FreeBSD – a lesson in poor defaults - <AUTHOR> https://vez.mrsk.me/freebsd-defaults.txt <comment><USER4> I'd be interested in hearing @cpercival's take on this. He was the FreeBSD Security Officer for a while (but stepped down some years ago) and is definitely properly paranoid about security.

<comment><USER5> I find that thumper's rule is very useful when dealing with zealous members of the OpenBSD community.

<comment><USER6> So the guy is talking utter nonsense and you'd rather not "feed the trolls" so to speak? Genuine q, security isn't my speciality

<comment><USER5> It's not all utter nonsense. Some things fall into the category of "we can't change this overnight because we have users, but it will be changing in the future".

<comment><USER7> Sure, he even acknowledges that by writing that in FreeBSD world back compat is more important than security. There's obviously nothing wrong with that as long as you're OK with this trade-off. He isn't, sucks for him then. :D And calling him OpenBSD zealot that is trolling is, well, trolling. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author writes:

       ###############################################################################
       daily_status_security_pkgaudit_enable="NO"
       ###############################################################################

       I most certainly don't want pkg (running as root, remember) going out to
       the internet every night to fetch a list of vulnerable ports.

       Who thought this was safe?

I'm confused. Why is this unsafe? Is it because the author doesn't trust `pkg` to do the auditing job safely as root? Remember, this isn't automatic updating/installing. This job just adds a section to the daily email that tells you which packages have security updates to them.

<comment><USER9> Yes, making this change is _bad_ for security, unless you have some other means of being informed of vulnerabilities.

If you think pkg has vulnerabilities, fix them. (For instance, running as not- root is a great idea!) The author's argument that pkg is bad because Debian apt has vulnerabilities is ... really stretching.

<comment><USER10> Isn't that still assuming that the information that pkg provides is generally trustworthy?

I assume their consideration is that the list might not be trustworthy, so knee jerk updating based on a potentially faulty list is itself a vulnerability. Would a 24h delayed updated list of security updates be worse than an incorrect one?

<comment><USER11> The fact that pkg isn't least-privileged in its operations sucks, but the idea that this somehow makes the contents of a cryptographically signed vulnerability list, fetched via SSL with chain-of-trust verification "untrustworthy" is nonsensical.

<comment><USER12> Since it runs as scripts as root what happens when through malice, mistake, or odd configuration a script gets through standard review and trashes a system? What if one of the official maintainers doesn't exercise due diligence?

You're protected from MITM and hacked repos, but what if the problem is in the official repo?

Defensive programming is useful.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but that's not the argument. I'm specifically responding to the parent's assertion that you wouldn't want to run audit because the list might just lie to you.

That's separate from the idea that the list might be maliciously crafted to exploit an overflow and gain root privileges (which presumably could bypass signing checks) -- if your threat model involves loss of control of FreeBSD's signing keys, pkg running as root is irrelevant. You can't ever trust anything outside the box, or update at all. No binary is trustable and even if you heavily audit the source you're in trusting-trust territory.

(also the only key that matters is the Security Officer's key for vuln disclosures -- not any random maintainer has signing authority)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some discussion here:[https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/4azhmm/freebsd_a_l...](https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/4azhmm/freebsd_a_lesson_in_poor_defaults/)

<comment><USER14> Wow, that comment about OpenSMTPD. I highly recommend reading beyond the first message. The reddit poster links it as supporting their claim, but the rest of the picture sure doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm really torn on the issue of how tightly coupled the userland configuration is to the release cycle. I'm not sure that I'd be running FreeBSD today if it hadn't been that way, because having a well tested and widely deployed base image makes adoption so much easier. The common problems that novices get discouraged by are completely sidestepped: package conflicts, library incompatibility, missing drivers, etc.

But after several years of use I find the methods used to implement those thing getting in the way:

In the interest of security I want the kernel to have the smallest attack surface possible, and this isn't just a theoretical thing. Not long ago there was a very serious remote exploit that leveraged two default kernel compile options - SCTP and IPV6, and had those not been made default (few can even take advantage of SCTP) I'm sure the number of vulnerable machines would have been tiny. So to decrease your risk for a 0 day you want to get off the GENERIC kernel config, but now you need to constantly rebuild the kernel in order to keep up with the latest security fixes - and you can't safely automate the build/install process.

Building the userland is far worse. The mk scripts handle dependency through explicitly defined, and very fragile, rules. Don't want the base version of openssl? Well have fun figuring out how to get your build working after some uefi bins that you don't even want fail to find the missing openssl headers - because somebody forget to add that dependency to the mk file. I could go on for hours, the buildworld process is a trainwreck.

But there is good news! The problem is actively being addressed, as I understand it, a lot of that is being pushed into a sort of blessed pkg repo. So hopefully we'll have the best of both worlds - easy initial base, and unlimited customization that leverages the pkg dependency code. I've been working on my own solution, using dynamically generated dependency graphs at the compiler level, but extending the pkg system seems like the right way to go.

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems that a lot f the issues the author has they can fix by moving over to OpenBSD. I'd be curious to hear what makes them stick with FreeBSD instead considering the complaint.

<comment><USER17> I'm not the OP but OpenBSD is missing some pretty key features. My reasons to use FreeBSD over OpenBSD are:

      - Virtualization (jails, bhyve)
      - Filesystems (ZFS)
      - beadm (which requires ZFS)
      - <USER2>

Which really is a shame because philosophically I think I'd prefer the OpenBSD camp

<comment><USER18> Also:

      - <USER3>
      - Arm support
      - The handbook

I do envy OpenBSD's pledge() and arc4random() though.

<comment><USER19> OpenBSD man pages and FAQ are really good too. LLVM is not in the base install, but you can install clang from ports and build a program if you need to.

I agree with pledge() and arc4random(). They are both ridiculously easy to use. FreeBSD has Capsicum but it doesn't seem to be integrated.

Oh, and FreeBSD has DTrace. Judging from some recent commits it looks like OpenBSD is going to get some sort of tracing framework.

<comment><USER18> > OpenBSD man pages and FAQ are really good too.

