Freelancers Now Make Up 35% of U.S. Workforce - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2016/10/06/new-survey-freelance-economy-shows-rapid-growth/ <comment><USER2> A large chunk of the 'new freelancers' are actually people who would love to have a normal job but that have been kicked out from their former position and are now forced to take work that normally would have been done by salaried employees. No unemployment, no benefits, a more complicated financial situation and no security whatsoever when it comes to being guaranteed some income next month. Coupled with limited financial planning skills this is a disaster waiting to happen, and all that to make it even easier to get rid of people when the economy hiccups.

Many decades of progress lost in a few short years.

<comment><USER3> I don't want benefits from my employer, only a paycheck. I like being as disconnected as possible, really. Why do we feel the need to be so tightly coupled to our employers? Employers only started offering these benefits to avoid taxes from what I understand.

<comment><USER4> I agree with half of that idea. Benefits should be part of the social contract of society. You should get them as part of paying taxes.

Also, if you want to shift the tax burden for these benefits from employers to employees that should be reflected in a raise of both income and taxes for employees.

<comment><USER3> The social contract of society? Sounds religious to me and also a rationalization for State power. I only believe in real contracts that I actually sign and agree to. Moving benefits to the State just gives them a monopoly on those benefits and that doesn't seem like a good solution, either.

<comment><USER5> "Social contracts", or regulations, solve coordination and transactional frictions problems:

[http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problem...](http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problems)

[http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html#contract](http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html#contract)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a bit exaggerated. As the results deck [1] shows, fully 25% (13.5 million) of those listed as Freelancers are, in fact, Moonlighters. Moonlighters are explicitly described as having stable, full-time employment in addition to their freelancing gig(s). It also lists another 28% (15.2 million) as people with a traditional job who then additionally gain income from sources like Uber.

What this adds up to is over 50% of those surveyed do not rely on freelance work for all of their income. In fact, it is likely that freelance income only accounts for a minority fraction of the income earned by half the respondents.

1\. [http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in- america-2016...](http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in- america-2016/1) (slide 10)

</comment><comment><USER7> This survey seems to consider someone a freelancer if they "have engaged in supplemental, temporary, project or contract-based work, within the past 12 months". I'd love to see the actual questions asked (if someone has a link, please share), because it seems to me like the answers may vary widely based on the wording of the question. I work a full time job as a developer; but for example, a few months ago, I charged a former employer a trivial amount to fix a bug in a system that I was familiar with from when I worked there. My wife is a PhD student. But she took a few babysitting jobs over the summer before her program started. Does that make us both freelancers? We certainly don't consider ourselves to be, but depending on how the question is framed, we might be categorized as such.

<comment><USER8> This, unless it excludes people that also have a full-time job during that entire period. Despite being employed full-time, I have a non-trivial amount of income that comes from "freelance" work for reasons having little to do with trying to make a rent payment or similar. I know many people in the software business in the same position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> First off, their sample size (6,000) is pretty small to be generalizing to all Americans. Second, if 63% of these freelancers (which is pretty loosely defined in their survey) say they are freelancing voluntarily, that means 37% would rather have a normal full-time job. So 13% of total people in the "workforce" are forced to freelance and are likely underemployed as a result. That's not exactly indicative of the healthy job market the BLS likes to claim we have.

<comment><USER10> > their sample size (6,000) is pretty small to be generalizing to all > Americans

Not really. It has been a while since I took a statistics class, but a sample size of around 4,00 will give you a 99% confidence rating for the entire US population with a 2% margin of error [1]. Of course, you need to pick the participants correctly, but the size alone is more than enough to generalize to the entire population.

I would be more suspicious of the fact the survey was run by the Freelancers Union and Upwork, two organizations who directly benefit from more freelancers. So it's somewhat in their best interests to get a high result.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination) and [https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size- calculator/](https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/)

<comment><USER9> I'm aware of sample size determination, but minimum sample sizes typically assume random sampling over the target population. All their sampling methodology slide says is that it was an online survey of adults who have done some paid work in the last 12 months, and they did some weighting to match BLS stats. We have no idea how they found the participants or controlled for bias in the selection process.

<comment><USER11> > I'm aware of sample size determination, but minimum sample sizes typically > assume random sampling over the target population.

If you were aware of sample size determination, why would you suggest that a 6000 person sample is "pretty small"? It's pretty big for a national study, actually.

Whether or not the sample selection was properly done with attention paid to bias is difficult to say, but has little to do with the sample size since a non-randomly-selected sample is likely worthless whether it's 6000 or 60,000.

I have some significant concerns about this study, but sample size is not among them.

<comment><USER9> Specifically because their methodology for sample selection is entirely hidden. If you do a generic online survey with self-selected respondents then 6k is not very many people from which to be drawing sweeping conclusions.

Edit: also, I disagree that sample size is entirely worthless in non-random sample selection. If your sample size is a big enough percentage of the target population you are studying, you can draw some conclusions regardless of randomness. You just end up having to use absurdly large samples to get meaningful data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > many of these taxpayers do not have access to the traditional social safety > net, such as unemployment insurance, or access to health care they can > afford.

1) Doesn't the availability of freelance work act as a safety rope for people who lose their full-time work or find it hard to get due to schedule constraints and/or criminal convictions?

2) The ACA was supposed to make health care affordable for freelancers. Is it in fact failing to achieve that for most people? I remember feeling like the cost of procedures was on a silver plan too far uncertain and moved to the UK partly for that reason.

<comment><USER13> Healthcare is still incredibly expensive for freelancers. ACA hasn't lowered costs the way it was intended to, but it has required that people who previously went without insurance (because they couldn't afford it) purchase it.

Depending on your political persuasion, this is either because 1) ACA didn't go far enough and was de-fanged before birth or 2) it was a bad idea and we should have gone in a different direction.

<comment><USER14> Healthcare is getting more expensive faster than inflation. ACA did lower costs when you account for this long term trend. But, not if you compare costs now vs 5 years ago.

<comment><USER15> ACA addresses healthcare INSURANCE costs, not actual healthcare costs.

<comment><USER16> Since the probability that a person will need healthcare and thus utilize their health insurance, is basically 100%, increasing healthcare costs will necessitate increasing health insurance costs.

ACA was simply a way to get healthcare costs to be spread out among more people by forcing them into the insurance pool, which was more politically viable than the option where all taxpayers pay for each other's healthcare (taxpayer funded healthcare).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Freelancing in America: 2016 October 6, 2016 Edelman Intelligence > (Commissioned by Upwork and Freelancers Union)

That's all you need to know.

</comment><comment><USER5> For those hoping to cut through Forbes BS landing pages, autoplay video, PR crud, and the rest of it, the survey slide deck is the closest thing I've found to actual study meat with minimal spin:

[http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in- america-2016...](http://www.slideshare.net/upwork/freelancing-in- america-2016/1)

I'd recommend the article be replaced with this link.

For those questioning methodology, which is never mentioned in the slide deck with any specificity either, note that the study is conducted by a major PR firm for:

 _This study commissioned by: © COPYRIGHT 2016 DANIEL J EDELMAN INC. | 63 Upwork Upwork is the world's largest freelancing website._

No, no conflicts of interest at all here. Nothing to see folks. Keep moving right along. </p>

</comment><comment><USER18> Self employed / business ownership was always a large part of the US workforce, there was a consolidation period which is now in decline and things are getting back closer to their older state.

"Freelancer" is just a different name for that simply because you don't need to own a business front property to be a tradesman today for many professions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ever see what happens when you apply for a loan or credit card when you write freelance or self employed? A big red flag that says unsteady income!

If that much of the workforce was shut out of the credit markets that would suggest a big adjustment in spending patterns in this country.

<comment><USER20> There is no red flag. They ask for two years of tax returns in most cases.

In a lot of cases (most?) a freelancer is an FTE, just for a single person company.

<comment><USER21> I believe when I applied for a mortgage my income from sources other than my salary was discounted by about 1/3 by the mortgage broker as it wasn't considered "steady" despite being steady over the tax returns I handed over. Might depend from broker to broker, I don't know what the federal rules are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's also much easier to do freelancing work now than it was 5 years ago. With the rise in SaaS like Roninapp, Elance, Reamaze, Upwork, Basecamp etc that enable freelancers to be more productive, seek and get paid, plus the freelancer lifestyle of being able to work anywhere they want and being your own boss, it's not a surprise people are moving towards freelancing instead of a typical 9-5 job

<comment><USER23> The ACA is the largest reason I can contract. Without it I would be forced to be an employee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Might be helpful here is the actual results from upwork[0].

[0] [https://www.upwork.com/i/freelancing-in- america/2016/](https://www.upwork.com/i/freelancing-in-america/2016/)

Quite the quote on slide 7, surprised it didn't make the article or I missed it:

       Half of freelancers (50%) say there is no amount of money
       that would get them to take a traditional job and stop
       freelancing.

</comment><comment><USER25> I find it hard to believe that 35% of the US workforce is comprised of self- employed white-collar workers doing contract work.

I'd easily believe "35% of the workforce is self-employed", but _freelancers_? I guess I'm an old fuddy-duddy that likes words to actually mean something; get off my lawn &c.

