S.F. cracks down on Airbnb rentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-cracks-down-on-Airbnb-rentals-5381237.php <comment><USER2> The money quote from the article:

> "They thought it was OK to rent out on Airbnb because the company didn't > tell them otherwise. Airbnb should be defending these tenants, or they > should disclose to every person who rents in San Francisco that (short-term > rentals are illegal) and tenants are being evicted."

This is interesting. If it is indeed illegal for any renter to use air bnb in San Francisco, then it seems logical to me that AirBnb should at the very least make the person renting out a place check a box that very clearly says

1) they own their own place

2) they have checked with their building, if its a condo or shared building, to ensure that its legal for them to rent out their place.

<comment><USER3> The tenant signed a lease, and should be aware of the clauses within it.

Usually leases forbid subletting w/o the landlords approval.

<comment><USER4> At least in this case, it appears to be a law that is being violated, rather than a clause in a lease. The clause in the lease that is getting people evicted states, "any illegal activity". So just reading your lease is insufficient to determine whether or not one could rent a room.

Further, from the article:

"San Francisco bans all residential rentals of less than 30 days unless the hosts have a conditional use permit - an expensive and cumbersome process that virtually everyone ignores. The ban applies whether the hosts own or rent, paying guests visit frequently or once a year, or hosts rent out a room or an entire dwelling."

So at least in SF - anyone using AirBNB _at all_ is breaking the law, irrespective of one's lease or ownership status.

<comment><USER5> There still is (at least to me) a difference between specific illegal activity involving housing laws and simply any illegal activity in the apartment. Can you get evicted for, say, lying on your taxes from your apartment?

<comment><USER6> The point here is "using the apartment for an illegal activity".

<comment><USER5> That's what I mean. I've heard of people getting evicted for drug offenses conducted from the apartment, but not for lying on taxes from the apartment.

<comment><USER7> If it could be proved that you "used the apartment" in lying on your taxes, I don't see why it wouldn't be legally enforceable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Assuming they live in a unit subject to The Ellis Act, SF renters benefit from ludicrous amounts of rent control that cause unending headaches for small- scale landlords. No sympathy for the renters in question here whatsoever.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Act)

I have personally run into a guy who was subletting his unit out for twice his monthly rent. This is completely illegal and with good reason. The Ellis Act was not put in place to help renters make a little extra cash but rather to protect them from sudden rent increases.

I don't agree with The Ellis Act, in fact I wish it would die because while I think it was well-intended, it has too many unforeseen negative consequences and effects. And before you dismiss me as some teabagger conservative, here's Paul Krugman on the subject of rent control:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a- rent-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent- affair.html)

And AirBnB should know better. No sympathy for them either.

<comment><USER9> Good to see Krugman actually got something right, even if it was back in 2000. SF has many ridiculous laws pertaining to real estate and rentals. If they got rid of rent control and eased their building restrictions they'd have more housing and more affordable housing.

<comment><USER10> They would certainly have more housing, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be any more affordable. There is simply more people who want to live there than it could possibly support, even now. Hell, I'm a developer and I can't even afford to live there.

<comment><USER11> It most certainly would be more affordable, but just not immediately. There is a backlog of 30+ years of market correction to endure before things return to where they should be. How quickly that correction occurs depends on the political will of those governing the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Airbnb doesn't have to know about laws in every places, but if it knows about such laws (and that they're being actively enforced) in SF and NYC, why allow people to announce or rent places there in the first place?

There are plenty of services (online streaming) that will tell you "sorry, our service is not available in your country/city/etc".

The fact Airbnb is allowing this to continue makes me question their ethics. It's all good they want to change the law but while they haven't had success in the area, is it worth the bad press and headaches for renters?

<comment><USER13> I have lived in 6 different jurisdictions in three countries. None of them allowed short term rentals (<30 days) without appropriate zoning, license, et cetera. This is not about differing laws in differing locales. This is about ignoring widely applicable law . . . granted law that is widely ignored with little consequence. AirBnB would not have a business if they made a good faith effort to comply with the law.

<comment><USER14> _This is about ignoring widely applicable law_

It seems that technology and culture have moved faster than law (shocking, I know) and that laws that might have been a good idea in one set of circumstances aren't anymore.

