You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming [2014] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/you-and-your-research <comment><USER2> 1986 and [http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html) are more canonical. Plus: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=You%20and%20Your%20Research&so...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=You%20and%20Your%20Research&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0) .</comment>


Ask HN: Entity Framework 7 guide - <AUTHOR> Hello all, I am doing a side project to learn web development back to front end.  I am using ASP .Net WebApi and Entity Framework with Visual Studio 2015.  In VS2015 I noticed there are some new class libraries which build NuGet packages and are meant for the new cross platform Asp .Net, I ran into issues with the new EF and am not sure what all has changed since the last version.  Any recommendations for getting started with the new project structure and EF7?  Thanks :) <comment><USER2> you can take a look at [http://ef.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://ef.readthedocs.org/en/latest/) I've been using it to get startd with ef7 and I find that it's well explained</comment>


Yahoo Open Sources S4 Real-Time MapReduce Framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/s4/core

<comment><USER2> the entire point was that it's not mapreduce, it's a stream processing system. try <http://wiki.s4.io/Manual/S4Overview#toc1> for a " _what is S4_ " intro.

 _The architecture resembles the Actors model, providing semantics of encapsulation and location transparency, thus allowing applications to be massively concurrent while exposing a simple programming interface to application developers._

and

 _S4 is a general-purpose, distributed, scalable, partially fault-tolerant, pluggable platform that allows programmers to easily develop applications for processing continuous unbounded streams of data._

go stream processing. also see _Flume_ for related recent works.

<comment><USER3> Seems very much like Percolator from google: <http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/10/google-percolator>

<comment><USER4> I don't think so. Percolator does not support stream operators, and it supports transaction semantic. Streaming process engine like s4 will never handle the race conditions brought by multiple writers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's not a readme! At best that's a weak INSTALL.

Anyone care to illuminate to me how this works? "Real-time MapReduce" sounds almost like an oxymoron.

The project's site ( <http://s4.io/> ) isn't very helpful either. Full source:

      the S4 open source project. coming soon.

<comment><USER6> <http://wiki.s4.io/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's kind of funny how almost no one is advised to write code in Java these days, and on the other hand really cool infrastructure projects like this or Cassandra are almost always written in Java.

I understand they have to perform better than the average webapp, but still...funny.

<comment><USER8> My recent experience with Java code is that efficiency conscious Java code is ridiculously under-performing compared to efficiency conscious C code.

By virtue of Java's structure and culture (as codified in its libraries), you have to spend approximately twice as much physical memory as you would in C. E.g., I had a 100,000,000 record array that I needed to sort. That's great -- Java has an Array.Utils.sort() method; But I needed to know the _sorting permutation_ as well. That requires an array of Integers, each taking >=16 bytes (so, 1.6GB of ram). Which slows everything to a crawl. So I wrote my own heapsort routine which needed only 400MB of ram. But it's 10 times slower than the equivalent C -- I suspect because of array bounds that the compiler can't throw away.

Those infrastructure projects are "cool", but horribly done. I don't know about Cassandra, but Hadoop makes jobs take between twice and ten times the resources that they need. Sure, it scales to 4000 machines, but you'd only need 1000 if it were properly written. And if you only have a 10-node cluster, you could probably run it on one machine with comparable throughput.

Color me unimpressed with Java.

<comment><USER7> I was actually thinking of Ruby/Python folks, perhaps there is a group that will skip Java/C/C++ entirely.

Against C there is always the "Java makes it more difficult for you to mess things up" argument...

<comment><USER8> Yep. It's much harder to mess things up when you use regular expression.

Between C, Python and Jython, I don't think there's a single reason left to use Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> @atarashi: S4 is a stream processing platform that has been developed at Yahoo!. The website and github repository are under development. Follow us on twitter <http://twitter.com/s4project>

</comment><comment><USER10> Website is live: <http://s4.io/></comment>


How Rust Gets Polymorphism Right [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSlBhAOLtFA <comment><USER2> There is a rumor[1] even Rust has yet to get polymorphism right:

>I'm using nalgebra for math. I'll write a bit about it here, because I think it's relevant to Rust as whole. I'm not sure if I actually like it. It's so heavily templated that most of the error messages are impossible to understand, so I usually just double-check what I wrote and try to guess what's wrong. It's also where rust's documentation generator gets in trouble. Signal to noise ratio there is <10%. Not sure how to fix that. Anyway, my point is that maybe it's not always the best idea to write code as generic as possible.

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/795dg4/i_spent_the_la...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/795dg4/i_spent_the_last_year_writing_a_plant/)

<comment><USER3> Much of nalgebra's woes come from it trying to be n-dimensional without support for constants-in generics yet (this is in the works). To do this it does crazy wizardy using traits to model numbers at compile time. It's impressive for sure, but the compile errors are equally impressive. Which is why work is being done to add support for constants in generic parameters.

But this is the case of one library. Another library to suffer from poor errors is the futures lib, but that will be solved with the `impl Trait` syntax that is in the works.

Definitely agree it's a good idea to have a balance when it comes to generics, but likewise I'm glad folks are pushing the boundaries and finding room where things could be improved. It does take time for the language to catch up though, but they're working on it. Lots of good stuff is coming out of the current impl period.

<comment><USER4> Using classes or traits to model dimension numbers is something I did in C# when working on Bling 10 or so years ago. If you only have a few dimensions you need to handle anyways, it works out, and you can embed predecessor and successor dimensions in the types. Good days, though I guess I'm not that reckless anymore.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, same in the C++ world with templates. They're just so handy, especially when you want performance! Thankfully C++'s `constexpr` has made this kind of thing much more tenable from a library consumer's perspective, and Rust will again be following in its footsteps, albeit with a less adhoc version based on dependent types.

For what its worth, my cgmath library just has a bunch of hardcoded `Vector{2,3,4}`, `Point{2,3}`, and `Matrix{2,3,4}` types.

<comment><USER4> Ya, that like is familiar. In C#, you can declare class D4 : Dim<D3,D4,D5> ...., and then use extension methods to access the D3 and D5 type parameters as previous and next dimensions. It all was nice and f-bounded as well. C# is an under appreciated language for these kinds of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to see comparison between Rust and Haskell/ML WRT polymorphism. I wonder if "gets right" would appear there and on what side.

<comment><USER6> Apples & Oranges.

Although Rust heavily borrows from the ML family, the fact it has mutability and imperative reasoning makes it hard to compare them.

But if you want a short one:

\- Sum Types EDIT: AND Product Types (silly me)

\- function-objects & closures

\- typeclasses (as far as I can tell), but no higher kinded types

\- no monads, functors nor monoids built-in

\- trait objects (eg. runtime polymorphism, think "abstract classes")

<comment><USER7> > \- Sum Types but no Product Types

Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't tuples and structs/records examples of product types? Which both rust and haskell have?

<comment><USER8> Yes I always thought tuples were the archetypal product type, which is why in some ML dialects they're notated as "Type1 * Type2".

Rust most certainly has them, as does Haskell. Records/structs of course are just the same thing with names for the components.

Thus, even Java has product types.

<comment><USER9> > Thus, even Java has product types.

Even _C_ has product types. Which is why I'm always bothered when people claim language X lacks algebraic data types.

They probably lack sum types, but are very unlikely to lack product types.

<comment><USER10> Product types without sum types and pattern matching are basically useless for expressing ADTs. That's what people mean.

<comment><USER9> > Product types without sum types and pattern matching are basically useless > for expressing ADTs.

That makes no sense. Algebraic data types are not _expressed_ , they're a concrete thing, a classification of composite types (by multiplication (hence product types) or addition (hence sum types)).

<comment><USER10> Sure it does, languages allow you to express things.

Some shitty languages don't have a concise way for you to express particular things (like sum types), so you have to rely on idioms or "patterns".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It makes me smile that this type of programming is starting to influence so many things. You see it even in Swift with 'protocols' and 'extensions'. Typeclasses are a fantastic method of abstraction. I remember watching a video on Rust's history and they said that some time during Rusts development a bunch of haskellers joined and the current traits and ownership system was born (I'm sure I'm oversimplifying here)

<comment><USER12> I'm glad that it's happening, but at the same time I'm frustrated that it's taken 20+ years to adopt a limited subset of what Haskell had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Watching this recording I really wished they would invest more in audio equipment and in people who know how to record it. Reminds me of a lecturer at uni who had a bunch of recorded quest lectures that he would show every year. Audio on those was terrible, constantly clipped sound, but when we complained he said he couldn't hear anything wrong.

<comment><USER14> This is why text articles are superior to videos - or at least an accompanying transcript. Text is very hard to mess up.

<comment><USER15> U+1F928 FACE WITH ONE EYEBROW RAISED

(Interpretation of that raised eyebrow: text isn't hard to mess up. It is nonetheless more accessible in general, I just couldn't leave the "text is very hard to mess up" unremarked on.)

<comment><USER16> Your counterpoint example to the proposition that text is hard to mess up is... a picture?

