San Francisco apartment rent prices are dropping fast - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/san-francisco-one-bedroom-rent-price-drops-11point8percent-in-june-zumper.html <comment><USER2> I'll add to the anecdotal evidence.

I live in Denver and just resigned my lease without much in the way of increased negotiation power. I run into two main issues here:

1). Extreme information asymmetry. While many of the properties are owned by different investors, many of those same properties are managed by a significantly smaller subset. Those property managers have a cartel like effect. For instance, they can strategically hold back supply to keep a rent floor and 'establish' extremely draconian lease terms under the guise of 'market forces.'

2). Draconian lease terms. This is a subset of the 1st point, but it's extremely difficult to price the market when you're required to give (move- out) notice well in advance of the actual lease date. Because the market here is so fast, you're basically jumping in blind-folded at what might be available when you go to look for a new lease. Great for landlords you can fill a spot in a moments notice, but horrible for a tenet who's trying to understand the cost of such a decision.

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that these price crashes are largely happening in the VHCOL (very high cost of living) like NYC and SF. One of the dynamics at play in the VHCOL cities is that the rent is so expensive that the cost of moving, even if only for a few months, is fairly trivial in comparison. If you are paying $4k for a 1-bdrm apartment, packing your stuff up, putting it in storage, and moving into a short-term rental in a lower COL area is likely to be net positive in term of cash flow. Financially, this make less sense in more moderate COL areas unless the pandemic/lockdown goes on for much longer, or if you can work remote permanently.

So cities like Denver and Austin are probably not seeing as much outmigration, but are also probably seeing some immigration from the VHCOL areas.

<comment><USER4> Just a friendly FYI, the opposite of immigration is emigration.

<comment><USER5> For extra confusion, immigration and emigration are homophones in a Southern accent because of the pin-pen merger: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin–pen_merger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin–pen_merger)

<comment><USER6> I've never heard the two sound different in any dialect and I'm not from the south.

<comment><USER7> Not met many Brits then

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In two weeks I move out of my $2,800/month, 3 bedroom apartment in Boston, MA. We're moving to a lower cost-of-living city.

Our upstairs neighbours, who share a 3 bedroom apartment are also all out. One moved to Denver (job opportunity), the other two are finding a more affordable alternative outside the city. These are young professionals who enjoy a patio and drinks on a Friday.

Our landlord originally listed our unit back at $2,800/month but I see it's now at $2,500/month.

My anecdotal evidence of the shift :)

<comment><USER9> As high-cost cities that refuse to allow adequate housing to be built force residents out, the jobs are eventually going to follow. Established companies may stay to an extent, but the new ones will grow up in Denver, Phoenix, Austin, and so forth. It's a shift that may be impossible to arrest if or when it really gets going.

Then we'll see thousands of articles about how SF, Boston, and so forth can't pay for the public services the cities want to pay for, and how terrible it is that companies are leaving. Those stories will contrast with the ones we've seen over the last decade, about how companies are evil and driving up the cost of housing.

Edit to add, the other question is eviction. Right now SF appears to have banned eviction: [https://sfist.com/2020/06/10/sf-supervisors-extend- eviction-...](https://sfist.com/2020/06/10/sf-supervisors-extend-eviction- moratorium-indefinitely/). If or when that ends, we'll see what the market clears at. I assume courts will eventually forbid an indefinite eviction moratorium, but courts are already willing to go along with rent control, so who knows?

<comment><USER10> Why has Denver suddenly become a spot compared to the rest of the country? I'm not too familiar with what's happening there.

<comment><USER9> Denver is inexpensive compared to California, Seattle, NYC, and Boston. But it is (relatively) urban, dense, walkable, and bikeable, with lots more bike lanes incoming. It has a mass-transit system of sorts, although it really needs a north-south subway connecting Cherry Creek to Downtown and past the freeway, as well as an east-west subway along Colfax. It has relatively good and sunny weather. The airport is very large and relatively easy to get to. The economy is pretty strong. Taxes are not insanely high. I was looking at it as a possible place to move.

Austin has many of those, but without mass transit, and Phoenix has some, but it's less urban and the traffic is horrible.

<comment><USER11> Also notable: virtually isolated from natural disasters: no earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, wild fires (in the urban areas), volcanoes, floods, tsunamis, land slides, avalanches, or sink-holes.

Also, climate modelling says that it's going to get wetter which would make its land more arable.

So, good retirement investment.

<comment><USER12> Also, much nicer weather than people think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think some of this is temporary. My friend just left NYC. They loved it there, but since everything is closed, there was no reason to stay. The bars, clubs, and restaurants were the main reasons they were there.

They figured they might as well save money and move back home with their parents until everything opens again. Then they'll probably go back.

I suspect things will pick up in SF as the bars and clubs and restaurants open again.

<comment><USER14> Were people really living in the city for the recreation? I always thought most people either lived in the urban core for work, or because they're _from_ the urban core and used to it.

But then again, I suppose I'm biased by living in Boston, which... kinda hates fun and wants to make sure you go home early.

<comment><USER15> NYC is open 24 hours a day.

Miami closes at around 2AM (generally).

It's night and day.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, Boston wants you to be going home at 12AM, when the last trains are leaving their stations, and they _force_ bars/clubs/restaurants/etc to be closed by 2AM, period.

It makes me miss the random industrial city in another country I lived in for my MSc. Admittedly, that's one of my favorite cities period, but _it had night-owl bus lines_ , including BRT. You could go out at 20:30, stay out until 04:30, and get home at 5:45.

<comment><USER16> Preach. Boston is damn near overly hostile towards young people. They hyper regulate all activities and services that young people want to participate in or use as you point out, do nothing to reign in housing prices, and then are shocked when they have a hard time retaining talented people after they get their degrees. It's absurd.

<comment><USER14> >and then are shocked when they have a hard time retaining talented people after they get their degrees.

I mean, come on. Are they _shocked_? Or is this how the townies want it? My impression is that quite a lot of the "natives" who think of themselves as "True Bostonians(TM)" (ie: not just those of us who've lived here for years, married someone raised here, and own property here) _want_ this place to be the world's most populous (but rather restrictive) college town.

Why would they want more people around to ruin _their_ city by walking around _doing_ things? Come, spend your money like a tourist, fuel _their_ businesses, get your degree if you're one of those workaholic nerds, and _get the fuck back out_. You can come back eventually if you manage to make the tenure track!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Amsterdam too.

My landlord tried to retroactively raise the rent on me during the COVID crisis, so I got pissed off and rage-browsed the rental web sites, and found a great deal I couldn't refuse:

I just moved from a 1 floor flat to a 4 floor house with 90% more space, backyard garden on a canal, an indoor garage (for bikes and storage since I don't have a car), near public transit, for 20% less rent!

They had to lower the rent 500 EUR a month to compete with all the AirBnB's that were suddenly dumped on the long term rental market.

My previous butt-hole landlord was shocked I was leaving on such short notice, and apologetic for the dick move that he tried to pull, and asked how he could convince me to stay, because he liked me as a tenant. I told him he'd have to at least give me the entire flat upstairs for free, to even get in the ballpark, and anyway it was a moot point because I'd already signed the contract.

Now I am much better prepared for the COVID crisis to last an indefinitely long time, and actually have enough room to get a chest freezer for the garage, for cooking and eating at home, and set up a big separate office instead using my bedroom, for working at home.

<comment><USER18> Nice playa

<comment><USER17> I have no interest in attending Burning Man.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you are trying to rent right now the going rate seems to be 2 months free for a 12month contract. So almost 20% off.

I think the reason for the 2 months free is to avoid various rent controls. If they actually gave 20% off they couldn't put the price back up 20% in the future as easily.

<comment><USER20> Regarding SF rent control: this commenter sounds like they know what they're talking about and say that landlords in SF cannot beat rent control with temporary free rent offers: [https://socketsite.com/archives/2020/06/complimentary- rent-o...](https://socketsite.com/archives/2020/06/complimentary-rent-on-the- rise-in-san-francisco.html#comment-394729)

<comment><USER13> They're wrong. The new rent control law (effective Jan 1, 2020) specifically excludes temporary discounts from the base rate calculation. See section 1947.12:

[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1482)

<comment><USER21> This is a state law and it still allows for stricter city level rent control. If the unit is bound under the stricter SF city rent control, the city rent control law may treat discounts differently?

