA? - <AUTHOR> The question: If you had to pick a framework for a SPA project, that will eventually be maintained by other developers with wildly varying levels of skill, motivation and language proficiency, which would you choose?
The reason for this question: When I started to work at a research facility at my university, I was assigned the maintenance and further development of the human machine interface of one of our robots. The used framework was an outdated version of Polymer, the build chain was brittle, there was little documentation and the previous students who worked on this project were long gone. Some of the code was beautiful, some of it was a huge mess.
Me, being inexperienced in WebDev, but interested in the project, started modifying it, up to a point where I hit a roadblock, burnt everything to the ground and started anew. I then got to see the whole cycle repeat itself: I built some stuff, then I was assigned to a different project, a new student took over, hated a lot of my uninformed "design decisions", but managed to implement some stuff, handed it over to the next student, this one implemented some stuff and at a later point I had to take over again. The code was - of course - a huge mess, some of it my own, some of it of others.
So... I'm burning it to the ground again. Clean slate and everything, this time we will do it right, right? But of course the nature of the future students who will maintain this project will not be different. As software always is the answer for human flaws, I'm looking for a framework that hopefully prevents the degradation of the project, or at least slows it down.
I guess I'm looking for a framework with the following features: - Large-ish community, so Google and SO can help - A rather strict way of doing things - This way should also be relatively easy to understand - Using 3rd party libraries like D3, the roslib etc. should not be a huge PITA - Stable tooling
What would HN choose? <comment><USER2> Think different.

Write an ordinary web app or a desktop app if at all possible. There is some possibility it will still work in 10 years, it's almost impossible that a SPA will. The problem is that the web platform has been weaponized by Google and Facebook (which are not interested in helping you accomplish your goals, they just want to sell ads at get rich)

Apple and Microsoft may have different motivations but they are left with pouring sand in the gears by not implementing "standards" and file formats that they don't want to implement to protect their real and perceived business interests.</comment>


Culdesac: Car-free neighborhood built from scratch in Tempe - <AUTHOR> https://culdesac.com/ <comment><USER2> The title and website headline are misleading, this isn't going to be car- free, it's going to be _no privately owned cars_.

> We're bringing together services like ridesharing, bikes and scooters, and > same-day grocery delivery, so zero private cars means zero hassle.

Here's why this matters from someone who lives here: 4 months out of the year Tempe's average temperature is above 99F. This means one of the following:

1\. Residents will heavily use ride sharing and delivery during the summer, just "in place of" owning a car.

2\. Culdesac will install a ridiculous amount of outdoor cooling for its residents, one might imagine this will require a fair amount of water.

Don't get me wrong, this is a cool idea, but is Tempe the right place to do it?

There are many options like semi-underground homes that could have been trialed here which would have fit the local climate; but they aren't doing that. Seems like they are trying to create a one-size-fits-all solution which IMO will not work outside of California.

<comment><USER3> Not quite 99F (which is like 37C) but Singapore is VERY humid compared year round (as opposed to 4 months) of ~90 F (32 C). On many days I've seen "feels like 39 C" on google weather. Despite all that, car ownership is 12 per 100 people. People rely heavily on public transit, which is air conditioned (AC seems to be their sin, but it's definitely more efficient than AC in every car on top of burning gas to get it to move around).

I think as you allow as a possibility in the end of your reply, it's not like it can't work, but non-ebikes and scooters might become a bit much for some people unless there's copious cover.

<comment><USER4> Riding an ebike in 39c is uncomfortable but not unthinkable. I do it semi regularly. If your trip is >10km it's not that bad at all. You will probably have to shower when you get home but it's still better than owning a car.

<comment><USER5> Being on a modern E-Bike in 39C is definitely way more comfortable than walking. You can adjust the power settings so you barely have to touch the pedals to move, it's less effort than walking, and you'll be traveling at up to 25 km/h so you'll get some air cooling you wouldn't get if you were just walking.

