Don't make your Android app free for 1 day - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/32ed272012555f90

<comment><USER2> I had this exact problem. This is one of the reason I have found the Android app market horrible when compare with the iPhone market. This rule is so arbitrary and non-intuitive.

I actually made my app free for testing purposes and had to create an entirely different app once I made it free.

In my experience with the Android app store, Google has no idea what they are doing.

Edit: Independent of this weird issue, I say this mostly because we sold literally 20x less of the exact same app on the Android market vs. the iPhone market (the apps were marketed the exact same way). This is in spite of the fact that the Android phone sales are apparently equal the number of iPhones phone sales...

Another one of my biggest gripes, while people are listening, is that you can not get a URL for your app for the Android store (or at least I don't know how). How are you suppose to sell anything on the web without a web address. We have a link to our iPhone app and for then Android app we need to give people a search term to enter into the Android app store! This is crazy to me!

Finally, and this is the last thing I promise, when you submit and app to the Android store you use a keystone to sign it. Well, I ended up losing my keystone (cause I'm an idiot), so I could never push an update of my app. So, I ended up needing to go through and literally refund 100 people's purchases (by hand) and create an entirely different app. This was actually the same app that I made free, so I literally have 3 versions of this app submitted to the Android App Store (but two are no longer public).

<comment><USER3> _This is in spite of the fact that the Android phone sales are apparently equal the number of iPhones phone sales._

From what I understand, Android sales are currently similar to iPhone sales (in the US) in terms of phones being sold today, but there are a lot more iPhones already out there than Android phones (because the iPhone has been selling for longer I guess). Which means at the moment there are fewer people to buy Android apps. This also varies considerably from country to country -- for example, apparently Android sales are tiny in Australia compared to the iPhone.

<comment><USER4> There are also a lot of iPod touches out there.

<comment><USER5> That's an important point. Android is a complete non-starter in the non-phone MP3 device market, and the Android tablets are just starting out and have little market penetration. When comparing all iOS devices to all Android devices, instead of just phones to phones, iOS numbers definitely get a big boost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm screwed. I've just done exactly that. There seriously should be a warning in the Dev Console when marking an app free.

I'm moving to IPhone development.

Edit: Here's how I got screwed. I put my app up as paid app for beta testing at first because testing the Google License Server required the app to be published as a paid app (that's another insensible thing). Within a hour someone made a purchase. I felt uncomfortable charging an app still under testing so I emailed the guy to ask him to revert the transaction within 24 hours. He said it's ok since he liked the app anyway. Then another guy emailed me asking why charging a beta app, which was a reasonable question since people can't download paid app without credit card info. I made my app free for beta testing, thinking that would make it easier for people to test.

Now, it looks like the app has to be withdrawn and republished as a new paid app. I feel bad for the guy who has paid for the app already. This really screws the developers and the customers.

<comment><USER7> So eventually you publish the final app as a new package and update the beta with a nag screen that points to the new package. Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER6> Customers who have paid for the beta app will get a crippled app, whether the beta becomes a nag-ware or a lite version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just got an android yesterday, first negative experience within 20 minutes of opening the box, to play around with the turn-by-turn navigation you have to download an app which is free, but which requires you to set up a gmail account, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the task at hand.

Other than that amazing tech. The app download process was pretty painless after the google account was created.

I can see why the 'free to paid' switch would require a new application ID, after all people would feel tricked if they sent the name of the app to their friends on recommendation only to find that the one your friend downloaded for free is now suddenly a paid app.

<comment><USER9> Actually, Gmail (Google Apps accounts work too) account has quite a lot to do with the task at hand.

You will find out, when you will have a new phone and log in with the same account - the market will know which apps you bought or downloaded in the past and will set up them on your new phone.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but that does not hold true for a free app that just enables some functionality that was supposedly present in the phone when I bought it. You don't need a google email account for turn-by-turn navigation with voice instruction.

<comment><USER10> So go get a 3rd party gps app if you don't like it; You're not forced to download the voice app. I've been using the Navigation app on my Nexus One for a year now without downloading it. It just beeps instead of talking, and I actually like it better that way, compared to my wife's phone where she did download the voices, and it's just some crappy synthesized lady who's hard to understand and talks _waaayyy_ too much.

<comment><USER9> Actually, you did download it. Google Maps (includes Navigation, Lattitude, Places, etc) was updated several times since you bought your N1. It was updated using Google Market.

<comment><USER10> But I wasn't forced to download the voice instructions. That's included as a separate package, and although it bugs me every time I start navigation to download or skip, I'm always free to choose "Skip" and use the turn-by-turn navigation without the voice instructions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Imagine the Internet riot that would break out if this was an App Store policy? I don't think gaming the Market ranks is a good excuse here. Google is a search company. They know how to make a good search/rank. They should be able to figure this one out.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yup, once it's free, it's free. Otherwise I think people would use this technique to skew their ratings and stats. Make it free till it's got 100k downloads, then put a price on it and people will think 100k people bought it.

I would LOVE just a few things in the Android Market:

1) To be able to give away a free license of a paid app to someone somehow. As a gift.

2) More than 325 characters to describe an app.

3) More than 2 screenshots.

<comment><USER13> > 1) To be able to give away a free license of a paid app to someone somehow. > As a gift.

You... can't do that? Ever? Don't you get like 50 free licenses for each AppStore update?

Can you at least gift applications on the Market?

<comment><USER12> I know of no way at all to give away a free license to someone. Even partial refunds are said to uninstall the app from the users device - tho I have not tried this so I don't know if it's true.

<comment><USER14> _Even partial refunds are said to uninstall the app from the users device - tho I have not tried this so I don't know if it's true._

I can't believe this. Customers would essentially be paying some percentage of the app cost and getting nothing in return if they obtained a partial refund. That's just wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another serious annoyance is that users can return your app in 24 hrs and get a full refund. Wipes out an entire ecosystem of cheap games that go for under $5. I understand that this is good for the consumer in a short-sighted way, but really, return a 99c app?

<comment><USER12> Today I looked, and if they buy the app a second time, they can't cancel a second time.

My biggest frustration is definitely the huge amount of "Payment Declined" orders that come through. Then I get emails a day or two later from someone ticked that their app never downloaded AND they think they were charged.

Google emails them that the app didn't download and they need to update their payment info in Google Checkout, but I think that most people just have Gmail accounts setup so their phone will work but they never actually check those gmail accounts where these non-payment notifications are sent. Then they're left wondering why their purchased apps don't download.

A simple email to both the gmail account AND the user's primary email address would at least help solve this problem.

EDIT: I'd like to add that in the few short hours I've been working this evening and following this thread here and there, I've received 4 payment declined orders for our apps. It's like watching money blow out the window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In iTunes it's a regular strategy to give an app away for free for a week or two to promote a special, a launch, or otherwise, and then see residual sales come in when you flip back to paid - particuarlly on social games etc.

Don't understand this policy in android.

<comment><USER17> IMO, Android is taking the right approach.

1) Developers will game the system. They give apps away for free to get good reviews and higher ratings. I am more generous on a free app than a paid app.

2) You are baiting users to get your app for free initially and then making them pay for the upgrades.

<comment><USER18> In the Apple app store, ratings given when an app is free do not carry over to a paid for app, so any extra ratings you get are ignored. Reviews are carried over.

There are a number of websites/apps with lots of users who look for free apps to try out, and rely on this method to try out some really good stuff.

I see nothing wrong with this, you are giving users something for free that is normally not, and a great way to get new people to try your app. A very valid and welcome marketing technique.

<comment><USER19> You can try out any paid Android Market app for 24 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the correct approach is to release an update that adds a link to buy the paid version, and disables the app after a trial period. It should have been done this way to begin with, usually there are two version in market (free and pro or something). Now that he screwed up, users can just refuse to update and keep it forever. Of course, they won't get updates.

<comment><USER21> Of course, the problem with that approach is that it punishes everyone who paid for the app before it was free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow. Delete the app and create a new package? I'm assuming that will also kill updates for people that had the original package unless you deploy to both, which may be impossible if you want the free version gone.

</comment><comment><USER23> Just another tidbit that bolsters the (to me) obvious fact: Android Market totally sucks and there's a _huge_ opportunity for startups here.

The 2-3 independent appstore websites also have ghastly designs.

<comment><USER24> Doubletwist's web interface to the Android Market seems well designed: <http://www.doubletwist.com/apps/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The problem with doing this, which I have seen before on other app stores, is that making something free and then charging for it makes your app look much more valuable than it actually is.

For example, if you release a free iPhone application, and it gets downloaded a million times, with 50000 reviews, and then you make it cost $0.99, won't people think the app is some amazing app that millions of people have bought, so then you're more likely to buy it? There's no true indication that the app was free initially, so you don't really know.

<comment><USER26> True enough, but it's not rocket science to use separate counter/review tables for each mode. If the app is free, show the free download counter and reviews; and so on.

