Uber Revenue Growth Slows, Losses Persist as 2019 IPO Draws Near - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-15/uber-results-show-revenue-growth-slows-amid-persistent-losses <comment><USER2> Maybe because I'm outside the unicorn bubble I can't see the magic, but I find something very warped about a business strategy that combines stratospheric valuation, intentional regulatory non-compliance, perpetual capital injections, service misrepresentation, and unprofessional corporate behavior... and results in massive financial losses year after year.

When I try to balance the elements, it frankly looks like an enormous grift. Some key early investors have probably made out really well, but at what cost to others involved?

Not that the taxi industry didn't need disruption - it desperately needed a modern ride calling and fare estimating feature. But being well regulated and having to compete with a maverick service that simply ignored rules meant that the taxi industry lost while Uber gained.

Drivers for Uber have come out losers as well, earning much less than expected.

Passengers did well at first, but surge pricing and eventual regulatory costs eroded that gain as well.

Late investors? The jury is still out on them, but likely they will be losers too.

Who won?

<comment><USER3> >Maybe because I'm outside the unicorn bubble I can't see the magic, but I find something very warped about a business strategy that combines stratospheric valuation, intentional regulatory non-compliance, perpetual capital injections, service misrepresentation, and unprofessional corporate behavior... and results in massive financial losses year after year. >When I try to balance the elements, it frankly looks like an enormous grift. Some key early investors have probably made out really well, but at what cost to others involved?

I think you're way too pessimistic here:

(1) A whole industry of rent seekers (medallion owners) was mostly run off

(2) The taxi experience in cities other than NYC, Chicago, and SF got a million times better. Before Uber in a city like Nashville you call for a taxi and maybe one shows up at some point. Since Uber you can reliably get a ride whenever you want. And that's not even talking about discrimination.

(3) Uber caused a dramatic decline in drunk driving. Likely because of (2)

(4) It allowed people to make some money with a flexibility that traditional jobs don't offer

For me, Uber/Lyft has definitely had the biggest positive impact on my life out of any tech company in the last decade. The only close competitor would be Android/iPhone. I don't know if Uber is worth the ~60 billion that they were last valued at, but they definitely fill a legitimate role.

<comment><USER4> > The taxi experience in cities other than NYC, Chicago, and SF got a million > times better. Before Uber in a city like Nashville you call for a taxi and > maybe one shows up at some point. Since Uber you can reliably get a ride > whenever you want. And that's not even talking about discrimination.

That is a good point I hadn't considered until now.

I remember back in my college days in Champaign, IL right before Uber's debut, I would have to call three separate cab companies a day ahead of time and then the day of to get a ride to the airport, and only one would maybe show up.

I ended up befriending an Ethiopian cab driver that was really kind and responsible and only then this challenge came to an end.

<comment><USER5> What do you mean by, "and only then this challenge came to an end."? You simply stopped calling him?

<comment><USER6> They mean: only after befriending the cab driver did the challenge of getting to the airport become easy.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uber is getting more expensive with time as they try to consolidate losses. For my commute to work nowadays Express Pool costs the same as UberX did a year ago. And of course express pool includes overtly long sight seeing detours and dangerous pick up/drop off points. This is getting prohibitively expensive and I plan to switch to an electric scooter + public transit in a few months.

<comment><USER8> This is a good summary of the VC economy: Use it as long as it is subsidized by VC Money, then switch back to whatever you used before.

<comment><USER9> Also the part about one VC passing the buck to the next, allowing them all to benefit reputationally from asset inflation - until the bubble pops. Then only the last ones holding the bag lose.

Edit: VC is actually not passing to VC, but larger investment funds like PE.

<comment><USER10> In the case of unicorns that don't meet expectations, it's usually the employees who were compensated in stock or options left holding the bag, since investors try to lock in preferred payout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Today I missed getting picked up by an Uber. I think the driver must have waited like 30 seconds before giving up. Still, it was my bad.

He apparently accepted the ride before cancelling it, because the pickup and drop-off addresses were different. I got a $6.50 charge instead of the normal $5.00 cancellation charge. I wrote into Uber about it, and instead of refunding me $1.50 they refunded to full $6.50 amount.

Sometimes my Uber fares are super cheap. I paid $3.00 to go a mile in snowy weather in Denver the other day. It was a shared ride but nobody picked up.

I think Uber is spending lots of money, and could probably make their numbers better by tightening up. They'd lose some of my rides, but probably less than half of them. In more than half of them public transportation is inconvenient or unavailable for the full route (the last mile problem is relevant to me).

<comment><USER12> Has happened to me, I was uber pissed. The Uber driver waited less no more than 2mns Max.

<comment><USER13> It's fairly rude to make them wait at all. They're not being paid while they're waiting for you.

<comment><USER14> If one could reliably order an Uber that would be great. But no way Im waiting outside in -10C while the app lies about someone about to pick me up.

<comment><USER15> More accurate pickup times would really help. I've rushed outside numerous times after being given a 2 minute ETA. Pretty much every time I end up waiting outside for 5-10 more minutes after the ETA changes to a longer time.

If I knew the ETA was accurate, I would be more vigilant about being roadside at the correct time.

<comment><USER16> I have never had an Uber arrive as fast as the estimate. Usually takes about twice as long as app displays when requesting the ride.

Also, there is absolutely no recourse if a driver starts driving in the opposite direction of you. I had a 3 min estimate, then driver drove 15 mins away. Called driver and he had the audacity to ask _me_ to cancel the trip (so I'd still be charged). Was 30 minutes late and had to contact support to get the cancellation fee waived. Uber used to be the faster way to get to work than walking/bussing, but no more.

<comment><USER17> In Lyft you just cancel when the driver is late and Lyft automatically voids the penalty fee before charging you. And I hope they give an internal demerit to the driver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Over the long run, at least in the U.S. it seems like Uber/Lyft are edging towards a comfortable duopoly. Usually their prices move in lockstep (each has insights into the other company's prices through email receipt intelligence, credit card intelligence, webscraping, etc.). And their services are fairly exchangeable. For either one to win there needs to be either a massive cost advantage or some sort of stickiness factor – which neither have. Will be fun to follow the '19 IPO season with Postmates on the horizon and DoorDash fat with Softbank money

<comment><USER19> I would not call it comfortable since both are bleeding money every year. In addition, Waymo, Cruise etc. are all trying hard to put robot taxi's on the road. When that day comes, it will be interesting.

<comment><USER20> I suspect car companies will move in at that point to disintermediate the ride companies, possibly spinning up subsidiaries using fleet purchasing to get around their dealership networks.

It's just as easy to rent a self-driving Camry from Toyota.

Oh and then there's the thing where Google and Apple and probably a hundred startup hopefuls scraping APIs will try to disintermediate them at the device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think uber's rewards program will be successful and boost sales. I've switched all of my business meals and longer rides to Uber for this alone. Other food delivery services don't offer a clear kickback. Lyft has a nice but poorly thought out program that gives you $5 in personal credit for every 5 business trips no matter how short.

<comment><USER22> The fact that you were apparently able to do what you did is a perfect indicator for the problem behind that "sales boost": it is a straw fire. And a very expensive one.

How fast will you be gone once the nice rewards give way to price increases necessary to reach a sustainable business covering expenses, let alone profitability?

<comment><USER23> I wont switch. 80% of my ubers get expensed. Keep me fat and happy with rewards, and I'll keep expensing it regardless of the cost, which doesnt really effect me, only our controller.

<comment><USER24> So now Uber's competitors just have to market to your controller, which is in fact easier than marketing to everyone at your company.

<comment><USER25> Harder than it seems. AmericanExpress had outsized market share in the corporate travel market for about 30 years, even though it never struck me as a superior product to Visa-based cards.

Not sure who they hypnotized to establish that edge, but it became strangely durable.

<comment><USER26> It always seemed very strange to me that it's legal for company-expensed credit card purchases to generate _individual, personal_ rewards for the card holders. (And these awards aren't even taxed?) Something feels underhanded about it, though I can't put my finger on it.

<comment><USER27> The theory of why normal credit card rewards aren't taxable is that they are a discount. OTOH, if it's a corporate expensed card or purchase, but the discount goes to the employee, it seems that either:

(1) the "reimbursement" for the full cost isn't all bona-fide reimbursement, since you are getting reimbursement for more than you paid after the discount, and therefore should be taxed like any other compensation from your employer, or

(2) The rewards you get in that case simply aren't discounts, and should be taxed as normal, but not employment compensation, income.

(These differ, because #1 has payroll tax implications that #2 does not, as well as the income tax implications.)

The fact that neither of these send to happen is either a legal loophole with no strong theory or just an administrative failure.

<comment><USER28> It's mostly (with some exemptions) formal policy from the IRS. I suspect the real justification is that a lot of these things are hard to value, the numbers are small in the scheme of things, and compliance would be very low. It actually makes a lot of sense not to put a rule in the books everyone would ignore.

