DC "Uber Amendment" would force sedans to charge 5x more than taxis - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/dc-city-councils-uber-amendment-would-force-sedans-to-charge-5x-taxi-prices-and-kill-uberx/ <comment><USER2> These are the kinds of battles that break out when your business model is truly disruptive.

The price of taxis is held artificially high and really it is a loss for the consumer. We are left paying the higher prices for what should be a relatively free market.

<comment><USER3> "The price of taxis is held artificially high and really it is a loss for the consumer."

Absolutely. In Bangkok there are more taxis on the streets than all other cars combined. You can find one anywhere, anytime and a ten minute ride costs about $1. No need to own a car, even if you can afford one.

Our minimum wage wouldn't allow for that but there is no reason it needs to cost $60 to take a 15 minute ride from San Bruno into SF. The gas cost + labor cost of that ride should be 1/10th of that. Double that to account for profit, administration and the car and you have a $10-15 ride.

Price it like that and a lot less people would own cars - and there would be a lot more taxis on the streets to account for the increased demand. And a lot of jobs.

<comment><USER4> Bad example. I've never seen a city in more need of stiffer regulation than Bangkok. The single worst part of driving in the city is dealing with agressive or incompetent taxi drivers. They break traffic laws and block lanes looking for fares.

The over-supply of taxis has the opposite effect of a more regulated public transport. It does not reduce the total number of cars on the road. It's useful from a consumer standpoint but the low cost means people are less likely to use the state of the art elevated train and subway, both of which run under capacity.

"Price it like that and a lot less people would own cars." Possibly in other cities -- though I doubt it -- but it certainly didn't help in Bangkok. People don't buy cars because they need them, they buy cars because they want them. The number of news cars sold in the country per day is astounding (though the number escapes me) and that's despite the fact that they cost 50% - 350% more than the same cars in the US.

Bangkok needs to regulate the shit out of the taxi industry and make it _more_ expensive to drive in the city if it wants to sort out its remaining traffic issues.

Uber can probably work in US cities that have the traffic capacity, but it's a horrible idea in congested areas.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand _why_ you make the claims that you do.

Why is it bad that people are "less likely to use the state of the art elevated train and subway"? Is it because they're "state of the art"? That hardly seems compelling. Is it because the train and subway are faster or cheaper? Sounds like they're not, otherwise more people would take them. Why is train and subway usage important if no one wants to use them?

It sounds like you're advocating forcing people to do something they don't want to do, and I don't understand why you're advocating that.

<comment><USER4> Because favoring the trains would mean fewer cars on the road, something the city needs.

The trains are faster in many cases (provided you're starting / ending close the line) but they're not cheaper. Making cabs more expensive would change this.

Take a look at what Singapore does <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing> to keep cars off the road. It might seem a bit draconian but it's effective.

<comment><USER5> Why does it "need" fewer cars on the road? It sounds like the city has as many cars on the road as the city wants to have.

If the trains aren't cheaper, why should that be the cars' problem? Why not make the trains a better alternative instead of making cars worse?

Why would you advocate something that "seems draconian" to you?

<comment> grey-area _Why does it "need" fewer cars on the road?_

If you'd ever been to Bangkok you'd know why it needs fewer cars. Pollution is terrible, and traffic is appalling - often a journey which should take 20 minutes takes hours, and safety standards are very low - the most popular form of taxi is a pick-up truck with bench seats in the back which is really unsafe in the event of an accident. They desperately need to encourage more public transport and get rid of some of the cars/trucks on the road to prevent rush- hour gridlock and massive pollution.

The easiest way to clear up the roads for public transport is to make driving more expensive and use some of that money for improvements in the public infrastructure. I doubt they'll ever do it, but they could do worse than follow the example of London with a congestion charge for central areas, and use the money to subsidise public transport, which is underused at present (because the train is so expensive, and the buses are so slow due to all the other traffic).

<comment><USER6> Huh? The most popular form of taxi in Bangkok is a typical sedan. The Songthaews are more like mini-busses and actually are a pretty affordable form of private small-scale mass transit. They definitely aren't safe, but without them most of the poorer folks in Thailand would be screwed.

Driving is already fairly expensive in Thailand: cars and gas are both pretty expensive. Taxis in Bangkok are much more expensive than they are where I live (tourist areas are even worse with their taxi mafias). Bangkok already has a public transportation system that is much better than other cities in the area (barring Singapore), they aren't doing that poorly.

<comment> grey-area Yes, there is a mix of taxis and probably the cars outnumber trucks (depends what you're doing, if it's long distance you wouldn't want to take a taxi because of cost, and I guess they have tuk tuks too). Neither are great because of the traffic and pollution caused by all the other road users. So Bangkok is a terrible example of a place which needs more taxis, as if you want to go any distance at rush hour they are terrible, and they cause all sorts of problems (pollution, noise, traffic) - it's one of the worst cities I've been to for traffic.

The public transport there is good (what there is of it), but the BTS and MRT are both expensive and therefore underused by anyone other than tourists and business people - most people don't use it and it's not as extensive as other cities. At least when I've been there the skytrain is remarkably quiet compared to the streets given how quick and easy it is. It's a shame they won't tax the cars more in town and use the money for improving public transport instead IMHO, and Bangkok is a terrible example of a place which needs less regulation - they need far more regulation on their taxis and traffic in general in order to manage it as at the moment it is bedlam at rush hour, partly because of all the taxis, motorbike taxis and trucks. It is a great example of the free-for-all which results from unregulated capitalism though.

<comment><USER6> Skytrain is packed during rush hour, but it's not as packed otherwise. It seems to go everywhere I need it to when I visit Bangkok, though.