<comment><USER13> SF does not count discounts in the base rent: [https://sfrb.org/section-372-definitions](https://sfrb.org/section-372-definitions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seeing lots of evidence indicating that prices are falling in cities and it's very hard to sell.

Meanwhile in the suburbs around cities the market is booming in certain segments. Lots of people who vowed they were always city dwellers are suddenly keen to live in the burbs. Hearing lots of stories of houses in desirable suburbs getting multiple competitive offers the first day they go on the market.

In the rental space in suburbs and vacation communities heard lots of stories of places being rented at above market prices sight unseen by people just looking to get out of the city for the summer/year.

Things will probably pick up in cities once things start to return to normal, but like a lot of things it's likely going to be a very long time before things get back to where they were before all this started.

<comment><USER23> That seems to be the case in Seattle.

Apartments in the city center are desperate to sign leases. But houses are actually a little more expensive this year, and they sell within a few days of hitting the market.

And it make sense. New urbanism is dead at the moment: parks, cafes, and theaters are closed. There are no events. Nobody wants to take transit. But in single family neighborhoods, life is basically normal. Not to mention there is no traffic and gas is dirt cheap.

<comment><USER24> Also because, you know, a goodly chunk of Seattle was ransacked, covered with graffiti, riddled with gunfire, responsible for at least 5 shootings in a month, looted, boarded up, and deprived of any protection at all.

<comment><USER25> This is needlessly dismissive of why those events occurred to begin with. SPD themselves (as evidenced by numerous videos) caused more than enough of the anguish and problems, and Durkan's actions speak for themselves.

There are many reasons to not want to be in Seattle right now, but casting it as a warzone without "protection" (from the very aggressors themselves) is a bit much.

<comment><USER26> What about the rampant homeless and drug use problems that predated all of this?

<comment><USER25> I see people bring this up all the time for Seattle. However... I've literally lived in the radius of the oft-demonized stretch of 3rd and Pike/Pine for the past 2-3 years.

I can assure you that while it's bad, they generally don't bother people and simply need a system that actually helps them. More police won't solve anything here - I'm confident in this statement as they sit outside my window daily and do absolutely nothing as it is.

<comment><USER27> You must live on a high floor. The homeless outside my window are annoyingly noisy. Too often they wake me up at night or scare my dog when I'm out walking. I'm tired of spotting needles in the bushes and I'm worried someday I or my dog will step on one without a cap. The other day, I watched one guy threaten another with a knife.

Call me callous, but I'd like to build drugs-allowed shelters so that they leave the streets.

<comment><USER25> I live pretty close to street level, actually - sometimes people on the corner by the Kress are playing music too loud, but this is a city: you're going to hear some noise.

I walk two dogs here a few times daily and while the litter has been worse post-COVID, it wasn't always this bad due to the city cleaners.

In general I agree with your shelters idea, Seattle does not do nearly enough to help these people.

Without knowing what part of Seattle you're specifically referring to I can't really explain more. If you're referring to Pioneer Square... well, I won't fight you on that one - that area needs help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I watch SF rents like a hawk. A decent 2ba/2br is $~4200 which is lower than a year ago. Also! I am seeing apartments come on the market - that haven't been on the market in 10 years: Views, custom kitchens, 1200 sqft, parking (wtf??). A handful of listings are starting to give out 1 or 2 months free (this is because they can't lower the rent due to rent control issues). But if you are looking in SF - grab something that hasn't been on the market for a decade - these are unique treasures.

<comment><USER29> What do you use to skim listings?

<comment><USER30> Not the poster, but I do identical surfing in NYC and use Zillow. It's all about the right filters (posted in last 24 hours, prices, neighborhoods, amenities). You can set up email updates, but it's more tedious to read the emails than it is to browse their app.

My anecdotal data in NYC is identical, btw. I used to see a great apartment _maybe_ once a week. Now, it's closer to 5-8 per week. And they're all "under" priced by 10-20%. I saw a rent-controlled parlor floor brownstone in Brooklyn heights recently. It's unreal.

It's just a bit sad to think how many of these households were lived in by actual victims of the coronavirus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I live in the Bay Area and this has not been my experience. Looking at Craigslist and Zillow the rents are stable. Perhaps the rate of increase has slowed down slightly. That is all.

<comment><USER19> Yeah as i stated above if you're actually looking call them up and they'll suggest 1-2months free. Source: I'm looking right now and pretty much everyone will say yes to 1 or 2 months free. They just don't want to drop their listed prices. Perhaps to avoid renewals in the same complex citing the lower prices and negotiating or perhaps to avoid rent controls locking in rates when this ends.

<comment><USER32> Are you looking mostly at large apartment complexes?

This is not the case with single family homes for rent - as far as I can tell. The single family homes and in-law units are vanishing as fast as they ever have in the desirable areas.

<comment><USER19> Yes. Also i think you're right there. Everyone's moving out from the more central areas to houses in the suburbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What happened to San Francisco is that public transit is vastly degraded, and you can't use the bathroom at most private businesses, even if you buy something. Thus, you are leashed to the bathroom distance from your house. Thus, you must drive everywhere, which makes city living much much less attractive vs. being in the suburbs. Add to that that remote work is the norm now, and there seems to be a higher crime rate in the cities with all the rioting, and living in the suburbs makes a lot more sense.

<comment><USER34> Having lived in SF for 10 years, it's really easy to use the restroom, there are plenty of public restrooms as well... Not sure where you lived.

<comment><USER35> Last time I was in San Francisco I noticed the entire city was an open bathroom :)

<comment><USER36> Open bedroom, open bathroom and beyond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "300 landlords who own more than 10,000 apartments"

Wow, that's allot of concentrated wealth. Anyone have some insight on these fine folk?

If each landlord owns 100 apartments renting for $4k each(average) that's $400k a month gross. That's allot of potential venture capital money to capture monthly, over $20M in five years.

<comment><USER38> Sure, _if_ they own outright, rather than having borrowed money to buy the apartment complexes, and _if_ they don't have to pay maintenance, insurance, landscaping, and so on.

It's not just free money. They're making money, sure, but considerably less than your calculation.

<comment><USER39> Not sure how much you know about the SF market. We only get glimpses, but it gives you an idea of how much wealth these landlords capture.

The building at the corner of Fillmore and Waller was bought for $1.05 million, 20 years ago. It has 6 retail storefronts and 18 apartments upstairs. Just one of the retail doors rent for $10000/month, or it did before this rent strangled the tenant:

[https://hoodline.com/2020/04/cafe-du-soleil-shutters- after-1...](https://hoodline.com/2020/04/cafe-du-soleil-shutters- after-15-years-in-the-lower-haight)

The building is assessed for $1.4m, so the taxes are around $15000/year (which the tenants pay under NNN terms) but the gross is probably well over $50000/month. And there's no landscaping, obviously.

These people are absolutely stacking cash. They are just parasites.

<comment><USER13> > They are just parasites.

They are providing a service. You arrive in a new city with no money. Where will you live? The landlord is assuming the risk of owning and maintaining the building and all you have to do it put in a deposit.

The main reason they are "parasites" is prop 13. Without that, their building would be assessed at a reasonable level, and most of their profits would be property tax payments.

If you live in California, make sure to vote yes on the two partial repeals of Prop 13 this November:

[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Property_Tax_Transfers_an...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Property_Tax_Transfers_and_Exemptions_Initiative_\(2020\))

[https://ballotpedia.org/California_Property_Tax_Transfers,_E...](https://ballotpedia.org/California_Property_Tax_Transfers,_Exemptions,_and_Revenue_for_Wildfire_Agencies_and_Counties_Amendment_\(2020\))

<comment><USER40> Landlords may provide services, but they primarily extract economic rent, essentially profiting from their their monopoly on that particular piece of land.

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

<comment><USER41> How can they profit from the unproduced value of the land when they had to buy it? It seems to me that you're assuming landlords owned the land since before high property values in SF or wherever were a thing. It seems unlikely this situation accounts for much of the real estate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope many of the cities that have seen rapid growth in the last decade get a similar reprieve from the strain of growth. As an example, Seattle has changed in ways that have reduced quality of life - worsening travel times, neighborhoods that look/feel completely different, visible blight everywhere, over-subscribed/crowded city amenities, etc. The culture of the city has also been overwhelmed by transplants, and with it, the old PNW spirit has effectively been smothered. The politics of the city is also completely different from what it was 15 years ago. I'd welcome an exodus here, even if it means reduced a reversal of economic growth/houses prices/etc.