While we're requesting Android enhancements - how about we let the developer select the return policy. 24 hour return works great for utilities and day-to- day apps, but is really hurting the cheap game market.

<comment><USER25> I agree with this. Actually, I will agree with it once Google allows Canadians to actually submit paid apps. What a joke!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just make it one cent instead?

<comment><USER28> It's never about the price, rather the difficulty of acquisition. When it's free, user's don't have to do anything to get it; just click and download. If it's fraction of a cent, they need to have credit cards or google checkout. If you want people to _try_ your software, good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good to know but about the free thing but the rest of your issues aren't issues at all. The guides explain all this stuff. How did you ever get your app uploaded and approved for the apple app store if you can't follow simple instructions like the ones that explain how to publish your app to the android market?</comment>


Reddit's Redesign - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/reddit-redesign/?mbid=synd_digg <comment><USER2> I think a big issue with the new design is the trust issue I/people have that stem from Reddit's other design efforts. Take the mobile website. It looks a lot nicer than the desktop site, but is completely unuseable on a lower end (but current) android device - because instead of showing content immediately it does some javascript client rendering and shows some loading screen, and that regularly takes 10-20 seconds on bigger comment threads. At the same time there is still i.reddit.com, an ugly mobile site seemingly from way back when sites started to make dedicated iPhone-targeting mobile variants, and that one is as fast as a site can be. Actually usable.

On mobile, if you visit the reddit site, they push a "use the app"-banner in your face. Every goddamn time.

When they redesigned the profiles recently there was a lot of pushback. I did not necessarily agree with that, I thought and think the new profile sites are fine in general. But what definitely was an issue was the performance. Again some javascript client rendering leading to loading indicators, even on the desktop. They improved loading times after that, but still.

So one big point of the new design is not actually "how will it look", but whether they will get the functionality/UX right. HN does, without client side rendering and redesigns...

<comment><USER3> What sort of future do companies like Reddit envision for the internet, exactly? One where I have an app on my phone for every website I visit?

<comment><USER4> Personally, I prefer apps over websites almost always unless the app is just a dedicated browser window to the company's website. I feel like the mobile experience on almost all websites is absolutely terrible when compared to a dedicated mobile app offering. Unless companies start investing more money into making their websites feel as good and snappy as their apps do, I know I'll default to the app over the website, always.

<comment><USER5> I would prefer sites as I cannot reliably adblock apps in all network environments.

<comment><USER6> Take a look at pi-hole with a VPN for remote use. It works great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do we care so much about design? Reddits success in spite of completely eschewing designers should prove design is over valued. So to does Craigslist. Japanese websites are proof by example that this is strictly a cultural phenomena. Why does Western society seem to value form over function so much?

How much is "good design" codeword for dumbing the site down as much as possible and making it shiny enough for people who get distracted by car keys? Reddit doesn't exactly have the learning curve of a command line tool or a rocket plane. Maybe I'm elitist, but if you can't understand reddit as it is maybe you're an idiot?

Call me an old man waving around my cane, but I say to hell with the redesign. Give me my plain old links in their plain old default blue underline and my mod-hacked-together css+bots. The internet need not anymore "progress for the sake of progress".

<comment><USER8> > design is over valued

I would be more specific. Designing so things look good is over valued. Designing so things are simple to use the first time but don't restrict the user later on are under valued.

<comment><USER9> All the redesigns look Facebook-ish. Which make me wonder... Do the designers understand what people love about Reddit? The new interface looks void of information and way too distracting...

<comment><USER10> > All the redesigns look Facebook-ish.

This isn't by chance... Reddit is actively pushing themselves towards being the next Facebook, down to the whole "deprioritize subreddits/emphasize profile pages and groups of friends" mechanic. They just hope by boiling the frog slowly enough, people won't realize what's happening around them.

<comment><USER11> I strongly suspect they are aiming to sell sometime soon. The new rules, the new redesign, the attempt to facebook-ify the site.

<comment><USER12> They want to IPO and cash out. They have explicitly stated that this is their goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am getting more and more respect for Craigslist who resisted doing constant redesigns for the sake of looking hip. Craigslist is ugly but I don't have to relearn something every few months because they have moved some function to another place.

It seems most sites like Reddit have run out of ideas and instead of leaving things alone they just shuffle things around and sell it as innovation. Same thing for Windows 10 and office 365. Lots of visual changes but under the hood it's same old.

<comment><USER14> Two very different user bases though.

Craigslist is more of a, 'Go there to accomplish specific task' end point.

Reddit is more of a, 'hang out here when your bored!' type of thing.

The former just has to work and work cleanly. The latter needs to hold it's users interest over time while staying 'hip' enough to gain users from potential competitors to stay relevant overtime.

<comment><USER15> Fark, like Reddit, is a place people go to to "hang out", and its design doesn't seem to have substantially changed over the years.

<comment><USER16> Reddit is also the 6th most popular website in the world, and likely gets thousands of potential new users daily that are turned off by the design and don't become Reddit addicts.

<comment><USER17> This puts them just below Google, Youtube, Facebook, Baidu and Wikipedia[1]. That's absolutely huge. If the interface was so bad surely they wouldn't have been able to get there now, would they?

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

<comment><USER18> How would you know if it's not holding them back?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I tried the redesign for a couple of hours and bailed out.

I don't care about the looks, but there are two changes that are egregious for me regarding UX:

1) They took out the subreddit ribbon at the top where you can quickly switch between the communities you subscribe to. It's been replaced by a hamburger menu that takes ages to show up, and then you have to scroll (and they are sorted alphabetically, not by popularity).

2) In the main subreddit view, the titles now link to the comments rather than the articles, you have to pixel-hunt the actual link, which is much smaller. I suppose they do this to keep users on site, but I dislike the change.

Edit: also, infinite scroll! As if Reddit wasn't sufficiently addictive as it is :-(

<comment><USER20> when I change back, next time I come back to reddit it shows the new design... how do I get the old design permanently?

<comment><USER19> No idea. I opted in through the beta options and disabled it from there as well (at the bottom of the preference screen). I still have the beta option enabled though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think reddit has bigger issues than the look of their site. I stopped using it once all the hate subreddits started growing. Even the smaller more niche subreddits I frequented turned into meme filled echo chambers. What really did it in for me was just how much sponsored content made the homepage that wasn't labeled as such.

They also banned me from reddit gifts for pointing out their first sponsored exchange (before they said it was sponsored, they tried acting like it was "fan service").

<comment><USER22> Funnily enough: Reddit started declining for me around the time they started banning "hate" subreddits but leaving others in place (r/shitredditsays for example). It felt like the curators of the site really had some kind of agenda to push, and it really turned me off of using it as a news aggregator platform.

(I say this as a person who has never been a member of any of the banned subreddits)

<comment><USER23> Agree. Censorship beyond a sub's mods is largely uncalled for. Sometimes (fewer times than is the case now), banning of some subs could be necessary.

I believe that subs are isolated enough that if you don't want to engage with any particular sub's content you wouldn't have to. Otherwise the whole thing becomes somewhat skewed towards a certain set of opinions and could even be deemed to be totalitarian.

<comment><USER24> > I believe that subs are isolated enough that if you don't want to engage > with any particular sub's content you wouldn't have to. Otherwise the whole > thing becomes somewhat skewed towards a certain set of opinions and could > even be deemed to be totalitarian.

But that's the thing, they are in theory, but in practice, you see subreddits leaking into others. Even with strict no-brigading rules, it's too easy to click on a link from /r/subredditdrama, for instance, and then start participating. And sometimes people with the same opinion just go to other subreddits to antagonize/troll people; you see this more with the more extremely-sided subreddits.

<comment><USER25> "Brigading" is the single most idiotic concept to come out of the site admins in Reddit's entire history. It's a value judgment that conveys nothing useful.

Do you know what someone following a link on Reddit and clicking around and participating where they end up is? _Normal usage of Reddit!_ The idea that you're not allowed to participate just because you came through an on-site link reflects a kind of isolationism that has nothing in common with Reddit's philosophy, nor how real people ever used the site.

<comment><USER24> Oh I completely agree, I always found that silly for the exact same reason. I think I got banned on one of those subreddits because I had a comment in both the topic linked and the subreddit's own.

Okay, so I used the link aggregation and discussion site as designed? Cool, I'll take that ban.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's an old and undervalued adage: don't fix what isn't broken.

Reddit is a community of communities. You can be part of more than one or just one, you can post in all of them, you're not forced to look at any of them, and each of them has different rules, culture and enforcement policies. They're on a pretty even playing field as far as site rules and moderation tools go too. It's crazy, chaotic and lends itself well to surprise.

The primary interface lends itself well to lurking, but what it is really meant for is talking _to_ people. You can post a new top-level comment on any post, but the real discussion happens in the threads in-between. The top level discussions are also ranked, democratically, but if the discussion looks skewed you can even easily change how you look at a thread to see what you're missing.

All in all, it's a real gem, the way it is now.