Beijing cut the subway to 2 yuan during/after the olympics (it was 4 yuan before and even in 1999 it was 3 yuan). The result is that the subway is very elgalatarian and very packed; I avoid it for the taxi accordingly (spend about 80 yuan a day on taxis). But Beijing traffic is also worse than Bangkok's, and there is more regulation (no private minibuses, not many tuktuk that are useful). Whatever they do, the answer to our problems probably isn't more taxis but public transit is also a problem (for the middle class).

I like Japan the best, where the transit is affordable, convenient, and mostly comfortable (when not rush hour).

<comment><USER3> Where China is harmed by their overregulation they are helped by their practice of creating laws and then selectively enforcing them.

In Zhuhai (near Guangzhou) there are far less taxis on the street than demand would dictate, however plenty of citizens drive around offering people rides at similar rates and everybody uses them, locals and foreigners alike. It is obviously illegal but it is so widespread and common (happens right in front of you and the police on every major street all day) that it is clear the police aren't doing anything about it.

That system is very Chinese. They make laws that would seem to restrict business and then local officials tell the police to ignore them when they deem their area is better off without them. Unfortunately this also extends to things like drugs and even kidnapping in some areas. No system is ever perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The headline here is totally sensational and factually incorrect. Has anyone actually read the linked article?

The proposed amendment sets the minimum for a sedan at 5x the flag pull rate on a taxi. So, in DC this would mean that the minimum rate for a sedan is $15 bucks. While I'm against government creating arbitrary and anti-competitive laws like this, it hardly seems as bad as forcing sedans to charge 5x more than taxis.

<comment><USER7> Further, if Uber really wants widespread support on this, they should publish some data showing how many of their customers/rides would be affected under this law. How many times in the past year has a customer paid under $15 with Uber? (I'm suspecting not many, as a percentage of total fares, but that's total speculation.)

<comment><USER8> The law puts a floor on non-taxi prices at Uber's current black car price. So 0% of their current black-car fares would be affected. What this does is prevent any future competition on price (like UberX in San Francisco). The law will literally prevent anyone (other than a taxi) from charging less than $15 for a ride, and for no obvious benefit to anyone other than Taxis.

For me, the difference here is clear. When I order an Uber, I have a certain expectation of quality, and I have the option of never using their service if they totally blow it sometime (or I can give a driver a bad rating, and if he/she gets enough he gets booted from the service). If I get a lousy ride from a Taxi, I don't have many alternatives. If a law is passed that prevents anyone else from competing on price, I have even less options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This great story "Why You Can't Get a Taxi" about Uber in the DC metro area got buried a while ago.

> "I want to get a license to drive a limo," I told him.

"There's a moratorium," he said, and pointed to a memo posted on the wall.

I'd like to tell you exactly what the memo said, but the commission wasn't giving out copies—"We had some, but we ran out," said the security guard, and no wonder, given that the "temporary" moratorium has been going on for years. The gist was that there would be no new limo licenses until the commission decided to hand them out.

"Take a picture with your phone," suggested a nice driver who was waiting for an appointment in front of the desk.

"No pictures!" said the guard.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/why- you-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/why-you- can-8217-t-get-a-taxi/8942/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it wrong that I can't wait until taxi companies are pulverized into dust? From credit/debit machines that always seem to be "out of order" to being put in a caller queue in order to tell someone "come get me at this location", interaction with the industry somehow never seems to be the highlight of my night.

<comment><USER11> Uber is amazing. It's one of my favorite pockets of the unevenly distributed future that I've come to rely on since moving to SF. Tracking the progress of my ride on my smartphone as it makes the usually less than 3 minute journey to me is still a thrill.

Uber is maybe 10% more expensive, yet 500% more reliable. I don't know if you've ever tried to hail a cab in SF, but it's a huge exercise in frustration. Calling a dispatch service is equally vexing. I'm with you, the doom of the Taxi business can't come soon enough for me.

<comment><USER12> As much as I agree with you in loving Uber, your 10% more calculation is insanely low.

I have done comparison drives twice. Once I took a cab from SOMA to Pac heights: $8.35, Uber back to the same spot: $15.95

SOMA to Dolores Park. Cab: 7.90. Uber: 15.25

Clearly not 10%. I guess the big thing for me is that I really don't care about bottles of water or the type of car the person shows up in. I just want an on demand service that gets everything done in a sensible way. If there was a cheaper version of Uber for regular cabs I would be all over it.

The bigger picture though is how much people will fight to keep crappy businesses in business. We will hear the argument about how we cant lose jobs right now when unemployment is so high, but for the love of god, this is progress people. If some cab drivers lose their jobs in the name of progress is this really worth hurting society over?

<comment><USER13> (Check out side.cr and lyft.me! I've been calling them Uber for poor people.)

<comment><USER14> I call them uber for fun people! Even if lyft cost the same as uber, I would still take a lyft. Being able to joke around with the driver is worth more to me than leather seats and a free bottle of water.

<comment><USER8> It's fun until there's an accident. Then it wouldn't be fun at all. I'll gladly trade "joking with the driver" for a driver licensed and insured to drive other people. Companies like Lyft make a point of saying they aren't affiliated with the drivers and have no liability. That means you're depending on the driver's personal (likely state minimum) insurance.

For me, choosing to ride with vetted drivers who have the proper insurance is an easy choice. I'm willing to pay much more for that. If I feel the need to joke around with someone during the ride, I just bring a friend. It certainly costs more (all other things being equal), to have a properly insured driver come pick you up. I think it's worth it.

For me, "Fun" comes far down the list of things I look for in a transportation service. Safe cars, vetted drivers, quick pickups and professional service are all much more important to me than riding with a driver who is "fun" (or who put a mustache on the front of their car with the hopes of appearing fun). I've had a couple UberX rides now, and honestly, that's the sweet spot for me (affordable ride, clean cars, professional drivers, timely service, environmentally-friendly and properly insured). It hits all the things I'm looking for in a transportation service, at a price very close to a Taxi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> First of all, I love Uber, Sidecar and Lyft. I really think that they are the future of transportation.

