Broken by design: systemd - <AUTHOR> http://ewontfix.com/14/ <comment><USER3> Not everything of systemd is in PID 1. And yes, what some people consider necessary and important or even essential features missing from sysvinit, others consider bloat.

Just to ensure we're all talking about the same thing, here's an overview of systemd's footprint: [http://people.debian.org/~stapelberg/docs/systemd- dependenci...](http://people.debian.org/~stapelberg/docs/systemd- dependencies.html)

From the article: "On most machines, systemd will bring from 236 KiB to 550 KiB of additional libraries to be loaded into memory. When recompiling systemd without its optional dependencies (e.g. for embedded systems), this shrinks to 368 KiB in the worst case.

The RSS (Resident Set Size) of systemd is 1.8 MiB, whereas sysvinit uses 0.8 MiB — both measured on typical Debian wheezy installations."

</comment><comment><USER4> I've used systemd on Arch Linux for about a year now. It wasn't the end of the world, I can deal with it, but it's not fun.

I'm bothered by seemingly built-in units that have no corresponding unit files, which all default to enabled, including units for bootsplash stuff ("plymouth") that isn't used on arch linux. I'm very annoyed by mounts and such that don't even have units, files or otherwise, such as the "pstore" filesystem or autofs4. I'm super annoyed that since an upgrade half a year ago, the configuration option to disable use of some cgroup controllers was removed, and now any cgroup controllers supported by the kernel are used unconditionally.

I have good reasons for not using some of these things, but even more than that, one of the main reasons I like to use Arch Linux is that I like to add what I need, rather than try to make sense of and clean up the clutter of a typical operating system later. The lack of control and default-everything-on of systemd is really very annoying, and I'm bothered by the strategies mentioned in this article by which systemd makes itself the one and only practical modern init system for linux.

<comment><USER5> The only Plymouth-specific code I see in systemd is related to asking the user questions at boot-up time, like their mount password, and it works by sending a socket message to a socket plymouth opens, and successfully falls back if it doesn't exist.

I don't see any plymouth-related services or unit files hardcoded. I do, however, see a NEWS-related entry from the v186 release: [http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/tree/NEWS#n1775](http://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/tree/NEWS#n1775)

<comment><USER4> there are no unit files, but there are units:

[plo@plo-air ~]$ systemctl --all | grep plym

plymouth-quit-wait.service masked inactive dead plymouth-quit-wait.service

plymouth-start.service masked inactive dead plymouth-start.service

<comment><USER5> On my system, those units do have unit files, and they're provided by the Plymouth package. I couldn't find any reference to "plymouth-quit-wait" in the systemd source code, so those strings have to be coming from somewhere. Are you sure you don't have a unit file at /usr/lib/systemd/systemd/plymouth-quit- wait.service ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why don't the anti-systemd folks publish some actual attacks against that big ol' attack surface?

I've been using it for maybe 18 months, it was different and different is some times scary but I have had no problems at all. Migrated some legacy init scripts and it's a piece of cake. It's fast, it works, it does what it claims to do. I've been shipping unix software mostly on linux for 15 years and there are very real reasons systemd, launchd, smf, upstart and other "do more than nothing" init systems exist and companies making money selling them write them. All of them are much much more simple for the administrator to use too...

<comment><USER7> Folks on #musl found 2 integer overflow bugs in the UTF-8 handling code within seconds of checking out the source to read it. It's not clear to me where the code is called from and what inputs reach it, but that kind of bug does not inspire confidence in the safety of the project as a whole. I also quickly found a case where a potentially-null string pointer is passed to a logging function which might or might not be able to accept null string pointers. (I suspect it uses snprintf and therefore depends on the underlying C library's handling of this usage, which is undefined behavior.)

<comment><USER5> In the interest of transparency, can you tell us exactly what you found? I looked around for a bit but couldn't spot anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > systemd makes it impossible to upgrade without rebooting. This leads to > "Linux" becoming the laughing stock of Windows fans, as happened with Ubuntu > a long time ago.

This irked me. It's just an unnecessary comparison. The ZDnet article linked is, and always was, completely fallacious in comparing an OS critical update channel to a fully-fledged distro package manager. Having just bought a brand new Windows laptop this weekend, I found myself spending no less than 2 hours tirelessly updating and rebooting Windows, and searching for, and installing, driver updates manually. It's 2014 and it still sucks. Windows update and OEM updaters are, in my experience, piss-poor and don't pick up half of the updates available to your average system.

Frankly I think your average Linux desktop could easily risk doubling or tripling the number and frequency of reboots demanded, and you'd still not reach a significant fraction of the annoyance of Windows on that particular front.

<comment><USER9> And all the servers? They are supposed to just keep rebooting all the time as if they were Windows desktops?

<comment><USER5> If you upgrade systemd or the kernel, yes, you should reboot your machine. Ideally, it shouldn't take more than a minute or two.

<comment><USER10> Obviously not talking about servers here. Those RAID can take more than a few minutes to spin-up.

<comment><USER11> If you can't afford 3 minutes of downtime (how long a Dell PowerEdge R620 takes to start responding to ping again after a shutdown -r now), you really should reconsider running that service without a redundant system at the ready.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems to me that, in keeping with its long tradition of being conservative, Debian should put off switching its init system for at least another release, since systemd is by no means the clear winner from a strictly technical point of view.

<comment><USER13> Agreed here. Then, at that time, there should be a re-evaluation.

Perhaps also at that time openRC will be a potential candidate and far less experimental.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> it seems like the pid 1 issue has been discussed quite a few times in the past. see also here [https://lwn.net/Articles/520892/](https://lwn.net/Articles/520892/)

it's also discussed in the official debian debate [https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd](https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd)

can anyone explain to me why they haven't just changed systemd to do less work in pid 1?

i've used systemd on my archlinux laptop for quite a while and was happy with how much faster the system boots. but i also found it to be too huge and too intertwined for basic maintenance tasks. but ofc that is just a personal opinion. suddenly i have to have a repertoire of systemd commands to do things i used to be able to do with basic unix tools

<comment><USER15> I don't know. Given what I know about how cgroups and systemd works, I don't think there's any particular issue with having a thin shim and starting systemd as PID 2, and so getting some of the reliability gains this article talks about. But I don't have all that much knowledge of the details and there may be good technical reasons why that is a bad idea (the man page notes that it is possible via a command line flag, but that it is not supported and only intended for testing). There are some issues surrounding cgroups moving to a single-userspace-arbitrator model, but I don't know what requires this to be PID 1.

<comment><USER16> The article remarks its pid 1 to catch "bad" services that disown their parents and get defaulted to pid 1.

But I figure if they switched the bulk of systemd to pid 2, any negligent services would get complained about until they were fixed.

<comment><USER7> Almost all daemons have a command line or config file option to skip "daemonizing" so that the parent can watch the PID correctly. For the few that don't, you can fix them, hack them (e.g. LD_PRELOAD wrappers to shutdown their bogus double-forking), seccomp-ptrace them, or simply wrap them with a legacy- style monitor that reads the pid file and forwards signals it receives to the real pid (this last option of course doesn't fix the race conditions inherent in such usage).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Was openrc ever a part of the discussion?

I don't like the concept of a GUI/Redhats philosophy dictating system behavior when X isn't even installed.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like this writing. Solid.

But, I'm curious: What are the specific deficiencies the author sees in daemontools? "Not ready for primetime."

I mean, it's so typical for bloggers to say certain software is this or that (some generalisation), without giving details.

I don't know much about systemd. I find Linux too chaotic, a moving target that moves a little too frequently for my tastes. It's changes like these that I find take too much energy to follow.

I doubt it's a problem specific to Linux though. As a BSD user, I've been amazed with how much init.c has grown in size over the years. A variety of developers have touched it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll run systemd only after you pry openrc[1] from my cold, dead hands.

FAR too much of the project makes exactly the wrong design choices. The worst of these flaws is the binding of previously-independent components discussed near the end of this article.

This bundling Is not even necessary! The features that systemd gets right - <USER2> interesting daemon management tool, and providing a useful default start/stop mechanism ("4 lines of config instead of re-writing the same generic shell script") - can obviously be independent features.

This mess _should_ be limited to merely bad design in a particular software niche(s)., but now we're seeing the "my way or nothing" attitude spill over into existing user-level software. (e.g., Gnome[2] I would probably already be using part of it was properly modular. Instead, the bundle is growing even more monolithic and incompatible.

When a similar "forced upgrade/incompatibility" happened to OpenGL (with ES dropping the traditional fixed-function pipeline, JWZ had a very good summary[3] of the the problem, from a "having to maintain old software" prespective:

        Let's say you have a well-specified system that is in wide use (a language, a
        library API, whatever) and because of changes in some substrate (operating
        systems, hardware, whatever) you find that you need to add a new way of doing
        things to it.

        The way you do this is, you add new features to the specification and you
        clearly document the version in which those features become supported.

        If there are old features that you would like to discourage the use of, then
        you mark them as obsolete -- but you do not remove them because thou shalt not
        break working code.

        If you don't agree with that, then please, get out of the software industry
        right now. Find another line of work. Please.