I've ridden mine in up to 35C and it's like stepping into an oasis compared to standing still in that temperature, more so if you wear clothing like loose fitting cotton clothing that benefits from the increased airflow.

<comment><USER6> >so you'll get some air cooling you wouldn't get if you were just walking.

39C is well above skin temperature so you're only going to get evaporative cooling and the effectiveness of that depends on humidity. It's possible the heating effect of the hot air blowing over your skin overwhelms the evaporative cooling and you are actually getting net warming.

Even if the humidity is low if you're not already drenched in sweet, it's going to feel awful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a resident of Phoenix, I can see this working 9 months out of the year. But, June can reach 120f, and I'm cursing just by the time I walk from the grocery story through the parking lot to my car. July and August have random monsoons which aren't navigable on scooter or bike.

If you added golf cart paths, the community becomes much more attractive. I'd take a golf cart 1/4 mile to an air conditioned bus stop/ride share stand.

Notice that this arrangement is quite unlivable for people with babies. Walking a child in a stroller 1/4 mile in 120f, to meet a ride share.... with what car seat? It would take any affluent new parents just a month before they nope'd out of that.

<comment><USER8> Why are people living there if they can't even step outside an air-conditioned environment for two minutes? Might as well be living on the moon in a pod at that point.

<comment><USER9> As someone who used to live in the Phoenix climate, and now lives in one of the furthest north cities in the US:

The middle of winter here is much more 'moon-like' than the middle of summer ever was in Phoenix. I basically have to don a space suit to go out in below 0 weather!

<comment><USER10> Well the highest temperatures in Tempe in the summer are closer to the highest temperatures on the lunar surface during the lunar day than the lowest temperatures in the Northern US winters are to the lowest temperatures on the lunar surface during the lunar night.

So depending on how you slice it, Tempe might in fact be more moon-like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is... ambitious. Very ambitious. Tempe is not a pedestrian mecca. And while it's nice that they're planning on bringing in some retail and grocery and entertainment options into the community itself, people obviously want variety and light rail only gets you so far here.

They're apparently intending to supplement this with car sharing spaces, which might help, and if you _work_ along light rail, this might be doable. They also mention they'll still have parking spaces for guests and such, so that means, ostensibly, they'll need to police them? Or just because they're not reserving spaces for residents, the demand will always outstrip the supply.

Either way, while I agree that transitioning away from dependence on individual automobiles is a noble effort, this concept has its work cut out for itself here. That being said, I have several friends who go car-free here, so...

<comment><USER12> What's wrong with just charging market rate for parking and road usage, i.e., just enough to so that there's always a few free parking spots and traffic flows at capacity?

<comment><USER13> That involves city law, and it's political suicide to do it everywhere, so it doesn't happen. You need bootstrap efforts like this so people can know what the alternative is like.

<comment><USER14> Why would it involve city law to charge market rate for parking at this particular development?

<comment><USER13> Not at the particular development, but everywhere in the city, which is what I think he was implying.

Imagine that the city started charging for the 'free parking' everywhere, either through permit schemes or parking meters, created photo enforced no stop tolling for major highways and busy commuting corridors and reduced property taxes w/ low income exemptions for the new driving fees.

You would get a revolt even with the tax reductions.

Small localized new greenfield experiments like this is not political suicide for a city to approve.

<comment><USER12> > Not at the particular development, but everywhere in the city, which is what > I think he was implying.

That's not what I was implying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A more terse mission statement from a linked job posting:

"Culdesac's mission is to build cities for people, not cars. We're the first post-car real estate developer, and our goal is to build the first car-free city in the US. We're starting with the first car-free neighborhood built from scratch - that's Culdesac Tempe, a 1000-person neighborhood that opens Fall 2020."

So, like an apartment building, but horizontal?