<comment><USER26> The term freelancer does refer to a business owner, generally a sole proprietorship who does not have employees. As someone who has been in business for 30 years, the difference I keep seeing now is that many contemporary freelancers do not view thwnselves as ownwrs of a business. I have been noticing the uptick in that perception for the past 4 or 5 years. The one positive ourcome imho is that more people now understand the risk,challenges and struggle associated with running a business. But that will only truly happen when the roses realize they are roses and begin to think like one. Much of the conflict I see today is because we have people who think like employees working as sole proprietors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I freelance because I can't find traditional employment. Most of my income comes from Upwork - they take 20 percent of most gigs, a huge chunk by any standard. This article is just sponsored content - an ad piece for Upwork. I can't even imagine how much they are making by shaving 20 percent off of every gig... I'd go back to 9-5 any day for stability, benefits and a sane work schedule. In case you are wondering, I'm one of the higher priced users in my area of expertise so I have to be selective on projects I take. Even with some of the highest rates on Upwork I still struggle to make a decent living. Don't get me wrong, some days it feels awesome but others I feel like I'm putting in double time over the 9-5 guy.

</comment><comment><USER28> Freelancers aka people being ripped off and paid via 1099 without any health insurance

</comment><comment><USER29> Source: [https://www.upwork.com/press/2016/10/06/freelancing-in- ameri...](https://www.upwork.com/press/2016/10/06/freelancing-in- america-2016/)

> The freelance workforce grew from 53 million in 2014 to 55 million in 2016 > and currently represents 35% of the U.S. workforce. The freelance workforce > earned an estimated $1 trillion this past year, representing a significant > share of the U.S. economy.

</comment><comment><USER30> After working in agencies/consultancies, I realized I could cut out the middle man and let clients use me directly. So, yes, I freelance or consult because I found a need.

</comment><comment><USER31> Can someone provide an archive.org or some sort of mirror for me to read the article? Forbes now require you to disable ad blockers, but then auto play video with audio :(

<comment><USER32> [http://archive.is/jhVvS](http://archive.is/jhVvS)

<comment><USER31> Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I doubt these no.s are really true. I feel these numbers are extrapolated after a survey over a small no. of people in a locality.

H1b workers are not allowed to do freelancing. They need to have a regular office job. Major chunk of technology workers are people working on H1b visas. if not H1b, there are many people who are waiting for green-card approval. This takes a long time and I don't think they can work as freelancers as well.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not surprised. I freelanced for something like 5 years before finally getting a 9–5 job (not that it pays much more but it's a stable income).

</comment><comment><USER35> > according to the "Freelancing in America: 2016″ survey released this morning > by the Freelancers Union, based in New York City, and the giant freelancing > platform Upwork, headquartered in Silicon Valley

Well I'm sure these parties have nothing to gain by releasing junk data.

</comment><comment><USER36> Warning: Autoplay video.

</comment><comment><USER37> Read that as freeloaders.

</comment><comment><USER38> So the unemployment rate is actually higher than we thought...</comment>


Sort a list on your own criteria with Python - <AUTHOR> http://pythonicprose.blogspot.com/2009/09/python-custom-sort-list.html

<comment><USER2> I didn't notice until after I commented on the site that the post is from 2009.

His call to sort reads like this:

alist.sort(mysort)

The ordering function doesn't sort, it orders. I would have called the ordering function myorder, so the call would read:

alist.sort(myorder)

More specifically, his ordering function orders by length, so even better would be:

alist.sort(orderByLength)</comment>


Ask HN: What do developers do with web mockups? - <AUTHOR>

I have a guess. They extract the assets and use it as a guide, but pretty much make the html/css from scratch. Am I correct in my assumption? <comment><USER2> It depends on the designer.

1) Preferably, all I have to do is say "That looks nice, let me know if you need the application to generate any dynamic elements." A good web designer will be able to apply their design skills to the site. They'll work with me, and I'll make sure that the system is generating whatever content they need to style. It's the best way of ensuring that the end result matches the designer's vision.

If that's not an option,

2) Ask the designer to provide all of the individual images that they used to create the mockup, along with relevant CSS and HTML. Some designers can't apply their design ideas to dynamic websites yet, but can create a static page of their design. We take that as a guide, break it apart, and then put it back together bit by bit in such a way that it works with the dynamic system. This is, of course, less efficient.

And if that's not an option,

3) Curse and waste time slicing apart the mockup to try to extract the same images that the designer pasted together to create the mockup. Then do all the work of converting the mockup to a web design and applying the design ourselves. This is least efficient and has the greatest chance of being not quite what the designer intended due to the increased likelihood of miscommunication, having programmers doing design work, and because the designer often knew nothing about the underlying system that they were designing for (otherwise we'd probably be in one of the previous cases).

Also, as mentioned by hnruss, we discover the implied functionality, find out the requirements, and build code to support it. Then we add in all the missing pieces that typically get left out of mockups, such as error messages, or content that only shows for users with certain roles or in certain conditions. (Ever wondered why error and confirmation messages are often poorly designed?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the breakdown. Very informative. I think I'd prefer the 2nd route given the option unless I knew the designer rights good front end code. And that's an interesting point about error messages lol. Maybe they should be mocked up more often

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In most cases you're correct. It's the worst way to design a website, though. Sure it looks great in photoshop but it's an absolute nightmare trying to translate layer styles and giant background images to HTML/CSS, so the end result is rarely looks the same as the PSD.

There's an extension called CSS Hat[1] which aims to give you matching CSS for photoshop layer styles, though I've found the result is rarely the same same. Getting assets out of photoshop is also a horrible process, thankfully enigma64[2] and slicy[3] help with that.

Oh and if someone was to send me a Sketch[4] file instead of a PSD I'd charge 50% less, it's so much nicer to work with. Hasn't happened yet, though :/

[1] <http://csshat.com/>

[2] <http://getenigma64.com/>

[3] <http://macrabbit.com/slicy/>

[4] <http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Enigma64 looks cool! Thanks for the links/sources. Very helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lets say I am given a Fireworks .png or a .psd, the first thing I do is open it, flatten the image and open it alongside my browser for easy viewing.

Then I look carefully for each "asset" I require, normally images unique to the page, things I can't easily create with CSS, etc.

After this I grab my lovely grid and start to plan out where each element will fit, crafting the HTML as I go along. I could use some kind of generator but it will never be as good as hand made HTML, it is always clunky and overly complicated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. When you mean "grab my lovely grid", do you mean just view the grid in Fireworks to see how many pixels apart everything is and code to match it? If so, I'm pretty suprised the mockups are "pixel perfect". Seems like mockups are a lot of work. That's done twice.

<comment><USER4> No - at my agency the design team works to a 12 column grid which makes responsive design a bunch easier, by "my grid" I mean our pre-built HTML/CSS in house framework for working with this Grid style. It's loosely based on Eddie Machado's Bones framework [1] but integrates well with Magento too. [1] <http://themble.com/bones/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your assumption is basically correct, except a lot depends on what content in the mockup is meant to be dynamic. Sometimes a mockup can imply certain features which then must be implemented in order to fully meet the design. It is those features which take up the majority of the development time.</comment>


Analysis of top 10 eCommerce websites (by conversion rate)  - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/top-ecommerce-websites-conversion-rate/

<comment><USER2> I don't think this analysis the right one to have. You can't benchmark the conversion rates of ecommerce sites in completely different industries: the customers and their behavior is just too different. The list has a grocery store, a plus-size women's clothing shop, pet medication, and even office supplies. You just can't compare the conversion rates of such diverse customers directly.

A more accurate benchmark is within industry: take a website and compare its conversion rate to its competitors'. _That_ is interesting, and even then comes with a big caveat in that you need to be careful with the market segment. For example, Lamborghini's conversion rate is probably very different to, say, Toyota's.

<comment><AUTHOR> All these websites are eCommerce sites. If these sites consisted of B2C, B2B, brands, music groups, etc.then I would have considered the comparison an unfair one. But here the conversion goal for all these sites is same: a sale.</comment></comment>


Twitter acquires employee feedback tool Peer - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/08/twitter-acquires-employee-feedback-tool-peer/ <comment><USER2> I guess before they fade away they want to know what their employees are thinking?

Just kidding, we shall see a return of Twitter to growth in 2016 after Sanders gets elected President.</comment>


Threads Basics - <AUTHOR> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/c++mm/threadsintro.html <comment><USER2> This might be a useful document to present to potential customers who ask "You want to charge us _how_ much for fixing our multithreaded code?"

I've found myself drawn to the Java platform for platform-independent multithreading. Or any multithreading, actually, and I dislike Java-the- language with a vengeance.

These days I'm using Clojure, although I haven't yet used its STM in performance-critical situations. I'll have to see how that goes, but the functional programming model goes a long way to encourage doing it right: even if I did end up tossing out the STM and rolling my own atomic + lock-based system for an app that's limited by the STM's performance, it isolates the synchronisation issue logically.

</comment><comment><USER3> People wonder why multithreaded development is so difficult. I have to use external libraries just to get threading working in different OSes.