        Your users have code that works. Maybe the new APIs would serve them better.
        Maybe things would be so much more efficient if they updated their code to use
        the new API. Or maybe it doesn't matter to them and they just want working code
        to continue to be working code. At least until such a time as they need the new
        features, or new efficiency. Remember the First Rule of Optimization: DON'T.

_sigh_ \- one of the big reasons behind my I left the world of Microsoft and Windows behind ~15 year ago was to be free of this kind of forced change...

1: Not giving up my .xinitrc/.Xresources or E16 theme, either. In all cases (along with openrc/sysvinit), they have over a decade's worth of bugfixes and tweaks. Any replacement would have to be _very_ good to be worth the time/effort involved in switching.

2: to be fair, Gnome has been merging thing that shouldn't be merged all the way back to the beginning of the project, and is as much at fault here as systemd itself.

3: [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/06/i-have-ported- xscreensaver-t...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/06/i-have-ported-xscreensaver- to-the-iphone/)

<comment><USER20> I think Gnome has been taking that approach going back years in part because of the opposite criticism: many people attack Linux UI as being a hodge-podge with no coherent design, comparing it unfavorably to a unified UI system like OSX's, which has a coherent and integrated take on windowing/libraries/widgets/etc. One of Gnome's goals was to fix that. They might unsuccessful at doing so, but attempting a unified/integrated UI was/is a core project goal, so I'm not surprised that they'd have no shyness about integrating components that Unix has traditionally kept separate. The tiling window manager scene (which I prefer myself) is perhaps the polar opposite (some wms don't even integrate the status bar into the wm), but isn't really targeting Gnome's target audience either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> systemd is like a second kernel in user-space.

<comment><USER16> Which should be good. If the OPs arguments about how dangerous it is to empower and stuff a lot of functionality into pid 1, think of how running in kernel mode on a cpu gives you power when your code is in the kernel proper.

So moving functionality out of kernel mode and into user mode is great. The only steps after that are moving as much functionality as possible to the user, and then to nobody. We do trend towards minimum permissions for the sake of security for a reason.

<comment><USER7> Functionality is not being moved out of the kernel and into userspace. It's being moved out of legacy freedesktop.org components (hald, ConsoleKit, PolicyKit, etc.) and into PID 1. Where should it be moved to? /dev/null.

<comment><USER5> hald has been dead forever.

PolicyKit is not being moved into systemd, nor is it getting systemd integration?

How do you want to replace ConsoleKit/logind? What should handle session management?

<comment><USER22> Something other than your init system. Not even Apple's launchd has the kinds of idiotic layering violations that systemd is full of.

<comment><USER5> Well, you'll be happy to learn that logind is a separate process entirely.

<comment><USER22> Layering violations don't only happen within the process level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> AFAICS, the arguments about restarting pid 1 on upgrade being a problem also apply to sysvinit, which has been restarting itself on upgrade for 20 years.

<comment><USER22> Except that sysv init, having tiny attack surface, very rarely needs updates.</comment></comment>


Stories and lessons from working with Jeff Bezos on the original Kindle - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/drose_999/status/1287944667414196225 <comment><USER3> I've spent 16 years working for major niche publisher and am a bit addicted to eReaders. Every time threads like this appear here I see lots of people that have no idea that there is a whole world of devices outside Kindle and Amazon. Here are some of the more interesting devices current out there in the market:

Pocketbook Color: yes, a color e-ink device for about $200: [https://pocketbook.ch/en-ch/catalog/color/color-ch](https://pocketbook.ch/en- ch/catalog/color/color-ch) You can see the Pocketbook color reading comics here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkufktAQC_E&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkufktAQC_E&t=0s) which beautifully demonstrates its colour capabilities.

Onyx Boox Note 2: 10'' e-ink screen, Android 9.0, touch and wacom digitizer: [https://onyxboox.com/boox_note2](https://onyxboox.com/boox_note2) It can be used for school/uni/research. Its large screen and notetaking features pair well with annotating fixed-layout formats such as PDFs.

I have some strong opinions about Amazon and its eBook business. I really like their tech but their business practices are not aligned with what I want for myself as an author. I have moved to Kobo for my personal eReader and am using a Kobo Forma which is their answer to the Kindle Oasis. Even though the Oasis hardware with its metal usage feels much more premium than the Forma with its flexy plastic shell, the device is much more open than the Oasis and it is easier for me to use it both as a reader and as an author. I live in the UK and Kobo through its partner Overdrive -- which it owned up until not long ago but I am not sure they still do -- allows me to borrow books from local libraries. I have a couple library cards from different library consortiums and that gives me a lot of catalogs to search and borrow from. Synchronizing with Pocket is also a godsend, every time I see a nice article here on HN that I think deserves more attention and care, I just send it to Pocket and read it from the Kobo in a nice park.

Anyway, this is just some pointers to those here that never experienced ebooks and ereaders outside Amazon. Yes, Amazon brings a lot of value to the table, especially for the readers, books tend to be cheaper in Amazon but that is due to its monopolistic practices and thug tactics. Kindle is not where the innovation is happening, other devices have better hardware and better software, other companies have healthier ecosystems.

<comment><USER4> As much as the Boox is great, they have a lot of GPL issues. Plus the kernel they are using is very very closed sourced. Sounds like FUD, but I am generally quite wary of companies in China that do this

<comment><USER5> Was just gearing up to type this. Onyx is a known GPL abuser and won't get a cent from me unless and until they fix that. Chinese company or otherwise, the FOSS community is clearly going to have to help support GPL when the courts can't or won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you guys are missing the point of this Twitter thread.

Yes, the kindle itself is mediocre at best. Technically it's got lot of issues, and I personally still prefer a physical book over it any day. But...

The thread was about being inspired. You can be inspired even while working on something that ultimately isn't great. You can be inspired working with someone who has the reputation of not being the best boss. You can be inspired when you want to.

So while working on this mediocre device, which is pretty much the only way to consume books digitally, this guy loved every minute.

To me, that's the lesson here.

<comment><USER7> Yes, inspiration, that's how these so called technology leaders trick us engineers in doing work for them, even, at times, to the detriment of society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I consider the Kindle one of the most underbaked products I have ever used, and it staggers me that no one seems to care. Earlier iterations were truly ground-breaking, so we gave them a break on the details. But we've been at this for 12 years now, the product really should have matured more.

I'm not talking about the state of E-ink, but the usability of the Kindle device itself. I current use a latest-gen Paperwhite but I've owned almost all of them. The current one, in my opinion, is a huge step backwards in lots of ways from earlier iterations. The touch screen is appalling and has no place on an E-ink device. The software is incredibly bad. There's so much scope there to surface useful information on the home screen but there's nothing of value there - I can't even see more than a couple of books in progress, much less find something I may want to read later. It's just astoundingly bad.

<comment><USER9> The kindle could have been the best, no clue what happened but development just seemed to completely stall. It's sad because the vast majority of consumers don't even realize there are incredible advances being made to E-ink displays, they never see it.

Last summer I was sitting in a library and had noticed the person across from me was using an E-ink device I had never seen before. I showed the person my kindle and asked if they like their device more or less than mine. I vividly recall the woman's eyes light up with excitement as she handed me the device and pen she was holding. Perfect written text on an e-ink device the size of a paper notebook with what felt like an almost identical weight to my kindle. Stunning! She told me how she had been using it exclusively for note taking and the battery life was fairly comparable.

I wish I could recall the name of the device but I think it was something by Sony. I couldn't help but be stunned though, Amazon is completely missing the opportunity with these devices and I feel bad for the people who will continue to purchase their obsolete products.

<comment><USER10> Same is true of goodreads. Amazon have their market lock now, it's the IE6 phase now. (Except it was way easier to get people off IE6 than it will be to get them off the platform with all of their books.)

<comment><USER11> I use goodreads as well and find the UI/UX very old fashioned. The lag is astonishing as well. What are some issues you have with it?

<comment><USER12> The mobile app is horrible. It's a webview or something, and works like total crap on old devices. If you open a notification for a group discussion post, it tells you what the title of the discussion is--but not what group it's for.

As much as possible, I find myself interacting with Goodreads through calibre plugins; I've got a library with zero actual book files that contains an entry for every book in my library, and I mainly use that to browse my collection. Since syncing that list takes so long, my actual calibre libraries are also synced to Goodreads, as that's where I actually make my changes.

With Library thing's recent removal of library limits, I'm thinking more and more about abandoning Goodreads--except I don't know if there's a calibre plugin for PT, and I've spent so much time adding and updating book records for items in my goodreads library, which would have to be redone for LT.

<comment><USER13> FYI the mobile opera browser uses the webview and is superfast, but the Kindle app is all native code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > We added a keyboard for search (this was a mistake, but it was worth a try).

I have a keyboard kindle. The keyboard is not a mistake; it's great. I wish other kindles had kept it.

(The keyboard does _feature_ a glaring mistake -- it doesn't have any number keys, despite the fact that its primary use is to type numbers. But the solution is to have number keys, not to get rid of the keyboard.)

<comment><USER15> I've got a kindle keyboard too. Very nice to have buttons to type with for search. What numbers are you entering, I can't recall doing that very often?