<comment><USER16> To get a rough comparison in context, a co-housing development in a suburban area (a mix of three-story flats, townhomes, and a common house) ranges from 9-44 households (so 50-80 peopl) over 2-4 acres arranged in a more cul-de-sac feel (buildings/etc center around a common walking area). So, my first take on this is like having ~10 cohousing communities + some businesses

From another article: [https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2019/11/19/...](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2019/11/19/culdesac- tempe-apartment-complex-wont-offer-residential-parking/4191470002/) :

"which will be on 16 acres near Apache Boulevard and River Road" ...okay, so roughly in line with what I was thinking, though even more dense. [https://goo.gl/maps/yDu9Zt96GKAi4KfR8](https://goo.gl/maps/yDu9Zt96GKAi4KfR8) is the location. Judging from the satellite view it looks like it'll be spread across the four areas around that block (with some of the old existing structures getting torn down). If you've never visited Tempe, there's been a lot of recent new downtown development ~3 miles west of this location.

"The project falls within one of Tempe's opportunity zones, which could allow investors to take advantage of federal tax breaks." ...Interesting, the deadline for these projects (i.e. for investors to fund them and get a capital gains deduction) to get funding into a QOF-registered LLC working in a Qualified Opportunity Zone is 12-31-2019 from my understanding, so that's why it's happening now.

"An apartment development with no parking for its expected 1,000 residents..." This is where I'm a bit questioning on whether this will really be a place one wants to live in over the long run. It seems like solely a large distributed apartment complex rather than a community/neighborhood with stakeholdership.

<comment><USER15> Maybe a people mover or a monorail, since an elevator won't be practical :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I sold my car years ago and it is one of the most liberating things I've ever done. Yes, I live in a posh metropolitan area that makes it unnecessary to own a car and yes my housing is a bit more expensive, but I'm happier and have way more free time. But I have to say, Tempe isn't a place I'd want to walk around most months of the year, so unless this is high-rises, low-rises, skybridges, and tunnels, no way would I be on onboard.

<comment><USER18> Buying a car after not having one the year I lived in San Francisco was one of the most liberating things I've ever done.

<comment><USER19> You don't own a car, a car owns you.

<comment><USER20> Ok, I'll bite. How does my car own me?

<comment><USER21> Owning a car creates its own demand that otherwise wouldn't exist.

e.g. choosing suburbs to simplify car ownership, and then relying on the car every day.

<comment><USER22> Choosing not to own a car creates its own demands (on your time, your comfort, your freedom).

Anecdote: my brother-inlaw lives in Chicago (one of the places in the US where not owning a car is quite practical), and purchased a car. Why? Because he attempted to do a home renovation himself over the course of a winter without one. Hauling around tools, materials, and himself on a bike in snow and slush was not something he ever wanted to repeat.

<comment><USER23> Even something simple like grocery shopping is a pain without a car. And delivery services (someone else's car) or a nearly daily shopping trip are the only alternatives.

Plus, Chicago is a place where it's far easier to be car free if you're wealthy. The north side is where most of the density is, and the highest real estate prices.

I judge Chicago (minus the extensive suburbs) as more of a one car per family situation. Which is better than most of America but not car free.

In Tempe Arizona, this will never work.

<comment><USER19> Grocery carts are a thing..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> People underestimate their ability to live car-free.

I have never learned to drive (35). As a California resident, I've only been in a car twice in the past three months. From January through April, I wasn't in a car whatsoever for 3.5 months.

~"The only problems cars solve are problems cars cause."

<comment><USER25> People also overestimate other people's ability to live car free.

I have 40 kilometers to work and bus density here is never more than once an hour. If I want to be at work on time I have to leave on the last bus the day before work, or I'd have to be late every morning. Even in that case of leaving the same day and accepting being late to work I'd be away from home for 14 hours at minimum.

I have 10 kilometres to the nearest grocery store, and like I said bus density is not great. Even if I planned to do all my shopping on days of I'd be away from home for three hours at minimum, instead of a round-trip time of around an hour by car.

That's just for easily planned daily things. Doctor, dentist, bank, etc? Forget about it.