<comment><USER4> This is accidental complexity that is solvable by standardization. The essential complexity is in managing program state.</comment></comment>


Why Latin? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.classicalacademicpress.com/images/samples/why_latin.pdf

<comment><USER2> I'd like to suggest that training in Latin improves the precision of one's writing. However, when one reads "In the 1700's the University of Georgia, like many of its contemporaries,required of incoming freshmen ...", you do wonder; the University of Georgia did not graduate its first class until 1804. And in general the prose could use a good tidying.

That said, I'm all in favor of Latin in the schools.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm European, and my mothertongue is strictly derivated from Latin. In the 70% of High School Diplomas, Latin is really important subject, because really help the students in the total understanding of every word in their mother tongue. Also, we study latin because a lot of authors use latin for wrote their "essay", like Cicerone, Cesare, etc.. In some Classic HS Diploma, the students also study the ancient Greek.

Latin is really good for understand our roots, our opera, our story, our tongue, and is a really good exercise for keep the mind elastic.

P.S1: I'm speaking about Europe.

P.S2: I have an HS Diploma in Computer Science, so I never study latin :P (Although I attend a little 3months courses, when I was a kid :P)

</comment><comment><USER4> I found that in studying Latin (and Ancient Greek at the same time) that they really helped improve my English (I'm Irish, so it's my native tongue). There really is a benefit to learning such a language, its structures and grammatical intricacies as it does give you a better understanding of your own language.</comment>


America's 1% hasn't had this much wealth since just before the Great Depression - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-been-almost-a-100-years-since-the-americas-1-had-so-much-wealth-2019-02-11 <comment><USER2> 2020 is allegedly going to see the same fate. But with a minor difference. Now we will have billionaires rising in crypto domain. [https://koinpost.com/bitcoin-may-reach-50000-by-2021-says- ch...](https://koinpost.com/bitcoin-may-reach-50000-by-2021-says-chinese- bitcoin-billionaire/)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's already plenty of billionaires land grabbing in crypto through hedge funds. As far as I can tell that started around 2017 and doubled down in 2018.</comment></comment>


One programmer broke the internet by deleting a tiny piece of code (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/646467/how-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code/ <comment><USER2> ('chchchchchch' \+ str).slice(-len)?

But yes, maybe you want to pad a lot of characters. That is why I always define a constant in the global scope.

const chchchchchchchch[...]chchchchchchchchchchchchch = chchchchchchchchchchch[...]chchchchchchchchchchc

Remember to name your labels in a way that users know what they represent.

I feel there is some truth to the laziness argument.</comment>


The New Golden Age of Renting? - <AUTHOR> http://worldaccordingtocarp.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/the-new-golden-age-of-renting/ <comment><USER2> Any europeans here on HN? I had a german professor last semester tell me many schools/teachers don't require students to buy specific textbooks and do homework problem sets in Europe. They just expect their students to understand the material, turn in good labs or essays, and pass the tests. He was obviously criticizing that american college students are spoon-fed their education.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I live in the UK and had no need to buy a single text book throughout my degree (Computer Science). There were usually a few equivalent suggested books for each module. We were free to purchase or borrow any of them or use other sources such as online material.

I bought half a dozen books because they were interesting beyond the course itself, mostly just used the library and online material though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree that renting is incredibly popular, but I worry about Chegg's success. I see more and more students (I'm a Ph.D. student in Computer Science) just "obtain" a PDF of the book and skip buying new/used or trying a rental service. The ones who still want dead tree buy copies from India for significantly less than the rental price, with the only difference some text on the cover.

<comment><USER5> What's wrong with those things? Obviously books costing $70 or $100 are not priced to target people subsisting on ramen noodles. And it's only the current debt-madness which has lead people to think those prices are anywhere near sane.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.datc.edu/files/datc/departments/bookstore/textboo...](http://www.datc.edu/files/datc/departments/bookstore/textbook$.pdf)

Like most things, no one is getting terribly rich off textbooks. What bothered me most in college was when they would release a new edition and refuse to buy back the old one.Even when the difference between the versions wasn't noticeable.

<comment><USER7> > no one is getting terribly rich off textbooks

That dollar in the PDF is sliced so many different ways and spread apart that you don't really notice that the publisher takes 64.6% of it. Of an estimated 6 billion dollar market. I'd say _someone_is getting rich off textbooks, but it ain't the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Zipcar just filed for an IPO to payoff their debt. They've got a lot of it.

I also don't see how Chegg deals with some of the things universities/text book publishers have done to handicap the used textbook market - i.e. having a new edition every year, with new required problems in the classes.

<comment><USER9> Negotiating power, and the ability to shift books around the country. They can demand discounts because they are making bulk orders larger than a single bookstore and textbooks refresh at 3-year intervals for the most part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At least one barrier to the general brand of renting is that it has long been associated with finance related ripoffs. I think brands like Netflix, etc. have worked to make their offerings appear as services rather then renting.

</comment><comment><USER11> Renting in general (cars, housing) is one of those things that people want other people to do, but not for themselves, at least not on things they consider important. For example, if you rent textbooks, you give them up at the end of the semester... but a lot of people want to have them around for years later.

An example is that, following the housing crisis, people quipped about how all "those people" who were taking out bad mortgages should have been renting instead of buying their homes, and there are a lot of arguments for why renting is superior to ownership for real estate (repairs done by professionals, more mobility, etc). But few people actually want to live by this. They'll gladly rent in their 20s when they're starting out, but they want to own the house they raise their children in.

<comment><USER12> _They'll gladly rent in their 20s when they're starting out, but they want to own the house they raise their children in._

I'm not sure that's really true. The rental and purchase markets tend to offer different products in most places. So while you can find studio rentals easily, you can't find rentals for a family of 5 nearly as easily.

Also, in the US, we tend to only see short term lease options for residential renting (say 12 months). But as you get older and get children, the cost of moving begins to rise. You've got a lot more stuff and your friends are older and busier and less inclined to blow a day helping schlep your stuff. So I think part of what older married people with children are buying when they buy a house is freedom from having to worry that they'll suddenly have to scramble to find a new place and then actually move.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to sell a small Internet business? - <AUTHOR>

I developed in a small internet business for some friends that makes about $1,000/month at the moment by connecting performers (artist, musicians, educators, etc.) with libraries and schools for their child and adult programs. The founders are done (for non-business reasons) and the business needs to be sold. However, the price is too low for a business broker. What is the best way to sell a small business like this? If you need more info on the business it is unboundbooking.com <comment><USER2> Flippa: [https://flippa.com/](https://flippa.com/)

Popular for sites like this, as long as it doesn't take much skill/knowledge/connections to administer.

<comment><USER3> I'd also try Flippa. Don't be scared off by the high number of low-value listings; there are plenty of people there willing and able to buy real working businesses with a history of revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Craigslist...</comment>


Environmental stress contributes to obesity and diabetes (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us//issue/61/coordinates/why-living-in-a-poor-neighborhood-can-change-your-biology-rp <comment><USER2> I can't help but roll my eyes at "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" for two reasons.

First prey species are actually pretty damn paranoid. Horses spook easily for a reason. Even predators who are also preyed upon show pretty heavy signs of anxiety and have been seen freaking out at nothing because it /might/ be a threat. Tiger Oscar Cichlids are marked as an aggressive fish in aquariums and yet will scare themselves into fleeing and hiding from the sounds of their /own splashes/ when eating. They have been a staple for millennia so clearly selective pressure of man and perhaps other fishers has driven them craven. It takes say isolation and no threats like say island gigantism to have that sort of "nothing preys on me" chill attitude. Step one of a creature becoming tame is not fleeing from, hiding from, or threatening humans on detection.

Second ulcers are bacterial in cause (although stress certainly doesn't help) and the selection bias involved. It is like saying the pioneer mothers and children were all healthy - just ignore the dozens of dead wives and children.

I don't doubt that stress can create downward spirals but it would be interesting to see how comparable other aspects were. If people in lower stress environments stress eat less that could give better results even if absorption doesn't play a significant role.

Or the reverse and you sifted through diet examples and found those who say had a personal chef who would prepare healthier better tasting food on demand had similiar or worse rates of diabetes and obesity compared to those those in lower stress environments who ate the same way they did before.

</comment><comment><USER3> You don't have to be kept in an actual cage to feel trapped. This is one of the themes in Johann Hari's book about the drug war, _Chasing the Scream_. [0]

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19122637)

The economic predicaments of the underclass would be easy to fix, if the politicians cared to do so. But the political debate is all about taxing and not-taxing. The talking heads ignore other strategies to fix the underclass' actual problems.

Ending the drug war is the most important thing we can do to foster more equitable economic conditions for all.

</comment><comment><USER4> From 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856476)</comment>


Robot Could Make Pesticides Obsolete - <AUTHOR> https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/nation-world/this-robot-could-make-pesticides-obsolete/67-b27bace9-e178-461a-9231-3063797f4176 <comment><AUTHOR> The headline is a bit confusing. What the robot would do is make fungicides obsolete but that in itself is really a pretty amazing development.