Edit: or have I completely missed the point of what you're saying!

<comment><USER17> It's a picture as much as any particular character in a font is, which is to say, _it is_. We're just very used to recognizing particular variations and combinations. There's one problem here that can be expressed in two ways, one is a proliferation of many new characters which people may not know the idiomatic usage of until they've encountered it in more context, the other is new combinations of known characters and words into a _new_ idiomatic usage that has the same problem.

Consider that there was a time not so long ago where the vast majority of people didn't know what LOL meant and would be confused when encountering it. On the other end you could probably copy some heavy British slang in here right now and I would be very confused.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Capitalization is obsolete - <AUTHOR> http://jmtame.posterous.com/capitalization-is-obsolete

<comment><USER2> I think it's easier to see the breaks between sentences with a capital letter rather than relying solely on a small period.

<comment><AUTHOR> but there's already white space after the period...

<comment><USER3> The same whitespace that's also after each word. That doesn't make it easier to find at all.

<comment><USER4> The typographer Jan Tschichold experimented with this in the thirties, though I think he recommended space-period-space to separate sentences rather than period-space-capital, and not bothering with a period at the end of a paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a matter of information theory, whatever feature a writing system has tends to disambiguate sentences that would be ambiguous without that feature being marked. The late John DeFrancis had an excellent article in the first issue of the Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association called "Why Johnny Can't Read Chinese," in which he mentioned many issues of readability that differ between Chinese and English because of the different orthographies of the standard written forms of the two languages. Capitalization is useful in English, and it is habitual to me as a former editor of trade magazines and a law review. Other languages have no such thing as capitalization in the writing system, but they have some arbitrary feature or another that also conveys information to experienced readers of the language. Capitalization is NOT obsolete in English.

</comment><comment><USER6> (a) I think you mean "fewer and fewer examples"; saying "less and less" makes you sound like an idiot.

(b) The latter part of (a) may only apply when read by educated people, but since they're the people that make all the decisions, you should probably keep following proper grammatical syntax for now.

(c) This is basically like telling, say, Arabic linguists that reading right to left is "obsolete"; it's a language construct, it can't just magically become obsolete.

I suppose you could argue that capitalization is a formality, but then you'd have to make an argument against all formal speech. The biggest hurdle you'd have is convincing everyone that talking and writing in "txt speak" is acceptable. There are a lot of people, myself included, who would sooner die than see that day.

</comment><comment><USER3> Capitalization is the difference between "I helped my uncle Jack off a horse" and "i helped my uncle jack off a horse".

<comment><USER7> wouldn't you use a comma there?

"i helped my uncle, jack, off a horse."

<comment><USER3> It's possible, but the meaning is slightly different. In "...my uncle, Jack, off..." you're clarifying that "Jack" is your uncle. In "...my uncle Jack off" you use "uncle" as a title. In the first example you could replace "Jack" by "Mr. Sparrow" or "that fellow over there", which you can't do in the second example.

<comment><USER7> I helped my uncle that fellow over there off a horse.

you need a comma in the above sentence; it doesn't matter if you use capitalization or not.

i helped my uncle, that fellow over there, off a horse.

<comment><USER3> That was my point, yes.

<comment><USER7> i'll give you a point for that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't forget that the whole purpose of writing is having it read. Anything that makes the reading easier without sacrificing accuracy is good. Capitalization, correct spelling, and to a lesser extent punctuation are foundations of good writing, because they improve readability and comprehension.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I first saw the title of the post, I thought it was going to be about financial capitalization, but alas, some capital is still a requirement for business.

Incidentally, I think most people wouldn't take you seriously without the might of the shift key after every sentence ending period.

<comment><USER3> _> Incidentally, I think most people wouldn't take you seriously without the might of the shift key after every sentence ending period._

And rightly so. Somebody who doesn't take any effort whatsoever to convey their message clearly shouldn't be taken seriously. Their reasoning and thinking is likely to be as sloppy as their writing.

Something illustrated quite well by the article :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That blog post was (in a way) persuasive...

It was substantially more difficult to read than it would have been had it been properly capitalized. I am now convinced that capitalization is _not_ obsolete.

</comment><comment><USER11> I write a whole paragraph without capitalization, then invoke my emacs script to automatically capitalize the paragraph. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER12> Since this is only about making it easier for the writer, there are any number of ways to have your writing auto-capitalized.

</comment><comment><USER13> From the title, I thought he was talking about the practice of determining the market capitalizations for publicly traded companies. I was actually interested until I read the post.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting. However, the blog fails to deal with the proper noun issue.

(Also, don't you think it's bad form to self submit your own short blog rants here?)

<comment><USER15> "Also, don't you think it's bad form to self submit your own short blog rants here?"

It's explicitly not bad form as per the site guidelines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As an interesting data point, many Asian languages don't have a concept of capitalization in the language at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think you can use a word like "obsolete" in this context. There hasn't been any dramatic upset or change in usage - capitalisation is as useful, or not, as it ever was.

It may indeed be useless, but that's another question. Many (most?) other languages have no concept of capital letters; personally, I like it in English - it does convey meaning and enhances readability, IMO.

I like capitals. But I think like many, I don't use them in certain contexts - IM, for example, which is highly informal and, more importantly, every sentence is on a new line. This is why full stops can be dropped there too, and it doesn't look weird or hard to read. But in continuous prose, like here - I would argue they are useful. The post, for example, is just that little bit harder to read for his lack of capitalisation.

The cost is not too high. Compared to glyph-based languages, English is remarkably efficient in terms of character space, so it's not like we'd benefit all that much from a reduced character set. It might indeed help in typing emails but .. I've never really considered that so much of a burden? The proper solution isn't to ditch the capitals, it's to finally perfect continuous speech dictation...

update: isn't the author really proposing that _formal speech_ itself is obsolete?

<comment><USER18> "I think like many, I don't use them in certain contexts - IM, for example, which is highly informal and, more importantly, every sentence is on a new line."

I used to do/think like that, too. But now that I've been touchtyping for a while I find the cost of hitting that shift key is really close to zero so I don't bother _not_ capitalizing properly everywhere, IM included.

To everyone in this community who still isn't touchtyping: You're missing out. You're missing out!

<comment><USER17> Oh, I touchtype, or close enough anyway. Typing capitals has little or no cost. But to capitalise on IM, and to use fullstops, now seems overly formal to me, inappropriate in casual conversation with friends.

It's quite fascinating, really, how these things develop. For example:

      friend: seen reddit today?
      me: no # <-- devoid of further meaning, a neutral tone
      me: No. # <-- overbearing and formal, almost a put-down:
            "No, of course not. Stop wasting my time."

Language, and its contextual use, evolves rapidly and I would now argue that capitalisation and full stops in IM have taken on a different meaning than when used in regular prose.</comment></comment></comment>


Cisco buffer overflow vulnerability with remote code execution - <AUTHOR> https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20160210-asa-ike <comment><AUTHOR> Here a nice explanation of the vulnerability: [https://blog.exodusintel.com/2016/02/10/firewall- hacking/](https://blog.exodusintel.com/2016/02/10/firewall-hacking/)

There is also a Snort signature to detect attempts to exploit this vulnerability.

</comment><comment><USER2> Cisco was also rushed to release the fix, as all of the new builds are tagged 'interim' and warn users that they have bugs and stability problems that will be fixed later. Most notably, several issues with ASA Clustering were found in the new builds. So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

</comment><comment><USER3> Edit...this is wrong-> _It 's specific to Cisco ASA firewalls with a version level < 9.1(7), which was released in January of 2015._

Edit: Gelob, below, is right. There's a really unfortunate "read more" link that hides the important bits on Cisco's documentation and caused my confusion.

<comment><USER4> Given the tendency for large enterprises to not upgrade unless there is time to do a full regression test, and then to prioritize creating new features over system maintenance, I wouldn't assume that means that there aren't quite a few of those still out there.

<comment><USER5> People who have firewall needs and no skills hire people who know what Cisco products are, get someone to implement an ASA for them, and then it sits for years without any software updates. Maybe a rule update every now and then, but definitely no software updates.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps most do but I see a different trend these days. "The network" is a lot more important now since so many things are cloud-based.

Our networking group automated a deployment for the fix and contacted everyone that has ever bought an ASA from our company and updated them. We have ~400 ASAs across the country still have < 50 to go. There are still a few stragglers and the older ASAs need a bit more TLC.

Many of those clients have a maintenance agreement with us that includes these sorts of things and changes. All of them were updated and tested within 24 hours.

We did the same thing for the Juniper exploits (albeit we only had a handful).

EDIT: typos

<comment><USER7> I can think of at least 8 of my clients (between 500 and 15000 employees, with probably 100 ASAs total) still on ASA version _8_ , much less 9. For some, the more critical in infrastructure, the less they want to update.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's an overview of devices that are running IKE on the Internet at the moment: [https://www.shodan.io/report/h2Naw1fd](https://www.shodan.io/report/h2Naw1fd)

</comment><comment><USER9> As someone who used to work at Cisco, I'm not surprised. Everything is coded in C, and there are memory leaks all over the place because releases are made before most of these bugs are fixed.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Note: Only traffic directed to the affected system can be used to exploit > this vulnerability.