<comment><USER27> That makes sense, more of an administrative optimization around thw current conditions than an administrative failure.

OTOH, that makes it an unstable thing to build a business model on expanding, since the more significant it becomes with entities other than credit card firms exploiting it as a marketing and loyalty tool, the less it remains the case that it is efficient to let it slide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't know what to say about this because as a lifelong value investor I cannot accept the valuation of Uber based on it's earnings. But the same logic held me back from investing in Facebook and Google, which did not make any sense to me at the moment of their IPO. How do I decide what Uber's earnings will be in five years?

<comment><USER30> Warren Buffett's advice on this is simple. If he doesn't understand it, he doesn't invest. No matter what the rest of the world thinks.

He famously missed the dot com boom. And in the middle of it, gave a private speech about exactly why, about how few of those companies were likely to be around in a few years even if the internet were exactly as successful as hoped for.

He was widely derided as being behind the times, out of date, and so on for a couple of years. But looking back now, he looks prescient.

If you are a value investor and don't understand how to value it, don't invest.

<comment><USER31> And it's not like he just flat out didn't invest all the money he wasn't putting into Geocities and Lycos. He was just putting it into other things, mostly stuff that was less the hot new thing, and therefore less in demand, and therefore more favorably priced.

I don't think he regrets his conservatism. From 1990 through now, BRK.A is up 4,200%, while the NASDAQ composite is up only 1,500%.

<comment><USER30> No, he doesn't.

But as [https://alphaarchitect.com/2016/10/10/value-investing-got- cr...](https://alphaarchitect.com/2016/10/10/value-investing-got-crushed- during-the-internet-bubble-heres-why/) points out, it looked rather different when Berkshire lost 44% while the NASDAQ gained 145%. Buffett stood by the strength of his reasoning. But the rest of the world didn't.

<comment><USER32> Until some years later when it did...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1283 I don't think this is a reflection of Lyft taking market share...more likely that the ridesharing industry has just matured.

I remember getting so much joy out of requesting an Uber back in the earlier days. Nowadays I get about as much joy out of Uber(pool) as using the bus, sometimes less because the wait time has increased so much.

<comment><USER33> UberPool Express has some things in common with the bus, although I've still never been slapped in the face by a homeless man in an Uber.

<comment><USER34> I get a bus twice a day in London and not once has this or even the thought of this come into my head.

<comment><USER35> I can totally anticipate this happening in SF.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Saudi Arabia owns 10% of Uber and executes people for being gay.

<comment><USER37> Funny to think that this is just one of the _many_ reasons not to use Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Of the $11.4 billion in net revenue the company generated in 2018, $3 > billion came in the last three months of the year, up only 2 percent from > the previous quarter.

To what degree does Uber's main business have seasonality? Are people going more places when it's nicer out in the Northern hemisphere?

<comment><USER31> I'd expect it to be positively correlated with nice weather in tourist destinations, because more people would be in town at all. I'd expect it to be inversely correlated in major urban centers, because the number of people needing to get around will have less seasonal variability, and walking, waiting for a bus and riding a bike are all relatively more attractive options when it's not gross outside.

<comment><USER39> Pretty big overlap between tourist destinations and urban centers.

<comment><USER31> There is, but, percentage-wise, the seasonal swing to the number of people in town is much bigger for Traverse City, MI than it is for New York, NY.

<comment><USER39> The discussion was about Uber's overall revenue. I imagine a far larger percent of their revenue comes from NYC tourists than Traverse City tourists. Traverse City gets about 3.5 million tourists a year [1] compared to 63 million for NYC [2].

[1] [https://www.record-eagle.com/news/local_news/tourism- region-...](https://www.record-eagle.com/news/local_news/tourism-region-s- tourism-industry-continues-to- surge/article_1ffad0db-14ea-5219-9697-e1918c2a282d.html)

[2] [https://nycfuture.org/research/destination-new- york](https://nycfuture.org/research/destination-new-york)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What is Uber's long term moat/pricing power? To compete in a local market you just need to sign up 5000 or so drivers. At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app, most drivers already swap between Lyft/Uber. You could even form a drivers cooperative and just give all the charges to drivers (like farmers do).

Regulatory capture seems like the only real route to sustainable profits with their existing main product. What they really need is something where they are the only one or two legal providers for a locale.

A different model of what they are doing is using their massive revenue growth (not profit) to raise money to fund a search for real pricing power with food delivery, shared bikes, and Uber freight.

<comment><USER3> >At a $5 signup bonus that costs like $25,000. You can just be the third app,

Uber can offer those drivers $10 not to switch and their capital will last longer than yours.

<comment><USER40> Sure right now. But long term? They don't seem to have any kind of moat at all.

They can't actually do that because it messes with the contractor thing, but they can do what they are doing with the rewards for a certain amount of availability.

But still I could just halve the amount I take from the transaction and give it to drivers. That's surely better for the drivers.

Moat is about them having a long term advantage that makes it hard to compete against them. Lots of capital isn't enough in 2019.

Long term it seems like the restaurant business, where most are just scrounging for minimal profits all the time.

<comment><USER3> >Sure right now. But long term? They don't seem to have any kind of moat at all.

They also have the moat of providing a reasonably good service with network effects. How would you come in and beat the Uber/Lyft duopoly? They can copy any innovation you come up with and have the capital to beat you in a price war.

<comment><USER40> Businesses where you burn capital on price wars are low margin businesses.

<comment><USER3> (1) Low margin is probably OK given the enormous market Uber/Lyft will share.

(2) They won't actually have to burn capital. No one is going to get into a price war they obviously can't win.

<comment><USER40> 1) We totally agree, ride hailing is a low margin business.

2) Yes! As long as Uber/Lyft act like low margin businesses no one will compete with them. This means they have no pricing power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Lots of great arguments for and against herein, but how about the reality that the gig economy, that Uber exemplifies, is an unmitigated disaster for society, as a whole?

</comment><comment><USER42> I really like this analysis: [https://thinkgrowth.org/uber-is-going-to-0-and- benchmark-kno...](https://thinkgrowth.org/uber-is-going-to-0-and-benchmark- knows-it-1566fb51b308) :

Taxi service is not a good candidate for a global monopoly - because most rides are for local population and there is no need for a global trust. Each dispatcher needs to compete locally. This is different from for ecample AirBnb - where the customers come from away and need some global entity to trust.

\---

Uber also does not seem to do very well in the self-driving car competition, which could potentially save it. What is left is maybe some data play and maybe being useful for spy agencies - a global entity knowing, and also being able to manipulate, delay or maybe even deny in some cases, communication in remote states (but that probably would rely on it being a monopoly). But I am waiting for this to end bad. The SoftBank way of growing the valuation by doubling their investments seems really crazy.

</comment><comment><USER43> I didn't see any talk of self-driving cars here. I think they're coming sooner than we think, and I suspect not having to pay drivers has been baked into the valuations by some of the firms providing those sweet sweet capital injections.

I also wouldn't be surprised to see Tesla enter this space, given their advanced self-driving capability (frankly the one that has come closest to a normal consumer as myself).

Re: Lyft vs Uber, I go for the cheapest usually, even though I know there are other differences. Many people who really care about the difference are mostly drivers. Many friends of mine who use both apps mainly use it to price differentiate.

<comment><USER44> Nah! We have a long way to get to full self-driving. There are just too many variables, unpredictable conditions - to be baked into a system.

[https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john- kra...](https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-krafcik- autonomous-cars-wont-ever-be-able-to-drive-in-all-conditions/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> This last Sunday morning, Uber made 3 charges to my checking account totaling over $1.1k total, for three rides at 6:59am, 7:00am, and 7:01am. I haven't used them in about 2 years (they put me in a car with a guy that admitted to sexually assaulting his drunk female passengers). It was a nightmare trying to get ahold of their customer service to return my money. They have no phone numbers, it's all bots that answer their social media and email.

I for one am excited by the prospect of their failure.

<comment><USER46> Why bother contacting Uber at all? Just call your bank and report the charges as fraudulent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> At this stage the only reason they are doing an IPO is to bail out the earlier investors. You'd be pretty stupid to buy Uber stock, my prediction is that it will make a nice 'pop' on opening day to ensure the underwriters get away with it and a swift crash after that when the bottom drops out and all lock up periods expire.

It's been done before.

</comment><comment> throwaway-1283 The irony of Uber and Lyft both losing so much money is Lyft especially is known for paying some of the highest SWE salaries in SF.

<comment><USER35> The cost of a SWE is nowhere close to the promotions and incentives rolled out to millions of users (imagine something simple like 5$ per user per month). SWEs are paid a lot in Bay Area but at least in top companies they are very well worth it.

Disclaimer: I am a SWE at Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wonder how much effect it would have on sales volume if ride prices were adjusted upwards to the break-even point? They must know what they are doing but it almost always seems counterintuitive to me to sell below cost over a long time period.