I don't know if there are any downsides but there are a lot of fruit and vegetables that this could conceivably eliminate in some cases multiple fungicide applications.</comment>


'Benson,' 'Star Trek' actor René Auberjonois has died at 79 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/benson-star-trek-actor-rene-auberjonois-has-died-at-79/2019/12/08/db319e26-1a05-11ea-977a-15a6710ed6da_story.html <comment><USER2> So long, Odo. You gave me some of the best times of my life watching DS9. Thank you forever for seeding my love of space, and belief in the future of humanity.

Here's to you, old friend.

</comment><comment><USER3> He was also frequently a short story reader on Public Radio's "Selected Shorts" program. I'll definitely miss his unforgettable voice there.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll forever remember his delightful performance as the snooty Clayton Endicott III, the foil to the main character, Benson, of the '80s sitcom of the same name. The byplay between him and Robert Guilluame as Benson never failed to get a chuckle.

Farewell, Mr. Auberjonois, and thanks for all the laughs.</comment>


Lime and Bird are growing rapidly - <AUTHOR> https://www.futureengine.org/articles/scooters-are-worth-10b <comment><USER2> I have spent a lot of time observing this phenomenon in Venice; here are some of my thoughts.

What these scooters have done for SM-Venice is, they've gotten people to park farther away and spend less time in cars. Especially the tourists. What does that mean for locals? Well, for one, it means that the _nuisance_ of having to drive slow past people on these things, rather than the _nightmare_ of sitting in standstill traffic if all of those people were in cars instead. Summer traffic in Venice was definitely helped by the scooters, as they replaced a bit of car traffic. These "short haul mobility vehicles" make it much easier for larger groups of people to engage in a large, spread-out, mostly- pedestrian area.

They're completely dorky and I'll never be caught dead on one... but, at the same time, there's serious benefits to us all that these things exist. There's definitely problems (not sure how I feel about seeing them in piles outside of public schools, such as Venice High, and there's something very Idiocracy- esque in watching them being used by people who would benefit from walking), but I find it to be an overall net-positive.

I'm interested to see where the next form factors go, and how these things factor into future urban planning decisions. Especially within geofenced environments where you don't have to pay for them, they just exist. There's a lot to ponder here.

<comment><USER3> >>They're completely dorky and I'll never be caught dead on one

Sorry for asking, but are you thirteen?

<comment><USER4> I'm in my early thirties and feel the same way.

A lot of people do. Looking at something and saying "I don't think I would do that because it would be very embarrassing" is a thing adults can do.

<comment><USER3> >> Looking at something and saying "I don't think I would do that because it would be very embarrassing" is a thing adults can do.

And its exactly a moment when one should stop for a second and ask him/herself a question "why would I feel so"?

Wearing glasses, reading books, dyeing hair with some tint, preferring pieces of clothing of some fashion or other, riding a personal vehicle that is supposedly beneficial for ecology (at least at the level of common knowledge) AND evidently improving quality of urban life - all of that shouldn't be embarrassing, or "completely" "socially inept"[1]. Wearing dirty clothes when you have the means not to or not looking after your hygiene should (and I can't really recall anything else at a moment's notice).

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dorky](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dorky)

<comment><USER5> Dyeing hair and choosing clothes are a matter of style preference, so why can't people think they don't like their style appearance on a scooter?

I agree it's weird but clearly as we see for cars, choice of vehicle is also driven by style preferences. E.g most people wouldn't buy a pink car with green polka dots.

<comment><USER3> >>why can't people think they don't like their style appearance on a scooter

They certainly can. Calling something with a particular epithet means it bears this particular quality, which is not subjective. The opinion is, but the characterization is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in Baltimore and these things have been awesome. Over the summer and early fall, I used them a lot for trips that were between 3-15 blocks. They were usually less than half the price of a Lyft, were fun to drive, don't directly use fossil fuels and were usually available (in one app or the other) within a block or two of my house. I used them to meet friends for brunch, to pick up my car from getting worked on, to go to bars near my house and to go vote in November.

Now that it's gotten colder, I think my range for using them will contract to something like 2-8 blocks, but I don't think I'll cut off using them entirely. I don't notice them being "piled up" anywhere (except for at a street festival, but lots of people were picking them up too), and I don't think I've ever run into a situation where my path was actively blocked by one.

Baltimore used to have a bike share, but I've heard it's being shut down and even when it was up they had a hard time keeping bikes in all the stalls.

<comment><USER7> "don't directly use fossil fuels"

Looks like Maryland uses a significant amount of coal to power their grid, so is this even a good thing?

<comment><USER8> Yes, because in the long term electric vehicles consolidate fossil fuel emissions to a single large point (coal in this case) which can be eventually replaced with a clean energy source (i.e. solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc.).

<comment><USER9> Also coal powerplants run much more efficiently than a car engine.

<comment><USER10> Internal combustion engines operate at about 25% efficiency (per this paper, page 54)

[https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/5764...](https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/57640/mpapke_1.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y)

Coal power plants operate in the range of 34% efficiency

[https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=107&t=3](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=107&t=3)

[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_02.html](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_02.html)

<comment><USER11> I wonder how much of that gets offset by transmission loss and the scooter's charging/discharging inefficiencies?

Not that that would be a reason not to use scooters in and off itself, since they're be posed to take advantage of grids that will hopefully become more and more renewable over time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These scooters and scooter companies seem pretty divisive, especially on HN. I understand they're operating in grey areas, I guess kinda like Uber before them, but they are causing (I think) positive disruption.

I personally love these scooters. I'm living in Australia now where we don't have them. But last month I took a 3 week road trip from LAX to DC and back so I could hit cities I hadn't been to before. And in many of these cities, I used a Bird to get around. These scooters opened up so much more of these cities for me than I could have seen if I just walked every where.

I think they provide real value to a city, for tourists to get around, and for citizens for the last mile and to complement other forms of transport. We just need for these scooter companies to be less like Uber and actually work with the cities to come up with reasonable regulations (in particular insisting on all riders wearing helmets)

<comment><USER13> I think the big issue that most people have with them is the large externality of having scooters littered around the sidewalk.

In a lot of places in West Los Angeles, you are having to step around them constantly if you walk down the street. People literally just drop them in the middle of the sidewalk, because there is no incentive for them to not do that.

This means that everyone who doesn't use the service has to suffer.

<comment><USER14> Curious thought: Disincentivize bad behavior. Scooter companies know who the last user was, so they could develop techniques to apply "parking violations." Whether that means GPS-enabled (sufficient resolution?) or crowdsourced (next rider taking picture) doesn't really matter. But this is like the automobile equivalent of a parking ticket.

<comment><USER15> What incentive would Lime and Bird have to do this? I think that'd have to come about through policy being passed in enough cities.

<comment><USER13> Right, this is what makes it an externality... Lime and Bird don't care about it, because the cost is born by people who are not customers. They have no incentive to fix the problem unless forced to.

<comment><USER14> I assume they care about it massively, lest cities drop the hammer a la SF.

Also: it's a fun exercise to go back in time and look at all the laws sponsored by automotive & oil companies to create today's car culture (case in point: streetcars). I assure you: there was a lot of protectionism & it wasn't always about the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Facts are facts but to me this always seemed like the dumbest idea. I thought it was a dumb idea before the City Bike program was introduced here in NYC then I thought so many people would get hurt with the way Cabbies drive out here.

Fast forward a few years and the program is a huge success here in NYC, there was some accidents but no where near what I thought there would be. People obviously love Biking and I was completely wrong.

What's even crazier now I think with the technology and access becoming even easier this has the power to completely transform cities. Obviously people love this and politicians that don't support it will be voted out, it's looking more and more like there could be entire roads dedicated to bikes and scooters as this becomes more popular.

Mayor Bloomberg wanted to limit the amount of cars in the city and put a toll on any any cars going below 95th street in Manhattan, people rebelled back then but if something like this had been in place the Cabbies and Car owners would be out of luck.

<comment><USER17> It's hard to grasp for older generations because everyone had to drive. But less and less people have a driver license nowadays in large cities.

<comment><USER18> Cars are fundamentally, egregiously inefficient. Most of their use comes from one person going to one place using one of their 5+ seats, yet automakers have to design an engine powerful enough to move 5+ people, and the 3000lbs of the car. A scooter only needs enough energy to move one person plus the 15lbs of the scooter. Older generations are blind to this fact because their entire life they've been sold the idea that they need to buy and spend money moving and storing a 3000lb hunk of metal with them every single day. Imagine paying money to go somewhere, knowing full well the major percent of that money is going to move a ton+ of material, and only a fraction is spent to move your physical body; you'd be outraged, but that is what a car is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My guess is that Lime and Bird's latest investors don't actually believe in these insane valuations. Instead, they see these companies as a safe place to park their money due to the limited downside provided by liquid preference terms.

<comment><USER20> I discovered scooters recently and have rode them in three major cities during the past month. I have to say it is the most genius consumer tech product I've seen in a long time. I instantly felt a sense of "wow" after riding the first one (bird). The entire experience is so simple, so elegant (ui/ux), cheap, efficient, and most importantly FUN. I looked up bird and lime to discover they'd each received over 400M in funding and it makes perfect sense to me. This is a disruptive technology that's going to see major adoption in every city across the entire planet. You have to ride one to understand, especially in an urban, downtown, waterfront or metro type area. They're going to easily cut into bikeshare and short-trip rideshare services. Take a ride and you'll see, #scootlife!