At the same time, I think these changes will be healthy for those who do move out. Some are moving back in with families, and the cultural continuity of multi-generational homes is an important part of human society historically. I also hope it encourages people to discover cheaper towns in the country that have been ignored and left out of the last couple decades' economic gains. Many of those places have a lot to offer, and I bet those who give them a try will be surprised how much they like it. The economies of those areas will also benefit from the boost.

</comment><comment><USER43> Has anyone in SF successfully Renegotiated rent based on this? If so, would love to hear about it.

I've been living in the same apartment for 3 years with no rent changes and feel like it's time for a drop

<comment><USER44> We recently renegotiated our rent for a 2br apartment in SF about 7% down after having begun our lease in March. Used a 2 prong tactic of mentioning some frustrations that we've had thus far as well as offering to extend our lease. We didn't have much leverage, but offering something in exchange for the rent reduction was probably what convinced them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ugh, they interviewed someone from J.Warvo. That company is scummy. They've been renting out literal shithole apartments/studios for above average prices. But barely respond to tenant needs. I hope they collapse

<comment><USER46> Most of the SF Property Mgmt companies are what Peter Thiel famously referred to as "urban slumlords".

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> At my office (working in tech in downtown SF) about 30-40% of employees have moved out of the city. Many plan for it to be temporary (why pay SF rent for the months we are all remote). Some are clearly hoping it will be permanent, but I think the chances of that are slim. I think we are on track to offer a lot more remote options than we did in the past - but I think that in 2021 a decision to stay remote will mean a huge pay cut.

</comment><comment><USER48> I own rental property in suburbs outside Philadelphia, my tenant's lease was up end of May and demand was off the charts compared to previous years. Only anecdotal, but had multiple people mention they just wanted to get out of the inner-city, but still be close.

Suburbs (around here at least) are a lot more millennial-friendly than people give them credit for. I think as millennials age and get over the "must be in walking distance of a social scene" mindset, this trend will accelerate. I also think the inner-city riots/looting/etc will stimulate this across the US.

<comment><USER39> Well of course millennials can't afford the inner city, being the poorest generation in modern history. Suburbs are usually cheaper (if you forget to net out transportation costs) so that's where millennials will go.

<comment><USER48> I agree with you, but I don't think it will be entirely about personal finances. Inner city living is a lifestyle that has high-highs (easy work commute if you work in the city, more vibrant social life, nearby public transit) and low-lows (higher crime/violence, unhealthy air quality, terrible public schools). As the highs start to matter less (social life not as active, remote working more acceptable, etc), and the lows start to matter more (they have kids, etc), I think the natural progression is that they move out of the city.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The comments here are all about the rental market, but the opposite seems to be happening in the housing market, at least where I'm at in Providence, RI. We're shopping for houses in the city and the price graphs have gone exponential. Seriously, look at the price graph on Zillow for these two places near me:

* [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/25-Brighton-St-Providence...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/25-Brighton-St-Providence-RI-02909/66095703_zpid/)

* [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5-Alton-St-Providence-RI-...](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5-Alton-St-Providence-RI-02908/65954264_zpid/)

The first one of those is in a very trendy gentrifying neighborhood. The second is in an adjacent working-class neighborhood. In both cases the asking price has shot way up from a year ago and has totally disconnected from the prevailing trends of just a couple months ago.

Supply is very low. Rates are very low. And the result is that the market is very hot. Every house we look at has multiple offers the next day, usually above asking.

</comment><comment><USER50> I hope this trend continues, but I feel like after the pandemic ends, prices will bounce back up.

<comment><USER51> Do you think people will move back once the pandemic is over?

<comment><USER52> Yep, I think the vast majority will. Many companies are allowing remote work for the rest of 2020 with no change in compensation. Once that ends, I'd expect people to come back. I think probably another driver of the decreased rents are the recent college graduates that had no reason to move to SF once the virus hit and everything closed. I'd expect them to move to the city once things get back to normal

<comment> crooked-v On the other hand, there might be a fair number of people who move to comparable but much cheaper locations (and given the insanity of SF, that includes most other major US cities) while still trying to work remote indefinitely.

<comment><USER53> Yup, I suspect many of those live in SF want to be in a city rather than suburbs, but they're not tied to SF specifically. They just choose SF because that's where the jobs are, and would just as happy in a different urban area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> "Zumper has been tracking rent prices across the country for over five years but we have never seen the market fluctuate quite like this,"

Five whole years?!?

Honestly, CNBC couldn't find someone with more experience than this??

</comment><comment><USER55> I think SF rents reached their zenith shortly before the pandemic.

Walking around the city you see a lot of commercial real estate signs and for lease signs. Tons of companies and individuals are leaving for good.

If the trend of WFH (forever) continues the rent prices in SF won't go back up for a long time.

<comment><USER56> What made SF interesting was pushed out long ago. What's left is an insular monoculture not unlike Cavendish bananas. Unless you've got deep roots there, seriously consider the alternative.

<comment><USER57> What would you suggest as a few examples to consider? (let's assume there is no covid in place so everything is open as usual) Thanks!

<comment><USER58> Everywhere else has less monoculture than SF. So just anywhere else in the US. Don't get me wrong, SF is cool and an easy place to live with the weather and the parks and density level. But the people are as bland and similar as you can get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I am not sure we have concrete data, but I'm really concerned about what this will do where I live: Bend, Oregon, which is more of a destination for the types of people getting out of the bay area.

A gradual influx of people is good, as over time it leads to more of a local talent pool, people starting companies, and that sort of thing.

But a rapid influx might be the last straw for a lot of people who are not working remotely in highly paid jobs. Nurses, firefighters, teachers, police, and so on.

In the past, I think our prices moved more or less in sync with other west coast markets, broadly, but if there's a real exodus from cities, that might not hold true this cycle.

</comment><comment><USER60> I've been casually looking on zillow. I have not seen rent go down in my neighborhood (NoPa)

<comment><USER61> Same. I've been eyeing Laurel Heights and Marina and I haven't seen those places dip. However Berkeley has plummeted. It's the only place in east bay that i would consider because there are a lot of ethnic restaurants. Ethnic diverse restaurants are key for me.

<comment><USER62> Berkeley is a fantastic place to live! Tons of great food (all open for takeout right now), the music scene was really fun when it was open, great fresh produce available at local markets, and most of what we need is walkable from our place, including BART. Also the weather is awesome compared to the city. It's sunny most days now, and the only annoyance is that it's pretty windy in the afternoons.

We been here for 10 months now, and signed for another year at our currently place with no rent increase. I didn't negotiate (our landlord offered us the same rent), but we have the best working relationship with him that I've ever had with a landlord and that's worth it to me. Also he's open to us modifying the property, which is worth something as well — he paid for ceiling fans to be installed and let me build a big garden in the backyard, for example. The place isn't perfect, but for now and especially during SIP, it's great. I expect if and when we move, we will continue to live in Berkeley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Anecdotal evidence, I was able to negotiate $200 off my $3,300 monthly rent in Los Angeles for a 2 bed / 2 bath 1,000 sqft. I think I could have negotiated $300 off but just went with the $200 off for 7 months.

We haven't signed the new lease and are potentially rethinking of signing since cases are starting to spike again and surrounding areas are looking really attractive for similar accommodations at ~$2,500 monthly rent.

We're hoping to buy a house within the next year.

</comment><comment><USER64> I'm moving out of my place at the end of July. Gonna do some short-term sublets for a few months, then move in with some friends coming up from South Bay. We've been checking Craigslist daily for weeks now and it's very exciting to see how prices have come down. We're at a point right now where we're holding out on getting a place since we expect prices to continue to drop.

</comment><comment><USER65> I moved from a $3000 1BR in downtown to an $1100 private room (4br 2ba 3 roomates) in the outter Richmond in SF. There is no reason to live in downtown SF right now with everyone working from home.

Many facebook groups are advertising significant rental decreases particularly for roomate-situations. They're calling it a "COVID discount" but I suspect its going to stick around for awhile.

<comment><USER66> Yow, $1100 to have 3 roommates? That sounds painful.