<comment><USER15> Alternatively, it could be that the law is more relevant than ever. The web (and airbnb in particular) has made it far more practical to turn the single family next door to mine into a hotel.

Does this mean that the law that says you can't do this is obsolete, or more relevant than it has ever been?

In the past, I was unlikely to suddenly discover that I live next to a hotel, because it was impractical. Now that it can be accomplished by going to a website, entering an address, and hitting the "create hotel" button, I need that legal protection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As an SF renter, this makes me happy. I have met too many people personally that have an extra bed room(or even keep their lease and moved to a lower-rent city) that they rent out to subsidize their rent. This reduces stock for actual renters and drives prices up.

<comment><USER17> How does forcing someone to leave an extra bedroom empty drive up prices?

<comment><USER18> Short-term tenants generally pay substantially more on a per night basis than real roommates (long-term tenants). Forcing only long-term tenants would thus presumably cause rents to move towards what the long-term tenant market can handle rather than the aggregate nightly rate achievable by accommodating lots of short-term tenants.

Naturally the reality is vastly more complicated but I believe that's the basic reasoning behind the "short term rentals drive prices up" line of thought.

<comment><USER6> Not only that, but some owners may decide to go full short-term leases to increase profits. That reduces the market for long term leases, hurting the housing market.

Now this is definitely the case for cities like Paris, were the law exists but is not enforced. I don't know of it's true for San Francisco where the price is already high from high paid locals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Many of the comments on sfgate refer to the moral ambiguity of profiting off of a rent-controlled property -- definitely an interesting wrinkle.

<comment><USER20> I don't see any ambiguity there. Airbnb is just one such abuse.

In talking to people, I've heard countless examples of "master tenants" charging incoming roommates much higher rent than an "even split" on the rent. In one extreme, a tenant in a 3 bedroom was living 100% rent free while the other two tenants covered the entire costs - until they learned of this and moved out on principle. Tenants moving in as roommates on rent controlled apartments are apparently even offering cash bribes exceeding $1k for the privilege of obtaining a spot.

Quite the broken system, imho.

<comment><USER21> Rent control is a broken system. You have cases of someone with a long rent controlled $1500 rent on a 3bdr that would go for 3k or 4k market rates. If they listed a bedroom at $500 on CL they would get ten thousand of applicants.

<comment><USER11> Furthermore, the quality of the applicants would be far lower than putting it on for market rate.

Someone who can afford $1500 a month is more likely to be gainfully employed with greater job security. They are also likely to be able to contribute much more to a household. Even if someone were to rent out a room for $500, it behooves them to select from the applicant pool those who are capable of paying $1500 a month.

Someone paying $500 and capable of $500 is less likely to want to contribute to common spaces and shared household necessities.

<comment><USER22> So you're saying that the main disadvantage with rent control is that poor people can afford the rent?

<comment><USER11> No, I'm 100% against rent control. What I'm saying that even if I had rent control and rented a room pro rata based on floor space, I would probably still choose someone as my roommate that could afford the high rent. I've had roommates that wouldn't pitch in for things like fixing things in the house and replacing things that needed replacing, and whose contributions to the commons were not desirable, like worn out, stained furniture.

If you put a ad on craigslist for a room for $500 today, you would go mad trying to select for the best roommate. Absent other automatic filters for roommates, like being able to filter on lifestyle choices/preferences, the ability to afford a high rent is a poor proxy for other desirable traits, but better than the alternative of no proxy. It's not like craigslist currently let's me put an ad out that only allows considerate, easy-going roommates with no undesirable habits to apply.

<comment><USER22> You don't personally want to live with the poors -- that's fine, you should get to live with whomever you want. I just think that using public policy to create a city-wide filter based on class and income just so you can get to inbox zero faster when you post a craigslist ad is maybe not right.

<comment><USER11> You're now just forming an ad hominem by twisting my words. Good for you. I want to live with people with the wherewithal to contribute equitably to the commons of the household in which I live. In my current household, I currently supply most of the common goods (sponges, garbage bags, soap, tools for home improvement, laundry detergent, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.). It gets pretty old after a while when no one else feels the need to contribute equitably. If I left things up to my roommates to take care of things, we'd run out of those basic needs. We are two days away from no toilet paper today and I'm certain that I'm the only one that thought to take care of that. I'm the only one in the house that buys the tools we need to fix things (drills, screwdrivers, pliers, etc.). I would prefer to live with people who, when inconvenienced by something that inconveniences us all, won't hesitate to pony up the cash to resolve it.