That being said, it's not that easy to just blame the public officials for all the chaos. It is a reasonable danger to these services, there are so many unknowns. The reason why the cab business is regulated in the first place was for public safety, so that cab drivers wouldn't just ask for exorbitant prices, take your luggage hostage etc. Remember, you are still just jumping into a stranger's car. Regulation was introduced to remedy these concerns (I'm not saying they are effective)

Airbnb shows how regulation is a reasonable concern. Once you go beyond the early adopters, there are so many things you have to deal with like insurance, liability, cleanliness etc. We can't just expect the world to change in an instant and naively believe everyone in the world does good.

<comment><USER16> And the reasons for regulation go beyond consumer protection from shady drivers. Cab companies are regulated in many cities so that they, literally, are part of the public transportation infrastructure. NPR had a recent story about the taxi-towncar debate in Portland that lays out why certain regulations exist, and affords some amount of justification in this debate. Simply put; taxis can't discriminate fares/hours while towncar companies can.

Their source claims that law requires they provide a certain level of service 24 hours a day, 365 days per year regardless of demand. This includes a large portion of cabs be equipped to accommodate the disabled. Further, they are not allowed to discriminate based on the distance or size of fare.[1]

1\. [http://www.npr.org/2012/06/19/155305029/its-taxis-vs- limos-i...](http://www.npr.org/2012/06/19/155305029/its-taxis-vs-limos-in- laid-back-portland)

<comment><USER8> But taxis still discriminate all the time. Call a cab to come pick you up at your house. They're legally required to come, but there's strong odds that they won't. A lot of taxi drivers will ask where you're headed before you get in. If it's to an area they don't want to go, they'll just take off and leave you there waiting and waiting.

The regulations in place are rarely (if ever) enforced. It's an issue for the free market to settle. Let consumers decide if they want 24 hour a day 365 days per year service, and they can hire the company that will meet that demand. If they want drivers to come pick them up at their house, let them choose a company that is willing to do that. Setting an artificial price floor doesn't do anything other than limit consumer's choices.

<comment><USER17> To be fair, before smart-phones were invented, the free market wouldn't have worked well for cabs. Cab drivers have zero incentive to compete on quality, because which cab/company you hire is based on who is nearby, not on your previous experience with that cab/company.

Now that you can dial up a cab on your smart phone, things might be quite different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From my reading, this also makes Uber, Inc. non-regulated by the taxi commission itself.

What I'd do as a special DC-specific hack is charge the 5x rates, but then have Uber rebate some percentage back to the user. So if the goal is to charge $15 for the ride, charge the $50 required under the law and then the taxi company pays Uber $35 in "Special fuck-DC licensing fee" and then Uber pays $35 to the user in "DC victim's compensation fund".

<comment><USER14> Law is not computer code and judges are not robots. Any competent judge would clearly rule that such a fund is a blatant attempt to skirt regulation and come down like a hammer on anyone dumb enough to try it.

<comment><USER18> At which point you can challenge the legality of the law itself, and will have bought time to get enough happy users in town to make it a political issue and possibly replace the regulators.

Some legal hacks work, others don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> However you feel about it, this is entirely expected. The government has chosen to regulate taxis; there's a whole bureaucracy around that; there are a bunch of providers operating within the system. Uber enters and claims the rules do not apply to it, and threatens to replace the regulated market entirely. The regulators are now faced with the choice between ending all taxi regulation, regulating Uber like a taxi, or simply excluding Uber from the market entirely. If they do nothing, they know that Uber will likely replace taxis, leaving an unregulated market. If they wanted an unregulated market, they wouldn't have regulated it in the first place.

When your business is based around regulatory arbitrage, you have to know that you will only enjoy that advantage for a limited window.

<comment><USER20> You're one removed from the actual decision makers. The real decision makers are the elite who own the licenses for the taxis. In my city, there are two families who have the bulk of the licenses and if I am not mistaken, 100% of the share of licenses for taxis allowed to operate at the airport. If you think this is about regulation, you are sorely mistaken. Or another way to think about it: regulation is about protecting profits, not consumers.

<comment><USER19> Regulation is what starts the ball rolling. I won't dispute that the outcome is often sub-optimal in some ways (like the one you cited) But the point is that the result is a whole apparatus which acts to preserve the status quo: the regulators themselves (who like being employed), the operators that are profiting from the system, etc.

I'm trying to stay away from the political hot potato of whether taxi regulation is a net positive thing or not! It's not really relevant to the point I'm making.

Whether it's profit or bureaucracy that are the drivers now, I think we agree: Uber must have known this was coming. I look forward to seeing what Uber has planned; perhaps operating a dispatch service over regular taxis?

<comment><USER21> I think your analysis is correct. It seems likely they will be forced to integrate and become a taxi service dispatch infrastructure provider. It seems a smarter move to accept how "sub-optimal" markets such as these have become and deal with unreality on it's terms than to resist the corruption outright on principal.

<comment><USER22> They can't integrate -- it's the whole point of the corruption, to maintain a cartel with limited supply, so as to inflate prices and profits. They don't want them to operate "within the rules" -- they want them to not operate, period.

No new taxis in D.C.:

 _The supply of cabs is limited by a licensing exam for drivers that's been closed since 2010._

[http://reason.com/blog/2011/12/22/the-medallion-bill-is- back...](http://reason.com/blog/2011/12/22/the-medallion-bill-is-back-dc-taxi- chief)

From an article about D.C.'s plans to establish _explicit_ supply caps (quotas), like the ones already in place in NYC, SF, etc.