<comment><USER67> A lot of housing in the outer Richmond is comprised of larger 4 bedroom 2 bathroom units making it not that cramped of a situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> _World 's smallest violin plays for all the landlords and homeowners who may no longer benefit from the Bay Area's absurd restrictions on new housing_

In all seriousness, while I welcome the new openness to remote work, what I'd love to see is a push towards something in the middle: distributed offices.

Rather than having to choose between moving to ridiculously expensive SF, or working from home in their current city, employees could go to their local coworking space.

They'd get the benefits of an environment more conducive to productivity, away from the distractions of home, and the mental health benefits of social interaction. I don't think that making a huge shift to working from home is good for the already prevalent issue of loneliness.

Plus, having coworking spaces spread out within the city itself means that even if your company is headquartered in your city, you don't have to make the long commute to HQ if there's a closer coworking space.

</comment><comment><USER69> It was early into social distancing that big techcos started announcing/enforcing their policies on remote worker salaries... I though: that's fast. This must be reactive. Maybe lots of employees have already moved, or they expect them to.

Mainstream remote work has felt 5 years away for 20 years. We kind of stopped pondering the side effects. Circa 2000 there was a lot of interesting speculation though. Housing markets. Transport markets. If a 45 minute d2d commute represents 10% of a workday, remote working increases productivity by this much. Labour market flexibility and liquidity, for what that's worth. Reversing regional brain drains.

Hopefully this is because of remote work relocations, not just insolvency.

On a side note, this recessing is freaking me out.

<comment><USER70> Sleeping on a train, perhaps, is not the same as having the stamina to work for another 2 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> The report referenced in the article is here: [https://www.zumper.com/blog/zumper-national-rent-report- july...](https://www.zumper.com/blog/zumper-national-rent-report-july-2020/)

</comment><comment><USER72> I wonder what long term effects there will be with having more remote workers? There are many positive side effects such as more time now that people dont have to commute, cleaner air, happier individuals, fewer automobiles on the road.

But, at the same time, will there be more urban sprawl? More alcoholism since its easier to drink at home? More loneliness or feeling less connected to your coworkers?

It'll be interesting to see how things play out. Maybe there's only a small temporary change and things go back to the way they were once this is all forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER73> Single family home rentals seem to be going the opposite direction. My lease just came up for renewal. Tried my damnedest to talk them out of a 5% rate increase based on covid and city wide rent declines, but they said that single family homes were facing a massive inventory shortage as people were rushing from apartments to houses. =/

</comment><comment><USER74> Will the drop in rent affect purchase prices? It doesn't seem that the cost of houses is going down in SF and LA.

<comment><USER75> In aggregate, possibly. It's highly location and feature specific. Does your condo have an exclusive-use backyard or deed patio area? That price is jumping by huge amounts right now in SF. Is it in a high-rise only served by elevators, or do you have a private entrance? Shelter-in-place friendly features are heavily in demand right now. The old selling points of Bay views and walk-to-work are getting crushed right now. Some condos are seeing big price drops, others are on the market a few days and selling way above a healthy list. It will be interesting to see how things unfold in aggregate.

San Francisco SFR is still a hot market, especially with a back yard.

I'm selling my condo with exclusive yard access once I can find a place to live in Contra Costa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> > average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco fell 11.8% year > over year in June, following a 9% year-over-year drop in May.

So, assuming rent was approximately constant in the year up to April, it first fell 9% now in May, and then another 3% in June? Wouldn't that be a better way of putting the numbers?

<comment><USER77> It's calculated year-over-year by matching months because there are significant seasonal effects, so you can't easily go from YOY to figure how it changed month-to-month.

<comment><USER76> Good point.

However, that also means that if there is a one-off drop of, say, 10%, then newspapers could report a "10% drop YOY" in 12 successive months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> The first apartment I moved to in San Francisco in 2013 started on $2300/month and the price jumped to $3300/month when I left 5 years later.

Yesterday, the exact same apartment after complete reconstruction was offered for $2500/month plus two free months. That's pretty incredible.

</comment><comment><USER79> This is obviously (I believe it is obvious) related to COVID. But is this because of the general economic malaise, or because people are moving out enabled by remote work.

Let's look at other places. Non-tech places which still have good jobs in, say, energy and medicine, in a place like, say, Houston:

[https://www.har.com/content/mls/?m=06&y=20](https://www.har.com/content/mls/?m=06&y=20)

Average prices in May are down 7% to San francisco's 9%. It would seem the impact is very similar in very different cities.

This doesn't help us per se because the ability to telecommute may be as valuable in Houston as it is in San Francisco.

However, if you believe the kinds of industries in Houston -- medicine and energy -- are less able to be made remote (and I don't have evidence for this), we might suspect that most of the collapse in pricing is driven by job layoffs.

</comment><comment><USER80> I'm not seeing it in Silicon Valley. Also: in the accessible sierras (e.g. Calaveras county) rents and house prices are going up as ppl realize they can work from home up there.

</comment><comment><USER81> In other words, supply+demand works and has always worked.

</comment><comment><USER82> Why is everything in the article in year-over-year percentages? Can't they just say how much the rent has _actually_ fallen?

</comment><comment><USER83> Good. This needs to happen.

The rent prices were way too damn high for a long time (which is the #1 reason I refuse to live in a big tech city).

<comment><USER84> Rent prices are dropping because more people are becoming homeless or dying. Not good.

<comment><USER8> This is a wild claim! Do you have anything to back it?

<comment><USER85> Rent is falling across the country...Do you believe unemployment skyrocketing to somewhere between 20-40 million people across the Country preceding the rent price crash is coincidence? Do you have an alternative hypothesis why rent across the Country is dropping? If its not a drop in demand...that would suggest the entire Country increased its housing supply at the same time.

<comment><USER86> Perhaps a good percentage of millennials moved back in with parents? Perhaps because lots of people are buying instead of continuing to rent because interest rates are so low? Massive amounts of people dying seems like quite the claim indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> It's probably because they can move closer to Palo Alto, San Jose and other places now.

</comment><comment><USER88> Oh awesome. Maybe someday my friends who are SF natives will be able to move back home.

</comment><comment><USER89> What happened? Did they change the zoning laws?

I think Hacker News always cites that as the main problem, right?

<comment><USER13> There are two sides to the housing equation. Supply and demand. Demand has been high for quite some time, so the only way to alleviate it was to increase supply (aka change the zoning).

But now demand is down. Lower demand will probably be temporary until things open up again. May people live in SF for the cultural aspects (bars, clubs, theaters, restaurants). Once those open people will want to live there again.

<comment><USER90> Just to be clear, currently demand falls is addressing both global warming and housing prices. But demand is a terrible way to fix things because it means a lot of human suffering at the same time. So yes, taking away everyones money is one way of solving expensive rents, but not the ideal way.

<comment><USER91> There's taking away people's money but there's also just giving people more flexibility in where they live. If everyone still wants to live in a particular location regardless of any work requirements, that's one thing. But if people are primarily there because they have to be that's another.

<comment><USER90> Totally agree, and it is a good thing if people who doesn't want to be there doesn't need to anymore. But in general demand slumps are hard to fix and last longer.

<comment><USER91> I think there are a lot of (especially) younger people who are looking at this through the lens of increased urbanization being inevitable. But the reality is that most US cities were still losing population into the nineties.

When I graduated from grad school in the late 80s, basically none of my cohort lived in Boston/Cambridge--including those whose jobs were in the city. (Pretty much all of the tech industry jobs were in the suburbs/exurbs "Route 128")

So, yeah, if there's a mass exodus, even if somewhat transitory, the restaurants and bars and shops will tend to be gone and it won't be easy to refresh. And the people who moved out will be somewhat older and won't be inclined to return and the younger generation won't really get the appeal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> > According to Zumper, the median rental price for a one-bedroom apartment in > San Francisco fell 11.8% year over year, from $3,720 to $3,280, beating > May's 9% drop. The survey also reports a 1% uptick in national rents, with > the average median apartment in the U.S. renting for $1,229 in June.