Absolutely! I didn't mention the man pages because all BSDs have really good ones and they all use OpenBSD's mandoc these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A lot of these really aren't "defaults" but things necessary for ABI compatibility in the -STABLE branches. I was expecting more on poor sysctl tuning out of the box (and that is a real problem).

I will say that for FreeBSD 11, where we can break ABI again, it would be nice to ditch sendmail and I don't know why it is taking so long to do it.

<comment><USER21> I believe there's work underway to replace it with Dragonfly's dma.

<comment><USER22> dma is already in base, just not default

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > (About SSH "none" cipher) The trade-off in performance isn't really worth it > either, as the bottlenecks one might experience have a lot more to do with > the MAC than the actual encryption.

Maybe that's just my experience, but I've used patched OpenSSH (scp, to be exact) that had "none" cipher on GNU/Linux, as a no-brainer tar+netcat pipe replacement for two PCs connected with a patch cable (so, no security was necessary), and it had saturated the link well. Default cipher suite ate the CPU and gave terrible performance. So I doubt the author's statement about the worth.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pkgng and poudriere can very neatly be used in conjunction. You can use pkg to fetch and install all your binary packages from FreeBSD in the same way that apt-get is used in Debian. Most people will do just that.

But, if you'd like to have some ports built by yourself with special options, you can setup a poudriere builder and tell it to periodically make the ports you're interested in. The ports are compiled and packaged into pkgng packages. The final result is an additional private repo which you can totally use along with the official FreeBSD one.

<comment><USER21> I've heard time and again that you should either build everything from ports of install pkg binaries? I believe it's because of different use flags (in Gentoo lingo), so maybe you mean that one would build everything privately in a consistent poudriere repo with personal settings and only ever install packages from there. Is that right?

<comment><USER25> Uh… no? Unless you really customize _all the options_ I guess. There's no reason to rebuild the exact same package you'll get from the repo.

E.g. I install all firefox's dependencies from pkg, then I build firefox from ports with the GTK3 option. Same with packages that use openssl (I use libressl). Never had any problems with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Best default ever: [https://shiro.apache.org/static/1.2.2/apidocs/src- html/org/a...](https://shiro.apache.org/static/1.2.2/apidocs/src- html/org/apache/shiro/mgt/AbstractRememberMeManager.html)

See DEFAULT_CIPHER_KEY_BYTES

Because no major companies forgot to change it when they used it?

</comment><comment><USER27> This reads as unnecessarily nasty and mean-spirited. Sure, I am biased, I am a FreeBSD developer.

<comment><USER28> I find it direct and nasty, but not mean-spirited. I think he does that because he cares about this, and hasn't managed to get his message across.

And I think he has good points. In particular, ports running make as root makes every buffer overflow in your C compiler, linker, and whatever other tools build scripts run a potential root exploit. Yes, other security measures such as pledge can decrease that risk, but why run the risk at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My personal aphorism (for at least 20 years now):

Warman's Law: That which _can_ be configured _must_ be comfigured,

Corr.: Defaults Aren't.

Impl: running any program on its defaults will get you in trouble somewhere down the line. This is no different. Configurations are there precisely to accommodate each users' individual needs, and we are not all the same. Typically defaults try to achieve useability by naive users, and usually do so in a way that is wrong for the sophisticated users. As well as often not chosen very well and really wrong for everybody. Then there is code written by naive programmers who code the naive default and do not provide any configuration because they are unaware of any other way to use the system. And the other extreme of course - Windws anyone? Multiple places to configure different aspects of a specific vehavior, and selection dialogues that "help" by not showing sub-options not used by the current settings, making it impossible to know the full set?

At least the /etc paradigm lets us get a canonical view of everything, explorable with a simple text editor. This article actually shows the advantages.

</comment><comment><USER30> "I don't know anythng about IPFilter, nor do I know anyone who uses it, so we'll pretend it doesn't exist."

If alternatives exist that would address the author's complaints (and they do), but he doesn't know anything about them or anyone that uses them then does he pretend they don't exist? What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER31> A lot of good points, but several ignorant ones, too (what's wrong with tcp_wrappers or PAM? also OpenNTPD is _not_ a drop-in replacement for ntpd). And if the author is someone coming from OpenBSD, they ought to know at least something of the history behind IPFilter, as it is the raison d'etre for OpenBSD's pf.

Speaking as an infosec guy myself, I'd dearly love to see the TrustedBSD MAC Framework or the Audit Implementation (OpenBSM) being used by default. I'm surprised the author didn't mention it.

<comment><USER32> Has the MAC framework reached sufficient maturity that root need no longer be especially privileged, but instead just-privileged-enough?

(this would attenuate many of the OP's complaints)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> 11/10 on arrogance and narcissism.

The defaults about swap and openssh are reasonable for high-performance networking servers, which is what FreeBSD is for. Yes, compatibility and performance _matters_. Ports are supposed to be installed before server is put for production, and at that time running shit as root is not a big deal.

BTW, OpenBSD, with all respect for code quality and attention to details is nowhere near in networking server performance and stability. Once I made an OpenBSD/spark64 firewall, which, I think, is still in production, but apart from packet filter and DNS server it was hardly usable for anything.

I am oldfag^W^W remember FreeBSD 2.0</comment>


The bug that ruined my weekend - <AUTHOR> http://ayende.com/blog/169377/the-bug-that-ruined-my-weekend

<comment><USER2> I wonder if Jon Skeet will come to save the day.</comment>


Sources: Amazon faces a full-blown EU antitrust probe within days - tech-historian https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-16/amazon-faces-eu-probe-as-vestager-plans-summer-finale <comment><AUTHOR> The article starts right off with a cliché often repeated in American media: that this is a 'crackdown on U.S. giants'. This is not targeted at US companies, the Commission has fined plenty of European companies in the past year. But the big giants just happen to be American and so obviously abuse their market power. Corporations don't really carry a flag (except for convenience), they are disloyal to all of us. So let's make this about what it is: standing up for consumers, no matter where the company comes from.</comment>


Waymo CEO Says Alphabet Unit Plans to Launch Driverless Car Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/waymo-ceo-says-driverless-car-service-coming-soon-2018-11-13 <comment><USER2> I'm excited. If you have been alive a substantial amount of time you are easily running a lifetime average of about 1-2% chance of dying in a car accident in your lifetime. Things have gotten much safer the past couple decades so that number is somewhere around 0.75% or lower now. I want to say being injured in a car accident is somewhere around 20-30% lifetime chance. Cars are incredibly dangerous and this will save a ton of lives.

