Uber Boston Has Been Served - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/2012/08/14/uber-boston-has-been-served/ <comment><USER2> Two tickets were apparently issued:

(i) For operating an unlicensed livery service

(ii) For using a non-approved mechanism for metering the ride

The C&D at issue here covers (ii). At its heart, the complaint is that Boston has standardized on a way of metering passengers, and Uber has replaced that standard with GPS. Presumably, cab drivers in Boston could not simply choose to replace their meters with GPS monitors, and thus, says Cambridge, neither should Uber.

(I might be wrong, that's just my read of the complaint).

I'm torn. Uber is pretty neat. Some (maybe most) of cab regulation is rent seeking. But not all of it is. Municipalities should find a way to make Uber lawful, but I'm not sure Uber should be able to make that happen by fiat.

<comment><USER3> I was amazed by this sentence in the C&D:

"Massachusetts law does not sanction unapproved devices for use in commercial transactions."

Does that mean what I think it means? If I use an iPhone app to calculate the tax, and it's not approved, then I broke the law? Does this apply to Square, too? I thought that there was an English common law principle that "Everything which is not forbidden is allowed".

<comment><USER4> "Everything which is not forbidden is allowed".

Sure. Massachusetts forbids you from operating a commercial service that charges based on the readings of measuring equipment that does not meet the standards of the Department of Weights and Measures. Taxi meters do. Standard car odometers don't. You can calculate with an abacus or an Apple, but your market fruit scale has a seal indicating that it was inspected and passed.

Your gasoline is measured by pumps similarly inspected. The pump at the dairy that fills gallon jugs is inspected. You can pay with barter, coins or large stones, as long as the negotiation is acceptable to both parties -- and when you pay for eight pounds of foie gras, you'd better be getting it weighed from an inspected scale.

<comment><USER5> OK, but how does MA decide which equipment is considered a measuring device used for trade? Are grocer's scales and gas pump meters a special case that's explicitly regulated, or is anything that (a) takes a measurement while (b) in the path of a transaction regulated?

My supermarket sells cheddar for $8/pound. When they take some cheese and price it, the scale that decides it's 8 oz of cheese is a regulated scale.

But my co-worker's friend sells D&D dice for $5/cupful. Is that cup a measuring device that would technically need to be certified by DWM for trade use?

And if not, what is the bright-line test for whether the Uber app is a cup or a scale?

<comment><USER6> I think there's some interesting sociology / anthropology tied up in this.

Reading through the MA regs, it looks like they primarily regulate:

\-- Scales of all kinds \-- Volumetric measurements for petroleum products and dairy products \-- Taxi meters \-- other commerce tools (grocery store scanners, change machines, bottle/can refund machines, etc)

It's a truism that weight is a much more accurate way to specify products than volume, which is why even liquids like self-serve soup at the grocery store are sold by mass, not volume.

However, we are historically used to buying gasoline, milk and ice cream by the gallon or liter, not the pound or kilo. It's also interesting that milk and ice cream are the fluids mentioned besides petroleum products in the state code -- we give dairy products a very special place in our culture. In Massachusetts, a 1967 law actually makes it illegal for stores to give away free milk!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uber, AirBNB and Food Trucks are interesting for two reasons:

1) They are on a collision course with the regulatory state.

2) Their employees are, by and large, young liberals.

Cab medallions are not much different in concept than wind and solar subsidies. In both cases, the government is picking a winner.

Our types of companies have been happily immune from the meddling of the regulatory state. As we crawl out into the real world we are dog-fooding the polices we voted for. Hopefully we will realize how bad they taste.

<comment><USER8> Interesting point. I looked back at the world where no such regulations existed, and I didn't see a perfect market which quickly and efficiently eradicated charlatans and thieves. No, instead I saw a world where people were constantly being preyed upon by the guiled class. I saw a world where the only people you could really trust were those in your close personal circle, and every transaction with a 3rd party, new or known, was rife with risk.

The "regulatory state" didn't come about as a predicted social experiment, it came about by constantly reacting to an endless stream of malfeasance that constantly stood to wreck any possibility of a functioning free market.

Cities and states regulating measurements and fare mechanisms are generally a -good- thing, even when it affects some darling company. For every darling company that wants us to "just trust them to do the right thing, they're good Silicon Valley-types," there are a dozen would-be scamsters plotting how they can take advantage of similar models to make free money. The constant "free market response" is "Oh, well, people will just shop somewhere else." Yes, after having lost their money (some times many, many people losing their money) AND their trust in any company like the same.

The world of figuring cab fares doesn't exactly need to be "turned on its head," it's a well-established practice of livery that's been going back for hundreds of years (perhaps more - I don't know the complete history). Yes, new technology can make it more efficient, but how inefficient is the current system exactly? Is it worth the risk? This is what local communities ask themselves. Why should one company be granted the permissions to step outside of the decision process and state they don't want to follow the community rules?

Every action by a government, and most especially inaction (failure to regulate) picks winners and losers. Failing to regulate pollution levels, cab fares, food safety, etc. make winners out of moderately unscrupulous types and moderately scrupulous types. Certain forms of regulations can make winners out of either the highly scrupulous, or the highly unscrupulous.

Nothing tastes bad to me about not letting cabs just use their iphones to automatically calculate fares from unmonitored and unvetted software. It makes it harder for Uber to make money? Well crap, cry me a river, it's better than making it easier on the thieves - society has chosen that path over millennia.

<comment><USER7> So on one hand, the world is rife with thieves and scoundrels and the state is the only thing standing between what we have now and Mad Max. On the other hand you're willing to entrust people working for the state with with powers undreamed of by the thieves and scoundrels.

But what happens if thieves and scoundrels hold positions within the state? Restaurant owners pay them to make laws against Food Trucks. Cab drivers pay them to make laws against Uber. Hotel owners pay them to make laws against AirBnB. In the wrong hands, the regulatory state becomes a weapon. That is what is happening now.

<comment><USER8> Your response appears to assume that I believe that the "State" as we know it is the only mechanism for creating a well-agreed upon set of rules, or that I hold any illusions of perfection anywhere humans are involved.

Thieves and scoundrels exist in all strata of society, it's a natural phenomenon. We create rules about the rule makers - bureaucracy is both a natural response and outcome. Vested interests infect and corrupt all things, which is why we provide mechanisms for review and change. These mechanisms may not be perfect or easy in all situations, but they can be made functional if we intend to fix them. You seem to not acknowledge the fact that a non- regulatory state becomes a weapon as well.

I am not impressed with the black and white dichotomy expressed between "regulatory state," and "free market," - in fact - the choice of "regulatory state" vs. "state of regulations," speaks volumes as to your intentions. We have direct experience with both overly-regulated states and under-regulated states. Neither work particularly well - instead, we strive to constantly re- balance them and find better ways.

It is for this last reason that I think it is good that they have come under scrutiny. This provides clear barriers for others waiting to see the rules made ineffective so that they may (wrongly) capitalize on the weakened system, and an excellent opportunity for the local population to consider the state of a rule and a bureaucracy that may have run too long unexamined.

To one last point: unscrupulous actors also pay politicians to remove laws and regulations for their benefit. The lack of or presence of, a regulation in and of its self does not predict a positive outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is especially sad considering a recent cab experience I had in Boston. I lived in Boston for a about 5 years before moving out to Seattle, where I recently started using Uber. Boston has one of the worst cab situations especially if you go out late at night. I was back in Boston a few weeks ago, and ended up running into a few friends and stayed up till 3AM. When it was time to go home, there were either cabs that had passengers, or ones that just didn't want to stop despite waiting for 10 minutes. I pull out the Uber app and get a ride in literally a couple of minutes. My friends hadn't heard of the service and they were just dumbfounded that something like this existed, and they all became customers on the spot.

In Seattle, I use Uber only when I have to since cabs are easy to get. I can't imagine using Uber in Manhattan. But in a city like Boston with a shortage of cabs, and just generally grumpy cab drivers I can imagine Uber was just putting a serious dent in the cab business, more so than other cities.

<comment><USER10> (Hello fellow Seattlite!)

I'm with you here. I rarely take cabs here in Seattle (I mostly bike/bus everywhere), but when I travel it can be indispensable.

I can't tell you the number of times I've had to (look up a local cab service and) call a cab, wait for it for 10-20 minutes... and not have it show up. Or schedule a cab to be there to pick me up early in the morning and take me to the airport and... not have it show up.

Three clicks on my phone and 2 to eight minutes later, there's an Uber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think being a startup should grant you immunity from the law or absolve the requirement to follow local regulations and licensing statutes. Lawyers, doctors, electricians they all have to follow the law too.

Why is Uber a special case?

<comment><USER2> Two reasons (neither dispositive):

(i) The cities in which Uber operates usually have dysfunctional cab systems. San Francisco, for instance, is notoriously underserved.

(ii) Much of the regulatory overhead in running a cab/livery service really is an artifact of top-down market controls from the turn of the last century that have been exploited to lock the market to a privileged few operators.

<comment><USER12> Imagine for a moment you got into a taxi and instead of the meter, he had an hour-glass with tick marks on the side and a bike odometer. Would you feel secure about what you're being charged?

Most of the Uber drivers use iPhones, which (especially the older models) have notoriously bad GPS. If it skips off to the wrong street for a few blocks and adds 1/4 mile to my trip, and I don't notice by staring at his screen, how would I know? Normally, I trust the cab company because that little meter is tracked, registered, and supposedly regularly audited.