Not everyone lives in a place where being car-free is an easy choice.

<comment><USER26> But don't you think that living in a place that requires you to commute for so long is a situation you would not be in to begin with if cars were not an option? And I don't mean it just as a personal choice but as a urban planning strategy.

It seems to me a bit of a chicken and egg problem.

<comment><USER22> The difference in living costs of having your home close to work is often ignored. It's frequently cheaper to pay for the car, gas, and maintenance than it is to live that 40km closer.

Not to mention, there are other things, such as green spaces, good schools, and work for spouses, which make living "closer to work" impractical.

<comment><USER27> I think you nailed the most fundamental economic forces at work here. The total costs of operating a household - including opportunity costs - will keep pushing people into situations where a long commute is unavoidable.

The only way to green that up in the long run (besides carpooling), I suppose, is doing something crazy like making cars accessible to everyone that run on sunlight and last a million miles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "We've pulled out the parking lots to make room for acres of greenspace, friendly courtyards"

Having the stuff they're talking about is commonplace in some countries (eg. Netherlands, Denmark).. but for the services, trains etc. to work, the whole urban area needs the right (high enough) density. I'd like to see a plan of this.. The quoted sentence does not inspire confidence in me.

Also, just for example Amsterdam is uniformly medium density until you reach the edge of the city where it immediately turns to farmland. There is no useless low density suburban sprawl, in which services cannot function (because there would not be enough people living in its catchment area)

</comment><comment><USER29> AKA off campus dorms. This isn't targeting the urban professional, it's for those who want to continue the dormie lifestyle. One of the biggest universities in the country is just a couple stops away on the light rail.

<comment><USER30> Bingo, when I first moved out here I lived a couple blocks west of this place. It was 70% college kids. They also have a massive park and ride garage there, so I think I know where all those car free people will stash their cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Two things:

1\. Here's some sample temperature data for Tempe: [https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/tempe/arizona/united-s...](https://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/tempe/arizona/united- states/usaz0233) If I leave my house in 90+ degree heat to go somewhere that's 10+ minutes away, I'd much rather be in an air conditioned car. With that being said, I could probably adjust to the heat and would be fine.

2\. How would I travel from Tempe to the outside? Would I walk to a location where my car's stored (e.g. outside Tempe) or would I take public transportation?

</comment><comment><USER20> If only someone could design some sort of self-balancing, two-wheeled scooter that people could use to get around, entire cities could be designed without cars!

<comment><USER32> I know, like a bike with a motor and forks with rake that promote autobalance... wait, we just reinvented scooters and motorcycles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> mentioned yesterday in [https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-arizona-development- bans-re...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-arizona-development-bans- residents-from-bringing-cars-11574164801) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578165)

</comment><comment><USER34> Is there any actual information about this neighbourhood available? The linked website seems to only be an email collection form, as far as i can tell

</comment><comment><USER35> Slightly OT - it has always amused me that "cul-de-sac", commonly used in the UK to denote a street with a dead end, literally translates from the French as "arse of bag", which I guess is accurate in terms of its shape, but I'm sure many people think of it as a rather fancy name because it's French without knowing the meaning.

</comment><comment><USER36> Perhaps of some relevance: [http://www.fusedgrid.ca/fusedgrid.php](http://www.fusedgrid.ca/fusedgrid.php)

</comment><comment><USER37> Cul is almost a pejorative for sex in France

so it means

sex in a bag

<comment><USER38> No, cul means ass.

No, cul de sac means dead end (as in a road that ends)

<comment><USER37> Yes, ass can mean sex

> I got some ass last night

Try going on Tinder in Paris.

*Edit: I never stated it didn't also mean "dead end"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is there any photos? I'm curious how they design it.

</comment><comment><USER40> should be nominated for a PWOTY, Pretentious Website of the Year award

</comment><comment><USER41> Car free often means family free. See that there are no kids in their illustrations but 2 dogs and a bunch of young people?

