The Housing Market in San Francisco and Ideas to Fix It - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zactownsend.com/broken-promises-the-housing-market-in-san-francisco-and-ten-ideas-to-fix-it <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281978%29)

Good thoughts. You failed to mention Prop 13 which was put into place a long time ago and simply doesn't make sense anymore. It's at least part of the reason it is so affordable (in relative terms) for rich people to keep second homes here when they bought them years ago.

We live in a building of 60 units where probably at least a third of those are absentee owners. They're rich enough and the cost to maintain is so low that they don't even need or want to rent those units out. We've seen our neighbors only 2-3 times in past 2 years... but if you look at the property tax bills of folks who bought 10-20+ years ago they are minuscule and are only adjusted upon sale of the property. In our case, we're paying easily 4x what the previous owners were.

We moved from DC couple years back which is also very expensive but their tax valuations are re-assessed on a regular basis so you don't have this huge disparity in what the rich old people are paying in prop tax vs the young not quite rich people are.

If values and property taxes were reassessed every 3 years or so this would put more pressure on these absentee owners to either sell or rent their units thus increasing existing inventory as well as adding to the city's coffers.

<comment><USER3> In your example, the building you describe is a condominium? If so, then what does it matter what your tax bill is and if they are absentee owners; if the owner maintains the property, pays their bills and taxes, then you should be happy to have them.

Tax reassessments during the boom of 2001 to 2007 were on track to price a lot of people out of their houses based on their current economic status. Proposition 13 and other bills passed across the country allowed individuals to avoid being "taxed out" of their house.

If you have a job that pays $100,000 and the taxes on your $250,000 house is $7,500 (3% property tax) and the tax quadruples to $30,000 in five years; why would you want the market fluctuations to be able to force an individual to leave their house?

The main item with this problem, as is with all affordability issues is that supply is not meeting demand. Look in Detroit and Flint where there is not enough demand and the supply is worth next to nothing.

Author's points of increased units would lead to a drop in prices until it becomes affordable to all. San Francisco will never allow it because the people who live there want to keep it San Francisco and NIMBY rules.

<comment><USER4> > If you have a job that pays $100,000 and the taxes on your $250,000 house is > $7,500 (3% property tax) and the tax quadruples to $30,000 in five years; > why would you want the market fluctuations to be able to force an individual > to leave their house?

I shed exactly zero tears for someone whose $250k property quadruples in value to $1m in five years. Sell the house and dance with joy at your (untaxed!) $750k capital gain.

The only argument for freezing tax assessments is to soak the new residents in favor of the current residents. It's a result of the absolute worst kind of democracy: voting to make other people pay more taxes.

<comment><USER5> >I shed exactly zero tears for someone whose $250k property quadruples in value to $1m in five years. Sell the house and dance with joy at your (untaxed!) $750k capital gain.

Ok, now where are they supposed to live? All the other properties cost just as much, so now they're forced to not only move out of the city, but now they have to quit their job too! How is this productive? You're penalizing someone for living in a housing bubble and not taking advantage of it. Even worse, you're penalizing current residents for having their house values driven up by a bunch of out-of-state (or out-of-country) investors and speculators.

<comment><USER6> Being priced out of their home is one option.

The other option is to ease pressure on home prices by laying down the NIMBYism and letting more housing be built in your community in a sustainable way!

This is the whole the point of self-corrective market forces: sure, you can choose to keep your low-density housing in a region that is attracting demand with great weather and strong industry, but prices are going to appreciate if you keep your doors closed to newcomers. Keep the door closed long enough and your self-defeating actions will force yourself out as well (see palo alto, where they now need to subsidize housing for anyone making under $250k/yr so they can have people like teachers and firefighters still live in the community).

The fact that taxes DON'T increase with demand distorts the self-corrective market forces that would otherwise stop people from closing the door to affordability.

<comment><USER7> >The other option is to ease pressure on home prices by laying down the NIMBYism and letting more housing be built in your community in a sustainable way!

That doesn't actually work in the real world. If you live in a desirable area, and you increase the housing supply in such a way that the area is still desirable, as soon as the price drops a tiny bit people move in from the outside and drive it back up again.

<comment><USER8> That can happen at the small scale - neighborhoods or suburban villages. It doesn't really happen at the city or metro area scale.

(If you have evidence of urban areas that have allowed lots of construction during periods of high population and job growth - cities like Dallas, Houston, or Atlanta - and have also seen high housing prices, please share it; I'm genuinely curious).

Part of the problem in the bay area is that there is minimal cooperation between the dozens of municipal governments to allow more housing. None of them want to be the first or only one to do it out of fear that they'll just end up with more density and high prices. It's a bit of a prisoner's dillema.

<comment><USER7> It happened in Southern California. In the area where I grew up the cities allowed developers to build hundreds of homes at a time - it's probably four times as dense as it was when I lived there.

Orange groves and strawberry fields and outdoor movie theaters and old military bases were all leveled and turned into housing tracts. But housing didn't get any cheaper - the state added 20 million people from 1970 to 2010, because there were jobs and it had the reputation of being a nice place to live.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The folly with arguments blaming San Francisco for the problem is the fact that the entire Bay area is priced at an insane level.

Take another look at this [1] BART map with corresponding home prices for each stop. Yeah, it's cheaper to live outside of the city, but it's still crazy expensive. The median sale price for a house in Pittsburg is $430,000, with a 62 min commute into SF. If you live 62 minutes outside of say, Pittsburgh PA, you can certainly expect your median home will cost ~$120,000 or less [2].

It's been my experience that while square footage cost may go down outside the city, you really end up paying around the same rent for a larger space. So if you can't afford a $3000/mo rent in the city, you probably still can't afford the $2800/mo rent you'll pay in Daly City.

I expect what would really happen if SF just went all in building new housing, is that prices would drop in the city slightly, allowing people to move back into the city, thus increasing demand and increasing prices back to where they were. The places where rent would drop are the suburbs, where people were pushed out to initially.

A way to look at it would be that SF's sphere of rent influence would end up shrinking, but the magnitude of the epicenter remains unaffected.

[1] - [http://www.estately.com/bay-area-home-affordability- transit-...](http://www.estately.com/bay-area-home-affordability-transit-stop) [2] - [http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/realestate/ZHV...](http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/realestate/ZHVI.Pittsburgh.394982.pdf)

<comment><USER10> (I'm the author).

You make excellent points, and I don't mean to minimize the regional issues.

Sure, if I had a magic wand then I'd increase housing being built across the Bay Area. In fact, I'd like consolidate the jurisdictions in the Bay Area, but that's a whole other argument.

I don't quite know how to play out the claim that demand is infinite. One, I don't believe that. And, two, it seems like an argument that has us throw up our hands and do nothing. It's large problem that needs a large solution -- I've heard estimates in the 100-200 thousand unit range -- but I'd rather shoot for that goal than do nothing at all.

<comment><USER11> Kinda off topic in context of this thread, but if you're organizing panel discussions about this, you should try to get someone from [http://www.spur.org](http://www.spur.org) in your panel. See [http://www.spur.org/policy-area/housing](http://www.spur.org/policy- area/housing) and [http://www.spur.org/policy-area/regional- planning](http://www.spur.org/policy-area/regional-planning)

<comment><USER10> Thanks! I know SPUR well, I'm actually on their housing policy board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I keep saying these same arguments put forth (add more affordable housing!) but the reality is that there are very specific laws that cause the crazy prices here and it ISN'T because of a lack of housing. It's lack of liquidity.

First there is Prop 13, which is the Ponzi scheme that let's older owners pay basically the same tax rate forever. This means that landlords have little reason to repair or sell properties. Which goes hand-in-hand with all the tenant protections that make it virtually impossible to vacate a tenant. And because landlords can't raise rents beyond a tiny margin each year (1% or so), they might have tenants paying 1/4 or less the going rate for an apartment, making it even less likely that they will reinvest in improving their building.