I like Uber as a service but I don't really care how they do, except that a friend works at their AI lab.

<comment><USER28> It seems odd to me as well. I don't use these services a lot but when I do it's almist always because they're better than dealing with a taxi. Rarely do I choose them on the basis of price.

<comment><USER49> For the most part, a taxi is only better when I'm at either an airport or a hotel. Otherwise, I far prefer Uber/Lyft because it's on-demand, no cash needed and don't have to explain my route or destination.

<comment><USER28> Yep. Sometimes I take a taxi from the airport because it's right there and ready to go even though it costs more. Otherwise I will, within reason, use whatever gives me the best experiencr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> While my story is anecdata I wonder if it speaks to a broader issue: I'm an Uber super-user. I used uber 400+ times per year in 2015, another 400 times 2016, and then again 400+ times in 2017. Then my rides per year went to 0 in 2018 and 0 in 2019 so far. It wasnt about price, the app just became too buggy to the point of being unusable. The customer service became unresponsive. I simply switched to Lyft/Careem/Via.

Certainly this didn't _just_ happen to me. I wonder how many people are in my situation and how many users Uber has lost. It is nice they are devoting engineers to far-flung projects like food delivery, helicopter rides, ML-as-a- service projects (Michaelangelo), and GPU Databases (AresDB) but I honestly just wish they would fix their main money maker -- ride hailing.

I know this sounds like a sob story, but here are real points:

1\. Cant add a credit card, just get a generic error. No error code that I can give customer service, just a generic error.

1b. For a while, didnt even get a credit card entry form, just the stupid green scanner box to photo-scan the card, which didnt work on any of my cards despite me having a top of the line iPhoneX camera

2\. Cant add any credit cards no matter how many I try. Reach out to customer service and I get a generic response "I see you cant log into your app."...umm no. I'm already in the app adding a credit card obviously I can log in.

3\. CAN add credit card, thanks for customer service, probably only because I started adding Dara Khosrowshahi @dkhos on my irate twitter messages....but when I try to hail a ride, "Payment Failure" regardless of how many cards I try. This is the _worst error_ , because it is a silent runtime failure ...who wants to risk those when you're at the airport desperately needing a ride.

4\. Pickup locations stale (SFO Airport changed ride hailing to the roof of the airport. Lyft immediately updated their app but Uber had stale pickup locations. Lyft had a service rep standing at the pickup location helping customers with the transition, Uber was nowhere on this -- _in their own home city airport!_ )

5\. Customer service provides useless generic responses and never closes a ticket. I understand customer service was outsourced to another company, which I wont name.

6\. I'm a VIP customer in a sense. 2000 rides in a short period of time! Come on...if you are going to ignore people at least see if they are an early adopter / megauser and court your top customers!

7\. Tried the pre-pay option using multiple cards...Bam! Payment Failure. Please take my money!

8\. Within the span of a year in 2017, I used Uber multiple times at airports in SF, LA, NYC, Singapore, Taiwan. Given all the ML prowess at the firm, don't they realize I'm a price-insensitive business user? Come on... _this is the cohort you want on your platform._ Didn't all the ML segment me into the most valuable cohort?

Sometimes I feel like i'm trapped in some bad A/B test they are doing. I even tried to delete the entire account and start anew with a new email and new credit card, but it almost seems like my name itself has been blacklisted. No response from customer service.

If Uber/Lyft were public companies, i'd be shorting Uber and go long on Lyft. I love both, but I can already see the disarray.

<comment><USER51> I was a long time and frequent user (started back when you'd text an address) but quit Uber over a software bug. Was a surge pricing day. I was asked to type in the multiplier, which was 2.0. After the ride, the receipt showed a multiple of 2.1 or 2.2 and a charge accordingly. The support people insisted that I had agreed to the higher multiple (and probably assumed I was some jerk who didn't understand how surge pricing worked). Fuck that. Game over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Hmm "Last year, bankers vying to lead the company's initial public offering told Uber the market could value it at $120 billion." Translation is "tell punters what they want to hear". Reality, 10x revenue means high quality revenue and that is far from proven.

</comment><comment><USER53> Let the superficial bad news divert investor interest so that the IPO is cheap.

</comment><comment><USER33> Wonder what happened with that profit in Q1 2018. Odd that the article didn't mention it. Was that Uber proving to investors that they can turn the spigot and generate cash? Or some one-time factor?

</comment><comment><USER54> Still on track to allow SoftBank and the Saudi's to foist this steaming turd on to the retail investor.

</comment><comment><USER55> The IPO is going to leave the public investors holding the bag</comment>


Ask HN: How do we replace our POP3 email solution? - <AUTHOR> We are a medium size company and our aging POP3 solution is becoming difficult to manage. It's a shared hosting setup that has to be administered via CPanel, what are our options? Any recommendations on how to tackle the monster that is mail? <comment><USER2> Ars Technica had an article about running your own mailserver, to include IMAP, awhile back ([http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how- to...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how-to-run-your- own-e-mail-server-with-your-own-domain-part-1/\);) while it's targeted at the individual user, a lot of the steps would apply to a larger, multi-server organisation. You could extend postfix with a PostgreSQL database, split the different servers onto different hosts &c.

Honestly, these days it's probably easier and cheaper to just buy Google Apps or Office365, but if you want to control your own destiny it's really not difficult.

<comment><USER3> The HN "detect URLs and make them clickable links" code was confused by your punctuation, resulting in garbage at the end of the URL. Here it is cleaned up:

[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how- to...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how-to-run-your- own-e-mail-server-with-your-own-domain-part-1/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rackspace Mail handles this for over 3 million business users. Their hosted e-mail is fully managed with a 100% uptime SLA and 24/7/365 live support. It's only $2 per mailbox per month.

[https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/email- hosting/webmail](https://www.rackspace.com/en-us/email-hosting/webmail)

</comment><comment><USER5> Options include:

      - Migrate mails over to SaaS (Gmail, Amazon mail, or Exchange online) .. Probably the best option, unless you want to run your own
      - Run a "full featured" open-source mail service like Zimbra on servers on any cloud of your choosing!
      - Run a simpler old-school mail solution, like postfix + https://roundcube.net/ for better access

Actually if you need help doing this migration, I'd be happy to help (I'm mostly an Ops person)

</comment><comment><USER6> With email, you want simple, turnkey, and ideally self service.

Free::

[http://modoboa.org/en/](http://modoboa.org/en/)

[http://www.iredmail.org/](http://www.iredmail.org/) ... also has paid version

Paid::

[http://www.afterlogic.com/mailsuite/linux-email- server](http://www.afterlogic.com/mailsuite/linux-email-server)

[https://www.atmail.com/](https://www.atmail.com/)

With each of the options above, you get the complete stack.

::Email server (IMAP + SMTP + POP3)

::Spam protection etc

::Web Client.

And for each of them, you also get a decent web admin panel out of the box.

Trust me, you really don't want to be spending the next week putting the individual components together and getting them to play nice yourself.

</comment><comment><USER7> • Cyrus – it's used by Fastmail and others, and with its perl API somewhat manageable. We e.g. put all configuration in Active Directory and sync it over with said API. It also has reasonable clustering and replication support.

• Google Apps.

<comment><USER5> I'm new to HN posting .. How do I create those bullets :) cheers

<comment><USER7> Unicode: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_%28typography%29#In_uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_%28typography%29#In_unicode)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just use Mail-In-A-Box. It does IMAP and POP.

[https://mailinabox.email/](https://mailinabox.email/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Do you have more than 20,000 people? Special security requirements?

If no, move to Google or Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why host it yourself? Outsource this.

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://poste.io](https://poste.io)

</comment><comment><USER12> You should be able to at least add IMAP instead of POP3, no?

</comment><comment><USER13> try [https://mail.zoho.com](https://mail.zoho.com)</comment>


Australia's Broadband History - <AUTHOR> http://reckoner.com.au/2013/09/australias-broadband-history/ <comment><USER2> More info:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/savethenbn/](http://www.reddit.com/r/savethenbn/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/](http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/) always has something on the NBN.

[http://delimiter.com.au/](http://delimiter.com.au/)

[http://iwantthenbn.com/](http://iwantthenbn.com/)

[http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/](http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/)

[http://nbnmyths.wordpress.com/](http://nbnmyths.wordpress.com/)

[http://www.netindex.com/upload/allcountries/](http://www.netindex.com/upload/allcountries/)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the most interesting reads was Internode's submission [1] under the "Take 2" heading. Even a layman like myself can see that Telstra's behaviour was anti-competitive and bullying. I can't imagine the headaches that competitors must have gone through to try and get their services to end customers!

[1][http://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/...](http://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/115428/Internode.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Both John Lindsay and Mark Newton [1] have, in the past, set wonderful examples of how to deal with bullying from both monopolistic competitors and over-reaching governments. I like Internode.