<comment><USER14> Location numbers, for "go to location".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For me the ability to get the free cellular anywhere in the world was the sizzle. I remember downloading a book in Tunisia in 2010!

</comment><comment><USER17> Survivorship Bias... please take this tweetstorm with a grain of salt unless you have backing the size of Amazon's income to play with

<comment><USER18> Amazon was not that big back in 2003.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/28/business/technology- amazo...](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/28/business/technology-amazon- reports-first-full-year-profit.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I liked the keyboard kindle, it was the best. Touch really sucks and it's makes one constantly anxious of not touching the wrong spot on the screen. Having dedicated buttons for actions makes it more predictable

</comment><comment><USER20> "Don't believe the institutional no" "Just because someone else has failed does not mean it's not possible"

So here's the part where we ignore basically all legitimate advice and the experience of others? Then are we using judgement, or hubris? If there is some artefact of new technology that changes the nature of the opportunity, then that's not so much 'ignoring' advice, it's contextualising it i.e. 'well it failed before, but ink screens are now cheap'. Etc.

</comment><comment><USER21> > _3 / Cannibalize yourself. Steve Kessel was running Amazon's media business > in 2004 (books/music/DVD's). Books alone generated more than 50% of Amazon's > cash flow. Jeff fired Steve from his job and reassigned him to build Kindle. > Steve's new mission: destroy his old business._

\- In 2015 Amazon's free cash flow was $529M [1], printed books contributed ~$250M to that

\- In 2019 total ebook revenue in the United States $983.3M (overall and not only Amazon's). [2]

Was Kindle 'distraction' worth it? I love Kindle and eBooks but did Bezos really make the right call when Amazon was just about beginning to recover from the severe dotcom crash?

[1][https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/free-c...](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/free- cash-flow)

[2][https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/ebook- revenu...](https://goodereader.com/blog/digital-publishing/ebook-revenue- fell-4-2-in-2019-and-generated-983-3-million)

<comment><USER22> It's better to cannibalize your own business than wait for someone else to do it.

<comment><USER23> yes

there is one other factor that people are missing

there are over a million self published authors. They are all sending people to Amazon to buy books

Those book pages have ads for other stuff

The amount of money coming from that is not insignificant

To give you some idea. I know at least 4 people who were making $50,000+ a month from affiliate sales

Of course, most of them got screwed like all other affiliates

However, 90% of the money was from stuff other than what they were sending people to Amazon for

 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __*

1 million authors, all desperate to get their books to readers, spending money on Facebook Ads and newspapers and radios

sending readers to Amazon

</comment></comment></comment><comment> grey-area The touch screen could be improved, but probably hasn't been because it would raise the cost and it is good enough. Most other things about the kindle are pretty good, including wireless syncing the early use of an e-ink screen, both of which were contrarian and ahead of their time.

The software is just good enough, like most Amazon software, but it does stay out of the way if you stick to the happy path. I don't really want it to change, I turn of most of the 'features' they've added over the years, like highlighting or notes. I want it to do one thing well - present black text on a white page, and it has done that well for years.

For me the value of a kindle is that it is a cheap single-function device which performs that function very well. If I want to read, I read on the kindle by choice, because the screen is a vastly better experience for reading than an LCD. If it breaks, I buy another, because it's much better than any other device (including paper) for reading.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Kindle 3 is still my preferred eReader. Dropping page turn buttons was good marketing but horrible for usability.

</comment><comment><USER25> I agree. The original Kindle was revolutionary. But it's been completely stagnant since then.

The level of innovation to drive forward doesn't have to be that large. After a lot of time thinking about the problem, the sweet spot for me would be an e-reader that combines:

* CBR/CBZ/EPUB support

* MicroSD slot for expandable storage (or 32 GB+)

* Yellow backlight

* Robust enough software

* No Android or web browser to speak of (I want a focused device without distractions) (but maybe Pocket Casts built in, with a 3.5mm port or Bluetooth)

* 300 dpi

* 7.8 inch display

And a price point of US$150. Which seems to be impossible with a 7.8 inch e-ink display. If someone comes out with this device I will buy it instantly. The Kobo Clara HD comes seriously close and I love mine but it is on the verge of no longer being on sale.

I think I will just have to wait for the Android e-ink tablets to come down in price and deal with an absolutely ancient version of Android, which they all seem to have.

<comment><USER26> It has a web browser. It's just so slow.

<comment><USER25> I know, I love it. It's there, but it's so bad that it's not keeping me from the eBooks for any appreciable amount of time, the actual intent behind the device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The removal of the physical page turning button rendered one handed usage impossible if you want hold the kindle in your left hand. It is massively annoys me.

<comment><USER28> You only need to be able to reach about a 1/3 of the way over the screen to tap the part that changes to the next page. Takes a little time to get used to but I read left handed all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I feel a lot of survivor bias here.

<comment><USER30> Spot-on. While there is definitely a component of genius in Bezos' personality, for this exact reason, most of the - let's call them - guidelines, won't work for other people/projects.

Point in case:

> 7/ Set unrealistic expectations

This is a recipe for a disaster for the vast majority of the projects. One field that pops into my mind is videogames development - this attitude is one of the greatest and well-known problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The prototype design of Kindle has an eeirly Star Trek feel to it:

[https://twitter.com/abcerra/status/1288076705634988035](https://twitter.com/abcerra/status/1288076705634988035)

In particular, the shape and labels of those buttons on the sides make it look like LCARS interface with physical parts.

<comment><USER32> That's the first consumer model, not a prototype.

The keyboard might have been a mistake but the jogwheel was the best possible input device for the two core tasks of menu navigation and text highlighting. I miss it a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I find the tone of this Twitter post exhausting. He talks as if his work revolutionized the world and Jeff Bezos is a god among men.

They made a fairly useful gadget that sold well. Seriously, come back down to earth.

<comment><USER34> > They made a fairly useful gadget that sold well.

Perhaps a little bit breathless, but it was an amazing thing at the time. I remember buying one (a DX) from Malyasia, (because they weren't available in Australia), through a reseller (some company who bought stacks of them and resold them around the world). It was a talking point for a long time - <USER2> would ask me about it on the train etc. I still have it and still marvel at its amazingness occasionally.

Edit: remembered some more - laptops at the time had awful battery life, this thing could carry thousands of books and last weeks from one charge. I could download any book (mostly) instantly, before that I'd order books from the states, they'd take weeks to arrive and cost a fortune. It was an amazing thing.

<comment><USER35> Somebody would have created an ebook if not for Amazon. They were just well placed to do so, but they didn't invent any of the technology or concepts.

Much like Apple and touchscreen phones, or Tesla and electric cars. The might have advanced the tech by a couple of years but they were profiting off the inevitable.

<comment><USER36> IIRC from the Everything Store there was some conjecture that the Amazon "read the first chapter" feature paved the way to mass digitalization of books. So they were well positioned to launch with decent selection and ramp up faster than if they relied on the pace of distributors. If any amazonians from around that time could confirm that would be cool...

There is art in execution too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've read quite a few posts on the thread and all I got is "Jeff did this,Jeff did that.Jeff is amazing,Jeff is cool. Jeff is brilliant.Jeff,Jeff,Jeff..". Of course he was pushy and demanding to get the results,but come on,give some credit to others too.

</comment><comment><USER38> One key takeaway I have from this story is that the core skill of making a business and making it work – is critical and different from the "business idea" itself. It means that if you are a good "businessman", you can start a new business in a new field, and possibly succeed. That's why we see so much "pivoting" and forays into new ideas. Here Bezos and Amazon jumped into two completely new things they hadn't done before: the Kindle, and AWS. And they succeeded! You don't have to stick with what's familiar, easy, or what's your "area of expertise". You can jump into new stuff, new project, completely new & innovative endeavors, and very well possibly succeed!! So HAVE HOPE!!! That's my takeaway from this!

</comment><comment><USER39> > He insisted on syncing over cellular, and he didn't want to charge the > customer for data. We told him it couldn't be done, he did it anyway.

This is really interesting. I wish he went into more detail about this.

<comment><USER40> Some fun tidbits:

Every Kindle had a unique phone number.

By the time your Kindle shipped to you, it knew who its owner was, and had already logged you in and downloaded all your books.

Any time we wanted to push updates to them, we'd SMS it (IIRC) and the Kindle would connect back to figure out what needs doing.

Original Kindles had an (awful) web browser (and didn't charge for data). It was not bad at Google maps

<comment><USER41> I recall shaving one or two bytes off one of the cell messages shaved something like $7MM off the monthly AT&T bill...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The basic stuffups in the GUI are astronomical. Try author search. Sorry.. we just do what we do. Yes you typed john le Carre but it suits us better to show you authors LIKE John le Carre.

Whyyyyy

</comment><comment><USER43> The story is about a creative response to Apple's decimation of the music industry's business model. It signalled the time had come to bring digital distribution to books, and Bezos was one of the few in the business to realize that. I'll agree that the hardware never satisfied, but while I'm sure it's been a disappointment to many, it certainly has not stopped the trend nor has it hurt the kindle project much.