Looking at this design, all I see is a Facebook. A different kind of Facebook to be sure, but it doesn't look like a real improvement on what I have now, just different. A change for the sake of making a change because otherwise all of those engineers in their office downtown would be bored or working elsewhere if they didn't have a project like this to keep them interested/entertained. Fine I suppose, and for now I can still use the classic interface, but for how long? How long till some bored engineer or annoyed project manager with a vision/dream/overwhelming urge to kick a puppy manages to convince the rest that they should drop the classic interface in favor of putting more wood behind their Facebook-shaped arrow.

<comment><USER27> I'm not seeing Facebook at all, personally. The UX of the entire site is different, from navigation to media.

Are you saying the visual design is similar?

IMO this is a clear improvement to the site's dated UX that held them back from going mainstream w/ many demographics.

<comment><USER28> Yes, all it seems to be doing is drag the visual design towards Facebook, or towards what everybody is doing nowadays . You can call that "less dated", but it's also unoriginal.

Which is a shame, given that there's a decade of ideas here, from third-party add-ons like RES to all of the custom CSS from subreddits and everything. They could have taken the best parts and just _improved_ Reddit, going in a unique direction regardless of what the rest of the Web currently happens to look like.

Can you even call it "design" if the end result makes it look more like everybody else?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Remember when Digg failed to address long standing issues and instead redesigned the site to be more like Twitter?

Prediction: The redesign is the straw that will break the Snoo's back.

<comment><USER30> What's the new Reddit? I'd like to get on that.

<comment><USER31> Voat.com has been around for a while. They made a decent push during some reddit drama ~2 years ago. However, looking through voat 'subverses' aka subreddits they look pretty dead for the counterparts that I visit on reddit ex: www.reddit.com/r/homebrewing vs www.voat.com/v/homebrewing and www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine vs www.voat.com/v/unrealengine

Their 'HOT' ordering makes the site look dead where they should probably take into account newer stories as everything in the 'HOT' ranking is years old (except for heavier trafficked subverses)

<comment><USER30> I noticed that a surprisingly large number of comments on Voat were anti- semitic and/or racist.

Totally out of context, I mean.

You might expect hate speech on political subreddits/subverses, but on Voat these were just out of the blue, and numerous.

<comment><USER32> Voat's userbase consists of the members and communities who were banned by Reddit's hate speech policy.

Effectively, Voat is Reddit's "recycle bin." Judging from its content, I think the admins made the right call..

<comment><USER33> > Voat is Reddit's "recycle bin."

I definitely agree, but I also remember how Reddit was considered the dumping ground for users banned on Digg and content that wasn't good enough for Digg.

Today unpleasant content probably makes up a large percentage of Voat traffic. But if a few big subreddits moved over that percentage would be dwarfed and suddenly it's no longer a Recycle Bin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Idk why everyone in here and on r/redesign can't take off their rose-colored glasses and admit that current (old?) Reddit has some pretty glaring usability issues.

I know I avoided Reddit for the longest time simply due to the fact that there was a learning curve _at all_...and I know many, many people that would adore Reddit actively avoid it because it's a little overwhelming and hard to use at first. People seem to really underestimate just how important that first couple of seconds on a new website are.

Granted, a lot of people pushed passed the quirks and the learning curve and grew to love the site we all know today - that's evident by the massive user base - but I just don't understand why everyone is so vehemently against a redesign effort when the site was clearly a hodgepodge.

Now, I'm not arguing that the current redesign is great and a smashing success, I think they're missing the mark on what made Reddit great in the first place...but to sit here and yell "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is laughable. The performance might be superb but the UX is atrocious, everyone has just learned to get over it.

<comment><USER35> > The performance might be superb but the UX is atrocious, everyone has just > learned to get over it.

I guess I'm one of those. I've been using reddit since before they enabled comments. I love that it's remained simple and it works really well for me.

The only items I'd imagine improving on would be remembering collapsed threads (like HN does) and preserving a deeper history of threads I've seen (maybe opt-in if it bugs people).

What's the "learning curve" that you refer to? Voting and comments are pretty simple, right?

<comment><USER36> I've had to explain Reddit to my mom--she wanted to see what her kids were so busy with all the time--I can tell you that voting comments aren't nearly as simple as they might seem.

Neither is the concept of subreddits, the difference between text and link posts, subreddit discovery, the community and culture... These were all hurdles that she needed to get through and at the end she gave it up. Too complicated.

The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined to get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.

The difference between her and most non-Reddit users is that she's quite tech- savvy. She worked in tech for 20 years. She fixes her friends' computer problems.

<comment><USER35> Well, if her experience is representative of other folks, then I suppose it is a problem. But is it one that a new interface could fix? I believe that it's possible, but it's not obvious to me how it would be improved. I'm not experienced at all in UI/UX design.

> The difference between her and most Reddit users is that she was determined > to get active on Reddit: she kept trying for weeks.

I don't understand -- she persisted and others who use reddit don't/didn't? Meaning they don't need to apply significant effort and she did? Does that mean that it's somehow intuitive to them and not her? I feel like I am missing the point you're making.

<comment><USER34> > But is it one that a new interface could fix? I believe that it's possible, > but it's not obvious to me how it would be improved.

A new interface _could_ fix a lot of the issues, but I think the jury is still out on whether or not the current redesign _is_ fixing those issues.

In my opinion, the higher level concepts of subreddits and subreddit discoverability are one of the main hurdles that brand new users have to understand and overcome. Most people that don't know anything about Reddit just assume it's a massive forum of people posting random shit - and don't bother going much further than that.

I think the new sidebar and the overhauled search are a great start at making the browsing experience much more intuitive - but the new profiles and messenger are all questionable design decisions that feel a lot less "Reddit" and a lot more "Facebook".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm disappointed to see Hacker News turning into Slashdot - immediate negative reaction to anything new, lack of empathy with the insanely difficult task the reddit management team is undertaking, and a general selfish bias of "as a power user I like obscure feature x, therefore without x they're doomed".

<comment><USER38> Humans hate change. Our minds strive to maintain equilibrium and have an immune system like response to anything that threatens to disrupt that state. Even when we intellectually commit to change, our emotions sabotage the effort.

Cue the bereavement model and the diffusion of innovation. Successful advocates of change account for the time and effort it takes to drag people along.

<comment><USER39> Burnie Burns of Rooster Teeth phrased it as, "the internet demands progress, but hates change." I like that because it succinctly draws attention to the juxtaposition of ideals and emotional reaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Me and a lot of smart developers before me have learned on our skins that you should never make a rewrite.

I think web design has the same problems as web development in regards to rewrite but the design community has yet to internalize that you should never remake something from scratch.

That's not to say that you should keep an old design forever - instead make changes incrementally and gradually. Putting 12 designers to work for a year with zero feedback and trying not to hurt whatever magic made reddit popular in the first place is bound to be a disastrous affair.

<comment><USER41> They couldn't keep the old codebase. It was plagued with tech debt and was hindering their progress in releasing even the most basic of new features.

<comment><USER42> I wonder which new features a site that is basically pictures/videos with threaded comments needs, since it already does that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Like every redesign, I'm sure that people are going to be angry about it no matter how it looks.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned it, but really the make or break of this new reddit will be speed. The one thing that I remember noticing about the site is how much faster it was than the comparable time wasting sites (Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc). More speed, more addictiveness.

</comment><comment><USER44> I recently noticed that reddit started to push AI as well for choosing what to display on my front page. As if everyone else doing it was not enough. The more I read some subreddit, the more posts I see from it on my front page, even though they may be scored lower compared to other posts. Just noticed today that a 30k+ karma post from a subscribed subreddit was all the way on page 3.

</comment><comment><USER45> Oh goody, more javascript. Infinite scroll. Less room for content, more room for sidebars and doohickeys.

The internet is a huge pile of garbage.

</comment><comment><USER46> I like "Dystopian Craigslist", it is nice and fast and simple.

</comment><comment><USER47> I hope they kept custom CSS in mind when they did this redesign.

It caused a ton of drama last year when they said they are deprecating custom CSS just to push through this new look. (see [https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_red...](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_redesign_css_and_mod_tools/) and /r/ProCSS for details).

<comment><USER48> I hate custom css of reddit. It is just horrible 100% of the times.

Super glad they have a feature to disable this.

<comment><USER49> There are notable exceptions.

The theme used by /r/geopolitics is genius for its vertical thread collapse controls. That would be the Minimaluminiumalism Theme.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/897qfo/saudi_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/897qfo/saudi_crown_prince_recognizes_israels_right_to/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/about/stylesheet](https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/about/stylesheet)

<comment><USER50> I don't browse reddit anymore, but the thread collapsing in /r/geopolitics is great!

Perhaps I would have continued to use reddit if more sub used it.

<comment><USER49> AFAIU one RES feature is to specify your own preferred stylesheet for _all_ subreddits.