So what happens? Anyone who has been living in the same rental for the past 5 years is pretty much locked in to their apartment now, no matter what. Every single tenant in SF who hasn't moved within the last 5 years is NOT MOVING UNLESS THEY NEED TO. Because they are paying about 50% less than the going rate. So those people will not move, which means their apartment won't be available for others, which means the supply of housing is significantly lower than it should be.

Just as new homeowners in SF are paying some of the taxes that existing homeowners should pay, new renters are paying some of the rent that should be paid by existing renters.

<comment><USER13> Fact: units built after 1979 are not rent controlled.

Fact: neither are single family homes, including most condos if you moved in after 1 jan 1986 (30 years ago).

<comment><USER14> True but even with these, the percentage of rental units in SF that are rent- controlled is something like 75%

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Housing in SF is an incredibly powerful illustration of the danger of letting things get so bad that the usual remedies no longer apply.

Basically:

\- Traditionally, the proper fix for a shortage of housing is to build more houses. Just lift the existing regulations, and let the free market do what it does best: take care of the demand at an efficient price.

\- However, after years and years of very slow building, the amount of pent up demand is such that even if builders were allowed to construct houses, the houses would almost all be built for the very well off. The amount of houses you'd have to build before you started constructing truly affordable housing is immense.

\- People that are in rent regulated apartments have absolutely nothing to gain from more construction. However, even poor people that have no stable housing also have almost nothing to gain from new construction because their only realistic chance of having affordable rent is through subsidies or semi- public housing in the medium term.

\- The people that have the most to gain are the moderately well off who can afford SF rents, but cannot find housing at the existing market rate.

Basically - politicians and residents let the situation with housing in SF get so absolutely bad that free-market based solutions would take a crazy amount of time to create affordable housing for poor people. At this point, I'm not sure there even are good solutions, especially if you limit yourself to what is politically feasable.

The lesson to draw from this is that you should never let the situation get so bad that people at the bottom stop caring completely about improving policy. In this case, the right policy (build A LOT more houses) would barely help poor people because the supply/demand curve is so out of wack. The very people that should benefit the most from improving the housing situation are instead opposing it - for fairly rational reasons.

<comment><USER16> _...the houses would almost all be built for the very well off. The amount of houses you 'd have to build before you started constructing truly affordable housing is immense._

This is a common mistake. In reality, all added supply brings down price levels across the board.

<comment><USER17> But you completely ignore the "time and amount of houses it would take" aspect.

If you can only build 10 houses, and make 10% commission... are you going to build a shack? or are you going to build mansion?

The houses that get built, if the gates were to open wide, would all start off on the high end... while that would start a downward pressure, it would still be a very long time before those who can afford $200k for a house see anything in their range built.

<comment><USER18> You are missing the point. Houses for poor people are almost never built, instead poor people live in 50 year old places that were built for the rich or middle class.

What happens is that 10 people move into those new places and 10 people move into their old one and the vacancy works it's way down the line. Eventually some guy down the bottom gets slightly cheaper rent or a better place.

Imagine that instead 100,000 high-end apartments were built in the Bay Area. None of them will have poor people move into them but instead places like (to quote elsewhere in the thread) "downtown PA (university Ave) its right around $2800-3000 for a 1 bedroom, for places with 20 year old appliances and no upgrades." might now be $1000/month cheaper and affordable by somebody on a lot lower income.

<comment><USER15> I think you are exactly right, and in a healthy market that's what would happen. In practice, I believe we are so far from equilibrium that it would take such a long time for the trickle down effects to push housing costs in a range which is affordable for people that aren't well off.

Telling people that within 10-15 years if you keep building several hundreds of thousands of houses eventually rents will be affordable is not a winning slogan :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another political solution is for the state government to step in. Growing regional housing and transit is a prisoner's dilemma in the sense that no individual municipality wants put up it's fair share of the cost and necessary changes in zoning. Metro areas with highly fragmented governance like the Bay Area deal with these issues very poorly. [http://www.vox.com/2016/4/6/11370258/honan-zoning-reform- bil...](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/6/11370258/honan-zoning-reform-bill)

<comment><USER20> I think a tragedy of the commons is a better description of the problem ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)) than the Prisoner's dilemma ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma)). Individual home owners in the cities and towns dotting the Bay Area are still better off not coöperating with each other to increase housing supply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree with the author for the most part: the ideal solution is to build lots more housing - it's the morally and ethically correct thing to do. But, SF lacks the political will to do this and we need to accept that. the 2nd best solution would be to get tech companies out of SF. I hate this solution as much as the author, but I think it's worth considering. There's no reason why tech companies must be in SF, when there's so much Software engineering talent in the rest of the US where housing is much more accessible. I can understand large companies with big budgets paying top dollar moving to SF - they can out compete other companies for talent. But, I have no sympathies for software companies that can't find labor in SF because they went to the worst possible housing location offering modest compensation.

<comment><USER10> (I'm the author)

Even putting aside the ethical and moral arguments, which carry a lot of weight for me: (1) There are network effects in urban environments. (2) Globally, specific industries often concentrate in specific cities. A lot of tech has concentrated in the Valley up to the San Francisco. The effects are getting stronger as that migration occurs. That's a great thing: it allows for people to move between companies easily, allows ideas to be shared, etc, etc.[1] That effects is and will continue to be hard to replicate elsewhere. (3) Destroying that seems like a gigantic waste. (4) We are destroying it through our current public policies -- housing and other. (5) I believe there are political solutions, just not ones that have been well-organized.

[1] Urbanism has a lot of other benefits too, if done right: like less traffic, and a lower per capita carbon footprint.

<comment><USER22> And yet there's nothing inherent with software development that makes SF and the Bay Area any different from lots of other cities, other than inertia. It's amazing that an industry that prides itself on being non traditional is so tied to a specific geographical location, as if there's some valuable mineral that can only be mined in SOMA and downtown Palo Alto.

<comment><USER10> There is nothing inherent about finance that makes New York and London any different than a lot of other cities, other than inertia.

It could be otherwise than it is, that's sort of the truth of network effects, but it's difficult.

<comment><USER22> Favorably comparing Bay Area software to Wall Street is an odd thing to hear from you.

<comment><USER10> I don't like big banks, but that doesn't mean finance has been bad for NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I visited San Francisco last week (for the Microsoft Build conference).

Having read here on HN about the housing problems and high rents I was surprised to see quite a lot of poorly maintained buildings, if you go a bit outside the centre. From my perspective, there seems lots of room for building and improvement. They could take down blocks and build more densely while improving quality. As in all US cities, a lot of room is used by cars.

Looking at my hometown Amsterdam, there are places like Java Eiland, ([https://www.amsterdam.nl/javaeiland/](https://www.amsterdam.nl/javaeiland/)) an old harbor dock where they built 8500 high quality appartments housing 18.000 people, on an area of only 1.3km x 130m. I think solutions like that could work in San Francisco too.

<comment><USER24> I'm also from northern Europe, and the average housing standard here is absolutely crap compared to where I'm from. For fun, try browsing apartments here on craigslist and you'll get to see the interiors as well. And when you then look at the prices of these things, it all seems like a cruel joke.

If you just visited the conference you probably didn't see Mission Bay, but they are doing the same here as in most other coastal cities, i.e. repurposing old harbour industrial zones and building large apartment buildings, it's just way, way too little, too late.

But I agree with you that there are so many city blocks that currently house a bunch of poorly maintained two-story buildings that should just be demolished and replaced with a single modern, tall residential building. There is _nothing_ of value to preserve there.

<comment><USER25> The Mission Bay properties are also ridiculously expensive and the first few buildings were basically student/PhD housing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem is NIMBYs. No one wants their view ruined so The City has height restrictions. Developers want to max out profit and only build luxury high rises downtown. New developments in Daly City, South San Francisco, San Carlos, San Mateo, Pacifica et al. don't go anywhere because Peninsula, East Bay & South Bay suburbanites don't want to expand a borough like New York City. Comparisons to NYC are difficult because NYC is one city. To truly accomodate the demand for Bay Area housing, we can't just focus on San Francisco. Per Wikipedia, Manhattan has ~1.6MM people in ~22 sq mi of land. We need many, many more taller buildings. Try getting current landowners to change the 3 story restriction.