1\. [http://users.on.net/~newton/ellis-2008-10-20.pdf](http://users.on.net/~newton/ellis-2008-10-20.pdf) (Letter to Minister for Youth and Sport regarding the so called "clean feed" filter proposition)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hopefully the NBN won't become the same as the other great Australian infrastructure project, the High Speed Rail Project ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- speed_rail_in_Australia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- speed_rail_in_Australia)).

<comment><USER6> "The second phase of the study was released on 11 April 2013, finding that the project would cost $114 billion, and be fully operational by 2065."

___

Perhaps too much "apples and oranges" but when vs. Hyperloop...

"The "Alpha" proposal estimates a US$6 billion budget for a passenger-only version of the system"

"He guesses it would take an additional four or five years to build the line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, putting its opening date at an ambitious seven to 10 years from now."

<comment><USER7> > fully operational by 2065

That's with a late-2020s start, presumably to avoid having to make any decisions within anyone's political lifetime.

I view Hyperloop as an extremely optimistic, naive and totally unproven idea. Wake me when someone actually implements it. Preferably Mr Musk - if the idea's such a winner he should have no trouble at all raising the necessary capital.

Meanwhile, Japan has been building its shinkansen network for 40 years this year, a long term project the likes of which we can not even conceive of in western politics, to our very great loss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While not "broadband" Australia was also big into packet radio, not just the amateur ham, but a national network for distance education in the outback was planned back in the late 80s/early 90s.</comment>


Has Work Ethic Become Pathological? - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtinfection.com/2012/12/12/maybe-we-should-just-relax/

<comment><USER2> "Our" implies "we" which is too many people.

I recommend investigating the benefits of singular first person pronouns.</comment>


Core benefits of paid advertising and marketing during an economic downturn - <AUTHOR> By continuing (or even upping) your company's paid outreach efforts during an economic downturn, you are staying "top of mind" and adding positivity to your customers' lives despite the negative news cycle, thus amplifying your organization's resilience and dedication to its quality and values — among other things.<p>Here's a full breakdown of the continuous benefits (backed by studies) of adverting and marketing during a recession, as well as what you can do specifically (costly and "free" things) in this direction. <comment><AUTHOR> Full article here: [https://claritask.com/blog/reasons-you-should-continue- adver...](https://claritask.com/blog/reasons-you-should-continue-advertising- and-marketing-during-a-downturn)</comment>


USAA Bank Will Let Customers Deposit Checks by iPhone  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/technology/10check.html <comment><USER2> I've been a USAA member for 10 years now, and they have always been a fantastic and innovative bank. The fact they don't have branches has forced them to do business differently, and for the better!

<comment><USER3> No lie: my dream was to sell my startup and make a USAA for the rest of us. (USAA really is restricted to active duty and vets, despite the article.)

<comment><USER4> Well, USAA Indemnity is military or dependents only. USAA bank products are available to civilians as well since it's established as a federal savings bank. I remember a CSR telling me that some of the credit lines aren't available. USAA also has a credit union for its employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I noticed I can scan checks in my wells fargo ATM. I wonder how much, if any manual checking, is involved since it asks me to confirm OCR'd deposit amount by hand. This seems like a really great logical next step.

</comment><comment><USER6> It will be interesting to see how well this works. I developed a desktop check scanning application in 2007. We needed good quality scans to make the OCR work reliably. USAA has got to be getting high exception rates with this app, especially with the fixed focus cameras on iPhones before the 3GS.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the most brilliant uses of the iPhone I have heard in a while.

Now if only I could pay for purchases via credit card by waving my iPhone over an RFID receiver, and use it as a MetroCard…

<comment><USER8> I know this is not the same thing as "deposit from your mobile", but PNC bank (formerly Riggs) gave me a device (scanner with an ethernet jack) where I could swipe the checks in and I pressed a green button to "send"; deposits made before 7PM Monday-Saturday were made same day :-)

Anybody with a busy business got the same offer as well, at least in our office building; they even threw in a Pitney Bowes self-stamping device for mail.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Pup, real-time app metrics with Statsd - <AUTHOR> http://www.datadoghq.com/2012/08/easy-app-metrics-with-pup/

<comment><USER2> Nice project, I love the UI.

I solved the same problem in another way with:

* collectd

* collectd to graphite plugin (for server-level metrics, from all your servers)

* graphite

* statsd (for custom app metrics over UDP)

* graphene - my own UI toolkit for graphite, also based on D3.js (<http://github.com/jondot/graphene>)

All in all, I got a better, more robust and detailed solution using these components. Using Chef, the time to set it up is very minimal.

<comment><USER3> Nice work with Graphene, indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems to be basically a collector that sends data to Datalog (a NON open- source service that costs $15/host/month). I recommend setting up Grahite+statsd (it's truly amazing and open-source realtime metrics setup).

<comment><USER3> This was developed for Datadog, yes. But Pup works fully stand-alone and is completely open-source - so you can take whatever you want / need from it.

Pup has a narrower scope than Graphite (which we also use and love), but optimizes for shortest time to app metrics viz.

(Oh and Datadog itself is all free up to 5 hosts - but remains completely optional)

<comment><USER5> > but optimizes for shortest time to app metrics viz.

I'm not sure I understand what "shortest time to app metrics viz" means. Are you referring to the time Pup takes to create charts? Or the lowest time frequency (minutes, seconds etc.) it can handle?

Graphite defaults to reporting at 1-minute intervals, and can report at a finer granularity (1 sec. intervals) if you tweak a few settings and set up a cluster. I'm just wondering how Pup differs in this respect.

<comment><USER3> I meant it as a shortest time from "I wish I could see my app metrics" to actually seeing them. In other words, ease of set-up, lack of knobs, having metrics appear automatically.

By default, pup aggregates statsd data in 10s intervals, and the UI refreshes it continuously.

<comment><USER5> Cool, sounds good!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excellent project! If I understand this right, it's an addition/replacement for StatsD that adds the graphing normally done in Graphite. I've tried to get the whole Graphite/StatsD stack setup before, and I could never get Graphite together quite right.

<comment><USER7> Somewhat off-topic, but what value is there in using statsd rather than talking to carbon, the graphite backend, directly? Statsd receives metrics over udp; carbon-cache can receive them over tcp, udp, or amqp. Statsd aggregates metrics and flushed them a set intervals; if you want this, carbon- aggregator can do it.

[http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/0.9.10/carbon- daemons.htm...](http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/0.9.10/carbon-daemons.html)

<comment><USER5> Other, more experienced people can speak to this, but I'd argue that statsd has a useful ontology for classifying metrics based on _what you want them to track._

If you're watching a number go up, use a statsd.Counter. Want to track request arrival rates? Use statsd.Gauges. Want to record times for request fulfillment? Use statsd.Timers.

Statsd isn't necessarily better or worse than carbon-cache via UDP, but it provides a handy solution for the above use cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Square has a good solution built on node & mongo called cube (<http://square.github.com/cube/>).

To build custom UIs they wrote javascript libraries Crossfilter (<http://square.github.com/crossfilter/>) & Cubism (<http://square.github.com/cubism/>)

</comment><comment><USER9> I love the one line install. The solution certainly won't be perfect for everyone but having such a pain-free way to test it out is awesome.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! We really had the get-started-quickly scenario in mind.

<comment><USER9> One thing I find disappointing is that you can't delete severs once they've been added. Especially since they count towards your limit. Unless I'm missing something?

<comment><USER3> They'll disappear automatically when you stop sending data about them (within a few hours) - we've done that for our customers who have elastic / rolling servers on AWS for ex.

If that doesn't cut if for you, we're happy to help - let us know what you're trying to do!

<comment><USER9> That's kind of cool :) But what about the case where I have an important server that's down for a few hours. Do I lose all the data previously collected?

<comment><USER3> Nope - all the data stays there, and can be shown on dashboards. We just don't show the hosts that don't submit data in the host lists, and don't count them towards the total number of hosts charged for. Does that answer your question?

<comment><USER9> Great! Thanks. Look forward to finding a chance to check this out some more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does it only integrate with statsd, or could it aggregate metrics from collectd, for example? This could be an alternative to Graphite for graphing metrics because Graphite is a pain in the ass to setup (no proper installer), comes with a lot of bloat and is in a semi-broken state regarding features right now.

<comment><USER3> Pup will graph all the metrics Datadog does - it already collects OS metrics, and comes with a set of plug-ins for connecting to common apps, and it wouldn't be very difficult to connect collectd to it.

Pup's feature-set is limited today, though, compared to graphite. You may also check-out the full <http://datadoghq.com> service for more. It's SaaS, and free up to 5 servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am i understanding this right: this is a kick in the butt for services like NewRelic?

Does this always need to run on the same server as the Application? Or is it possible to run it on a different server and push the data to it?

disclaimer: i have no experience with statsd/graphite etc.