<comment><USER3> What if you're in the car that the self driving algorithm decides it's safer to crash and kill you than hit whatever it thinks it was going to collide with?

Edit- downvoters please state your beliefs, there is no right or wrong answer to points 1-7 below.

[1] Imagine you're in a self-driving car going down a road when, suddenly, the large propane tanks hauled by the truck in front of you fall out and fly in your direction. A split-second decision needs to be made, and you can't think through the outcomes and tradeoffs for every possible response. Fortunately, the smart system driving your car can run through tons of scenarios at lightning fast speed. How, then, should it determine moral priority?

Consider the following possibilities:

1\. Your car should stay in its lane and absorbs the damage, thereby making it likely that you'll die.

2\. Your car should save your life by swerving into the left lane and hitting the car there, sending the passengers to their deaths—passengers known, according to their big data profiles, to have several small children.

3\. Your car should save your life by swerving into the right lane and hit the car there, sending the lone passenger to her death—a passenger known, according to her big data profile, to be a scientist who is coming close to finding a cure for cancer.

4\. Your car should save the lives worth the most, measured according to amount of money paid into a new form of life assurance insurance. Assume that each person in a vehicle could purchase insurance against these types of rare but inevitable accidents, and then, smart cars would prioritize based on their ability and willingness to pay.

5\. Your car should save your life and embrace a neutrality principle in deciding among the means for doing so, perhaps by flipping a simulated coin and swerving to the right if heads comes up and swerving to the left if its tails.

6\. Your car shouldn't prioritize your life and should embrace a neutrality principle by randomly choosing among the three options.

7\. Your car should execute whatever option most closely matches your personal value system and the moral choices you would have made if you were capable of doing so. Assume that when you first purchased your car, you took a self- driving car morality test consisting of a battery of scenarios like this one and that the results "programmed" your vehicle.

There's no value-free way to determine what the autonomous car should do. The choice presented by options 1–7 shouldn't be seen as a computational problem that can be "solved" by big data, sophisticated algorithms, machine learning, or any form of artificial intelligence. These tools can help evaluate and execute options, but ultimately, someone—some human beings—must choose and have their values baked into the software.

Who should get decision-making power? Should it be politicians? The market? Insurance companies? Automotive executives? Technologists? Should consumers be allowed to customize the moral dashboard of their cars so that their vehicles execute moral decisions that are in line with their own preferences?

1\. [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5a8d3/self- drivi...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/j5a8d3/self-driving-car- policy-uber)

<comment><USER4> This is just FUD, and it's got nothing to do with the parent comment, which was talking about the lives that will be saved by widespread autonomous vehicles. Not sure why you decided to respond to that comment with your own variation of the trolley problem but you're being downvoted because the comment wasn't relevant.

The fact that developers of autonomous systems have to consider the ethical and moral implications of their work is well understood, but these systems will still be much safer than human drivers.

<comment><USER3> "Not sure why you decided to respond to that comment with your own variation of the trolley problem but you're being downvoted because the comment wasn't relevant."

Because it's the only aspect of autonomous cars that worries me and parent was talking about how much safer it will be. I know it's not rational from a statistical perspective and actually safer than human drivers, however on an intuitive human level it's hard to stomach that I may be algorithmically placed in harm's way.

<comment><USER4> Provided that it's statistically safer, I'd rather be algorithmically placed in harm's way than placed at greater risk by drunk or distracted drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This will be a huge milestone for the Waymo team. I had not thought they would get here until 2025 at least, so I guess I'm overly cynical these days :-).

I hope that a successful launch in Phoenix will expand out to other locales because this capability is a huge win for those groups that would otherwise not be able to make these trips.

It is also remarkable that it is possible to replace a regular vehicle operated by a human as a livery service, with an incredibly complex machine and still make a business case out of it. That says a lot about how far computers have come in the last couple of decades.

<comment><USER6> Personally, I think that all the self driving efforts would do well to be tightly coupled to city planning going forward and we should be specifically regulating toward "driverless zones" where a grid system can handle all traffic, a city switch, effectively.

There are efforts to fit driverless cars to horrifically planned streets, but I don't see any cities approaching it from the other direction.

This is all said though because I freaking hate cars and the entire ecosystem surrounding them.

<comment><USER7> Or for a fraction of the cost you could have driverless trains and move 20 ~ 50x more people. Oh wait, that already exists. It's existed for decades:

[https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not- so...](https://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the- transportation-problem/)

Self driving cars are totally the wrong direction we should be going in, and it's going to cost the US more in the long run.

<comment><USER8> > _Self driving cars are totally the wrong direction we should be going in, > and it 's going to cost the US more in the long run_

This goes against the research I've seen, which suggests a self-driving fleet can more-efficiently transport a dispersed population like America's than rail. (For the relevant distances.)

Also, anecdote: after Uber, I use the subway and regional rail system more. It solves the last-mike and "should I rent a car" problems.

<comment><USER9> The car drives you to the bus, the bus drives you to the train, simple. The train is scheduled to depart at the best time for all the buses to arrive at. Less waiting, less buses and trains that are half empty.

<comment><USER10> For this to work the self driving car needs to be expensive enough for people to care to organize their trips this way. So we will need to pass road tax in cities to account for the externality of congesting the roads. As these cars are driven by corporates with constant GPS monitoring this will be more easily enforced than ever

<comment><USER9> Pricing in externalities is job 0.

I want to go from A to B.