<comment><USER13> Phone-based GPS, really?! They probably _should_ be taken to task by weights and measures.

But why is Uber even metering the trip distance? If they incorporated the destination address to the booking, they could calculate an exact price based on time of day/projected congestion/etc. Then they'd have even _better_ consumer protection than a taxi cab (where the driver still has an incentive to go a more expensive route).

<comment><USER14> They know your start location because you call them there. They use GPS to determine your end location, to save time.

Uber doesn't really even publish a rate schedule for how much you pay, and it doesn't have stable prices. They go up during periods of high demand, for example. So it's unclear why you'd object to the GPS, except to mess with them; you don't know what you're going to pay in any case.

<comment><USER13> So make the destination address optional while booking, and if given you'll get an exact price ahead of time. This doesn't exactly conflict with demand pricing either - Uber just has to be a bit smarter ahead of time.

The fundamental problem is "you don't know what you're going to pay", and I'm not surprised they're being called out for that under consumer protection laws. The point of taxi regulation is to prevent people from being cheated on the spot. Uber is in a position to do even _better_ than what regulations are capable of, with market pricing, and they should aim for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This hits close to home (literally). I've used Uber in Boston lots of times and while the service is pricier than conventional taxis, it's a nice way to guarantee yourself a ride at high-demand times.

This is not competitive with existing taxi service but complementary: if I see a regular taxi coming, I'll take it; if I need to call for a guaranteed car at an odd time, I'll use Uber.

I hope this gets resolved in a way that works for us customers. Innovation should be harnessed, not punished.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh, the rent-seeking. What are taxi medallions for if not graft and log- rolling?

<comment><USER17> Traffic and pricing control...

<comment><USER18> That is true. But it was much more relevant in an age when the rider was more or less at the mercy of the driver who picked them up. The internet on your phone (not to mention the GPS) means you can much more easily tell if you're being cheated. And the fact that you contact Uber and then they send a car means that the sketchy kidnapper risk is mitigated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> __TL;DR: Uber is innovative, but their approach (or lack thereof) to dealing with regulatory hurdles in each city disgusts me. __

It seems like HN has already picked up on the major issues Uber faces in Boston, as well as pretty much every city: a new style of relationships with drivers, and "metering" virtually-on-demand livery rides, which are intended to be both unmetered and pre-arranged.

After seeing this same story repeated too many times now, and the resulting discussion, I feel the need to throw down. You don't need to trust me (IANAL, etc.), but based on my experience in the field -- I co-founded HireWinston (initially a Canadian, corporate-focused Uber competitor; we've since pivoted to competing indirectly by selling taxi fleets) -- I hope I have something to add.

First, the relationships with drivers: Uber tends to work directly with drivers (many, if not all, of whom they hire legally from existing livery services). In order to boost their chances of availability, they spend some of their hard-raised cash to book drivers for entire days, taking a steep loss at first in the hopes of driving enough demand to better satisfy their capacity.

In most cities, there are clear regulations that define a livery service. We found that, if you work as many commenters understand Uber working -- namely, as a network that has pre-arranged agreements with drivers or livery services to shuttle rides in their spare time -- you're in a sufficiently comfortable area not to get shut down. However, the way Uber works to juice supply (especially in newer markets) tends to clearly fall under the definition of a livery service, as they have their own "employees" that they pass rides to.

Second, the meters. This one I'm much more in their favour on: the phones themselves are not metering devices as the laws define them (i.e. they do not themselves calculate the price). I haven't personally torn into their source code, but having heard from an insider _and_ having built this tech myself, I'm fairly confident their Driver App simply sends GPS data back to the server, where the calculation takes place according to a pre-defined rate. The customer either implicitly or explicitly accepts this rate through the TOS and/or by virtue of using the service (assuming the rates are published somewhere).

This setup guarantees they have something to show regulators if ever asked. From our research and testing, the integrity of the data from existing metering technology is similar enough to that from an iPhone or Android's GPS (ideally accompanied by accelerometer data). And, since the calculations happen on a server that records full route information rather than in a black box that discards it: way easier to share this with regulators. So A+.

Third, and most importantly, is what you don't see: Uber's relationships with city regulators. In Toronto, the municipal government sent us an official notice that they were concerned with our business, and that they wanted us to come talk through our business model and underlying technology with them. They were genuinely excited that there was innovation happening in the field in their city, and really just wanted to make sure we weren't doing anything egregiously wrong.

We sat down, and had an incredibly pleasant meeting. 30 minutes, back-and- forth Q&A, with some regulators who have spent years in the space. They appreciated that we knew the laws, had worked to abide by them, and were comfortable with all but one aspect of our business model (cancellation fees). No C&Ds were sent out.

At the end of the meeting, they asked us what we thought of Uber. Apparently, for months, the Uber team was dodging any request for a meeting the office sent them. While I definitely cannot attest to Uber Boston's actions on this front, I can't imagine that Uber Toronto was taking their plays from a different playbook.

In summary: Uber has done a tremendous job pushing the industry forward, and I'm confident that our approach -- selling the underlying software to existing taxi fleets, who truly want to better service their customers but have no idea what to do with technology -- is a more sustainable and dependable iteration on the model. I'm thankful to them, and I truly love a lot of the folks I know who work there.

That said, I have no sympathy whatsoever for these C&Ds whenever I read about them. The company relies on deep pockets and public sympathy for the "underdog technology company" to change laws, rather than working with the existing system. And, frankly, normally I'd even be fine with that... if it weren't the taxi drivers -- the most marginalized members of the entire taxi ecosystem -- who were getting the shortest end of the stick.

 __DISCLAIMER: I do not, and have never, worked for Uber. Most of my knowledge comes from a mix of an outsider's view and third-party testimony of the approach that Uber has taken in Toronto and NYC. I'm not sure if Uber Boston took a different approach than Uber Toronto or Uber NYC, so take all specifics with a grain of salt. __

(edit: formatting errors)

<comment><USER20> Nice post, and you definitely bring a certain amount of insight with it.

However, the current system is, in many cities, broken. Working to change laws to fix a broken system will produce a better outcome than trying to work within the broken system to bring about its maximum potential.

I love and use Uber because it provides a different and better service than taxis do in San Francisco. I don't even own a car, and instead split my transportation budget between public transportation and Uber. ZipCar has its uses for some people and some situations, but for me, Uber is my go-to reliable transportation system.

Comparing and contrasting Uber with SF taxi service:

\- I've never had a bad experience with an Uber driver, whereas ~30-40% of my taxi rides were unpleasant in one way or another.

\- It takes all of 30 seconds to call an Uber, and they always come. Calling a taxi dispatch takes much longer and is extremely unreliable, as many taxi drivers will pick up anyone that hails them on their way to picking someone up.

\- Uber takes care of all payments through the app, including tip. My credit card is charged, and it gets recorded in Mint and added to my transportation budget for the month. Many SF taxi drivers will harass you if you try to pay with a credit card.

\- Uber drivers will open your door for you, call you to make sure they pick you up at the right place, and many offer to help carry bags. Taxi drivers are usually in a rush, and don't offer anything besides the ride.

These are my experiences in a year in San Francisco. I used taxis exclusively for a while because they're cheaper, but have since switched to using Uber nearly exclusively. And with UberX now, the cost difference is negligible. I see no reason to own a car in SF as long as I'm here, and the reason for that is Uber. [[I am in no way affiliated with Uber with the exception of being a customer]]

<comment><USER19> Thanks -- this is a subject that is near and dear to me.

I definitely agree with you that there is a service gap between Uber and standard taxis. Some of it comes from the app, some of it comes from their quality control.

(On that note: Uber does a really solid job with quality control, and I've personally recommended a stronger emphasis on quality control to fleets we work with. They all seem to want to take us up on it, so I look forward to reporting back on that one soon!)

That said, the points you bring up aren't actually broken by the current regulatory system (save one, sort of... see the asterisk), which is why I am disgusted by Uber's typical reaction to the C&Ds that come their way (and their preparation for them):

\- Taxi companies today have a very limited, only-opt-in feedback mechanism: you call and complain if you have a particularly bad or particularly good ride. I've personally spoken with GMs for companies that do hundreds (sometimes thousands) of rides per day about this; they rarely break 20 customer service calls per day. Uber's feedback mechanism -- not a new concept by any means, but new to the industry -- of asking users to rate their ride, and send in some comments after _every_ ride is relatively frictionless and undoubtedly leads to more data points, which can then be shared with drivers to encourage a healthy sense of service. This could and should be adopted by the rest of the industry.

\- Again, this is a fantastic innovation, but doesn't need to lie outside the existing regulatory system to succeed; our old business model is proof that they can co-exist. Rarely do cities take issue with apps. Further, most fleets use dispatch systems that directly assign a driver, and all drivers know they will get docked if they take a street hail instead of the passenger they're assigned.*

\- Yet again, no regulations prevent this... but I've been the recipient of many a complaining driver myself. While drivers have both legitimate and illegitimate reasons for trying to avoid credit cards (fleets often tax drivers an additional point or two above going credit card rates; credit card transactions must be declared when filing taxes), this again can be solved with an app that respects the current system. In fact, while running HireWinston, we showed our driver partners that the guaranteed 15% tip more than made up for the increased cost they incurred by taking credit cards.

