Where will 'garage orphans' charge electric cars? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/mobility/article-where-will-garage-orphans-charge-electric-cars-if-they-have-to-park/ <comment><USER3> Yet another reason the real answer to the climate crisis isn't EVs - it's public transit, bicycles, e-bikes, scooters, e-scooters, walking, etc. All these other modes are much lower impact on the environment than purchasing and operating an EV, much less an ICE.

<comment><USER4> It's been entertaining to read the discussions (below) about how to make this practical. So far, it looks like the only way to make this work is to a) live in a city, or rebuild your suburbia into a city, and b) construct your entire life around riding that bike - choose a job with a tolerant boss, spend extra hours every day showering and changing clothes after biking, etc.

I'd rather drive an air-conditioned car, sit in traffic for that hour or two, and enjoy my private backyard (however small it may be).

<comment><USER5> Instead of constructing your life around a bike you construct it around a car. You can't commute to work any other way, if it breaks down you are bound to mostly Uber as a backup strategy to get anywhere.

Except those car-centric environments you live and work in are a more effective gate to keep the poor out than the grandest gated community. Almost no where else on the planet is the idea of a city being a tiny urban core surrounded by hundreds of miles of single family houses in spiraling one lane streets of sprawl the norm. Its a purely American fixation on centering all human activity around cars. And for your benefit, even - the world would be alight in a raging inferno if we ever tried to globally house everyone in quarter acre single family houses with 4 hour single-occupancy car commutes every day.

<comment><USER4> > construct it around a car

I don't, actually - it's that a car is far more useful than a bike. I drive 25 minutes to work; I haul (5 bike-ride-loads of) groceries several miles to my house; I visit friends anywhere from 1-5 hours away; I casually drive into the city and back. Even if I felt like riding 10 miles each way, rain or shine, or using public transit, it takes _so much less time_ to drive my car, and I have to either find multiple clever solutions to each of the other activities I use the car for, or _just go without_.

My car gives me freedom from limitations; bicycle dependency only adds to them. To use a bike instead of a car, I have to fundamentally adjust my life, in every way for the worse.

<comment><USER6> You don't seem to able to wrap your ahead around the fact that driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city that was designed around cars, not because cars are inherently faster or more convenient. The convenience of the car is an artifact of city planning decisions, not a universal truth.

Example: do you realize how preposterous the idea of driving several miles to get groceries is to someone who lives in a real city? If I want to get groceries I walk to the grocery store two blocks away. If I don't like that grocery store I walk to the other one four blocks away. Or the other other one five blocks away. It takes me less time to walk to the grocery store than it takes you to drive to yours. The counterfactual to a 10 mile drive is not a 10 mile public transit ride, because without car-induced sprawl everything would be much closer and you would have to travel much shorter distances to have access to the same amenities and see your friends.

Public transit is also not slower than driving in a city with proper transit. I don't own a car and almost every single journey I take is either short enough to walk, or faster on transit than in a car. It takes me 10 minutes to get to work on the train, the same drive would take half an hour due to traffic.

<comment><USER4> > driving appears to give you more freedoms only because you live in a city

I don't live in a city, just like half the population of the US. You assumed that, and now the rest of what you wrote is irrelevant.

<comment><USER7> 80% of the US population lives in a city.

<comment><USER8> That is nowhere close to true, unless you are counting suburbs as cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This stopped me from buying a Tesla with my most recent car purchase. I live in a 100 year old apartment in Boston that has 0 parking spots for over 100 units. My wife and I share a car, mostly for weekend adventuring, so we rent a spot in a dude's backyard down the block from us. It works well for us, much more convenient than the rat race of street parking. But it was hard to imagine that life with a Tesla. I could probably negotiate that I could plug it into an outlet connected to the guy's house, but I'd only get a slow trickle charge, and it's an odd request he could easily reject. I could rent in a garage with chargers, but there are none near my apartment, and it would also be much more expensive. The thought of only being able to charge at Superchargers was a big turnoff.

<comment><USER10> > I live in a 100 year old apartment

Keeping in mind '100 years old' sounds dramatic but is now as recent as 1919, which doesn't sound that old when you write it out! That's about a fifth of the housing stock in the UK I believe. Obviously, almost none of these houses have garages.

I wonder if local governments could install plugs under little hatches like they use for stop cocks all the way down residential roads.

[https://stock.adobe.com/be_en/images/blue-painted-water- stop...](https://stock.adobe.com/be_en/images/blue-painted-water-stopcock- valve-cover-found-in-the-pavement-on-the-street/122551084)

<comment><USER11> London is putting charging points in street lamps:

[https://www.electrive.com/2018/08/21/char-gy-new-player- on-l...](https://www.electrive.com/2018/08/21/char-gy-new-player-on-london- lamp-post-charging-scene/)

<comment><USER12> European countries have a much easier time than the US in this regard due to 220V mains voltage. Even with a standard outlet you can fully recharge a Tesla overnight.

<comment><USER13> > Even with a standard outlet you can fully recharge a Tesla overnight.

Nah. 230V 10A is about 2kW and 15A about 3kW.

More realistically it's 24h for a 20-80% charge.

That said, 2kW is a 10kmh charge, so "overnight" (let's say 12 hours) you can do a 60km commute from a regular socket.

<comment><USER14> It's at least fairly cheap to install a standard industrial outlet (single phase, or three phase if the house supply has it -- this varies in Europe). That looks to be what older/cheaper street lamp installations have -- a domestic outlet isn't appropriate for outdoor use anyway.

That gets 7kW or more.

From [https://www.spiritenergy.co.uk/kb-ev-understanding- electric-...](https://www.spiritenergy.co.uk/kb-ev-understanding-electric-car- charging) :

> If you have a standard domestic single phase (230V) supply, you won't be > able to achieve a charging rate of more than 7.4kW. Even with a standard > commercial 3 phase connection, the power rating for AC charging is limited > to 22kW.

22kW is plenty, and e.g. my apartment in Denmark has a three-phase 40A supply, so houses surely have more than this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I live in a high rise apartment with three shared level 2 chargers in the garage. I would say there are ~10 EVs in the building and sharing the chargers has never been an issue. It's like shared laundry; you really only need it once a week or so for a few hours. Once it's easy to make people pay for electricity, adding lots of chargers will be a no-brainer for garage owners.

<comment><USER16> Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy.

Most homeowners have laundry in their home. Starting and switching loads is a few minutes, and the rest of their time is still free. Many high-end apartments have laundry within a short walk from each residence. It's largely the same experience. But then those with less ability to afford "nice" housing often have to use shared public laundromats that are not as close to home. You probably plan a trip once a week or two, and it takes you several hours. If you're lucky, it's close to other errands, but since you've got your hands full with your laundry, it's not like you can really combine it with grocery shopping.

In a future where everyone drives EVs, the wealthier will have higher range vehicles, easy access to super fast chargers, and even chargers in their home or luxury apartment. But the poor, with lower range vehicles, will just have to visit a mediocre public charger, and hope they can make that time useful, or read a newspaper while they wait. They'll have to be more thoughtful about how they use their car because going an extra 20 miles for some unexpected errand might screw up their schedule and send them to the public charger where they can waste a half an hour of precious time waiting in line and getting a partial charge.

<comment><USER17> > Laundry. That just might be the perfect example. What a huge division of > experience between the wealthy and the less wealthy.

While a bit off-topic: I never understood why a lack of washing machines in flats is such a huge issue in some countries.

In Germany, most flats come with a connector for your own washing machine, those that don't have on inside the flat often have them in the basement, where every party living in the house just adds their washing machine.

Public laundromats do exist, but from what I can gather they are quite underutilized because there's barely any demand.

Does anybody happen to know why these vast differences in "washing machine availability" exist in other countries? Is it really that much more expensive to lay the water/wastewater lines for washing machines inside the flats? Doesn't all that just plug into the same plumbing that's already there?

<comment><USER13> Germany is usually used as an example of good tenants' rights, though. I've never lived there but my understanding is that there's nothing wrong with renting, well off people might do it too, and so it's comfortable.

Apartment living mixed with bad tenants rights is a recipe for disaster because the majority of people then end up basically living in a minimum standard hellhole that no-one cares about. See: UK private rental sector.

<comment><USER17> I checked if it's something that's required by tenants law, but from what I could gather nothing like a "tenants right to a washing machine in their house/flat" exists in Germany.

And it's not like the situation is that perfect either, these past years rents have been exploding in most places with any economic development. Government response has been slow to non-existent on the issue.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't have to be legally enshrined for the general attitude to help the situation, though.

A bit like how buses in the US, or at least the parts I've visited, seem to be a shitfest, because they're only a thing poor people use, whereas in Europe they're often a lot better not due to legislation per se.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I own a condo with a garage, yet I can't put in a charge station. I need to convince most of my neighbors to have the HOA do it.

The garage is a separate shared structure and is only wired for lighting and the electric garage door. The only way they could put in EV chargers would be to trench though 30 feet of asphalt from the electrical vault (assuming that vault has sufficient capacity), then wire up the garage. I'm not sure how metering would work in that case, I assume that'd have to put in meter boxes for each resident.

Several people have tried, but couldn't get interest from more than a handful of residents, and the cost to do the initial work is too much for one person to bear.

<comment><USER19> I had to trench about thirty feet to install a charger in my back alley. It was expensive (about $1500) but I looked at it as a long-term investment that would pay off over a decade. If I could have shared that cost with, say, 10 neighbors it would have been pretty modest. My state also has a reimbursement program that will cover a portion of the installation costs. These capital costs are problematic but not really devastating. Even if nobody wants to use taxpayer funds, cities/utilities could propose investment programs with payback done via a small extra fee charged to electric usage over a few years.