1\. My goal for San Francisco is a diverse city The City was diverse before the tech boom. The tech boom is pushing people out. Contrast the population of San Francisco with San Jose. Why is SJ more diverse? The white, suburbanites move to SF not SJ because they want NYC on the West Coast. A city of 860k vs 8mm have much more opportunity to have diversity. Again, there needs to be coordination across multiple municipalities that simply don't want to work together.

"I want to live in a beautiful, multiethnic, socioeconomically mixed community. A city where people of low, moderate, and high incomes live together, and people of different ethnicities interact." You should have moved here 20 years ago and then you would understand why long time residents hate the newcomers.

2\. A little self awareness about my my role and position in San Francisco You grew up poor but aren't now. Super.

3\. The cause of our housing problem is huge demand in the face of limited supply There were population exoduses for many years. The demand is relatively new problem. If you had been here in 2002, landlords were begging you to rent in SF. Granted, you graduated college in 2009 so you wouldn't know that but believe me, this is a recent problem caused by recent graduates.

I want to keep responding to your posts but I'm too tired. This isn't NYC and there aren't 5 boroughs that are able to be coordinated for building codes and transportation. This isn't an easy fix and, forgive me, I find your youthful perspective insulting as you have no idea how long these issues have been brewing. Chris Daly was a big proponent of affordable housing. Read up on him.

</comment><comment><USER27> _" We are on a self-imposed path leading to only one place: a city that is entirely rich and, more or less, entirely white."_

Sounds like a plan.

The problem is this. SF is built out; to build something, you have to demolish something first. So the alternative is high-rise housing. High-rise low-income housing, especially high-rise low-income housing, has been a disaster in the US. Chicago had to demolish the Robert Taylor Homes, a mile long strip of high-rises. Here's a list of failed high-rise housing projects.[1] "You can't stack poor people who drink.", as one author wrote.

The boom may be cyclical. SF after the first dot-com collapse in 2001, had low traffic and lots of vacancies. After the 2008 crash, there were tens of thousands of houses in foreclosure and for-sale signs everywhere. That could happen again. Twitter and Uber aren't profitable and are going to get hit by economic reality at some point soon.

[1] [http://newsone.com/1555245/most-infamous-public-housing- proj...](http://newsone.com/1555245/most-infamous-public-housing-projects/)

<comment><USER16> _to build something, you have to demolish something first_

Yes, of course. That is how all healthy big cities work.

 _So the alternative is high-rise housing_

Well, replacing 1-2 stories with 4-8 stories is probably optimal for current SF. Not sure I'd call those high rises.

<comment><USER27> SF has gone the other way, replacing 4-8 story public housing with 2 story public housing. You can see examples just south of Japantown. Crime rate went down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Biggest issue for me is public transit. If BART was more reliable/faster, it would be easy for people to live in Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro or anywhere along the line. I actually bought a house in Richmond because it was cheap and I could BART into the city. What was once a 30 minute ride usually takes a little over 40 now. We really need to fix transit in the bay area. More ferries would be great imo.

<comment><USER29> Ferries are even slower and less reliable in my experience.

If you didn't live where the track died, then you would still say BART is more reliable. I've noticed BART is less reliable in the edges vs the core of SF, berkeley and downtown oakland

<comment><USER30> I ride (and complain about) BART regularly to/from SF from the Berkeley/El Cerrito area. The truth is that it's still pretty reliable, though having lived where I am now since 2004 the decline in reliability and increase in crowding clearly isn't going to stop.

One alternative is AC Transit's transbay service, which I swore by for many years. Unfortunately the increase in road traffic has that option declining as well.

There has been talk in the past about a Berkeley Marina/Albany Bulb ferry, but to my knowledge there are no current plans. I haven't ridden the ferry many times from other places, but I'd like to think that having that as an option would get a decent amount of ridership as well as possibly reduce the load on the roads and tracks.

The lack of any ferry service connecting the East Bay between Jack London Square in Oakland and Vallejo is pretty surprising. Judging from the fact that a morning commute-time BART train starting in Richmond is typically standing room only by El Cerrito Plaza (third stop on the line), I'd say the demand for alternatives is definitely there, so there must be financial/political/engineering reasons that there are no ferries from other parts of the East Bay.

<comment><USER29> Boats are fundamentally slow and cannot dock at the center of a city where most jobs are, but it's edges. Docking and boarding/unboarding is a minimum 5-10 minute process too. A really fast ferry goes at 30 knots, which is around 35 miles per hour. Often ferries are there because building the equivalent bridge or train doesn't meet the cost/benefit ratio, otherwise they are an inferior transportation option.

The reason why there probably isn't any service from jack london square is because it's faster to get to a bart station by bike or similar and then take the BART.

As for vallejo, there looks like there is a ferry service for some reason according to google maps: [https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B005'59.8%22N+122%C2...](https://email@example.com,-122.2637485,18z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0?hl=en)

<comment><USER30> Sorry, to clarify I was saying that the only ferry service that does exist is from Jack London Square and then north of that all the way up in Vallejo. The entire, pretty well populated chunk of the East Bay between those two points basically has BART from Richmond, AC Transit Transbay, or their cars as an option into SF and below. That was sufficient for a while, but is less so more and more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> One issue he doesn't mention is traffic congestion.

A potential remedy could be a significant tax on parking. Perhaps very significant. Parking is ugly and a blight on the city, as well as a tremendous waste of space that could be more effectively used for housing.

<comment><USER10> (I'm the author).

Traffic is a big problem -- as is parking. Public transit investments do have to correspond with building housing, but too often the lack of one is used as an excuse not to expand the other. We have to start somewhere.

As I said in the post, public transit deserves it own analysis -- I was already in the thousands of words just on housing! -- maybe that will be next.

<comment><USER32> Indeed. In the current Prop-13, anti-tax environment you simply cannot propose building infrastructure to support future needs. The need must already exist and be bad enough to get people to vote for taxes to pay for improvements.

Muni will not be extending T to Fisherman's Wharf, nor BART building a 2nd trans-bay tube and line through the Richmond/19th Ave unless the bay area can manage this housing problem and bring in more residents to pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While I agree with the post, I think the need for more housing is obvious and the root problem is political.

If you find a way to solve the political problem, I'd be impressed.

<comment><USER10> I'm the author: I agree with you. I believe there are political solutions. Putting ideas out there to see if anyone agrees with me is the first step, hopefully not the last.

<comment><USER33> Props to you for organizing a discussion as a first step. And best of luck solving the problem. If I still lived in the Bay Area, I'd show up for support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Excellent article.

The solution is that we need more housing.

The problem is that politicians do not allow that - and that is not going to change. Why? Because existing rich people do not want that.

Not sure what we can do here...

</comment><comment><USER35> The only way to fix the housing market in San Francisco without destroying what people love about living there is to reduce the number of people living in San Francisco. And the most direct and effective way of doing that is to destroy the ridiculous bias against remote working. For all the innovative, intelligent, talented people in the Valley that we haven't yet figured out how to work together to build software without physically being in the same room is pathetic. We'll look back on this in the same way we look back on child labor and seven day work weeks.

<comment><USER36> I'm surprised and a little saddened that this is not higher up.

The root cause of the problem is that there are too many people wanting to move to San Fransisco because that's where the (tech) jobs are.

Spread out the jobs to spread out the people?

<comment><USER35> I'm saddened, but not surprised. Like I said, there's a really weird bias that a lot of otherwise progressive and intelligent people have against remote work, and I've never heard any convincing arguments _from people who 've tried both_ that one way is categorically better than the other. Perhaps it will take something as extreme as a major environmental or economic catastrophe to warm people up to the idea because people seem to be clinging to the old ways for silly reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If you live in San Francisco, you can vote on May 10 to make some of Zac Townsend's suggested fixes a reality. Here's the slate card to see how: [http://www.sfyimby.org/slate/](http://www.sfyimby.org/slate/)

<comment><USER38> Yeah and if you don't live in San Francisco, you can tell one friend who does live there to vote.