You can achieve a similar result via a browser CSS manager, say, Stylus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I used the redesign for two days and rolled back. The designers went for a river of news app-like design.

I've always had trouble putting individual items in context in river of news designs and prefer to switch from one topic (subreddit in this case) to another and scan each one. The hamburger menu makes this a lot more awkward.

I also really dislike mobile-driven UI designs on a desktop. I know why they're done. I've implemented them myself. They annoy me.

</comment><comment><USER52> Ironic that a page that looks like this[0] on a 24" monitor is commenting on design.

[0] [https://imgur.com/a/nTdxg](https://imgur.com/a/nTdxg)

<comment><USER53> Actually looks pretty great to me. What do you consider wrong with it?

<comment><USER54> The image conveys little to no information, yet it takes the whole screen real estate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Does that redesign still shoves reddit mobile app down your throat and degrades mobile experience?

(Judging by the fact that mobile isn't mentioned anywhere in the article, I'd say yes)

<comment><USER52> Just use one of the various excellent third-party apps: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/search_results...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/collection/search_results_cluster_apps?clp=ggEICgZyZWRkaXQ%3D:S:ANO1ljL4qEo) (ignore the first result)

<comment><USER55> I don't want to use reddit's own app, why would I use a third-party app? I want a proper unhindered mobile web experience :)

<comment><USER52> > I don't want to use reddit's own app, why would I use a third-party app?

Because the third party apps are much better that the official one, in all metrics. If you have a specific grievance against the official app, there are overwhelming chances that you won't face the same issue in a 3rd party app.

<comment><USER55> I think you've missed the point completely. Twice. :)

There's exactly zero reason for a text-and-images-and-comments site to have an "official app", or a plethora of "third-party apps that are better than the original". A mobile site would be perfectly fine.

However, since there's zero incentive for anyone to use those apps, instead of improving (or at least keeping) the mobile experience Reddit actively degrades it. Hence the entirely unnecessary apps.

I currently have next-to-zero incentive to even click on links to Reddit, and the requirement to have an app just for that will bring that incentive to exactly zero.

And it looks like their redesign had zero intention to improve mobile experience.

<comment><USER52> I think if you use a good app like rif or sync, you will realize that they do add considerable value to "a text-and-images-and-comments site". I find them easier to navigate than any website. Another big plus is that apps have a lot of settings. You can customize the layout, colors, basically everything in a good app.

This is basic stuff. A single website can never provide all the flexibility of use that an app based on the api can.

<comment><USER55> For some reason you assume I want or need any of that.

Reddit is not my go to website. Neither is Hacker news. Or Twitter. Or... Or...

I browse the web. I may come across links that I click. I really really really don't appreciate the experience of getting yanked out of my flow into some app.

Even Facebook has a very decent mobile web experience. However for some reason Reddit actively degrades its mobile site and tries to make it as unusable as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> > But up close, the changes have turned Reddit from an esoteric maze into a > website anyone can use—like a junk drawer that's been gutted, cleaned, and > reorganized.

> For people who have been on Reddit for years, the obtuseness is part of the > appeal.

What maze? What obtuseness? Reddit is a plain, usable site (esp. if you turn off the image previews they added a few years back). There's simply nothing wrong with it the way it is.

I suspect that this is a submarine article, paid for by Reddit itself.

I also suspect that the new interface will be yet another JS-laden, SPA atrocity — but perhaps I'm wrong, and I'll be pleasantly surprised by nice, static, server-rendered HTML instead.

</comment><comment><USER57> > Before, formatting text posts required the use of Markdown; now, there's a > WYSIWYG toolbar too.

Ah, that's reassuring to see. So many sites have gone all-in on Markdown in the last few years, which seems to me to be resurrecting early 80s Wordstar- style formatting codes and rejecting the UI advances of Xerox Parc and the Mac.

Markdown has its place - essentially, something that's readable in both raw and rendered form - but it's not a consumer-friendly way of editing rich text, and I'm pleased to see Reddit recognise that.

<comment><USER58> WYSIWYG can often take more resources on a webpage, and act unpredictably and with less control over formatting.

Atlassian's Confluence wiki was one of the most painful tools I've ever had to use in a professional capacity, largely because their editor several years ago was so atrocious. I was forced off of it from a nice, Markdown-based wiki our team had been running.

So I would miss Markdown. BTW, having live preview/having a WYSIWYG toolbar with Markdown editing is a happy meeting of both worlds; I don't see the issue with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I assume there's some irony in this URL ending with ?mbid=synd_digg

<comment><USER54> Can we get this tracking garbage removed from the URL?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> When is the Hacker News site redesign coming?

Things I'd like to see here:

\- TLRD; article summary for each post

\- markdown support

\- image support

\- user profile page enhancements: avatars, pretty URLs, more links to user's other sites/profiles, etc.

\- user karma listed next to username in comments

\- social logins (1 less password to manage)

<comment><USER61> Please tell me you meant to add an /s to this

<comment><USER17> it's obviously satire

<comment><USER54> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> What is up with web redesigners? They always seem to make things worse, less performant, seem to have egos that shine brighter than the sun. In the end, just shove their perfect child into your face (looking at you youtube).

</comment><comment><USER63> Isn't it possible to "morph" the changes, little by little, so the users don't get overwhelmed by the changes? I think Facebook has done such progressive redesigns in the past.

</comment><comment><USER64> I must be getting old (pun intended), but this instantly reminded me of Digg™.

</comment><comment><USER65> "Our site is wildly successful. We'd better change it."

</comment><comment><USER66> personally I hate the new user profile overview. I used to be able to quickly scroll through someone's post history and now it looks like another facebook feed ...

<comment><USER67> I can't even properly find my own comments in the new user profile...

Edit: Actually the new new profile is better now. That intermediate version was terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I feel like their redesign didn't go far enough.

The official Reddit mobile website is totally unusable on mobile.

I've been really happy with Shine (now with twice the unofficial goodness), and Apollo.

* SHINE for reddit (unofficial) - Chrome Web Store || [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shine-for-reddit-u...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shine-for-reddit-unoffici/dlbccbcpelghmhkhmpefncahafgigkek)

* Apollo | A beautiful reddit app built for power and speed || [https://apolloapp.io/](https://apolloapp.io/)

</comment><comment><USER69> Here's the official announcement from reddit itself

[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/start...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/891stx/starting_today_more_people_will_have_access_to/)

Importantly, for those in here who don't like change, you can still visit [https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com) and get the old site.

</comment><comment><USER70> Looks like they wanted facebook.com with reddit color scheme.

I feel like this will be about as successful as slashdots redesign attempts over the years.

</comment><comment><USER71> For those interested in a different experience, there is a terminal client called rtv[0]. I use it for most of my Reddit browsing and I consider it even better than the site for text subs like NoSleep for example.

[0] [https://github.com/michael-lazar/rtv](https://github.com/michael- lazar/rtv)

</comment><comment><USER72> The redesign is just another example of form over function and "fixing" something that's not broken.

</comment><comment><USER73> At this point Reddit's look is authentic. I'd stick with it. Others here have mentioned craigslist as an example. People aren't leaving Reddit because it doesn't look flat and bland like so many other sites. Reddit is an old zoo. It should look like one.

</comment><comment><USER74> The key questions would seem to be how long use of a legacy interface was maintained and supported. Having more than one ui is a cost burden, but that aside doesn't have to be a problem

</comment><comment><USER75> Based on the near-universal disdain for the redesign here in the HN comments, I'd like to go on record predicting it's going to be a huge success amongst non-HN types.

</comment><comment><USER76> Reddit is not yet profitable, right? Will this redesign help them actually make money? Is it meant to allow for more sponsored content between user submissions?

</comment><comment><USER77> paid puff piece. tl;dr: they made reddit look like Facebook/instagram feed (which every unofficial app already accomplished)

<comment><USER78> Advance Publications is a majority shareholder in reddit, the same company that owns Conde Nast, who in turn publish Wired.

<comment><USER79> This should be mentioned on the page, but isn't for some reason. I stopped reading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Whew. Looks like a dodged a bullet by finally leaving Reddit due to their increasing censorship last month. This new design looks terrible and it breaks reading the site without javascript enabled. Before reddit worked just fine and you could toggle JS on to vote/comment/submit.

I imagine they feel they can do this kind of thing since new users now overwhelming outnumber old users and they've pushed most of the original users off the site. Facebook 2: This time it's Reddit is coming along nicely.

</comment><comment><USER81> Any known way to activate via some param or something?

<comment><USER82> Preferences > Beta options

[ ] I would like to beta test features for reddit (by enabling you'll be subscribed to /r/beta automatically. details on the /r/beta wiki)

Wait for page to reload, scroll down, then click the new option you'll see:

[ ] Use the redesign as my default experience (by enabling this, you will be redirected to the new site when you go to any supported [https://reddit.com](https://reddit.com) page)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Worth switching from PHP to Java? - <AUTHOR> I have around 8 years experience in PHP, and am not happy with how much I earn. From cursory research it seems Java devs can get much more. Is it worth retraining in Java, or would the time it takes to get to a reasonably high level outweigh the salary benefits? Or am I wrong about the salary benefits? <comment><USER2> If you like all the things that are positive about PHP I would not touch Java. Rather look into Nodejs or Go.