I'm confused, how else would the system be compromised, by directing traffic at the moon?

Running an EOL ASA in colo on v8.2. Have been holding out due to the post-v8.2 changes to NAT. Looks like you need a SmartNET contract to get the fix, unfortunate, many legacy devices will left vulnerable as a result.

Well, there goes the weekend...

<comment><USER11> You don't need a SmartNET contract, but...

We own affected hardware and don't have a support contract. It took me about four hours working my way through Cisco customer and tech support to get updated. Now that the interim patch is applied (complete with bugs mentioned elsewhere in this thread?), it doesn't sound like we'll easily be able to get a bug-free update at a later date. So while we're hopefully safe, we might not be stable.

Early on in the process (after 2-3 email iterations) their customer support called me to say we weren't eligible for a fix because we didn't have a support contract. I'd mentioned in my initial request that we had no contract but also pointed out that the advisory said we didn't need one. I had also provided a link to the advisory in my initial request, so that should not have been an issue. I was then told my request was "very confusing".

Once I finally convinced them we were allowed the update and verified the serial number of our hardware, I was thankfully forward on to tech support. They then checked our firmware version and I was supplied with a patch download URL quite quickly. The actual download was hampered in several ways by their poor website (registration required, browser autocomplete and cut and paste caused their JS validation to fail, and I couldn't get it to work with any browser other than IE). Once I finally had the patch, it applied without issue.

In short - the patch process was long, frustrating, complex, and as a small business owner makes me never want to ever, ever deal with Cisco products again.

<comment><USER10> Just called Cisco TAC and am heading down the same road shortly ;-)

I'm going to renew SmartNET not for this particular vulnerability but for simply getting over the NAT hump from to 8.2 to 8.3 (and whatever other gotchas have come up between 8.2 and latest 9.x). Cisco TAC has been pretty awesome in the past, definitely don't trust myself to navigate the upgrade path in production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Rackspace pushed this update to all their clients last night, as they have seen this attack against some of their infrastructure...</comment>


How to fly (almost) for free - <AUTHOR> http://learntravelhacking.com/?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> I love travel hacking so much. In the last 5 years I've picked up about $40,000 worth of flights for just miles and taxes and fees.

Now my entire family leverages credit card sign up bonuses for free flights. Hopefully this course will help you do the same!</comment>


Just Don't - <AUTHOR> https://www.profgalloway.com/just-dont <comment><AUTHOR> This really cuts to the chase:

> Work email inboxes have been filled with "in light of recent events" > expressions of solidarity and anti-racism. Is this leadership or lip > service? Asking the following are important determinants:

Are blacks represented in senior leadership at your organization?

Are mechanisms and resources devoted to recruit, retain, develop, and promote black employees?

Would your black employees say they are treated and paid equitably? Have you asked them?

Would your black employees find your messaging consistent with their experience in your organization? Have you asked them?

Is diversity and inclusion isolated to singular events (e.g. Black History Month; when there are massive global protests) or part of a sustained effort and the ongoing fabric of the culture and values of your organization?

Is your senior leadership involved and supportive of these efforts?

Is your organization actively investing in the black communities in which they are based and operate?

Does your organization invest in cultivating black businesses as vendor partners and service providers?

Have you personally mentored a black associate?

> _Lack of representation relative to population doesn't prove these companies > are racist or that they aren't trying to make up the difference. But the > numbers show the trying needs to hurry up: We have a ways to go._</comment>


Why FireO Is Important for Google Firestore - <AUTHOR> FireO make life easier for developers when you are working with Google Firestore. Now using FireO you can create models and operate Firestore operation easily.<p>Read More how FireO useful https://octabyte.io/FireO/ Appreciate our work by giving stars to FireO https://github.com/octabytes/FireO <comment><USER2> Is there an interface to use transactions?

<comment><AUTHOR> we are working on it and this will be available in very next release</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cross-platform mobile app development - <AUTHOR>

With the announcement of the Visual Studio Community Edition and Android Emulator, I think many of us who currently build iOS and Android versions of their apps in completely separate code-bases (Objective-C & Java) would be interested in learning from the experiences of those of you who have tried to write cross-platform native apps for iOS & Android or share most of the application logic between the two versions using Xamarian or good-old C++ (or anything else).<p>- How was your experience? What about debugging, maintenance, performance, etc?<p>- Is your app somewhat complicated (for example, it uses custom UI controls, animations, etc)?<p>- And finally, if you have to build a complicated and actively developed app on both iOS and Android now, what platform would you use (assuming your level of familiarity with all of them is equal)?<p>I've read time and time again that non-native cross-platform solutions like PhoneGap etc still don't give a smooth enough experience to compete with native counterparts. So, I'm still not taking them seriously. <comment><AUTHOR> I've already seen a high level post about how Dropbox does cross-platform development [1], but I think they don't go in details about the kind of issues one might face going with that approach.

[1] [http://oleb.net/blog/2014/05/how-dropbox-uses-cplusplus- cros...](http://oleb.net/blog/2014/05/how-dropbox-uses-cplusplus-cross- platform-development/)</comment>


Amazon's prime's 66% content is user uploaded - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605 <comment><USER2> It's not just that a lot of the content is conspiracy twaddle, it's also that a lot of the content - especially the documentaries - are very, very poorly made. Remember that YouTube video you made for your introduction to video course? Worse than that.

Amazon should have a preview option required for all videos that shows just a short random segment from the video prior to purchase. The segment should be randomly selected, as otherwise it could be gamed by the video uploaders.</comment>


São Paulo Labor Judge Rules Uber Must Pay Full Employee Benefits to Drivers - <AUTHOR> https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/politics-brazil/uber-to-pay-13th-month-and-vacation-to-drivers-rules-sao-paulo-labor-court/ <comment><USER3> Just to put this in context, this is a first instance ruling. There were dozens of those already in Brazil, but they are all reverted in upper instances because the supreme Labour Court has already decided they are not employees (Brazilian labour laws have very specific requirements to be considered so and Uber drivers definitely fail a couple of those objective requirements).

I understand that there is a need to protect those drivers (and other gig economy workers), but trying to bend the law's definition is not the right way to do it. This will get reversed as all other cases did.

<comment><USER4> Bending the law's definition is exactly how Uber and other companies avoid employee benefits and taxes.

<comment><USER3> In Brazil's case, they don't need to do that.

The law establishes that to be considered an employee/employer relationship, there needs to be a level of control from the employee's journey/hours, etc.

That control simply does not exist between Uber and Uber drivers and that is why it is considered that they fail the legal employee definition.

Obviously there is disagreement, as with everything in Law, but in this case you really need to bend the definition to make it fit the requirement.

As I said before, I fully agree that Uber drivers and other gig workers need some protection, but I also fully agree with the ruling that they do not fit the current legal objective definition of a employee/employer relationship. It simply does not.

We need new laws for those cases, or to change the legal definition (which is unlikely). Judges giving those rulings is basically having judges creating laws, which is not how it is supposed to be (by the way, Brazil does not have Common Law, so other rulings do not have the same power as in US/UK and other Common Law states).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Would a good compromise be if you work less than say 15 hours a week you don't get all the employee benefits and if you work closer to a full time schedule you do?

I hate the idea of closing it off to people that just want to side income.

<comment><USER6> By adding a boundary with financial implications, you also incentivize businesses to ensure employees don't cross it.

I don't have a good replacement mechanism that keeps benefits tied to employment and isn't complex and likely prone to other perverse incentives. But at the very least, we should be clear about what the incentives end up being.

Which is why I think the right answer is to decouple things like healthcare from employment.

<comment><USER7> A possible solution is to have no hard cutoff. Work 5 hours a week? Get 5/40ths of full time benefits. Or something like that. Obviously it's tricky with benefits that are all or nothing, though some of that could be adjusted - for health insurance, this could mean Uber offers to pay a variable portion of the cost based on how much you worked in the last ~3 months. With anything on a strictly proportional scale, there's no obvious financial incentive to keep workers from working the number of hours they want.

Though I agree healthcare is the one thing that would probably be better off not tied to employment.

<comment><USER8> Even better, just stop having non-cash benefits for employees whatsoever, which would allow them to command higher compensation in cash and then buy whatever "benefits" they want or with it or not.

The entire concept of "benefits" came out of regulatory arbitrage to avoid 20th century wage controls or because of differential tax treatment. It's an anachronism that should cease to exist.

<comment><USER9> That is very dangerous.

People are, in the large, morons. That goes double when it comes to money and health.

<comment><USER8> > People are, in the large, morons.

They're not, and constantly assuming they are is incredibly patronizing.