<comment><USER18> The estimate was about 10X more than that -- I'm not sure what made it so expensive, maybe because the wiring had to be sized to handle all 30 units, the HOA wouldn't let it be built to handle just the few people that wanted an EV charger today. And there was some sort of upgrade that had to be made to the underground electrical vault.

<comment><USER19> A $15,000 loan, at 5% interest, works out to about $159/month over a decade. Divide that by ten neighbors, it's about $16/month per user to charge -- excluding the cost of energy. This isn't _nothing_ , but it's a reasonable enough price if you have 10 people in the facility who are interested. Obviously the theory and practice are very different things, but as barriers go this one seems surmountable. Particularly given the fact that electric car charging is eventually going to be more and more popular/valuable to purchasers or renters. In short, this is a very tiny fraction of the price of a new roof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I used to run an extension cord out of my 2nd floor window, but I wasn't parking on the street. My space was off the driveway, behind a fence and a gate, but only about 12 feet from the curb.

More recently, I had been parking an electric car in my apartment's lot, and running an extension cord from the exercise room, out to the car. Then the apartment decided to close off those outlets.

In both cases, the car's battery was only 24Kwh. With 110 volts, it took about 18 hours to fully charge. With a battery the size of a Tesla, that charging rate is going to take all week.

<comment><USER21> There's a guy with a Tesla around the corner from me, who does this (cable out the 2nd floor window), and he does park on the street. Not sure what he does if he can't get a space close enough. (A neighborhood of row houses with little off-street parking)

I think the car makers have to accelerate integrating solar charging into their cars. You probably wouldn't get 100% of your charge that way, but you could get enough to substantially reduce dependence on the grid.

<comment><USER22> > I think the car makers have to accelerate integrating solar charging into > their cars.

Nah. Solar on cars is a dead-end -- even with perfectly efficient solar panels, a clear sky, and the sun at the zenith, the most power you can possibly get is 1.3 kW/m² (cf. [1]). I don't know exactly how large of a solar panel you could put on a car, but even with a _huge_ 5 m² panel, you'd still be looking at over 12 hours (i.e, multiple days of charging) to charge a Tesla's 85 kWh battery. With realistic panel efficiency and sun conditions, it'd take even longer.

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

<comment><USER23> > over 12 hours (i.e, multiple days of charging) to charge a Tesla's 85 kWh > battery.

The tone is somewhat pessimistic.

Full charge every two-to-three days for a range of ... what is it? 265 miles? Effectively untethered car if you only need 50 miles daily.

<comment><USER22> Again, keep in mind my numbers are assuming a large, perfectly efficient solar panel under ideal conditions. Realistic numbers will be much worse. For example, most commercially available solar panels are 20-25% efficient.

<comment><USER23> 1.3kW/m^2 * 20% efficiency = 260w/m^2

260w/m^2 * 5m^2 = 1.3kW

1.3kW * 4 hours daily sun = 5.2kW/day

265 miles range / 85kW full charge capacity = 3.1 miles/kW

5.2kW/day * 3.1 miles/kW = 16.12 miles / day

Still sounds too good, what did I miss?

<comment><USER24> 16.12 miles a day is not going to cut it. In your previous comment you suggested 50 miles a day. In various studies, Americans drive >30 miles a day.

16 miles would hardly even cover most American's one-way commute, let alone any other errands or trips.

<comment><USER23> >you suggested 50 miles a day

/s/suggested/calculated using data provided by parent comment/

<comment><USER24> Nobody in the entire comment chain brought up distance except for you, which you kicked off by suggesting 50 miles daily usage.

Regardless, even your drastically lower 16 miles a day isn't going to satisfy the needs of the average driver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I always thought this was a big problem for EVs, but recently came to think nightly charging might not matter so much for these drivers. If an urban apartment dweller has an EV with 200+ miles of range, can't a public fast charger be used once or twice a week instead? I lived in an apartment with a ~200 mile range ICE car and filled it less than once a week.

<comment><USER26> Filling your car at the gas station is a five minute stop on the way home. Filing your electric car is at least an hour if you have a DC fast charger and that gets you only 80% full. To get totally full, it would take a multi-hour stop.

<comment><USER27> Sure. If your commute is 15% of your range, you'd be able to charge once a week. I'm pretty sure most people could work out a multi-hour stopover near a charging station into their week. Put them near a restaurant, arts, or shopping district and bingo problem solved.

<comment><USER28> Near where I live, there's actually one in the parking lot of the almost derelict shopping mall. But that's also right next door to a particularly busy grocery store. There are usually vehicles in it and this is in an area (Mass) that doesn't have a lot of Teslas generally and certainly not in the somewhat rundown small city this store is on the outskirts of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Fully Charged recently ran an interesting panel discussion that they put online yesterday with a few vehicle to grid experts: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkh33KjF3Gc&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkh33KjF3Gc&t=0s)

One interesting thing with vehicle to grid is that EV battery capacity is becoming a valuable commodity. It's valuable to EV owners because they can sell back electricity to the grid and manage when they charge using either solar or simply low rate night time energy from the grid. This saves them cost and some cases makes a profit. It's valuable to grid owners because they can serve peak demand from plugged in EVs and dump access clean energy back into them so they can stay on top of peaks in demand and supply. It's even attractive to battery leasing companies or EV car companies responsible for managing the batteries because keeping them fully charged all the time when they are not in use is actually not that great for battery life. Some car manufacturers are already experimenting with battery warranty and vehicle to grid usage in order to take away the concerns about wearing out the battery.

So, vehicle to grid may be used to address exactly this issue. It's a complicated topic of course but providing charging points to garage orphans could be a profitable business. There are all sorts of interesting things happening around this.

<comment><USER30> Assuming everyone's selling it back I'd imagine there have to be easily swappable batteries then to deal with the increased wear. At least so it's not a big operation for the dealer. I wonder how much more difficult this would make car designs...

<comment><USER29> They covered this in the panel discussion. In short, some car manufacturers seem willing to allow this under their normal battery warranty (i.e. they expect this to be not much of an issue) to minimize risk for the user and take away concerns around this. Some manufacturers are already building inverters into the cars to facilitate vehicle to grid (and vehicle to vehicle even). Most manufacturers (e.g. VW, Renault) expect this to be common in a few years and are looking to standardize how this works.

Swapping batteries is of course covered by existing warranties and obviously this is already technically doable as part of normal car service. So, no special new design is needed for this. I imagine this typically involves unplugging a bunch of cables, loosening a few bolts, etc. Doesn't sound like rocket science. In any case, your base assumption that this becomes a regular thing for EV owners is probably simply wrong. It's rare now and it will probably not become a lot more common. EV batteries are pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Several states have laws that require apartment building and condo managers to allow tenants/owners to install EV chargers (at their own cost). I expect this trend to continue slowly across the US.

If you can't charge at home, public charging is going to continue to expand rapidly (as electricity is everywhere). It'll just take some time, and effort on the part of local citizens and policy makers.

If you own an EV, get involved! Advocate for home, workplace, and public charging stations where you frequent.

<comment><USER20> _Several states have laws that require apartment building and condo managers to allow tenants /owners to install EV chargers (at their own cost)._

Which states?

<comment><USER32> California for Condo/Townhome owners. However, in my experience, it didn't help. I had a condo with a shared garage, and the HOA said I had to pay for not just a line from the electrical room to my parking spot, but also the equipment/piping to scale it to any of the other parking spots. What would have been a $2000 installation turned into much more. My point being, even though there are laws that allow you to do this, there are ways they can make it out of reach if they want to.

<comment><USER33> Sounds like your HOA needs a visit from your lawyer. Making pay for all costs for your needs is one thing, demanding you pay for costs for everyone else is another.

Bet if you did pay for it all, the HOA would not credit you for any other BEV owner you attracted and tapped into the power lines.

Sounds like they want the benefits but none of the costs.

<comment><USER32> Yea, exactly. The bill leaves this part of it in a grey area. What are "reasonable" costs that an HOA can impose? Getting a lawyer involved would have been very costly. I eventually sold the stupid place and moved on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I saw an interesting pitch from _Sparkcharge_ [1] at an incubator event, which is deliverable super charger batteries.

If it scales, it would essentially allow people to order charging on the fly, get it delivered/hooked up by an Uber driver, and then just leave it for pickup in the lot they parked in. This is obviously only an urban or suburban solution, but could help with some of the issues.

[1] [https://sparkcharge.io/](https://sparkcharge.io/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Besides garage orphans, also those with self standing homes and a garage will have (or become) a problem.

Say that in you street that are 50 single family homes connected to a same cabin/transformer.

The electric infrastructure powering them (lines, transformer, etc.) has been dimensioned to power them at their average current power consumption rate + something to take care of peaks + something more to take care of exceptions (like - say - a constructions site for the renovation of one of the homes).

Now the existing infrastructure will have no issue with your single electric car charging at night, and probably with that of your neighboor on the left and that of your neighbour on the right, but the moment a given number of families will have an electic car, each of them will try to use 5 kW of additional power more or less at the same time.

That is a lot of "juice" and it sums up quickly.

I believe (correct me if you have better data) that in the US the infrastructure is generally dimensioned[1] for something like 6 or 8 kW per unit, so, adding to each house some "constant" 5 kW for the charging (even if only at night) is almost using all the capability of the infrastructure and possible peaks might create issues.