Also worth noting, none of the technology is itself "new", but rather bird & lime particularly have packaged existing technologies together to make a product with all the qualities mentioned above. Innovation is usually just a twist on something that's already out there.

<comment><USER21> I liked it so much, I bought my own for my commute. It kept me from buying a second car, and ultimately saving 25 miles of driving each day.

<comment><USER22> Holy crap. You ride on one of those standing electric scooters for at least 37 minutes each way?! (20 mph) That's a long time... I could understanding biking but not stand up scootering.

<comment><USER23> It's just standing for 37 minutes. I suppose you engage your core a bit here and there, but it really isn't an exercise like biking would be.

I love these scooters BTW, super convenient!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In West Oakland I see many people using the Ford Bikes, but yet even more people using the Lime scooters. Kids, adults, techies, non-techies.

I think they look kind of dorky, and some end up on the sidewalk and dumped in Lake Merritt. On the other hand, it appears that people are using these scooters a lot, possibly instead of driving. That seems like a positive outcome to me.

<comment><USER17> I don't understand why people say that they look dorky. Didn't you have this scooter trend like 20 years ago in the US? We sure had that in Europe.

<comment><USER25> Currently there is a huge trend at the Chaos Communication Congress because the new buildings are so big and the distances far. Last year many places were actually sold out. It's even better if you outfit it with some LEDs and stuff! (So if anyone is going this year - wheels recommended.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really liked riding them until I realized how expensive they were. When you use them everyday, it adds up quick. Hundreds of dollars a month. I now bike everywhere instead and wonder why others don't.

I could see using them when traveling, where I wouldn't have my bike with me.

</comment><comment><USER27> Stand up scooters feel so unstable. Why not just add a seat and allow a seated scooter that's foldable. The problem with last mile transport is that the laws in many countries need electric bikes to have peddles and peddle assistance. Just let people have a certain power and max speed and they will drop the car and replace it with a powered scooter. Aka, China.

<comment><USER28> *Pedal.

Some EU countries have already announced that scooters will soon be treated similarly to e-bikes, i.e. max 250W and 25km/h for the ones that don't need registration and plates.

While more expensive and less portable, a bike is a lot safer and more versatile.

<comment><USER21> A bike is safer? Definitely need some citations for that. Versatility is debatable. I can fold my scooter and put it under my table at a restaurant or toss it into the trunk of a car. Scooters are also extremely low maintenance: no flat tires, no need to carry a pump or patch kit.

<comment><USER9> The bigger wheels give it much better stability. Hitting a hole or rock on a bike and a scooter is a very different experience. lots of the scooter steering setups make it very easy for the front wheel to suddenly turn 90 degrees and send you flying

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Full disclosure, I'm anti scooter. People drive them on the sidewalks, leave them in front of my front door, and I genuinely hope that both of these companies, specifically, fail.

With that disclosure, was anyone else horrified that the lifespan of these scooters is only 3 months?

Are they really removing enough vehicle trips to make these a net positive from an environmental standpoint?

<comment><USER30> > People drive them on the sidewalks

Where else would they drive them? On the road? They would just contribute to the thousands of cyclists that die or are seriously injured every year.

If you are suggesting that every electric vehicle be banned because sidewalks are for pedestrians only then I disagree. Streets are for cars only, don't let these fake bike lanes fool you.

<comment><USER29> Vehicles that move faster than pedestrians should go on the road, like bicycles do. As a bike rider, its a vastly superior option that going on the sidewalk.

<comment><USER31> In more developed areas, there are three options. Fast (main road for cars), medium (bike lane) and slow (sidewalks). I'd imagine birds would ride in the medium and slow lanes. They go up to 15 MPH, which is the run-speed of a human. Should runners be on the bike lane? I don't think so.

<comment><USER32> > In more developed areas, there are three options. Fast (main road for cars), > medium (bike lane) and slow (sidewalks). I'd imagine birds would ride in the > medium and slow lanes.

And to be clear 'bike lane' != road shoulder with a bike painted on it. A bike lane should have at least some amount of separation from the road in the same way that sidewalks are separated.

I'm hopeful that the popularity of scooters speeds up the adoption of medium speed lanes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Anybody miss the days when companies were named something that was at least tangentially related to their function?

<comment><USER13> When was this?

You might just be thinking it used to be that way because when a new company/product becomes successful, their brand name becomes the term for the thing.

Kleenex

Xerox

Google

Asprin

Hoover

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

<comment><USER34> Xerox's name was meant to evoke its business:

> Looking for a term to differentiate its new system, Haloid coined the term > xerography from two Greek roots meaning "dry writing".

"Aspirin" was named for the Spiraea ulmaria plant used in its synthesis.

"Borax" is sodium borate.

"Kleenex" helps keep your nose and face and surroundings clean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have friends in London and commuter towns buying scooters for their own use- despite knowing that they can't ride them legally. There are none for hire here. When are they arriving?

<comment><USER36> Given C. London pavements are incredibly narrow, inexorably busy and often uneven, people on these things are a nightmare. Even non electric ones are a nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's strange that even though SF approved 2 scooter companies to operate that I feel like I rarely see anyone actually use vs what I saw when Bird/Lime were here.

<comment><USER38> SF didn't want to make BART feel bad by providing actual competent transit options, so we got the joke that is Skip/Scoot.

Seriously, this city has convinced me democracy doesn't work. Maybe China should regime change us.

Edit: stingrae points lack of availability may be the City's fault, rather than Skip/Scoot. _No sé_ \-- but for sure the city's intervention took a useful, environmentally friendly transit option and made it non-useful.

<comment><USER39> Out of curiosity, what is your issue with skip/scoot? All the services seems to be similar to me?

<comment><USER38> I haven't tried 'em in a bit, so to be fair, maybe it's better now.

But last time I tried:

Scooter coverage was too sparse to be useful.

If you did try to chase down one of the sparsely scattered scooters, usually it would be missing. No way to make it play a sound to help locate it, no way to report it was missing.

Gave up and just kept skating everywhere. Whereas I found Lime and Bird to be a practical alternative mode of transport, before they got kicked out.

<comment><USER39> That sounds like a different issue. SF limited the number of scooters each company, Skip/Scoot, could deploy. When Bird and Lime launched in the city they had no limits, so they flooded it with scooters.

<comment><USER38> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interestingly I just noticed Lime-branded Fiat cars in Seattle for the first time yesterday. Looks like they're taking on Car2Go and ReachNow.

Looks like it launched a couple weeks ago: [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/transportation/bik...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/transportation/bike-share-company-lime-launching-car-rental-service-in- seattle/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I really want to try this. I think easy car sharing could be huge and it'd be amazing to be rid of the hassle that is car ownership (monthly parking, insurance, maintenance, etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am a frequent user of lime bikes. I think they have a few drawbacks that make them difficult to use all the time however. Mostly:

1\. Consistently Well Working Bikes can be hard to find

2\. I often use these to get from the residential part of Seattle to the urban parts for date night... it can be very difficult to find two of these near each other.

3\. They really need some sort of limited reservation system. This would help mitigate the difficulty of getting multiple bikes.

<comment><USER11> Bird is actually rolling out reservations, although I think it's more intended for daily users (they say they'll drop a scooter off on your doorstep every morning and only you can unlock it).

<comment><USER42> At that point why not just buy a scooter?

<comment><USER43> Because then you have to worry about it getting stolen, and you have to remember to charge it. Part of the magic of the birds is that when you're done, you just get off of it and park. 0 anxiety about somebody stealing it.

<comment><USER25> Are they too big to just fold and store under your desk or whatever? They don't look that big in the pictures.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This article says these scooters make $16/day in revenue?! Where are they making that kind of money? The scooters in my city just sit in the same place for DAYS without moving... I don't buy those numbers at all...

<comment><USER13> Bit of a selection bias... you are much more likely to notice the ones that are in the same spot day after day, and not notice the once that are in constant use.

This is the average revenue, I am sure there are some that generate a lot less/barely any.

<comment><USER44> Even with some of them being in constant use, the math still doesn't work out.

<comment><USER45> Pricing for Bird looks like $1 to unlock and $.15 / minute to ride. I think it's not unrealistic to see utilization of at least 5 rides per day for $5 of revenue + average of 15 minutes per ride for the other $11 to get to $16 / day.

It's likely that there's a few that are much more highly utilized to balance out those that are not utilized at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The problem with these scooters is that they are great as a user, but terrible for everyone else. They are a lot of fun to ride, but if you're just a regular old pedestrian they are a nightmare, people park them in the streets and pass by you way to quickly and closely on the sidewalk.

But riding them in the street pisses off drivers and is pretty dangerous, at least that's how it shakes out in Cincinnati.

<comment><USER47> _" The problem with these scooters is that they are great as a user, but terrible for everyone else."_

So, like cars?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I finally had a chance to try one out recently and was very frustrated with the experience. After attempting to use several shown on Bird's map I gave up. Some were broken, some were almost certainly being hoarded inside of apartment buildings, and some simply could not be found anywhere near the map marker. The experience was a huge letdown after being tempted to try the product so many times.