Seriously, we don't need that many people to make a big difference this time. It's worth it for you to get _one_ more person to vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _We are on a self-imposed path leading to only one place: a city that is entirely rich and, more or less, entirely white._

 _I want to live in a beautiful, multiethnic, socioeconomically mixed community. A city where people of low, moderate, and high incomes live together, and people of different ethnicities interact._

I guess he's never heard of Chinatown. SF is one of the most most ethnically diverse cities in the country. [http://theculturetrip.com/north- america/usa/california/artic...](http://theculturetrip.com/north- america/usa/california/articles/the-10-most-multicultural-cities-in-the- world/)

Also 'white' does not imply 'rich', as there are many regions in America that are predominantly white and very poor, Appalachian region being one.

<comment><USER34> Did you know that Valencia St was full of latinos? Or are you saying that as long as there is something called "Chinatown" it is ok to kick all Mexicans out?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interesting article but I think the demand side also needs some more reexamination. It is very strange that SV mantra is "teams need to move there". Doubly silly since we're mostly talking about software companies. If you break that mentality some of the demand issues will go away.

It feels like a very dogmatic mantra "it just works better". VCs should try to reexamine and disrupt startup financing by not being clustered in one place (which is one of the top arguments for moving to SV other than talent pol being there which is kind of self fulfilling).

"Move to where your initial customers live" would be a decent counter-mantra. Make it a differentiator as a VC that you come to the startup and don't make them come to you.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you care about SF housing, please just show up to Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors meetings. Better yet, start or join a grassroots group of at least 10-15 people and thoughtfully present all your ideas without coming off as insensitive towards the homeless or low-income individuals. There's TONS of room for public input in SF, it's what makes our planning process unique. In many cases, this leads to a deficit in housing because planning is so sensitive to the request of those who actually show up to meetings and make their case.

</comment><comment><USER42>
      I am perceived to be part of the problem.

Not attacking, just commenting: maybe rephrase? I'm similar to you but despite background / origin we're still part of the problem. We are rich enough to live in the mission and shop at bi-rite and we displace poorer folks (who, as you observed, are often from ethnic minorities, with backgrounds different from ours). Having come from modest beginnings doesn't make us less the problem.

That said, I think it does help to make us more aware of how unfair the system is.

</comment><comment><USER43> Is San Francisco really on a path to becoming almost entirely white? I thought a large portion of the Sunset and Richmond were Asian and it had a much larger Asian percentage than other cities?

<comment><USER44> San Francisco is around 40% Chinese. If you look at indicators like unemployment, single parent births, education level the Chinese population is as different from the Caucasian population as Caucasians are from Black Americans. Chinese make a very strong and strangely unrecognized contribution to San Francisco economically and socially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> We hardly ever see consideration of the other party in these debates. Tenants cry about high rents. What about supply and demand? There are two main causes of supply problems: (1) tough building permitting, anti-building policy seemingly; (2) shortage of willing landlords.

If I have $5 million dollars to invest, will I invest in San Francisco where (unless I buy post-1979, and 75% of units are rent controlled in SF) -- or will I invest where I can make a return on the investment?

Shortage of willing landlords. Shortage of new construction.

Almost _no one_ talks about the shortage of willing landlords. It's as if people think "owners have their apartment buildings, they HAVE to be landlords."

NO. See here: [http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/05/because-of-rent- control-...](http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2011/05/because-of-rent-control-sf- has-31000.html)

\- If you make it very difficult/nearly impossible for restaurants to make money, SHORTAGE OF WILLING RESTAUARANT OWNERS.

\- If you make it very difficult/nearly impossible for dentists to make money, SHORTAGE OF WILLING DENTISTS

And so on.

The reason no one considers how to entice more landlords (ie. to increase the supply of units) is -- everyone probably thinks "landlords have no choice. They MUST rent their units." It's NOT TRUE.

When public policy acknowledges this point -- maybe we can all stop believing "we don't need to entice landlords -- they have units, they MUST rent them out (so we can control and limit their business).

</comment><comment><USER46> (11) If you love it, be ready to leave it.

If investors in the area are not willing to look outside, politicans and others in the San Francisco area know they have enough leverage on you that they can keep following the same failed policies.

Only when you stop the policy of redlining 99% of America and show San Francisco there is a real threat the jobs will move away will any reform be possible.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'd be interested to see projections of earthquake casualties before and after this increase in housing density.

<comment><USER48> Morbidly, I think a big earthquake will be the turning point for housing in the Bay Area. After a 6.5+, just about all the brick buildings will be degraded to the point of no return. We might see plenty of new steel / wood construction with the rebuilt (or 3d-printed) facades of old buildings, with new heights and efficiencies inside (better lighting, accessability, modularity).

<comment><USER49> I've often thought it might take a natural disaster to fix things a bit.

But realistically, at this point I'd expect investors to circle the aftermath like vultures waiting to throw money at whatever they could. There might be a small downturn, but then things will get right back up there.

My hypothesis is that it would only slightly dent demand for the area. And that says nothing about all the single story wood-framed ranches in the Peninsula which would largely be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> There's a lot of coverage of this kind of thing on [http://marketurbanism.com/](http://marketurbanism.com/) for those interested in following it more.

I think it's one of _the_ issues facing a lot of cities in the US right now.

</comment><comment><USER51> Rich people with money vs rich people with property. The poor people have mostly been driven out already. There is plenty of housing for tech workers. The problem is it's not hip enough: bay view, outer mission, outer sunset, outer richmond, portola valley, etc...

</comment><comment><USER52> Housing affordability is a nation-wide problem. Since the housing bust of 2007, little new housing stock has been added, save for oil & gas boomtowns of Texas and North Dakota.

We are all now competing for limited housing in most every major metropolitan area.

The solution is for every city to build more housing, not just SF. Unfortunately, new housing starts have only recovered to 1993 levels. [http://www.macrotrends.net/1314/housing-starts-historical- ch...](http://www.macrotrends.net/1314/housing-starts-historical-chart)

<comment><USER53> It's even more striking if you adjust for population:

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=...](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=45EC)

That's just a quick look of housing starts / population but we've steadily been building fewer houses and the whole thing fell of a cliff during the financial crisis. Even in the recovery, we're off the chart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Great article. How can we turn your ideas into reality?

<comment><USER55> Start by voting. Read those tedious propositions and those small offices, and vote on every one of them. Supervisor Julie Christensen was pushed out by anti-housing Aaron Peskin with the approval of 12% of District 3's residents. And don't take the shortcut of just voting whichever way your Democrat or Republican voters guide tells you to vote.

Join, or at least follow, a political action group like SFBARF[0]. And when they mention some special committee, then don't just go to a couple meetings and otherwise leave it alone. You're supposed to be part of the community. Actually learn from and provide your own input to that community.

If you have some free time, then find what else the SF Planning Department has been doing[1], and attend their public hearings.

[0][http://www.sfbarf.org](http://www.sfbarf.org)

[1][http://sf-planning.org](http://sf-planning.org)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I think a $25 minimum wage hike would definitely fix it..........

</comment><comment><USER57> Another answer to the housing crisis: [https://youtu.be/JDoPmj- BIEA](https://youtu.be/JDoPmj-BIEA)

SF ain't Brooklyn

Folks can't buy groceries at Uber

People matter, profits don't

When you've been around long enough, it will begin to make sense

</comment><comment><USER58> Blaming Prop 13 is silly. Look at the rest of the state, housing prices are relatively sane in places like san diego, and downright cheap in the inland empire, orange copunty, anaheim, etc etc.

Oh, all those places have to deal with Prop 13 as well.