\- See first bullet above re: service again.

To sum up, I hear you on all fronts: riding with Uber offers a superior experience to virtually any other cab out there. My point above, however, still stands: all of the innovations and improvements you bring up (which are, from our customer research, consistently the most salient) come from areas that few, if any, regulators take issue with (I know from experience). Which is why, again, I am disgusted by how I've seen Uber deal with regulators.

*I feel for you, though; this situation is at its worst in SF. But on the flip-side, I've heard more "passengers aren't there anymore when our drivers show up" complaints from SF fleets than I have anywhere else in North America. Because of this, it's often more attractive for drivers in the Bay Area to get docked and grab the street hail's certain money than to risk the no-show. IMO, SF taxis and consumers are stuck in this perpetual loop until the supply of taxis increases dramatically.

<comment><USER21> _all of the innovations and improvements you bring up ... come from areas that few, if any, regulators take issue with_

They don't issue with them, but still no one in the regulated industry bothers doing them. And why? Because thanks to the government distortions in the market, you don't need to do any of that stuff to compete.

And that's what government interventions in markets almost always ends up doing: protecting a group of entrenched companies at the expense of consumers.

Good for Uber for trying to fuck over an industry that's been fucking over their customers for decades, with the full faith and protection of the governments those customers pay for.

<comment><USER19> I believed this point too when we first started our company, and were more Uber-clone-y than we are now. However, after spending a year working in the industry, I've learned that it's more "catchy idea" than reality.

It turns out that the taxi industry is a little different: the fleets have wanted to innovate for years now, but have little idea how. The regulations clearly permit innovation. In cities where taxis aren't run by the municipal government (i.e. "in cities that aren't New York"), there is healthy competition between taxi providers, in spite of their commoditization (regulated pricing, supply, etc.).

IMO, the existing taxi technology players are the ones who are stifling innovation (and/or "protecting a group of entrenched companies at the expense of consumers"). 2 of the big 3 dispatch technology providers charge _hefty_ fees just to open access to their APIs for new entrants, if they'll even grant you access in the first place. And, due to the long-term, hardware-heavy, dispatch-focused nature of their contracts, they rarely have any incentive to innovate for the passengers; one of them once told me that they have _nobody_ on staff who understands the web or web technologies!

Working with the existing dispatch companies, while not a necessary evil (take Hailo or GetTaxi, for example), is the best way to ensure scale and distribution -- the amount of cash consumer-focused players must spend in this industry in the hopes of curbing cab booking behaviours is enormous. Our research showed that, when calling for a pre-arranged cab, 95% of taxi passengers chose their fleet because it was first to mind, or the fleet they always called. In other words: only 5% of consumers chose what TaxiCo to call for any rational reason. Having an existing brand identity, and a number of cars on the street constantly hocking your wares, goes a _long_ way in this industry.

But even before Uber came along, a wave of new dispatch companies had started cropping up, most of which are relying on a healthy partner ecosystem in order to make it in the first place. But, since dispatch technology contracts have typically been signed as 10-year license agreements, evolution naturally trends to a slow change: a lot of forward-thinking fleets I've met with renewed their contracts in the last year or two, since they didn't feel the new technology was mature enough yet (and, in most cases/for their needs, rightly so).

All this to say: I'm not yet sure what the best way to spark the necessary change is (FWIW: currently leaning towards "open standards", but I'm not 100% sure how that would look yet... ); figuring it out will likely be a huge benefit to my company. But I firmly believe, based on facts and experience, that it's not a regulatory issue.

 _(edit: formatting)_

<comment><USER21> You don't seem to be understanding. The regulations themselves don't stop innovation directly, but the fact that it's very difficult and expensive to get a medallion, plus the fact that once you cross that barrier, you'll be protected by law from much new competition, means that it's harder for new players to enter the market and compete.

The medallion system is stupid and should be done away with. It's purely anti- competitive.

<comment><USER19> Again, you're right on the fact, but not on the interpretation. The medallion system used by most cities restricts the number of cars on the road in a city. However:

1) Most taxi fleets -- _especially_ the larger ones -- collect monthly rent from car owners, rather than own a ton of medallions themselves. The medallion system benefits owners of medallions, not fleets. This distinction, while invisible to the masses, is incredibly important.

2) It's definitely not rare for new fleets to pop up. We talk with plenty of folks who own fleets that are only one or two years old. All you need is a subset of drivers (and/or owners!), a couple of regular clients, and a little gumption. New fleets _are_ popping up, and trying to innovate as best they can. The new, lower-priced, often mobile-based dispatch systems I mentioned in a previous comment have really been a boon to this segment.

3) In most cities, black car licenses are similarly restricted to medallions. The limits may not be posted, but they exist. In fact, a great article about Uber in The Atlantic exposed this issue in DC back in May[1].

4) Again, fleets working with us are achieving similar results; companies like Hailo and GetTaxi (who seem to be trying to work within the system) are as well.

In short: the medallion system is a red herring when it comes to stifling innovation. It is definitely an issue, one that tends to marginalize drivers and unnecessarily restrict supply for passengers. But every one of the companies you and I have mentioned abide by the restrictions it imposes, so your point is moot.

Going back to my original issue: I have _no_ problem with challenging rules, conventions, and decisions (I'm an entrepreneur, posting on HN... do you really expect me to disagree here?). My issue lies in Uber's underhanded approach, where they both flout actually sensible laws and arguably force governments to send C&Ds by refusing to engage with them when initially approached.

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/why- you-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/why-you- can-8217-t-get-a-taxi/8942/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For anyone wondering what uber is: <https://www.uber.com/cities#>

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not impressed with Uber. I read the entire article twice and many of the comments, then went to their home page.

I still have no idea what they do other than it somehow relates to taxicab service.

<comment><USER24> * Reliable pickup in about 10 minutes by hitting a button on your phone or a text with your address -- no need to call or tell someone the address. If you've ever had the experience of waiting 30-45 minutes for a cab to ride a couple miles, or maybe the phone line is just busy, you'll know why reliability is important.

* Clean car with friendly and helpful driver (who you can rate). Seems minor, but it opens up possibilities. If you're on a date or business meeting, and for whatever reason need a ride somewhere (e.g. after drinking), uber will enhance the experience rather than cheapening it.

* No money changes hands (taken from your card on file at uber, including tip). Receipt with lots of details (including your route on a map) is emailed immediately.

* I'm pretty sure it's cheaper if you are above $15 fare, or about the same maybe.

I don't have any affiliation with uber, but I have had a great experience so far (only twice, once for me and once for someone else). I plan to use it a little more often.

I guess, in retrospect, I could probably have been happy using cabs more instead; but they just always seemed more awkward, unreliable, and just less pleasant. If I can get this for the same price, why not?

Cabs might still be better for areas where they are easy to get and you're going short distances, e.g. Manhattan or Las Vegas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> i think the uber service is great. that said, we (collectively, the startup community) can't keep using this "we're an innovative tech company and the laws we're breaking weren't written with our great innovations in mind" argument. it doesn't hold water. it just sounds childish and pompous.

</comment><comment><USER26> I love it how they wear it as a badge of pride. It's the first step to changing the game in Boston.

</comment><comment><USER27> How absurd.

</comment><comment><USER28> _the Division of Standards is claiming that until the National Institute of Standards and Technology has guidelines in place for GPS location technology_

Is not as though GPS is some brand new thing that they have never heard of before. This whole tone of this makes me think of Central Services from the movie 'Brazil'. Uber should ask the Division of Standards for a 27b/6, just to keep things official.

<comment><USER2> That's not what they're saying. They're saying that under MA law, a cab driver couldn't replace their meter with the "equivalent" GPS system, and so neither can Uber.</comment></comment>


America's social-media addiction is getting worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/08/08/americas-social-media-addiction-is-getting-worse <comment><USER2> The biggest concern to me is the attention span most people have today. They can't go longer than a few minutes without checking their phone. It impacts work and leisure. An assignment at work is delayed or low quality because you checked your phone every few minutes, you don't understand what's happening in a TV show/movie because you kept checking your phone, you can't get interested in a good book because you can't read more than a page or two without checking your phone.

I am guilty of this behavior myself and it's something that I've been working on a lot lately. I recognize that this is a problem, but I don't really support the government saving us from ourselves. I think this is something that average person just needs to educate themselves on and make the decision for themselves. It's not impossible to break free from it.

I highly suggest everyone checkout Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. It's a fantastic read.

<comment><USER3> > but I don't really support the government saving us from ourselves.

I don't understand that argument. By the same reasoning all drugs should be legal:

Everyone know's it's bad. People get trapped. It has severe consequences for personal health and the society as a whole. But, hey, "it's not impossible to break free from it" by yourself. No need for Government action.

The key metric for me is impact to society. You can do all bad things to you if you want to, and they only impact yourself, but if things have large impact on:

\- Social fabric (stability of families and communities)

\- Political Culture (erosion of discourse culture)

\- Education (lower attention span)

\- Healthcare (burnout!)

\- Working productivity

It might be a good idea to change the rules to prevent these effects.

<comment><USER2> > I don't understand that argument. By the same reasoning all drugs should be > legal.

Do you really believe it's the illegal nature of drugs that keep the vast majority of people from using them? It's the fact that they know it's bad. In the future social media could be no different.

I don't know if I would be in favor of legalization, but Portugal has had reasonable success with decriminalizing all drugs.