People need to wake up to the reality that kids demand cars. How will school pick up and drop offs work? How will you take your kid to lessons? What about that play date you setup? What about going to school at your kids school for an early pickup 4p from office?

You can make it work without cars if you are fit, are lucky to have your office and kids' school in the city near to each other - but often "time" is a critical factor and you need the flexibility that a car offers.

<comment><USER42> > People need to wake up to the reality that kids demand cars.

That is ludicrous. We've only had cars for a hundred years.

The fact that it's difficult is BECAUSE we built cities around cars. Schools normally have districts so that they're nearby to the kids, if your kids school is in another suburb then frankly that's your poor planning. If you set up play dates with kids two 'burbs away, again, why did you do that? Places like Japan have no issues with no or low car families, the kids take public transport, walk, or take their bikes. You can ride your bike with them or join them for the train ride if you want to make sure they're safe, but the idea that kids need to be transported around in cars is ludicrous.

> but often "time" is a critical factor and you need the flexibility that a > car offers.

Public transport and biking is often faster than cars in denser car centric cities, and good public transport is on time so you can plan accordingly. Not all cities have good public transport, I get that, but that's the problem we need to solve. We've already tried cars, it's not working.

The issue isn't that we need cars, it's that we need a better city built around moving people without cars. You're looking at the problem in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER4> People in America live in such a bubble and just think that anything that doesn't work in America can't possibly work at all. A common post on HN goes along the lines "trains are shit and could never be seriously used. I took a train once and it was dirty and slow"

<comment><USER41> No it is not like that. I know you want to fit things to your narrative but honestly what we are asking here is to completely redesign cities from ground up and it is not going to happen anytime soon. Europe works since it has a huge history to it when cars weren't there and thus a lot of roads/lanes were built accordingly. To suggest US should do the same seems improbable to me. We should build for the future vs. the past. So the question I will ask what is next after cars? My mind goes into ideas such as aerial transport vs. walking/biking.

Also, I would be very curious how many folks commenting here have kids vs. single men/women who ride their bikes and hate that they have to share the road with cars.

<comment><USER14> > No it is not like that.

Oh, yes it is. I see comments on the internet like, "bike friendly? But what about kids??" as if kids explode if they get too close to a bike, all the damn time.

Somewhere in the commenter's mind, they're aware that there are bike friendly places where people have kids, like the Netherlands, and it works just fine. But they don't want to admit it, so they pretend they don't know. If you point it out to them, they'll find whatever the most obvious surface differences are between that place and where they live and insist this makes it impossible to draw any lessons.

I have a kid and we live car-free in Munich. We use walking, biking (including an electric cargo bike), buses, and trains. Works great. I don't dispute that sometimes it would be nice to have a car for the convenience, for things like going to Ikea or ski trips, but overall it's worth it for us to avoid the hassle and expense of car ownership.

On the other hand, I accept that when we move back to the states, unless we're in NYC we'll probably need a car. Oh well.

<comment><USER41> The problem with this line of argument often is that you are transposing solutions that work elsewhere piecemeal vs. looking at things holistically. For example, public schools in cities such as SF could be quite far away from people's homes. And public transport in SF sucks. Likely very few people in Munich travel to suburbs for work (since many companies in the bay area are headquartered far away from SF) and there are parents who have no option but to make that travel happen.

As such, this line of reasoning that if it works in Netherlands will work here seems vacuous. You need to consider the realities on the ground vs. making one off statements.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some companies that do "presentation interviews" - <AUTHOR>

Instead of doing a standard 45 minute interview, have the candidate give a 45 minute technical presentation to the team?<p>A startup I worked for a few years ago did this, and it was awesome. From looking around careers.stackoverflow.com and other popular job sites, this technique is not as popular as I would have hoped. Does anyone know of a company (startup or not) that utilizes this interview method? <comment><USER2> rapgenius.com does

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I wrote them a long letter asking to present to their team about 2 weeks ago but never got a response. Real bummer.