San Francisco(and the bay area overall) has consistently chosen to restrict their supply for housing for years. Obviously this would culminate into higher prices in the future, but to many people live in denial. They would rather pretend that AirBnB is the real problem, or that Prop 13 is distorting the market(but of course, rent control is not _rolleyes_ )

<comment><USER59> Of course Prop 13 is distorting prices. It affects all kinds of things. It limits the revenue stream of local governments, causing them to do things like encourage big box store development to get more sales tax. Prop 13 has tons of unintended consequences. Or maybe its framers knew exactly what they were doing.

I ALSO think rent control and airbnb distorts prices too. The Airbnb threat maybe overblown, who knows, but airbnb has maintained in the past they have no way of telling cities how many customers they. Databases are hard I guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Oh boy, yet _another_ article claiming that if only private investors were regulated less then "all of our problems would be solved". These will never get old.

>The only way to fix it is through a radical change in our housing policy: a change that encourages (a lot of) building.

No, the only way to fix it is to _actually_ build a lot of housing. If you have trouble imagining what that would look at, take one look at Singapore.

To make this happen requires pitchforks, eminent domain, and political will not economic tweaks to building policy.

>Incorrect claim 2: Investment capital will never build affordable housing

Not incorrect at all. Affordable housing meets the demand for a place to live by the middle class but it doesn't meet the demand of the ultra wealthy for a yield bearing asset.

The "lack of demand" for affordable housing is a facet of massive wealth inequality and the treatment of living places as yield bearing assets.

>The forces behind those aren't singular movements or collectively one movement alone.

ZIRP is pretty much behind most of it. If you want somebody to point a pitchfork at, Ben Bernanke or Janet Yellen are as good a target as any. They are largely responsible for homes being transformed into mostly investment vehicles that provide living space from vice versa.</comment>


A/B testing for Mobile and Tablet websites - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/mobile-ab-testing/

<comment><USER2> Along with the feature, we have also put together a 32 page PDF guide on 'Testing and Optimization for Mobile Devices' [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/downloads/mobile- testing-g...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/downloads/mobile-testing- guide.pdf)

Testing and optimization for mobile websites is still in infancy and most small/medium websites wouldn't bother with it right now. But with increased usage and much of research for shopping increasingly happening lazily on tablets and mobiles, this is definitely going to change in next one or two years. Our own website gets 5% of traffic on mobiles and tablets, but it is steadily growing.

<comment><USER3> So I read that pdf, and I am not convinced. These all seem like "before Day One" checkpoints to consider when building mobile apps and mobile websites. Making sure the website renders on multiple devices is just the beginning. That's not optimized, that's just the basics. Is there anything more thorough?

Also, have you guys considered hiring pentesters? I'd be happy to do the work.

Edit: what do you guys think about clutch? <https://clutch.io/>

<comment><USER2> The tips and tricks are not exhaustive of course. We had to balance the amount of information with the limited attention span. I had actually written a more detailed article titled '10 Tips To Optimize Conversions On Your Mobile Landing Pages' [http://searchengineland.com/ten-tips-to-optimize-for- convers...](http://searchengineland.com/ten-tips-to-optimize-for-conversions- sales-on-your-mobile-landing-pages-137101)

Hope you find it useful and more thorough. Let me contact you about pentesting.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any reason this is limited to "large enterprise only?"

<comment><USER2> We believe most small websites don't have sufficient traffic on mobiles to make use of the feature, while bigger accounts would have custom websites and landing pages for mobiles and tablets. Of course, we could have launched it for everyone but we have been trying to introduce some premium features without increasing our base pricing (our basic plan of $49 for 10,000 visitors hasn't changed in last 2.5 years since launch).

<comment><USER4> I guess it's always a tricky deciding which feature to apply to which plan.

On the flip side, since a lot of sites are now just starting to experiment with mobile commerce, mobile landing pages and such this feature might be useful as an acquisition "hook."

<comment><USER2> Yes, it was very tricky to decide whether to release for all or for selected plans or even introduce it as an addon. Ultimately, we decided it to launch for $249+/mo plans only.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why You Must Store Your Own Analytics Data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yesgraph.com/must-store-analytics-data/

<comment><USER2> 1\. Segment

I recall reading a blog post by Andreas Klinger (Product Hunt) talking about analytics and what stuck with me was "there is no silver bullet". I've seen this blindness by a lot of people (myself too) and its hard to swallow but unfortunately true. Just run MixPanel, Google Analytics, Localytics etc all side by side and they give you totally different data.

Segment is a great choice. I really didn't know much (and still don't) about analytics so I went with it after finding GA flakey and not wanting to sprinkle the iOS code with multiple SDKs. Support from them has been great and timely and it hasn't cost a penny for all the major integrations I've used - e.g. MixPanel, GA. Just the other I flicked on Localytics and it just worked. Sounds like I work there! Anyways, you owe it to your future sanity to try it out!

Obviously it adds an additional cost to some otherwise free services. However, the plans are set up so when you have to start worrying it, it's probably a good sign!

2\. "Building dashboards is a much harder engineering and design exercise than most people appreciate."

YES! Sites like Geckoboard make it look super easy and all the tools you get with MixPanel are great, but sometimes things just aren't quite right. Funnelling data from MixPanel where if you have a property that can be True, False or Undefined, it only allows you to filter by True or False in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, if you have too many pageviews, Google Analytics only gives you a sample instead of the full data.

I like piwik. It isn't that hard to set up your own analytics with piwik or another tool.

</comment><comment><USER4> Having used 3rd party analytics tools including GameAnalytics for Unity, I can attest to this. Many analytics platforms horde your data and won't give you database access, and you're restricted to their (usually incomplete) tool set. Much better to have the raw data yourself so you're never restricted.</comment>


Playboy Magazine interview with 29-year-old Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.playboy.com/magazine/interview_archive/steven-jobs/steven-jobs.html

<comment><USER2> From Steve Jobs talking in 1985 I learn something about color vision:

"You know, Dr. Edwin Land was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. Polaroid did that for some years, but eventually Dr. Land, one of those brilliant troublemakers, was asked to leave his own company—which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. So Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision."

Googling on Land's color vision work:

<http://www.greatreality.com/Color2Color.htm>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinex>

Neat.

<comment><USER3> Ironic, considering that Jobs was himself asked to leave Apple a few years later. (And, of course, came back to re-conquer Apple from NeXT).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great interview. A couple things struck me. Particularly, two of the major threads in the 37signals new-speak lexicon are almost verbatim from the interview:

I like to think of the Fortune 5,000,000 or 14,000,000. There are 14,000,000 small businesses in this country. I think that the vast group of people who need to be computerized includes that large number of medium and small businesses. We're going to try to be able to bring some meaningful solutions to them in 1985.

And

Let me compare it with IBM. How come the Mac group produced Mac and the people at IBM produced the PCjr? We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn't build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

</comment><comment><USER5> "PLAYBOY: What will change? JOBS: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people—as remarkable as the telephone."

</comment><comment><USER6> Trying to read that on my iPhone redirects to special iPhone portal. Pretty annoying for any site to not support direct linking for mobile versions of their site. For the playboy site it is weird, you find yourself on the playboy homepage... ;-)

<comment><USER7> why did this comment deserve downvotes? it's not abrasive, and it's true! the same thing happened to me.

seems like every site that has a mobile version does this. you follow a link from somewhere else, and instead of getting to the page you wanted to read, you wind up at the top page of their mobile site. annoying.

<comment><USER8> It was down voted because it was only tangentially related to the original post.

<comment><USER7> "only tangentially related" might be a reason not to vote it up. but my interpretation of pg's rules are that downvotes are only for comments that are inflammatory, spam, or some other violation of protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "He is an engaging pitchman and never loses an opportunity to sell his products, eloquently describing a time when computers will be as common as kitchen appliances and as revolutionary in their impact as the telephone or the internal-combustion engine."

Well, he got that one right.

<comment><USER10> Not yet, there's more to be done. This is a good start perhaps, but we're nowhere near where we could be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Is that really significant or is it simply a novelty? The Macintosh has been called "the world's most expensive Etch A Sketch" by at least one critic."