<comment><USER3> So: \- It doesn't need to run on the same server as the application, and you can have any number of apps reporting to it. The only limitation here is that apps communicate with Pup in UDP.

\- Our goal with pup was to make it super-easy to see app metrics. It is therefore much narrower in scope than services like New Relic or projects like Graphite. It's open-source, though, and you can take it anywhere you want.

\- We ourselves operate a service that can consume data from Pup and other sources, and provides metrics + events aggregation and correlation, fancy graphing, alerting, etc.. You can check-it out at <http://datadoghq.com>

<comment><USER12> So if i understand this right:

\- DogStatsD is running on my Server and is collecting data. \- I can use "dogstatsd-ruby" to collect data from my (i.e.) Rails App. \- DogStatsD reports Stats to your Service Datadog HQ (optional) \- Pup is a small version of Datadog HQ that is running locally on my Server and connects directly to DogStatsD. \- If i feel Pup doen't satisfy my needs, i can switch from Pup to Datadog HQ, get more functions and you my money? :)

right?

<comment><USER3> In a nutshell, yes. You can also contribute some of the features you need to pup if you are so inclined.

We're on a mission to provide monitoring that doesn't suck, and we believe that making it easy and rewarding to instrument your app is an important step on the way.

<comment><USER12> Is Pup only designed to use it on my dev. machine to run it in my development environment, or can i use it on my production system? :)

<comment><USER3> We designed pup to be first and foremost accessible to developers, but it will work just the same on production systems.

Once you get addicted to metrics and want more aggregation / graphing / alerting / analysis capabilities, there's a number of open-source components you can pipe your statsd data into. Or you can use our own <http://datadoghq.com> service for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks potentially interesting, but I can't really evaluate it without thorough and accurate documentation. It would be nice if there were more than just instructions for downloading it and a trivial use case. Without it, your work's not done.

<comment><USER14> I was able to get in running against an existing statsd installation trivially, and explore it to my heart's content on my existing metrics. And I can look at the source - what more do you want? That was the easiest 3rd-party dashboard setup I've ever experienced.

<comment><USER13> If your needs are trivial, then it's probably adequate. Not everyone's needs are, though. I'm trying to evaluate it in the context of needing an enterprise-grade dashboard solution, with tens of thousands of metrics across thousands of hosts, and robust filtering/aggregation capability.

To my knowledge nobody has really solved this problem yet in a satisfactory way, outside some closed-source solutions at big internet companies.

<comment><USER3> otterley - for that, you can take a look at <http://datadoghq.com>. We do all of the above.

Our service isn't free beyond 5 hosts, but is quite a bit cheaper than rolling and running your own or flying blind and facing the consquences. It's a hard problem, and we're on a mission to solve it for companies that don't start with goo* or end in *ook.

<comment><USER13> I looked at Datadog, but they still suffer from the same malady everyone else does: inspired by Cacti and Graphite, they use a flat namespace for metric names (e.g. interfaces.eth0.pkts) and host is the only supported dimension you can query against. Unfortunately, none of the monitoring and analytics startups I'm aware of have support for arbitrary dimensions you can query or aggregate against (host, interface, disk, datacenter, etc.).

Without some understanding of the dimensions of the data, it is very difficult to compose dashboards or aggregation rules that have arbitrary filters or can update automatically when new components are added.

I really ought to elaborate in a blog post someday :)

<comment><USER3> otterley - Don't walk away yet... we _do_ support arbitrary dimensions!

You can attach any arbitrary set of tags to metrics or events - on a per- datapoint basis, and slice / dice / alert based on those tags. Datadog will automatically tag your points by chef role or AWS availability-zone, for example, and you can add any other tag you want. Tags also don't have to be tied to a host and can also relate to a specific volume, mysql index, etc...

(Note to HN, this is a feature of datadoghq - pup will gladly collect and filter on tags, but won't aggregate them, yet)

<comment><USER13> But tags aren't dimensions. Tags are merely a list of dimensionless values and completely lack context that are essential for dashboard construction and value aggregation.

Suppose I apply the tags "ord", "foo.example.com" and "bar.example.org" to a metric. How does the dashboard builder or the aggregator know what they are? They're values without the fields.

<comment><USER3> Got it. Tags can be of the name:value kind. for ex: role:db or availability- zone:us-east-a1 or foo:bar

And you can then ask for "my.metric" summed over "availability-zone:us- east-1a" grouped by "role".

Here's a screenshot to show what it looks like <https://skitch.com/oliveur/emywc/sobotka-datadog>

You obviously have a lot of experience with monitoring tools - I'd love to connect. I'm @oliveur on the twitters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very cool! Is it possible to use an existing StatsD installation if we already have one running? Or is it pretty much an "all or nothing" package?

<comment><USER3> Pup will work with any existing statsd client - it just replaces the node.js statsd server. In other words, you can keep all your code and apps untouched (FYI I'm not the author, but a Datadog co-founder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is why the guys at DataDog are awesome. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> I should add that Team @datadoghq is on IRC in #datadog on irc.freenode.net

Don't be shy if you have questions when running pup.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very cool app! I'm using Graphite a lot at work these days, so it's cool to see an alternative from a team based in NY.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice! And that's an awesome logo.

<comment><USER18> Double thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What are some potential use cases for pup?

<comment><USER10> A no-hassle, real-time display of custom metrics for developers: 1 command to run and you can watch your app in action, as long as you instrument it with a statsd client (pretty much standard these days).

So, no logs to parse to get any app metric, everything already graphed for you in real-time, quasi-nil setup.

We chose statsd because it means that you don't have to change your code to get it to production. You can then rely on pup for display (but no historical data), or on your internal tool chain (e.g. graphite et al.) or give our service (<http://www.datadoghq.com>) a try if you don't want to set your own stuff up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Love the Pup branding! Awesome logo.

</comment><comment><USER21> Too purpley.</comment>


Opposition Comments to §1201 DMCA Copyright Exemption Requests - <AUTHOR> http://copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a real long-shot that this is going to get enough upvotes to appear on the homepage, but it's really interesting stuff.

After the mess of the last triennial §1201 DMCA exemption (unlocking exemption was removed, causing a kerfuffle), a coalition of organizations rallied around this year and petitioned for a whole host of important exemptions.

These are the opposition comments - its fascinating to see content creators and equipment manufacturers come out and argue for why people shouldn't be able to use and modify the devices/content they've purchased.

The original petitions for exemptions can be found here: [http://copyright.gov/1201/2014/petitions/](http://copyright.gov/1201/2014/petitions/)</comment>


Looks Can Kill: The Deadly Results of Flawed Design - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/looks-can-kill-the-deadly-results-of-flawed-design <comment><USER2> [http://jalopnik.com/heres-the-problem-with-jeeps-recalled- ge...](http://jalopnik.com/heres-the-problem-with-jeeps-recalled-gear- shifter-1782364420)

That monostable shifter is just an incredible bad idea. It is baffling why they do it that way. Was shifting a huge problem which needed to be solved in automotive industry? Guessing someone wanted a promotion by claiming "I redesigned the shifter".

I understand when GMail kept changing its interface every 6 months -- it would correspond probably with year / mid-year reviews and ever designer probably wanted to say "I redesigned blah blah". That is just email. But this is a car and it can easily kill people. Why couldn't they just instead add more lights to the dashboard, or rear view cameras or something of that sort.

<comment><USER3> I understand your point; but we should remember that the redesign of the shifter did not happen in isolation.

Car designers have been tinkering with controls for decades. Sometimes the addition of new ideas can be very helpful. For example, I had a Ford Taurus back in the late 90s. Buttons that had a "positive" effect had a convex portion; buttons with a "negative" effect were concave. Door locks, cruise control, etc., all worked this way. It was very easy to operate that car without looking, or in the dark.

Now add to that the computers-do-everything reality of the modern world. Controls that used to be directly hooked to some mechanism no longer are; software reads the control, and software initiates the desired effect. This means that the form of controls is no longer dictated by the mechanisms they relate to. Designers are free to design controls that users will find easy to use and intuitive.

And so designers have tried all kinds of things. But, alas, some of them turn out to be bad ideas. I don't say this _excuses_ the design flaws at issue here, but I do think it does go a long way toward _explaining_ them.

[Meanwhile, I have a another Ford Taurus. No convex/concave buttons. I have no idea why not. :-( ]

<comment><USER4> A classic in aircraft design are the levers that control the flaps have a flap-shaped knob, and the control for the nose gear has a little tire for the knob. This is all so the pilot knows what control his hands are on without looking at it.

But as a cockpit designer told me once, everything that seems intuitively obvious in cockpit design was paid for with blood.

<comment><USER5> > But as a cockpit designer told me once, everything that seems intuitively > obvious in cockpit design was paid for with blood.

pretty sure the same is true for a lot of other things that needed improvement, EVEN if the designer(s) knows beforehand a possible failure MIGHT results in human injury / death.