</comment><comment><USER44> > _Jeff fired Steve from his job and reassigned him to build Kindle. Steve's > new mission: destroy his old business._

Fun fact for trivia night: Steve, after he returned from his sabbatical, would go on to head the _Amazon Go_ division. Some amazingly diverse set of leadership roles over the years for him. His _Kindle_ portfolio was handed over to Dave Limp, an ex-Apple executive.

</comment><comment><USER45> \- Ebooks are the most important invention of the XXIth century.

\- Jeff Bezos is a God.

\- A bunch of weird corporate tactics worked for us at the time so they are lessons on how to make a successful product.

<comment><USER46> Yes, there's definitely a bit of survivorship bias going on here. The lesson isn't to compete with yourself, or ignore all of your advisors, or trying to pivot your business model after a crash etc etc. There are plenty of businesses who have failed doing all these things. I suspect that Jeff Bezos had a vision, and these are more side effects rather than the reason for its success.

<comment><USER23> Some of the stuff they say are completely inaccurate

He claims Kindle as the first ereader to use an eInk screen

Sony ereader launched a YEAR before and had an eink screen

Also this guy seems to be a worshipper rather than an unbiased or somewhat objective observer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Which is the best for programming/math reading and for sketching notes while reading them?

<comment><USER48> Remarkable

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's not clear from the thread what was Rose's role in developing the Kindle. Is this common knowledge?

I tried to look him up and it looks like he's running a VC fund and is a former VP of mergers and acquisitions at Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER50> I loved how older paperwhite wasn't flat. I mean the border was risen-up.

Modern paperwhite and oasis have their screen hidden behind layer of think transparent plastic. You don't feel like your are staring at actual paper anymore

</comment><comment><USER41> Fun fact: the original Amazon Echo has a significant amount of Kindle software in it, developed by the same branch. The later releases switched to Android for no particularly good reason...

<comment><USER40> I'm so sorry :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A man with a vision. Kudos to him

</comment><comment><USER52> Based on radiocarbon dating researchers say GoodReads is built by Ancient Aliens.

<comment><USER23> anyone who has used Good Reads loves your comment

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> the bit about 100k books at launch at 9.99 could have been dumping no? He makes no mention of the publishers coming to an agreement on such a low price. Usually e-books like that are 19.99 iirc.

<comment><USER32> At the time, "e-books like that" did not exist.

The publishers were not happy, sued in combination wither other tech companies, and introduced agency pricing as a response. A story with no heroes or winners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> if only our system incentivized the geniuses to become obsessed with making the world a better place...

</comment><comment><USER55> Just give me an affordable 8 inch !

<comment><USER55> So tired, of 6inch everywhere

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Wait, kindle is a piece of hardware and not just an app?! /s

<comment><USER57> I had a prs-900 (sony daily reader). I remember at the time comparing it with the Amazon alternative and the Sony one being way better in both how open it was, features and speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Bad storytelling.

</comment><comment><USER59> what's the story with bezos' helicopter crash?

<comment><USER57> www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-helicopter-crash-2018-3

<comment><USER60> The photo of the wreck [http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/amazons-jeff-bezos- helicop...](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/amazons-jeff-bezos-helicopter- crash)</comment></comment></comment>


CSS Learning Roadmap - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/sfl-newsroom/css-learning-roadmap-2b17346d2316 <comment><USER2> Article not quite finished yet</comment>


CAPTCHArt - <AUTHOR> http://www.captchart.com/

<comment><USER2> I've seen pretty much all of them; a lot of them are quite mediocre. This is one of the few good ones in my opinion:

[http://cooxncookies.tumblr.com/post/945061795/dingo-at- sea-c...](http://cooxncookies.tumblr.com/post/945061795/dingo-at-sea- captchart-youre-comics-why)</comment>


Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/04/protected-bike-lanes-traffic-safety-cambridge-bicycle-plan/586876/ <comment><USER3> I've lived in Cambridge or neighboring Somerville every year but one since 1989. The cycling infrastructure is much improved and still deadly.

Just yesterday, I approached an arterial Street from a side street at 6pm. Cars on the arterial were moving about 8 MPH. I dismounted my bike, and began walking across the arterial in the crosswalk. As I re-mounted on the other side and resumed riding, a white man in a mid-size SUV leaned out his window and said loudly to me, "I hope you get hit!"

This morning on my way to work, a driver popped out of a side street from my left side directly in front of me. As I was along side of him, he swerved hard to the right and into a parking lot (no signal of course).

I've been a daily bike commuter in Cambridge for 12 years. We desperately need infrastructure that forces drivers to respect cyclists as equal road users. There is hardly a day that I don't _almost_ get hit by car while cycling.

<comment><USER4> The thing about cycling is that it's basically fast walking. In places where cycling dominates people only ride as fast as a quick jogger (10 mph is a 6 minute mile). The correct model for cycling isn't space on the road, it's an extra sidewalk with an accommodating turning radius. This is what you actually see in The Netherlands. People think of public spaces as roads and as roads as places for cars to drive and park, so they get hung up on "sharing the road," but really the thing to do is shrinking the road and enhancing places for people.

<comment><USER5> You won't find a cyclist who opposes dedicated, protected lanes that are separate from roads and sidewalks.

It is almost always the car drivers who don't want to sacrifice the single lane required to make a two way, protected bike lane. Case in point, Peachtree St in Atlanta ~3 years ago.

[https://www.ajc.com/news/traffic/bike-lane-plan-for- peachtre...](https://www.ajc.com/news/traffic/bike-lane-plan-for-peachtree- road-hits-dead-end/vPZiz5EQrgdwDpcuyTK4cK/)

[https://www.ajc.com/news/local/bike-lanes-peachtree-road- for...](https://www.ajc.com/news/local/bike-lanes-peachtree-road-for-the- percent-wheels/SqL6Q0veuNzA7JlCPTSL2H/)

<comment><USER6> Atlanta is a great example of where it makes no sense to have bike lines. I lived in Atlanta for eight years. It's a commuter city. The only people biking are relatively privileged yuppies living in the fancy new apartments and condos that have sprung up recently. Why spend public money, and inconvenience drivers in the process, for their sake?

If we're going to use up a lane, let's do it in a socially responsible way and make it a dedicated bus lane, which is what most people in need in Atlanta use to get around.

<comment><USER7> > _Why spend public money, and inconvenience drivers in the process, for their > sake?_

Because the cyclists, too, are part of the public? It's not like that public money is solely sourced from automobile drivers. Many people I know who live and work and pay taxes in Atlanta cycle _and_ drive, depending on where they're going. Are you really suggesting auto-drivers are more important citizens whose convenience matters more than the safety of others? Should Atlanta also start de-prioritizing safe sidewalks and crosswalks so people who are walking all over Midtown and downtown don't inconvenience the drivers? Suggesting the many people who aren't traveling along on 4 or more wheels should be ignored for the sake of convenience to those who are seems awfully silly.

<comment><USER8>
      Because the cyclists, too, are part of the
      public? It's not like that public money is
      solely sourced from automobile drivers.

Then, would you be not opposed to requiring bicycles to be registered, bicyclists to be licensed & taxed just like cars & vehicular traffic does?

If you want a lane all to yourself isn't only fair that you pay your fair share toward the building, maintenance and repair of the lanes? Why should you get to use them free of cost?

<comment><USER5> We do pay our fair share, over half of the road funding in Georgia comes from general revenue, i.e. taxes everyone pays regardless of vehicle.

Don't act like my bike puts as much wear and tear on the road as your 3 ton SUV or the 18-wheelers and delivery trucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found a "simple trick that makes all drivers around me nice".

I put a pigeon on my helmet 8 years ago[1]. Everywhere I go I see smiles. I really makes every ride fun. One of my friends recently started also doing it, so its starting to catch on.

Pigeonriding transforms me from an awkward software engineer into an interesting person who people want to talk to. I have only had a handful of bad experiences[2] with drivers and other bikers in 8+ years that I have been riding (a few of those years I commuted on a bike year-round).

[1]:[http://www.pictureboston.com/blog/2011/08/14/a-leica- camera-...](http://www.pictureboston.com/blog/2011/08/14/a-leica-camera- street-scene-from-bostons-north-end/)

[2]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=1&v=2hJ_hzjlQsw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=1&v=2hJ_hzjlQsw)

<comment><USER10> OMG DID I JUST SEE YOU IN UNION SQUARE, SOMERVILLE? (Or was it your friend?) I noticed the pigeon.

(File under: it's a small world, I probably shouldn't act so surprised.)

<comment><USER9> That was my friend. He bikes in cambridge every day while I moved to the burbs and only commute when biking for an hour wont make me cold/wet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every person I know that bikes in Chicago has been hit at least once. Fortunately none of them have been seriously injured, but it is a constant danger.

There are lots of bike lanes downtown but they aren't protected or respected. We have a long way to go to make biking a safe form of transport like it is in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER12> I personally know 3 ppl that died in chicago. Two of them were my coworkers, died in the same year. :/

Sorry but if you have kids and family you are fucking stupid to ride bikes on the street in chicago. White bikes on sidewalks are not street art. Go to lakeshore path/606 if you are dying to ride bikes.