With even the most hardcore "you must work IN the office" companies switching to remote for at least another 6 months, and many probably staying that way, I don't see how more people aren't flocking out of SF. 3x the rent and a downtown slowly becoming [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsterdam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsterdam) there doesn't seem much keeping people there. The old argument of, "but that's where the jobs are" really isn't the case anymore.</comment>


So what's Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sowhatsbitcoin.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The guy who started this site is a good friend of mine. Here he's interviewed at the Coin Congress last week in SF by Money & Tech's Rebecca Ahn

[http://moneyandtech.com/david-silva-smith-of-so-whats- bitcoi...](http://moneyandtech.com/david-silva-smith-of-so-whats-bitcoin-coin- congress/)</comment>


Function Space - <AUTHOR> http://functionspace.org/

<comment><USER2> Potentially nice idea ... but nothing to see really: just an email harvester for now.

<comment><USER3> Much more to come pretty soon! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am the founder of Function Space. I was really not expecting Function Space to get featured on Hacker News so prematurely! We're still working on community and apps. You can know more about it here - [http://blog.functionspace.org/news/2012/11/28/know-more- abou...](http://blog.functionspace.org/news/2012/11/28/know-more-about- function-space) We had our plans for Show HN, but this came way sooner than expected! But now that it's here, I would like to tell that we would be posting a big update about Function Space community in about 10 days on our blog. We're already in talks with some academicians for video lectures, interviews and useful articles. For any queries, mail me at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER4> The integral evaluates to 2012.93.

Wouldn't that be November 11?

Or perhaps September 3...

<comment><USER5> There's also a ceiling around the integral (⌈...⌉), so it evaluates to 2013

<comment><AUTHOR> nice catch there !!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly higher content: [http://blog.functionspace.org/news/2012/11/28/know- more-abou...](http://blog.functionspace.org/news/2012/11/28/know-more-about- function-space)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for adding the link to blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> UI nit: You should add placeholder text for the signup text input. The fact that it's intended to field email addresses may not be obvious to everyone.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool, it's like Facebook, but for calculators.

I get why they do it this way (minimizes risk), but I wish people would create something interesting before they start up the marketing machine.</comment>


African elephants are migrating to safety, telling each other how to get there - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1203988/african-elephants-are-migrating-to-safety-and-telling-each-other-how-to-get-there/ <comment><USER2> This is tangental....

I've read/heard a bunch about "rewilding" as a concept over the last year, introducing mostly megafaunal populations to their historic ranges, sometimes very historic. Hippos, lions and hyenas in scotland for a particularly quirky example. There are some very tentative efforts currently to reintroduce bison, lynxes and some other species to western europe.

Anyway... 350,000 wild african elephants. Declines notwithstanding, it's amazing that such a population still exists. Consider how much impact a herd of elephants have on human interests.. agriculture or whatnot. Imagine how hard it would be to get buy-in for a dozen elephants in spain. The african savannah's megafaunal systems still exist! They really are an amazing thing to still have. It's the system we came from.. most of our most ancient art is about them. The first famous french painting features extinct and extirpated megafauna, lions for example.

<comment><USER3> It's crazy that we're talking about genetically re-engineering mammoths to help revitalize cold climates when we have such trouble preserving these elephant populations.

<comment><USER2> erm... Idk. I see this as similar to the "we need to solve poverty before we can go to mars" issues. Things just work independently of one another.

On one hand we have conservation, on the continent with the biggest poverty and governance issues. Wilderness, land-use & habitat issues are key issues. Outside of the artic, there just aren't many habits to support those kinds of far ranging species. African land tracts are unique.

Elsewhere we have rewilding, in its infancy. The US seems to be transitioning from one to the other. Europe is very slowly opening up to the idea.

Elsewhere we have some eccentric ideas about engineered hybrids using paleo- genetics, like the idea of bringing back mammoths. The ecological implications are complete unknowns. It's more of a genetics science project, with futuristic zoo implications. It's far from being a wilderness question at all. Resources don't compete.

Projects like the Russian Pleistocene Park don't really need mammoths. They've had a lot success using "closest available substitute" species instead of extinct ones. Maybe African or Asian elephants can (or can be bred to) tolerate that kind of cold and eat local plants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a bow hunter I am keenly aware of the prowess of animals to know their environment and all its dangers, humans at the top of the list. These animals are wired to survive and adapt. When people are surprised that they exhibit these behaviors it is much more a condemnation of their lack of understanding of nature then it is a novel or new behavior on the part of the animals. These animals exist in a life and death struggle every day.

</comment><comment><USER5> The effect of elephants (or generally wildlife) being aware of where they are in danger is starkly visible in South Africas Krüger National Park: It's right on the border to Mozambique. On the South African side, wildlife is abundant and fairly well visible, but once you cross over the border, there's no visible wildlife. Some elephant droppings on the road, that's all.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems humans having a tough time these days. Elephants better at directions, goldfish have a longer attention span, and orcas are better at mimicking speech. And given that humans (so far) the only species to knowlingly destroy its own habitat, one has to wonder if climate change isnt our own reward.

Having gotten that off my chest its an intersting article about group learning.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if having for-profit organisations/startups who's core mission it is to protect these fantastic animals would be more successful vs non-profits or government projects. Not necessary to make a buck, but in many cases, for- profit organisations get more done because of the constant pressure they feel to perform.

<comment><USER8> > for-profit organisations get more done because of the constant pressure they > feel to perform.

How is it possible that changing the primary existential goal from "save animals" to "make profits" will lead to more efficient animal saving rather than loss of efficiency in animal saving for the sake of profit? That seems like the exact opposite of what would happen.

<comment><USER9> If saving the animals = more profit, then more animals will be saved. That's the argument, at least, not saying it's feasible.

<comment><USER8> All you did was repeat the argument without adding any plausible explanation.

<comment><USER9> Is it really necessary to explain that people desire to enrich themselves, therefore they seek profit, therefore they will do things which resulted in profit?

<comment><USER8> It necessary to explain when you magically hand-wave in that it's going to benefit the environment and natural animal populations when all evidence and logic indicates the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I am surprised that nobody has raised this issue?

If elephants are smart enough to recognize an enemy, avoid it, and warn other elephants that have not seen this enemy first hand... do they qualify as people?

They certainly seem at least as smart as dolphins, and their trunks allow for a crude form of tool manipulation that dolphins lack. We humans define our personhood in terms not just of raw intelligence, but also by our ability to modify our environments, so...

<comment><USER11> Tangentially related, but if this train of thought interests you, you may be interested in the "Great Ape Personhood" project. From [0]:

> Great ape personhood is a movement to extend personhood and some legal > protections to the non-human members of the Hominidae or great ape family: > chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_personhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_personhood)

<comment><USER12> This is great. Finally people should accept me how I am.</comment></comment></comment>


Rumours of supersymmetric particles at the LHC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vixra.org/2012/02/07/stop-rumours/

<comment><USER2> I love how the process of assessing the rumours among the LHC teams mirrors the process of analysing the data from the experiments. Do we have a strong rumour here? 3 sigma?

One might even call it a _symmetry._</comment>


Coronavirus clobbers Uber, leading to $1.8B quarterly loss - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/08/coronavirus-clobbers-uber-leading-to-1-8-billion-quarterly-loss/ <comment><USER2> It's really "only" about $500-800 million more than an average quarter for them. Very surprised to hear the ride business is actually barely profitable and they are just pouring money into deliveries and self driving. Both of those seem like absolute money pits, but I'd say the same about ride sharing. It is an interesting point that when people go out less (less Uber) they order more takeout (more UberEats). Nifty mechanic there.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is a staggering amount of money.

Considering Uber's business model should be light on classic fixed costs, what are the major cost driver(s) in play?</comment>


Ask HN: Can we make money on CRM? - <AUTHOR>

We recently developed a CRM web application for a company. How can we use it to make profit? <comment><USER2> I tried and failed at making a CRM.

The problem with developing and marketing CRMs is:

1\. Very crowded space

2\. You need to attract a lot of customers because revenue/customer for SaaS apps like CRMs are low: [https://highrisehq.com/signup](https://highrisehq.com/signup) for example. When most of your customers will be on the free plan or paying you just $30-$40/month you'll need to attract 1000s in a very crowded space with plenty of low cost options around.

3\. You can't tightly integrate email without going to a lot of trouble or resorting to a hack b/c Gmail and other services don't allow you to integrate their special sauce into your application. And IMAP isn't a viable option because of the low revenue/customer (IMAP is heavy and will cost you in bandwidth and storage).