And if they are, aren't the people deciding all of these things for everybody also "people"? Clearly then we shouldn't rely on their decisions because people are morons.

> That goes double when it comes to money and health.

So give a tax credit to individuals for having a minimum amount of high deductible health insurance but structure it as a "tax" for not doing so, which triggers loss aversion and causes people to buy it to avoid the "tax". It changes nothing for the people who were already doing the math and it catches the "morons" you were worried about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm from São Paulo and I'm embarrassed about this decision. Brazil's labor laws treat the "workers" as stupid people, unable to negotiate good terms by themselves. It's much better for them to have an intermediary - <USER2> government! - to handle this, and then pay 50% of everything that you make in taxes for this wonderful protection. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER11> What a strange comment.

> Brazil's labor laws treat the "workers" as stupid people

This has nothing to do with stupidity, intelligence or anything like that. This has to do with _leverage_. A multi-national giant corporation like Uber has a lot of leverage over Brazilian workers. If Uber treats them like figurative slaves and gives them too little money, workers have very little they can do against this. It is government's responsibility to _protect_ people from this power imbalance. Yes Uber should have a freedom to charge/pay whatever market accepts and workers should have freedom to negotiate their own benefits. But at the same time Uber needs to implement a minimum care for their workers, and if not government should be able to enforce them to do so.

<comment><USER12> Drivers are not bound in any way to Uber, Uber won't send slave hunters if they leave the app.

If people continue to drive for Uber, doesn't that mean the app is still a net positive for them, or do you believe people would pay to work?

Your comment is a great example of what the parent comment is saying, the belief that people are too damn dumb and they need protection.

<comment><USER13> I believe that people will take deals that don't benefit them. But that's not the point here. The numbers are made up, but say Uber makes 10$ per ride and the driver makes 10$ per ride.

If the drivers get together, they might be able to negotiate 15$ per ride, leaving 5$ per ride for Uber. However, it might be hard for the people to do that, so the government can step in to improve conditions for riders by negotiating for them as a block.

<comment><USER8> All of this labor theory only applies when you're negotiating with a monopolist. Otherwise the company already has thin margins as a result of needing to compete with other companies -- remember all that stuff about Uber losing money? -- and there is little more they can give you without trading it against something else you want, like flexibility or number of hours.

The primary way they could pay drivers more is by charging higher fares. But then there is lower demand for rides, so they need fewer drivers, so some of the drivers lose their jobs. If you think that's a good trade off then take it now -- quit and go do something else. It will cause the remaining drivers to be able to command higher compensation.

Everybody wants to be the one to get paid more and not the one who loses their job, but some of them will necessarily be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is Uber asking for donations to help drivers during COVID-19 lockdown in your country?

It does so via push notifications in India, so does its rival Ola but news report says that funds weren't distributed to the drivers properly[1].

[1][https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/uber-ola-hyped-relief- fu...](https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/uber-ola-hyped-relief- fund_in_5eb40f7ac5b652c56473c954)

</comment><comment><USER15> Good.

Uber is trying to weasel out of this in Switzerland by letting drivers set price but it won't fly.

<comment><USER16> I don't think of that as "weaseling out of" at all. If anything, I've been arguing that the single primary thing that nullifies Uber's "they're all just contractors!!" argument is that drivers have no involvement in setting the price. If drivers _can_ set the price though, and actually put in fair bids that they believe are necessary to pay their costs and make an acceptable profit, then it does become much more of a true marketplace and the "all drivers are employees" argument holds a lot less water IMO.

<comment><USER17> Then why isn't this the policy across all territories? Weaseling out sounds correct if they are only doing it to get around local laws.

<comment><USER18> If the laws are not strong enough for them to be forced to do this in bigger markets, then perhaps the laws should be changed?

Depending on companies to self govern is not sustainable even if Uber does not exploit this, the next company will. Such loopholes need to be closed, putting on pressure on some companies is just band aid if they actually change, if not just effort wasted on the wrong thing.

I don't buy regulatory capture as a valid argument either.

To make sure companies do the right thing strong regulations and laws need to be in place, to make sure regulatory bodies and lawmakers are not influenced, people should have more power in government than money does.

<comment><USER17> I agree with pretty much all you said.

Mainly, I do not find it very genuine that they only implemented this policy, likely with extra effort, in one territory. This feels like a play to capture market share and increase growth, even if it doesn't match their existing business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is almost surely going to be reversed on appeal because the Superior Labour Court has already decided that Uber drivers are not employees

<comment><USER3> This is very important. I also posted my own comment about this.

There were dozens of rulings like this in Brazil already. They all got reversed in upper instances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is preliminary decision and goes agains previous legal battles that where favorable to Uber.

Given that São Paulo is a key City for Uber, according their prospectus Sampa is the second most active city This will be a long ongoing legal battle.

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't hold out hope considering the other key cities Uber operates in (SF and LA in California, NYC in New York, New Jersey, and London [1], which account for 1/4 of their bookings) have made similar determinations. São Paulo was the holdout.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23713582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23713582)

<comment><USER22> It's too early to say that they were determined as employees in any of those cities. The cities WANT them to be employees because it takes the burden off them to get jobs for them, but the legality of those ruling haven't been finalized. There are plenty of reasons why they shouldn't be considered employees and there was a study released by Cornell this week that showed more than 75% of drivers are part-time anyway and want freedom, not full time employment.

<comment><USER23> You mean this one? [1]

 _> "Uber and Lyft covered the costs of the study [...] The study was priced as cost-plus, which covered the costs of the research plus overhead to the university. In total, study costs came to $120,000. [...] Driver earnings for all of our analyses came directly from Lyft and Uber. "_

Yeah, real convincing.

[1] [https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...](https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1070&context=reports)

<comment><USER24> And, anyway, this would only argue for giving them an option, not for giving nobody the option of working full time. 25% is not a small number

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> All of these laws leading to full employment/benefits seem like a good thing on paper, but I wonder if it will lead to regulatory capture by the existing ride sharing companies, making it impossible for new entrants to join? Also what will be the long term consequences?

Also let's say you didn't want Uber/Lyft/whoever to dictate your working hours, could you reject the full benefits for flexibility?

<comment><USER26> Not all regulations lead to regulatory capture, and this is not generally the pathway to capture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I dont know what people think the result this will be, but I can tell you what will not happen, they will not just magically make all the drivers full time employee's

one or more these things will happen if this stands

1\. Hours will be limited to part time only

2\. Rates for rides will explode, which will likely cause a reduction in revenue probably to the point to mass layoffs

3\. Drivers will have to sign Exclusivity and not be allowed to work for any other RideShare service

4\. Drivers will have to work a set schedule, set by uber

I am not saying any of these are necessary bad but it seems to me that many of the people "fighting for employee status" seem to think that a change in that status means everything about the service stays the same but now they get vacation, paid sick time and health insurance.

That is very very unlikely to be the result

<comment><USER26> Non-competes in Brazil require employees to be paid salary for the duration of the non-compete clause, so doubt that's what Uber would turn to.

> 4\. Drivers will have to work a set schedule, set by uber

> 1\. Hours will be limited to part time only

This undermines Uber's contractor argument, I also doubt they would do this.

<comment><USER27> If they are classified as employee's then they are by definition not contractors

So yes today Uber, as contractors, will not do that, the second the law requires them to be classified as employees then they will

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm all for employee protections but I also worry we are nipping the emerging gig economy in the bud.

<comment><USER28> If the gig economy relies on the suffering of others, then it should be nipped in the bud.

If the gig economy cannot compete on a level playing field, keeping the benefits stable, it is just a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER29> There is huge demand for easy to get unstable jobs, lots of people want these. Not having them removes options from people, they aren't worse than other jobs just different.

<comment><USER30> I mean, depending on the country in question they are worse than other jobs (namely by not offering healthcare benefits). People trade long-term benefits for short-term profits and the end result is that the tax payer is on the hook for those that slip through the system and need medical care.

At least that's how it functions in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Doesn't this move hurt ride seekers in under-served areas? If every driver now has fixed cost for Uber, each driver needs to be scheduled and positioned to maximize Uber's revenue. A driver's health insurance costs the same whether the driver is driving during prime hours or at 3 in the morning. Uber has every incentive to not schedule many drivers off hours. For riders this mean either no ride or a very high-cost ride, whereas before Uber had no problem with letting as many drivers who wanted drive whenever they wanted.

</comment><comment><USER32> Employer paid benefits always wind up coming out of the employee's pocket.

The advantage, though, to the employer paying them is they are paid out of the employee's pre-tax income.

<comment><USER33> There's another advantage: large employers have huge bargaining power compared to individual employees, so a dollar just goes farther when the employer spends it.</comment></comment>


Long URLs Please - <AUTHOR> http://www.longurlplease.com/

<comment><USER2> Or, when using communication mediums where length isn't an issue, you could courteously give your readers a _decent_ url:

<http://decenturl.com/>

e.g., <http://news.ycombinator.decenturl.com/long-urls-please>

And a tidbit for the sadistic: <http://hugeurl.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I can understand the Firefox extension as being something laudable, sure. But an HTTP API? That seems kind of random, given that the URL shorteners work with 30x HTTP responses. I mean, you just need to request the short URL and read out the Location header of the 30x response. It seems... convoluted to go via an additional server.