<comment><USER4> This doesn't seem as unreasonable as your incredulity makes it sound. Alcohol is uncontroversially wayyy more dangerous than a handful of illegal drugs, and it's in incredibly wide usage. Same for cigarettes in the past: it took a sui generis effort to dramatically shift culture to lower cigarette's popularity (in the US), and it was fragile enough that a rebranding to "Juul" is starting to undo a lot of that work.

FWIW, from a selfish perspective, I wish most drugs were legal: ; I used marijuana responsibly before it was legal and continue to use psychedelics responsibly, and the reason I don't do meth or cocaine isn't because it's difficult to get, but because I'm aware of how dangerous they are. But I'm genuinely curious as to what could make you think that, for the average person, legality doesn't drive a substantial amount of their attitudes towards usage of a given drug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _On July 30th the junior senator from Missouri unveiled the "Social Media > Addiction Reduction Technology Act", or SMART Act. The bill would limit > social-media usage to half an hour a day (users would be able to bypass the > limit by adjusting their app settings). It would also ban addictive > features, such as "infinite scroll" (when a user's entire feed can be seen > in one visit) and "autoplay" (when online videos load automatically one > after another)._

We should never let the government dictate UI through laws. It's shocking that it's even being proposed.

<comment><USER6> Why is it shocking?

The government has always had a say in the UI if it was for the greater benefit of it's citizen:

\- Off putting images printed on cigarette packages

\- Warning stickers put on microwaves to prevent people from drying their house cats in the microwave

\- Forcing speed meters in cars

\- Forcing head lights of cars to be turned on after a certain hour of the day

\- Lot's of "UX" regulations in casinos and other addictive establishments

\- Licenses to sell alcohol which basically influences where people can find and shop alcohol

\- Recently the UK has drafted a law which prohibits supermarkets to stock and display addictive unhealthy food close to the checkout tilts (Mars, Snickers, fat crisps, etc.)

Why should it be different on the internet? Social media has a damaging and addictive negative impact on society, so it need's to be regulated to protect citizens from the exploitative patterns which these companies purposefully implement to hook vulnerable people into their system.

I wonder what makes people believe that the internet should be this sort of "law free" place where anyone can implement all the exploitative behaviour which is otherwise forbidden elsewhere?

<comment><USER7> >I wonder what makes people believe that the internet should be this sort of "law free" place where anyone can implement all the exploitative behaviour which is otherwise forbidden elsewhere?

Violent crime doesnt happen on the internet. The only thing to prevent is fraud. And that weirdly isnt huge, at least in my life.

Not everyone subscribes to the thought that government makes better decisions than individuals. Having laws are often used for corrupt purposes.

<comment><USER8> >Violent crime doesn't happen on the internet. The only thing to prevent is fraud.

I couldn't disagree more with these statements. Human and sex trafficking occur through the net, hell you can hire hitmen! Then there's the grooming of underage kids, etc. To say only fraud happens on the net just seems wild.

>Not everyone subscribes to the thought that government makes better decisions than individuals. Having laws are often used for corrupt purposes.

This is a pretty general statement. What specifically in the proposed law are you against?

<comment><USER9> All those crimes happen offline, though. Internet is just a communication channel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure India's is worst but nobody is performing these kind of studies in India. We will learn damages when it's too late.

It's exactly like pollution nobody gives a damn here about it. This is going offtopic but check pollution data for India its same as that of China. At least China has proper facilities for measuring the air quality.

<comment><USER11> > check pollution data for India its same as that of China. At least China has > proper facilities for measuring the air quality.

I have checked. It is not the same.

World Most Polluted Cities in 2018 - PM2.5 Ranking | AirVisual – [https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted- cities](https://www.airvisual.com/world-most-polluted-cities)

<comment><USER10> Note that this is the case when we have limited data points. If we do full fledged studies we would reveal severe issues with pollution in India.

Coming back to social media there's a growing number of foreign youtubers who react to Indian media. The ammount traffic they are receiving is phenomenal. This though not a correct indicator definitely highlights growing social media in India.

<comment><USER12> If you don't believe there is enough data points then why did you ask us to check the data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about America's TV addiction, or even talk-radio addiction? Or even, you know, the actual _addiction_ addiction of the opiate crisis?

<comment> the-dude "According to a Nielsen report, United States adults are watching five hours and four minutes of television per day on average (35.5 h/week, slightly more than 77 days per year)."

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

Nielsen may be biased though.

<comment><USER2> That seems insane... I get off work around 4:30pm and get home from the gym around 6pm. I make dinner and it's basically 7pm and then I have leisure time to read a book, work a personal project, or watch TV. I aim to go to bed 10pm. I never spend 3 hours watching TV and I'm not sure how some of these people are doing more than that! The weekends could skew the numbers, but even then I don't watch it that much.

<comment><USER14> > get home from the gym around 6pm. I make dinner

These are 2 things that apparently large parts of the population do not do. Instead they grab fast food on the way home and watch TV until bed. At least that's the responses I get anytime I say people should work out every day, and eat healthier by spending a few minutes cooking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't find the data precise enough to make conclusions. Yes, we spend more time on social apps, but it's also our main way of communication. I wouldn't be surprised to know that 80% of the time spend is in private conversations. We are just switching from classic apps (SMS, email, WhatsApp) to messaging in social media apps.

<comment><USER16> Also just because the app is open on my screen doesn't mean I'm looking at it. Bad science is bad, only one upped by the bad reporting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> One important part of solving this is allowing apps which provide the ability for an individual to bind his future actions. If there should be any government policy, it should be to make these tools which help augment individuals' own strivings for self-discipline.

It would be really nice if Apple would re-allow content-blocking apps on the iPhone.

[https://support.freedom.to/en/articles/2259444-freedom- app-s...](https://support.freedom.to/en/articles/2259444-freedom-app-store- removal-status)

It would also be nice if someone would develop a subscription service like SelfControl.app, but which took recurring payments in order to support an engineer making continual improvements. [https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/issues?q=is%3A...](https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen)

\</comment><comment>-

By the way, there exists some similar fintech for substance addictions: [https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/next_step- card-...](https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/next_step-card- recovering-addicts-debt-1273.php)

<comment><USER18> I think the approach of "have more self control" is doomed to fail. We have a social media addiction problem because there are literally teams of scientests using machine learning, A/B testing, and other techniques to get you hooked onto the app.

If you want to break the addiction, the only thing you can do is abstinence from the apps that employ these tactics. I don't think that you can win against adversaries that literally make a living out of getting you to keep clicking.

Media like HN is fine, self control techniques work here because YC isn't doing all of the same dark patterns and addiction strategies that are being employed by facebook, youtube, twitter, snapchat, etc.

If you realize you are addicted to one of these opiate-like apps, you really have to choose cold-turkey.

<comment><USER19> > Media like HN is fine

There might not be anything purposefully done to get you hooked, but link aggregators have some "innate" features that your brain really likes, such as getting upvotes and discovering cool stuff on a random basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I went to Disneyland for the first time in 20+ years and it struck me how much people stare into phones. In lines of course, but also in the middle of rides? Just didn't seem healthy, like we are running a huge social experiment which eliminates talking and paying attention to those around you.

<comment><USER21> I hadn't thought of that because I hadn't been to a theme park in years, since smartphones took off. Wow. I couldn't imagine a line full of kids staring at phones. Lines were always tedious, but we joked around and generally entertained ourselves through it. Man, we are becoming a dull bunch of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And if these companies had their way users would be spending every waking minute on their platform, collecting that sweet sweet ad revenue. That's what happens when primary business success metrics are engagement and hundreds of micro-experiments are run every day to make these platforms addictive as possible.

</comment><comment><USER23> Imagine a Star Trek episode where they go to a planet were everyone is staring at a personal device and not interacting with each other. That's what walking into a bar in 2019 is like.

We're living in the part of the dystopian movie, in the beginning, where they explain the timeline of how everything got so bad.

</comment><comment> lota-putty Addictions are good for business.

Addictions are predictable & can be channelled to make profit. Like they say, "Make hay while the Sun shines". Whole private business community rides on such waves of addictions(good/bad).

Some successful businessmen with guilty conscience do charity.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is Youtube a social site now?

I think it should go in the other corner where it says 'TV Addiction'...

<comment><USER25> >Is Youtube a social site now?

Absolutely, go pick a video at random from a YT account with more than say half a million subscribers. Go look at the comments, go look at the 'community' tab on one of those accounts pages and look at the engagement in their non-video shares as well. Go watch one of these accounts when they do a live video and the chat is often flying by faster than you can read more than one or two lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My solution to this problem is simply that these websites shouldn't exist. A network of more than a thousand or so people can't reasonably give you any real sense of community. All these sites have a commonality: they are ad supported, so in order to end this the consumer ad industry must be collapsed, block ads and avoid purchasing products advertised to you. Once the ad industry is collapsed such sites will either be paid for or will be setup to facilitate a genuine need. This will maximise the benefits and avoid creating a constant stream of broadly irrelevant and useless information.

<comment><USER27> What makes you think that people don't value those sites enough to pay for using them? People pay huge sums for cable packages which is essentially a monthly fee for "make the time go by more quickly". Social media is similar in that regard, so it might just be worth money to them as well.

<comment><USER26> If people valued the existing sites enough to pay for them they'd already be doing that, it would simply be a more reliable stream of income.