Those Java jobs that pay a lot in the banking sector etc are soul crushing. Slow release cycles and being a very little cog in a big machine...

For ultimate developer happiness look into modern Perl!

<comment><AUTHOR> I should probably have said in my question that I find most dev work pretty soul-crushing. My aim is to spend a couple more years making some money then leave for something else. If I must be a cog then so be it!

<comment><USER3> Well if you really do not care, what you use and what you develop, you could look into embedded programming. If you have gained some experience there (a lot of companies are willing to give a newcomer a go in this area, since developers are hard to find) you can make a lot more money than beeing just another Java dude. That means mostly MISRA C and sometimes Java as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Check into learning Hibernate and Spring/Spring Boot, stay away from J2EE stuff unless you want to work with legacy.

</comment><comment><USER5> could be your location? could be you don't know how to ask for more. there are php developers commanding ridiculous income all around the country and not just in silicon valley.</comment>


CEOs and the Real World - <AUTHOR> https://ma.tt/2018/09/ceos-and-the-real-world/ <comment><USER2> I have watched Zuckerberg's testimony on the Capitol Hill and the distance between him and the senators was significant. He looked kind of calm, but I think I sensed some intrinsic distance. Facebook, being as huge as it is, I think it might be hard for Zuckerberg to even think in terms of smaller-scale problems, not that Cambridge Analytica is a small scandal, but his capabilities of understanding the frustrations that leaked users might have had seemed pretty limited.</comment>


Government to urge us all to walk and cycle more - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52592421 <comment><USER2> Hopefully, that will persist beyond the initial knee-jerk reaction to go back to work after lockdown.

Though they (UK gov, and elsewhere probably) do need to invest a lot more in infrastructure to assist.

* Safe and easy to use separated continuous paths. Not just paint strips but actual physical separation.

* Cut/ban hedges so you can see the car coming round the bend at 60mph on a tiny narrow lane. And so the car overtaking you on a blind corner won't push into the hedge when surprised by another car.

* Wider paths to support both walkers, people with pushchairs, and slow recreational cyclist like me without pushing one into the road or hedge as they pass.

* Paths beyond the towns, so you can actually safely cycle / walk to the next village. Was pretty dangerous to go see a friend when I walked everywhere with a pushcair.

<comment><USER3> > Safe and easy to use separated continuous paths. Not just paint strips but > actual physical separation.

I think this is such a critical point. A lot of people are not interested in getting on a busy road, but would definitely get on a bike only path.

I will also add that I think cities should be creative and try to develop more bike infrastructure that is independent of the roadways altogether. The lakefront trail in Chicago is a good example. Many cities could develop similar infrastructure along rivers, through parks, through repurposed streets, etc. having a separate network is not only safer but if done right can often be faster for commuters than driving or public transport.

<comment><USER4> We have quite a lot of that in the UK already, the trouble is it isn't often where people make their daily journeys.

<comment><USER3> I would not classify it as "a lot" even in the wrong places. And, even when paths do exist they are far from adequate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd definitely consider cycling for work if I wasn't certain that doing so on a daily basis would get me run over before retirement.

I'd also consider walking to work if doing so didn't mean walking next to noisy, polluted high-traffic roads most of the time. This could be addressed e.g. by cities progressively forcing a transition to electric cars (e.g. by switching parking spots to electric-only).

<comment><USER6> There have been quite a few studies with conclusions like this:

"On average, the estimated health benefits of cycling were substantially larger than the risks relative to car driving for individuals shifting their mode of transport."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/)

Cycling could be made better, but, it is already safer than getting fat in your car.

<comment><USER7> I'd bet that that doesn't hold true in SF. Cycling on Market street turned me in to a Veteran with PTSD.

<comment><USER8> I remember reading a study that looked at life expectancy of cycling vs driving, which I unfortunately can't find right now, in many cities around the world.

The TL;DR in almost all cities you'll live longer cycling (even considering extra exposure to pollution and road accidents) than driving. Except in a very small handful of city, none of which were in the US.

So cycling in SF is probably better for you than driving. But that doesn't mean it's gonna be a pleasant experience. (I mean getting injections isn't fun, but vaccines are definitely good for you).

<comment><USER9> I'd be surprised if those studies modeled the survivor bias. For example; this link was a standard reference:

[http://www.phred.org/~alex/kenkifer/www.kenkifer.com/bikepag...](http://www.phred.org/~alex/kenkifer/www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/health/risks.htm)

The author of it died in a bike crash.

<comment><USER8> The studies looked at predicted life expectancy when you consider the various health benefits of cycling vs increased severity of road accidents and expose to pollution. They don't need to model for survivor bias, they weren't tracking individuals, but deriving specific population stats from larger general populations stats.

> The author of it died in a bike crash.

I'm not sure what your point is?

People die that's not a surprise, the fact the author died in a bike crash doesn't invalidate their work.

Doctors die of smoking, some scientists studying nutrition are fat. None of that changes the validity of their work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's funny how air quality has improved both visibly and measurably during the UK's lockdown, and yet the proposals for limiting car traffic and encouraging cycling through segregated safer paths within London are always met with howls of derision.

<comment><USER11> I live in Los Angeles; it's been glorious how clean our air is. We've been able to see the Hollywood sign miles further away than you typically can, because of the haze.

<comment><USER12> [https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-28/coronav...](https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-04-28/coronavirus- la-air-quality-improved-pandemic-dont-expect-it-to-last)

> "It is possible that this was partially due to reduced emissions, but > meteorology likely played a much larger role."

Here in OC over the past couple weeks the haze has returned, while traffic is only slightly up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Myself and the Mrs. took free cycling lessons from the council a few years back with the idea we wanted to start cycling to work etc more. We decided it was too risky due to the terrible traffic. As a regular pedestrian, I've almost been run over multiple times in the last few years. I think the city really needs to look at banning non delivery vehicles from zones 1 and 2, or something to that effect.

<comment><USER11> Or modify the roads; driver and cyclist behavior are heavily influenced by road design. Protected lanes actually protect cyclists, and narrower roads naturally cause drivers to slow down.

<comment><USER14> Cycle facilities in countries without a strong cycling tradition are generally dangerous, illogical, and awful. Cycle facilities in countries with a strong cycling tradition are usually better-engineered but mostly exist to get cyclists "out of the way" of motor vehicle traffic.

The solution is low speed limits in urban areas.

<comment><USER15> Your comment is spot on, however I'd go further: cycle facilities in countries with a strong cycling tradition don't exist to move cyclists out of the way from motorists — it is the other way around: motorists are moved out of the way from cyclists and the points were both intersect are carefully chosen.

This makes things easier for both sides..

<comment><USER14> ...and high speed limits are maintained. The poor still wind up with highways through their neighborhoods, and a blanket of noise covers the country. Everyone breathes vehicle exhaust, asbestos particulates from brake pads, and ground-up tire dust.

<comment><USER15> As someone who lived at a main crossroads for a while: don't forget the mind numbing effect of constant noise

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When you're unable to provide safe public transport, you demand people move on foot. Thanks for all the lack of cycling paths and constant tax refund to car buyers I guess?

<comment><USER17> Do they not tax cars in your country?

<comment><USER6> UK VED is a polution tax (not a road tax) and cycles don't pay it because they don't pollute. VED is a very small proportion of the UK general tax take and not ringfenced to funding roads.

UK roads are funded from the general tax pot and regular cyclists in the UK – those who cycle at least once a week – are disproportionately likely to have a household income of at least £50,000 per year which means they almost certainly pay more towards road maintainance than the general population (1).

In addition to this this, 83% of UK cyclists live in a household that pays VED in some form (2) anyway.

The argument that cyclists pay no tax and therefore don't deserve to use the roads is rubbish.

(1) [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/aug/10/cyc...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/aug/10/cycling- boom-survey)

(2) [https://www.eta.co.uk/2013/05/24/more-cyclists-pay-road- tax-...](https://www.eta.co.uk/2013/05/24/more-cyclists-pay-road-tax-than-car- drivers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cycle more, until the end of summer 2020, then the bad weather hits, and people are back in their cars and 2020 is a distant memory.

And in the UK cycling is horrifically bad.

Car drivers that don't accept that cyclists have identical rights to use the road.

Awful tarmac and pot holes.

Drain covers and manhole covers in the road, by the gutter where cyclists are expected to cycle.

Cycle paths shared with pedestrians and dog walkers.

Cycle paths that are badly laid out, incomplete, badly signed, switch sides, full of obstructions and just don't join up.