4\. Mission critical. If your CRM goes down even for a few minutes and you have 1000s of customers you're going to get a lot of angry phone calls. Not to mention a whole host of other issues that can go wrong like data loss, security breaches. Don't forget this is sensitive business data you'll be acting as a gatekeeper for. If something fails it'll be your head.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you have no idea where to start, but you'd like to start a startup based off of the CRM, I'd start with

[http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html)

and

[http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-- ebook/dp/B...](http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-- ebook/dp/B009UMTMKS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380233613&sr=1-1&keywords=startup+owners+manual)

and see if that knocks out any ideas. There are several possible ways, but with CRMs, it is difficult in my opinion because the ones willing to pay good money for a CRM are the ones already looking at Salesforce CRM, and the other giants.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply , we are looking to make some SaaS based web application. Well a few searches in google about CRM resulted in knowledge of salesforce dominance in the market and a dishearted me.</comment></comment>


The future of K12 education? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a high school social studies teacher for the past 3 years or so.  I'm currently laid off and substituting, so I've been able to observe what goes on in a lot of subject areas outside of my training.  I was thinking today about the potential impact of digital "textbooks" on the classroom, especially for subjects like math and reading.
A lot of students make progress in different ways and at different speeds.  It would be extremely easy to tailor instruction when students are moved away from textbooks and class-wide instruction to laptop-based, small group or individual instruction.
Every student could have a laptop with (extremely) limited Internet access and simply rotate through classes staffed by teachers trained in different subjects.  Students would work on web-based curriculum that meets them on their individual achievement level.
All Johnny or Suzy has to do is make progress towards showing that he/she is learning, stay on task in class, and not break anything/anyone to be moderately "successful" in school.  A machine gets broken, no worries, get a new machine, all the work is web based.
Smells like the future to me. <comment><USER2> 100% agree. You should check out khanacademy.org He is trying to do just what you are talking about.</comment>


Ask HN: I can do the work but how much do i charge? - <AUTHOR> after an unpleasantly long period of unemployment i was contacted by a former colleague who knows my skill set well, he is expanding his business and wants me to handle the IT side as well as providing some specialized documentation and training.
Thing is while im good at the tech side of things im by no means a businessman, ive always worked for a company before and as such ive never had to consider what to charge ive just received a wage or day rate. Ill admit that in my zeal to get back into work i jumped in head first but i am woefully under prepared for the business side of it.
i have estimated that i can complete the whole project within 25 days, it entails everything from installation and setup of the network and servers, cabling, installation and setup of 10 new PCs, building an internal wiki and writing documentation for business procedures, pen test the company website both public and intranet and other basic IT tasks as required
as it stands i dont really even know where to start on such things but when ive done bits of freelance work in the past ive usually been told ive under charged <comment><USER2> Freelancers generally charge higher rates than employees because you don't get benefits, don't usually work 40 billable hours a week, have to do a number of the things your boss was doing behind the scenes, and have to pay the taxes that your employer was paying (self employment tax). If you want some specific numbers, I started out charging $50 an hour when I was right out of college. Then I raised it to $70, then $90 after 3 years. I just recently got $125 an hour for the first time after 8 years.

But I've never been an employee, and I'd count any time you spend at a company as years of experience.

In general my thoughts on rate:

$10/hr - you need to be told exactly what to do $25/hr - some self-direction, you can do some things yourself $50/hr - you are inexperienced, but can get things done on your own $70/hr - you have middle experience and can usually get things done on your own $100/hr - you are a professional and can get things done on your own and figure things out on your own. You actively take away stress from the client instead of adding to it.

If you think that in this job you can in your professional experience do everything your colleague wants (and it sounds like you can and have years of experience), I'd say that your rate is now $100/hr. If you want to charge by the project, for now just estimate how many hours you think it'll take and multiply that by $100. Add a multiplier based on how much uncertainty you think there is in the project.

If those 25 days are 5 hours of work each, $100/hr * 5 * 25 = $12,500. Let's round that up to $15,000 because if you are anything like me, your estimate is probably a best case scenario. Adjust the numbers for your situation.

But, if you've been an employee and a consumer your whole life/career, you may be surprised at just how much money flows through an established business. Numbers you might be very uncomfortable charging for may be completely reasonable. From what I've seen, $100/hr is completely reasonable for a competent professional freelancer.

And the fun part is, the higher your rate (to a point) actually increases your credibility in the eyes of the client. I once actually had someone say to me after I recommended a freelancer to him, "Is this person you recommended not any good? His rate is only $60/hr." Ha!

Charge more, especially in a B2B context. Happy to discuss this with your further, my email's in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ask your friend "What is your budget?" Your job is not to save your client money on your services. The budget determines what is practical without cutting corners. Twenty-five days might be 1/10th of what the budget anticipates. Twenty-five days might be 10x more time than the client thinks the work should take (it happens).

To put it another way, money/budget can proxy expectations on scope, level of service, and trust.</comment>


HyperE: Hyperbolic Embeddings for Entities - <AUTHOR> https://hazyresearch.github.io/hyperE/ <comment><USER2> This is closely related to Hyperbolic Trees [1], which are a nice way to visualize an 'infinitely large' graph all at once while allowing for continuous scrolling through it [2]. Last I looked, it was potentially still under patent though.

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

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwpze3RF55o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwpze3RF55o)

<comment><USER3> I thought mathematics couldn't be patented, or are visualization methods exempt?</comment></comment>


Russia is considering legislation to send Bitcoin users to jail up to 7 yrs - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/672780/russia-is-considering-legislation-that-would-send-bitcoin-users-to-jail-for-up-to-7-years/ <comment><USER2> Source at Bloomberg: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/russian- la...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/russian-law-would- send-bitcoin-users-to-jail-as-cybercriminals)

</comment><comment><USER3> National governments just have to face their Napster moment, in 50 years they will be irrelevant and the inefficiency of endless war and recessions will be turned skyward and the next era of humanity can begin.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we expect Flutter to stick around? - <AUTHOR> I am currently wondering which tech is worth investing time in to build cross-platform mobile apps. Flutter seems to have been around for a while now. However, given Google's track record of r.i.p.-ing services/products I wonder if it's worth my time. <comment><USER2> With their legal issue regarding java and oracle it seems more sure than ever that flutter is here for the long run.

And if fuchsia is ever coming out of alpha/beta or if it is a test ground for the future of android then the future is already predictable when it concerns the place of flutter at google.</comment>


Facebook is down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/hashtag/facebookdown?lang=en <comment><USER3> Very cool! Can't remember the last time it's just DOWN (which is saying a lot for how good FB is able to keep things up!)

</comment><comment><USER4> Just saw this. Couldn't believe it! Keen to see the subsequent write-up on what went wrong.

</comment><comment><USER5> Down! for a while but came back again in mobile fb

</comment><comment><USER6> Yep - this topic keeps getting flagged too - <USER2>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing a lot of posts about it all at once

<comment><USER7> The HN backend logic is kinda pathetic if that is the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Its back online

<comment><AUTHOR> \- still down for me

\- downforeveryoneorjustme.com says down

\- seeing new twitter posts still

guessing it's intermittent

<comment><USER6> It's back online. But the app was always up as that uses their API, then they did a redirect for the mobile site to m.fb to fix for mobile users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> still down in CA. Messenger also down.</comment>


Toxoplasma infection permanently shifts balance in cat-and-mouse game - <AUTHOR> http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/09/18/toxoplasma-infection-permanently-shifts-balance-in-cat-and-mouse-game/

<comment><USER2> This. \-- "The idea that this parasite knows more about our brains than we do, and has the ability to exert desired change in complicated rodent behavior, is absolutely fascinating," Ingram said. "Toxoplasma has done a phenomenal job of figuring out mammalian brains in order to enhance its transmission through a complicated life cycle." \--

There is no conscious awareness here, if that isn't obvious. It's cool this thing evolved to exploit behavior in this way, but it had no say in the matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was really surprised to read that at the end of the article as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Toxoplasma seems to affect human behaviour too: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/?tool](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2526142/?tool) (incidentally, I was part of this research as one of the subjects)

<comment><USER4> Did they tell you afterwards if you were one of the toxo-zombies??