<comment><USER4> Good point - what I've done is allow you to piggyback more than one lookup onto a single request. so the plugin will batch them in groups of 4. does that make sense?

<comment><USER3> Well, on the server you're still starting N requests based on my batch request. I guess combined with caching that can make sense, yes. Even so, I'd probably want to implement my own [1] when setting up my own web app for reliability/trust reasons, and because of same-origin restrictions on client- side scripting. (XHR does support not following redirects, but it's kind of pointless with same-origin policy)

[1] I did exactly that for <http://tweetoftheyear.com/> in clojure:

      (defn lookup-redirect [url]
        (try
          (let
            [response (http-client/url-do url "HEAD" {:follow-redirect false})]
            (when (#{301 302 303 307} (:return-code response))
              (first (get (:header response) "Location"))))
          (catch java.lang.Throwable t nil)))

<comment><USER4> I thought so, and I do cache everything nicely in memcache and db.

Also it's hard or maybe even impossible? to reliably fetch arbitrary short url using javascript - exposing it as a simple json api makes this easy.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, it's only possible on the same hostname as the page you're on, which limits the usefulness and makes the server-side lookup necessary. The JSON solution will only work via a foreign host with a <script> tag as far as I know, which again is something of a trust issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Taking the fun out of Rickrolling since 2008.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been using Twitter as part of my blog and have started replacing the href of links with the expanded link. So if you go to my blog or follow me on twitter the links look the same but if you hover on a link the status bar shows the end link.

I do this on the server side, with Python code I mentioned <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=406608> but it is possible to do it client side as well with something like <http://remysharp.com/tinyurlapi>

</comment><comment><USER7> The Firefox plugin at addons.mozilla.org is messed up (I looked at the contents and found it's an html document). However, the "Benefit right away by installing the firefox plugin" link has a working xpi. Just a heads-up for anyone wondering why they can't install the plugin. :-)

EDIT: Oh, and the statusbar icon is utterly pointless.

</comment><comment><USER8> nice idea and thanks for including an API.

sort of related, I wrote a Greasemonkey script to automatically create bit.ly urls as you type a Twitter Tweet. Does it on the fly. Uses the bit.ly API. Check it out at <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39042>

<comment><USER4> Nice! twitter confuses me how it will convert your urls to tiny urls when you don't want to - but won't when you need it to.

<comment><USER8> yah.. I wrote it partly to take that ambiguity away.. also seemed a shame to take up some of your 140 characters with a long url, then only to see that Twitter compressed it for you in the saved Tweet, reminding you that you could have typed more :)

<comment><USER4> on the typing more front words - have you seen tweetshrink? <http://tweetshrink.com/> \- it'll shorten words like later to l8r to save characters - <http://tweetdeck.com> have integrated it's api into their twitter client

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's also longurl.org - doing the same sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> Yep - looks very similar to what I've done, I hadn't seen it until a few days ago. We could do with even more similar services - to balance out the hundreds of url shrinking services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's funny. I was just looking for this.

</comment><comment><USER11> you can already use user-entered strings in tinyurl so i dont see the point of using them as an example

</comment><comment><USER12> great idea. Installed :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank you; installed.</comment>


IBM Patents Half-day Out of Office Notifications - <AUTHOR> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,095,941.PN.&OS=PN/8,095,941&RS=PN/8,095,941

<comment><USER2> If I'm reading it correctly, the patent covers a _very_ specific implementation, even mentioning use of EJB. Presumably an implementation on a different stack couldn't infringe.

<comment><USER3> Not necessarily. Patents commonly discuss specific implementations but qualify them as just one of many possible "embodiments" of the invention.

<comment><USER4> Incorrect. Only what is specifically claimed (in the claims themselves) holds up in court.

<comment><USER5> The key requirement in that is going to court.

<comment><USER6> Exactly - no matter now badwrong the patent, it still takes time and money to go to court, and the kind of people that IBM will be using this patent against don't have that time or that money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The key is to read the claims (particularly the independent ones) - that is the only part of a patent that holds water.

In this case, the first independent claim is seriously narrow. The OP's title is extremely misleading.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I read in the claims section:

"What is claimed is:

1\. A system for generating an electronic notification containing a portion of a day out of office notice, ..." (and then goes on to explain its implementation).

Could you please tell me how the title is misleading?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"This invention relates in general to personal information management applications, and more particularly, to a system that generates an electronic notice that displays a portion of a day out of office notice."_

Surely this quote is actually from a Monty Python sketch and not an official patent issued by the USA.

<comment><USER8> You haven't seen their _"method and process for swinging a mackerel at high angular velocity in the direction of a colleague's face"_ yet then, have you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every patent application needs these three questions answered:

        1. What's novel about this?
        2. What's not obvious about this to an average professional in this field?
        3. What is useful about this?

In this case, 3 is a given but I can't seem to figure out 1 and 2.

<comment><USER10> Right, but money has a way of figuring out 1 and 2.

Seriously, if they get awarded this patent, I'm just going to go through everything I can think of and file patents for half. Apple patents "swipe", I'll patent the "half swipe". Microsoft patents "avoid Ghetto" GPS feature, I'll patent the "avoid areas near a Walmart" feature.

<comment><USER11> Has anyone ever tried starting a community effort, something like IP Commons?

[edit: I just duck'd and fished this out patentcommons.org but the site is down.]

<comment><USER12> <https://w2.eff.org/patent/>

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the link. I mean, why not start a non-profit "open source" patent organization and start filing patents and hold ownership in commons; GPL for IP. Two can play this game, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A very thorough examination: filed 2006 granted 2012. But i understand why it took so long, they also had to invent multi-base fractional numbers (days hours and minutes: "timestamp to-the-minute" is repeated eight times in the claim) to support the invention. Who had heard that before.

Coming next: a patent that supports notifications accurate "to the second".

</comment><comment><USER14> My second thought was how I will be required to set this up anytime my schedule for a day is a bit unusual :-(

Method and device for making office life suck even more...

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like the patent examiner was test-driving this invention himself.

Would explain quite a bit about PTO.

</comment><comment><USER16> 6 minute abs!

</comment><comment><USER17> Exclamation. Adjective adjective noun, exclamation.</comment>


How Automakers Invented the Crime of "Jaywalking" - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history <comment><USER5> Now is an opportunity, perhaps first in ~100 years, perhaps last, to recover the streets for unaugmented humans: slow down cars in urban areas, increase qualifications for humans to drive, eventually ban human drivers entirely, leaving only automated vehicles with enough sensors and going slowly enough to reduce auto-related deaths for pedestrians and passengers alike to zero.

<comment><USER6> If automated vehicles become popular, I predict new crimes will be added in addition to jaywalking. Cyclists may be restricted and anything else that confuses AI drivers. If certain intersections or sections of road consistently confuse AI drivers, automakers will lobby for ways to change these roadways. I suspect calls for AI regulation by people like Elon Musk are really attempts at regulatory capture to make automated vehicles possible and dominated by the first market entrants.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. I see this here on hacker news with people excited about the notion of doing away with stop lights so that AI traffic can flow easily. People are completely ignoring the existence of pedestrians and cyclists. It would not be surprising to see a new crime of "hindering an autonomous automobile" be lobbied for.

<comment><USER8> It's only a matter of time before some stupid kids start jumping in the way of self-driving cars to make them brake hard. That's when we'll see the anti- pedestrian regulations appear, by my estimation.

<comment><USER9> Self driving cars are not magic and judging their braking distance is not much easier than with a human driver. I think kids trying that will quickly find out that it's not too hard to make an autocar hit a human. In other words, I think the problem would quickly solve itself.

<comment><USER6> In bad neighborhoods, the carjackers(might not want a autonomous car though) or robbers might just roll a beach ball into the street to stop the car or maybe just a cheap open umbrella. I can imagine those people who practice "rolling coal" doing the same thing to rich autonomous car riders or just throwing a beach ball out the window on an interstate. Lots of possibilities that security researchers will need to consider.

<comment><USER9> Rolling a ball on the street is probably enough to stop human drivers as well. Is carjacking that much of a problem where you live? I've never heard of anybody being carjacked here. I guess you could equip your car with one of these devices if you're concerned:

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

<comment><USER10> A human driver has a good chance to recognize the situation for what it is and just hit the beachball. (Or heck, the hoodlum himself.)

<comment><USER11> Um where do you think this is happening exactly that people know that beachball = carjacking? Based on the language used, I suspect you aren't in such an area and are coming up with an unrealistic scenario here.