Do you want option a) be alone, £100, b) share car, £60, c) most efficient, switch to bus and train, £30

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I will be really interested to see what limitations the service launches with. From what I've seen, they have been extraordinarily hazy about what the cars can actually do (e.g., time of day, weather, locations, dealing with non-road complexity). That makes sense, of course, as it's valuable information for competitors, but I'm still eager to find out.

I'll also be interested to see how much this is them wanting to run a full production service versus an advertisement for their technology. Will it be more like Google Search? Or more like Android, where they maintain a small market share as a demonstration of where they want people to go?

<comment><USER12> > From what I've seen, they have been extraordinarily hazy about what the cars > can actually do (e.g., time of day, weather, locations, dealing with non- > road complexity).

Not sure this is 100% related, but the driver-assistance technologies in my new 2019 vehicle such as the lane keep assist, blind spot sensors, adaptive cruise control all suffer varying levels in inclement weather. My lane keep assist is completely unreliable in the rain, the collision detection sometimes misfires (but thankfully doesn't brake me) or mistakenly thinks an oncoming car around a bend is in front of me, etc. There are thousands of edge cases I can think of, just with my rudimentary understanding of the technology (namely lidar) are thinking to my self there is just no possible way they have come to a point where they are safe for general use.

<comment><USER13> You're comparing apples to oranges. The hardware and software running on fully self-driving cars is much more sophisticated than mere assist aids on regular cars. Your car does not have LIDAR, for starters.

<comment><USER12> I was making two separate points about current assistance technology and the capabilities of LIDAR. (I think the technology in Tesla's are pretty good - Elon tends to think LIDAR isn't necessary, who is to say he is wrong and their opinion is any more or less valid?)

In either case, it isn't hard to imagine, the fundamental algorithms are the same -- recognize lane markings, adjust steering wheel, that kind of thinking. What do you do in the case that the lane markings have been worn down on the road? Freshly paved roads that haven't been painted? I could go on ad nauseam but point remains: too many corner cases, lidar or not.

<comment><USER14> Teslas also like to accelerate into road barriers. It is hard to consider them a legitimate competitor in the self driving space right now.

<comment><USER15> Yes. Tesla pulled their self-driving claim last month.[1] Their self-driving video, from 2016, was apparently the one trial that worked out of a large number of tries.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/20/18000884/tesla-full- self...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/20/18000884/tesla-full-self-driving- option-gone-musk-autopilot)

<comment><USER16> > Their self-driving video, from 2016, was apparently the one trial that > worked out of a large number of tries.

Are you speculating, or is there a source for this point?

I don't doubt it, just wondering, as I think evidence for this would be fairly incriminating.

<comment><USER15> Evidence: [1]

[1] [https://dailykanban.com/2017/02/ca-dmv-report-sheds-new- ligh...](https://dailykanban.com/2017/02/ca-dmv-report-sheds-new-light- misleading-tesla-autonomous-drive-video/)

<comment><USER16> > combined with eyewitness reports of multiple days worth of filming, it's > clear that at a minimum Tesla's system had many attempts to practice the > route before recording a truly autonomous run.

Interesting. I'm a little surprised this did not get more coverage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So the truth is Google is expanding its pool of test users, removing their NDAs, and starting in the easiest place in the world to operate a driverless car.

It's certainly progress, but I would have appreciated a less click-bait headline.

<comment><USER18> The idea that driving in a well-tested Phoenix suburb is even the same activity as Manhattan, as some seem to think, is comical.

<comment><USER19> Pretty large chunks of the country are a lot like phoenix suburbs.

<comment><USER20> A non significant chunk of trips are in places that don't look like them. If I still need a driven car for 10 or 20 percent of trips, I'm not going to ditch in favor of driverless cars.

<comment><USER21> It's a service, like Uber, you're not expected to ditch the car at this stage

<comment><USER22> If it gets cheap enough I at least could take the self driving car to the nearest train stop and go downtown via train. She got grocery shopping in the suburbs. However, shopping be better only a single stop. Maybe we could solve that problem though by having some kind of bin that gets automatically stored at a grocery store while I'm shopping, loaded with my groceries and then put into the next self driving car...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lfyt and Uber must be having a heart attack right now.

<comment><USER24> This was always a clear threat. While Uber is also working in this space, it always seemed very clear to me that once you "solve" driverless cars, creating a network similar to Uber is relatively trivial, assuming human capital is not required 1:1 as it is with Uber.

In theory, to the customer, it doesn't matter if a human or machine is driving, so you're no longer dealing with a two-sided network, making adoption substantially easier, especially for a company like Google who can deploy massive capital.

The thing I never understood is how Uber's investors rationalized this and thought it wouldn't happen. Did they think self driving cars would not be a reality? Did they think Uber could get there first? Did they think there is still a profitable enough gap between current situation and the dreiverless future to hedge in case Uber doesn't get there? Is the Uber brand and tech worth so much that they'll get something back as an acquisition for whoever does get there first?

<comment><USER25> At the current cost of a self-driving car (~$250K), it would be ridiculously expensive to build a fully self-driving ride-sharing fleet [1]. So expensive that I doubt it's possible to make real money that way right now.

Self-driving cars are a long game until companies can bring down the costs. It might be years before that happens. Uber has the advantage of being able to ramp up self-driving cars as part of their existing fleet until then.

Edit: Math mistake

[1] [https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car- int...](https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car-into-a-self- driving-vehicle/) [2] [https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company- info/](https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company-info/)

<comment><USER26> I believe that the cost to produce a self-driving car will be coming down, but let's look at the $250k price tag.

Over 6 years, that comes to $114/day. 1 ride per hour at $5 per ride would hit $120/day.

Assuming a 2 mile ride, that would be 105k miles which is well within the car's usable life. At 3 miles, it would be 160k miles which is still within a car's lifespan. It looks like Uber is $1.35/mile with a $2.10 base fare and $1.85 fee. A 3 mile ride should be able to get $5.

Plus, it's really about the long run. Operating margin might be negative for a bit, but the cost of the technology and manufacturing will come down significantly. Still, even today, I think $250k just isn't that bad. I think most drivers will do a lot more than $5/hour in gross revenue.