</comment><comment><USER49> I loved using Lime, but I can see cities banning it like SF. You aren't supposed to ride the scooter on side walks and many people do it. People just leave it in random places and I know some cities don't like this.

<comment><USER50> Someone somehow managed to abandon one on the roof (7th floor) of my work building. Getting the damn thing down to the ground floor and out of the building was not a lot of fun. Moving it locked up the wheels and triggered the alarm. It even announced through a speaker that it was "calling the police." With some help I was able to get it down, moved into a service elevator, and escorted out of the building. The stupid thing would not shut up. Someone must have come by and collected it because it was gone by the end of the day.

Pain in the ass, and the company, in typical Silicon Valley fashion, didn't have any information on their website about how to contact a real person or to report an abandoned scooter. If this is going to be a regular thing, where I have to be an impromptu scooter wrangler, I want my cut :)

<comment><USER51> Bird is different. They have real people answering the phone or email all the time.

Disclaimer: I work for Bird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> DC had a scooter death a couple months ago marking among the first in the country: [https://dc.curbed.com/2018/9/26/17905378/electric-scooter- de...](https://dc.curbed.com/2018/9/26/17905378/electric-scooter-death)

The wheels are way too small for some of the pot holes in cities.

<comment><USER53> Involving a car. I wonder if these scooters will cause a death anytime soon without needing to use a car. That would be much more interesting.

<comment><USER51> Someone died the other day in a Lime scooter after hitting a tree.

If you search for news on scooter accidents you will see they are more likely with Limes. Why not Bird? Because Bird throttles the speed according to the current laws (15mph) while Limes go sometimes up to 20mph.

Disclaimer: I work for Bird.

<comment><USER17> When are you guys coming to SF? I don't have a driver license so I can't use the shitty alternatives we have at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> As a cyclist, I'm hopeful that these bike/scooter/wheel-shares programs will force governments to examine their plans for keeping people safe. More low- speed travel lanes for bikes, scooters, one-wheels, hoverboards, etc. Keep the sidewalks for walking and wheelchairs.

Otherwise we are sure to end up like China in these photos: [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share- oversup...](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply- in-china-huge-piles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/)

<comment><USER17> Less cars! These huge roads need to be shared to other modes of transportation.

<comment><USER55> Exactly this, Americans need to detox from their truck-obsession. Size of your car does not make you a tough guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Lime and Bird have collectively raised nearly a billion dollars within 14 months of founding at valuations of $1.1 billion and $2 billion, respectively.

For reference, American Airlines has market cap of $18 billion and 950 jet planes.

<comment><USER2> Actually, I'm pretty sure American Airlines has 950 jet planes _on lease_ , and they have a century's worth of pension and other obligations that remain hidden in their books.

Companies are far too complicated to compare based on single numbers. Try not to make this mistake —- it's great for clickbait, not so much for critical thinking.

<comment><USER56> $41B on the balance sheet. [https://americanairlines.gcs- web.com/node/36886/html](https://americanairlines.gcs-web.com/node/36886/html)

Yes they do have debt. $44B of revenue. Still Lime and Bird valuations are insane.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> One interesting thing about these scooters is that their lifetime CO2 emissions are actually slightly less than a that of a vegan on a bicycle.

That is given the following assumptions are correct:

-A vegan on a bicycle has a carbon footprint of 22g/km of CO2.

-The scooters are Xiaomi Mi electric scooters with a 330Wh(approx based on specs) battery of the type with the biggest CO2 footprint(250kg/kWh).

-Electricity comes exclusively from coal(1kg/kWh of CO2).

With these assumptions the break-even point is 7500km or 4700 miles - that's approx. one charge each workday.

</comment><comment><USER58> > The big wild card, though, is whether Uber or Lyft buy Lime or Bird. Uber is > talking to both companies about an acquisition so this is not just a > hypothetical question.

Why would Uber buy either of these companies? Uber already has JUMP scooters. Can't they afford to create way more scooters than either Lime or Bird?

Sure, Uber isn't one of the two companies who are part of the scooter pilot in SF. Still, I doubt that justifies spending hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars on buying a company.

</comment><comment><USER53> A lot of this evaluation assumes the price stays the same. $1 + 15 cents a minute.

I think we'll see prices come down 80%. These scooter companies will face more competition than uber and Lyft do because people are happy grabbing the first scooter they see when walking.

My personal scooter costs a third of a cent per mile of electricity + $350 to buy it. I'm at 150 miles so far, and could easily see this thing lasting a few thousand. So ~20 cents a mile.

<comment><USER59> They have a life cycle of 3 months, so $3 per day.

They can only be ridden for 50 minutes before they need charged, which costs $20, which comes down to $0.40 a minute.

I don't see the unit cost economics, let alone how the prices could come down by 80%.

<comment><USER53> The lifecycle will increase dramatically. Just a few parts need to be beefier. The motor and battery can last a long time.

Its 12 cents to charge, and I imagine there will be city infrastructure added to accommodate charging on the streets. Pay someone a dollar to plug it in to the nearest streetlamp at the end of their ride.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Will be interesting if Uber or Lyft will postpone IPO in favor or buying one of them. Cant imagine it's possible to acquire one of them and still IPO in near future - but who knows. Exciting to see scooters and bikes get nice adoption! Changing the form factor to be more like a mini car (with at least a seat) would be neat, scooters just dont feel that safe.

<comment><USER61> Uber has around 7 billion (last time I heard) and this year they will lose around 5 billion, maybe more.

Uber is on track to run out of money in 2019, so a financial event is inmminent. I don't know if we will see an Uber 2019 IPO, but if it doesn't happen is more likely due to the current bear market and not so much because they are considering a large acquisition.

If they acquire a scooter company I presume they will do it through a mix of debt and a heavy stock component. In fact it seems that they already raised another 2 billion through private placement bonds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Reading the comments here make me chuckle. I honestly find it mind boggling that people would complain of bicycles taking up space, let alone scooters.

I love the bike share programs in Taiwan and China. I haven't used a car in years. Yeah some people trash the bikes but most people at least seem to give a shit.

Why this is such an issue in the West, I can't understand...

<comment><USER17> People in the US love their big cars...

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I cannot _stand_ the Limes and Birds around Santa Monica.

I walk out of my apartment, and the streets are _littered_ with them. It's annoying when walking, it's even more annoying when jogging, and riders are constantly riding them (without helmets) on sidewalks even though we have bike lanes. They're even a nuisance when driving.

I'm hoping for some legislation that will ban them -- I might set up a grassroots campaign myself. It's mostly the tourists using them, anyway.

<comment><USER64> I was actually in Santa Monica / Venice area for the first time a few weeks ago. I was /floored/ with how many scooters there were. I live in Atlanta and find them to be super awesome and unintrusive, but I could understand how the sheer quantity could put you off of them.

At least realize that they aren't so ridiculously overpopulated in other places -- it's probably the tourists that make it financially worth it to put out a deluge of them.

<comment><USER63> I was in Atlanta last month, and outside of Midtown (Tech/GSU), I didn't see them anywhere else. Here, we have them in SM/Venice, in Westwood, in Culver City, in DTLA, etc.

<comment><USER65> They're all over Atlanta. Midtown probably has the highest density of them but they're all over downtown, west midtown, Old 4th ward, Decatur, Reynoldstown, Cabbagetown, etc.

Go down Memorial or DeKalb heading east in the morning and you'll see rows and rows of them freshly set out ready to be kicked over like dominos by some jerk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> It would be cool if these things helped cities make streets safer for all cyclists and small vehicles.

I can imagine that VC's won't like articles like this and that may have a knock on effect of making cities better in the long term.

[https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/09/24/e-scooter-deaths- unde...](https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/09/24/e-scooter-deaths-underscore- the-urgent-need-for-safer-streets/)

</comment><comment><USER67> They're a menace to society given the un-insured nature of their services. A local journalist had some scooter doofus run into her vehicle badly enough to damage the ability to open the driver's side door, then he turned around and claimed she hit him. So she was facing having a record of striking a pedestrian on her driver's and insurance records and was only saved by footage from a surveillance camera. What a joy!

</comment><comment><USER68> It's funny to see this just after in Nashville a Bird user ran a red light and got hit by a car. Now I know this user is not indicitive of all users, but it's enough to galvinize the people against them.

I say this as someone who loves them. I hope they stick around, but its only a matter of time someone in a party city like Nashville is drunk and ends up getting hit leading to a death.

</comment><comment><USER69> I'm curious to find out what the usage in winter will be, I can't image it will be very popular in rainy or snowy climates.

</comment><comment><USER70> Remind me again why they are allowed to litter all the public sidewalks and street corners with their scooters?

Regulation hasn't caught up yet?

<comment><USER35> Why are cars allowed to litter the public roads and park all over the place, taking up a massive amount of space with mostly empty seats and driven around less than 10% of the time?

<comment><USER71> It's not littering since local statues have rules about parking. FYI, in some areas, parking _is_ illegal, and in _most areas_ leaving your car in a spot for too long will allow the city to tow it.

Since the majority of places don't have statues for scooters, the default actually is littering, it's no different than dumping anything else on the sidewalk.