<comment><USER10> Okay, so we have to suppose we're driving through LA County's Palos Verdes Estates, and a beachball suddenly pops up. Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Reporters could send in the basic details of a traffic accident and would get in return a complete article to print the next day. These articles, printed widely, shifted the blame for accidents to pedestrians_

To me, that is the craziest sentence in the article. Reporters were outsourcing writing to the auto industry? Of course they blamed the pedestrians! In what world is this ethical?

What is next? Sending overdose details to pharma companies for them to blame the drug users?

<comment><USER13> You say this as if it's unusual for news articles to be solely written by various company's PR and marketing teams.

<comment><USER12> But there is a difference between promoting a product vs shifting blame, isn't it?

<comment><USER13> In both cases, the entity creating the message is promoting a point of view in which it has a financial stake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was another Vox episode mentioning how manufacturers also heavily influenced our views on littering: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxKfpt70rLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxKfpt70rLI)

Suddenly that ecologically unsound packaging was no longer their problem; disposing of it properly was the consumer and the government's shared responsibility.

<comment><USER15> In much the same way I'm happy we no longer empty chamber pots by heaving the contents out the front window, I don't really care where litter or rubbish comes from but I'd prefer it not pile up on the sidewalk.

<comment><USER16> The difference is that one is biologically unavoidable and the other is stubbornness in the name of saving production costs.

<comment> spaced-out If someone ate an orange or banana and left the peel on a park bench, I'd still consider that littering.

<comment><USER16> and? obviously I don't want heaps of chamber pot contents on the sidewalk either. The point I was making is that, yes all littering is bad, but why does the consumer shoulder the burden when a huge majority of packaging can be avoided?

<comment> spaced-out Can be avoided, but there's a cost. Wrapping food in plastic makes it easier, and thus cheaper to distribute, and vastly lowers the risk of foodborn illness. If you get rid of plastic packaging, the consumer will bear that cost in other ways.

I agree that companies often avoid the negative externalities of their activities, and support things like a carbon tax to fix that. But in the case of littering, whoever creates the mess needs to clean it up.

<comment><USER17> How exactly does wrapping potatoes and bell peppers and cucumbers individually in plastic make it easier to distribute them? As far as illness goes, any number of steps along the food distribution chain can introduce pathogens, so they still have to be cleaned, separated, prepared and stored properly, regardless of plastic use.

On the other hand, if you get rid of plastic packaging, the consumer will bear the _benefit_ in other ways. A lack of plastic in the environment means a healthier ecosystem, which affects their food as well as their quality of life.

But this is all a bit of a red herring because goods aren't packaged in so much plastic in order to reduce costs or improve quality. The single most important factor in consumer packaging is "Will this make the consumer want to buy it more".

<comment><USER18> In the case of cucumbers, it's to extend the shelf life because otherwise they very easily dehydrate through their skins[0]. (The alternative is waxing the skin.)

I've never seen an individually shrink-wrapped potato or bell pepper where I live. I do see sets of 3 large bell papers, or of a pound or two of "baby" bell papers, in a plastic bag, and don't know of any excuse for that beyond convenience.

[0] [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and- drink/featu...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and- drink/features/a-lesson-in-packaging-myths-is-shrink-wrap-on-a-cucumber- really-mindless-waste-8340812.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can HN please stop it with this "not owning a car is virtuous" shtick? I went most of my younger life not having a car, only learning to drive at age 28. I lived in a new england suburb close enough to go to my work and shopping services at a ten minute walk at the time, and it still was horrid.

People here don't get how limited your life is without a car. You are limited to a ten-fifteen mile radius for everything, unless you use inefficient public transport which tacks on a huge time tax for even basic trips. You are captive to that transport, which means something like being called in is hard to impossible, as well as many duties of your workplace; dropping deposits off to a bank after hours as a manager, for example. That transport doesn't even expand your range that much, maybe one or two towns over; the time for further is so long as to be prohibitive.

Even with walking, you wind up spending far more time and expense on basic tasks. Instead of shopping one day you need to shop five, just because you can't fit more than a couple bags of goods. If you are on the bus, you can't even easily use perishables; 30-45 min one way is the norm. You can't do things like buy a mattress without tacked on delivery fees and more time spent waiting to receive it. If anything happens where you simply can't walk like doctor or dentist visits (because doctors don't always stay in walking distance of most people) that's an expensive cab or uber both ways. Sometimes its even worse...jury duty can be in the county courthouse 30 min by car and an hour and a half by bus.

You have no social life with no car. Not every town can simply cluster everything in one place; the downtown can easily be 30 minutes away from where people live. It took me an hour to walk to the comic shop one way; the bus would had made that longer, not shorter. Dates are impossible because of that; if the nearest date spot or bar isn't within five minutes, what do you do?

A life without personal cars would be a rather limited and even serfish one. Everyone assumes driverless cars might save us, but they have yet to prove they can even navigate a highway during a New England winter, which is what you'd need to do to replace a commute. People talk about bicycles, but 0 degree or snowy weather makes that horrid, as well as high heat. Please stop assuming cars are this evil thing that more walking and biking will solve; they wont, not at all.

<comment><USER20> Counter point. Late 30s here, family, no car, no license. I use cabs all the time, it's great. I have a fine social life and can drink safely. I can rent houses and move about for work, then change countries without offloading assets at fire-sale prices. I choose not to live in an unpleasant climate, so snow is a non-issue for me. Have you considered the option that _maybe you just don 't get it?_

Cars are responsible for many problems including wasted space, noise, visual and air pollution, danger, and unpleasant urban space breakdowns.

 _The Highway and Automobile culture are symbols of totalitarian cultures which deny people more sustainable and equitable alternatives for mobility and transport_ \- Vandana Shiva, February 19, 2004.

The reality is that most people live in dense Asian urban environments, and this trend is increasing. More and more people rely solely on public transport, and this is a good thing for society and the environment. If everyone carried on like Americans or Australians, global warming would be insane. Let's encourage pluralism and change. Cars have had their chance - <USER2> 1950s called and wants its suburban utopia back.

<comment><USER19> That's called "being wealthy." Being wealthy enables you to escape a lot of the problems that not having a car involves, because you can just throw money at the problem to overcome it. A lot of people are not wealthy and cannot do this.

There's also a bit of good fortune involved. I was young, single, and healthy. But I'm older now, and there are times when I simply cannot afford to use public transit or walk. If you get the flu, you don't even have the choice; walking fifteen minutes to get medicine or food is agony. And you always have to walk fifteen minutes, just to get to the transit spot. You feel the weather a lot more as you age; a brisk rain shower is rougher on you at 40 than at 20.

And come on, what can be more totalitarian than restricting the ability of people to move beyond a tiny radius apart from communal vehicles that can be shut down on a whim?

<comment><USER20> I think you are evaluating many things from an American context and you reveal that you are older. IMHO the problem with American environments are that they're often semi-explicitly designed around the car. If you are used to a car, not having one is probably a horrible prospect. However, as you explicitly discussed aging, you can't put your head in the sand - <USER3> eventually you won't be able to drive a car, so you'd better get ready for it. Most of the US likely won't change quickly enough to lessen that challenge for you, but perhaps with younger generations behind change one day that issue won't be faced by others.

<comment><USER19> You can drive a car a lot longer than you can walk. I could do a 30 minute walk as a younger person, but now it's something I could only do as a special thing, not every day to a job. Society will not be able to redesign for this; if anything it's other people who own cars that act as caregivers for housebound seniors as their work.

<comment><USER21> Can I ask what age you? You should easily be able to walk 30 min at any age short of 60, unless you have relates health issues. If you can't then you need to seriously consider improving your health.

<comment><USER22> My dad is 66 and can easily walk for hours. I think the problem here is strictly health issues, not age. (Obviously, health issues often come with age... but age itself is not the limiting factor at all!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In the UK jaywalking doesn't exist; technically people still have right of way on roads, but try telling that to a car. In the 1930s, when the first footbridge over a road, Western Avenue in London was built, there were protests:

The Bridge of Fools, the first footbridge over a road in Britain

In 1938 the inhabitants started to protest about the rising death toll on Western Avenue, the "Avenue of Speed and Death". They petitioned the Ministry of Transport to impose a speed limit of twenty-five or thirty miles an hour. The ministry said that would be an "ingenious provision" to save lives, but it would be against "the whole object of constructing a road free from congested traffic".

On 21 July 1938 the protestors filed across Western Avenue from the Approach, and then back, causing a huge tailback. The next day the Ministry arranged to build two bridges, one here and one by Gipsy Corner, much to the disgust of the protestors, who thought it would encourage cars to drive faster and to force pedestrians off more roads onto bridges and subways. A week later a thousand people demonstrated again for "their right to cross on the level".

In September the hastily erected bridge was complete, and five hundred people demonstrated against it again. The bridge became a tourist attraction and it was "quite usual to see people from other districts coming to look at it".

In October torchlight processions were held on the road every evening for a week, with a dog with a red light attached to it and four bearers carrying a coffin, and placards saying "We want crossings not coffins".