It would be really expensive to make a fleet, but the economics are so compelling, even at high prices. I mean, Americans are often spending $35,000 on a car. If a self-driving vehicle can service the needs of 7 people, it can be cheaper than car ownership.

While the price of driverless tech might be high now, the prices of car ownership and human labor are both very high as well and only one of those three prices is likely to decrease over time.

<comment><USER25> Factor in the cost of gas and you're in the negative already.

<comment><USER27> I suppose most of these vehicles will be electric, and cost of charging is lower than cost of refuelling...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Waymo announced this last month.[1]

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/10/waymo-wont-have-to- prov...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/10/waymo-wont-have-to-prove-its- driverless-taxis-are-safe-before-2018-launch/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it will help the blind, and people with seizures, so I hope it gets figured out. I do some driving for people with visual impairment, and I enjoy helping, but this would be best.

</comment><comment><USER29> TLDR; Waymo will be spinning up new company next month exclusively for app based rides (name is being kept secret). Fares will be competitive with Uber/Lyft. They did year long test drive for 400 customers in Phoenix. These same customers would be offered initial access. Other competitors still remains far behind in terms of disengagement metric.

This will mark the first ever commercial self-driving cab service.

<comment><USER30> Why spin up a new company? Is it to limit liability?

<comment><USER31> Waymo does the R&D for the autonomous driver.

Then separate companies build a business around each use case to monetize the driver.

1) Consumer rideshare

2) Courier / delivery

3) Corporate / fleet / trucking

4) License driver tech to OEMs

5) Lease self-driving vehicles outright

6) ???

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Uber has done the hard work of normalizing ride sharing everywhere and giving consumer pricing expectations of rides, just for Google to sweep in with it fixed-cost self driving car ride sharing service to start collecting massive profits. It is going to take a while to spread nationwide but Google will do it eventually, really just a matter of time (not even money for a company as rich as Google). I'm really wondering where Uber goes from here.

<comment><USER25> At the current cost of a self-driving car (~$250K), it would be ridiculously expensive to build a fully self-driving ride-sharing fleet [1]. So expensive that I doubt it's possible to make real money that way right now.

Self-driving cars are a long game until companies can bring down the costs. It might be years before that happens. Uber has the advantage of being able to ramp up self-driving cars as part of their existing fleet until then.

[1] [https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car- int...](https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car-int..). [2] [https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company- info/](https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company-info/)

Edit: math mistake

<comment><USER33> In the article it says WayNo has already reduced the cost of Lidar by 90%:

"Waymo, the Google spin-off, claims it has cut the cost of an experimental version of the high-end LIDAR to around $7,500. It did not release details"

More details here: [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo- invests-i...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-in- lidar-technology-cuts-costs-by-90-percent/)

<comment><USER34> They "reduced" the cost by stealing Velodyne's Lidar technology and filing a false patent on it.

[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/10/lone-engineer-spanks- wa...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/10/lone-engineer-spanks-waymo-in- lidar-patent-battle/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm imagining the traffic/resource simulations that would certainly be run to plan such a thing, will be fun productive times.

Then the next thing is all the side industries that will come of it. What will people do when they don't have to concentrate on the road while going from point a to b... Might open up more "Point B"s for people who don't like driving too...

</comment><comment><USER36> This is huge. It must feel surreal being driven around by a driverless car. Hope it comes with a Jarvis voice for navigation

<comment><USER37> Jarvis is too current an IP, so will be very expensive. Try "Johnnycab."

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > "you could anticipate a material contribution to the world from Waymo over > the next couple years," he said.

I doubt the drivers made redundant agree with that characterisation.

(Of course, that's been the Luddites' argument all along. Will the drivers be absorbed in some other productive pursuit? Or is it different this time?)

</comment><comment><USER39> Cynical analysis:

This announcement of 'business paying for rides' is priming the customer to have their data sold to corporations. How else would it make sense for someone like Walmart to offer the free ride?

Walmart (for example) will want to know the personal profile of that customer, the routes they normally travel, where they shop, and how much they spend. That way they can target new customers who will potentially spend a lot of money on high-margin products.

Alternatively, a customer who books a ride to Kmart might get a popup before the booking is confirmed - come to Walmart instead and the ride is free!

Maybe the car auto-routes to drive past Walmart? Maybe it parks in a parking slot closer to their store? Lots of possibilities.

Don't forget Google's original business - data collection and advertising.

<comment><USER40> I assume Walmart would offer the free rides intending to monetize by selling stuff. I could see free ride when you spend $100 or some such working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have also read an article that discusses about self-driving cars at [https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car- accid...](https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accident- injury-lawyers-attorneys/). I think it's always interesting to talk about this future technology. However, for now, I personally think there are still so many aspects and features that should be fixed and perfected by automakers before bringing them to public.

</comment><comment><USER42> Launching in Phoenix only; for anyone whose never been there, the roads are straight & wide with extremely sparse car/foot-traffic and zero bad weather days. For those living in actual big US cities, don't hold your breath that this service will launch anytime soon for you...

</comment><comment><USER43> With driverless electric vehicles, an ad model can economically work. You get in the car and there's a screen with ads and if you pay extra, you get the premium features like no ads and music control.

The only hard part is bootstrapping the capital to get network effects (you want enough cars so that users don't have to wait a long time). Google should have enough money.

<comment><USER44> I would be very surprised if they decide to monetize this with ads.

My impression is that the executives very much want to diversify income streams. You can see this with Cloud, GSuite, Chrome OS, hardware, etc. It doesn't make sense (to me) to want to throw even more eggs into the same basket.

I work for Google but opinions are my own.

<comment><USER45> Google's advertiser-side ad network/tools/analytics is lightyears ahead, and I'll bet they can capture more $ from video ads in-car than actual ride $.

Of course, why not do both? :-)

(ex-googler)

<comment><USER46> I find it hard to really believe that could be true. At least on YouTube, even with video ads CPM is ~$10, where as CPM for a taxi service is more like $10,000. It doesn't seem like it could be a particularly important amount of money to them.