<comment><USER3> yes, they told everyone after the last test

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/03/how- your-c...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/03/how-your-cat-is- making-you-crazy/308873/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3573694)

</comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps a title change is in order. We know the mice became unafraid of cats, just not that the change was permanent.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is a Radiolab that discusses Toxoplasmosis: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/91689-parasites/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91689-parasites/)</comment>


Ways to Keep and Motivate Your Best Employees - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@masud_hossain/7-ways-to-keep-and-motivate-your-best-employees-1cf61605c06c?utm_source=medium&utm_campaign=medium&utm_medium=medium&utm_content=7%20Ways%20to%20Keep%20and%20Motivate%20Your%20Best%20Employees#.dr1kc5avw <comment><USER2> Good article, motivating employees by offering them training courses, go to conferences and meetups, work on prototypes one or more days per month, give them a budget to buy books or a budget to organize meetups or hackathons in the office are all goods things to keep employees (developers) motivated ...

But one thing always seems to be a motivation taboo, I'm speaking of the salary. If your company is a good workplace where employees feel motivated and enjoy working but another company offers then 5% more salary then they will probably refuse the offer. But if that other company offers them 50% or even 100% more then you might lose that employee. So please dear CEOs out there, be aware of what the average salaries for employees are and offer them a pay raise if the salary they get is lower than the average. Don't wait until it's too late, hoping your employees won't use salary comparison tools and not notice for years that they could be earning far more if they would switch to another company.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice post. As a team lead, I would like to put an emphasis on communication. Communication is crucial and I believe it is a good idea to let employees know what is expected of them, setting goals, etc. but I figured out it was even a better idea to spend lots of time and energy to give the big picture to the team and to be totally transparent about the project from all angles. Not the often heard "it's the software team, we don't need to communicate that to them" which I sincerely believe is a misconception.

</comment><comment><USER4> This was actually my article!

I'm glad it was helpful for all of you (my most popular article thus far!). Feel free to follow me on medium! I love writing about startups and how to keep everyone happy, including your customers.

<comment><USER5> So far I've found all your articles on Medium valuable, great for someone who's involved in the startup community! Keep up the good work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> #7 will shock you.

No, really. It's shocking how sapping it is when the team is dragging dullards along. You need to repurpose or get rid of those people.</comment>


Ask HN: Estimated costs to build a mobile app widget? - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious as to the costs involved in building a fairly complex widget to be integrated into social (consumer) mobile apps.  As an example, it would be like adding a "scoring" system option each of the app's tens of thousands to millions of users.  Sorry in advance if this is vague, but I'm just looking for rough ranges.  Basically, everything from hiring the developer/s to testing and launching.<p>Thank you! <comment><USER2> Definitely shop around, if you must. Technology is at all time smart and a lot of smart people around the globe so any complex thing can be conquered, just look in the right places. My estimated cost is between $3K to $8K overseas and $3K to $20K in US. This is a great site to start, I think. [http://www.toptal.com/](http://www.toptal.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate the estimate & link! I'm curious: how would you compare elance and other freelance sites to Toptal?

<comment><USER2> Absolutely! It is hard to say as all these companies are the middle man and they charge their base fees and connect you with different skill level people; depends who you get connected with. I've been burned twice so be very careful spending your money. Never put up front money, get stuff in writing, talk to people on the phone and ask for proof that what they already built? See if they measure up to your standards. If money is not issue, go with well known brands/people, if it is then ask the developers for some referrals. This article helps a bit.. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2014/05/29/the-true- cost-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2014/05/29/the-true-cost-of- offshoring-your-app-development/) Good luck!</comment></comment></comment>


The Secret Search Engine Tearing Wikipedia Apart - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedias-secret-google-competitor-search-engine-is-tearing-it-apart <comment><USER2> See also: [http://wittylama.com/2016/02/15/knowledge-engine-by- wikipedi...](http://wittylama.com/2016/02/15/knowledge-engine-by-wikipedia/)

This is an excellent analysis of what exactly has gone wrong with this grant application.

However, I'd like to add: search is not Wikimedia's core competency. It's an important aspect within the various Wikimedia properties (Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikidata, Wikisource, et al) but the knowledge engine has been clearly positioned to the Knight Foundation as a competitor to commercial search engines. The document even states this. And it looks pretty clear that the search was to also involve sources external to WMF sources.

I frankly find it remarkable that the WMF would prioritise search to the exclusion of all the other technical things they need and want to accomplish. And the way this has all been done is breathtaking in its arrogance, secrecy and stupidity.

In my view, and in the view of many others, Lila should resign. Immediately.

 _edit:_ I think the talk page of James Heilman is very instructive as to what happened here:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Doc_James](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Doc_James)</comment>


Mental health resources during Covid - <AUTHOR> https://www.wellnesswisdomstack.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> In response to my friends feeling increased anxiety during these uncertain times, I curated a directory of 300+ hand-picked mental health & personal development resources across articles, podcasts, videos, and newsletters.

Please take a look and submit resources you think would be useful</comment>


SpreadShare: Explore community-curated spreadsheets for startups/professionals - <AUTHOR> https://spreadshare.co/ <comment><USER2> This is basically a collection of 110+ spreadsheets collected from HN, FB groups, Slack teams, Quora, private convos a.o.

This is a product I built with my partner in the last 3 weeks, call it MVP/RAT. We plan to build a beta in the next weeks and have lots of ideas. Right now we're using Google Drive's spreadsheets.

Our long-term plan: we're hosting the sheets ourselves to be able to build powerful collaboration features. Thinking of the Git metaphor,we plan to let users open 'pull requests', 'commit changes' within a review process, 'fork' sheets, create 'branches' and bundle 'collaborators'.

And here's a story how we met, came up with an idea and built this: [https://medium.com/spreadshare/https-medium-com-benjamin- lib...](https://medium.com/spreadshare/https-medium-com-benjamin-libor- spreadshare-launch-ca113d03b5e4)</comment>


Does the "Entrepreneurship Subculture" prevent big ideas? - <AUTHOR> http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/does-entrepreneurship-subculture.html <comment><USER2> I would say that in Spain(at least before the crisis), we have a very good "great ideas" detector, but with inverted polarity. People usually goes around saying "this sucks, that sucks". But they can not think in fixing anything. That´s why I love the SV way of thinking, every thing is possible, just stand up and DO IT. Also being 35, I realize that now I have more experience than when I was 23 (obviously), and that experience allows me to take distance from the group thinking the OP mentions (and now a days is oppressive here in Spain. People can´t think there is an end to the crisis, as there was an end to the crazy bubble). I think is a good idea to change for a time, and immerse yourself on another ambient, job, place, whatever. There are thousands of things broken that need smart energetic people to fix them, and they are not another social network.

edit: some typos and punctuation.

</comment><comment><USER3> The other thing this article doesn't mention, but related to the article the other day about going to the moon: when we work only in small teams, and dislike the massive ordered military-like hierarchical companies, we make it harder to do things as big as going to the moon.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but that really hits on the "big thing" about the moon Mercury/Apollo missions. They had a funding model that allowed them to spend incredible amounts of money with absolutely no expectation of return on that investment.

If you put 10000 really smart people to the task of solving big problems while giving them nearly unlimited resources, they could get a lot done.

Of course that's not how entrepreneurial funding actually works. For better or for worse it takes a really unique financier (like the government) to make that happen. The moon landing was the product of a really unique time in our history, I wish we'd stop using it as an example I guess.

<comment><USER5> We could use Zheng He or Christopher Columbus instead, I guess? Though one has the disadvantage of no one having a clue who he was and the other is problematic to anyone who is bothered by the stuff he did.

But _why_ was it unique? Why couldn't it be duplicated? Why shouldn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I seriously hate people who keep saying we need to chase 'big ideas'.

Why?

Because big things have small beginnings c.f. the universe, earth agglomeration, the sun, galaxies, life, humans, civilisations, businesses, technologies and AI. Everything snowballs - nothing just magically appears from nowhere - it's all just a combination of incremental past states.

People who don't understand how things are made feel as though all we need is more "eureka moments", geniuses, "innovation plans" and "big all encompassing goals" when this is not how innovation works at all.

Innovation is directed evolution of the adjacent possible via the convergence of many secondary composable technologies and ideas and hence is messy, arduous, long and always incremental. Chasing big ideas is like building extremely complex software using the Waterfall method - it just doesn't work too well.

What people should be saying is that we should "reduce the cost of failure", "speed up the iteration cycle" so that a bunch of small trivial composable ideas can quickly be assembled into something extraordinary - like the repurposed cells that create a human, or the combination of engines and wheels that make our cars.