<comment><USER72> Scooters are definitively vehicles. What would governments do if people just started parking bikes and scooters in free full-size car parking spaces :)

<comment><USER73> Scooters aren't vehicles licensed for public roads. So it will probably still be littering, of public roads and parking spaces this time.

<comment><USER32> But you're supposed to ride them in the roads in most cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Is the business model sustainable? They do need people to pick these scooters up, charge them at home and deploy them somewhere.

<comment><USER18> Like any gig economy job, people have gotten religious at it. There's a guy by my neighborhood who drives slowly with a brand new sprinter van while another loads the scooters into the moving vehicle. There is no shortage of people willing to rack up $100 a day on the side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Just noticed them in my parents' town (50k population) this past weekend.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just waiting to be able to ride one in San Francisco without a driver license (which is impossible right now). I can't wait to be able to commute short distances without having to take cabs everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER76> I would love to see some stats on repeat usage.

Is this a fad where people just want to try something new? Or are people actually shifting regular transportation to these?

</comment><comment><USER77> Wish they'd legalise electric scooters here in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER78> "Lime recently indicated their latest scooters have an average lifespan of 4 months."

I wonder what happens to the scooter after that. Landfill? Recycle?

</comment><comment><USER79> Translation: we are entering a scooter bubble.

<comment><USER44> How do we short it??

<comment><USER80> Start a scrap metal business

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Cool!

Are there any servicing companies popping up to re-sale end of life/refurbished scooters?

</comment><comment><USER82> I had to do a double take here. It seemed this was a joke article to me.

</comment><comment><USER83> When will it peak and go down again so I don't have to keep looking at this garbage strewn haphazardly all about the city?

</comment><comment><USER84> Uber for scooters. How many times was that autogenerated by one of the million (ironic) startup creator sites? These companies are not worth billions. They have an app, thousands of scooters and a near-slavery workforce. The charade of companies like this being displayed as marvels of capitalism and technology isn't going to last much longer. Uber is wearing out its welcome worldwide already.</comment>


A Skeleton Key of Unknown Strength (CVE-2015-7547) - <AUTHOR> http://dankaminsky.com/2016/02/20/skeleton/ <comment><USER2> Reading this, you'd think getaddrinfo() was the first glibc vulnerability ever discovered. "Look at how many things are affected! Even sudo! How will we ever detect them all?" Let's hope the author has some benzos on hand before they learn about kernel vulnerabilities.

Look: not only is this flaw not unprecedented, like, at all, but just last year we had a glibc vulnerability in gethostbyname() --- the most common libc DNS resolution function. You may remember the flaw by its brand name, "GHOST".

GHOST did not ruin the Internet or justify what I can best describe as 4000 words of concerned back-patting. And it was exploitable on day one!

Just patch the stupid thing, like everything else, and get on with your life.

I do object strongly to the bit at the end, about how ASLR, NX, CFG, &c are effective only at showing us who the best exploit developers are. Horse. Shit. There are today memory corruption bugs that are _not exploitable_ because of runtime constraints. Moreover, when Linux and OS X bugs turn out to be widely and reliably exploitable, the reason tends to be that they hit something that isn't fully covered by runtime protections.

If you want to argue that critical, exposed network services shouldn't be written in C in 2016, you'll get no argument from me, or, for that matter, 98% of Hacker News. We should definitely get moving on porting stuff like DNS servers to things like Go and Rust.

<comment><USER3> > If you want to argue that critical, exposed network services shouldn't be > written in C in 2016, you'll get no argument from me, or, for that matter, > 98% of Hacker News.

Not 98% of Hacker News. There are an awful lot of people who think modern C++ is memory safe.

<comment><USER4> C++ isn't 'memory safe', but what it does is give you the ability to write memory and resource safe types, and then lean on the type system as a means of ensuring memory safety.

C doesn't let you do that. It's just incapable, and it's a handicap that leads to bad APIs and bad client code. Take gethostbyname() as a historical example. It returns a pointer to static data, which avoids memory leaks at the cost of being thread-unsafe. Want a fix? use gethostbyname_r()... ok, great, except now you're dealing with a function with _six_ parameters and have even more ways to shoot yourself in the foot. Ok well, they're both deprecated anyway... use getaddrinfo()... just don't forget to use freeaddrinfo() because this function allocates a linked list. So don't forget to check for null pointers as you enumerate it. C++ brings value semantics, iterators, and RAII to table and these problems largely go away.

All this is why C++ is better than C. In C++ you can have memory safety, thread safety, type safety, _and_ a simple API. It's not perfect, and it's not easy, designing APIs never is, but at least it's a remote possibility.

<comment><USER3> > C++ isn't 'memory safe', but what it does is give you the ability to write > memory and resource safe types, and then lean on the type system as a means > of ensuring memory safety.

No, it doesn't, because it isn't memory safe.

> All this is why C++ is better than C. In C++ you can have memory safety, > thread safety, type safety, and a simple API.

No, you can't. C++ is not memory safe. Use after free happens in C++ all the time, because smart pointers do not protect you from dangling pointers and null pointer dereference, among other things.

Instead of copy and pasting examples to show this, I'll just link to other posts of mine from the past two months: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11111987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11111987), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11054630), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11055020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11055020), [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819501](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819501).

<comment><USER4> Move your for-loop in to an algorithm that takes Container by const& and your resize() / iterator invalidation problem becomes a compile error. If you actually need to resize your array while you iterate, then a language like Rust is going to catch your pointer invalidation, but it's not going to make the impossible possible and suddenly make your algorithm do something sensible.

I never claimed C++ statically enforced memory safety. Clearly that can't happen while its a superset of C. I just claim that it's steadily reaching the point where the most concise and elegant code with the best API is the safest.

And I'd argue that's the problem with C. The language is too weak to write safe code _concisely_ , so you end up with too much cognitive load, get lazy, and then end up with sprawling unauditable messes like we see in glibc lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Toward the end of the essay there's an excellent and provocative summary of the way forward:

      My concerns are not merely organizational.  I do think we
      need to start investing significantly more in mitigation
      technologies that operate before memory corruption has
      occurred.  ASLR, NX, Control Flow Guard – all of these
      technologies are greatly impressive, at showing us who
      our greatly impressive hackers are.  They're not actually
      stopping code execution from being possible.  They're
      just not.

      Somewhere between base arithmetic and x86 is a sandbox
      people can't just walk in and out of.  To put it bluntly,
      if this code had been written in JavaScript – yes, really –
      it wouldn't have been vulnerable.  Even if this network
      exposed code remained in C, and was just compiled to
      JavaScript via Emscripten, it still would not have been
      vulnerable.  Efficiently microsandboxing individual
      codepaths is a thing we should start exploring.  What can
      we do to the software we deploy, at what cost, to actually
      make exploitation of software flaws actually impossible, as
      opposed to merely difficult?

<comment><USER6> if ($password == blah.crap) is insecure in any lang.

What I mean is, we solve one vector, but is always another (logic flaw vs stack flaw). Is there a truly "perfect" way to code? Is there any academic philosophy that is impossible to exploit?

I ask from a _very_ ignorant perspective. I can barely program.

<comment><USER7> We can eliminate entire classes of attacks by using certain languages and technologies.

Simple, forgotten example: You can't just patch a running OS kernel from an application program anymore. There's hardware in the CPU called an MMU, or Memory Management Unit, which inspects all attempts to access memory, read or write, and checks them against a policy the kernel set which aims to disallow all unsafe memory accesses. (This is like nine kinds of oversimplified, but it's not actually wrong... ) The MMU will alert the kernel if an application program attempts to access memory in a way contrary to policy, and the kernel typically kills the program dead right there. That's what a segfault is.

My point is, prior to the MMU, the only possible response to "Applications can modify running OS kernels willy-nilly." was "Don't do that then." There was no way to _enforce_ that policy. That's why MS-DOS, which ran pretty much exclusively on hardware either without an MMU or with the MMU disabled, had no effective security policy: Any application could modify the only thing attempting to enforce that policy at any time, and nothing could stop it. In the immortal words of Bokosuka Wars, "WOW ! YOU LOSE !"

We take MMUs for granted now. We take OSes which use MMUs for granted now. We no longer have to rely on the care and kind nature of strangers to enforce the basic policy.

The trade-off is speed: Adding an MMU to the path to RAM inevitably makes accessing RAM slower. There's no way around it. We see it as a rock-simple win-win tradeoff that we've almost forgotten that there even _is_ a tradeoff, but our computers would run faster without MMUs. We've just, as a hardware and software culture, decided that it's worth it.

So. The discussion here is, "Which other tradeoffs are worth it?" Because there _are_ other technologies we could adopt, hardware and software and a mix of both, which could completely seal off other classes of attack vectors, and we need to decide which of those technologies are worth implementing.

<comment><USER6> Was this exact conversation not had decades ago regarding C & assembly-type languages? Tomorrow, lua vs C, then Go vs java, then spoken language vs whatever. (I surely got the specific comparatives wrong)

Tomorrow we will take terabytes & terahertz for granted.

I see no end. Old-school vs new-school ad-infinitum.

<comment><USER8> Yes, once upon a time C shared a spot with the other systems programmer languages many of them safer than it, and on home-micros it was seen as a "managed language", which many used as a cheap macro assembler via the inline assembly extensions.