The war brought and end to the protests, and for a few years the traffic.

(from Leadville: A Biography of the A40 by Edward Platt)

<comment><USER24> In my state (Connecticut), pedestrians have the right of way, but Jaywalking is a crime.

It makes sense, having the right of way won't save you if you decide to dart out in front of a car without warning

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Point taken. However, when new tech comes along, new laws follow in their wake.

When people moved from farm to city and suddenly we had massive amounts of worker abuse, labor laws got introduced.

Barnstorming aviation gave way to regulated aviation.

It's not exactly the same, but it's similar in that it's a reaction to change in the operating environment. I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally ad hoc. Today streets are prescripted and need to meet various contextual requirements (volume, traffic flow, vehicle types, pedestrians, weight limit, wear characteristics, etc.)

When a car gets crushed on the tracks, it's usually not blamed on the train. It's typically thought of as the responsibility of the car driver.

Now, sure, trains are constrained by tracks and don't enjoy manoeuverability, but same with ships, the little ones get out of the way.

Cars can't stop on a dime, so we put the ones on the entity with the most manoeuverability, in this case people.

<comment><USER26> > I mean, before cars, streets tended to be narrow and generally ad hoc.

It's also worthwhile to consider all that cars have added to our society. People stayed in the streets because that's as far as they could go. Vendors came to the streets because that's where their customers could get to. Travel was limited, the movement of goods was basically nonexistent compared to today and "moving for a job" was not even a possibility for the majority of Americans.

We introduced cars, then made them faster because that enabled more of what we wanted for ourselves, and sure, we made a sacrifice in that trade but I don't understand this modern trend of decrying our future for love of navel gazing through the past.

<comment><USER27> The role of technology in society is a perpetual balancing act negotiated by the actions of the people. Perhaps it isn't so much "navel gazing through the past" as recognizing that the balance has, for some, shifted too far in the direction of sacrifice.

Luckily, there are other societies that have managed to achieve most of the benefits of cars with fewer of the costs. We can learn from them as we try to find a balance that is acceptable to a broader population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I sold my car 3 years ago, and am lucky to live in a city where I no longer need one to get around. If someone wants to ban/inconvenience cars in a place where public transit is up to snuff, more power to them. But until then, let's get realistic. Most Americans _need_ to drive in order to live their personal/work lives. We can punitively punish drivers all we want, but ultimately, the only people we're punishing is ourselves.

Having a combination of sidewalks and roads is the best of both worlds - <USER4> pedestrians and cars are free to go as fast as they want, without having to get in each other's way. I've personally experienced the chaos of driving through unruly streets, where pedestrians can get in your way at any second. It's intensely stressful and frustrating to spend half an hour on a drive that could have been easily accomplished in 15. I'll take the smooth roads, demarcated lanes and traffic lights, thank you very much.

</comment><comment><USER29> 99% Invisible did an episode on this a while back that's a pretty good listen.

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the- modern...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern- moloch/)

<comment><USER30> I came here to post this episode. It's one of the greatest from 99pi.

<comment><USER29> It was one of the first I listened to, then I went back and listened to them all. :D

 _coin check_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For anyone that's interested in the subject, Hunter Oatman-Stanford wrote a rather more comprehensive article[1] with a much snappier title on the topic roughly four years ago, and Eben Weiss (aka Bike Snob NYC) responded with one of his charmingly vitriolic hot-takes[2] shortly thereafter.

[1] [https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder- machines/](https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/)

[2] [https://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2014/03/bsnyc-no-friday- fun...](https://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2014/03/bsnyc-no-friday-fun-quiz- instead-friday.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been driving for several decades. I'm also an avid automobile enthusiast, "will talk cars with anyone" kind of a guy.

But for 30 minutes every day, I'm just an ordinary pedestrian. And I follow the traffic rules and regulations which apply to pedestrians religiously: always cross at a crosswalk, never cross on Red, even if the intersection is devoid of traffic. Why do I do that? Because as a driver and as a pedestrian, I understand the challenges and the dangers of being on both sides. It has to do with discipline and maintenace of the very high standard of living I enjoy in the country where I live. Being undisciplined would erode that standard.

Many pedestrians are undisciplined. I see them crossing the road at places other than a crosswalk. I see them crossing the road on Red, while as a fellow pedestrian I patiently wait to cross at a crosswalk when the traffic light turns Green. It angers me greatly when other pedestrians aren't disciplined, not only because they erode the standard of living, but because I could have just as easily been the driver who unwittingly hits them and has to live with that for the rest of her or his life.

<comment><USER21> You're presuming here that the current system is fair and reasonable. As it is, pedestrians are massively inconvenienced so that drivers can speed around in a two ton box of steel. To my mind that's not a fair trade off.

<comment><USER32> I'm not presuming. Where I live it's more than fair and reasonable in favor of pedestrians and bicyclists, heavily skewed in their favor as far as traffic laws and infrastructure. Europe isn't like the States in that respect.

And yet a lot of pedestrians don't abide by traffic laws and a lot of bicyclists actively abuse and violate it. I just had a guy take my right-of- way in a rotor (roundabound) and fly right in anyway although I was already in it and about to make an exit, and when I honked my horn he just waved me down like it was nothing; If I had hit him even though he broke the law, the court would by default favor him because he was on a bicycle, never mind that when they are on one they are a vehicle like any other for the purposes of traffic laws and they have to abide by them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As someone from the other side of the pond I always found it strange that pedestrians could be entrusted to carry a loaded handgun, but not to cross the road.

</comment><comment><USER34> This was covered in a very entertaining show called Adam Ruins Everything. Each episode has footnotes for the sources:

[http://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins- everything/blog/adams-...](http://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins- everything/blog/adams-sources/adam-ruins-cars.html)

Interestingly enough, their source was an article from Vox from 2007: [https://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2934608/N...](https://cdn1.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2934608/Norton_Street_Rivals.0.pdf)

EDIT: the article references the original author's work and the book (also cited as a source by the show) [http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Traffic- American-Inside-Techn...](http://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Traffic-American- Inside-Technology/dp/0262516128)

</comment><comment><USER35> Not surprising to read that Los Angeles was the starting point for jaywalking laws. Still today, it enforces them harder than most other cities. Try running across an empty street with no crosswalk for 1/4 mile in either direction in front of a cop. It's likely that you'll still receive a fine citation. I'd like to see it replaced with an "impeding traffic" law that would only apply if you're actually putting yourself or others in danger. But I presume the city makes too much money from the current jaywalking law to make that change.

The relationship between automakers and L.A.'s city government back in the 20s an 30s is an interesting topic. They seem to have had an enormous amount of power over the city. Automakers were instrumental in shutting down the extensive subway system as it transformed into the car based city it is today. Was this due to corruption or was L.A. just preparing for what we thought would be the future of transportation?

<comment><USER36> Granted I don't live in LA, but I've visited many times and I'm surprised by this comment because it doesn't match my experience. I"m much more familiar with Chicago, where a taxi cab will jump a curb just for the chance to run down a pedestrian. Meanwhile every time I've tried to cross a road in LA, the minute I lift one foot off the ground while standing at a crosswalk, traffic in both directions comes screeching to a halt with drivers waving me on against the light. I've found drivers in LA to be far more lenient to the random whims of others (pedestrians and drivers alike) than most cities I've visited.

<comment><USER37> At crosswalks that don't have lights, they have to stop for you when you're there. This is also heavily enforced.

But in areas without crosswalks, you'll get a ticket for stepping into the street even if there are no cars coming.

Edit: clarity

<comment><USER10> If no motor vehicles are coming, then no police car or motor bike is coming, so you don't get a ticket. Unless it's a cop on horseback or bicycle. Or else the cop was already present there on foot, in which case don't do that!

People who get tickets deserve them because they are obviously not paying attention to their surroundings.

If you can't see that a cop is there, what else can't you see?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Fantastic photo from 1914, but while the peope are gone, and the buildings are barely recognisable, I'm not sure the car has completely taken over on that particular street (Orhard and Hester facing SSW towards Division St.)

[https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hester+St,+New+York,+NY,...](https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hester+St,+New+York,+NY,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-73.9913672,3a,75y,166.01h,92.28t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1s3WQId5LdrSrKTHzX2RO21Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i43!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x89c25a28004b74fd:0x86b2847175e8efde!2sHester+St,+New+York,+NY,+USA!3b1!8m2!3d40.7169698!4d-73.9944555!3m4!1s0x89c25a28004b74fd:0x86b2847175e8efde!8m2!3d40.7169698!4d-73.9944555?dcr=0)

</comment><comment><USER39> What i would like to know is did it actually reduce deaths?

<comment><USER40> Maybe from cars hitting people - but how about death from obesity and environmental degradation of suburban auto-oriented lifestyle as compared to urban walkable/transit oriented lifestyle.

<comment><USER41> There have been massive increases in quality of life as a result of cheaper, faster transportation of people and goods.