"Aside from some of the recurrent criticisms—that the mouse is inefficient..."

I'd say an important take away from this interview is to ignore (most) criticism, no matter what. Just imagine how silly some of the criticism for advancing technology today will look in 2040 :-).

</comment><comment><USER12> "The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy—free mechanical energy, in this case. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy." (page 2)

This is the vision - freeing the intellectual energy.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, who needs AI, when there are millions of people sitting around with nothing to do?

<comment><USER14> that is an excellent observation.

One reason there are still lots of truckdrivers and not AI's driving those trucks is that even if you could build one it would be very hard to make it cost effective.

Long term it will probably be more like the drones piloted by guys sitting a couple of hundred (or thousand) miles away, jobs will be broken up into groups based on the 'hardness' of the problems that need solving and then get parcelled out a-la the mechanical turk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _A.T. &T. is changing from a subsidized and regulated service-oriented company to a free-market, competitive-marketing technology company. A.T.&T.'s products per se have never been of the highest quality. All you have to do is go look at their telephones. They're somewhat of an embarrassment._ \- Steve Jobs

Some _early_ foreshadowing.

This is one of the best Jobs interview I've seen. It's long but it's well worth it; Greatly inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER16> He was much more open then.

</comment><comment><USER17> And then?</comment>


War Stories from a VC - <AUTHOR> http://wing.vc/perspectives/war-stories <comment><USER2> I'm not allergic to the term "War Stories" like smacktoward. I would like to see a similarly highlight set of curated stories about entrepreneurs that succeeded or failed while working with VCs.

Frankly, these stories read more like marketing and fluff than real war stories or lessons learned.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having been shot at in actual wars, I find it disrespectful and dishonest to use this term to describe some marketing experience or whatever. Unless, of course, you pulled a rotting child corpse out of a canal at some point. Then I suppose you could say it was a "war story".

</comment><comment><USER4> I know this will sound nit-picky, but it's one of my pet peeves: don't talk about "war stories" unless they involve you getting shot at. Really, literally shot at, or otherwise menaced by someone who wants to kill you.

It just feels disrespectful to hear people talk that way in a society where we send a tiny fraction of our population off to actually bear those risks on our behalf, while the rest of us sit comfortably in air-conditioned rooms where the biggest risk we face is obesity. It's vicarious masculinity, borrowed valor.

People use these terms all the time, without thinking. "War stories." "Knife fight." "In the trenches." A trench is a muddy hole in the ground that you had to dig yourself to keep your innards from getting pierced by flying metal. Your Aeron chair is not a trench.

End of rant.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your opinion on DAI a stable cryptocurrency built on Ethereum? - <AUTHOR> In my opinion, it's delusional (at least for now) to believe that a massive amount of businesses will start accepting crypto like Bitcoin without selling it at the market value automatically. Businesses need stability and we can't ask them to trust a currency that can lose 80% of its value in a few months.
Businesses want stability but they also want to maximize their revenue by eliminating unnecessary costs. The current credit card processing fees are around 2-3% which is huge! By accepting a stablecoins like DAI instead of credit card payment a businesses could save a lot of money.
I would be curious to hear what HN thinks about this.
Edit: You can learn more about it here: https://makerdao.com/ <comment><USER2> How do you save the 2-3% processing fee? People will continue using their Visa / Mastercard credit cards so you'd have to persuade for profit businesses that do processing currently to use DAI and lose their income from fees. Not going to happen. You'd need to offer alternative payment method and somehow persuade people to switch.

<comment><AUTHOR> They can accept both forms of payment. They can simply add DAI as a form of payment accepted by their shop.

<comment><USER2> That sounds simple when you say it but persuading merchants adding new exotic payment methods is a tall order. Do they need to buy a new device for processing DAI payments? That is extra expense they don't want. It would depend heavily on how the integration is done.

Do you need to train their stuff how to accept new payment method? Also now they are holding money in multiple places (bank account for normal payments, some wallet for DAI) so this introduces another overhead for them to handle.

How many people will pay with DAI? Will it be more than 0.01% of customers? Because there are almost no people who own DAI (nobody outside of crypto bubble), so you have problem on customer side. And why would merchant go through the trouble of supporting new payment method when it will be only used by a minuscule number of people (there are merchants that tried supporting Bitcoin payments and it turned out they had like 1-2 people paying in BTC in months so they don't bother anymore.)

I don't see it happening personally unless it can be done in a completely seamless way (for both merchants and customers) and I don't think that's the case. Existing payment methods are too entrenched and very convenient. People actually like using credit cards / Apple Pay etc. It's easy and user friendly.

The few places that accepted Bitcoin payments back in the day when it was trendy, it looked really weird and inefficient, people scanning QR codes, having to use special mobile apps to handle the payment instead of POS merchant already has and knows how to use. Seemed kind of pointless.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. To accept DAI you simply need a phone and a dedicated app that would generate the payment QR code. No new device needed. (67% of payments in convenience stores in China are being made with QR codes: [https://technode.com/2018/03/16/qr-codes-nfc- china/](https://technode.com/2018/03/16/qr-codes-nfc-china/))

2\. There is definitely a chicken and the egg problem as there wouldn't be as many people ready to pay with DAI at first but it has never stopped good projects to take off. In my opinion the main issue (once the tech is ready with Plasma running on the main net) is to get merchants to accept this new payment method which should possible since it's literally free to try.

3\. Paying with Bitcoin is completely different since most of the people who own some Bitcoins don't want to spend it as it's mostly used as store of value/speculative asset.

<comment><USER2> 1\. What are the costs of your solution? Who's running the nodes, how much does it cost? Gas? Give me some numbers please.

2\. Scaling. Current state - it doesn't scale. My own opinion is it will never scale, centralised systems will always be much more performant.

3\. Not really. The only difference is Bitcoin is very volatile and most people are expecting it will rise in value so they are not spending, you are right. But as a payment system integration wise it would be the same as your proposed solution, some mobile app and scanning of QR codes.

Finally, give me a single reason why it would be better than current system (as I believe the answer to 1. it's not cheaper, it's actually more expensive as centralised system). And that was the only reason you have given. Is there anything else than theoretically lower fees (which I don't believe would be the case).

<comment><AUTHOR> So it seems that our main disagreement is about the cost of the implementation of such system.

While I agree that the current state of Blockchain and Ethereum doesn't allow this I also believe that a part of the scaling issue will soon be solve with Plasma, you can learn more about it here ([https://plasma.io/plasma.pdf](https://plasma.io/plasma.pdf)). In this case the transaction fees and processing time are drastically reduced and Plasma could support (in theory) 1,000,000 transactions / seconds. The sender will pay for the tx fees (probably around half a cent) and the payment will be delivered almost instantly.

So "the single reason why it would be better than current system", since you asked for it is really because transactions operated on an efficient Blockchain would be less expensive than credit-card payments.

<comment><USER2> In theory what you are describing sounds appealing. One more issue I thought about is in a case this system ever became a thing, Visa/Mastercard could just lower their fees. Pretty sure they are still profitable even with much lower fees so there's a chance they could still outperform this plasma system since their centralised system will be more efficient and will allow them to have even lower fees. It would be good to have a competition to force Visa/MC to lower their fees though. And other payment processors. They are getting away with insane profits right now.

Also I don't think it's possible to rollout a system like this in China due to the government there. They would not allow a a system they don't control to be used. So it would have to be in some relatively free country where you would have to implement this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A full cost comparison works be interested. This would have to include.

Are there any providers that offer full merchant services based on any stablecoin?

What about any insurance providers for to cover pontial losses?

I'm going to purposefully avoid all the other typical questions of hurdles to adoption as they seem out of the scope of your question.