Now its compilers are praised for speed, given 30 years of optimization efforts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Somewhere between base arithmetic and x86 is a sandbox people can't just > walk in and out of....Efficiently microsandboxing individual codepaths is a > thing we should start exploring.

wat

The turtles need to end somewhere --- at the end of the day, you are writing something that becomes machine code, and you've lost the benefit of your high- level abstractions. The glibc bug is a perfect example --- glibc is an abstraction layer to make life safer that virtually all (excluding Debian and some other distros, but near enough) Linux code links against.

No matter where you put it, your stack is going to have a layer like that in it somewhere, and sometimes you're going to find bugs in that layer. Maybe next time it's a bug in your C-to-JS compiler that emits insecure code, or a bug in your `microsandboxing framework` that allows RCE. Shit, maybe there's a bug in your CPU architecture that allows RCE.

The glibc bug is an example of the sort of incredibly rare screwup you can't escape no matter how hard you try, and we're fortunate that 'the good guys' caught it before it had a chance to develop in the wild.

<comment><USER10> What I'm saying is that a lot of energy has gone into "Assuming an attacker has gotten us into an undefined state, let's try to prevent them from pushing us into a chosen redefined state." And what I'm saying is, maybe we can create an environment where we don't end up in undefined states, or at least, there are bounds to how undefined they can be.

For example, I'm exploring ending use after free bugs by just not freeing memory. This sounds ridiculous until you realize that on 64 bit, leaking virtual memory (and therefore never recycling pointers) is actually not an insane idea, particularly for browsers that get to kill processes outright because they feel like it. Also, lots of UaF in there.

<comment><USER2> When you indict things like ASLR as being little more than bait for exploit developers, and later suggest that part of the solution might be a hack involving free() create zombie addresses, you give the impression of having said "exploit mitigations aren't working, unless they're my exploit mitigations".

(I also don't think yours is a good plan, but I'll wait for you to publish more details before criticizing it further).

<comment><USER10> Very specifically, I'm interested in exploit mitigations that eliminate undefined states, rather than just hope an attacker doesn't know enough to redefine them. One can show "zombie pointers" (fine, we've got lots of space in 64 bit land) will never allow an attacker to exploit a UaF much easier than we can show memory is randomized enough.

At the end of the day hard bounds checking (however slow it might be) also falls into this category of "approaches that do not try to survive falling into undefined states". I'm not saying ASLR et al isn't useful, just that we should put more energy intostaying within well defined states.

That's ultimately what "better" languages promise, after all. I'm curious if there are approaches that don't require rewrites, and very interested in actually measuring what does and doesn't absolutely suppress vulnerability, at what performance cost. We're not doing enough of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is patching this bug on any server a matter of running `sudo apt-get update` (or the equivalent of the linux flavor in question) - and then rebooting afterwards?

EDIT: From AWS ([https://aws.amazon.com/security/security- bulletins/cve-2015-...](https://aws.amazon.com/security/security- bulletins/cve-2015-7547-advisory/)):

""" We have reviewed the issues described in CVE-2015-7547 and have determined that AWS Services are largely not affected. The only exception is customers using Amazon EC2 who've modified their configurations to use non-AWS DNS infrastructure should update their Linux environments immediately following directions provided by their Linux distribution. EC2 customers using the AWS DNS infrastructure are unaffected and don't need to take any action. """

<comment><USER12> Yes, when I woke up the morning after the advisory all my servers were already patched. I only had to reboot them. Thanks to things like yum-cron and unattended-upgrades.

<comment><USER13> First, until you reboot your servers, they are not really patched. Second, you are happy about unattended core system upgrades to production machines? I don't think this is the right feeling to have :)

<comment><USER14> As a general rule, I would agree with you (with regard to point two). However, you don't know the details of INTPenis' infrastructure so you can't know. Perhaps automated / unattended upgrades / reboots would totally hose your environment but that's not the case in every instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The hard truth is that if this code was written in JavaScript, it wouldn't have been vulnerable."

I'd be very, very careful making broad "interpreted language X would prevent this bug" statements - not only is it dependent on the VM not having remotely- exploitable issues, there's also the matter of VM-to-host leakage. For instance, it's possible to exploit the row-hammer behavior of the host system's DRAM from Javascript:

[https://github.com/IAIK/rowhammerjs](https://github.com/IAIK/rowhammerjs)

<comment><USER10> No argument from me about the seriousness of issues like Rowhammer. Computers are built in layers, and layers require reduction to logical assumptions. The degree to which Rowhammer destroys logical assumptions is astonishing.

However, we've got lots and lots of common flaws that our present coding patterns aren't quite covering. This exact code written in JS wouldn't have been a problem. It wouldn't have been a problem even if it was just transpiled to JS and kept in a well defined sandbox (which isn't how we're doing sandboxing right now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "A network where devices eventually become existential threats is a network that eventually ceases to exist."

I imagine this only if these devices can't be disconnected. Life creates its own existential threats in a lot of parts of the "network", but they are contained or fixed eventually. Diversity is the key, and even though all life we know has the same fundamental building blocks, so far it worked out. The internet is not that fundamentally different. So instead of working on ways to increase maintenance, continue to make the internet a highly diverse place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Back in 2008 after the cache poisoning hype, I developed my own method of resolving names without using caches (it is very fast); I use only authoritative servers. I still use this method daily.

"... but we can set the tc "Truncation" bit to force an upgrade to the protocol with more bandwidth."

dnsq does not do TCP queries. Sorry.

I also developed a few systems for resolving all the names I needed in advance so I did not need to use DNS at all, except when periodically updating the list of IP addresses. I am glad I did that work. (But nowadays there are resources like scans.io)

When someone publishes a vulnerability in dnsq from djbdns (it does not send recursive requests), I'll have to dream up another solution to the problem of "DNS". I doubt that's going to happen _, but I could be wrong.

_ There are too many other easier targets.

<comment><USER18> 1\. Hitting authoritative servers for every DNS query and refusing to cache results will make the operators of those servers _hate_ you. You will probably find that some sites (or even potentially entire TLDs!) will end up blocking your requests entirely after a while, as this is an incredibly "unfriendly" behavior.

2\. Supporting TCP queries is not optional. Some DNS servers will refuse to answer certain types of queries over UDP. In particular, ANY queries are often TCP-only, as they are a potential vector for DNS amplification attacks.

<comment><USER17> 1\. The truth is, I make far fewer queries than the average web user. Because I have the IP addresses I need stored permanently. And I only update those files periodically. Today's websites and graphical web browsers (that I do not use) perform astounding quantities of uneccessary _daily_ or _hourly_ DNS requests that I never make. Maybe you think I am resolving every registered name in existence? If that were true, then yes, I think that is unreasonable _. But the fact is I am only resolving the names I need, which, in the context of the total number of names registered, is very, very few._ however scans.io and other scanning projects do not seem to be labeled as "unfriendly" nor the target of "hate"; perhaps your views are not based on actual exerience?

2\. This is a personal solution. I am not writing software for anyone else. I do not have to use TCP for DNS queries and I have never found an authoritative server that refused to accept a UDP query. dnsq does not do TCP queries; I guess you could complain to the author he's violating some rule? If I am not mistaken, amplification problems happen because of ideas like open resolvers and enormous UDP packets, like those required for EDNS0 and DNSSEC. I am not a user of either of those ideas.

<comment><USER19> I would encourage you to publish your solution and get it included in various software distributions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Common Misunderstandings about Key Laws of TDD - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedroidsonroids.com/blog/key-laws-of-tdd <comment><USER2> I have yet to see a TDD piece describe how to handle the situation where a current algorithm must be replaced.

Consider Martin's "primes" example, at [http://www.butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.ThePrimeFactors...](http://www.butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.ThePrimeFactorsKata) . Martin is rather chuffed that the implementation takes only 3 lines of code:

      public class PrimeFactors {
        public static List<Integer> generate(int n) {
          List<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<Integer>();

          for (int candidate = 2; n > 1; candidate++)
            for (; n%candidate == 0; n/=candidate)
              primes.add(candidate);

          return primes;
        }
      }

Where in the Red-Green-Factor do you add tests to verify acceptable performance across the applicability domain?

For example, Java's maximum integer value is 2147483647, which is also a prime. The above algorithm tests every integer >= 2 before determining that. Which is slow.

When do you add a test that PrimeFactors.generate(2147483647) correctly returns the 1-element List containing 2147483647, and with acceptable performance?

If you find that the performance is too slow, how do you refactor the existing code to handle it?

This linked-to page says: "Before touching the production code, we do a single automated test. Next, we add the simplest possible code which makes it pass."

So, I add 2147483647 as the single test, which fails. What next?

Obviously there are many well-known ways to make that code performant. However, _all_ of them would require substantial changes the code, which surely should entail many additional tests, yes?

And just what is the 'simplest possible code to make it pass'?</comment>


How Crossy Road developers made $10M in 90 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/314240/crossy-road-developers-made-10-million-90-days/ <comment><USER2> 1\. Rip of frogger 2\. Try to make it to an Apple event to advertise game 3\. Profit</comment>