<comment><USER43> Maybe surveys or something more interactive would work. On Facebook, you can pay $10 for someone filling out a survey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> We are now guinea pigs to the robot car revolution and it's progress.

Wait I didnt sign up for this!

<comment><USER22> Isn't that common with big impact, new technologies? Who signed up to have the first nuclear power plant next to them? Who signed up to live on a street that started to have Model-Ts drive on it? Who signed up to have the first gas pipes run under their street?

<comment><USER47> Ummm all those technological advances mentioned are zeroed in on one location that if you were worried you could move away from.

Robot cars are wherever and in time everywhere! You soon won't be able to escape them.

<comment><USER22> Model Ts didn't get contained did they? For now you are probably pretty safe from self driving cars if you move to a rural area with bad weather or a place with chaotic traffic like Manhattan.

<comment><USER47> Ummm model T vs. horse/carriage is pretty easy to decipher.

They didn't sign up for that, but at least they knew a model T from their horse & buggy.

With robot cars there isn't a way by looking at to decipher robot car or not. I wonder if these robot car companies are willing to smack something on each robot car that lets all know what type of car it is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is good initiative taken by Waymo CEO in terms of Pollution. Good Luck for this!

</comment><comment><USER49> Absolutely nobody wants to hear this — but I'm an Uber driver. I work in the sf area. After an average day I go through 250 miles and have brought in a total of 330 dollars. The cost to fuel, maintain and replace my car is 20 cents per mile. Driving every day as I do, I make a lot more than most people would guess. Drivers are actually paid well which is why every other car in sf is an Uber driver. Cutting the driver out would give a competitor a very distinct advantage.

AI and automation are evil. Nobody appreciates the fact that the only reason human beings generally enjoy a good life is because they possess a resource that cannot be found anywhere else or reproduced by any means. As soon as that is no longer true, life as we know it will cease to exist.

Already, in today's world where sentience is uniquely human, it is only a privileged few in the higher strata of the first world who actually have what you might call a good quality of life. How could anyone think that the waterline of poverty will move down instead of up once humans no longer monopolize intelligence? Killer robots don't even have to be considered — the economics of true ai are more than enough.

The key is that the only requirement for how the state of the world will change is that entropy is satisfied. It is actually entropy that contorted matter into our human figures that are unimaginably complicated. Society, nature and the world are a convoluted way of expending energy. Just as humans were very surprising compared to the barren earth, the next step that satisfies entropy will also be surprising. The importance of thinking in terms of entropy is that it allows you to appreciate that very unexpected and surprising things might happen because there are many weird ways that might be most efficient in satisfying entropy — many weird monstrosities of matter such as ourselves. I think sometimes the human mind has a tendency to think it's human progress that's supposed to be satisfied universally instead of entropy.

I think that when you look at it this way you can sort of see that the global economy actually serves some mysterious, higher purpose. We tend to think of global economics as driving forward progress for humanity and our quality of life. And although this makes intuitive sense and seems to agree with the way things have gone, it's not true. Time is a series of integrations folding in on themselves and blossoming into one moment after the next. Humans will continue to be integrated into larger and more complex super organisms — just as our mitochondria folded into us and viruses folded into our dna and rna folded into every living thing, we will succumb to the next integration and society as we know it will be lost. This is all to serve entropy. Our cars and televisions have been very convenient integrations.

The most important takeaway of my insane ideas is that ai should resisted at all cost. If we allow it to exist, we will enter into a very unstable configuration Where it's basically only a matter of time before we become lost to it.

I find it very hard to carry the belief that ai is coming and that it will end the world. It causes me material emotional distress every single day. I feel very depressed even writing this.

<comment><USER50> > AI and automation are evil. Nobody appreciates the fact that the only reason > human beings generally enjoy a good life is because they possess a resource > that cannot be found anywhere else or reproduced by any means. As soon as > that is no longer true, life as we know it will cease to exist.

It depends. Our reason to exist could simply be our own pleasure. As long as the automation serves us rather than destroys us, it will be fine. There is plenty of fiction that contemplates this going badly. If you're interested in what it might look like for it to go well, try reading a book from the Culture series (not Consider Phlebas, though).

<comment><USER49> If ai can do a job more efficiently it will be used for that job. Each market and each player in each market will selfishly automate while knowing that if everyone automated the world will end. The holdouts will be overrun by automatons and the whole thing will tip over. Countries that automate high level executive functions will win conflicts against organic countries. It will ratchet forward. If the technology is out there do you really think it can be partitioned perfectly into pleasure robots? You think Iran or North Korea won't try to use it? If it exists it will be used. Unstable configuration like I said.

<comment><USER50> Well, it's gonna happen anyway. About as much point worrying about it as the heat death of the universe. Best to enjoy yourself today and strive to make the world a better place.

<comment><USER49> You can't pick and choose what is within your influence and what's not. If the outcome of a system is both subject to your influence (to any degree) and also pre-determined then you are saying you don't believe in free will — you are then in contradiction with yourself when you decide to take action on your own behalf for any reason as you surely have. The only correct path forward is one where you bear the weight of the knowledge that your actions have an impact on the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Here's a non-WSJ story: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-13/waymo- to-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-13/waymo-to-start- first-driverless-car-service-next-month)

<comment><USER52> On this topic, I have nothing against paying for content, I pay for NYT and lots of other (video) content services. $40 a month seems like a bit much, no? Worth it? Comparitively, other similar services seem to be in the $10 range?

<comment><USER5> This is the Blendle link: [https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/waymo-ceo-says- alphabet-unit-p...](https://blendle.com/i/wsj-com/waymo-ceo-says-alphabet- unit-plans-to-launch-driverless-car-service-in-coming-months/bnl- wsj-20181113-SB12405722030152263707504584592362094372076?sharer=eyJ2ZXJzaW9uIjoiMSIsInVpZCI6ImNodWNrbWNtYW5pcyIsIml0ZW1faWQiOiJibmwtd3NqLTIwMTgxMTEzLVNCMTI0MDU3MjIwMzAxNTIyNjM3MDc1MDQ1ODQ1OTIzNjIwOTQzNzIwNzYifQ%3D%3D) In that link they charged me $0.49 to read the article.