[1] when estimating the need of a line the usual formula is roughly between

1/3 max power x 1.20

and

1/2 max power x 1.10

so assuming the peak is 15 kW, that would be between 15/3 kW x 1.20 = 6 kW and 15/2 kW x 1.10= 8.25 kW

</comment><comment><USER36> The "businesses renting out their lots after hours" is an interesting model, though in high-density areas it's not clear that this would be enough, and might not be well co-located with residential demand.

City-owned public infrastructure (i.e. lamppost charging) makes a lot of sense too, but infrastructure changes are slow and expensive, and will certainly lag far behind demand. It might be a way for municipalities to earn revenue, though.

One could also imagine how much self-driving might help this: The car could pilot itself to a nearby charging station/lot without any inconvenience to the owner. But we are not there yet with capability, so this remains a near-term problem.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why does everyone need a place to charge at home? Sure, it is one of the big advantages of an EV, but not everyone can take advantage of it. If the car has a 300-400 mile range, then charge it like you fuel up a gas-powered car. Takes a little bit longer, but that will improve over time.

<comment><USER38> A little longer? What am I going to do at a gas station for an hour? I am already bored when I am there for 3 minutes with an ICE car...

<comment><USER39> Exactly. I simply don't get this. All of that effort when it's (for lack of a better way to put it) 'not ready for prime time'. Other comments include running an electric extension cord out the window and other hacks. A cord out the window be serious.

Imagine for a second of what compensating good could be done for the world if people put the same time, thought or effort into something else with more immediate (and urgent payback).

<comment><USER40> It's not any extra effort to plug your car in at the grocery store while you're shopping. In fact, it's often _less_ effort because the electric charging spots are often closer to the doors.

Then you don't have to make an extra stop or trip just for gas. It sounds _way_ better than the current situation with gas.

<comment><USER39> Extra effort? You have the anxiety of wondering if the spot will be open or not. Also as the method becomes more popular it would make sense that the spots will not be increased immediately and therefore will not be open. And of course the grocery store is only one place you go and how many people go there regularly enough to use it for charging and how many spots do they have or will have?

> It sounds way better than the current situation with gas.

Seriously? Where do you live and where would you get gas? This is a non issue for most people.

<comment><USER40> My experience today is that there are almost always open EV charging spots at places that have them. No anxiety needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Currently living this lifestyle. Luckily there's a set of level 2 chargers in a nearby parking garage that don't see heavy use, so I just charge there.

But I still have to pay a premium, and walk half a mile there and back, so it's not exactly as hassle free as just plugging in when I get home. Also need to plan ahead significantly if I'm driving anywhere far.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd seen the idea of using street-furniture, such as lamp-posts - but can't help seeing visions of coils of cable looping all over the pavement/sidewalk (in the UK at least, lamp posts tend not to be on the road side of the pavement). Plus, if this isn't new-build, whatever's powering those lamps isn't going to charge your car. Well.. it might charge one or two, but once you've got 20 cars, all wanting to be charged overnight..

If you're going to have to lay new lines, then cheapest approach is surely to just put cable in the gutter, and then protect it with something similar to those rubber speed-bumps you can bolt into the ground. Downside is the low profile prevents great big connectors/supply units - but would be fine for the equivalent of the domestic-plug....

...I'm meandering now, but wonder if you could retro-fit drain covers to contain chargers...

<comment><USER43> In Stuttgart, Germany, Daimler piloted a rent-by-the-minute electric car program (which is proliferating with normal petrol cars elsewhere, called Car2Go). The Smart ForTwos that they use are all electric, and the cable is bolted into the trunk of the car, so it takes its cable with it. The charging unit and car's "fuel port" are both receptive sides of the connection, and both the car and the charging station (the city installed them so anyone with the right cables can use them) has a lock that keeps the cable from getting removed when it's in use.

Works pretty well and this sort of model would likely work fine, with you keeping your cable yourself.

<comment><USER44> Car2Go used to operate in my US city, but they pulled out a couple years ago under the guise of "an onerous new tax burden" (despite no new taxes being passed). I think the real issue was they were just plain expensive -- barely cheaper than an Uber, and way less comfortable.

Other rent-by-time companies like ZipCar are similarly expensive. I'm not convinced that business model works, at least the ways I've seen it implemented.

<comment><USER43> Car2Go works here that you don't have to leave or pick them up from designated spots -- they have an agreement with each city to allow general parking, even in neighborhood zones.

Not sure if it was the same in your city, I'm used to ZipCars having special spots which is a little less convenient.

It's a good alternative to public transport when you need to cross a city and transfers would be annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It is certainly holding me back at the moment. I have allocated off-street parking under my apartment that is actually owned by us as part of the lease, but I doubt the building management will let me install a charger, and I don't think the law in the UK means I can force them to let me.

In London there are a few public chargers dotted around, but they are fairly infrequent. I don't have any data but it feels like there are perhaps 2 public on-street chargers for perhaps every 10 to 20 residential streets.

The nearest one to me is about a 15-20 minute walk away, and if I get there and it is full or broken, then what? Try the next charger that is 30-40 minutes walk away?! The contention ratio of homes to chargers is insane - <USER2> must be in the 500-1000:1 level (guessing)

There are however lampposts _everywhere_. There is some talk of adding charging points to lampposts but I think there are only very small-scale trials at the moment. If I could rely on every lamppost also being a charger then I'd buy an EV literally today.

Sadly, right now it feels like PHEVs are a more sensible option until public infrastructure catches up.

<comment><USER46> Lampposts is exactly how I charge whilst not having off-street parking, in central London. The council converted all the street lights to LEDs, meaning there is excess electricity delivered. So they put plugs on the posts. Works brilliantly. [https://imgur.com/a/I5AtwJk](https://imgur.com/a/I5AtwJk) [https://www.ubitricity.com/](https://www.ubitricity.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fully Charged did an episode on this:

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls)

However, in many cities the posts are not in the sidewalk, but on people's properties, so as to allow clearer pedestrian paths. This is generally true in Toronto (where the story is written), especially on residential side-streets.

<comment><USER47> "clearer pedestrian paths" seems like a really bad trade-off for putting public infrastructure on private property (and all the right of way / access issues involved). I wonder if, since the wiring is clearly there, something on-sidewalk could be added (something parking meter-ish).

<comment><AUTHOR> This has probably already been taken care of when the land went from public to private ownership I'm sure there various clauses and agreements in place via various by-laws and such.

A pretty typical street in the older parts of my city (use Street View):

* [https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Westminster+Ave,+Toront...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Westminster+Ave,+Toronto,+ON/)

Putting poles in the sidewalk would be a non-starter and anyone suggesting it would be laughed out of the room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> A few years ago I lived in a fairly northern Canadian city. Most people had block heaters installed in their cars and plugged them in when the car would be sitting in the cold for more than a few hours. Otherwise, the car would be too cold to start. Most companies and apartment buildings had outlets installed in their parking lots, and at home people just ran extension cords.

<comment><USER49> You don't even have to go particularly north to see plug in block heaters. Pretty sure I've seen them as far "south" as Toronto. Guess they're all ready for the EV generation.

<comment><USER50> You can still find them even in the suburbs of Minneapolis, though I haven't personally seen anyone use them in years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> There need to be more chargers at places where people park their cars when they are not at home. That is parking lots at the work place and parking lots of malls and supermarkets. Parking at work would need little more than a standard plug, assuming you are 8+ hours at work. At malls and supermarkets, you would have medium-fast chargers, as you are parking for 1-2 hours. And with the lastest gen fast-chargers, a recharge can be done in as little as 20-30 minutes, so having a good coffee store with WIFI along with the charging stations (no bad smells at charging stations) should mostly solve the problem for an occasional charge and wait.

</comment><comment><USER52> Not exactly pertinent to "garage orphans," but i was struck by the picture featured in the article and the design choice of how electric chargers look.

They seem to be an exact replica of a traditional gas nozzle. Striking to me how initial conditions matter for human perception and adoption. While EV is an entirely new technology and thus could be built from a cleanslate, the easiest way to drive adoption was to shape it as close to the existing solution as possible - which was specifically designed to transmit a liquid. Clearly it works - but an important design lesson for me!

<comment><USER53> Electricity and gasoline both travel through tubes, and both are dangerous if they breach insulation.

Handles are convenient for people with hands.

<comment><USER54> Quite a lot of senior citizens go for EV cars - they are not as fit and strong as your average HN reader (who seem to be the only other demographic buying EV).

So there needs to be consideration for them. Apparently it is really quite hard work plugging in if you are in the twilight years with health considerations. The more you need the mobility solution an EV offers the more likely it is that you are going to struggle putting that big charging cable in to your Nissan Leaf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> One guy I used to work with drove a Nissan Leaf, and he ran an extension cord from his car through the office front door and charged at work. I'm not sure if he was a garage orphan or just cheap.

</comment><comment><USER56> To me, this seems like a transient problem. As battery technology improves, we may be able to move back towards a "gas station" model for charging. BMW/Porsche already has a charging solution that can do 100 km in 8 minutes [1].

[1] [https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/282364-bmw-porsche- demo-...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/282364-bmw-porsche-demo-super- fast-electric-car-charger)

<comment><USER43> If there was no switching time, that'd be 7.5 cars / hour for a potentially every-other- or every-third-day quick charge, and the high voltage required does reduce battery life (I think).