<comment><USER27> There is no option to pay instead of getting ads. I'd happily pay for Google's search sans ads/tracking and their focus on the dumbest user possible, but I can't because they don't offer the option.

I do agree that most people won't prefer paying with money instead of attention, but that doesn't mean they won't prefer paying with money over not having the service.

<comment><USER26> There have been countless services who've attempted this model, none of them suceeded, in fact I can't even remember their names off the top of my head because no one bothered.

<comment><USER27> That's while they are _competing with free_. It's hard to compete with free. It's much easier to compete with non-existant.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but free is the defect state in the Prisoner's Dilemma. If Google provides a paid option, they'll still be competing with their free option. If they switch entirely to paid, Bing immediately starts advertising as "the free search engine".

This dynamic is even more powerful for network-effects-driven platforms like Twitter or fb

<comment><USER27> Sure, but the premise was that it would go away if you took away ads as a funding model. I doubt that FB would simply fold and say "oh well" if, by some miraculous law, ads were no longer an option for funding. And Youtube (which is counted as social media here) already has Youtube Premium/Red, where people (at least in some countries) can pay to get an ad-free experience and some extra content.

When people perceive a value, they'll pay an appropriate price in some way (be it by spending money or watching ads), that's all I'm saying. And they appear to value social media or they wouldn't spend that much time on it. So if you remove "just watch some ads" as a payment form, I'm pretty sure that at least some will switch to handing over money.

<comment><USER4> Ah I see, by "remove" you mean remove at an industry-wide level, eg through regulation. Sure that's a classic solution to Prisoner's Dilemmas

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Regulation the usage of private websites and something as specific as infinite scroll on an app is ridiculous. I understand we regulate things like cigarettes and alcohol, but I absolutely hate the idea of government getting involved in regulations of software and the internet. I just don't personally think that if I'm going through multiple private businesses (phone manufacturer, ISP, social network) that I should be restricted by government regulation on something as mundane as spending too much time on Reddit.

That being said, that's my personal opinion.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yeah, people are in touch with each other. I'm glued to my phone on transit because I'm catching up with my friends who I haven't seen in days, something I can't do at work. Fucking insufferable, the paternalism.

<comment><USER30> Well said.

Another factor is that not everyone, especially women, _do not want_ to leave themselves open to strangers to bother or even harass them. The best way to do that these days is to be busy on your phone, or to put on some ear/headphones in public. Looking busy is almost a must on public transit or else you risk looking like prey to unwanted solicitations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I helped crack down on my own social media usage by getting a feature phone for calling and a really cheap low-end smart phone ($40) for those times when I really need an app for something.

</comment><comment><USER27> Are they using social media more and more additionally to watching TV, or is it shifting more towards social media? And if it is: is social media worse than TV, and why?

</comment><comment><USER32> The use cases expand and contract year over year, iterating towards ones that create longer sessions without necessarily being dopamine like addictions

Just pointing out that people merely use a service for X minutes doesn't tell what people are doing

Over the last year the instagram service added IGTV, which can be replacing TV and youtube for some people, for example

These can be completely exempt from the messed up frustrating picture feeds and the use case of attracting likes.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's strange that people still believe in internet addiction.

</comment><comment><USER25> I applied to the most recent winter YC batch with the idea of, I want to help people put tech down and plug back into the world. Sadly, they weren't interested as it won't make 1 billion dollars in a few years for them to make bank on.

I think purely the attention companies get at demo day would have been a very powerful thing and I know there are countless tech types the world around that are fed up with technology in front of them all the time (and it's nothing new, I knew a programmer in the late 90s that got rid of his computer, then his game consoles, then his television because he just didn't want to be around the stuff outside of work). I mean, look at how many CS types buy hobby farms or talk about someday buying hobby farms. Look at a lot of the van life and tiny home types, same kinda thing.

I would love to help people take a step away from tech, if anything just to help myself.

Here's a snippet of something I wrote in 2017, it's probably the first time I really put thought into ME and tech

>In 1995 when I discovered the internet we got 60 hours a month, shortly after we got 120 hours a month. If the weather was nice you didn't give a shit about the internet, you were outside. If the weather was bad you'd connect to the internet, get lost in the text of a MUD. I remember the first time I saw an image on a website, the first time I saw video on a computer.

Here's another bit, this grows and evolves in me almost daily

>I've got 21st century burnout. I'm not alone, I know I'm not. I've got two friends that are of a similar mind. I want to live in a world where community is a thing, where life is simple, where the only real concerns are who's bringing what to the block party or what book I want to read next.

[https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss- th...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-the-20th- century)

What's really crazy is just look at video games, the time we spend in video games is dumbfounding

>ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX BILLION HOURS A YEAR. That's 17,808,219 man-YEARS spent on video games annually. 17 million years wasted every year playing video games. Seventeen MILLION.

I break that out, using great works we've done, to show what we might accomplish if we just put down video games

[https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/8/2/humanitys-...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/8/2/humanitys- end-the-time-we-waste-on-virtual-lives)

And that doesn't include the obscene amounts of time people, hell I, spend on Instagram, Facebook, HN, Reddit, Tinder-like apps, sending gifs and memes in a dozen message/chat threads.

We've gotta do something about this.

<comment><USER33> "I want to help people put tech down and plug back into the world"

But they are plugged to the world, and more so than in the past when they were limited to people around them, books, newspapers etc.

<comment><USER25> They're plugged into the highly curated social media shares of people they went to grade school with and haven't seen in 15 years, or worse they're plugged into the curated 'life' of complete strangers.

This is leading to anxiety, depression and even suicides

[https://www.healthline.com/health-news/social-media-use- incr...](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/social-media-use-increases- depression-and-loneliness)

[https://www.psycom.net/social-media-depression- teens](https://www.psycom.net/social-media-depression-teens)

[https://adaa.org/social-media-obsession](https://adaa.org/social-media- obsession)

[https://blog.pcc.com/social-media-self-esteem-and-teen- suici...](https://blog.pcc.com/social-media-self-esteem-and-teen-suicide)

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media- contributi...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/social-media-contributing- rising-teen-suicide-rate-n812426)

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/30/social- media-u...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jan/30/social-media-urged- to-take-moment-to-reflect-after-girls-death)

<comment><USER33> Anxiety, depression and suicides are nothing new. I don't blame on either ordinary or online social interaction. Instead I think social interaction is healthy, given it has a good quality, whether it's online or not.

<comment><USER34> Yes - anxiety, depression, and suicides are not new. But the rates have risen drastically.

<comment><USER33> A quick search gave me the information that death by suicide is going down. If there is an increase in anxiety and depression, I see no reason to blame social media. If used in a good way, social media make us feel well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is quite a visible moral panic as we can see people glued to their phones in public places, e.g. on the train or bus.

I am not a Facebook person myself but I see no harm in someone spending their time commuting on a train using Facebook instead of something more worthy, e.g. reading a newspaper.

Behind closed doors people plug in to regular TV programming and spend hours on games consoles. There are only so many hours in the day and people who spend hours on social media are spending less time watching regular TV.

Instead of moral panic we need some better numbers. For instance we have unemployment numbers, we could also do with numbers of how many people lost their lives to Facebook/X-Boxes/YouTube/trawling Wikipedia this month.

<comment><USER36> I fail to understand how "reading a newspaper" is more worthy than reading facebook. Both are used for pushing some propaganda and to sell ads..

<comment><USER37> Newspaper articles, especially pre-internet era, require an attention span longer than 3 seconds to get through. Content had an editorial process, a physical body was held accountable for content. There are tons of differences that make a newspaper a better media for your brain to consume.

<comment><USER38> Most people I saw reading the newspaper on the subway were reading either a cheap tabloid or the free paper distributed on the subway.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Visual Studio fraud - <AUTHOR> https://skitch.com/natesampo/8rp2w/introducing-the-new-developer-experience-the-visual-studio-blog-site-home-msdn-blogs How can there be a serious development tool without line numbers in the demo?<p>Seriously, who is this targeted at?  Because it can't be developers. <comment><USER2> Tools > Options > Text Editor > All Languages > Display Line numbers...

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you mean, "fraud"?

<comment><AUTHOR> To post screenshots of a developer tool without including line numbers is just plain deceptive

<comment><USER3> The developer tool can be configured to not display line numbers (and who knows, maybe it comes configured that way by default), so how are the screenshots deceptive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Umh... I always hide the line numbers column. Why is it useful?

</comment><comment><USER5> dude, even if there WERE line numbers it still looks ugly...</comment>


Boston Dynamics Is Gearing Up to Produce Thousands of Robot Dogs - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/07/21/boston-dynamics-spotmini-robot-dog/ <comment><USER2> The interesting meta-point here is the chicken-egg problem between cheap robotic hardware and large-scale data collection.

We don't have general-purpose robotics because there aren't enough robots being built for them to become cheap.

And the robots can't do anything in the real world because they cost too much for someone to gather 1m hours of training data.

Presumably this is the Softbank game plan -- build a ton of general-purpose robotic hardware platforms, and hope that they (or another group) figures out how to build general-purpose algorithms in the next few years.

It's a calculated risk that Softbank have the resources to bankroll.</comment>


Why Johnny can't code - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2006/09/14/basic/ <comment><USER4> Other articles in this series:

      Why Johnny can't repair a carburetor.
      Why Johnny can't stack his vinyl records properly.
      Why Johnny can't ride a horse.
      Why Johnny can't prepare a basic white sauce.
      Why Johnny can't find the outhouse.