I got doored 2 yrs ago escaped only with broken wrist.

<comment><USER13> Then I assume you would support a similar law in Chicago as Cambridge passed?

<comment><USER12> Yes but aren't you back on the street with no protection where there are no bike lanes( most of chicago)?

<comment><USER13> I don't know Chicago, but I do know what's happened in San Francisco over the last 20 years. It's taken a long time, but the city is finally starting to take protected bike lanes seriously, sadly much of that is in response to lives lost.

When I first got here, it was just a fight for standard bike lanes. For either to happen, more people need to get on their bikes and ride. Contributing to your local bike coalition is also great way to help push these issues forward.

If everyone follows your advice and chooses to not ride because of the danger, then nothing will change, and the lives lost to poor road infrastructure and poor driver education will have been for nothing.

<comment><USER12> > If everyone follows your advice and chooses to not ride because of the > danger, then nothing will change

Are you seriously suggesting some ppl risk their lives for 'change'? Sorry I really don't want to trade my life for bike lanes, there are ppl counting on me to stay alive.

<comment><USER13> No, I don't want people to risk their lives for anything. I want things to change. 40,000 people die a year in the US while driving or riding in cars, following your logic, that is also extremely risky, and so we shouldn't do it.

<comment><USER12> I am not sure thats a correct analogy. Driving a car to work is not an optional activity for most ppl. Ppl riding their bikes in the city are doing it for fun/thrill/whatever, its an optional activity for 90% of the ppl doing it.

I have a theory that most of these ppl would stop doing it once the thrill/'cool factor' goes away with protected bike lanes.

<comment><USER13> That's an interesting theory. I think I've seen some studies that show the opposite:

85% increase in cycling with better infrastructure: [https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/tomguha/85-increase- cycling-a...](https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/tomguha/85-increase-cycling- attributable-better-infrastructure)

This shows a direct correlation between lower risk and increased cycling: [https://nacto.org/2016/07/20/high-quality-bike-facilities- in...](https://nacto.org/2016/07/20/high-quality-bike-facilities-increase- ridership-make-biking-safer/)

I especially like this quote: "A virtuous cycle is clear: With more infrastructure come more riders. Perhaps counterintuitively, with more infrastructure and more riders, safety improves. And the more bicycles there are traversing a city, the more it reaps numerous returns on investment, including the health benefits of cleaner air and greater physical activity." from [https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/buildings-and- cities/bike...](https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/buildings-and-cities/bike- infrastructure)

I don't think most people who are biking while commuting are doing it purely for the thrill, but that is a plus, no doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _" Local law now requires the city to erect vertical barriers between > cyclists and cars on any roadway that's rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured"_

I'm all for better bike lanes, but it seems kind of extreme to require this for _all_ new roads [0]. I used to live in Cambridge and rode my bike quite a bit. I never felt like I needed a dedicated lane on every side street, just on the main drags (where some of the new protected bike lanes were amazing to have).

[0] Actual ordinance available at [http://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID...](http://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID=5905&highlightTerms=cycling%20safety%20ordinance). I could be misinterpreting the language, and it seems they will allow for some very limited exceptions, but the default seems to be that a typical side street would have a dedicated bike lane.

EDIT: after reading the actual ordinance again (and as a comment below pointed out), it seems that this only applies to streets that are rebuilt or improved _and_ are part of the city's plan for streets that should include bike paths. In other words, most random side streets wouldn't get bike paths.

<comment><USER15> Don't they get snow? With vertical barriers I'm confused how a plow will be able to properly clear the street.

<comment><USER16> Most of the existing separated bike lanes are incorporated into the sidewalk, and therefore protected by the curb. There are a few that are "protected" by rows of parked cars or bolted-down pylons, but this would seem to not be legal under the new law.

I'm actually not sure how they manage to get those bike lanes cleared, seeing as how the sidewalks are always covered in snow, but there seems to be some method.

<comment><USER17> There are smaller vehicles that are used to plow just the bike lanes in some parts of the world.

It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is quite low.

<comment><USER18> > It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people > who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is > quite low.

This is not necessarily true. Here in Copenhagen the amount of people cycling in winter is not significantly less than at other times of the year. That said, we don't have much snow, but the bike lanes are cleared before the road lanes (to incentivize not taking the car into the city).

<comment><USER16> The problem is more that twilight is around 4:30PM from December through February, rather than the weather. Though I suppose this might be less of a worry if cycling infrastructure were safer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is long term controversial issue. If you think the right answer is obvious you probably haven't dove down to the details, where it's much murkier. See in particular John Forester's _Effective_Cycling_. Forester believes that "cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles" and are not segregated from them. There are studies in this area pointing in both directions. One such concluded that putting bikes on multi- use trails makes cyclists less safe. A lot depends on the design of the bike paths, and a badly designed one can increase the risk over none at all.

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

<comment><USER20> I don't know a single cyclist who agrees with that statement.

<comment><USER21> I've been a transportation cyclist for roughly a decade and I agree with everything he said. Many cyclists do, particularly more experienced ones.

Bike lanes can be helpful, but they are not the panacea many people make them out to be. I think the main benefit bike lanes have is increasing the number of cyclists which leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. I think far too many bike lanes are made poorly, however, and these ones seem to be less safe than if there was no bike lane.

<comment><USER17> And yet protected bike lanes are proven to vastly increase the number of people who are willing to bike, which then makes biking safer for everyone because of sheer numbers. I'm a confident enough cyclist to bike in the street, take the lane, and ignore all the honking assholes, but my girlfriend isn't. The protected bike lanes are great because it means we can bike to things together.

<comment><USER21> I don't know if the increase in the number of cyclists outweighs the problems with the intersections.

I get the impression from your various comments here that you have never rode a bike in the US, so perhaps our experience differs.

On my daily commute in Austin I cross I-35 via a bike lane that is sometimes semi-protected. I think many inexperienced cyclists think that this is "safe" because it's sometimes protected, but I consider it to be actually a fairly dangerous intersection that I take reluctantly. Whenever the bike lane crosses a car lane, there are signs saying to yield to cyclists, yet I can only think of a single instance where a driver yielded to me without me having to use my air horn.

I can't find the details right now, but a local bike activist's wife actually stopped cycling because she found this intersection so dangerous:

[https://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=5464](https://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=5464)

(I don't see a mention of the particular intersection in that link, but as I recall this was it.)

Perception and reality can differ a lot, and I think that's what my criticisms come down to.

<comment><USER22> It's sad to me that I immediately knew the crossing in Austin you were talking about and it made me shudder. Thankfully I've never had to use it as a cyclist. However I do live near a "protected lane" in Austin that puts both bike lanes on one side of street. All that ends up doing is ensuring drivers never check the bike lane when they turn through it. It's awful.

<comment><USER17> It sounds to me like it's a very poorly designed intersection that isn't actually protected, then. I know some intersections like that here in NYC and yeah, they suck (one example being 2nd Ave in Manhattan through midtown at the bridge and tunnel). When there's a reasonable alternate route available I'll tend to take them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm a huge fan of protected bike lanes. Chicago has a few of them, and they are far less stressful to ride on compared to just basic striping on the road.

By far the biggest issue I have with striped bike lanes is trying guess when an Uber driver is going to do something crazy when picking up or dropping off a passenger.

<comment><USER17> My biggest problem with unprotected bike lanes here in Manhattan is that they are _so_ frequently illegally blocked, not just by Taxis/FHVs but also by people parking in them. And a lot of the unprotected bike lanes are basically just the door zone of a line of parked cars, so you need to ride to the far outside of it to avoid getting doored.

There's entire block-long stretches that I'll stay out of the unprotected bike lane entirely for, because it's so frequently blocked or so close to parked cars that it's more dangerous to be in there.

The protected bike lanes, on the other hand, are _much_ better. I wish we'd get this law here.

<comment><USER24> The fine for parking your car in a bike lane should really be a tow. Predatory towing companies in my town can grab a car in 10 minutes; it's spooky. They even have scouts. I feel like towing companies should be chomping at the bit to get action on this parking ignorance with bike lanes, which seems to be universal in any city with them.

<comment><USER17> Definitely. There's so much money to be made here in ticketing and towing people that are parking illegally. You would easily pay the salaries of the people doing it and then also send a lot more revenue back to the general treasury.

It always astounds me that they don't have more enforcement agents out there. On my 10 minute bike ride I routinely see at least one ticketable infraction per minute. Hell, give me a ticket book (and a percentage cut for my trouble) and I'll gladly go earn ticket revenue for the city myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I used to bike every morning from my house on Morrison Ave in Somerville to Riverside Boat Club, then from RBC to Central Square. I would then bike the reverse in the evenings.

Rides could be treacherous because the tension between drivers and cyclists when they share the road. There is a hard division established for commuting by foot (sidewalks) and drivers (roads), but none for cyclists. Both cyclists and drivers feel entitled to roads, but there are few parameters around how they interoperate with one another.