I'd be curious to know how long gas stations plan on someone staying at a stall for a full fuel up, to know what sort of capacity in an area would need to be replaced or added.

Part of the benefit of EVs is that fueling points don't require all of the fluids storage and safety; putting in transformers can be easier and allow fitting charging points to many more places a car gets parked. But it'll still be an interesting issue if an optimum charge takes 20-45 minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Besides garage orphans, also those with self standing homes and a garage will have (or become) a problem.

Say that in you street that are 50 single family homes connected to a same cabin/transformer.

The electric infrastructure powering them (lines, transformer, etc.) has been dimensioned to power them at their average current power consumption rate + something to take care of peaks + something more to take care of eceptions (like - say - a constructions site for the renovation of one of the homes).

Now the existing infrastructure will have no issue with your single electric car charging at night, and probably with that of your neighboor on the left and that of your neighbour on the right, but the moment a given number of families will have an electic car, each of them will try to use 5 kW of additional power more or less at the same time.

That is a lot of "juice" and it sums up quickly.

I believe (correct me if you have better data) that in the US the infrastructure is generally dimensioned for something like 6 or 7 kW per unit, so, adding to each house some "constant" 5 kW (even if only at night) is almost using all the capability of the infrastructure.

<comment><USER57> My Model 3 charges at ~240v/48a, which is around 11kW.

At peak times in our house, say, heat on, lights on, TV on, cooking, doing laundry, we pull perhaps 3kW. Our house is pretty efficient; gas appliances, LED lights, no air conditioning, etc.

The car charges after 9pm, but that's just because our rate drops then. If midnight was even cheaper, it would charge then. We don't charge every day, but if we did, it would take perhaps 1 hour. And this is for a car we drive 18,000 miles on in its first year.

3-4x the demand of a 'normal' household is not nothing, but it's not insane, either. Considering EVs don't need to charge every day, or every hour of every night, it's not that tricky to see the aggregate load as fairly similar to peak afternoon/evening hours in your average suburb as people return home from work.

To be sure, if everyone started charging their EVs at 6pm, we might have a problem. Likewise, if everyone had an EV and they all clicked on at midnight, we might have a problem. But the load on the grid is not that huge from an instantaneous perspective, and can be managed by variable pricing and/or some kind of grid scheduling tech.

<comment><USER58> I imagine a world where the electricity grid is intelligent enough to have a "conversation" with appliances to efficiently spread load across the day, more accurately plan capacity, and do it at a lower cost to consumers and the environment.

<comment> pi-rat That's happening here, my power company has a GraphQL API[1] where I can read my current consumption (5 second resolution), they also offer up the current price, including an indicator of the price level compared to how they see the rest of the day (CHEAP, NORMAL, EXPENSIVE).

All houses/apartments in Norway got new smart power meters the last couple of years. They standardized on a data interface (a bus you can connect to using a RJ45 plug), so you can access your own data if you don't want to go via your power companies API.

There are EV chargers[2] and other appliances (Heat pumps/ACs) that can react to this price indicator, charging your car when power is cheapest.

It will also load balance based on how much the rest of your house is using, they're moving towards an "wattage" fee here, to avoid massive loads at peak hours. If you get near the limit, the car charger can slow down.

Here's some images of what their app gives me[3].

It's easy to pull their data into home automation systems, here's mine[4].

You can do pretty smart stuff like: Charge my car when it's cheap, but it must be ready by 07:00.

[1]: [https://developer.tibber.com/docs/guides/calling- api](https://developer.tibber.com/docs/guides/calling-api)

[2]: [https://norge.tibber.com/products/easee/](https://norge.tibber.com/products/easee/)

[3]: [https://imgur.com/a/RYYqcjY](https://imgur.com/a/RYYqcjY)

[4]: [https://imgur.com/a/8ef0jck](https://imgur.com/a/8ef0jck)

<comment><USER57> Very cool! I seem to recall first reading about such plans as early as the 90s. It almost certainly wouldn't be allowed most places in the US because regulatory schemes always need approval to change, and it would be considered suspicious and an attempt to hide 'true' costs from the consumer (eg, the power provider can just change the rate _any time they want_ , it will hurt poor people who can't afford these smart appliances, etc etc. Too bad.

<comment> pi-rat In our case the power provider, the to the house line owner and the producer are all separate. My provides buys from the cheapest renewable offered up on NordPool. My fee to the provider is fixed (39 NOK per month). They don't get a cut of the cost per kwh to the producer. If one producer raise their price, they'll just be outbid. If they all raise their prices too much their reservoars will overflow. I pay the market price to the producer from the spot market + some percentage tax/fees to the government + line owner, and a flat fee to the provider.

Makes it hard to get scammed by the power companies/providers I think.

You'll get the current power source from their API or App. ATM I'm getting 100% hydro from "Kvitingen Kraftverk"[1], but that will probably change during the day.

[1]: [https://imgur.com/a/2uRhsZ2](https://imgur.com/a/2uRhsZ2) or [https://imgur.com/a/oXeccnR](https://imgur.com/a/oXeccnR) (ocr translated)

<comment><USER58> Wow. The grid in the US sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Sadly, if you started putting outlets on the side of street poles in the Bay Area you would attract camper vans rather than EVs. (cue the story of the guy who drove to LA using RV parks to recharge)

Its an interesting question though, EV parking lots would seem to make a lot of sense. And certainly it would seem that HOAs for apartments and condos could benefit from them if they charged a bit for the power.

<comment><USER60> My friend toured the USA in his 2012 Model S before the SuperCharger network existed by only charging at RV parks. The truth is that gas is harder to find in some places than electricity. You just have to take a few minutes to think about the grid and where power is at and the entire debate about feasibility of EVs is flipped on its head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> My question would be - does frequent short charging sessions cause issues for the battery packs? Versus longer full charging sessions?

I know that lithium cells with their different chemistry are more forgiving of charging and discharging (vs NiMH, NiCd, or Lead Acid). I wonder though if that doesn't cause other effects, such as perhaps longevity issues that might cause overheating or something?

<comment><USER62> Deep discharges and sitting at low state of charge for a long time are the main things that shorten battery life.

Also harmful is charging to the absolute maximum state of charge. I believe most vehicles have a setting to terminate the charge at a level that maximizes battery life and another setting that maximizes range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> It seems like an opportunity to building an electrified parking garage where people can buy a powered spot. Could also sell powered street spots to municipalities in a rev share agreement. Many office buildings and apartment complexes are ramping up charging facilities with the number of EVs.

<comment><USER64> Lots of shared building garages as well as public parking lots/garages have dedicated spots for EVs with chargers built-in nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> My office has installed a couple of free level 2 chargers and I haven't needed to charge at home or elsewhere since. Charging for a few hours a couple of times a week is enough for my Bolt and my 10 mile commute as well as driving around the metro area on the weekends.

</comment><comment><USER66> I like the streetlight idea for getting more chargers out there. It'd also be great if every parking meter had at least a trickle-charger.

Hopefully solar efficiencies will continue to improve to the point where trickle charging via solar is actually viable.

</comment><comment><USER67> I've been meaning to suggest to the franchise owner with a bunch of Wendy's around here that putting EV charging stations in some of his excess parking. Get some folks who might consider coming for lunch to come, pay to park for half an hour, then leave without monopolizing spaces for a long time because they have to get back to work. Also become a hub for food delivery drivers.

Beyond that, there are a few charging stations at local malls, one at a Meijer (regional chain, think Target with a large grocery store), probably a bunch of others that I've just not noticed. Common element is that they're at places where people can shop.

</comment><comment><USER68> The Target in my neighborhood has like 10-20 charging stations. Its packed to the brim with Teslas with even a waiting line at times. I'm not sure if they are people trying to save money or apartment dwellers.

</comment><comment><USER69> Honestly I think the low hanging fruit would be to put 115V outlets in at apartment complexes that have designating parking spaces. Just normal 115V, which is usually already wired at or near the spot.

</comment><comment><USER70> Where will garage orphans add gasoline to their cars if they must park on the street?

If only there was a way to add energy to a vehicle outside of the home. Cars park all over the place. Distributed charging infrastructure doesn't sound too impossible -- parking meters probably already need electricity. Park and rides or business parking lots incentivize people to shop or commute in certain ways for a relatively modest investment.

<comment><USER71> It's not really comparable. Garage charging makes EVs more convenient than ICE cars, but they're much less convenient if you can't charge at home. ICE cars can stop at a gas station on empty and be back on the road completely full in two minutes. Even with a fast charger, it takes upwards of half an hour to charge an EV. Level 2 charging takes hours.

<comment><USER70> Maybe the PNW is different, but there are chargers everywhere here. Charge during work, while you shop, etc.

Charging will be an incentive or even an expectation. Imagine if your employer said, "We'll fill your tank with gas while you work", people would love that perk. Having free or subsidized charging at work seems like an inevitability to me.

<comment><USER71> The year of Linux on the desktop seemed like an inevitability for a lot of people. It never happened. I'd love for the future you envision to come true, but I don't see any reason to think it will, given how little movement there is in that direction even in a super EV-friendly region like Southern California.

To be clear, there are chargers at my work...but only two, and they're for- profit, so the converted cost per mile of range is more than it costs to put gas in my Prius. It was the same at my last workplace.