I measured the monthly cost of my subscriptions to various publications, and then cancelled those accounts and setup a Blendle account with a self imposed limit of that monthly amount. What I found was that I typically spend half to at most three quarters of what I had been spending and I only read the articles I care about. And when I'm doing something that interferes with my available reading time, I spend practically nothing at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Hopefully New York permits them to operate in the city despite recently limiting the number of ride sharing drivers.

<comment><USER54> I don't see any reason for New York to permit them, especially in the city center, before they have been proven safe over at least five to ten years in less urban and crowded environments.

<comment><USER55> You don't see _any_ reason?

* I've seen research that indicates there are fewer drunk driving fatalities, when things like Uber are available in a town. I would imagine self-driving cars would follow that same trend.

* I would guess that more people able to stay out late, drinking and spending money.

* I've heard that with 10% of traffic being self-driving that it reduces overall traffic congestion. That sounds great.

* Potentially reducing the demand for parking, which increases the supply for development (which yields more tax income for the city)

* Potentially makes longer commutes more palatable, allowing people to work farther away from home, which eases housing costs.

* Easier tourism.

* Easier access for the disabled.

Those seem like good reasons, in favor.

<comment><USER56> How much time have you spent in the "city center" of New York ?

<comment><USER55> I suspect that if you started from the outside, and worked your way in, that even small impacts on traffic outside of the "city center" could have large impacts on the "city center" of New York.

And even if it doesn't, having a small positive impact on areas outside the "city center" would still be a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> And where are the ads going to be inserted? :)

<comment><USER58> On your phone, in search or on the map. But a taxi service may be a profitable business on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I know driverless cars are supposed to be the next big thing, but I have to say I've become a bit skeptical that it will improve quality of life at all. We can use technology for guided driving that is as safe as, or even safer than, full automation. And what are the other benefits? More time in the car to do what, scroll Facebook, work remotely, and look at ads?

No thanks, rather focus on driving.

<comment><USER60> Are you serious, you free millions of human beings from the drudgery of driving people around. You make billions of people be closer to wherever they want to go. Its a transportation revolution, akin to smartphones. If they work, society will be completely different within a decade.

<comment><USER59> Freedom is not sitting in a metal box waiting to arrive at my destination.

<comment><USER60> It's certainly not driving the metal box!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MS Research - Ripley: Ensuring the integrity of client-side code - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ripley/

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary: Using .NET to create web applications and the Volta compiler to automagically generate the required JavaScript code allows for a uniform development platform.

The problem: the client code that was once trusted because it lives on a server not resides on untrusted clients. Ripley sits between the server and the client, and runs a replica of the code running on the client. Any input on the client is sent to the replica to be run as well, if the outputs do not agree the code fails.

End result: Faster response time on the client(due to the use of client-side code) but integrity of computation.</comment>


Another plane like MH370 vanished with GPS tracking - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/another-plane-like-malaysia-airlines-flight-370-vanished-with-gps-tracking/story-fnizu68q-1226856947629

<comment><USER2> already submitted in the past week. Different source (it was Wikipedia).</comment>


LAS_Mandarin_PyTorch - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jackaduma/LAS_Mandarin_PyTorch <comment><AUTHOR> This code is a PyTorch implementation for paper: Listen, Attend and Spell, a nice work on End-to-End ASR, Speech Recognition model.

also provides a Chinese Mandarin ASR pretrained model.</comment>


What living in San Francisco on a tech salary really looks like - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/living-in-san-francisco-on-tech-salary-disappointing-photos-2018-9 <comment><AUTHOR> For whom live in San Fransisco. Is it really like that? I don't work for a fancy company, don't live in a fancy city and I work on boring enterprise problems but I live considerably better than that. I would accept those conditions only if I were a college student and not an adult professional.</comment>


Rethinking Professionalism: The Meta-Expert - <AUTHOR> http://synaptify.com/?p=613718

<comment><USER2> I hope I don't come off as pedantic but, presuming I understand you properly, I wouldn't describe these people as meta-experts. Unless I'm mistake, the prefix meta- means, from Wikipedia, "about (its own category)". If this is right, a meta-expert would be an expert about experts, or an expert on experts.

Thus, it's my opinion that calling these people meta-experts could imply something different than what you intend, particularly to people who don't read the article fully, and if it takes off as an Interblag "term", it could cause some confusion (although it could be that I'm just crazy).

Perhaps I could interest you in neo-expert?

<comment><USER3> Neo? Doesn't that mean "new"? Wouldn't a neo-expert be an expert on new things? Or a just a new expert?

It isn't the prefix that needs adjustment, it's the word "expert" that needs replacement.

And there is already a term for these sorts of people. Polymath

<comment><USER2> A neo expert is a "new expert". It could be thought of as describing the type of people he is talking about as a "new breed of expert", unless I am sorely mistaken.

However, I agree that the word "expert" itself is rather disingenuous. Just like the term "hacker", it (as stated in other comments) is not generally considered a description one could apply to oneself, and (still just like "hacker") it means many different things based on context and user.

A good decision, in my opinion, would be to phase out use of "expert" except in instances where you want to imply that a person has a lot of experience in a particular area (so "he is an expert computer scientist" == "he has a lot of experience with computer science"). The term "professional" could be only used to label people who are what we currently call a "consummate professional": someone who is skilled in many areas relating to their field of expertise and to business and people skills in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "In my own experience, I've had more negative than positive transactions with experts and professionals that advertise themselves as such."

Great point. The terms expert and guru (maybe professional too) are a lot like nicknames. I can call you those things, but if you call yourself that, I can't help but think the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's easy to build up an expert reputation and then depend on it. It's easy to become your group/company expert on such-and-such topic, and then have people defer to you even as your skills deteriorate. What's hard is to actually retain a real level of expertise. You have to continually challenge yourself, question assumptions, and test the limits of what you know.