I think designating a division for cyclists is a great idea in a city with a high volume of cyclists.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just got back from a trip Amsterdam. If you want to see what the future of Cambridge could be - take a trip there. The cycling infrastructure is phenomenal and very heavily used. It seems the majority of streets had dedicated and protected cycle lanes on both sides. Even more impressive is that it doesn't stop at the city limits. It goes far far out into the countryside. They even had parking garages for bikes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I also wonder what all our resident PRIVATE PROPERTY enthusiasts think about on-street parking: what other of my 250 sq.ft. objects may I store on public property for free?

<comment><USER27> how big is your car? Damn....

<comment><USER28> 10 feet long, 2.5 feet wide

<comment><USER29> > 2.5 feet wide

no passenger seat or they all sit behind you in single file?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As a biker in Cambridge, I have mixed feelings about this. Biking in Cambridge is subpar, I lived in Berkeley, CA 4 years and biking was MUCH more comfortable there. I'm worried this will hinder the progress and slow down constructing new bike lanes. I want more protection BUT I also want bike lanes every where. If they're not gonna construct more bike lanes because now it has more regulation, this is a negative development. If this will not happen, this is a positive development. Time will show. I'm hopeful but skeptical.

<comment><USER31> Cambridge also seems to have a disproportionate number of unsafe bicyclists (and pedestrians) for some reason. Maybe it's all the students. It's probably a net good thing that cycling lanes are being improved although there are certainly tradeoffs given the traffic and parking situation. However, whenever I'm driving home up Beacon Street after dark, there are invariably cyclists zipping around with no lights, going up streets the wrong way, and pedestrians dressed in dark colors randomly quickly stepping out from behind parked cars into the street.

The bike lanes that now exist probably make things safer overall but there's a lot of dangerous behavior out there on the part of many types of infrastructure users (including cars as well).

<comment><USER32> > Cambridge also seems to have a disproportionate number of unsafe bicyclists > (and pedestrians) for some reason.

There's a certain "vicious cycle" element to this. If bicycling generally appears unsafe, then mostly (over)confident, risk-tolerant people will do it. Those are the same people who are comfortable getting away with unwise things like running stoplights the wrong way at dusk on their no-brakes fixie with a single tiny red blinkie mounted high on their messenger bag. ;)

It's also tied into a common argument against biking infrastructure: "Why would we build this? There aren't any people biking now." Chicken-egg, but there are many people who won't bike if it seems unsafe. And those people have a good chance of behaving more sensibly when they are convinced to ride.

<comment><USER3> Right. The argument "not that many bikes, why build bike lanes?" is a bit like "nobody crosses the river on a raft, so why build a bridge?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Protected bike lanes are key. I commute to work by bike, and use biking as my main form of transportation. My city has created many bike lanes, and encourages bikers to prefer those roads. Unfortunately, bike lanes have really just become double parking zones for delivery workers, ride shares, and people just who don't feel like looking for a proper parking space while their partner shops. Having to go around people double parked in the bike lane feels much more dangerous than biking on a regular street, since I have to go out into the middle of the road to pass them.

</comment><comment><USER34> I live and work in Cambridge and one of the new separated lanes is on my regular route to work. The design, I think has been mostly an improvement, with quibbles. There's definitely less chance of getting doored, but I don't like that the lanes go right through bus stops. Also, cars turning at intersections don't see you on the other side of parked cars.

A big plus, though is that the city actually keeps the lane cleared in winter. The regular bike lanes get to be pretty bad and blocked by parked cars when there's a lot of snow.

</comment><comment><USER35> While Baltimore is reversing protected a bike lane implementation as a result of pressure from retail business and constituents who prefer cars. (The neighborhood in question is one of the most affluent in the city.)

[https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore- city/bs...](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md- ci-roland-park-bike-lane-20190329-story.html)

<comment><USER36> My city did that. Only they waited for most of the businesses to fold first. What a great reward for weathering the recession those businesses got. Turns out when you kill parking in favor of bike lanes in a small city that does a lot of business by being a commerce destination for the surrounding towns it doesn't work well. Also nobody bikes here because the entire city is hills (plenty of people walk though) so bike lanes are an attempt to solve a problem that doesn't exist but they tried it anyway because they're politically fashionable, details of the specific situation be damned

<comment><USER35> This part of Baltimore doesn't fit this model, however, since parking was not removed. The bike lane was inserted between the parking zone and the curb. Previously, the bike lane was between the rightmost travel lane and the parking zone.

Poor driving, or factors related to poor driving, may be a contributor.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/08/30/dc-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/08/30/dc- baltimore-drivers-are-nearly-bad-it-gets-allstate-says/)

Or, it may just be an anti-cycling bias, but I don't have evidence to support this.

<comment><USER36> I'm not saying Baltimore did that. I'm just saying you can't just go around with a hammer looking for nails because you have a politically popular hammer. It's not going to work in every case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As both a driver and former cyclist, this is a great development that all cities should be doing.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a shift from car centricity to a transport centricity for roads. Looking back in time we had one from horses to trolleys to cars. Now we could be beginning to see them in a broader light. Transport is growing now to include all kinds of electrified (and Rapid!) transit, eg scooters, ebikes, hoverboard... When i lived in Cambridge, ell before the concept of a protected lane, bicycling was commonly known and utilized as the fastest means of transport: the pinnacle of sneakernet.

</comment><comment><USER39> Every city should be doing this. It's shameful how little attention we've paid to cyclist safety with city designs up to this point.

<comment><USER40> Its especially frustrating how cities will try almost anything to alleviate traffic instead of encouraging cycling. Its less taxing on the roads, it doesn't pollute, it doesn't require a schedule and best of all it takes up peanuts in space compared to a parking spot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There is already barely any parking in Cambridge, driving there already sucks... Let's see how much worse this is gonna get.

<comment><USER42> Good. Parking and driving are not well-suited to narrow roads in high density cities. There have been tons of studies that show this. This is as a Cambridge resident who struggles to find parking when I occasionally have to. Parked cars are truly a blight on our beautiful streets. Protected bike lanes are definitely [edit: probably] part of the route towards greater livability.

<comment><USER32> I agree mostly, except that there needs to be a _usable_ non-bicycle alternative to cars too. I love riding, but not everybody can do it all the time, for a large variety of reasons. Reducing in-city car usage is good, but just forcing it to be even more unpleasant is not going to solve anything.

<comment><USER20> Sounds like a job for.... public transportation!

<comment><USER43> Indeed, cycling and public transit go hand in hand. Even in the Netherlands, people don't ride bikes exclusively. For longer distances, they may ride their bikes to the train station, then take transit to the city center, or something like that. This makes it a lot easier to live without a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The major problem with protected infrastructure is that they do a poor job at managing intersection conflicts. Intersections are where the majority of collisions happen. If traffic cannot see other traffic when approaching an intersection, then some type of signage or traffic signal is required to control approaches to the intersection. But if you have too many modes of transportation making use of the intersection, then the phased signals start taking too long and you start having compliance issues. This then leads to more collisions.

</comment><comment><USER45> I live and work in Cambridge, MA. In my opinion, Cambridge and Somerville are not very bicycle friendly due to the fact that main streets were laid out before cars were common. As a result, there is basically only one route (via Beacon) to work for me via bicycle. Grid-cities like SE Portland, OR where I formerly lived, were much easier because you can ride on a street parallel to the artery, not on it. Its nice to see what Cambridge is doing, but its a much harder job than other cities face.

</comment><comment><USER46> I work in Kendall sq and have wanted to ride my bike into Cambridge the past 5 years.

I'm (almost) deathly afraid to ride make the short 4 mile trek across the river for exactly this reason. I lament every day I get on the T to slog for 45 minutes on a decrepit, slow, and usually broken train system. I arrive to work bothered by my commute almost every day.

For Boston/Cambridge being such a bio and tech hub, it's entire transit system (roads, busses, trains, biking) is amongst the worst I know of in the US.

Sad.

</comment><comment><USER47> I try to cross the street in my downtown are just walking from my parking garage to the office and some driver's think I don't have right of way and turn left or make right turns into me, because as a person, I don't count, even though I have the walk signal.

I'm almost tempted to just start video recording when I'm making the trip, and start reporting these people after getting their plate number.

</comment><comment><USER48> So all new street construction has to include bike lanes. Is there any provision to ensure a steady pace of road maintenance/upgrades? I think this strategy has a real risk of stagnating the already slow rate of road maintenance in a lot of places.

In places like Cambridge where there is money, it seems like a smart move. But making construction more expensive won't work everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER36> As much as I hate Cambridge I'm having a hard time finding fault with this. Bike lanes fit their needs really well.

<comment><USER49> Are there scooter companies in Cambridge? I've been hoping they would spur some major cities to invest in bike lanes but I'm not sure if that's the case here.

Either way, solid win all around.

<comment><USER36> The entire state of MA is highly unwelcoming to anything with two wheels and a motor that is less than a motorcycle (and even then it kinda sucks for them too). You say "scooter" or "moped" and suburban soccer moms and uptight politicians get images of New Dehli in their heads and that's too low class for MA so any organized attempt at doing that gets blocked by the power of arbitrary enforcement.