<comment><USER72> In NorCal I got charger in following places: 1) apartment complex (one set of public + separate apartment dweller chargers) 2) at work 3) at supermarket I do shopping most often 4) on public parking in various places

"The future is already here — It's just not very evenly distributed"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I'm one of those and have never had any issues with charging. I park in a public garage with 6 charging spots near the entrance and once every 1-2 weeks when I get home I park at the chargers, plug in the car (at 11KW Type2) and move it to a normal parking spot when it's full (typically 4-5 hours later). So the time I "waste" every 1-2 weeks is pretty much the extra walk to the garage and back.

</comment><comment><USER74> There was a guy several years ago trying to get his car charged. The city will have tons of work in the future to allow this [1].

[1] [https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/09/01/toronto- electric...](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/09/01/toronto-electric-car- owner-stuck-trying-to-charge-car-on-the-street.html)

</comment><comment><USER75> How about running one of those gas-powered generators next to the car?

Put a sign next to it saying, "my government doesn't invest in green energy".

<comment><USER76> Something like this image, but with your slogan/sign on it?

[https://imgur.com/UgEs6va](https://imgur.com/UgEs6va)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> There was a Model 3 owner at the last apartment I lived in. The buildings had garages for some apartments, and he had one. But the management wouldn't let him hire an electrician to wire up a 240V charger. So he left the interior garage door open and ran a cable to the clothes dryer outlet instead.

</comment><comment><USER78> The chargers are cheap and getting much faster and will be deployed everywhere you can run an electric line: [https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1152625267589840896](https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1152625267589840896)

<comment><USER71> This is kind of the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" of EVs. I'll believe it when I see it. I live in a community with an incredibly high number of EVs, but I can't get one because I am not a homeowner and there's no charging anywhere besides people's garages.

The above thread suggests there's going to be free, ubiquitous inductive charging in a few years. Just look how far we are from that. Even in putatively EV-friendly areas, it's still really hard for someone without a garage to consider an EV today. California can't even find the political will to fund its EV rebate for the whole year. How likely is it that there will just be magic free electricity everywhere in 10 years?

<comment><USER13> Ten years ago viable electric cars did not exist. At all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> In California the bankrupt PG&E power company will be turning off power during fire season high risk periods to limit their exposure. Escape from fire in an EV won't be possible unless you keep a fully charged vehicle on standby regardless of the charging location.

<comment><USER80> Can you drive a tesla while it's being charged? A small trailer with a generator on the back could work as an emergency.

<comment><USER79> yes with some caveats [https://generatorgrid.com/blog/tesla/](https://generatorgrid.com/blog/tesla/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> >"Most neighbourhoods have somewhere – a local community centre, library, school or a church – with parking that's empty at night, and these folks could use the revenue,"

Yeah that is what we need traffic / coordinating who parks at these gathering spots.....but just to change.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron This thread seems to be an argument between inner-city people who don't see a need for a car, and people who don't live in a city who can't understand why people in cities don't give a toss about anyone else.

<comment><USER82> Surely this is a problem specific to cities? Must be unusual for people in suburban or rural areas not to have access to their own parking.

<comment> King-Aaron The article at hand - agreed - is a city-centric topic in itself. What I'm getting at is the borderline aggression within the thread here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I know at my current company they decided to put in a Tesla charger station out back. Not too many in the company have one but any regularly visited location with a supercharger could substitute.

</comment><comment><USER84> I have this problem with my electric moped - I often need to find a charger for it.

Its going to be an app that connects users with each other to help provide charging facilities.

Or else, gas stations will pivot.

</comment><comment><USER60> RV plugs curbside. We could make this standard if we cared to.

</comment><comment><USER85> Seems the US is at a severe disadvantage here with 110V.

Also, surely people can charge at work? 8 hours at work should cover a fair bit of the population

<comment><USER86> The US has both 240v single phase and 208v three phase across the entire country. Any house with an electric range would have 240v service and can likely handle a L2 charger.

</comment></comment><comment> pi-rat This problem requires multiple solutions, here's some that I think work great in Norway:

\- "Lamppost" charging, Oslo (and other cities) put up a ton of charging poles in the streets, you use an RFID card to start charging. They've recently been free, but now cost $1 per hour ($0.5 at night). They look like this[1a] or this[1b]. Oslo will have about 2200 of these at the end of the year.

\- Parking house charging. My regular parking house got it's own zone for electrics. Your license plate is read when you enter the parking house, then read again if you enter the charging zone. Automatically billed when you leave. This is my main charging atm, I've a garage, but not had extra power installed yet. My car has about 500 km range. Leaving it a work day in a parking house once per ~14 day is enough for my (limited) use. Some of the parking houses in Norway are built with battery banks to handle the load of 100+ chargers. Here's a video tour of one of them[2] (I don't live in Oslo though, but it's similar). I think I end up paying $12-ish for parking+charging for the one I use for 8+ hours.

\- Shopping centers / convenience store charging. Many stores here got free AC charging now. And some of the larger centers / stores have established fast chargers (DC) on their parking lot (costs money to use). I can charge 250 km range while doing 30 minutes of shopping for around $10.

\- Charging at work. Many work places here in Norway offer free charging as a perk.

\- Friendly neighbours. In my street there's a dude who's put up a sign: "You're free to use my charger if I'm not here, send me $1 per hour using vipps (local app for mobile payment) to XXXXXX if you feel like it"

\- And if all else fails, have plenty of paid fast chargers around in central locations, sucks to wait around for 30-60+ minutes, but it's a nice backup.

There's tons of charging spots in Norway, but the number of cars is outpacing the number of chargers, we'll probably see more congestion and queues in the coming years.

While I've never hit a full parking house yet, it will happen sooner or later, so it really helps to have a long range EV, that way you can go "Meh, I'll charge tomorrow instead.."

[1a]: [https://email@example.com,10.7231223,3a,59.2y,...](https://email@example.com,10.7231223,3a,59.2y,115.83h,72.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sbTZWYkPZ1VrxuPhXRaeUlA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

[1b]: [https://www.salto.no/media/images/referanser/_big4by3/søyle-...](https://www.salto.no/media/images/referanser/_big4by3/søyle- dyp-2.jpg)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNKWLwjQJM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNKWLwjQJM)

</comment><comment><USER87> I thought it was illegal to own a car without having a parking spot. I don't know really, can someone clarify?

<comment><USER9> It is not illegal to own a car without a parking spot. Where did you even hear that?

<comment><USER11> In Japan you have to prove you have a parking space before you buy a car:

[https://www.reinventingparking.org/2014/06/japans-proof- of-p...](https://www.reinventingparking.org/2014/06/japans-proof-of-parking- rule-has.html)

[https://jalopnik.com/why-the-japanese-will-never-buy-lots- of...](https://jalopnik.com/why-the-japanese-will-never-buy-lots-of-american- cars-1791698361)

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/06/04/how- tos/pa...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/06/04/how-tos/parking- car-can-drive-crazy/)

Kei cars (tiny city cars) don't require proof of parking so they are a popular segment of the Japanese car market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> I thought people like that would use the Tesla self-driving robotaxis. They won't need their own car.

</comment><comment><USER89> Why is this a problem? Gas-powered cars don't fill up when they're parked. Just solve the problem the same way - let people go to a specific place to charge their car like they do to fill up with gas.

I have a Tesla and live in an apartment and it's really not a big problem. The Superchargers are pretty convenient. And once Tesla rolls out L3 chargers more widely it will be even easier.

<comment><USER90> The problem is filling a gas powered car takes minutes so you can easily fit it into your day - charging a Tesla is probably closer to 30 for a decent range top up.

The former can be done on the way to work, as can the latter, but the latter requires a bigger shift in behaviour to achieve.

Yes, it's not the end of the world, but to pretend there's zero problem ignores reality somewhat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> Yeah, I can see guys with Teslas and extension cords on electric reels that plug into your external outlet and charge, then burn off they see your lights go on...

</comment><comment><USER92> Once cars get smart enough to actually drive on their own, your car can sneak off to the nearest charging station while you are at work or sleeping at home.

<comment><USER38> So what do we do for the 50 years between now and then?

<comment> xkcd-sucks Run a gas-powered generator in the back seat?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> We've had an EV for about 6 months now -- no way to charge at home. I will admit to being a special case, in that I have no problems at all charging the car, but the experience has led to some insights.

First, why I'm a special case. I live in Japan. Compared to Canada (and I assume most of the US), the charger situation here is _amazing_. We've done a fair few road trips now and it seems like no matter where we go, there is a fast charger within 2-5 km. At least 25% of the rest stops on the highway have them. A large percentage of "michi no eki" (Road station -- essentially farmers markets) have them -- to the point where the other day we were on a road trip and were very surprised to see a michi no eki that _didn 't_ didn't have one. Family Mart convenience store often has one (something like 1 in 10, I would guess). Aeon (big shopping mall) has one or two (and often 15-20 200V chargers) and every Nissan and Mitsubishi dealership has one.

This is really the future, I think. It costs _millions_ to make a gas station. It costs _thousands_ to put in a fast charger. You can put one _anywhere_ because we already have the electrical infrastructure in place. I know several restaurants that have put them in.

At the moment, there is _way_ more infrastructure than demand, so I very rarely have to wait. If, for some reason I do, then I drive 2km the road and charge there. It's hard to know if this will get better or worse as things scale up, but for the moment it's pretty good.

I'm also in a good situation in that I work from home. When I want to charge the car (a couple of times a week), I drive to the Family Mart, plug in, pick up a few groceries and then work for 30 minutes to an hour. They have a table (with power, even) for people to work at. It's air conditioned. It's so convenient, it's crazy.