<comment><USER19> TaxiMagic seems to be operating without any government interference, by integrating with the existing taxi services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A ton of people in this conversation are making a ton of assumptions about the reasons for taxi medallions and the effects that they have on the ecosystem and marketplace. Given that I doubt any of us run cab companies, this seems silly: more homework is needed. ;P

It seems like there is a a whitepaper that, in three parts, went into some detail on the situation in NYC, examining the causes and pulling apart the proposed solutions, for various of the complaints people have about the system.

<http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/taxi1.htm> "Factors of Production in a Regulated Industry: New York Taxi Drivers and the Price for Better Service"

<http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/taxi2.htm> "Villain or Bogeyman? New York's Taxi Medallion System"

<http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/taxi3.htm> "Fixing New York City Taxi Service"

</comment><comment><USER24> What they can try to solve this if it passes is to give forward credit to future rides.

e.g. if a ride costs $7 dollars, charge the user $15 and give them an $8 discount off the next ride. This gives users an incentive to use Uber again and again since they will always have credit with Uber.

If a user consistently uses less than $15, do something where they get entire rides "comped". You can't charge less than $15, but I bet this law has a loophole for "free rides" because no charging is involved.

Either way, some creative thinking with payments + loyalty benefits should help them get around this if this law eventually passes.

</comment><comment><USER25> I lived in DC for the past year and a half and never heard of Uber. Considering my tech-minded friends i'm surprised at the lack of advertisement.

Look at this Washington Post article from 2006, before the fare system was changed from zones to meters: [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/06...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061201428_2.html)

On the old zone system: _""Last night, I had to go to a dinner, and the cab that brought me back charged me twice as much as the cab that took me there," he said as he waited for another taxi outside his downtown hotel. Well, maybe not quite twice as much, he amended, but $12 vs. $19.50."_

And on meters: _"But opponents of the meter say it would bring unwanted changes to D.C. taxi service: Residents traveling from poorer outlying neighborhoods in Southeast or Northeast probably could not afford a meter ride, they say, because it could add up to much more than a zone fare. Another reason fares could rise is that the meter would not stop clicking when the cab is idling in one of the city's infamous traffic jams."_ and _"If they get the meters, the only cab you'll see in this town will be at hotels, like the other major cities," Wright said. "You won't find them anyplace else. You won't find them in the neighborhoods."_

The regulation on fares forces taxicabs to pass up many people who want to go outside areas with heavy foot traffic or deep pockets because they aren't going to be able to find a return fare. As such, there are "taxi deserts" all over the city where you might see one taxi every 45 minutes, and they've already got a fare, or their meter is off. Slugging through a 1.5-hour bus ride is often the most reliable form of transportation for these areas.

In order to maximize their payout, plenty of DC taxis will take zig-zagging routes, go slower than the speed limit, and ride their brakes. A 5.6-mile ride from the Atlas District up to Petworth may cost the same as an 8.5-mile ride from Columbia Heights up to Bethesda, using the meter system. Take a cab from outside the district and you'll find your trip takes significantly less time.

There's probably still a market for an Uber service, even with this brazen attack on (what seems to me as fair) competition. But don't expect the taxi lobby to roll over in a town where it took 75 years just to introduce meters.

</comment><comment><USER26> Standard government corruption and central planning. Why do we need the government to manage taxis? Self driving cars are going to further destroy this industry.

<comment><USER27> Have you been somewhere that Taxi's are unregulated? After they refuse to give you your luggage until you pay $20 over what was agreed, rob you, leave you at the wrong destination, etc... is when you realize taxi regulation was setup to protect consumers.

 _edit_ To clarify, I'm not saying there are no problems with the current cab systems, only that public safety and consistent fares are one of the main reasons cabs are regulated by the government

<comment><USER26> I've been in places where taxis are regulated and I've been ripped off too, primarily boston and new york:

1\. The taxi driver refused to turn on his meter and then just demanded a fee.

2\. Taxis refusing to take you where you want to go, i.e. getting a cab to brooklyn.

3\. Taxis not showing up when they've been reserved ahead of time, early morning airport runs.

4\. Taxis taking long and wrong routes to drive up the fare.

5\. Taxis not knowing the area, and not having a GPS, so they get lost and then just give up leaving you somewhere.

6\. Being in a taxi where the license picture does match the driver.

So, I've had lots of bad experiences of "regulated" taxis. I've had lots of good experiences too. As for unregulated, I've been in a few in south and central america, not sure if they were regulated or not.

<comment><USER28> Saying that you've had bad experiences with regulated taxis is not a counter argument. For all six of those, there is a number you can call to report them. And none of them are all that bad.

Get into an unregulated taxi, and you're at their mercy.

<comment><USER29> Yes, it's a good argument. It shows how the regulation that _ostensibly_ was set up to protect customers does not consistently do that. And what am I going to do with a phone number? Spend 20 minutes on hold before I can tell a disinterested minimum wage call center employee about how my would-have-been $50 missing taxi caused me to miss my $1500 flight so it's recorded in some log that nobody ever reads?

The fact that some people might accept the service-failures listed by the GP as not being bad just shows how low expectations to taxies has become. Luckily some people believe taxies can do better.

Finally, all but the stauchest libertarians would accept a sensible minimum of regulation that would provide a minimum of protection, including mandatory insurance and conspicuous display of photo ID inside the vehicle.

<comment><USER28> You haven't been ripped off by an unlicensed cab before, have you? The licensed cabs operate in a manner that will at least keep them from having their medallion taken away. Unlicensed cabs have nothing to fear.

<comment><USER29> No. I don't ride in unlicensed cabs. That doesn't keep me from wanting significantly less regulation.

I _have_ been ripped off by licensed ones, though - twice, I think. Both cases involved foreign counties and drivers who conveniently and suddenly lost their command of English.