As another commenters mentioned they were there briefly before the .gov told them to get lost. The other thing about MA is that it's highly totalitarian. The government is mostly benign and the single party nature of the state means it doesn't cause too much discontent but trying to pull an Uber and provide a service that has popular support before the regulators can kick you out doesn't really work in MA because the people have little choice in the manner, the .gov can just say "this isn't good for you" and that's the end of it.

<comment><USER50> MA already had laws statewide mandating bike lanes on new construction and renovation. This has led to the situation near my house where a highway intersection (Route 1 and 495) was rebuilt and a bike lane added for about 1000 feet on a road that has a 55mph speed limit. There is no bike lane on the rest of Route 1, just around the intersection where the construction happened. Now we have a bike lane that will never be used confusing the drivers trying to figure out where they should be when taking the entrance ramp onto the highway. This is a suburb around 40 miles outside of the city.

I'm all in favor of bike lanes but these types of blanket mandates aren't the solution because it eliminates the community's ability to use common sense and apply the law logically. So you wouldn't be encouraging biking across a ramp with no signals and cars going from 55 mph to 65 mph for example.

<comment> frosted-flakes Well, it seems to me that constructing bike lanes piece-meal as roads are re- built is the most cost-effective way to do it, even if it results in a super fragmented bike lane network at first.

As far as bike lanes across freeway entrance ramps goes, great, if it's done right. The bike lane should be painted solid green or red where it crosses the ramp, with a "Yield to " sign. The rebuilt interchanges in my city are like this, and the coloured lane is a visual obstruction that forces drivers to take notice of any cyclists on it. I've both cycled on and driven across these lanes, and they work well, far better than the alternative.

Also, bike lanes on 55 mph roads is fine if there are no alternative roads for cyclists to use. Often, this just means paving a wide shoulder and putting regular "" signs as reminders to drivers. Even if only a few people a day ride it.

Edit: it looks like the commenting platform strips out the "U+1F6B2 BICYCLE" character, used twice above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> It will be interesting to see what effect this has. A few things I predict:

1\. The price of housing with off-street parking will rise even faster now.

2\. A lot of off-street parking in the neighborhoods will be eliminated, forcing some people who have to drive to work outside the city to move.

3\. The speeds of cars will increase because the roads will feel wider

<comment><USER52> How wide are the typical lanes there now? I believe the newest best practice is for 10 ft wide lanes, though many cities have been making them 12 ft for a while. Narrower lanes are great for slowing traffic down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Emigrate to the Netherlands. No, seriously. Vote with your feet.

<comment><USER54> Not really viable for most people though is it? And "it's fine in the Netherlands so we don't need to bother here" isn't a great attitude either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> It is funny to see Cambridge labelled a 'Boston suburb'. That was clearly written by someone who has never visited Cambridge, MA or even the Boston area.

<comment><USER56> Never been there, could you explain?

<comment><USER57> I live in Cambridge, MA and would need it explained.

<comment><USER58> Cambridge is a city of 100k people, not a suburb. For comparison, Boston has 600k.

<comment><USER37> I wouldn't describe Cambridge as a suburb, but plenty of suburbs have populations larger than 100k.

<comment><USER17> The key distinction is that suburbs are largely residential and composed of lower density housing, which does not describe Cambridge accurately.

<comment><USER59> Waltham is further away too and has > 100k people. It's hard to say if these cities are suburbs or not.

Waltham, Newton, Cambridge, etc.. are very dense.

There is a clear delineation in density with a lot of these. Usually it's whether the town/city is inside 95, but Lexington is not very dense and is inside.. I think Lexington fits the mold of suburb where as Newton & Waltham feel urban.

<comment><USER17> What about Somerville? I've been there a few times and at least the parts I was in felt more like a small city than the suburbs. Everything was well- connected with mass transit and walking seemed to be a very popular mode of transportation (which it isn't in the 'true' suburbs I've been to).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I really appreciate the mental model expressed here: [https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/15/how-to- turn-a-...](https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/15/how-to-turn-a- stroad-into-a-street-or-a-road)

The TL;DR is that a street is in a dense area that's slow speed and welcoming to all forms of transit, A road gets cars at a fast speed from point A to point B, and a "stroad" is the worst of both worlds and a common anti-pattern in many sprawly areas.

</comment><comment><USER61> Asking for anyone who might know: how is it that this article is at the #1 spot on the front page already. It was submitted by an account created 21 minutes ago, and it seems unusual that it would displace things like the Assange story, which has over 800 comments.

<comment><USER36> Up-vote rate over time is highly weighted and it's east coast business hours right now so there's a lot of people from MA mashing the upvote button.

<comment><USER62> The voting mechanism here is a bit opaque. I think it also considers trends. So a an article with 60 votes in a short time period will probably climb higher than an article with 800 votes but slow increase.

Activity on the submission (views and comments) probably also has an influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Cambridge can't even fix potholes and plow snow, but this is where they decide to spend money. Some real galaxy brains.

</comment><comment><USER64> (insert bike credentials here)

For me one of the largest (if not THE largest) factor* in bike safety is route choice, and the main factor in that for me is density and speed of car traffic. As comfortable as I feel "vehicular" cycling (e.g. cutting across lanes to take a true left turn, taking the lane to avoid the "dooring zone" along parked cars), those are the moments when I am most exposed and at risk. Likewise the safest intersections are those that do not have cars passing through!

As an example, a colleague of mine commutes from near my house to our office, and we take very different routes - him along a major artery with (mostly) protected bike lanes, me along back streets with sharrows or no bike markings at all. Even in a protected line, he has to contend with fast and constant traffic alongside him, frequent intersections where he has no protection and is even harder to see (since he's popping out from behind a line of parked cars); the intersections are constantly in use and drivers turn and accelerate faster to make smaller windows in the faster traffic. My commute along back streets is leisurely; I can ride in the middle of the street without fear of getting doored or getting overtaken at speed unexpectedly, and intersections are calm. Of course the major artery is more direct (and so perhaps slightly faster), but it's also a major designated bike route and for that reason sees a lot of bike traffic even though I think it's less safe.

Of course in denser neighborhoods and cities it may be difficult to find "back streets" with minimal car traffic and which still get to where you're going. Still, I think that should be a goal of new bike infrastructure development - I'm happy to act like a car, make turns from the correct lane, stop at red lights, signal, etc., and I don't need a protected bike lane either - a normal road with light, slow car traffic is fine. A set of these which connects the major neighborhoods in a community (e.g. running parallel to arteries but not quite in the central areas) makes for a very nice bike experience (c.f. Berkeley's bike boulevards which is naturally my inspiration here!).

So, when this article mentions the requirement of protected bike lanes on all streets, while I think that's great and I love seeing bicycling given more consideration in urban planning, I also think that it seems a little coarse. Some roads don't need to have any bike traffic at all, some roads can be wonderful for biking without any modification at all, and some roads ought to be made better for biking but in more nuanced ways (primarily traffic easing - roundabouts, narrower roadways, removing through-access, etc - <USER2> discourages car traffic without impeding bike traffic). Of course if you want to build independent bike trails (or non-grade lanes, or other more significant changes) that's wonderful too!

 _Other important factors IMO:

_ Cyclist density - everyone should bike! Probably preaching to the choir here but there's safety in numbers, drivers get used to seeing cyclists and how they behave, and it makes it easier to advocate for better infrastructure. Also relevant on a micro-level for route choice * Cycling experience/behavior - including "vehicular" maneuvers, general awareness of dangerous/risky situations and driver behavior * Lights</comment>


Travel the world with an awesome group of hackers and designers - <AUTHOR> http://hackerparadise.org

<comment><USER2> would I have to come for the entire time?</comment>


15-second ads coming to Amazon's Alexa - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/05/amazon-alexa-ads-voicelabs/ <comment><USER2> stupidest thing I've ever heard of. It will probably be huge.</comment>


Google+ and Search Signals: Tinfoil Hat Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.christopherspenn.com/2011/07/google-and-search-signals-tinfoil-hat-edition/ <comment><USER2> Interesting analysis. Would be an interesting experiment to look at how the shared items gain velocity and what they look like. Even more interesting would be to compare them to the curves that reddit published for items that make the front page over there.</comment>


Thermodynamic impact of human domination of the biosphere (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4534254/ <comment><USER2> "Because there is no substitute or replacement energy for living biomass,"

Huh? Energy is energy.

<comment><AUTHOR> So if you run out of food you can just eat batteries? Unless you are the AI I've been waiting to meet, that's not going to work so well.</comment></comment>


Breaking Your "Four Minute Mile" - <AUTHOR> http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2006/06/25/breaking-your-four-minute-mile/

<comment><AUTHOR> I ran across this article while browsing today, and I thought the story behind it was quite good (and the article a bit motivational).

I have always held the belief that you should question "conventional wisdom" and strive for the Beyond. You either learn that the wisdom was correct or that circumstances have changed enough that you have a real innovation. We place psychological barriers in our way all the time; we should keep a vigil eye towards breaking down those assumptions.</comment>


Ask HN: "Founders at Work" of Gaming Startups - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in reading interviews of founders of great computer games. Besides "Masters of Doom", are there any other books?
I'd love to read things on the founding of Wow / Lineage / Everquest; the start of Duke Nukem / Unreal / Halo / Mario; ... or anything else along those lines.
Book preferred, but list of interviews cool too.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> IMHO, gaming industry is not very lucrative as a whole. As a rule, releasing a succesful project doesn't guarantee that you willl have funds for the next one. Therefore, teams developing games can hardly be called startups.