And then there's the law. If a cyclist is killed by a motorist, the motorist rarely gets more than a slap on the wrist. If a cyclist collides with an idiot on their mobile phone that hasn't looked before they stepped off the kerb, it's the cyclist's fault.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone enlightenment why opening your windows or just general walking in the public, observing social distancing, is safe from lingering viruses in the air?

Wouldn't we just breathe those virus in the air if we kept our windows opened or walking by a person who was infected?

<comment><USER20> There are I believe 0 confirmed cases of virus transmission taking place outdoors, of the almost 4 million cases.

Edit - does anyone have data to contrary?

<comment><USER21> That's such an unlikely claim that the onus to show proof lies on you.

<comment><USER20> Well I heard this on Brett Weinstein's podcast where he reviewed literature showing this to be the case, a couple weeks ago at least. No doubt related to UV which has shown to kill the virus.

I'm sure you're aware that positive news about the virus is generally being censoring by mainstream outlets, if you're wondering why you didn't hear about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's all very well, but to buy a family-sized home within a half hour walk of my office, I would need a salary north of £250k. Renting an appropriately sized home is not cheap either.

</comment><comment><USER23> Should also help the general population with circulation and vitamin D, which appear to be key factors in COVID outcomes

</comment><comment><USER24> The government isn't a person. It can't 'urge', even if the BBC says it can.

</comment><comment><USER25> If only they had the ability to make it easier to do so beyond mere urging. Alas

<comment><USER25> What an impoverished sense of statehood the U.K. has</comment></comment>


Possible link between sugary drinks and cancer - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190710193917.htm <comment><USER2> Downvotes notwithstanding, probably almost everyone should be taking metformin.

While the study referenced is new, the news tying sugar metabolism to cancer is old. Some physicians noticed decades ago that diabetic patients who took metformin rerely got cancer: those with cancers got better from taking metformin.

Studies were initiated circa 2002 and show that metformin inhibits cancer (even existing cancer) and extends lifespan like nothing else.

"The Drug Virtually Everyone Should Ask their Doctor About":

[https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2010/11/The-Drug- Virt...](https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2010/11/The-Drug-Virtually- Everyone-Should-Ask-their-Doctor-About/Page-01)

"FORGET THE BLOOD OF TEENS. THIS PILL PROMISES TO EXTEND LIFE FOR A NICKEL A POP":

[https://www.wired.com/story/this-pill-promises-to-extend- lif...](https://www.wired.com/story/this-pill-promises-to-extend-life-for-a- nickel-a-pop/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I use a natural alternative called Berberine. I've been seeing great results from it. it also modifies p53, clamps glucose, is anti-cancer, anti-tumor. But if you can get your doc to prescribe metformin, perhaps it will be cheaper to use insurance.

<comment><USER3> Berberine is great but I can't sleep if I take it late in the day. I have to take it first thing in the morning, and even then it's quite powerful in its hunger-inducing effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've not had a hunger affect from it, but I do avoid taking it in the evening. I take it early in the morning, then mid morning and afternoon. It took a couple months to get used to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny, here's the original HN discussion on the actual study:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20412291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20412291)

I left a comment there... "I guess now we watch for headlines like "Soda Causes Cancer" which is not what this really says."

<comment><USER5> but drinking red wine extends life right...right?!?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Possible link between aspartame and cancer. Possible link between non-sweet drinks and cancer.

Possible link between enjoying yourself ever and cancer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Enjoy your life, exercise a bit, don't eat too many processed / sugary foods. Enjoy life - we all die eventually.

If only we could make the basic step of getting the masses to understand why being obese isn't okay... i.e. fat acceptance movement etc...

<comment><USER8> > If only we could make the basic step of getting the masses to understand why > being obese isn't okay

I don't think that this is the problem. The problem is that we don't really have a good way of helping people who are obese from being obese (with the exception of mechanical changes like a gastric sleeve). For people who are fat, you can't just explain to them that they shouldn't be fat. The failure rates for this are INSANE. AFAICT, explaining to fat people that they shouldn't be fat is just a feel-good exercise for the speaker.

But once you have fat people that you can't help, cognitive dissonance will kick in, and they will normalize it. I mean, the alternative (not normalizing their own physical bodies) is probably also quite harmful. So... Let's figure out an actual good way of helping people not be fat? Blaming fat-acceptance? meh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or sugar and cancer. Why draw such a simplistic correlation.

</comment><comment><USER10> On the Internet, one can find 'studies' for pros and cons of anything...

Here is one stating that soft drinks are part of balanced diet:

[http://www.britishsoftdrinks.com/Health-and- Wellbeing](http://www.britishsoftdrinks.com/Health-and-Wellbeing)

However, I think I will stick to not consuming soft drinks.

<comment><USER11> C'mon - pretending that marketing materials from the British Soft Drink Association is equivalent just because they are "both on the internet" is just silly.

<comment><USER10> agreed - I was just joking.</comment></comment></comment>


RIP Jack LeLanne - <AUTHOR> http://rosstraining.com/blog/2011/01/24/rip-jack-lalanne/ <comment><USER2> Hacker News doesn't need a post about every celebrity death. I can already get this on CNN.</comment>


Apple files 'iMoney' patent for virtual currency, digital wallet - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/06/apple-files-imoney-patent-for-virtual-currency-digital-wallet-and-free-stuff/?goback=.gde_61993_member_247935833 <comment><USER2> wot? you mean a company like Apple would take other peoples ideas and then patent the whole sphere just so they can act like a complete pain in the arse to anyone who might actually develop something new?

Can't believe that - oh wait!</comment>


Alaska so warm it had to ship in snow for Iditarod sled dog race - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/sports/after-warm-winter-alaska-ships-in-snow-for-start-of-iditarod-race.html?_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> _temperatures are rising in Alaska at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the United States. In the past 60 years, average temperatures have risen by three degrees across the state, and warming in the winter has increased by six degrees_</comment>


Joe Rogan Experience #1533 – Adam Curry - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/fTPQ9KR5j8k <comment><USER2> Is this a Straussian way to show that people become less interesting when intoxicated? Because if so you did a good job. Joe being drunk (or high?) ruined this podcast. The conversation would have been way better if both parties were lucid. I skipped to several parts of it to see if it gets better but it doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER3> Adam curry pretty much invented the podcast/interview format. Sharp dude.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's interesting about this particular Joe Rogan podcast?</comment>


Swarmlike collective behavior in bicycling - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-11-swarmlike-behavior-bicycling.html <comment><USER2> Cyclists minimize drag and maximize safety. When somebody slows down or they foresee a slow down (roundabout, traffic light, intersection, traffic, etc) the cyclists behind move to the side to get a better view and/or an unblocked path to slow down on their own at their own pace. This is normal for amateurs on a group ride. I've never been in a race, they also maximize speed in those.

Cyclists on a slow ride with friends and family are a different thing with different dynamics, more like people walking. They maximize chatting.

<comment><USER3> Many commuter cyclists _do_ maximize speed, although on less fancy bikes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really surprised this article did not mention wind resistance. The majority of cyclists in a peloton race are just trying to reduce the amount of effort they expend during the race so that they have the most energy at the end, to win or help their teammate win.

I think what they were trying to look for regarding school of fish would be better demonstrated by watching traffic patterns of motorbikes in a crowded city like Saigon. Small 50cc-150cc bikes are the main mode of transportation in the city. There is no need to combat wind resistance, just get to the destination as quickly as possible.

(Spent 9 years racing competitively and have lived and driven in Saigon for the last two years.)

<comment><USER5> > ... aerodynamics only come into play at the outside edges of the peloton. > Instead, the researchers found that peloton dynamics are likely driven by > rider vision, with each rider keeping other riders within a range of > peripheral vision that is most sensitive to motion. Additionally, wave > propagation speeds were consistent with human reaction time ...

So this is a swarming, shoaling, flocking behaviour in the core of a peloton where (as you'll know) the wind resistance is light enough to freewheel and eat snacks. We're starlings!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its not so much something that "just happens" as something that is learned. Go out for a trip with your local serious bike club (after training hard for 12 months just to be able to keep up) and try "half wheeling", passing on the wrong side, standing up incorrectly, speeding up after the crest of a hill, slowing down at the start of a climb, or using your brakes in anything other than a life-threatening emergency. They wont be scared to set you straight.

<comment><USER7> About 200 years ago it was a similar thing for 'shave tails': new Cavalry recruits. A shave tail would go on a spur ride (earn their spurs) and get their butt handed to them for about two weeks straight, or until they got the hang of riding a horse in a safe manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok, so what are the fluids that other crowd behaviour act in - if cyclists are minimising drag, what is the social equivalent for choosing which band to listen to or which film star to like, which policy to approve of?

<comment><USER9> I'd say you'll find few commonalities between peleoton and fashion dynamics. One is shaped by physical, the other by social interactions. I don't see what features would transfer.

Even if you try to use terms that do transfer, like say "avant-garde", you don't get much overlap. Imagine how the Tour de France would look if teams would split off here and there to follow their own course, hoping the others would follow.