<comment><USER28> Like I said, being ripped off by licensed cabs isn't an argument for less regulation. It's an argument for something else, possibly more regulation. Show me that cabs don't need licensing and regulation using unlicensed cabs as an example, and you'll have an argument.

<comment><USER29> Uhm, I wasn't giving a counter argument. I was replying to your question. What you want to do with that is up to you.

Any demonstration in the vein you propose will rely on a measure of caveat emptor. I would guess I am willing to accept a greater degree of this (trading strict consumer protection for better competition leading to better service and lower prices) than you seem to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can someone please explain why government intervention is necessary here, or how any of this proposed legislature is even legal? When new competitors are forced to set prices to 5x the incumbents, who is winning? How does that benefit the customers? I thought the government was supposed to serve the people, not dying taxi companies that refuse to innovate...

</comment><comment><USER31> Competition between brokers and reputation systems thereof replace the need for certification/regulation by the government.

This behavior by the govt is pressure exerted by the desire for homeostasis of control. Shameful.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm not surprised that this has happened- vested interests are hardly something new in government lobbying. But I am amazed at how brazen it is- even calling it the "Uber Amendment". I suspect that they will get a rude awakening of the new realities of open government soon enough.

<comment><USER33> Those of us who live in and around the District have been waiting for that "rude awakening" for a very long time.

It's worth pointing out that Marion Barry (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry>) is still sitting on the DC Council.

<comment><USER34> Somewhere in my parents house, I still have a picture from the Post of Barry flicking off the photographer. They printed it large, on page B1 in 89 or so.

I can't believe he's still around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If the amendment is passed still titled as the "Uber Amendment," would the law be considered a Bill of Attainder against Uber? ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder> )

<comment><USER36> No. A bill of attainder refers to legislative bill declaring someone guilty of a crime. The Amemdment merely prohibits Uber X's planned business model. UberX would not be guilty of anything unless it went ahead with its planned business model.

What is it with the armchair lawyers on HN today?

<comment><USER35> I freely admit that I'm not a lawyer, which is why I asked a question instead of making a statement. I thank you for your insight, though, as I see you are a lawyer.

<comment><USER36> Sorry about my statement about the armchair lawyer bit. On other threads today, commenters have been making assertions of the law that have no basis in reality, so my fuse was a little short and I misinterpreted your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What can we do to help? Something concrete, I'm at a loss, ideas appreciated. Bitching about it here is just preaching to the converted. Maybe someone from über can make suggestions?

I love using über. I like to be able to relax at the table finishing my coffee as I wait for the car to arrive. I hate standing on the side of the street in the rain with my hand in the air wondering when a cab will show up. I hate paying for a driver of a pre-ubercab car service to wait outside for four hours while I have a drink with friends. Uber eliminates all this crap.

I'd like to help, love to hear a constructive suggestion on what I can do.

</comment><comment><USER38> As we speak, Chicago taxi drivers are protesting the fact that fares haven't gone up in seven years, while their expenses have.

[http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13500/the_7-year_itch_...](http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13500/the_7-year_itch_desperate_for_a_fare_increase_chicago_cabbies_continue_week/)

That's right, they can't even set their own fares. Taxis are regulated to astonishing degrees. I don't know why they aren't simply brought on as full- fledged government employees in many of these cities. They'd almost certainly be getting paid better.

</comment><comment><USER39> Elected officials should be ashamed of themselves. What are they going to do when Side.cr or Lyft arrives in D.C. ? Ban private car ownership?

</comment><comment><USER40> Wait, wait just a minute. I thought a free market meant you were free to charge what you wanted? /sarcasm. This is ridiculous on so many levels, sounds like Uber needs to fight back and do a little lobbying of their own. The real issue here is that Uber has proven to be both cheaper, faster and more reliable than any NYC taxi service let alone any taxi service anywhere in the world. Perhaps instead of lobbying maybe these taxi super-lobbyists should be lobbying their own companies to pick up their acts. Then perhaps they wouldn't feel the need to resort to dirty tactics as opposed to doing what they should be doing like most people in business do when they feel threatened by a competitor: undercut the competitors offering.

Sounds like they've got plenty of cash to lobby that could be better spent improving NYC taxi services.

<comment><USER36> Uber is not a taxi service. It is a car service (i.e., a limousine service).

Taxi service: picks up any passenger, off the street, anywhere, without any prior arrangement to do so. The passenger may not have any opportunity to investigate the taxi provider ahead of time, or to choose their taxi (i.e.,at airports or hotels), so regulation is placed on taxi providers for the protection of passengers.

Car service: picks up a passenger by virtue of a prior arrangement. In some locations, that arrangement can be be minutes old; in others, the arrangement must be made hours in advance. The passenger has the opportunity to investigate and choose the car service provider, so regulation is significantly reduced.

<comment><USER40> Uber is a taxi service in many ways. Picking someone up to take them to a destination is very much how taxi's work. Fair enough you can't flag down a limousine from a sidewalk, but you can also call and arrange for a taxi to pick you up at an arranged time like Uber and a limousine. Lets not get confused here, the taxi lobbyists wouldn't feel the need to resort to these kind of tactics if they felt like Uber wasn't competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks like the Council tabled the matter until november.

<https://twitter.com/SegravesWTOP/status/222696651620483072>

Does anyone know if this means Uber gets to operate Uber X in the meantime?

</comment><comment><USER41> When I lived in LA, I heard many times that the taxis there were run by the Russian mob. I wonder how Uber will fare against them. Russian gangsters arent really a group I'd want to be the one to "disrupt"

</comment><comment><USER42> If taxi services would keep up with technology and allow the market to make and break companies, Uber would not be able to eat their lunch. Same story, different industry.

</comment><comment><USER43> So I've scanned the article...

As a DC resident,and one who has a partner that's a social worker.