Personally, I absolutely despise the situation that exists in the city and thinks everyone is selfish and unwilling to bell the cat by applying the only solution that makes sense: more housing. The landlords are selfish. Those with rent control are selfish. The homeowners are selfish. The only people who aren't selfish are those at the bottom of the food chain getting taken to the cleaners by the landlords, primary tenants on the lease and the homeowners blocking all zoning improvements.

I'm not poor, but I'm certainly not rich either. I earn enough to to live in this city, but certainly can't afford to live comfortably at $1500 a month, especially when I help out two other family members with money. That being said, absent other better systems for filtering, putting out a classified ad at a high rate is still a practical proxy for what you want in a roommate, even though I'm one of those filtered out by an ad for a $1500 room.

If you were a master tenant with a 3 bedroom for $1500 a month, would you put a classified ad for each room at $500 each? Answer honestly. I don't think anyone would (or does since I've never seen such an ad on craigslist and I know that there is no lack of rooms that should cost that much with ~175,000 rent control units in San Francisco.)

Furthermore, with supply as constrained as it is, nobody will actually read you ad or care what it is you want in a roommate. At $500, everyone will apply whether or not they actually meet your criteria. Let's say you want to live with single, pet-free non-smokers between 30 and 40 and you say so in your ad. Do you think that hundreds to thousands of people who don't meet that criteria will refrain from sending you an email for a chance at living in a $500 a month room?

<comment><USER22> So you want to remove rent control and exclude hundreds of thousands of people from living in the city just to make it easier for you to find good roommates.

To borrow the words of master spy Sterling Archer: Do you want anarchist protestors? Because that's how you get anarchist protestors.

<comment><USER11> I'm getting to the point where I should stop feeding the troll, but I'll bite one last time.

No, I would grandfather in everyone in the city with rent control that currently has it and I would work on a legal mechanism that allows the grandfathered in right to rent control to be separated from the underlying property via a mechanism similar to one I've written about before here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437658)

Rent control messes up all housing markets, reducing the quality and quantity of housing for everyone. We can't undo the mistake that has been made, so the best we can do is find a way to phase it out in a way that allows the market to recover from rent control, but preserve the expectations of those that have come to rely on it. The city needs to increase the supply of housing and the way rent control currently works acts like a lock on a database. The city currently has ~175000 locks on n properties that are essentially undevelopable until you remove all the locks on the property.

I don't want rent control. I, and even most people with rent control, would actually be far better off in a parallel universe where San Francisco had never had rent control. Only those who have been in a property for decades actually benefit. The majority pay far more than they should be for the first couple of years and then in later years end up paying roughly what they would have in the parallel universe where rent control had never happened.

Furthermore, if you lifestyle changes and you want to raise a family, you've fucked yourself out of the market you love because you can't afford anything in the market by the time you decide you might want something different. When someone moves into a rent control place, they effectively check out of the housing market like an ostrich with their head in the sand. Basically, had they been back in the housing market every few years as their housing needs and expectations changed, they would have demanded more housing supply in the city. Rent control permits people to remain blissfully ignorant of the housing situation until one day something happens that causes them to be out of their unit such as an Ellis Act eviction. At that point I think to myself "boo hoo", because if they really wanted to live in a city forever they would have either bought property back when they first moved here or they would have demanded increased housing supply long ago so that they would never find themselves in a housing market they were priced out of. People who argue for rent control are downright selfish, since they basically get the benefits of a scarce good without any of the sacrifice (like saving for a down payment) and actively prevent developments which would reduce the scarcity so that others just like them that arrive later may also enjoy the benefits of living in a city like San Francisco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> While breaking the law is generally a bad idea and generally one should be punished for it, I was disappointed that both the article and comments on the article didn't delve into whether it is a 'good and fair' law in the first place.