<comment><USER10> There is a prize in the Tour de France for 'combativity' and it means some competitors end up powering off on attacks that have minimal chance of success, so you're maybe not as far off as you'd think!</comment></comment></comment>


Free Jeremy Hammond - <AUTHOR> http://freejeremy.net/

<comment><USER2> I know nothing about him. So before jumping up and down and cheering, I went to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond) to look it up.

He sounds like a fairly radicalized activist who did some seriously questionable stuff, and will do it again given a chance. I applaud him for being true to his ethics. But can see why the government goes after him.

Other than the solitary (we shouldn't do that at all the way we do), I cannot support not punishing him for illegal acts he knowingly did.

<comment><USER3> > He sounds like a fairly radicalized activist who did some seriously > questionable stuff

Most of his arrests are either for stuff I don't care about (i.e. possession of marijuana, which is just a stupid law) or for things I'm, to some extent, happy someone is doing even if I wouldn't ever do them myself.

The most misguided one seems to be storming a restaurant and harassing the guests, which is just misdirected bullshit even if you do dislike the owner. The guests hadn't done anything wrong.

Beating the shit out of an anti-gay protester I couldn't possibly care less about, though. Going to a pride parade and protesting against homosexuality should get your ass kicked, even if it's against the law. The law isn't "what's right" so while I'm not a violent person myself I can't see an issue with that one.

<comment><USER4> > Beating the shit out of an anti-gay protester I couldn't possibly care less > about, though.

So freedom of speech is only for things you (and I) agree with?

<comment><USER3> Getting your ass beat because you're a stupid douchebag is hardly the blow against free speech you're making it out to be. Truth is there are lots of things that make people deserve beatings that are well within the parameters of the law.

From a legal perspective we tolerate lots of things. That doesn't mean it's some big mystery to people that you might get beaten up if you're stupid enough to go to a pride parade and protest against homosexuality. If anything, it's a lesson in not being stupid.

<comment><USER4> It's not a big mystery, but, unlike you, I _care_ about people getting assaulted for peacefully expressing their dissenting opinion, no matter how stupid they might be. I believe in caring about the right of unpopular opinions to be expressed — this is the _essence_ of free speech.

<comment><USER3> I care about them being allowed to express their opinions, but I'm also realistic enough to realize there are venues and times where those opinions should get them beat up. They can create whole movements if they'd like to, I don't care.

How you make your voice heard matters and in this case it was so obviously right for them to get "assaulted". Even more so with the almost too obvious possibility that they went there expecting a bunch of docile homosexuals that were too passive to do anything about their shit and learned the hard way that being a fucking asshole can get you in trouble regardless of where you go.

To reiterate: I don't care what their opinions are but I certainly think it's right in every way except the law for them to get beat up when they express it in that way and in that particular setting/venue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone please educate me on what the need for a "time served" sentence is? According to Wikipedia, this guy was (in part?) responsible for hacking Stratfor which resulted in a bunch of credit card fraud [1].

> [posted] stolen credit card data, one containing 3,956 items and the other > with 13,191 items. Next they posted a set of over 30,000 items

> ...

> The hackers said they used the credit card data to make donations to various > charities, including the Red Cross, Save the Children and CARE. However, one > security expert stated that the charities will never receive the payments, > claiming that instead, customers will report the fraudulent transaction, and > the credit cards will return the money to the customer using a charge back. > Ironically, this will most likely be a minus for those charities as they > lose out on the fraudulent donations, along with the nominal bank service > charge that customers typically must pay simply for processing/re- > processing.

As someone whose VPS provider was "compromised" and a few weeks later had fraudulent transactions appeared on my credit card, it's stressful to be arbitrarily out of pocket $500 and then stressful/annoying to go through the chargeback process and get a new card and update your billing details everywhere.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor#2011_hacking_incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor#2011_hacking_incident)

<comment><USER6> This happened to my Cousin a year ago. A small donation to the PBS in NY. Oddly he was a PBS member but knew he wouldn't put any membership on the card that was charged.

Apparently these small donations are just used to check if a stolen cred card is valid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So am I to understand that it should be completely fine to compromise systems illegally as long as they belong to a company that can be construed as "evil"? Would this campaign exist if he had physically broken in to Stratfor instead of electronically? Not every hack-tivist is a victim of the system, imho.

<comment><USER8> Yes, that is what you are to understand from this page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Speaking as someone who was familiar with Jeremy many years ago, I feel compelled to say that despite his more "radical" nature (as some have noted), he really is a great person.

I'm not happy that he is currently facing a long time in prison (again). But he's as truer to his beliefs than anyone I've ever met.

Unfortunately, his ideals aren't an excuse for breaking the law. Nonetheless, I wish him the best of luck with his case.

</comment><comment><USER10> The only mention of him on the EFF site is from June. Are they involved at all?

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/jeremy-hammond-case- de...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/jeremy-hammond-case-demonstrates- draconian-nature-cfaa)

</comment><comment><USER11> >"In November 2012, after being held for eight months without trial, Hammond was denied bail ..."

So he is already in prison for 1 1/2 years without being sentenced?

Sounds like an interesting "justice" system.

I understand you can not let him walk, but _eight_ month without a trial? And then he was denied bail? And why solitary confinement?

</comment><comment><USER12> Advocating for comparable sentencing between online crimes and physical crimes seems a lot more supportable than advocating repeal of all online/computer crime laws.

</comment><comment><USER13> The problem is that even one poorly behaving (h)activist sets a precedent for average people against all other activists including those that perform a societal good in a very ethical but technically illegal manner (Snowden). It also sets a poor example for others coming of age.

How things are accomplished is of more importance than what is accomplished. Activists should plan carefully by seeking out likely anticipated consequences before pulling the trigger. Otherwise, it's just reactive, aggressive chaos that doesn't go very far.</comment>


True confessions: I wrote for an Internet content mill - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/07/inside-an-online-content-mill-or-writing-4156-words-a-day-just-to-earn-lunch-money/

<comment><USER2> There was quite a bit of outrage about "content farms" a few years ago. Not so much now. Did readers or search engines get better at filtering the crap out?</comment>


Show HN: Scrapy Real Time - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scrapinghub.com/2015/01/22/introducing-scrapyrt-an-api-for-scrapy-spiders/ <comment><USER2> And the words "Real Time" find yet another meaning..

</comment><comment><USER3> fantastic!</comment>


Graduates Are Told They Can Do Anything with Degrees. Why Do They Feel Lost? - <AUTHOR> https://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduates-Are-Told-They-Can-Do/244696 <comment><USER2> We are thought that education will make our life easier. It will give you edge to other people in terms of employment, social status and even about getting relevant to most of the society. Which is true. But the mind set it implies to us is we get education to survive making us to forget how to life should be lived. People with degrees often get lost it is because people have mind set that you need that to be competent on the world with "set standards" rather than taking education to pursue your dream or what someone really like.</comment>


Paul Buchheit: Communicating with code - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/communicating-with-code.html

<comment><USER2> Completely agree with the main point...

However,

"Public APIs enable everyone to experiment with new ideas and create new ways of using your product. This is incredibly powerful because no matter how brilliant you and your coworkers are, there are always going to be smarter people outside of your company."

The only thing that worries me about this, is that in Twitters case, they have lost control to a large extent. They're not really a destination anymore. They're a backend service with a free API. They're no longer the gatekeeper. Just suppose Twitter introduces some advert tweets in everyones stream. 3rd party apps could just ignore those. Suppose twitter does something else to try and monetize... The major twitter apps could just decide to get together and pass messages between themselves instead of through twitter.

Having a public API is awesome for innovation and growing userbases, but it seems like there could be a reasonable risk and cost to that. I think a public API should not be _so_ complete that people don't need to use your app anymore.

<comment><USER3> There's definitely a cost-benefit scenario, but I think in Twitter's case much of their run-away usage has been because exactly that ecosystem exists. It's like an early adopter's wet dream. My biggest gripe with it is the rate limiting since it means I can't actually build the apps that I want to.

(I'd love to build a friend-finder for it. Theirs sucks. That's a perfect setup for our graph discovery stuff, but we need to be able to traverse several levels out to do something useful with it.)

<comment><USER4> Off-topic, but I did see a pretty good friend finder linked to on hacker news the other day. Can't remember the name of it though.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, if you stumble across it let me know. If you've build some secondary app that people are using you can probably get away with scraping out bits of the graph along the way, but most of the ones I've seen just do some very simple counting of friends rather than trying to do anything like finding clusters or trying to figure out which of them you're not likely to already know about.

<comment><USER5> <http://www.whoshouldifollow.com/>

Think this is the one he was talking about.

<comment><USER4> Yes, that was the one. I thought it gave pretty good recommendations.

<comment><USER3> Yep, they're pretty good. I'll probably play with it a little more later to figure out what the rough weights on correlation are.

<comment><USER6> Hey, I'm one of the guys who built WhoShouldiFollow. Glad the recommendations are working out for you.