</JustKidding>

I've been around long enough to understand OP's argument and sympathize with him. I've also been around long enough to appreciate that _there has never been a better time to learn programming_.

Why? Two words: "View Source".

I've been through many modes of programming (all the way back to punch cards and once a day compiling) and I am nostalgic for none of it. I can't imagine going back.

Today, anyone can learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Resources are everywhere. Results are instant. And best of all, examples are everywhere. How many times have you been to a webpage and wondered, "How'd they do that?" "View Source" is often your window into so many other worlds. It's hard to believe that there was a time when you couldn't do this.

Like OP, I get nostalgic, too. I miss a lot of things about the good old days, like Willie Stargell hitting 500 foot home runs without steroids, 35 cent Stroh's drafts, and hot Big Macs. But not old technology, even BASIC.

OP, turn your kid on to the "basics" of web programming and let him find his way with his generation's technology, not yours. You'll think he's missing something because his experience won't be your experience. You'll be partially right, but don't forget about all the stuff he'll be able to do that we couldn't.

<comment><USER5> I hit "view source" on google. Here is some of the javascript:

        ar _IG_MD = _IG_MD_Generate({ct:0,t:[{i:0,n:"Home"},{i:1,n:"arxiv.org"}],dt:[0,1],m:[{i:2,mt:25,u:"http://www.quotationspage.com/data/qotd.rss",ti:"Quotes of the Day",sn:"A3",t:0,dd:["ed","del","ming","shg","rg","ag"]},{i:139,mt:25,u:"http://lwn.net/headlines/newrss",ti:"LWN.net",sn:"Ne",t:0,dd:["ed","del","ming","shg","rg","ag"]},{i:137,mt:25,u:"http://blog.jgc.org/feeds/posts/default",ti:"",sn:"",t:0,dd:["ed", [...Lots more snipped...]

This will help Johnny learn to code how?

<comment><USER4> Straw man. 1 counterexample != refutation

"View Source" doesn't help on _every_ web page.

But it does expose more examples of code than ever before. That's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The world is a circle.

I figured, maybe I'll port some basic program for linux, so I did a search of basic in debian and found:

<http://packages.debian.org/lenny/basic256>

Click on the homepage link and:

<http://www.basic256.org/>

Perfect! I'm about to write to the author of the post and then I notice:

Check out "Why Johnny Can't Code," the article that inspired BASIC-256.

LOL

Someone should update the title to point out that the article is from 2006, and the link above is the answer.

(The actual link on debian is <http://kidbasic.sourceforge.net/en/index.html> but that no longer works, so I adjusted it.)

<comment><USER7> I'm the original author of Basic-256, if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Most people seem to be pleased with it, but I'm starting to wonder if it's the right approach; maybe it's the C64 and not BASIC that's the key. I recently downloaded a C64 emulator and the "Programmer's Reference Guide" that I had as a kid; you almost have to try NOT to understand how a computer works in order to not get something out of a C64 and that guide.

Right away they delve into changing bytes in memory to draw on the screen, and I remembered drawing sprites on graph paper and figuring out what the binary representation would be. I was in second and third grade at the time, figuring this out on my own.

There is something about the C64. It's at the perfect spot of advanced and simple that makes learning easy.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's the C64 - I started on a Laser-128 (an apple clone). I didn't start with graphics though, I started with a guess the number game (computer picks, and you guess and it tells you higher or lower).

I still remember the day I learned about strings in variables - <USER2> simplified my program quite a bit from a mass of hard coded strings combined with gosub.

If I have just one suggestion it's to increase your visibility. About a year ago I actually searched quite a bit for program exactly like yours. And didn't find it. I eventually found an online BASIC emulator in a browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is so close to my heart. I first wrote programs in BASIC on a TRS-80 at the local Tandy store in 1978. I bought my own in 1979, then got frustrated with how slow it was. I hacked the machine, smashed the stack, wrote a Z80 command line interface, and then wrote a compiler for a limited subset of BASIC. (Hand-built recursive descent. I was planning to write a peep-hole optimiser (it desperately needed one) but never got the time).

Then I got my first "freelance" programming "contract" to write some stock prediction code. I still didn't have a clue, but my second project - still in 1979 - was a restaurant layout and waiter allocation program. It used what I now know to be simulated annealing to find good (not optimal) layouts for the restaurant given the sizes of parties that were book.

All in 16K RAM on a 1.77 MHz Z80 processor.

Why not write a simulator for a simple machine that goes into a full-screen window and emulate the simplistic language and graphics of the time? Most kids would blow it off with scorn and go back to their play-stations or whatever, but some would love it.

Which ones would become programmers? Shouldn't we encourage them?

Kids need sandboxes in which to build sand-castles and let their imaginations run wild. Can we build one for them?

<comment><USER9> have a look at scratch programming language by MIT Media Lab, Which is an active and ongoing effort. This article is written by a complete idiot!

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure if you noticed, but Scratch was started in 2007, and this was written in 2006.

<comment><USER9> WOW I USED TO THINK HN WAS ABOUT NEWS. GOOD LORD YOU PPL SRSLY NEED SOME HELP

<comment><USER10> > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes > more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the > answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My first thought was "PYTHON!"

But then, we have an ongoing transition to 3.0, and it turns out the turtle module from 2.6 is "an extended reimplementation" that is "(nearly) 100% compatible" with the prior version included in 2.5. This is probably not a problem for textbooks being written today, but it does make me wonder how durable an actual source code listing in any 'modern' language would be. How long would the average code listing remain usable?

<comment><USER12> It'll remain usable as long as previous distributions of python are available for download.

PyGame is quite a fun resource for learning programming, there's something there about pressing play and seeing your code changes translated into direct visual feedback which is particularly appealing.

<comment><USER11> The previous distribution of python will only remain usable as long as it installs and runs on whatever machine you're using.

PyGame might be fun, but I don't really see it as a true beginner's environment. It's a serious library, so it takes a lot of initialization, requires flip() calls, and runs in event-oriented style. It's also not included in the standard library.

In fact, for graphics, anything that doesn't create its own window and give you calls like drawPoly/drawEllipse is probably not simple enough to approach AmigaBASIC or QBASIC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I started on BASIC, too, when I was 9.

I think the sandbox of today would need to run inside the browser to achieve the instant gratification of BASIC back in the day. I wonder if JavaScript could be the new BASIC - I find it hard to judge how hard it would have been to learn for my 9-year-old self. The barrier to entry for JS programming is probably a little too high (you need to know HTML, need to host your code, etc.) but a simple web based JavaScript environment with a REPL and some wrapper functions for a Canvas element and keyboard & mouse input might just do the trick.

A technical problem I can see with that is the event-based model of the browser, which is probably harder to understand than the explicit event loop. You'd need a blocking waitForNextFrame() of some kind. I guess you'd have to precompile and transform the code into continuation-style closures. Or just call their code periodically with setInterval(). Either way, the framework could gather up relevant events between frames to make them available more easily.

Damn, I really want to make this now.

<comment><USER14> Chrome and Safari have a REPL console - you can type JavaScript and get immediate feedback.

Great idea for a library that builds on what modern browsers can do to provide an environment that is similar to the old micros (I started programming on a Apple II).

<comment><USER13> _Chrome and Safari have a REPL console - you can type JavaScript and get immediate feedback._

As do Firefox (with Firebug) and Opera (Dragonfly). The mental model of raw client side JS, along with actually saving your code isn't exactly "instant gratification" though. This should be a web service that lets you easily save your code, and gets rid of most of the accidental browser complexity. And while we're at it, you should be able to embed the stuff you made elsewhere, hosted or not. (though IE throws a spanner in the works if you're using Canvas and want to embed it to show others)

This is sounding better and better the more I think about it.

<comment><USER14> You could use the client side database support in Chrome/Safari to save local copies of code and allow stuff to be loaded back into the environment of the current page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Best word processor I had in high school was typed in line-by-line from Compute magazine (better than the ones I would've had to spend $$$ on).

That said, why didn't he install a C-64 emulator or an Apple II emulator - <USER3> need to buy the box. Also, Logo, another good starter language has implementations, including 3D extensions. Processing + JavaScript is another decent alternative, or Canvas if that's your cup-of-(tea|joe).

It's a nice rememberence of a language many of us started with, but it's okay to let it go and move on to other things.

</comment><comment><USER16> My path to programming, as a product of the internet generation:

As a child, I loved the idea of computer programming. I got books at the library that told you how, but they always needed equipment I didn't have. I actually wrote fake programs in Ami Pro because of sample code I found in books! My parents were cutting-edge with computer purchases, but were otherwise nontechnical. They didn't know that toy programming languages existed, and probably didn't care. They just wanted me outside!

Time passed, and in 8th grade I needed to sign up for high school classes. I saw "Computer programming" in the class listing and I registered immediately. I didn't want to enter the class knowing nothing, so I researched C++ (the language taught by the class) and came across DJGPP. I spent a lot of nights that summer careening through internet tutorials and wrote a mountain of crap, but it was fun!

The first day of school was very disappointing - I got the syllabus, and saw that I'd already learned everything on the sheet. I was equally disappointed 2 years later when I signed up for the AB C++ exam and realized I knew nothing on the sheet. The next year was the worst yet - I knew everything on the AB Java exam, but I had to spend the year relearning it all in Java! Yuck!