The "corruption" that is blocking your business maybe partially fueled by the taxi drivers who don't want to become unemployed. Almost all drivers fall below the poverty line and rely on social services to support them and their families.

I'm not really sure how the cab companies do with revenue and profit, but you'd probably be best off appealing to hiring the drivers to circumnavigate this issue.

</comment><comment><USER44> DC's taxis are really the worst, so it's not surprising that they are fighting back so hard to kill a perceived threat to their monopoly. Still, I haven't used Uber much due to the high prices compared to taxis, but the new lower- priced UberX could be a real game-changer if it isn't squashed by the government.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is this the same as New York where taxis are overpriced but the money is all flowing to the rich license holders?

</comment><comment><USER46> We have the same kinds of problems in Paris, where it is impossible to try to increase the number of licences (hence making the price of the licenses held by current cab drivers go down) without a city-wide strike that paralizes the city.

</comment><comment><USER47> Using law instead of tax dollars amounts to the exact same thing: State control and interference. Reminds me of the bad old days of socialism.

</comment><comment><USER48> "First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win." M. Gandhi

<comment><USER49> Don't hold your breath waiting for me to mock you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Straight out of an Ayn Rand novel... :)</comment>


Ask HN: Biggest Alternatives to Pingdom? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN.  We've used Pingdom for over a decade but in the past year the alerts have become increasingly unreliable.  I never get alerts on my phone anymore despite triple checking every setting and interacting several times with their support people (who kinda just stop responding).
We added Slack webhook integration and started using a Slack channel as the alerting piece, which is OK, but Pingdom doesn't seem to honor their "Alert only after down for more than 10 minutes" setting when sending webhooks to Slack.  So we get bombarded with tiny up/down up/down alerts when any minor glitch happens (even network connectivity glitches), which is why we set the "Alert only after down for more than 10 minutes" in the first place.  We opened a support ticket, but given past support responses from them, we are not hopeful for a solution.
Long winded intro to the question - what would you recommend as an alternative to Pingdom?  Looking for someone who's stable, established and not going anywhere obviously.
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> I'm currently using their free trial and so far it has been working for us. One of our servers went down two times last week and I got SMS notifications. Curious to learn about other alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER3> Runscope?</comment>


Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/09/back-to-school-with-riaa-funded-curriculum.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss <comment><USER2> I read the student worksheet. The RIAA stated that the cost of sharing a song online is 99 cents. That basically kills their arguments against Thomas/Tenenbaum.

<comment><USER3> I bet the cost of sharing a song is much less. Let's say you have a new song that a bunch of kids like, what do they do?

They check p2p programs to see if they can find it, if they don't find it that way (or they skip that step) they check torrent sites for the album, finally after they have exhausted options the weigh cost/need whether or not to buy it on itunes or get the cd.

After judging the cost I bet less than half or even less than a quarter actually buy the song, they will just move on to the next great thing and leave it at that.

There is another interesting subset that itunes has brought out though and that is the group of people that check itunes first and pay for their music... something that people should really pay attention to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's really hilarious is that the RIAA spent gods knows how much money developing a program that kids will outright ignore anyhow.

<comment><USER5> I agree. A complete waste of money if you ask me. An expensive, fake gesture to seem as if they are actually trying to educate the youth, instead of simply complianing about not getting their cut as they always do. And at the same time, in recent news, they have forced Pandora to pay royalties. Cover up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't Copy That 2 (Official Sequel to Don't Copy That Floppy) :

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUCyvw4w_yk>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.teachingcopyright.org/></comment>


Bleed Content to Other Devices – New Bleed Android App - <AUTHOR> http://bleed.link/

<comment><USER2> Cool app. How do I share images with this app ?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> That's an awesome app. You can share text, images and even slideshows.

</comment><comment><USER3> A simple app to share things across devices..Good Job

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice one . Can easily share URL's and Images.</comment>


Support call from the Google Pac-Man doodle  - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3FhJocDLKg

<comment><USER2> This guy is a complete pro for being able to help her figure out how to close a browser tab.</comment>


Pollen: the book is a program - <AUTHOR> http://mbutterick.github.io/pollen/doc/ <comment><USER2> Hi, this is Matthew Butterick. If you have specific questions about Pollen's capabilities (e.g., "how hard would it be to ...") I encourage you to post them to the GitHub repo at [http://github.com/mbutterick/pollen](http://github.com/mbutterick/pollen). I'd love to make it more useful for other authors, especially those in technical fields, so I welcome all suggestions.

TeX has been mentioned several times — I don't mind that comparison at all, since my thinly-veiled ambition is to create a contemporary successor to TeX. Contemporary = optimized for web publishing + better "macro" language (Racket) + shallower learning curve.

That said, TeX got a lot of things right. Especially the basic notion that a book (or other publication) should be represented as a program, and that authors should be able to freely intermix text and code. With digital books, I think it's essential.

(PS on Racket: HN was built with Arc, which was also built with Racket.)

<comment><USER3> The bit in the book / manual about typing a "lozenge" character that shows how with an Apple then has two blank lines for windows and linux is a little disconcerting.

<comment><USER4> As with any unusual character in Windows, you seem to be pretty much stuck with "build and install a new keyboard layout" as the general solution, though there may be editor-specific alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been looking at this recently. It looks like an extension of what made TeX so successful: your typesetter is programmable -- and macros can live in your documents, defined at any time -- so any common tedious task can be automated.

Sure, Markdown and the rest have a simple syntax for everything, but what if you're writing a book and want cross-references? Or you commonly use side-by- side examples (good grammar vs. bad grammar, say) and want a macro that generates the appropriate table layout. Or you want some macros which typeset entries in your CV. And instead of crufty TeX macros you can use Racket.

If I weren't already writing a book in LaTeX I'd try writing one in Pollen.