However, it's the same thing when we travel. Our car only has a 30 kWh range, so we have to stop relatively frequently. But since there are chargers _all over the place_ , we just stop and walk around. We often end up buying small things, or having a snack. We've seen so many amazing things since we got the EV because we're forced to stop and hang out in the small towns.

I think people are going to cash in on this. You are going to see small towns with parking lots with validated charging. People are going to drive by, stop, pick up a few things and carry on. Already the rest stops in Japan are absolutely geared for this: the have souvenir stores, restaurants and even things like clothing stores.

I think this is going to be a thing because compared to a gas station, it's cheap _and it 's also really nice_. I thought I would dread charging the car. It's actually one of the best parts of my week. I get out and meet people. I slow down a bit. I get some shopping done.

Canada is kind of a difficult problem because it has 25x the land area and 1/4 the population of Japan. It's going to be tough. Also, they don't have any particular reason for someone to invest money in the infrastructure. Nissan and Mitsubishi are doubtlessly scared stiff of the time when Toyota and Honda enter the market. They want to own that charging infrastructure -- so they are going crazy right now. But I think it's actually inevitable, so if you have a fair amount of capital and are looking for a long term investment, I think this is a good one.

</comment><comment><USER94> Xez we cz CT f az

</comment><comment><USER95> I think this points out the elephant in the room: why are so many people in supposedly high income cities not able to buy properties? This is an issue that needs to be solved hand in hand with pollution: less travel, less need for a car, and more living outside overcrowded cities means more living space. So how can we move more jobs to suburbs, where people can work at nearby or home locations and can afford more living space? I seriously struggle understanding why at least tech jobs are so centered around crowded cities, when these could really be located in tech clusters or tech cities on the outskirts.

<comment><USER96> This is my hangup too, and it crosses over into the craze around building high density housing in California.

I don't want high density housing. I don't think anyone does. I want a yard for my dogs to play, for my wife to nurture the garden she has always wanted, for fruit trees, a garage where I can work on my car, etc...

We have so much land all around this country and no one is using it.

<comment><USER97> Unless you live in a very small community the downside of this is horrible traffic.

<comment><USER95> That is based on the assumption that jobs MUST be downtown, thus all traffic converging towards that area.

<comment><USER97> Jobs aren't downtown in the Bay area... Traffic is awful and if you change jobs you might need to move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> This story reveals an underlying problem, DC charges are still too slow compared to gas stations. You can fill a gas car en less than 5 minutes, compare to Level 3 charges that still requires an hour. This causes a severe convenience problem for electric cars. if you are running out of gas and still need to use the car, you can quickly solve the problem at a gas station; with electric cars what if you still need the car? (You had a pretty busy day), you are no good for more than 6 hours while the car charges.

Certainly, it will be a good business opportunity for the company who figures out how to take charge time to gas station levels.

In Condominiums, metered charges could be installed in each appartment parking lot. For those who don't have a garage or parking lots, small public charging stations could be used, although the charging time problem would need to be solved.

</comment><comment><USER99> Extension cord.

</comment><comment><USER100> How about this: We stop giving people free (or almost free) parking lots in public space?

</comment><comment><USER101> This is why we need standard, swappable battery packs. You pull into a "filling station" and a robot pulls your used pack and pops in a new one. 5 minutes, in and out.

Sad thing is, this isn't a new idea. People just don't seem to want it.

<comment><USER102> _People just don 't seem to want it._

People right now feel that the advantages of batteries integrated throughout the chassis are greater.

<comment><USER103> Yeah standard swappable batteries are nice but as we can see in the cell phone and laptop world, they're very restrictive on design choices. And since EVs are very sensitive to weight and aerodynamics, coupled with the fact that EV makers are trying to put as many batteries into the car as they can, there's just no way to make a one-size-fits-all battery that works for every car.

You'd either need to trade off battery density (which means EV range concerns are amplified) or trade off weight and aerodynamics (which means EV range concerns are amplified).

No general consumer EV maker is going to _reduce_ the total range on their spec sheet just to make it easier to swap a battery that also fits several other cars that they don't make. It's not a smart marketing decision.

<comment><USER101> > You'd either need to trade off battery density (which means EV range > concerns are amplified)

So, instead of being able to go 300 miles before charging for an hour, I could go 225 but change it out in 5 minutes. I'll take the latter thank you.

<comment><USER103> Yes, that's why I mentioned the spec sheet. It doesn't matter all the additional benefits you might get if customers are looking at just one number: range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> > _Right now, the bulk of public stations in Canada are Level 2 (there are > nearly 3,500 of them), But to get a full charge, you'll have to leave your > car there for hours, and many of the country's chargers are clustered in > major urban centres like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Even if you live > in a city where many chargers exist, there might not be one located > conveniently close to where you live._

That's okay, Trudeau will invest in this area by running a few copper wires along the trans-mountain pipeline expansion.

</comment><comment><USER91> Did you know a huge part of the cost of operating an electric subway is the delays involved in getting a dollars from every person who gets on through a slow down called the fare box. Another is a stooge whose only task is to open/close doors. Another stooge starts and stop the cars. In Toronto these stooges get about $50 US per hour for salary, pension and various benefits. That is $150 an hour. Elevators were like that years ago. They had operators, and in a fully automatic elevator, they would ask you what floor and push that button. Then they fired them. End of the earth is looming said their union. Ho-hum said thje world. We need fully self driving subway cars, with fitted electic doors on the cars and on the track - just like the doors that stop you falling down the shaft on an elevator. That way subway operating costs would fall by 60% or more. WE also need fully tracked packaging. Buy a wrapped chocolate bar and they know who paid for it, and you pay a25 cent wrapper deposit. Toss away the box and they know who tossed it = fee for you. Dispose properly and the candy wrapper deposit is scanned and paid to you. We are going to have to deal with our trash. This applies to all trash, even on the high seas. The UN, after 20 years, needs to declare coal burning plants and act of war against mankind = cruise missile to destroy it. Cars must all be electric in 20 years. Any after that confiscated unless converted to batteries. No excuses. It is as stark as it can be. Do this or the world dies!!!</comment>


How side-mounted LEDs can help fix VR's "tunnel vision" and nausea problems - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/how-side-mounted-leds-can-help-fix-vrs-tunnel-vision-and-nausea-problems/ <comment><USER2> Looks like something that will slowly reduce your ability to see with that many LED's shining that powerfully into your eyes.

<comment><USER3> I don't see why. The LED's on the side are set to the same intensity as the screens to the front.</comment></comment>


Cloudkick (YC W09) now supports multi-factor authentication - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudkick.com/blog/2010/jul/28/multi-factor-authentication-in-cloudkick/

<comment><USER2> Nice job on authentication. A question arises for me, though. I can understand the cost of Yubikey and email authentication falls to the user. But how much do you estimate the SMS will cost you as a fixed cost? Back-of-the-envelope calculation would say that the cost shouldn't be onerous, but I don't know how frequently your userbase logs in anew. Have you arranged a bundle or do you pay per message still? Pardon the questions and feel free to ignore them if I am prying. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found the part about yubikey to be the most interesting. I was not previously aware of it. What a fantastic alternative to the standard RSA LCD display key. The implementation as a keyboard is pure genius.

</comment><comment><USER4> Random thing not mentioned in the blog post: If you use the dvorak layout, you don't need to change to qwerty before hitting the button on your yubikey. It gets automatically parsed and converted.

<comment><USER5> I went to their store, and it appears to be an USB stick (yeah like I have a spare USB port), so I don't get your comment - why _wouldn't_ it work the same way all other programs do?

<comment><USER6> Because it works by emulating an USB keyboard and keystrokes (which is pretty ingenious idea imo).

"The Key generates and sends unique time-variant authentication codes by emulating keystrokes through the standard keyboard interface. "</comment></comment></comment>


Is the Linux Desktop less secure than Windows 10? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/linux_desktop_versus_windows10/attachments/slides/1730/export/events/attachments/linux_desktop_versus_windows10/slides/1730/fosdem_linux_desktop_security.pdf <comment><USER2> It's interesting that the problems are all with things that I actively _dislike_ about the modern Linux desktop. I mean, I guess it's OK that it creates thumbnails of images...but, the tendency to grind away for seconds whenever opening a big folder (Windows does it, too, I guess) is just annoying. I end up using command line most of the time for file management tasks because it's too slow and cumbersome to use the UI.

Also, it seems to be file types that would never be automatically parsed on Windows or Mac. I mean...a Nintendo music file? Why on earth would the desktop environment need to do that? (And, I say this as someone that composes chiptunes and enjoys listening to them, but I don't need my desktop environment to grok them).

And, I guess I like that Linux does things out of the box that Windows and Mac need third party apps for (much less so, today, but still a factor I notice when I reboot into Windows). But, maybe this is overkill?

And, yes, I think it's clear that Microsoft made a significant investment in security a decade or so ago, and it has paid off massively. Windows is remarkably more secure, stable, and reliable than it was a decade ago. I still prefer Linux, but the case for Linux over Windows is nowhere near as compelling and clear cut as it once was.

<comment><USER3> > Windows does it, too, I guess

No, it generates thumbnails outside the main UI thread; sometimes it's a bit slow in so doing, but I've never seen it hang an Explorer window, regardless of file size or quantity. (Windows 7, but it would astonish me to learn that 10 displays a regression here.)

<comment><USER4> It's pretty well known. There are several workarounds.

One is to optimise view for general, not images or video or sound.

Another is to "reset your folders"

[http://superuser.com/questions/1097394/windows-10-download-f...](http://superuser.com/questions/1097394/windows-10-download- folder-slow-to-display-contents)

<comment><USER5> Might another option be to have the default view be "List"? I'm not sure if that's possible, but I've been wanting to do this for years.