Anything can be made to look like a massive net negative with the one-sided comparison that it's fashionable to apply to cars, social conservatives, and a handful of other topics around here.

<comment><USER40> Both points definitely true. I guess my argument is you can accomplish the same (probably more?) massive increase in quality of life without the suburban auto dependent monoculture. Look at quality of life (especially with regard to ease of mobility) of some bike infrastructure leaders like Copenhagen versus SF Bay Area where you pretty much have to own a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Limited access" roads already exist. These are the places for unlimited speeds in autonomous vehicles. Everyplace else it should be assumed that cyclists and pedestrians are in the mix, and even if traffic signals for cars become obsolete, those cars will still have to enable bikes and pedestrians to move without joining the v2v network. You might be able to provide a safety advantage to cyclists and pedestrians carrying beacons, but you'll never be able to count on it, so city traffic will have to remain within speeds that keep un-instrumented pedestrians and cyclists safe.

</comment><comment><USER43> There's an episode of The Dollop podcast that addresses the introduction of cars to the streets of America when horse and buggie still ruled the road [0]. It is highly entertaining and informative, and it touches upon why "jaywalking" and who "Jay" is supposed to be. I recommend it and the podcast in general to anyone who is interested in peculiar history.

[0] [http://thedollop.libsyn.com/193-when-the-cars- came](http://thedollop.libsyn.com/193-when-the-cars-came)

</comment><comment><USER41> People really turn into extremists around here whenever the topic is cars vs bikes vs pedestrians vs anything else. Of all communities you'd think that this one would be able to discuss this in a more generalized way without getting all emotional about how cars are the devil and bikes have no manners, etc, etc.

It would be a lot easier to have a productive discussion if there were some way to have it in terms of something people find more neutral. Maybe find+replace cars with aircraft and people with service vehicles. Fork trucks, pallet jacks and foot traffic could be another substitution.

It makes sense to segregate traffic and govern their interactions with defined rules and put lots of redundancy in those rules. That's why bike lanes and sidewalks, are a thing. In ports, rail yards, construction sites, mines an anywhere else there's a lot of different traffic there's similar rules about who goes where and how they interact with each other.

Interactions between classes of traffic need to be well defined and include lots of redundant rules for safety. Redundant rules allow the slack from a violation of expected behavior by one party to be picked up by another party that is following the rules that govern how it should behave.

With regard to this article in particular, I see jaywalking laws being more a result of society tolerating micro-managerial laws than I do on any special interest group.

Jaywalking laws would have happened sooner or later. The only reason people ascribe them to the automobile industry is because the automobile took over from the horse at about the same time period where society started tolerating putting the force of law behind what's just good manners.

If someone crosses the street in a dumb manner and expects other traffic to "just deal" they're in the wrong. Whether it's a car running red light or a pedestrian or a rider on horseback cutting off an ox cart does not matter.

<comment><USER44> > Jaywalking laws would have happened sooner or later.

There are no jaywalking laws in the UK. So I don't think that's true.

<comment><USER41> If a pedestrian crosses the street at a particularly inappropriate time is there a statute under which they could be fined?

The "jaywalking law" in my state is that you have to use a crosswalk if it's within 300ft. In practice this means that you either use a crosswalk, or cross the street in a reasonable manner at a reasonable time. It's like speeding. If you behave reasonably you have nothing to worry about.

The US seems to have more restrictive laws about traffic behavior and enforce them less.

If you compare jaywalking laws with the rules vehicles have to follow[1] the result is that if one party is following all their rule. It's similar to the redundancy in road traffic laws (e.g. a safe following distances and using one's signal provide redundancy that prevents rear endings when one party doesn't do one of those things)

[1] [http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian- cross...](http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/pedestrian- crossing-50-state-summary.aspx)

<comment><USER44> > If a pedestrian crosses the street at a particularly inappropriate time is > there a statute under which they could be fined?

No.

There is semi-binding guidance called the Highway Code, which includes sections for pedestrians ([https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules- for-pedes...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for- pedestrians-1-to-35)) but there are no criminal or administrative penalties for not complying, except for Rule 34 (railway level crossings) which carry a criminal fine.

Crossing the road in a dangerous way is discouraged by education ("The Green Cross Code") and by the obvious downsides of getting hit by a car. If you do something stupid you may well get a bollocking from any passing police officer, but no fine.

edit: The Highway Code is actually a very good example of (kinda) law which is sensible, well-expressed, easy to read and well-illustrated. Well worth a look.

<comment><USER45> An exception is motorways, where pedestrians would get fined ( bicycles, mopeds and horses are not allowed either).

<comment><USER44> Yes; motorways (and other 'special roads') are restricted. It's not a matter of crossing them, though - just being at the roadside is an offence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sure, they were pro-active about it, but let's face it: It was going to happen anyhow. This just accelerated things.

<comment><USER47> I thought jaywalking is only a thing in the US? I'm not sure who's less informed, you or me, I have no idea about the prevalence of the idea in other countries.

It's not a crime to "jaywalk" in the UK, and I quote it as the concept simply doesn't exist here.

Also, in the UK, if you are crossing a side street and a car wants to turn into it, officially speaking, the pedestrian has the right of way[1].

[1][https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the- road-...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/using-the- road-159-to-203#rule170)

Edit: Seems it's a real mix, some there are none, others have it, some have it but it's never enforced and some countries have laws that only apply within a certain distance of designated crossings:

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

<comment><USER48> Europe is more strict esp Germany. I heard a story that if you get hit by a car they'll come to your hospital bed to give you the bill to repair the car damage, though I'm not sure how accurate that is.

<comment><USER49> That's nonsense. Jaywalking is not a crime or offence here. You cause an accident, you're paying.

//Edit, I stand corrected. It's a very minor offence, costing you 10€ if there's no signal, if there's a signal 5€ if traffic is endangered and 10€ if an accident was caused. 10€ for crossing the Autobahn (or, more likely, your life)

<comment><USER50> Anecdotally, I once crossed an empty street in Munich when the crosswalk said not to and was promptly chastised by a police officer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> the ultimate limit of roads+autonomous vehicles is an inefficient implementation of an electric railway

</comment><comment><USER52> This is silly.

>"Ultimately, both the word jaywalking and the concept that pedestrians shouldn't walk freely on streets became so deeply entrenched that few people know this history"

The article makes it seem like the only reason the rules exist as they do now is because some industry players forced us into this situation.

No. The rules exist now because the majority of people agreed that cars should be given the road and people should be given the sidewalks, and that people darting to and fro on the street would be very bad for everyone involved.

Sure the car industry backed these ideas, but people accepted them because they made sense.

<comment> a-priori Okay that's your opinion, and it's a fine opinion to have. But it's just one way things can work.

Another way, is to give pedestrians priority and expect drivers to exercise due caution to not hit them the same way they do other cars or trains or ambulances or whatever.

In an alternate universe where the laws had ended up with pedestrian-priority being the norm, then you'd be coming in here saying "Cars shouldn't drive freely on the streets! Streets are for people! People have been walking freely on streets forever and now you're proposing we vacate them for the convenience of drivers?" and so on.

So let me ask you this: how are you any more right than alternate-universe- you? Other than the status quo bias that you're defending the way things currently are where you (and I) live.

<comment><USER52> You're not understanding the situation. The nature of all parties involved means that what we have now is the optimal compromise.

Given the inertia of cars, starting and stopping frequently takes tremendous energy. Cars having to avoid pedestrians would waste tremendous amount of energy.

Also when you're driving you're focused on what's in front of you. People darting to and fro on the street is almost impossible to keep track of when you're driving and focused on the road ahead.

This is not an opinion. This is fact. And so, taking these facts into account, we've decided a system that optimizes energy use and safety for everyone involved. Pedestrians have sidewalks, cars have streets.

Complaining about this system is just silly.

<comment><USER53> Why do we grant special entitlements to people who opted to use two tons of steel to move one person? That sounds to me like a reason to place heavy restrictions on their behavior. There's an implicit assumption somehow being in a car makes you more important than someone who isn't. And any argument that presumes a pedestrian is wasting energy over someone who has chosen to drive in a car is absurd.

<comment><USER54> Why are you being so reductionist? Drivers have to accept extremely tight restrictions on their behavior already. I feel like I'm talking to an alien that's never driven a car. I mean good lord you have to 6 month class to learn a subset of the rules of the road.

The fact that cars are given priority because its more efficient to do so doesn't imply that people think they're more important. In a world with only bikes we would make the same contract so that bikes could go faster.

Allowing cars to achieve and maintain speed increases efficiency without impacting pedestrian walk times. Compared to this, a system where roads are shared does waste energy, time, and economic value.

<comment><USER55> > Allowing cars to achieve and maintain speed increases efficiency without > impacting pedestrian walk times. Compared to this, a system where roads are > shared does waste energy, time, and economic value.

Probably, but "energy, time, and economic value" isn't necessarily an unalloyed good that must be striven for. There are societal costs to the decisions we've made.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>