People who chase 'big ideas' miss the DNA for the forests.

You have to work on making DNA before you can build the trees.

<comment><USER7> I think you're diminishing the role of a big "good" vision in the process of innovation.

What's the guiding vision of the internet community ? as far as i can tell is mostly there's no valuable guiding vision. It's all about rapid trial and error to appeal to as many people as possible with whatever idea that will work.

So we end with most of the web development community working on creating junk- food sites, optimizing ads and new ways to sell stuff. This way you get McDonalds and TV advertising invented. Big inventions indeed , mostly with negative value.

Of course there are some clusters of the web with a big guiding vision: collaborative consumption, using the power of the web to reduce prices, better ways to share important knowledge, new labor marketplaces, democratizing innovation.

And you see a qualitative difference between both sorts of companies.

<comment><USER6> Get off your high horse - the market dictates usefulness within the bounds of negative externality regulation and human rights.

The internet has produced more value over the preceding 10 years than essentially any other industry. "Purists" irritate me for the very reason that they don't work in the real messy world.

People like McDonalds. People like watching TV. Just because you don't like it doesn't matter.

Crass consumerism is the saving grace of the United States - it's what allows companies to thrive and grow and build wealth.

"Important" things are overrated by those who don't do.

Google's Ads and YouTube's cat videos have done more for the web than Wikipedia.

<comment><USER8> The issue here is all wrapped up in "bounds of negative externality regulation". I'd hate to 4Step my way into being Zygna - I don't think it's useful for the end users and is nearly 100% parasitic. The market isn't perfect due to there being no "digital-heroin regulations" to prevent this drag on human progress. I think we can say with confidence that we're in a local optimum in current market conditions, and some us - myself included - wish to select ourselves out of doing such companies.

"Wealth creation" is a byword for justifying rent seeking as if that was an end in itself - "job creators" at least has some positive end in sight.

The argument you make "cat videos, etc." being beneficial is a valid one. The 90% of shit is why we have much of our infrastructure from AWS to FedEx. However, it's dangerous to assume that this is the only, or best, path to increasing our standard of living, and moreover to not see why we shouldn't try, in our own activities, to try to rise above it.

Any concerted effort on solving a problem produces the effects you speak of - it's not just crap. Pure end-user numbers, vis-a-vis "crass consumerism", are not what dictate these positive externalities (AWS, etc.) that we experience. It's likely the challenge of the problem with respect to having a product- market fit. In other words - a hard problem solved for a small market is likely to produce outsized spillover effects - like why Rails powers productivity software and now tons of things.

There is a middle ground between the dreamers and the rent seekers where the biggest impact to society can be gained. Rent seeking hoping for spillover is not the optimum path. Instead, if you really do want to make an impact first, find a real problem that benefits humanity and solve it - don't dream about it, and don't whitewash what's black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been told that one way to come up with ideas for startups is to put a timer on your watch/phone that goes off every 30 minutes. When that alarm goes off, stop what you are doing and ask yourself "Why does this suck, and how could I fix it?". Keep a journal of the ideas and see what you come up with over time.

I think that if you are a 25 year old guy living in San Francisco/Chicago/NYC/ _insert your favorite major US city_ it is really likely that you are going to come with ideas that solve a common set of problems. Are those business worth building? Maybe so. Are they going to make an impact on a global scale? Maybe not.

Perhaps if you combined an entrepreneurial spirit with travel to emerging/developing nations and put yourself in uncomfortable or unusual situations you could come up with something that had the potential to change the world.

<comment><USER10> The approach described in the first paragraph led to the invention of the snooze button.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the current entererpenural culture centered around silicon valley encourages people to think small. There's so much you can do with a big team and real resources, but that doesn't really jives with the culture in the Valley nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's a LOT of engineers in SV. If everyone get as little as one great idea each 10 years it's a lot of great ideas. The cognitive bias described in the article doesn't really matter because of the statistical nature of the process.

The problem with enterpreneurs is that they are focused on getting funding. The investors that provide the funding tend to prefer proved solutions, so the enterpreneurs dump great ideas as too weird or too unproven or having no clear business model to possibly get the funding.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great points about how groupthink can limit creativity, but I suspect it can also impede execution which may be even more important. As good as lean startup is, it certainly causes many to groupthink the best execution strategy. This may increase competition for ideas well suited for it, and prematurely kill (or pivot away from) ideas best pursued with a different approach.

</comment><comment><USER14> What are some of the biggest ideas solved by small startups? Maybe large organizations or established industries are needed to develop some of the biggest ideas and startups are not solving big ideas because that's not their purpose.

<comment><USER5> "What material to use in making a transistor".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley#Silicon_transist...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley#Silicon_transistor_and_birth_of_the_Silicon_Valley)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too often, the bigger the idea lust, the bigger the insecurity.

You will find many more successful businesses that started small with the idea that really resonated with customers.

</comment><comment><USER16> I agree with many of the points you raise, but I think you're trying to unite tangential concerns around a single issue.

The excerpt from your father's paper suggests that our problem solving can be inhibited by our initial impulses about a solution. I agree that this is often the case- most people seem to have a natural resistance against reversing out of a train of thought in order to choose a different branch. Our natural inertia tends to carry us forward. Even when we drive, think how awkward it feels to make a wrong turn and have to reverse down the street in order to correct your error. Obviously on the road this act puts your physical health at risk, so it's not a perfectly sound analogy, but the feeling is similarly uncomfortable with our problem solving tendencies. Most people would prefer to continue to drive and hope/wait to find a turn that will bring them back to the road they know or suspect they should be on.

Considering this tendency in the context of entrepreneurship, I agree that it would be inhibitory, but I also would suggest that the capacity to recognize a wrong turn and act appropriately to correct it is a necessary characteristic of a successful entrepreneur.

After the citations of your father's papers, you move into a sequence about how a self-contained entrepreneurship subculture might result in 'collaborative fixation'. I would argue that a central tenet of the culture, and something that makes it what it is, is that those individuals who self- select into that group de facto bring their own unique personality and background toward working on solutions to problems. If anything, the entrepreneurial subculture puts a premium on thinking differently than your peers, even if those peers also happen to consider themselves entrepreneurs.

Regarding the mini-terrier social network (dibs on that idea, by the way), there are always going to be individuals who copycat models and try and apply them to specified contexts. But, at least in my opinion, that kind of business doesn't exist in the same context as trying to address a Big Problem (then again, I don't have a mini terrier- maybe for some people it is).

I agree with you, again, about your last point regarding context. If a problem is really a Big Problem, it exists across multiple contexts, affecting a number of different people in different ways. That's why it's a Big Problem. As such, it's critical to be able to conceptualize approaching that problem from and through a variety of different contexts, and once again, that's a critical trait for an entrepreneur trying to address a Big Problem.

tl;dr:

After writing this, I'm wondering if it's not so much that the entrepreneurship subculture is inhibiting our capacity to address Big Problems as much as the problems themselves. That's why they're big in the first place right? In order to solve them, a person or group has to be agile enough to abandon their wrong answers, self-aware enough to stay true to the solutions they believe to be tenable, and diverse enough to consider a solution across diverse contexts. I think if anything, the entrepreneurship subculture encourages all these things, and if it were easy to uphold all three characteristics at any time in the face of any problem, entrepreneurship wouldn't be the art that it is.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is HN Search not working? - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone also experienced difficulties in using the HN Search? <comment><USER2> It seems to be working here. What symptoms do you have?

<comment><AUTHOR> failed to load resource</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cloud Based Bug Tracker? - <AUTHOR>

There are only 2 of us in the company, both developers for most of the workday. We use zendesk for customer support, heroku for application hosting, grasshopper for the phone system, launchrock for promotion and godaddy for simple web hosting.  My last few companies used Jira for bug tracking but it looks expensive as we are just starting out and it needs care and feeding.<p>Please, your suggestions on an inexpensive cloud based Bug Tracking solution? <comment><USER2> This is free and self-hosted: [https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard](https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard)

</comment><comment><USER3> Axosoft's Bug Tracker is free to use: [http://www.axosoft.com/bug- tracker](http://www.axosoft.com/bug-tracker)

<comment><AUTHOR> And thank you! I like the price and feature set both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try Pivotal Tracker (pivotaltracker.com). They just launched new pricing for 2015, free for teams upto 3.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>