The Twitter API rate-limiting makes things harder, but as a whitelisted app we haven't (yet) run into any situations where we've hit our quota or get throttled in any way.

It sounds like Alex is working on a new method to retrieve a users followers/friends in bulk which should help out a lot: [http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development- talk/msg/...](http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development- talk/msg/63c4b5bcb4891e1e)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article just reinforced how hard it is to build brilliant products inside traditional software houses. The thought of going through several rewrites of a back end and front end, prior to release, would be laughed at.

</comment><comment><USER8> _... so I connected to that ads database (I assure you, random engineers can no longer do this!)_

Interesting. I guess protecting the infrastructure of a billion dollar business is worth the cost of there being no chance of another billion dollar business being discovered in this way by a random engineer.

<comment><USER9> It's not really the infrastructure they're worried about, it's their users' trust. Can you imagine the hell there would be if some disgruntled Google employee ran off with the business strategy, clickthrough data, and credit card numbers of every Adwords customer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Paul, what are your thoughts on Joel's essay on writing specs?: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html>

<comment><USER11> I think both Joel and Paul are right. Most of the code Paul talks about writing took a "few hours" to write, what Joel is talking about are massive projects that take weeks of effort only to find out that they solve the wrong problem.

So, rapid prototyping: good, unspecced large projects: bad.

<comment><USER12> The only thing good about a large project that is specced that still goes wrong is that the developers can feel good about it not being entirely their fault.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So Buchheit was the key figure behind Adsense, too. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER14> _we re-wrote the frontend about six times and the backend three times by launch_

The more I work in this field, the more I think that this is the best and quickest way to build good software.

Once you realize that everything you write is disposable, you have freed yourself to just write and judge later.

It's not how fast you get started, it's how fast you finish. Sometimes the long roads around is quicker.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. I don't understand why more large companies understand this method...

The best way to build the best X, is to build 5 of them.. by the 5th you're pretty awesome at building X. Seems like too many people believe instead, in meticulous up front design analysis etc etc.

The other point is that in my experience, the rewrites take less and less time to write, as you know more and more.

<comment><USER15> I agree with you, but the reason is because the managers see four of the iterations as wastes of resources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting a Error 403 from google clicking on the link ...

[http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://paulbuchheit....](http://sorry.google.com/sorry/?continue=http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/)</comment>


Tree felling work uncovers WW2 underground bunker near Moffat - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-51800809 <comment><USER2> _The specially-trained teams were often made up of local estate workers who knew the land in the area "like the back of their hand"._

It was so heavily dependent on local knowledge that it was only found because someone who used to play in it as a kid went looking for it.

That's how you keep a secret.

</comment><comment><USER3> Near the town of Moffat, in Scotland, not Moffat Federal Airfield (Naval Air Station) in Sunnyvale, CA.

<comment><USER4> Also not near Moffat, Steven, the person famous for being showrunner behind BBC TV series Sherlock and Dracula and few seasons of Doctor Who, who was born in about 85 kms from that forest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if these locations are recorded in WW2 era classified documents that have never been released. Someone at some point must have known where they were, in order to assign personnel.

<comment><USER6> They may have not kept records specifically because it was meant for a potential resistance movement. If there were records, then the Nazis could just read them after an invasion.

<comment><USER7> Yeah presumably this is something that is best used and highly localized as far as knowledge goes. No records, just some trusted locals who would use it... beyond that as few people as possible would know about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The rock of.Gibraltar had a secret Stay Behind cave for Hitler's invasion.

[https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/06/operation-tracer- secre...](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2017/06/operation-tracer-secret-plan- to-bury.html?m=1)

It was not found until recently. They also found one of secret operatives alive (doctor).

[https://www.google.fi/amp/s/www.warhistoryonline.com/world-w...](https://www.google.fi/amp/s/www.warhistoryonline.com/world- war-ii/operation-tracer-british-cavemen.html/amp?espv=1)

<comment><USER9> The way you put it makes it sound like he was still inside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When they opened the door, they found Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos hiding from Coronavirus.

<comment><USER11> They wouldn't hide in a tube in the Scottish fortress, they'd go for something like [https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/doomsday-luxury- bunker...](https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/doomsday-luxury- bunkers/index.html) or [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday- prep-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the- super-rich)

<comment><USER10> Apparently they are hiding out in New Zealand right now in their luxury doomsday coward bunkers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I spent February driving around Scotland taking pictures of a bunch of castle ruins. It's great fun to walk around a pile of aging stones and wonder what the heck used to go on in there.

<comment><USER13> My favourite example of "what the heck happened here" being vitrified forts - someone had gone to the bother of melting the walls of fairly substantial fortresses - nobody has a clue whether this was intentional or accidental:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are some short documentary on the Auxiliary Units on Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCamfiEqkc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCamfiEqkc) , [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jedeTE- MUXo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jedeTE-MUXo)

</comment><comment><USER15> Something like this would be so fascinating to delicately and tediously catalogue and study.

<comment><USER16> Is it though? I mean we know everything there is to know about the war and even if we discovered something new it's unlikely to be of any practical value. There were bunkers all over Europe.

<comment><USER17> Yeah this is a fair point, it looks like a generic bunker with the (same limited) equipment long ago pillaged by the local people who knew about it. Not much value IMO, outside of maybe knowing the full scale of the deployment.

Once one or two of them are museums and the known survivors were documented, there's not much archeological or historical value in hunting them all down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How is that image created?

<comment><USER19> Photogrammetry. From multiple photos, 3d information is derived. Try it yourself with Meshroom (open source).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of how Hitler killed himself in a bunker, basically in downtown Berlin... which is now a grass/gravel parking lot that, despite Germany's desire to never forget WWII, is almost entirely forgotten (primarily for fear of worshipers overrunning the place).</comment>


Code Browser - <AUTHOR> http://tibleiz.net/code-browser/

<comment><USER2> > No need to scroll page after page to find something

I thought the ctags utility fixed that problem many decades ago?

Failing that, the humble grep utility would also eliminate the need for such excessive manual scrolling.</comment>


Shock as $140m bike-share startup CEO goes AWOL ahead of impending collapse - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/bluegogo-bluegonegone <comment><USER2> As I see it, these guys took US$60 million from VCs and used it to donate 350000 perfectly robust bicycles to some parts of the world most in need of modern transportation (SF).

They are goddamn heroes. If you gave the same money to the SFCTA they would probably build a mile of highway facsimile.

<comment><USER3> > (Bluegogo) holds tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits > from its approximate 15 million users, which many now fear cannot be > refunded.

These guys took millions from users in the form of deposits.

<comment><USER4> So as a user you should take one bike and hold it as leverage. If they don't return the deposit you sell the bike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think I've ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden. I have seen rows of bike share bikes sitting parked taking up useful space that could have been allocated more usefully as public parking for people riding bikes they own.

I assume there must be some aspect to this business I'm not understanding if they are able to talk cities into giving them valuable street space and investors into backing them to the tune of $50M+. I'm not seeing what value they add by centralizing ownership of what is already a very inexpensive and democratic mode of transportation. What is the play here?

<comment><USER6> _" I don't think I've ever seen a bike share bike actually being ridden."_

One person's noticing or not noticing bikes being ridden is a poor way to judge the effectiveness of a city-wide program.

I know I've seen plenty of bike-share racks mostly empty of bikes. I could assume from that that these bikes are currently being used. But that's a poor way of judging too, because I don't know if they were ever full, or how many bikes were stolen or lost, etc.

The real way to judge is from data collected by the agency in charge of the bike share program itself (assuming they keep such data and that the data can be trusted), or to have some independent third party keep track of all the bikes and their use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "staff this week told salary payments will be delayed until February 10, 2018"

For real?? What sane person would continue working for them at this point? Might as well say February 10, 2028...

<comment><USER8> I guess I would come in and solely work on finding my next job until I either landed it or got fired.

Then there would be the off chance I'd get paid later for the search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's hard to imagine why they found this shocking. Many startups with questionable business models end up bankrupt, no matter how well funded.

</comment><comment><USER10> In Sydney you're required to wear a helmet, and there are not many people willing share helmets...

<comment><USER11> At least the helmets don't have people's junk and a __sweat on them all the time. Whole thing is pretty gross when you think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is it "shocking"? That is never explained in the article.

From the looks of it their two revenue models were advertising and flat user fees.

So the fees would have been super low to get as many customers on the platform and the ad dollars were not exactly rolling in.

<comment><USER13> Their revenue was _deposits_ made by users to use the service.

If every user has to pay $60 refundable security deposit to get started, and you can attract a million users to try your service a couple of times, you can quickly pay for a few thousand bikes.

The vast majority of users will then forget to reclaim their deposit.

OBike for example reminds users who try to refund their deposit that if they want to sign up again there will be a fee to pay. That discourages users from claiming the refund because they think "huh - I might want to use this again in the future, and if I do, I don't want to pay a fee".</comment></comment>