<comment><USER6> I've been contemplating using my literate programming project [https://github.com/jostylr/literate- programming](https://github.com/jostylr/literate-programming) to write a book. It would allow one to do all sorts of things in terms of reordering text, doing macros, calling out to stuff, etc. as well as having multiple compile-to targets.

It would also allow one to write why one is writing what one is writing without actually putting it in the book. Kind of like writing a "behind-the- scenes" while writing the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Beautiful, and I'll use it for my first book.

But I have to call out the claim:

 _> I think Pollen just won the Hello World Tournament._

That tournament was won permanently by the M4 language in 1977. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hello_world_program_exa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hello_world_program_examples#M)

<comment><USER8> I was considering an esoteric (joke) language that would compile a blank file to print "Hello, world!", q to a quine, g to guess, and similar. I never got around to creating it though.

<comment><USER9> HQ9+ already fills that niche well enough.

<comment><USER8> Ah, yep, nailed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome!

I love Butterick's Practical Typography. It taught me a lot about typography, and started my love for typefaces.

The fact that Matthew Butterick is, a lawyer, a typographer and a programmer just increase my respect for him.

Thank you for your work!

</comment><comment><USER11> "The ◊ character is called a lozenge. In Pollen, the lozenge is a special character that marks anything Pollen should interpret as a command (rather than plain text).

How to type a lozenge: Mac: option + shift + V Windows: holding down alt, type 9674 on the num pad Ubuntu: ctrl + shift + U, then 25CA"

That's an unfortunate choice, imo. Pollen looks great but I wouldn't want to have to type that character all the time.

Sorry to nitpick, I think everything else I've seen (so far) is very encouraging. Looks like something halfway between Markdown and LaTeX.

<comment><USER12> If our languages never stray outside of ASCII, then our input methods will never improve. The Emacs version is not much better:

C-x 8 RET loz[enge]

or

C-x 8 RET 25CA

Which suck, but can at least be rebound to a useful key. Unfortunately, the \lozenge command in TeX mode produces U+2727 "white four pointed star". Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks very interesting. Books really are code: I now have 10+ conditional flags in my book: ifPG13, ifPRINT, ifEBOOK, ifEREADER, etc. I'm looking to add more, but the basic \ifthenelse macro in LaTeX won't be enough...

How hard would it be to implement things like \ref and \pageref and support more of the LaTeX environments supported by MathJax?

I think a triple output format HTML + ePub + LaTeX|PDF|print would be awesome --- I'd switch right away!

Thanks for releasing this as LGPL.

<comment><USER14> >I now have 10+ conditional flags in my book: ifPG13, ifPRINT, ifEBOOK, ifEREADER, etc. I'm looking to add more, but the basic \ifthenelse macro in LaTeX won't be enough...

Makefiles can be your friend... in the file `Makefile` put

        .PHONY: all pg13 print ebook ereader
        all: pg13 print ebook ereader
        pg13: book-pg13.pdf
        book-pg13.pdf: mainfile.tex
    	pdflatex "\setstuffforethisversion\input{mainfile}"
        print: book-print.pdf
        [etc...]

Then type `make print` or `make ebook` etc at the command line. (This version is almost certainly too simplistic, but I hope the point is clear.)

<comment><USER13> Hm... reading-in the src from the command looks a little brittle, but it's a must try. The makefile will also help with the need to compile 3 times with latex.

<comment><USER14> It's definitely brittle, but it's brittle along a dimension that usually doesn't change much over the course of the project (paper, book, etc). If you have automatically generated images or tables the benefits can be huge.

`latexmk` solves the "compile many times" problem, and can monitor for changes to the source file in the background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-nikolaev Interesting software. Actually, I wish there was a way to use some other character (or string) instead of the lozenge character (◊) for commands.

I mean, I see the reason for using a weird symbol, but I'm not even sure how to enter it from the keyboard other than by copy-pasting it. Is it some sort of standard symbol in DrRacket environment?

Maybe, a directive for changing this symbol can be added: #commands_start_with my-char

<comment><USER15> Apparently you can do this via setting Pollen's 'world:command-marker' value; though I don't know how to do that myself :-/

Ref for others, on OSX, its: option + shift + V

See [http://mbutterick.github.io/pollen/doc/reader.html](http://mbutterick.github.io/pollen/doc/reader.html)

edit: key commands now fixed for other platforms

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This looks great! I like the documentation itself even more, is that generated with pollen as well?

Edit: I answered my own question, the documentation is generated using Scribble: [http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/](http://docs.racket- lang.org/scribble/)

</comment><comment><USER17> [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spot/markup/markup.html](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spot/markup/markup.html)

also used scheme for writing books, provided for embedding code execution, tex for math, targeting html and paper, etc. i made it in 1996 to write my phd dissertation, based on markup by jar@mit.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have been looking forward to trying this out ever since I heard about pollen in one of MB's talks on typography. Unfortunately it requires racket 6.0 and Debian only has 5.3.6 in unstable and nothing in experimental.

According to the "package 6.0" bugreport it looks like things are not going to change very soon:

      As far as I understand, the build system and general organization of
      racket has been changed quite a lot for 6.0. I'm not sure how soon I'll
      find time and motivation to work on this, especially since I'm committed
      to using 5.3.6 at $WORK through the end of April.

I cant remember the last time I saw a self extracting shell archive installation and/or a shar without a gpg signature.

<comment><USER19> You can install Racket 6 directly from the Racket web-page: [http://download.racket-lang.org/](http://download.racket-lang.org/)

You can see the SHA1 hashes of the distribution here: [http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/snapshots/](http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/snapshots/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks cool and I'll take some time to read the docs in depth.

I wonder when Atwood's Law will kick in and we'll see more ambitious JavaScript-based tools like this (maybe with sweet.js macros to provide higher level constructs). JS already turns a document format into a program, but plain HTML+JS is not the best authoring format.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can I export it to PDF like in TeX?