If you find yourself justifying your answers with "because I'm an expert" on a regular basis, it may be time to reevaluate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps the old distinction between the wise man and the pedant is what you are after.</comment>


On almost every indicator, Germany's south is doing better than its north - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/blogs/kaffeeklatsch/2017/08/explaining-munich-miracle <comment><USER2> This is really horribly misleading.

It's primarily because Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, and Hesse are the richest non-city states (in terms of per-capita GDP). But if you include city states, then Hamburg and Bremen are both richer than those, while Saxony, Thuringia, Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland are among the poorer German states [1]. (Comparatively speaking; obviously, they're still pretty darn well off compared to most of the world.)

Also, the West-East divide is far bigger than the North-South divide still. There's not a single state in the former East Germany with higher per-capita GDP than any of the former West German ones.

The line that the article draws is overall pretty arbitrary and mixes up rich and poor states on both sides of the divide. The EU has regional breakdowns at the NUTS-2 [2] and NUTS-3 level that provide a more nuanced picture.

[1] [http://imactivate.com/regionexplorer/indexedeu/?options=true...](http://imactivate.com/regionexplorer/indexedeu/?options=true&columns=0,43,48,56,58,60,62,64,68,70,75,81,85,90,94,92,86)

[2] [http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/GDP_at_regional_level)

<comment><USER3> Any division of a country is going to be arbitrary to some extent, but east/west was due to the Berlin Wall-- an artificial border-- while north south is due to culture, a difference more of choice than edict.

<comment><USER4> > but east/west was due to the Berlin Wall--

No, East-West was because of the border running North-South through Germany intersecting with the main motorway from Hannover to Berlin at Helmstedt.

The Berlin Wall was an interior division separating two parts of Berlin, 'West Berlin' and 'East Berlin', but to get to West Berlin by road you had to cross through a large chunk of East Germany first, and then you'd enter West-Berlin through yet another border crossing. The road from Helmstedt to West-Berlin was known as the 'corridor'.

West Berlin was best thought of as an island within East Germany with the Berlin wall circling West Berlin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The characteristic divide in dialects of German is the "Uerdingen" isogloss separating low forms of the language (where the pronoun "I" is pronounced "ik") from central and high ones (where it is pronounced "ich")._

No. Only Berlin / Brandenburg people say "Ik". Southern German dialects say "I" (pronounced as "ee" would be in English).

<comment><USER6> The article is only incorrect by omission. I am not sure, but you may confusing the term "low form," that is, Low German / Plattdeutsch, with being geographically southern. It is geographically northern -- the "low" refers to elevation, not latitude.

Precisely people in Berlin/Brandenburg say "ik" _because it is Low German, which is spoken in the North of Germany, which is what the Uerdinge isogloss describes_.

The article did fail to mention the other big lines, the Benrather and the Speyer line (which is what you are referring to with Oberdeutsch dialect differentiating between "ich" and "i").

There are a lot of these lines drawn by linguists.

<comment><USER7> I agree both you and the parent, I don't think you're disagreeing, you're just talking about different things. You're talking about the historical distinction, the parent is talking about how things are nowadays.[0]

I found the article a bit disingenuous since you need to know what the Uerdingen line is and its context to understand what they're saying, since the divide isn't quite what it used to be.

[0]: [http://www.atlas-alltagssprache.de/runde-2/f25c/](http://www.atlas- alltagssprache.de/runde-2/f25c/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yeah the South is better than the North for many reasons. I lived in Munich for 22 years but still Octoberfest beer prices doubled since 2002 (introduction of the Euro) ([http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und- fakten/soziale-sit...](http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und- fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/61766/lohnentwicklung)), while wages only rose 20% ([http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale- sit...](http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situation-in- deutschland/61766/lohnentwicklung)). That is why I moved 350km South-West from Munich, Germany (most livable city in Germany) to Zurich, Switzerland (most livable city in the world)

<comment><USER9> Isn't Zurich horribly expensive, like the rest of Switzerland? I went to Geneva once and the prices of things struck me compared to what we have in Paris, France (which is already a pretty expensive city).

<comment><USER10> I live in Geneva, and it's horribly expensive. The living costs as well as rents are insanely high. The wages are higher as well though. The worst thing is if you're paid in Euros and have to convert them to Swiss francs for spending

<comment><USER8> Why would you get paid in euros? No tech company I know would do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find the more interesting distinction is between the fates of Bavaria and Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony, formed by the British by amalgamating smaller states after the war). Both are large, agrarian states, with Niedersachsen somewhat wealthier in the 1950s. However Bavaria diversified its economy better and became a powerhouse, while Niedersachsen was, IIRC, the poorest of the West German Länder at the time of unification, and until that time received the most federal assistance.

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo From today:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/6v3fma/three_germa...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/6v3fma/three_germanies_regional_gdp_per_capita_op/)

also recent:

[https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/8/18/16162234/r...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/8/18/16162234/regional-inequality-cause)

 _Today, Massachusetts's GDP per capita is about double what you find in Mississippi — roughly equivalent to the gap between Switzerland and Slovakia — and it's not getting any narrower._

<comment><USER12> It doesn't stop at the German border, though. And if you look at this map, the distinction between S and N is much less clear: [https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gross_domestic_pro...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gross_domestic_product_\(GDP\)_per_inhabitant,_in_purchasing_power_standard_\(PPS\),_by_NUTS_2_regions,_2009_\(%25_of_the_EU-27_average,_EU-27%3D100\).png)

Southern Germany, Western Austria, Northern Italy, Switzerland and parts of France: There's a big wealth cluster in the larger region around the Alps. Why? I don't know, but as a South German myself, I'm not too convinced by the claims of the article.

<comment><USER13> I remember learning about the Blue Banana ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana)) in high school. You can see it pretty clearly on your map.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this a historic trend or a consequence of the war?

<comment><USER15> like between Prussia and Bavaria?

<comment><USER16> I took it to mean the Second World War, and the different occupation zones.

<comment><USER15> It was a thinly veiled RTFA, since it addresses that

<comment><USER14> I never do RTFA, tbfh</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>