</comment><comment><USER17> He'd been on that quixotic quest for _three years_? For some reason, I have a hard time believing it.

When the first sentence is not credible, what does that say about the rest?

</comment><comment><USER18> I learned to program in BASIC on an Apple II, and although it was my entry language, I don't see it as necessary now. The school I work at uses MIT Scratch with the 5th graders, and they love it. I'm teaching Java in a high school computer science elective because that's what is used on the AP Exam, and they're likely to start with in college. I think Python, Ruby, or Lua would be better choices, but Java is good enough.

However, I'm also exposing them to logic circuits, machine language, and assembly so that they have a better understanding of how the computer actually works. I want them to understand the basics of what the compiler and VM are doing so that Java is not completely abstract to them. As experienced developers know, these abstractions have leaks so it's helpful to know what's going on underneath. I see BASIC as a dead-end abstraction. I would rather use assembly to teach a low-level understanding, and then use modern languages at the higher level.

</comment><comment><USER19> This article, poetic as it is, is very wrong, imo.

I got my start in programming working with qbasic as a 12 year old, then graduating to some VB programming. I loved being able to go to any house, quickly type up a program I knew by heart, then mess around with new ideas I had. So I'm pretty nostalgic towards basic as well.

Having said that, today's situation is better. Anyone who wants to can get started on any computer with some simple HTML. In fact, people can come very close to replicating the look of their favorite sites, without needing anything but their computer and access to a few tutorials. Not to mention the fact that the other languages (Python, Ruby) are much better. Better for working, but also better for learning. I don't understand what his problem with Python as a beginner language is: it lets you do actual stuff you want to do much more easily, which is especially important when learning.

<comment><USER10> > Anyone who wants to can get started on any computer with some simple HTML.

"Lots of people wrote in to say that HTML and JavaScript are the new BASIC. NO!!! You can't be serious!!! So people have to write two languages now, which are intertwined in an almost inexplicable and unfathomable way? This doesn't do it.

Hello world should be one line." - _why, "The Hackety Manifesto" [http://wiki.github.com/steveklabnik/hacketyhack/the- hackety-...](http://wiki.github.com/steveklabnik/hacketyhack/the-hackety- manifesto)

I'm inclined to agree with him. (Surprise!) Don't get me wrong, I love HTML/CSS, but I think it's far too much to get started with.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the link.

I disagree with that though. Especially the sentence "Hello World should be one line". In html, _it is_. You create a new text file, put the line "Hello World" in it, then you can open it up in your browser and voila. You've got something everyone recognizes: a website.

Of course the more you code, the harder it gets, and eventually you have to add CSS, then JS, and then all hell breaks loose. But you can coast pretty far on basic HTML, with either no CSS, or inline CSS. And I'd argue that that's the direction we should be sending people just getting started in programming.

<comment><USER10> > I disagree with that though. Especially the sentence "Hello World should be > one line". In html, it is. You create a new text file, put the line "Hello > World" in it, then you can open it up in your browser and voila.

It depends. It's one line in the sense that 'it works.' It's not one line in the sense that "it works but enables quirks mode and it won't necessarily work right equally in all browsers unless you do all this stuff ..." and that's why I dislike HTML/CSS for learning. Yeah, in the simplest cases, it's kind of easy, but it can get really complex really quickly.

That's not even counting the fact that markup is not really programming, and if you'd like to add some, you've now got TWO languages to learn, HTML + Javascript. And then you might want to do something server side, so now you've got three.

The complexity explodes really quickly.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, but as a beginner, you don't need to see the complexity.

Mind you, I'm not comparing HTML to other languages for learning, I'm comparing it to QBasic as a "first try at programming" language. The basics had their own problems.

<comment><USER10> You do end up seeing the complexity. What can you do without Javascript and/or a server side language? Not too much, really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I started out programming using Sinclair BASIC on my ZX Spectrum +2A purely because I wondered what the menu was for, other than loading games off a tape. It wasn't really "programming" though, so much as typing in the Breakout clone listed in the manual. Once in school we learned programming using MacBASIC on a Macintosh 128K, doing basic trigonometry formulas and answer/response programs.

Now that I've experienced everything from PL/SQL to PHP, I would agree to a certain extent that beginning your programming experience with the language supplied with your machine has its advantages, but I would question the long term benefits - there's no harm in learning how to set up a new programming environment in order to be taught the rudiments behind how a computer works, and arguably having that base level knowledge is more advantageous.

</comment><comment><USER21> There is absolutely no reason at all you can't do all of the math shown in the 1980's text books in python and have it be just as simple.

Because python can do much more complicated things doesn't mean you can do basic code in it either.

Author is stuck whining rather than finding real world solutions to this problem.

</comment><comment><USER22> "The "scripting" languages that serve as entry-level tools for today's aspiring programmers -- like Perl and Python -- don't make this experience accessible to students in the same way. BASIC was close enough to the algorithm that you could actually follow the reasoning of the machine as it made choices and followed logical pathways."

Wow, and here I thought I was using conditions in P&P all these years--I'll have to run a "grep if *p[ly]" when I get back to the office. Though I do agree that there is a certain satisfaction in coding at a lower level, if the level is assembler.

I don't know what the story is in the Mac world, but as far as I can tell most of the Windows boxes out there will let you code and run VBScript if you have a passion for that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't agree more with the author. I'm 20 now, and for a non CS major, have a very deep interest in programming that I can only attribute to BASIC programming.

If you calculate the years, I wasn't even born in the days of the commodore 64, the earliest OS I remember is Windows 3.1. But even then I was too young to comprehend what a computer was. What truly got me started was Texas Instruments.

7th grade: I was a TI-BASIC pro. Wielding my TI-89, I learned more about graphing calculators than any kid should have, ported existing games from TI-83 to '89s and '82s, and instead of solving tedious math problems by hand, I would write FOR loops in BASIC to do my work for me.

There is something truly simple and zen-like about BASIC on a calculator that makes it (imho) one of the best languages to learn "programming" on. In that sense I mean learning all the basics of what variables, functions, if/else statements, loops, ... etc.

By the time I made it to my intro to programming (Java) course in college, I barely had to go to lecture and easily pulled an A.

So for parents/teachers trying to get young kids into programming, get them a calculator with TI-BASIC for the following reasons:

* fixed screen size -- you can easily make visual ascii games and use each character as a "pixel"

* full documentation = right in the back of the instruction manual!

* do maths! -- if nothing else, learning how to program functions to do often used math functions is reason enough

* community -- when I was at that age, everyone had a graphing calculator, and everyone would transfer games and programs with those little transfer cables. I became (in)famous as the kid with all the games and programs and kids would even ask me to write and port games for them. There was also a decent community online full of other people trying to program in TI-BASIC as well. I could easily program a few helpful math functions and share with my friends to help them and get that sense of instant gratification that I created something to help the world around me.

Hopefully the era of TI-BASIC isn't over, anyone know of the current status of graphing calculators in middle/high schools?

</comment><comment><USER24> It's a different world that the one we grew up in. My son showed no interest in understanding the CLI or programming, but he loved scratch: <http://scratch.mit.edu/>

</comment><comment><USER25> I've actually got GW-BASIC running on DOSBOX on my home computer. Every now and again I get nostalgic and fire up one of the ASCII graphics video games or text adventures I wrote when I was a teenager.

<comment><USER26> I'm glad you mentioned it. I'm not certain if Atari Logo at school, or GW- BASIC at home was my first encounter with programming.

My dad was a EE, and he set me up with GW-BASIC after I checked a book out from the library that had each chapter ending with a "Try it in BASIC!" section. I figured that there would be no problem getting GW-BASIC up and running under dosbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is where I mention that I just put up links to Hackety Hack 0.9 for Snow Leopard and Windows... <http://hacketyhack.heroku.com/>

</comment><comment><USER27> I just don't buy the premise. Kids get interested in programming by being able to create things. Back in the day creating things meant getting any kind of text/ascii on the screen was an achievement.

Now, kids want to learn how to do things that look as nice or do as much as the rest of the computer (or web) features they are used to.

For those that get interested some will go back to the roots and become hackers, some will continue to work in higher level languages. I don't see the problem.

</comment><comment><USER28> > we bought a Commodore 64 (in original box) for $25. It

> arrived in good shape. It took us maybe three minutes to

> attach an old TV. We flicked the power switch ... and up

> came a command line. In BASIC.

And the cheaper and easier solution would be type three words into google: basic interpreter javascript

Low and behold: <http://www.ngbasic.com/ngbasic/>

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm going to set up a PC for my five year old son, and have it boot into the shell only, no GUI. I know he'll love having it do addition and subtraction for him, but I bet he might want to start asking it questions, like "how many legs does a spider have?"

Is there a CLI program out there which does text-only Q&A via some web service?

<comment><USER25> >Is there a CLI program out there which does text-only Q&A via some web service?

You could probably whip something up in Python, httplib2 and BeautifulSoup in a couple of hours. If I can't sleep tonight, I might play around with this.

<comment><USER29> Sure, my question isn't about how to do it technically though, instead I want to know if there is a Q&A website out there which will return either, clear legible answers or null.

<comment><USER30> Wolfram Alpha

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _why penned an article titled "The Little Coder's Predicament" that echoes similar sentiments and proposes a couple solutions. I found it an interesting read.