</comment><comment><USER4> I dunno about DAI but in my experience the processing fees for crypto currency are usually alot more than credit cards.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be the equivalent of saying "I don't want to use the internet because it's too slow" in 2001. There are numerous organizations working on ways to reduce crypto processing fees, one of the most advanced in certainly Plasma: [https://plasma.io/](https://plasma.io/)

<comment><USER5> Not sure that's a reasonable analogy. The Internet in 2001 let you do things that you would like to do but couldn't, easily, before. It was a bit crap at them but it was delivering value incrementally.

Bitcoin did that initially, to some extent, by being the currency of a part of the underworld.

Unfortunately, what then happened was that crypto was massively oversold. It would be great for distributed currency. Not really. As a store of value. Too volatile. As a payment processor. Too expensive.

Now, we're getting the next stage which is that it'll be fine when we add this special sauce. And maybe it will be, I hope so. But TBH, I'd say that the onus is on having at least one system come close to meeting at least one of the sales pitches. Even if it's a bit crap.</comment></comment></comment>


Nokia and University of Cambridge launch the Morph - a nanotechnology concept device  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1194251 <comment><USER2> If you don't know how much nanotechnology will change the world go read Eric Drexlers classic: "engines of creation".

It's available online here: [http://www.e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Table_of_Contents.h...](http://www.e-drexler.com/d/06/00/EOC/EOC_Table_of_Contents.html)

It blew my mind when I read it ten years ago.

<comment><USER3> In chapter 14 he lays out the concept of pagerank and online forums and advertising. In 1990. Wish I would have read this back then.

<comment><USER4> I'm thinking you probably wouldn't have known you had a gem before your eyes.

<comment><USER3> And you would be right. But it would have expanded my horizons, nonetheless.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Quote: Henry Ford, Founder, Ford - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/11315452477

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't find fault, find a remedy. Anybody can complain.

\- Henry Ford

<http://startupquote.com/post/11315452477></comment>


At California Olive Ranch, Technology Takes Root - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/23/at-california-olive-ranch-technology-takes-root/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> I've been buying California Olive Ranch olive oil for years, after reading this: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/dining/californias- olive-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/dining/californias-olive-oils- challenge-europes.html?pagewanted=all) in the New York Times and "Slippery Business: The trade in adulterated olive oil." ([http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/13/slippery- busine...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/13/slippery-business)). So far it's been great!

<comment><USER3> I just wish they made a regular, non-virgin olive oil. (I understand why they only produce extra virgin olive oil, but refining it neutralizes the strong taste and acid content and makes it more suitable for cooking.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone interested in food and technology, my company[1] builds quality control tools for craft producers. We use machine learning and data science to help producers refine their production process and understand what specific populations and demographics like and dislike about the flavor profile.

[1] www.gastrograph.com

</comment><comment><USER5> In France, they prune the apple trees into a hedge to make the fruit easier to pick, similar to what they describe in the article for the olive trees. Now that I've seen it, I don't know why all fruit growers don't do this.</comment>


Relative hashpower of BTC and BCH in percentage of total - <AUTHOR> http://fork.lol/pow/hashrate <comment><USER3> The headline is incorrect, the graph shows the RELATIVE hashrate of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.

The absolute hashrate of the Bitcoin network is still increasing [0].

All this chart demonstrates is that the hashrate of Bitcoin Cash is increasing faster than the hashrate of Bitcoin.

This also means that NEW hashing power is coming online, not that hashing power is necessarily switching from Bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash (even if it's currently more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash than Bitcoin [1]).

[0] [https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty](https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty)

[1] [https://cash.coin.dance/blocks](https://cash.coin.dance/blocks)

<comment><USER4> > even if it's currently more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash than Bitcoin

It seems that is the case if you consider only the block reward, but not if you also consider the transaction fees: [http://fork.lol/reward/blocks](http://fork.lol/reward/blocks)

The BTC chain has more transactions per block than the BCH chain, and the per- transaction fee is also higher.

<comment> TD-Linux No, it's still more profitable to mine BCH even considering the transaction fees, see the home page of fork.lol: [http://fork.lol/](http://fork.lol/)

The graph you linked is not considering block difficulty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My ignorant TL;DR: BCH may temporarily more profitable in part because hardware goes a lot further against the reduced difficulty. As more miners are attracted to BCH, the difficulty should theoretically balance in correlation with the "in-practice"/exchangeable value of BCH.

Clicking on the 'difficulty' tab seems to confirm this:

[http://fork.lol/pow/difficulty](http://fork.lol/pow/difficulty)

\--

I barely remember some mention of (at least the potential for) miners cooperating to reduce the difficulty for BCH after the fork. If I'm understanding this right (unlikely!), the relative hashpower is a pretty bad metric for comparison unless difficulty is also factored in?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901033)

\--

I personally use the open source NiceHash client to earn what currently works out to $.06/day with a single older desktop GPU (thanks "free" internet + electricity!) because I don't want to be bothered with micro-managing to point the infinitesimally small fraction of mining power I experiment with in the optimal direction.

<comment><USER6> The difficulty re-targets once every 2016 blocks. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has a added feature that re-targets the difficulty downward if blocks are being found too slowly. Bitcoin's Legacy chain doesn't do this so if enough hash power leaves the legacy chain in a short period of time it causes slow block times and people hope that if it gets bad enough there will be an inflection point where people abandon the legacy chain for Cash. The likely hood of that happening is anyone's guess.

[0] [https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty- adjust...](https://medium.com/@jimmysong/bitcoin-cash-difficulty- adjustments-2ec589099a8e)

<comment><USER7> That downward adjustment is total bs, and can enable (like is happening currently) a scenario where miners lower their hashpower for ~12 hours, the difficulty drops, and they all pile back on and get ~2 minute blocks for 2016 blocks and earn a shit ton of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone comment on what is driving this? I read an article about it being more profitable to mine Bitcoin Cash a few days ago, but as with most of these cryptocurrency releases I find it tough to separate the marketing from the truth.

<comment><USER9> In this case it is the truth. The price of Bitcoin Cash is going up and the difficulty to mine had been going down. So for now, it is more profitable. It will likely go back in forth for a while before there's a dominate winner.

<comment><USER10> this view suggests the difficulty of bch will increase by ~220% in ~3 days: [http://fork.lol/pow/retarget](http://fork.lol/pow/retarget)

which i think will inversely affect profitability?

<comment><USER9> Yep. As it becomes more profitable more people mine, the difficulty goes up, profitability goes down, people stop mining, difficulty goes down, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was under the impression, it was miners that by and large were in favour if segwit and everything that goes along with it. Part of point of Cash was to try to reduce the influence of miners on the currency. So my guess is it's just bet-hedging for now.

<comment><USER3> That's incorrect - in general the miners are opposed to SegWit, but they accepted a compromise of agreeing to SegWit if they could increase the block size to 2 MB (from 1 MB currently). SegWit will be activated within 24 hours, but Bitcoin Core (the main developers of current Bitcoin code) have already said they are not going to support an increase to 2 MB blocks. They also claim they never agreed to it in the first place.

As a result, it's very likely to see another hard fork to 2 MB in November, so there will be 3 chains with a shared transaction history, and most like all will claim to be the real Bitcoin -- personally I don't think debating which one is the "real" one is worthwhile, just use the one you want, but eventually it's likely that one chain will get the majority of hashing power and have a much higher price per token than all the others.

<comment><USER12> The Bitcoin Core developers were never part of the agreement to hard-fork and increase the block size - they've said it was a terrible idea all along at least on the time scale proposed. I don't think they even knew about it until it was publicly announced. Also, SegWit increases the block size to 2-ishMB by itself (it's complicated, because older nodes need to think blocks are still under 1MB, which is done by stripping out parts of SegWit transactions when sending to them). This means that in practice the hard fork gives a block size of 4-8MB.

The "compromise" framing of "we gave you SegWit, now you have to give us a hard fork" is pretty terrible too, because the two aren't symmetrical - <USER2> makes hard forking less urgent, but hard forking to increase the block size makes the SegWit improvements more important because they're designed to make larger blocks work better. Even Bitcoin Cash copied one of the key SegWit improvements, the transaction hashing change, in very slightly modified form for this reason.