<comment><USER4> I'm of the opinion that user interfaces should not be patentable, specifically so that when people find safer interfaces everyone else can copy them and standardize on them, rather than trying to carefully avoid them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some comments here completely miss the key point of the article and instead go down the route of whether the shifter itself should change or not.

The blunder (and yes, it is a blunder and not only in hindsight) in the shifter is that it provides poor feedback to the human. While changing technology may render some types of control not necessary, and thus correctly invite new design thinking, the fundamental human need for feedback does not change. In fact, when something that is so habitual to you changes, that is precisely when the design should provide even more feedback because otherwise you are likely to miss it. This is amplified if the consequences of not comprehending ones actions are high - which clearly was the case here.

The designers here dropped the ball. There is no way early feedback through rigorous testing on prototypes would have not identified this issue way before it went into production.

<comment><USER7> > _Some comments here completely miss the key point of the article and instead > go down the route of whether the shifter itself should change or not._

Well, the point of the article is "bad design can be dangerous", but there is another point that can be discussed which is: why change what works?

Regarding the shifter, the traditional shifter is physically connected to the gear box; in newer cars where everything happens via software, the physical connection no longer exists, and so designers thought there was an opportunity to redo it.

But, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

That said, your point about necessary feedback is extremely valid; it is believed that the crash of the Air France flight 447 in 2009 is due in no small part to insufficient feedback (either pilot could take back control of the plane, without the other pilot knowing they didn't have control anymore).

<comment><USER8> It was actually worse than that in the Air France case -- if the rudder inputs from the two pilots were different, they were averaged before being applied to the physical control surfaces.

<comment><USER7> It could work both ways: either with one pilot in control or with both.

The averaging thing was not as stupid as it sounds when values are close.

It's completely crazy when both rudders were in the opposite direction at the maximum (average of -100,+100 = 0), but it must have seemed an impossible case to the designers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have that shifter on my Jeep Grand Cherokee. It's been recalled but I actually love it. Maybe I'm an outlier but it's not that dissimilar from electronic shifters in BMWs and Mercedes. My girlfriend's Mercedes acts like a turn signal on the steering column and it's 10x more confusing to operate. I hate it. The primary safety difference is that it auto-parks itself when the door is opened. Chrysler's recall adds the same self-parking functionality.

I don't agree that shifters should work the way they've always worked. They warrant a redesign because long throwing shifters eat up a bunch of precious center console space. An area where stuff is often over-packed by the driver or co-pilot; phones, cups, coins, paperwork, keys, wallet. Most of this demands short-term, easy access storage.

If better safety mechanisms were considered in the Chrysler, I doubt we'd be talking about this shifter as a failure. Nobody is criticizing Mercedes' exceptionally poor design – unless you read car enthusiast forums – because they added better safety processes.

<comment><USER10> An automatic gearshift doesn't belong in the center console, it belongs on the steering column. I've driven Ford trucks and SUVs too long for me to think otherwise.

<comment><USER11> Get off your high mechanical horse. Most cars have a center console shifter nowadays.

<comment><USER10> haha, I know, and I don't like it...

If you're going to occupy the pumpkin, at least have a real, manual gearshift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every time I see an issue like this, I think of this Steve Jobs quote:

"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you."

(That is, you can count on some things having been made by idiots.)

<comment><USER13> Not just idiots, but sometimes committees of idiots. And often, committees of smart folks who unintentionally create idiotic things.

<comment><USER14> Also consider that more often than not, making something useful is _not_ a business goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This angers me as a consumer of automobiles. I _abhor_ poor automobile design and this takes the cake. This is also why I hate

a) air conditioning and radio controls that do not have clear positions for their status, forcing me, the person _driving a big automobile in traffic_ , to divert my gaze to inspect them to ensure I have the correct setting

b) Tesla's monolith faceless screen which forces me to stare at it constantly, taking my eyes off the road when I drive one

<comment><USER16> On the flipside of that, my LEAF has a big button in the middle called "Auto". Hit that, and it's usually what I want (or damn close enough) if I'm at a time when I can't glance at them.

Front defog is the only thing that I might need to look at in any kind of a time-sensitive fashion. In my experience, setting defog on any other car is harder than mashing the two buttons the are on in that area (defog and rear defog).

I agree that if I want to manually set AC compressor on/off, fan speed 0-7, face, face/feet, feet, feet/windshield, windshield-only, that it's harder on the LEAF. Most times, I don't want that. I want either "defog" or "I'm a little uncomfortable; please make me more comfortable".

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This seems to be something the medical industry hits every month with medications and materials. The human is prone to an incorrect interpretation of the specifics and may take action or not take action improperly because of that.

How to identify similarly spelled medications as different? Is the dosage or dilution magnitudes apart without visibly distinct and obvious clues?

More information about how the medical world handles these kinds of issues is at the Institution of Safe Medical Practices [1].

[1]: [http://www.ismp.org/Newsletters/default.asp](http://www.ismp.org/Newsletters/default.asp)

<comment><USER18> I heard recently of a patient that took some prescribed medication before her surgery, but instead of taking 5 mg as prescribed she ended up taking 5 grams, which induced a near fatal stroke. You could argue that better design could have prevented this from happening.

Edit: The mistake was between mg and ml, so the person drank 5ml of a 5X concentration drug. Either way a terrible, preventable result.

<comment><USER4> There was a famous airline accident where gallons of fuel was confused with liters. The fix (obvious in hindsight) was to standardize on gallons.

<comment><USER19> You're thinking of the Gimli Glider, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider)

Boeing had just transitioned their FQIS from lbs to kgs (aircraft fuel is always weighed, volume changes with temperature). The flight crew hadn't had enough familiarisation and miscalculated.

All aircraft now calculate fuel usage in SI units.

<comment><USER16> > aircraft fuel is always weighed

Jet fuel is typically planned by weight. Avgas is typically planned by volume. In general aviation, both are typically priced and sold by volume.

> All aircraft now calculate fuel usage in SI units.

All 3 of my aircraft track/calculate fuel usage in imperial units. Likewise, everyone I know in US general aviation also still uses imperial units (lbs, lbs/hr, gallons, gal/hr).

<comment><USER20> I wish people would stop saying imperial when they mean US Customary!

An imperial gallon is about 4.5 litre while a US Customary gallon is about 3.8 litre.

<comment><USER16> Fair point. Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I find it fascinating how many chat applications exist, and how success is almost completely due to design. Most chat features you find in newer chat apps, like Kik or Whatsapp existed since AIM. Yet users are very willing to jump ship and grab onto an application with the same, perhaps fewer, feature if it's more eye-catching, or intuitive. It's a nice reminder that part of innovation in the tech industry is UI, and if you innovate a new interface for an existing service, it can be as ground-breaking as any other innovation in the industry.

<comment><USER22> No, i think the jump was technical.

AIM and similar gen IM protocols expected that you were using a desktop or laptop with a persistent connection. This would break on iPhone because Apple didn't allow backgrounding.

Kik and similar took over once Apple introduced their push notification service. This allowed apps to behave closer to text messaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know how NASA modified presentations after the report mentioned in the article? Only show one single piece of data per safety slide? Mandate large fonts and color coding on safety slides?

<comment><USER5> not exactly slide-related

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11719953)

<comment><USER23> Excellent reference, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is an antifreeze sold in a green pop top can that looks similar to beer. I wish I could find the photo of it.

<comment><USER25> [https://i.redd.it/igpx1sl1ex9x.jpg](https://i.redd.it/igpx1sl1ex9x.jpg)

<comment><USER26> Is it legal to sell that in the U.S.? It wouldn't be allowed on the shelf in Australia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The design of pilot controls in aircraft has a great deal of effort going into making them intuitive, and still serious mistakes are made. It's a very hard problem, and what's obvious in hindsight escapes nearly everyone in foresight.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow. I think what baffled me the most is this: [http://i.imgur.com/AUW0C1P.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/AUW0C1P.jpg)

It just doesn't make sense for -so many- reasons. Besides the obvious that the cleaner literally looks identical to a neon-colored children's drink, why would anyone possibly decide to put them on the same aisle? The cleaner even has similar pricing to the beverages.

Some stupidity I can understand, but this? How does this possibly get past anyone in the chain of command? Feel like this requires a dedicated, concerted effort in avoiding any thought whatsoever to occur.

</comment><comment><USER28> If this was open source software the answers would be "Don't use if it you don't like it" or "It's open, why don't you fix it yourself?"

</comment><comment><USER29> Another horrible shifter is Toyota's. Take a look here: [http://imgur.com/a/9ShAC](http://imgur.com/a/9ShAC)

First gear is all the way down and to the right. Then left for 2nd, up and left for 3rd, up for 4th, right (!!!) for 5th (aka drive). Now it gets dangerous, if you go up and right you get reverse.

Is there a method to this madness?