<comment><USER3> Try again with a short one-paragraph letter.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I need feedback for my feedback site - <AUTHOR>

www.FeedbackJar.com
Just need some feedback before we launch. Thanks HN!
Think of us as Getsatisfaction/UserVoice for small businesses.
For Customers:
Post a Question, Suggestion, Praise, Discussion, or Issue
Discuss with business employees and customers
Share ideas on improving products and services
For Small Businesses:
Receive, respond, and manage feedback
Increase customer satisfaction and business
Build and retain loyal customer relationships
Also, let me know if you have any launch ideas? <comment><USER2> The one question I have deals with how much data you'll have at launch. Right now, when I search for anything in MA, there's nothing there. Are you planning on either: a) just focusing on CA for launch b) preloading some data so there's at least something there c) connecting to an API or other service like Yelp, etc. to display some local listings, allowing users to select those businesses to add to the feedbackjar listing

My other question: Are you purposely staying vague with your categories? When I go to add a business, there are no category selectors, though it feels like there should be (could just be me).

Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its the classic Chincken and Egg situation ! You wont succeed without traction so you are forced to grow regionally like Yelp and City search etc .. If you launch Nationally you will spread yourself too thin .. Yep - Building the software is one thing Marketing is a different beast all together ..

</comment><comment><USER4> The one thing, I don't understand. You say "Think of us as Getsatisfaction/UserVoice for small businesses."

But small businesses are all over Getsatisfaction.

So what's different about FeedbackJar?

<comment><AUTHOR> But you can't search for by location on getsatisfaction. Plus, we're focusing on the small business vertical market like restaurants and cafes.

<comment><USER5> When you say "small business" I think you mean "small local retail business". My (theoretical) small, virtual consulting business is not who you're targeting.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're always welcome to create an account =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought Satisfaction and UserVoice _were_ for small businesses.

Are you really trying to build a company based on "We're like Coca Cola, but with a different name!"

Also, for the love of god, coordinate your colors. Rainbow text is so 1992.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yo dawg, I herd you like feedback...</comment>


Ask HN: What do you want to learn in 2018? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Deep learning.

In fact, I want to start the year with a MOOC or a video course on deep learning. I went over the current offerings, and am hesitating between Andrew Ng's new Deep Learning course at Coursera in 5 parts, and self-studying through the cs231n Stanford course (it has all the videos, assignments etc. posted). Can anyone help me decide between the two, or offer something else? I'm looking for mathematical understanding as well as hands-on experience, and am not afraid of math.

<comment><USER3> From my personal experience I would recommend Andrew NG's courses. (I am on the second one right now). I have done fast.ai's first course which is low on math and more practical (you directly jump to coding, and then try to make some sense of things.) CS231n is definitely a great option, however I chose coursera because I needed deadlines/reminders of Coursera to keep me motivated and finish something. If you are looking for more options, there are lot more courses listed here in Machine Learning category : [https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome- courses](https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses) however I don't know if someone has reviewed them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More Japanese (going for N3 in December) . Android game programming (iOS is apparently more profitable, but Java aligns better with my day job and lack of Apple devices). Possibly some deep learning.

<comment><USER5> After learning casually for over 3 years, I'm going to finally give the JLPT a try. I actually did a practice N4 test and the grammar was easy, but vocab is what really held me back

<comment><USER6> In advanced levels, grammar and lots of homophones are what holding me back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I _want to_ learn: thinking in array languages. Have been curious about them for a while, but over the holidays went through Advent of Code in K/Q. Without much prior knowledge, some of my solutions ended up distinctly awkward, but for some problems the solutions just fell out. Reasonably sure that the fraction of "just falls out" will increase substantially given a some more practice...

What I probably _should_ learn: how to sell. Increasingly clear that it's something I'm going to need in the next few years whichever path I take. Something that leaves me pretty nervous though (and some of the obvious ways to try stuff out, like monetising side projects, may be awkward in the context of $day_job).