[http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredica...](http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredicament.html)

</comment><comment><USER32> C is as close to machine as any other language can get. Why not new Johnny learn programming in C?

</comment><comment><USER33> JavaScript and a web browser. The parallel is obvious to me, I'm not sure why it's not to him.

</comment><comment><USER34> I still remember typing in pages of A4 sheets of code for a football management simulator on my commodore 16, reading every line to try and figure out where I could alter a line or two to give me an edge in the game over my brother :-) good times!

</comment><comment><USER35> Here's an interactive book on learning to program using javascript and jQuery: <http://davidbau.com/javascript/learn/00-preface.html>

</comment><comment><USER36> Johnny should try Ruby, now to write some intro-text interactive

<comment><USER10> You might be interested in <http://tryruby.org>, then. ;) Or Hackety Hack, which contains it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Has this guy simply never heard of Python and Ruby?

<comment><USER10> Those were very different in 2006.

<comment><USER38> How?

<comment><USER10> The community and support was not nearly as developed as it is now, for one. Both languages have seen an explosion in usage. And community support is a big part of getting help when you're starting out.

Also, he explicitly mentions why he doesn't like Python in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I responded to this back in 2006 - [http://archive.azplace.net/index.php?itemid=861&catid=14](http://archive.azplace.net/index.php?itemid=861&catid=14)

Whoa, an "epic problem" because of the absence of "line-by-line" programming language?

Brin harkens back to an earlier time, when tinkering with line-by-line programming was a large part of the reason why a computer was purchased. That the buyer was a financially endowed nerd already passionately motivated and inclined to what was, for that time, a solely hobbyist pursuit. Today, the price of computer hardware has plummeted, making a PC purchase within reach of nearly all. And the entry level barrier for youth to enter into the discipline of programming computing machines has never been lower.

* As stated, the cost of machines that 20+ years ago would preclude ownership for many kids, is now, in most all cases, a total non factor.

* In the good old days of BASIC PEEK and POKE, your only link to programming prowess was a geeky magazine article, or provided by a fellow nerd friend. There were a few books, but rare. No googling for help, no vast internet repostiory of tutorials and how-to guides that exist in 2006, however.

* The machines of yester-lore were no more than glorified calculators. In fact, the machines that sit on our desktop (and in our laps) have much more in common with old school mainframe computers than the early IBM/PC and Apple computers. Point is, running a comptuer today, in many ways requires a whole heap more of

* Apple Macs and Linux machines all come with all the programming tools a budding programmer could wish for. Even Windows machines, though less endowed, come packaged with C# programming environment.

* But all that really is needed to write programs and see the output of basic algorithms is a web browser and a text editor. Both of these come standard with any machine today. There are still BASIC programs in textbooks? Brin is dismayed over his the internet choir's emphasis on his repeated references to BASIC, but there are at least 30+ mentions of BASIC in his article.

Yes, and the problem, according to Brin, isn't the textbook publishers who add program exercises in an archaic language that some computer science luminaries consider to be "life corrupting". it's Microsoft's fault for not maintaining lingua franca on its machines!

Not all of Brin's missive is misguided. I understand his sentiment, but he laments for an age that has come pass, and because of his own nostalgic remembrance, distorts reality. The computing landscape has indeed changed, but you don't have to run BASIC programs to gain an understanding of how a computer works. BASIC is no different than any of the newfangled scripting languages. Furthermore, the fundamental model of "how a computer works" is radically different today — the simplistic model Brin details is less instructive than the state of the computer circa 2006.

But while Brin bemoans the current status of programming tools for aspiring programmers, here is what is happening in the golden age of programming.

* Millions are busy creating home pages, scripting game macros, writing Microsoft Office VB scripts to access databases and perform Excel functions.

* Others are creating web applications or writing social networking applications such as MySpace.

* Millions are downloading and installing free and open source (F/OSS) software, including the various Linux and FreeBSD distributions. And by doing so, are receiving far greater instructive benefit by learning how a modern day computer works, encountering firsthand, the challenging experience of installing, configuring, maintaining and even scripting/programming in nearly all the layers of software and services that make up a contemporary computer system. Even if Brin's claims have merit, the contention that its a "problem for our nation and civilization" is unbelievably far fetched. The discipline of computer programming differs from other fields of science — most programmers are, in large part, self taught, and gravitate to the field, based on their inkling and proficiency in being able to tell the computer what to do. Years ago, when the government went recruting programmers, they attempted over and over, to discover who would make a good programmer. Chess wizards, mathmeticians, bookkeepers, etc... were all once viewed as being optimal programmer candidates. But it was discovered that there was no common theme, and good to great programmers came from all walks of life, that a small segment of folks just had a knack for it. Even back when I went to school (I changed majors halfway through), it was expressed by professors that they viewed their job as weeding out those who won't cut it, who are pursuing the field for the money or because they think they'll dig it. And just examine the successful programmers — it's quite evident formal schooling and/or training is not necessary to ordain a great programmer. Therefore, even if all of the other points Brin contain some merit, that "computing is not as easy" without a "lingua franca", there are those that still will be drawn to the field. Incidentally, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are both college dropouts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also WTF about BASIC with GOTO? You should teach your kid nothing but Python, which helps him understand the functional and OO aspects of programming.

<comment><USER40> In looking for a first programming language for a grade school kid, I'm not particularly sure that needing to learn how to write functional or object- oriented code is particularly high on the list of priorities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> AutoIt

</comment><comment><USER9> I am sorry but the author of this article hasnt even performed basic research. He is completely bullshitting about Media Lab. Media Lab has created Scratch programming language which is actively being used by many kids in large number of schools around world.

Sad to see such as stupid article.

<http://scratch.mit.edu/>

<comment><USER42> The article is from 2006; Scratch was released in 2007.

It's hard to fault him because his time machine wasn't working.</comment></comment>


Hesh – The Haskell-Extensible Shell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jekor/hesh <comment><USER2> See also turtle: an API for writing Haskell programs in a shell-like manner.</comment>


Show HN: Luxe Projects – Only the best projects for sale - <AUTHOR> https://luxe.daltonedwards.dev <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking out this project! Will be adding a more professional domain soon (will 301 redirect this one). Luxe Projects is a marketplace for finding quality projects available for sale.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> URL updated to LUXEPROJECTS.SITE :)</comment>


Learning Dependency Injection in ASP.Net Core - <AUTHOR> http://fullstackmark.com/post/6/learning-dependency-injection-in-aspnet-core <comment><USER2> Good introduction into fundamental concepts of DI, design patterns and antipatterns.</comment>


Optimizing Costs for AWS S3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sumologic.com/aws/s3/s3-cost-optimization/ <comment><USER2> There's also a way to run an S3-compatible file storage server on your own VPS or hardware, thus avoiding S3 costs altogether. The project's name is Minio [1]. Finding that out has saved me a lot of money. I've written up a story about that if anyone's curious [2]

[1]: [https://minio.io/](https://minio.io/) [2]: [https://www.patreon.com/posts/long- changelog-7498817](https://www.patreon.com/posts/long-changelog-7498817) (skip the changelog)

<comment><USER3> I'm interested to hear stories about real-world use of minio, especially distribution/replication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For people doing any kind of deployment at scale, there are lots of enterprise options out there that are often cheaper to host yourself (think 100TB+). For a startup with a small storage requirement I totally get the appeal of starting out on AWS though.

</comment><comment><USER5> LeoFS is also a self-hosted S3 that's got Erlang support</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for examples of html5 apps that feel native - <AUTHOR>

Looking for examples of both Android and iOS apps that are built with html5 (or hybrid native/html5) but feel completely like a native app. <comment><USER2> Are you familiar with Ionic? Pure HTML5 AngularJS apps compiled with cordova into native android and iOS applications. I've been working with it for a month and I've found it incredibly useful. [http://showcase.ionicframework.com/](http://showcase.ionicframework.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking at Ionic as my first choice right now. The showcase apps aren't really that great. They seem like side-projects. I'm looking for an example of a larger project.

The framework looks good on the website, I'm just looking for a fairly popular app that's actually launched with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is a company called Ludei ([https://www.ludei.com/](https://www.ludei.com/)) who has built an amazing framework for HTML5 apps and games.

To prove how powerful their framework is they've published several games, here are some:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ludei.slid...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ludei.slidesoccer)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideateca.a...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideateca.android.ibasket)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ludei.demo...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ludei.demos.webgl)

Their games go faster and work better than many native games I have.

<comment><AUTHOR> did they launch games on ios too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Guardian's new Android and iOS apps are natively wrapped webviews: [https://twitter.com/patrickhamann/status/472017297771884544](https://twitter.com/patrickhamann/status/472017297771884544)

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://gonative.io/examples](https://gonative.io/examples) looks descent just built an android app for bbus.in & pypnrstatus.in

</comment><comment><USER6> Financial Times - [http://app.ft.com/](http://app.ft.com/) Though not sure if they officially shipped it or not.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am also interested in this. Most jQuery Mobile/ PhoneGap apps feel 'substandard'..

</comment><comment><USER8> famo.us is a javascript framework using which you can develop apps in javascript which can give the native feel. Their website looks pretty decent on phone. You can explore their examples. I guess cordova compilation should work for famo.us apps too.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen famo.us too. Same comment as my one for Ionic. The website for famo.us has some pretty good demos, but I'm looking for a launched app that actually uses it.</comment></comment>