<comment><USER3> In everything from XP through 7, you can. Select the view you want to make default, then press Alt to display and activate the menubar. In the Tools menu, choose Folder Options; on the View tab, click Apply to All Folders. Current Explorer windows may need to be closed and reopened to show the change; all newly opened windows from now on will take the view you chose as their default, but also remember any changes you make to a given folder's view.

I generally prefer Details view myself, but know no reason why this shouldn't work for List or any other. Enjoy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I mean, the answer is unequivocally, without the slightest doubt, yes. The Linux Desktop is probably a good 5-10yrs behind Windows 10 in terms of defense-in-depth mitigations as well as exploits in common targets like file parsers etc etc.

[https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Weston-W...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Weston- Windows-10-Mitigation-Improvements.pdf) is a good reference for all the stuff that Desktop Linux in 2017 is for the most part, missing

<comment><USER7> The thing with the Linux Desktop is that you can selectively enable SELinux, use PaX etc. and have security comparable to, if not better, than Windows 10, plus the fact that Linux is a much more varied attack surface still applies.

Or you can do nothing, in which case you're probably less secure.

<comment><USER8> Where's a good place to get a general guide on every day desktop use of SELinux, PaX, etc?

<comment><USER9> Arch wiki is a goldmine: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When this metadata indexing was introduced in gnome/kde many users complained, because it pegged their cpu and was really unasked for. But some felt that this was something the MacOSX had and therefore some developers felt it was a good default. I'm not convinced, partly because of the increased attack surface.

The desktop environment itself is but a small part of the complete desktop. Some important differences between those specific desktops are are: 1) Clicking a file both runs the code and opens the file, and difference is hidden from the user. 2) Mail clients start pretty much any software automatically to open attachments. 3) Office software runs code embedded in documents with just a user prompt. 4) A lot of plugins are active by default. Flash and ActiveX used to be, but this is better now. 5) Code is run automatically on removable media insertion. 6) Users download software from random web pages instead of vetted archives.

These things are not technical but behavioral in nature and make desktops ownable. I hope the Linux desktop never emulates them. Web browsers have gotten so much better but one simple thing they could is stop downloading things automatically. That save dialog won't scare anyone, and users will stop having lots and lots of unknown files in their download directory.

<comment><USER11> Showing dialogs is not a solution. Various studies have already shown users click any dialog which pops up without actually reading the dialog.

Loads of browsers do download automatically. Making things inconvenient and delegating security decisions to the user isn't good enough. Make it convenient and secure!

PS/Edit: Btw, under Windows 10 loads of things are indexed. It makes things very convenient. You use your pc like Google. Instead of knowing exactly where things are you just "Google" for it. With that I mean it has a good working search that's also really quick in giving accurate results.

<comment><USER12> 'locate' is 35 years old. And has been available on linux desktops since 1991. Just saying.

<comment><USER9> Hasn't it been replaced by slocate, mlocate, tlocate or another variant since ?

<comment><USER12> Yes, and there were a few implementations from different groups, as you would expect. I'm typing this on a current Arch and locate, mlocate and slocate are all available from the mlocate package.

<comment><USER13> They are most likely symlinks to mlocate

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Speaker here.

As the slides may not tell the whole story (there should be a video soon), I covered this mostly also for LWN recently:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/708196/](https://lwn.net/Articles/708196/)

<comment><USER15> Video? What happened to good old fashioned text? I can read 10x faster than you can talk...

<comment><USER16> Yeah, screw that guy for offering free quality content in video form, AND the nicely written text piece you just asked for.

<comment><USER15> Where is it? The PDF has some slides, not actual text, and the LWN article is also just a summary.

<comment><USER17> _(there should be a video soon)_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Feeling mighty smug about my preference for tiling window managers and minimal distro choices.

But I shouldn't, they found bugs in software I use daily (ffmpeg for example), it would be relatively trivial to make me execute something with it, since my brain is trained to 'exes as threats' not mp3s.

<comment><USER19> Selinux / apparmor / grsec-rbac can do wonders here. Your MP3s should not execute new code and your system can enforce it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I believe in sandboxing, I hope it gets better and easier to use.

I work on several C programs. I wish for the day when we have an easy to use, cross platform method of setting up a small set of open files at the start of a program, then be able to say "No more file access, no more network connections".

I know this hides a whole bunch of complication, which is why it's hard and why there are so many ways to do it -- I view it the same way as the move to distinct virtual memory spaces for each process. Once we have it we'll wonder why we ever allowed every program free access to the whole file system for it's entire life-span by default.

<comment><USER21>
      > say "No more file access, no more network connections".

Looks like you're advocating OpenBSD's pledge(2). [http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD- current/man2/pledge.2](http://man.openbsd.org/OpenBSD-current/man2/pledge.2)

<comment><USER20> That is one thing I've looked at, and it looks great.

Hopefully someone (and it won't be me :) ) will write a library which looks like pledge but wraps all the various things in different OSses (I hear words like seccomp on linux)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmm. If i look at the slides, the article should be renamed "gstreamer, and some stuff browsers on all platforms do, are insecure"? Is it easier to change your media player on Linux, or to trust Microsoft?

Say, does a default Windows install still enable 20 networked services that don't belong on a home computer and can be exploited without the user downloading anything?

<comment><USER9> This title is pure sensationalism. The written piece says clearly "security vulnerabilities in the GStreamer multimedia framework. A combination of the Chrome browser and GNOME-based desktops creates a particularly scary vulnerability.". Somehow this very specific combination inflated to become Desktop Linux.

My default installation came with VLC, firefox and KDE. No gstreamer nor gnome installed, google products including Chrome are not welcome. Though I'm pretty sure manjaro is part of the Desktop Linux family.

Too bad this misrepresentation is hurting the message OP is trying to carry to the world. Then this message is hardly news, the guys at grsecurity have been at it for 15 years providing hardening security patches to the vanilla kernel.

<comment><USER22> Baloo, KDE's indexing engine is apparently hit by the same vulnerability that hits Tracker (except they didn't fix it, according to the article). Also, are you sure Firefox and none of the KDE applications are using gstreamer for the backend (e.g. for HTML5 videos)?

I dislike this idea that the Linux desktop is all Gnome and systemd, too, but the situation is pretty disastrous. Things that have an X in them, from X11 to (especially...) XDG shouldn't be trusted too much...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Important bit is on the later slides: Issues on most codecs/parsers can be prevented by sandboxing. An exploding parser should never affect other processes, files, etc.

Seccomp (bpf version) is only available since 2012 really, but I hope more apps will start picking it up. It's pretty simple it should become a shameful thing not to use it in new apps.

<comment><USER9> No need to wait, you can sandbox your applications now: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security#Sandboxing_app...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Security#Sandboxing_applications)

<comment><USER19> You can apply the generic sandboxes to the whole process, but that's not the same as a targeted seccomp. For example, you can use one of the external jails to stop your media app from using the network, and that's great. But what if you want to stream content from the internet? Without changing the source, you can't apply the no-network rule only to the decoding part. That's what still needs work from the maintainers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am a big fan of grsec, RBAC and sandboxing stuff. But let's be real here people! Those are good features on servers where there isn't a giant security black-hole called X, where any local exploit of the app can turn it into a compromise of the entire GUI system.

Look at the hoops that adversary resistance focused distros like SubgraphOS have to jump through just to mitigate the giant attack surface that X opens.

Until Wayland becomes the _usable default_ standard, "Linux Desktop Security" is an anachronism.

<comment><USER11> Security should be multi layered. So if one thing fails there's still yet another layer of defence. This because everything will have bugs anyway, so it should be assumed none of the layers will ever be fully secure.

systemd offers various methods to restrict daemons in their abilities. That's hardly used. Only recently tracker started sandboxing their indexers. Why block adding other security laters on Wayland? There's no need to wait, nor do these layers depend on another.

<comment><USER24> The best defense in this regard is not do jack all unless the user asks for it.

<comment><USER11> That's how Flatpak works with its portals, so assume you'll now read what I wrote instead of simple responses?

<comment><USER24> Should have guessed you would claim that monstrosity as the fix for your (Gnome's) other monstrosity.

<comment><USER11> I didn't argue that there's one fix, I mentioned that there should be multiple layers. If you'd read what I write you'd have known this. Further, just being negative and calling names vs maybe making an argument isn't helping your case.

You dislike GNOME.. meh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> About the $10K: don't forget that the french Gendarmerie runs on Ubuntu. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu)

<comment><USER9> Sorry but the french Gendarmerie does _not_ run on Ubuntu. They use a custom made distro called GendBuntu which is based on Ubuntu as Ubuntu is based on Debian.

<comment><USER26> Do you work in/for the Gendarmerie?

I seriously doubt it's like you say. It's probably a lot more like a "custom made distro" that's based on Ubuntu as Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu: all the core stuff exactly the same, and a few things on top different (namely the DE in the case of Mint).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > ASLR: Debian: Work in progress (Stretch / 2017).

From the dpkg-buildflags manpage:

> Additionally, since PIE is implemented via a general register, some > architectures (most notably i386) can see performance losses of up to 15% in > very text-segment-heavy application workloads; most workloads see less than > 1%. Architectures with more general registers (e.g. amd64) do not see as > high a worst-case penalty.

Is this the reason why the adoption of pie is so slow? Does rust enforce hardening techniques?