</comment><comment><USER14> Just saw this too: [https://github.com/mbutterick/hyphenate](https://github.com/mbutterick/hyphenate) "Racket implementation of the Knuth–Liang hyphenation algorithm."

</comment><comment><USER6> I am a bit flummoxed about the lozenge character being used to signify markup. Is it convenient to input by keyboard? Seems like that would be necessary.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does it have mathematical typesetting like Tex?

<comment><USER2> You can use MathJax inside Pollen today. As far as building more integrated support for math typesetting, I'd like to do that, but what I'm not sure about yet are the ergonomics. Ideally, you'd just be able to drop TeX-style math expressions into the markup, indicating whether they're inline or block, and Pollen would do the right thing in terms of handling the rendering (based on whether the output is a web page vs. something else).

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you think about MathJax vs. pre-rendering formulae to images and using those, with the TeX input as the alt attribute? Oh, and using STIX or whatever as web font.

<comment><USER19> There is already a couple of packages for Racket that prerenders formulas in TeX into various graphic formats (they call LaTeX to the rendering). It is straightforward to use these from Pollen.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that it's straightforward, I'd like to hear about pros and cons I haven't found myself.

<comment><USER19> If you want an html-page that works offline, then MathJax is rather large. In that case it makes sense to generate pdfs or svgs containing the formulas. Otherwise using MathJax from a CDN is quite convenient. On mobile rendering a page with many formulas via MathJax is somewhat slow though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [How] Can we add keyboard navigation?

</comment><comment><USER24> Wonderful!

</comment><comment><USER25> there's also literate haskell. [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Literate_programming#Hask...](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Literate_programming#Haskell_and_literate_programming)</comment>


New Coke Didn't Fail. It Was Murdered - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/07/what-if-weve-all-been-wrong-about-what-killed-new-coke/ <comment><USER2> lol, Coke also murdered Crystal Pepsi by making Tab Clear to confuse shoppers... and it worked.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Clear#Post- discontinuation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Clear#Post-discontinuation)

<comment><USER3> I don't know how much of Crystal Pepsi's failure is attributable to Tab Clear, but as someone who's tasted Crystal Pepsi I have a hard time imagining it otherwise surviving.</comment></comment>


Google blocking login for some browsers? - <AUTHOR> Ive been trying to login to Google services on Firefox with a spoofed Chrome useragent, which I ironically use to prevent Google from degrading search and youtube.<p>It won't let me get past login screen. Just says to "try a different browser". Has Google started blocking browsers that pretend to be Chrome? Can anyone else replicate this? This is scary, because Google gives crappy versions of many of their sites to non chrome browsers. <comment><USER2> Google blocks browsers that are lying to it, yes. This is extremely common for bruteforcing and other abusive use cases, and you're just caught in the middle.</comment>


Show HN: Roll20 Enters Open Beta (Virtual tabletop for playing RPGs online) - <AUTHOR> http://roll20.net/?openbeta

<comment><AUTHOR> We're incredibly pleased to enter the next phase of our development, and the support of the Hacker News community during our Kickstarter campaign is a big reason why it's been possible.

For those more interested in the technical details, check out our Acknowledgements page[1].

[1] <http://help.roll20.net/acknowledgements/></comment>


Infections Tied to Lower Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/infections-tied-to-lower-rheumatoid-arthritis-risk

<comment><USER2> Too early to tell anything from this study and the article doesn't discuss any details.

But a lower incidence of autoimmune diseases have been linked to childhood infections. As in, the more pathogens you're exposed to earlier in life the more your immune system develops to be a healthy one. No sources off hand, but it makes sense if you consider that an autoimmune disease is a problem in the immune system.

I am guessing this would apply to all kinds of abnormal inflammatory responses in the body.</comment>


Ask HN: Should Communications Laundering be a crime? - <AUTHOR>

Should constitutionally 'free' speech include a provision or carve-out for anonymous communication? If communication can never be anonymous can it ever truly be private? If its never truly private can it ever be free? Shoud the 4th amendment be read to protect a right to private speech? <comment><USER2> _If communication can never be anonymous can it ever truly be private?_

I don't guess I understand your requirement that "free speech" and "anonymity" be linked. There's always at least two sides to this argument:

1) People have a lot to say as long as their are no repercussions for them

2) The value of what someone says is diminished if they cower in anonymity to say it

These are obviously quite different and very polarized. You/me/anyone isn't going to change this - most people are going to identify strongly with one of these and that's that. It's a Liberal/Conservative, Right-to-life/Right-to- choose type of argument IMO - full of emotion, lots of heated debate, and neither side could ever convince the other to switch sides.

For the non-USA folks here, the 4th amendment: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution)

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been asked and answered many ways over the last decade: large wealthy companies are protected, individual TOR users are not. If you doubt this, consider which group operates in the open and which pins its hopes on anonymity and not getting caught.

US supreme court finalizes gift of immunity to the telecom giants [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/10/supreme...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/10/supreme- court-telecoms-win-immunity)

Tor operator charged for child porn transmitted over his servers [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/tor-operator- char...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/tor-operator-charged-for- child-porn-transmitted-over-his-servers/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not just the 4th that alludes to privacy. The 3rd (quartering soldiers) infers a privacy of home, the 5th could be construed as privacy of personal information (specifically information that could be incriminating).

There's a ton more information here: [http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightof...](http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html)</comment>


Consent is not the way to handle data protection issues - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bozhobg/consent-is-not-the-way-to-handle-data-protection-issues-b167c04fba08 <comment><USER2> i never click on a consent box, i just block it. the whole childs argument "well i thought thats what you meant" or "i thought i was doing what you said to" is not something that should be allowed to sidestep the purpose of GDPR to be scuttled and obfusicated.</comment>