<comment> et-al Visually, it may seem confusing, but tactilely, it's intuitive:

Move your hand from the bottom-left corner to the top-right. That diagonal motion is shifting from D-N-R-P, what most people will use.

Now pretend you're driving in the mountains and you're on a long descent. Instead of riding your brakes, you want to use the transmission to limit your speed.

You're in 4th gear (D), so just bump your lever down to third (3). It's a simple vertical motion. Now you're in 3rd gear, but forgot and think you're still in 4th (D), and attempt to downshift once more. Fortunately, you _won 't_ accidentally drop the car into second gear. To get into second gear, you need a downward _and_ horizontal motion. It requires intention to move from 3rd to 2nd gear.

And once you're in the rarely used 2nd gear, to switch between second (2) and first (L) is a horizontal motion.

So it makes sense once a person feels it out and actually _drives_ their car. Designers with a background limited to just visual aesthetics need to learn this. Run through your interfaces; interact with them under less-than-ideal conditions.

      **tl;dr**

      P-R-N-D: diagonal motion

      D-3: vertical motion

      2-L: horizontal motion

<comment><USER29> You've somewhat proven how poor this shifter design is because you didn't realize it is for a 5 speed transmission!

<comment> et-al You're right, but I've only looked at it and run the design through my head.

If I were sitting in a car, I would would know that 4-D is basically shifting between fourth and overdrive. And if someone accidentally did shift from overdrive down to fourth, it won't kill the car in most circumstances. It's better than the old O/D button that asks your thumb to press it.

Ultimately, my proposal that this shift pattern groups gears by use-cases still holds true. D-4, 4-3, 2-L. If a person can't understand that, it's perfectly fine to leave it in D.

<comment><USER29> Consider this scenario: you're shifting up from 1st gear and forget what gear you're in. If you're in 3rd gear its safe to shift up and to the right. If you're in 5th gear its not safe, up and to the right is reverse!

I don't agree with your analysis. Toyota's shifter is unsafe.

<comment> et-al First off, please explain to me the scenario where you're drag racing someone and limiting your upshifts in an automatic transmission car. Okay, so you're in 5th gear (D), which happens to be overdrive. If you know what overdrive is, then you'd know that the possibility of redlining in that gear is next to none.

Lastly, with any automatic-transmission car made in the past 20 years, they won't let you shift into reverse from drive.

See:

[https://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-if-a-person- suddenly-...](https://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-if-a-person-suddenly- shifts-from-Drive-to-Reverse-or-Park-while-driving-at-a-fast-speed)

Shift Transmission into Reverse While Driving ([https://youtu.be/GR13mElbqxM](https://youtu.be/GR13mElbqxM))

Anyways, you don't have to agree with my analysis. AFAIK, Toyota hasn't had a recall for this shift pattern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Bad UI can happen to everyone and for a lot of reasons: I think the minimalism thing can get to stupid levels, the music controls on the ipad mini has the controls so cramped that I get a friend to prove than less than 50 percent of the time I can move the sound without pressing the rewind arrow.

</comment><comment><USER31> Speaking of bad design, on mobile the text on that page slightly flows off the right edge in a way that interferes with reading and can't be fixed by zooming.

</comment><comment><USER32> Must-read in this category: "The design of everyday things" by Don Norman.</comment>


The Same Pill That Costs $1,000 in America Sells for $4 in India - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-29/the-price-keeps-falling-for-a-superstar-gilead-drug-in-india <comment><USER2> With prices like that, seems like insurance companies could arbitrage this by paying their patients to live on a beautiful resort island somewhere near India for the 3 month treatment course. You can afford to bring the patient to the pills instead of the other way 'round.

<comment><USER3> There is already "medical tourism" happening in India - there are companies that organize everything, all one has to do is go there, get surgery (or whatever treatment), then go sight seeing before returning to the US and the cost of the entire trip would be less than what the procedure would cost here. Only downside is, it is driving up costs for the locals.

<comment><USER4> >>Only downside is, it is driving up costs for the locals.

As an India I can attest to this.

Also even by these standards(that appear to cheap to people in western economies), health care is prohibitively expensive to most poor people in India.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of the biggest problems with the pharmaceutical/insurance hybrid system I experience is the inability to express choice.

My family has an insurance plan in which we pay a set premium cost monthly, and then for some set of health services our insurance promises covers (and thus reduce for us) some of the costs. I think most Americans are in a similar situation.

The insurance company is allowed to reject claims for some services. In particular, they frequently reject claims for drugs for which there is a cheaper "preferred" alternative.

To some extent, this seems reasonable and wise: if there's a cheaper, completely substitutable version of the drug, then let's use it.

The trouble is, things aren't nearly so simple. My grandmother has a strong preference for certain kinds of pain relief medication because some (let's call it Drug A) will knock her out effectively all day, and others (let's call it Drug B) let her function wonderfully and pain-free. However, Drug A is "preferred" to Drug B. As a result, the insurance refuses to cover it.

Every single incentive structure in this system is unproductive:

* My grandmother is left expressing her preference by voting with her dollars, out of pocket -- punishing her for expressing a preference. Because the price gap between Drug A and Drug B is inflated by the effect of the insurance company, this disincentive is so vicious that many people would be unable sustain this at all. Many consumers are effectively _unable to express preference_ in the market because of the synthetically inflated price gap.

* The insurance company feels no pressure whatsoever to cover Drug B, even though the devastating side effects reported by my grandmother are extremely common. There's simply zero incentive for them to behave pro-consumer, _or even to bargain the price of Drug B down_.

* The drug manufactory feels reduced pressure to change the pricing of Drug B, because unless they drop it to _below_ the price of their current high-seller Drug A, the insurance company will powerfully influence the market away from Drug B, despite the fact that it is in almost all cases superior to Drug A and no more difficult to manufacture.

By completely failing to align incentives to match good outcomes, we've ended up with a system that's pitted against its own progress. Hackers, can we construct a better market?

<comment><USER6> > Hackers, can we construct a better market?

No, you can't. Any solution you come up with will be illegal in some key respect. You are dealing with one of the three most heavily regulated industries in the United States.

You don't need hackers; you need an army lobbyists of lobbyists powerful enough to overcome entrenched opposition from every corner of the healthcare system.

<comment><USER7> Can we not lobby hard enough for universal healthcare? Which has been shown to deliver healthcare at a much lower cost per capita?

Google, Facebook, and Apple are in front of how many people's faces per day? Sounds like a huge lobbying force to me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So why isn't someone smuggling bottles' worth back to the US until the price equilibriates? That's a pretty nice profit margin even for the illegal drug trade, and the US can't even reliably keep things like heroin from being readily shipped on a retail basis.

<comment><USER9> Is that really considered smuggling? If the whole 12 week treatment costs $84000 in the US and apparently $336 in India according to the article, you could take a nice vacation to India with your family, get your bottle of 84 pills there, and save $75k to $80k. A smart insurance company would cover it.

<comment><USER10> That's assuming the insurance company is fine paying whatever the vacation to India costs.

<comment><USER9> It's really their own $75k they're saving...

<comment><USER10> Not if they weren't going to pay that anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pricing a medicine, like pricing any other product, will have its own complexities.

* You need to fix a price which would cover the cost of your research that went in (and also for unsuccessful researches that you write off for other ailments) * You have idea about the scale of the ailment but little idea about market acceptance and reaction to your price. * After market has accepted a price, even if it exceeds your predicted consumption by many fold, you have little incentive to change the price especially if insurance is paying for it. * In a new market, because you have already recovered what went in to build the medicine, you can price it better.

In fact, insurance itself work very differently in US vs India. In India, in most cases your insurance won't pay for your medicines and medical expenses (diagnostics) if you don't end up hospitalized for at least a day. And that can govern how medicines are priced here because price has a direct implication on adoption.

<comment><USER12> You forgot one part:

* You have to finance your highly paid sales staff.

People always claim that pharma companies spend so much money on R&D, but when I look at job ads in the news paper I don't see ads for research positions, but lots of ads for sales positions (from pharma companies).

I'd love to see actual numbers, but I'm pretty sure that sales is at least as costly as research (if not more so)

<comment><USER13> Here's some actual numbers for marketing vs research: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big- pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is no market for healthcare and medicines in the US. Its just an illusion.

US runs so much on the whims of the health insurance industry, that $1000 pill justifies a rich/middle class family's $1000 a month insurance premium.

Would the families/individuals pay the same expensive premium every month, if the pill was available for even $100 in US?

I pity the guy who jacked up the price of the pill in US, and got burned online. All he was doing, was to take a bigger chunk from the stinking rich health insurance companies, and providing the product in the US "Market".

I live in US and have spoken many Americans as to why they don't think of going to India for medical reasons. I was expecting some kind of a condescending / patronizing response about quality of service etc. Often, the response is that they have a "sunk cost of expensive monthly premiums", which gives them the illusion that getting treated in US costs lesser.