</comment><comment><USER28> I've read the OpenBSD developers poke fun at Linux by saying the same thing. During the 2000/XP time frame security became a serious threat to Microsoft's market dominance. Since then Windows has kept up with the best security practices and technologies better than most. It's very impressive considering I can still run Windows 2000 binaries on Windows 10.

</comment><comment><USER29> Not really fair to compare every Linux distro vs one version/distro of Windows.

>KDE has baloo

Again, not every Linux user uses KDE. That's like saying Windows 10 is less secure because of Total Commander[1].

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

</comment><comment><USER30> It is important to decouple distributions from Linux itself. Some distributions do not place security as their top-most priority, but rather ease of use.

Then, there is no "one" Linux desktop. You have different X servers, different window managers, different desktop environments...

In Windows there's only one of everything, the configuration is less flexible in terms of what things you can disable, and once something is vulnerable that's it.

e.g: Vulnerability in fonts being rendered on the kernel? What can you do about it exactly? Nothing but to wait for updates... but then the Flame malware installed itself via Windows Update. It's fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER31> If anything, Linux may benefit from relatively varied installation states in security scheme (SELinux, Apparmor, etc.), libraries included, and desktop environment. It is perhaps bit harder to pull off one-size fit-all attacks.

Things like data at rest protection seems to work better on Linux; as far as I know, there aren't out of box solution for Pre-boot authentication for Windows, for instance.

Edit: To the latter point, it looks like BitLocker has the mode to allow that, if you have Professional/Enterprise with TPM...

<comment><USER32> Windows RT was the playground for Windows security ideas. Every Windows RT device connected to a Microsoft account has device encryption backed by the TPM enabled for example...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Ironically, I didn't pay attention to the "[pdf]" part of the title, and as soon as I clicked the link, the PDF file got downloaded.

I have a pretty strict AppArmor profile for Evince (AKA Document Viewer on GNOME-based DEs), so I thought that automatically downloading PDFs and opening them in Evince instead of in the web browser would be safer. I didn't even thought about this kind of attack surface.

<comment><USER34> Apparently, the code for parsing PDFs has grown larger than the linux kernel. That's quite an attack surface!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why are they comparing bugs from Ubuntu 12 "unity" to windows 10 and calling it "linux security", this is like shitty statistics... you narrow your field enough and you will contrive the result you were looking for like a numerologist.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm irritated about the initial example, which targets "Ubuntu 12.04". Why this 5 year old version? Is it fixed already in newer ones? Because it will never be fixed for 12.04 and people are still using it?

<comment><USER37> Ubuntu 12.04 is supported until April 2017, so yes, it's still an "active" version, and security issues should be fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> it's only as secure as the user

<comment><USER11> You can make things more secure or less secure no matter the user.

Also: if one desktop doesn't check SSL certificates and the other desktop does, then one desktop doesn't even enable the user to be secure. Checking SSL certificates is a pretty recent thing btw. E.g. various mail clients accept any self signed certificates silently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Given that piping curl in bash with sudo is considered acceptable, this is not surprising

<comment><USER24> Outside of architecture astronautical web development (usually done on a Mac while sipping some kind of coffee and milk blend) no it is not acceptable one bit.

<comment><USER40> I mean, even to install Rust they give you a command to do this. So no, it's not just web dev.

<comment><USER24> Well Rust is a Mozilla creation, and Mozilla is first and foremost a web company...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> No.

Betteridge's law of headlines: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

</comment><comment><USER42> what Linux desktop?

<comment><USER24> The Gnome DE...

<comment><USER11> Apport, gstreamer, Tracker/Baloo, Chrome/Chromium/Epiphany, ASLR isn't just GNOME. It seems investigation started on Ubuntu (Unity 7). It affects multiple desktops and as others notes, also Baloo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> There's security and there's safety. Linux desktop may well be less secure, meaning that it could be successfully attacked by an experienced attacker. At the same time it's far less likely to be attacked, so it's safer, for the same reason as macOS: less marketshare, few people are motivated to learn/research attack vectors.

<comment><USER44> Once again: Mac OS in pre-X days had even smaller market share, but many many more viruses in the wild. It's not all about the market share.

<comment><USER45> But which kind of virus?

An internet-distributed one would be pretty futile, but a diskette-spreading one aimed at a lab with several macs could be pretty successful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> err but Linux is mmer secure....derp derp

<comment><USER47> Please don't post like this here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> of course not

[https://threatpost.com/microsoft-waits-for-patch-tuesday- to-...](https://threatpost.com/microsoft-waits-for-patch-tuesday-to-fix-smb- zero-day/123541/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Click Bait Title

Anyone care to define default outside of Ubuntu?

I run OpenSUSE and have it down to just a tiled window manager, terminal and FireFox.

</comment><comment><USER50> They just don't have the money. They're behind because it never got the inertia of accumulated capital infrastructure, and it's finally starting to show. I bailed out to OS X late last christmas.</comment>


Ask HN: Weird Interview Situation - <AUTHOR> I'm a recent master's student CS graduate from a top 30 University in the states.
I've been looking for jobs and had an interview with a well known company that is dying. The interview consisted of 40 minutes of talking to me on the phone and didn't have any technical questions.
I thought this was going to be a first round of interviews, but they made me a very lucrative offer a week or so after the interview. They didn't offer to fly me out for a second round of interviews, and only spent 3 minutes on my website for my portfolio (I used Google analytics).
Should I be worried about the position? Something just doesn't "feel right" about the whole interview process. Even in googling the company, people have said that they have been flown out for in person interviews. It just seems very strange why they would want me and pay so much without asking technical questions. They didn't ask about much on my resume either, meaning I could have made about 75% of my resume up... <comment><USER2> Perhaps this hiring process is the reason they are dying now. Kidding..

There might be many reasons. Perhaps you've been the best fit after a series of interview and they are in badly need of filling out the position.

If you are not sure about the offer, make list of all the questions you can come up with and ask them. Definitely go into dialog with them.</comment>


HTML Form to File.txt - <AUTHOR> http://simongriffee.com/notebook/form-to-txt/ <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good "Show HN".

Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'll look at the guidelines.</comment></comment>


Book Review: The Shareholder Value Myth - <AUTHOR> http://arizonastatelawjournal.org/book-review-the-shareholder-value-myth-how-putting-shareholders-first-harms-investors-corporations-and-the-public-by-lynn-stout/

<comment><AUTHOR> Reminded of this following the comments to the earlier submission "What Happens When a Healthcare Startup Leaves You With the Bill" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7983281](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7983281)

The actual book is:

"The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corportations, and the Public" by Lynn Stout [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The- Shareholder-Value-Myth-Sharehold...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Shareholder- Value-Myth-Shareholders/dp/1605098132)

but linking to a review to get an idea.</comment>


A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter -Sculpture That Perpetually Sells Itself on eBay - <AUTHOR> http://atooltodeceiveandslaughter.com

<comment><AUTHOR> There's an interview w/ the artist here:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhF3YS5KuAo></comment>


Lessons I Learned at McDonald's that Help Me Build Software - <AUTHOR> http://edweissman.com/lessons-i-learned-at-mcdonalds-that-help-me-b

<comment><USER2> I worked at McDonald's too, and I remember the bin system that edw519 describes. It's what made McDonald's famous.

The idea was that the warming bin would always be stocked with product and historical data was collected to know _how_ much to stock at a given hour of a certain day of the week. But food could only live in there for 10 minutes before (by the rules) being trashed. Of course, a sudden bus arrival or freak rainstorm could wreck all of those plans. And (hint hint), the 10 minute rule was disobeyed a lot because management was tracking food waste percentages. Wasted food took away from profits...which took away from their bonuses.

The other downside was that food that had been sitting in that warming bin for 9-12 minutes (typ) started to taste bad. People liked Wendy's and BK _because_ their orders were fresh. Customization was another problem. McD custom orders could throw the entire workflow off if the grill staff wasn't in a good rhythm or if they weren't actually making product at the time of the order. Oh, you want a Filet-o-Fish with no salt? Get ready to wait 7-9 minutes.

So, fast forward 25 years and McDonald's is now making single orders in a bespoke fashion, ala Wendy's or BK. Why do you think that is? What's the analogy to making software?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thank you, Ed. I really enjoyed reading that.

I can't help thinking that the counterpart -- which you've provided indirectly in various other posts and comments -- would be a/the story of working somewhere where these distinctions are not recognized or acknowledged. And the risk this can pose to the high performers' well-being.</comment>


The #1 paid app in the Google Playstore "Virus Shield" is a complete scam - <AUTHOR> http://freedomhacker.net/2014-04-1-paid-app-in-google-play-store-virus-shield-is-a-complete-scam/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware that this is a blogspammy submission but HN won't let me submit the original ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7545635](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7545635) got autokilled).</comment>


Google wants to educate students about universities right from search results - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/30/13101754/google-search-results-college-university-data <comment><AUTHOR> I think Bing deserves some mention here since they have had this feature for over a year</comment>


Sending Google a fake court order won't help - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/11/13/dont-like-what-you-see-when-you-google-yourself-sending-a-fake-court-order-wont-help/

<comment><USER2> On the other hand, even getting Google to remove obviously inappropriate content from their services such as child pornography is a pain in the ass. I've been trying to report some blogs hosted under Blogspot on the last two weeks, but their abuse report tools are far restricting and confusing. All I managed to get until now was a contributor on Google Groups asking me to wait for more two to four weeks because "freedom of speech is relevant here." Geez, say about frustration...</comment>