Anyways, I think you are better off collecting and reading individual articles in specialized press i.e. Gamasutra, Kotaku etc. If you want to read about the making of past titles, seek postmortems.

As far as I can understand it, gaming industry and innovation went searate ways. You are either (a) making multimillion-dollar blockbusters and bound by capitalists and IP holders, or (b) try to do whatever you want with your friends with nearly zero chance to be noticed by the industry or consumers.

There is a certain line of thought about computer games (here we're talking variant b, or underground): Games are a new art form in its infancy. Really, think about it: game can do (kind of) what music and cinema can, and more: it is interactive! As other art forms, it is looked down at and tries to copy other, more recognized art forms (as cinema was looked down upon compared to theater and tried to imitate it). Therefore, adherents of this line of thought say, we must experiment and we should find expressive means unique to such art form as games. If you want to learn abouut this approach, I suggest you start here: <http://tale-of-tales.com/> it's home of Tale of Tales, Belgian developer of art games. The site is rich in content and contains many links to other like-minded sites.

<comment><USER3> _You are either (a) making multimillion-dollar blockbusters and bound by capitalists and IP holders, or (b) try to do whatever you want with your friends with nearly zero chance to be noticed by the industry or consumers._

The gaming industry is changing though. A lot of iPhone games have been successful on a smaller scale. There are also several promising social gaming startups like Zynga and Playfish. And there have been a lot of game startups out of China getting funding based on virtual-goods business models. All this stuff is pretty interesting and offers the potential to make a hit game without working for EA.

<comment><USER2> Nice to know. Would you please name the startups from China or point me to articles about them?

Also, electronic distribution (i.e. Steam) may free indie developers from the shackles of publishers.

<comment><USER3> Here's a list of game & "virtual world" companies that got funded in 2008.

[http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/26/second-revision-game- and-v...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/26/second-revision-game-and-virtual- world-fundings-reach-935-million-in-2008/)

Notable in that list from China are 9you and G10. Also from China there is tencent a.k.a. QQ (curious that their company names are all combinations of numbers, letters, and english words) which is not a game per se but they are making a lot of money selling virtual goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've only read a bit of this book so far but it seems pretty neat -

Vintage Games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time

<http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/2214>

It's not exactly interviews of founders; they don't really focus on the people who made the games per se. But it talks about how the various games were created, and it's pretty interesting.</comment>


ThinkGeek calls off deal with HotTopic. Sells to GameStop instead - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/sorry-hot-topic-gamestop-owns-thinkgeek-now-1708529608

<comment><USER2> Slightly better fit. Not looking forward to pre-order requests at the register.</comment>


Ask HN: What will be the bigggest technology story of 2010? - <AUTHOR>

In light of TechCrunch's wrapup of the biggest stories of 2000-2009, what do you think will be the biggest technology story of 2010?  Apple undermining the cable networks?  Facebook going public?  Twitter getting bought?  The CrunchPad getting fixed? ...  Let's hear it! <comment><USER2> The rebirth of the technology IPO. Two of the following five will IPO: Facebook, Zynga, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to be a contrarian and predict that tablets fail to gain traction outside of a small niche market. The Apple tablet will be an amazing piece of technology, sure, but I don't think that people are going to want to carry around a device of that size without having a physical keyboard for input.

<comment><USER4> Gorilla Arm alone makes tablets a total nonstarter. Even if you don't have to awkwardly cradle the thing in your arms while you use it, you still have to hold out your arm to poke at it.

Microsoft only persisted with their Tablet PC crap for so long because the thing was designed for their middle managers to fiddle with in their constant meetings.

<comment><USER5> At the point where the display is as e-ink readable as paper, the touch part is as sensitive as an iphone, the screen is also as sensitive to pen input as a wacom tablet, and the software is good enough for touch-doodling, pen- drawing, typing, sketching, all interchangably and neatening up diagrams for you, then you will have it on your desk instead of a notepad, instead of a phone message pad, you will look down and work on it like a jotter instead of cradling it like a child or mouting it vertically at head height and arms length.

But we're not there yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Apple tablet revolutionizes modern medicine as a simple checklist app tailor made for doctors reduces hospital mistakes by 50%.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cell networks as dumb pipes.

EDIT: "becoming" to "as"

<comment><USER8> And it's complement, anything and everything can be given access to the network over the air. Your car, your washing machine, your golf bag; the wiring closet at work, the front door of your apartment building, fire hydrants, parking lots.

Data everywhere is a precondition for endowing the world around us with intelligence.

<comment><USER9> Hmmm, that strikes me as something to hope for in the next decade, but I can't see it happening in the next year, if for no other reason than the network buildouts required (e.g. after so many years of cutting capex, how long will it take AT&T to merely catch up with current demand?)

<comment><USER8> The thing is it's already here to some extent, and there are some widespread deployments of embedded OTA data products, kindle, On-Star, various netbooks with modems included, commercial washing machines(for laundromats), alarm systems; there's a lot of product already out there.

Yes, it's a long term trend, but it's growing stronger and there's a lot of equipment that's only going to be reporting 20-30kb of data per month. And the cost of the parts has fallen along the same curve as most other electronics. A $40 dollar broadband module can pay for itself with one service call or critical alarm, depending on the context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Augmented Reality. Facebook in school. Teaching through Social networks. Elimination of old studies and introduction of new concepts. Nano technology more in your face. Mobile devices replacing computers. We getting a cure for cancer. We growing limbs again. The futures fine to look forward to.

Unless we destroy ourselves before that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Tablets, tablets everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> Foundational cloud computing becoming _really_ big.

By "foundational" I mean the raw level stuff like Amazon Web Services such as S3, EC2.

</comment><comment><USER12> Real-time web starts being much more a part of the average user's browser experience.

<comment><USER13> Not just the web but services such as <http://waze.com> as well. Indeed though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A huge step forward towards real broadband ubiquitous Internet access (A larger clearwire wimax rollout perhaps?)</comment>


Raw Nerve by Aaron Swartz - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve <comment><USER2> Part of my extreme, _EXTREME_ shock at the tragic, horrible news about Aaron was quite how much I enjoyed this series + found it utterly engaging. Usually stuff on this topic is full of bullshit, but Aaron really had some very interesting things to say here.

Another wonderful, challenging and _important_ article was the one on faith in science - <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/sciencefaith>.

RIP Aaron.

<comment><USER3> Treating life as a hackable problem seems to be a recipe for despair. It may be interesting, but there lies madness.

<comment><USER2> Really, you think so? Please expand. Do you mean perhaps that might make it more difficult to deal with things you can't control?

<comment><USER3> I think that when you're young and really smart you think you can reason your way through tough problems because for a lot of problems other people find difficult it's been true. Eventually you'll learn that for many of the toughest problems in life, no clever algebraic trick exists to sort it all out, and you either learn something or you go down the rabbit hole. My first rabbit hole was mortality (I lost sleep for months trying to reason my way around mortality), and my second was simple financial transactions. Relationships, kids, politics, justice -- anything involving other people -- tend to be intractable problems.

One of my "great insights" was figuring out that I didn't understand how I made decisions -- that when I consciously made a decision wasn't when I decided but more like when I became aware that some kind of unconscious tipping point had already been reached. When I have mentioned this to other people I have _never_ ended up in an argument -- they either nod at me as though it's about time I figured this out, or they stop and think about it and agree.

This insight is almost a cliche in matters such as romance, but really it applies to almost everything. When you realize how little we know about our own consciousness, how our rational minds are constantly fooled into thinking they're in charge, the idea we can truly just reason our way out of every kind of problem quickly becomes laughable.

I'm very sad that such a brilliant guy killed himself, but looking at all his blog posts with dewy eyed admiration is morbid, silly, and perhaps even dangerous. Suicide is stupid and -- worse -- selfish. It's not cool or tragic or deep — just sad.

How to be productive, achieve great things, etc.? Hint: do not kill yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Raw Nerve is the best series I have ever read on getting better at life. In the last email communication I had with him (when he wrote only 4 parts of the series), I suggested that he turn it into a book. This was his reply,

<http://jumpshare.com/v/Z7HjqR>

Mirror: <http://i.imgur.com/qPzol.png>

</comment><comment><USER5> yep he had many controversy too but he did many good things too. Dan Haubert,Ilya Zhitomirskiy and now Aaron Swartz dont know what is happening. is the situation so bad that life has no meaning.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why are people posting all of his stuff after he's died? Because I'm pretty sure it's not because the 3 part trilogy of his life just ended and now it is the best time to marathon. Karma whoring at its finest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally why I posted this: loved the essays when they came out. And I know many people have not read them. More than that, even many people here on HN had never heard of the guy or don't know his mindset. Those essays open up a lot of who he was.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for posting them. I admire Aaron's work very much but will admit to not knowing of everything that he has written. I guess I don't have the photographic memory like the parent commenter</comment></comment></comment>