The blow of a $1000 pill is softened, to those who pay the expensive premiums.

As someone who moved from India to US, I can know market prices of individual tablets /medicines in India, but its way too difficult to know the "market rate" of medicines in US, unless you go by the rates shown by your health insurance company.

</comment><comment><USER15> India is bigger than the US and Europe combined. I think we can even add in the US again. They are a rapidly developing economy with a strong educational system. Wouldn't we all benefit if the moved up from generics and created new medicines? More drugs, more competition, etc

<comment><USER16> You mean if india started doing their own research? Well of course, we the general population would benefit. Nobody is stopping them. Except maybe cost.

<comment> lloyd-christmas Quality. The problem tends to come down to human trials. Very few countries have a combination of the quality of medicine, the proper oversight, and a large enough population to actually make the trials worthwhile. China/India simply don't have the same quality control as that of US/Europe/Japan.

Beyond that, humans aren't all equal. Drug trials in the US make an effort to represent the general US demographics within their studies (which is also representative of Europe). Clinical trials of a 100% Indian population have questionable relevance any other country, and will likely require the entire study to be redone with a population-representative sample.

<comment><USER17> Are there any drugs that work well with one populace but are harmful to another ?

<comment> lloyd-christmas Yep. I'd have to dig for examples, but many cancer drugs have different efficacies on differing ethnic populations. My father researches genetic markers vs. success rates in different treatments for the same types of cancer. He sees it constantly (Dinner conversation; his big data vs my big data). It's easy enough to assume they do given the different rates of diseases among ethnic groups. From my viewpoint, I would be more shocked if they did actually have the same efficacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> India follows the "Sheep Herd" mentality. The whole country's economy is based on people getting into "Profitable" domains mostly following the success of a pioneer in the field. The most recent example of this ideology is the "Business Process Outsourcing" industry. New BPO units are propping up here and there at a dime a dozen leading to a quality deterioration in the final deliverable. This process will continue till a saturation level is reached and then they will wait till another "Killer" domain picks up momentum. Till then India will be in a so called "Calm Period" where nothing great and major takes place.

[http://qz.com/519777/why-india-needs-a-new- constitution/](http://qz.com/519777/why-india-needs-a-new-constitution/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think making cheap drugs widely available is a way for China and India to improve their soft power in a way that the west can't really match. However, they first need to find a way to counteract the safety fear-mongering with regards to drugs produced outside of western countries.

<comment> lloyd-christmas To be fair, China produced toxic drywall. For my epilepsy, I'm happy paying $1k for drugs produced in the US compared to $10 in China. Even countries like Japan can barely manage human trials. My father is an oncology physician/researcher/consultant. He goes there yearly to tell them to stop chopping out every prostate that walks through their doors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The cynic in me wonders if it is because people are able and willing to pay higher prices in America.

<comment><USER21> It could be because the government is not allowed to negotiate drug prices. (Medicare.) They pay whatever the drug companies ask.

Or, maybe because most individuals in the U.S. don't pay the full price. They pay a 'co-pay.' Insurance companies pay the rest. But, they can only make profit as a percentage of revenue. If they lower drug costs significantly, they significantly lower their potential profits. Why would they do that? From a shareholder's perspective, that's a very bad idea.

In the U.S. relatively few people really know how much a drug costs, so why would price be taken into consideration?

<comment><USER22> Your first statement isn't accurate. I used to work at a startup that dealt with Medicare. They have a process where they put contracts out to bid. In my companies case their allowable reimbursement declined by 90% in a single year. They have plenty of power to put screws to suppliers and use their power effectively.

<comment><USER21> > He has asked Congress to let Medicare officials negotiate prices with drug > manufacturers — a practice explicitly forbidden by current law.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/us/obama-proposes-that- med...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/us/obama-proposes-that-medicare-be- given-the-right-to-negotiate-the-cost-of-drugs.html?_r=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

People that can pay more do, those that can't... don't?

</comment><comment><USER24> Pricing comparison charts for 8 drugs in 14 countries: [http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-drug- prices/](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-drug-prices/)

US tops the list every time - even with discounts negotiated by insurers. The flipside to these exorbitant costs is the accessibility they bring.

It's easy to ignore the fact that US pricing arrangements motivate pharmaceutical companies to market more of these drugs. Keyword: market.

As sad as it feels to say this, a more socialist agenda wouldn't nurture as much drug commercialization - development perhaps, but not marketable products.

Australia's social healthcare, Medicare, is driving down the price of common "molecules" to negligible amounts.

These days, you can really sense apathy on the pharmas' part. Stock outages are frequent because there simply isn't a $ factor to make them care.

On top of being a geek, I'm a pharmacist business manager - knowing how drug pricing economics works is part of my job.

<comment><USER14> "Discount negotiated by insurers" is the mirage americans live in.

$10 pill is marked up to $100, charged to insurer. your health insurance with a premium of $250 per month, negotiates the price and enables you to buy it for $15, giving you a illusionary savings of "$85".

Same pill, is probably available in India, at a market rate of $5-$7.

People compare market rate of the pill in India $5 with the pre-negotiation sticker price in US of $100.

Q to the Pharmacist Business Manager: Do you think prices of these drugs would remain so high, if health insurance companies didn't exist and everyone paid for medicines and services out of pocket?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is similar with Bayer's Nexavar (Sorafenib)and its India-market-only counterpart.

India had to impose an export-restriction for these drugs.

</comment><comment><USER26> Well of course, I don't know why people find this surprising. You are not paying for the cost of manufacturing the single individual pill. You are paying for the cost of researching it and testing it, as well as a thousand other drugs that didn't make it to market.

If the US market didn't pay for these drugs, they wouldn't still be cheaper in India. They likely wouldn't exist at all.

<comment><USER27> > You are paying for the cost of researching it and testing it, as well as a > thousand other drugs that didn't make it to market.

Trying to think of other straightforward instances where a tremendous cost is spent on researching and testing, and directly affect human well being.

One example would be meat farming. As far as I know raising pigs or chicken evolved a lot in our lifetimes, extensive research was done on how to produce mor meat, there's oversight by a public agency and it is consumed by human so there is a decent amount of safety check and oversight.

Yet meat is cheap.

The more research that went into it, the cheaper it got. Provided meat as a product is more stable and less dangerous than drugs, I still think that it doesn't explain why meat would become cheaper while drug price should stay high and pharmatical firms should have extra protection to keep their prices high.

We're not paying for research, we're paying for monopolies.

<comment><USER26> This comparison makes no sense. The vast majority of drugs are super cheap, and we have more choices then ever before. Only ones developed in the last 20 years have patents.

The exact same is true in agriculture. You can patent a gene or a variety that you bred. But the only way to sell it to farmers is if it gives them higher yields than the previous stuff.

Agriculture did benefit a lot from research done by public universities. As did medicine. I'm hugely in favor of increasing public research in both areas. This is not not mutually exclusive with private research. It's not like there are a finite number of things that can be researched or invented.

<comment><USER27> > This comparison makes no sense. The vast majority of drugs are super cheap, > and we have more choices then ever before. Only ones developed in the last > 20 years have patents.

If as you say the majority of drugs are cheap, varied and didn't need patents, I'd say it's as good sign as any that we don't need patents for drugs.

I also think we need more research, both public and private. I understand that the current system relies on patent money to sustain itself, but I just don't buy that it has to be this way, or that it wouldn't work otherwise.

For the record I am not comparing industries, just saying that different models exists.

<comment><USER26> >If as you say the majority of drugs are cheap, varied and didn't need patents, I'd say it's as good sign as any that we don't need patents for drugs.

I think you are confused. Patents only last 15-20 years, not forever. The majority of drugs were developed by companies looking to own the patents. However they are now free to the public.

Without the patent system, they wouldn't exist at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Indian person here, in case what I'm about to write is offensive to anyone:

The difference is that the Indian companies are simply stealing intellectual property paid for by American taxpayers. These companies didn't spend years and billions of dollars going through the FDA maze to develop the drugs. They simply stepped in after all the hard work was done, to develop an alternative process for a proven drug.

That's right, India has "process" patents, not "product" patents, for pharmaceuticals. Look it up.

<comment><USER29> The article mentions, Gilead licensed 11 companies in India to make generics. I don't see how licensing to make generics make it stealing intellectual property.

Besides I am curious how $1000 in USA compares to $4 (about ₹ 265) with the per capita income in perspective, as a measure of affordability of the drug.

<comment><USER30> the purchasing power of $1000 vs ₹265 is not important; Gilead benefits, because they now have >$0 from each pill whereas otherwise they would have $0.

Identical to software piracy in poor countries: if people are buying DVDs with your software for $2, that's what the market will support. Nobody offers you a choice between $500 and $2, it's between $2 and $0 :) So you'd be smart to go and start selling it yourself for $2.</comment></comment></comment>