</comment><comment><USER8> To learn more about my local river, as I plan to do quite a lot of fishing every day in the spring...

</comment><comment><USER9> Vue 2. I love Laravel, I suck at front end. I'm working on a monitoring app at the moment that could really benefit from live updates to the display, usually I'd use jQuery and timers, but I'd like to try something more modern.

</comment><comment><USER10> Every now and then there is this dude who posts regularly about algorithm trading. I guess I'll try that in 2018. I don't expect to make profit right away, not even till 2020.

<comment><USER11> His account? I'm interesting in algo trading cryptos.

<comment><USER10> [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=SirLJ](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=SirLJ)

<comment><USER11> Something seems off about this guy!

<comment><USER10> Why ?

<comment><USER12> Look at his submissions. He posts almost every day and their always one of about 3 major news outlets. I'd have to say I agree that that seems unrealistic for someone with honest motives.

<comment><USER10> I still don't understand what's so unrealistic about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ha-shine Machine Learning and Ethereum dapps. I will be taking machine learning electives at school and my employer is looking for ways to make use of blockchains, so I got those going for me :)

</comment><comment><USER13> 1) React Native

2) Some Japanese for a trip next year

3) Better meditation practices

4) General and technical knowledge via my goal of listening to 25 audiobooks next year

</comment><comment><USER14> Furniture eCommerce. How do people buy furniture online without physically trying the furniture? How do you ship furniture across the country? What are the niches in the space?

Pure software on its own can't do much. Gotta learn about the real world.

</comment><comment><USER15> More Elixir. I would love to be writing Elixir full time by end of 2018.

Xamarin Forms, seems about time to start working on mobile. I have an idea and started the elixir server part of it but will start on the Xamarin Forms part soon.

React or Angular. I started learning Angular 1.x right before 2 came out but never actually kept up with it or moved to 2.

Embedded development. I have an R Pi that I want to use Nerves with but I would also like to get non embedded linux hardware too

</comment><comment><USER16> Learn how to use XLM in an application.

Learn spanish.

Learn to free dive to 150 feet.

</comment><comment><USER17> Learn to speak the way Jony Ive speaks when he says:

> One of my memories at Apple would be less the actual products that we > developed, but the way that we developed them. I think that's been something > that I, everyday, feel grateful for.

[https://youtu.be/ef69BUlge-A?t=1m9s](https://youtu.be/ef69BUlge-A?t=1m9s)

</comment><comment><USER18> • Write a blockchain in swift

• Learn to write Ethereum dapps

• Tinker with modern GPUs on my QuadG5 under Linux.

</comment><comment><USER19> Lucid dreaming and meditation (Intensify practice), Sketching, Japanese

</comment><comment><USER12> More woodworking skills. R Pi architectures in the context of IoT.

</comment><comment><USER20> ReasonML, more functional programming, more parsing techniques/algs

</comment><comment><USER21> Ruby, Rails, Javascript (so I can enhance the rails apps)

At least so I can ship things confidently. If anyone has any suggestions, would love to hear them!

<comment><USER22> For Ruby I can't recommend [https://github.com/JoshCheek/ruby- kickstart](https://github.com/JoshCheek/ruby-kickstart) high enough.

It's a series of problems with tests and solutions. The problems will take you through a set of interesting CS problems which you'll be solving using features of the language.

It's addictively fun and will help you understand ruby before you dive into rails.

Also, you may find it useful to play with Sinatra a bit before diving into rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hindi.

</comment><comment><USER23> Investing, Natural Language Generation and painting (abstract style).

</comment><comment><USER24> Surprised that nobody mentioned Kotlin!

</comment><comment><USER25> Deep understanding of Swift Lang

</comment><comment><USER26> Robototechnics

</comment><comment><USER27> OpenCL and Vulkan.

</comment><comment><USER11> Swimming

</comment><comment><USER28> Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER29> oscp</comment>