<comment><USER6> There is a good explanation on reddit of the history of this. [0] The Core developers did agree to a block size increase though in what is commonly referred to as the Hong Kong Agreement. They didn't follow though on that agreement and made up some truly weaselly excuses for why.

More recently a large group of players in the space came together and agreed to what has come to be called the New York Agreement (NYA) This said that they would support Segwit and a 2MB hard fork for bigger blocks. Core and Blockstream who largely controls Core have ignored the NYA and worked against it. They are pretending like segwit has support w/o the 2MB block increase when it doesn't and they are going around doing some truly cringe worthy stuff to tray and scuttle the 2MB part of it.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6uw5kf/why_does_core_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6uw5kf/why_does_core_refuse_to_increase_block_size_and/dlvy1ej/)

<comment><USER13> > The Core developers did agree to a block size increase though in what is > commonly referred to as the Hong Kong Agreement.

No, a couple of developers did. I think every core developer not in the room went "wtf, no".

<comment><USER6> At least 5 by my count and the CEO of your own company which employs still more. If what you say is true then the HK agreement wasn't made in good faith.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Another Ridiculous Software Patent - Location Based Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Localcom-Granted-US-Patent-Number-7231405-for-Location-Based-Search-745434.htm

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this funny read. The announcement sounds like they invented LBS last week.</comment>


Open Source BI Helical Insight 4.0 Release - <AUTHOR> https://www.helicalinsight.com/helical-insight-4-0/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, We just had release of version 4.0 of our Open Source BI product Helical Insight.

We just had a major release of version 4.0 of our product. Using our product you can have traditional canned reporting (like invoices, P&L statement, salary slips, bank statement etc) as well as new generation dashboards data analysis and visualization (dashboards, infographs, geomaps etc) also. There are a ton of features like self service drag drop interface, embedding, Single Sign On, API support, user role management, exporting, email scheduling, alerting notifications, workflow, white labeling etc.

We would love to get the feedback from the community here.

Thankyou</comment>


Peergos – A decentralised, secure file storage, sharing and social network - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Here's the actual link: [https://peergos.org/](https://peergos.org/)

Edit: Actually it seems like there's more useful information on github: [https://github.com/Peergos/Peergos](https://github.com/Peergos/Peergos)

<comment><USER3> Because it's an interesting and active project, it might make sense to resubmit the github link.</comment></comment>


To Improve Your Sense of Direction, Lose the Technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/science/walking-directions-mobile-phone.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> It is not true in my case.

When we go on a road trip often my 14 yr old son is sitting in the passenger seat with a laptop w/ Microsoft Streets and Trips and we also have an atlas of the state we are in, county maps, city maps, etc.

My dad warned me about bushwhacking because he got lost close to the treeline the treeline (spending an unplanned night in the woods) in Franconia Notch the summer before he shipped off to Vietnam.

It is hard for me to motivate my son to walk on trails but he loves bushwhacking -- I find it a lot more fun if I have a GPS because like Theseus, I can always follow my track back. In my area there is also the risk of running into a canyon you didn't know was there and having topo maps also helps with that.</comment>


A New Thermodynamics Theory of the Origin of Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of The Animate and the Inanimate by William J. Sidis. The concept of life being the reversal of the 2nd law of thermodynamics wrt time featured prominantly: [http://www.sidis.net/ANIMContents.htm](http://www.sidis.net/ANIMContents.htm)</comment>


Microprocessor Design (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Microprocessor_Design <comment><USER2> haven't played it but there is MHRD on steam which is a game about designing a CPU.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/576030/MHRD/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/576030/MHRD/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The metaphors go from extremely simple to complex in the matter of a chapter. I'm not quite sure who the target audience is.

<comment><USER4> Did you read the blurb?

> [...] students in computer science or computer or electrical engineering who > are in the third or fourth years of an undergraduate degree > [...] The > reader should have prior knowledge in Digital Circuits and possibly some > background in Semiconductors [...]

<comment><USER3> Then why does the author use a truck analogy at the start? An student with that type of background would most likely be able to understand the concepts more abstractly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Knowing next to nothing about microprocessor design, I suppose the Mill architecture would also be vulnerable?

<comment><USER6> I'm genuinely not sure. Mills certainly speculate instruction just like the next guy but they handle memory access faults differently. Instead of stopping the world on a bad read they just tag the data as bad. With speculative execution and stop the world you have to supress stopping the world until the speculation is resolved or risk interrupting good programs because your branch predictor made a mistake. But there's no reason for a Mill to suppress tagging. Loading from invalid data should just short circuit to producing more invalid data instead of actually producing a load so I don't see why there should be data ex-filtration from arbitrary memory locations as in Spectre. And they're certainly not intensely optimizing everything for every last drop of performance in the way Intel did to suffer from Meltdown. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of Spectre-esque speculative attack you could run against current Mill designs to get some data out but probably not from arbitrary memory locations?

But all the above is pure speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please, let's not design and implement a hundred different architectures now. It's hard to keep track of Intel bugs alone already. The whole Von-Neumann system architecture is way too old for today's problems. We need heterogeneous systems. There needs to be a discussion on fundamental issues regarding which architectures are fit for what purposes.

<comment><USER8> I think it _is_ time to talk about new directions because we're still _STUCK HARD_ in a rut begun in 1971 for general purpose compute. 4004 -> 8008 -> 8080 -> x86 and here we remain. Requirements and tech have both changed vastly since then. We've made some minor widening, into RISC, GPUs, and VLIW, plus we're just now looking into many cores, now that atomic physics is starting to push back on minimum feature sizes.

Two areas that have not been remotely explored are asynchronous design and massively parallel (think Connection Machine). In both cases, the compilers and tools were not up to the task, but perhaps we're ready to give both another try.

<comment><USER7> I think that there have been discussions, but everyone being on this one-big- complex-cpu-doing-everything train over the years made companies pursue financial goals rather than security. You cannot have a complex _and_ secure CPU. That would be too expensive, so it's not a question of will-it-work, rather will-it-sell.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, security is still not a profit feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> phoe-krk I find it highly ironic that this link has appeared on Hacker News literally hours after Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities have been officially announced and described.

<comment><USER9> Not a coincidence. Articles with the words CPU or Microprocessor in the title are getting a lot of attention on HN (including a 2016 article on CPU bugs).

<comment> phoe-krk Honestly, I find buzz like this to be extremely bad taste. It is trivially simple to post links like that on HN and wait for the "ha, Intel, this is how you should have been doing things!!!1".

If this bug is really present in all chips since 1995, then where have all these people been for the last 22 years? If they're so competent about CPU design, why haven't we seen literally tens of Intel competitor startups pop up and succeed?

<comment><USER10> I can comment on this.

Hardware is a long and tedious process. CPU design is an extra level of difficult on top.

In my field, it is routine to hire people in late 40s/50s to make CPUs. I'm in my late 20s, and viewed as a weird specimen. In my career I've made a armv8 CPU and now work RV64.

It takes a couple of years to get a guy from uni into working shape. And that's just to teach him how to do 1-2 tasks in his field. If verification, this usually is coverage specification and test writing. Combine this with a cpu project duration average of 5ish years and it's quickly evident that you won't beat someone with a startup.

In my office today, in a team of 10, no one, other than me is under 40.

<comment><USER11> Something that always strikes me is how insanely complex it is to even experiment as an outsider to the university path. From my understanding a relatively simple 10+ year ago tech ASIC is still going to run like $10k USD for a shared die prototype from limited providers, compared to software, component level systems design, or even mechanical devices where you can get a local machine shop involved or at least do some parts of it yourself.

Yes, FPGA's exist but they are not even relevant when you are talking about the skillset/engineering discipline to make the FPGA itself and actually producing the physical thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Dizzy game from the Olivers - <AUTHOR> http://yolkfolk.com/mwd/ <comment><USER2> Flash? Really?</comment>