I understand the ambiguity of a tenant virtually subleasing a property, which is a clause normally either allowed or not allowed in a tenant's lease, but the blanket ban of renting a room for a short number of days seems like a law that hotel lobbyists worked hard to get in place.

<comment><USER24> This isn't black and white.

Many landlords struggle because their tenants are paying below market rents. This is a particular problem in San Francisco, but also in other cities like NY.

On the one hand, you can say, "Joe taxi driver can barely afford rent, what's wrong with him leasing out his room when he's out of town?"

Then look at it from the landlord's point of view. They say, "I can't get a free market rent, because the law says that I can't evict Joe Taxi Driver. So I have to settle for less money, then he goes and rents the room out without paying me a dime."

Then look at Jane NewToTown. Jane says, "I would like to pay market rate for Joe's place. I can't, but if I want to stay for a few nights I can pay the renter who gets below market rates, rather than the landlord."

AirBnB isn't the cause of the problem - it exists because there is a problem that it being arbed.

<comment><USER25> I think what we are saying, essentially, is that Joe Taxi Driver is leveraging the fact that he cannot be evicted to engage in aggressive rent-seeking behavior.

<comment><USER4> That would be a reasonable conclusion if time wasn't a factor. Imagine if Joe Taxi Driver moved in when he could afford rent, and then the price of housing tripled in two years. Now, Joe's new roommates expect to pay 3x what Joe's old roommates paid. Additionally, Joe has far less housing security - he cannot move, even if he get's a 50% increase on his taxi receipts, he still can no longer afford market-rate rent.

It's unclear if Joe is now 'leveraging the fact that he cannot be evicted' because the cost of eviction is so high, and his 'aggressive rent-seeking behavior' is now merely an effort to make a little extra money on the moral hazard that has been dropped into his lap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I just came back from SF having used Airbnb (studio apartment under the house) for the duration of my stay. I looked at hotels and hostels, however the night rate of a hotel was simply too expensive and I hate staying in hostels. Airbnb was a cheaper alternative that meant I could actually afford to stay in SF, while there I used the trams, bought coffees in local coffee shops (not Starbucks), ate in restaurants and visited the Exploratorium, all of which I assume SF gets a slice of through taxes.

My hosts own their property and as a result I think they should be able to rent it out on a short term basis if they want to, they should have to pay a (small) percentage tax of the rate they charge though. I think the law should be looked at if for those who own their property. Villas in Europe are rented out legally all the time and it drives lots of tourism and provides accommodation at much better rates than hotels etc.

If the host rents, then their land lord should be able to evict them if they sublet and they're not allowed to - they agreed to the contract and they should stick to it.

<comment><USER27> Airbnb residents are often a nightmare for other tenants in the same building- they often function as de facto customer support and are forced to put up with the extra noise. Beyond the legality, this business model is plagued by extremes.

<comment><USER11> What's your basis for claiming this is an often occurrence? I have no doubt that there are nightmare airbnb hosts, but often is hardly warranted. I've lived as a roommate in a unit where the master tenant rents out on airbnb and in the dozens of interactions, I can think of at most one case where the person what an inconvenience to me and I can think of no cases where the person was an inconvenience to our neighbors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The lack of interest on the side of AirBnB is not very surprising: They know exactly that renting out apartments without a proper license is illegal in most parts of the world, they just don't care since they can externalize the risk to the owners of the apartments. Personally, I can understand the frustration of the people that are on the loosing end of this business model: Neighbors who find that their building has become a busy hotel complex, landlords who see the value of their property decline by overuse and noise, hotels that face an army of competitors which don't pay taxes and don't comply with existing regulations, and the whole community that faces increasing rents.

Uber provides a similar example by creating a "parallel market" for taxis and putting established companies (which comply with existing regulations) under extreme pressure. In general I'm a big fan of the "free market" model, but gaining an unfair advantage by just ignoring existing laws and hoping to get away with it is not a legitimate business practice, I think.

</comment><comment><USER29> A startup built on an illegal business model in it's most popular markets... sounds like a 20 billion dollar exit.

<comment><USER30> Enabling a large number of people to more easily do slightly illegal things can be viewed as an opening offer in a negotiation. If the scale is large enough that enforcing existing laws is unrealistic, what often happens is that lawmakers and offenders eventually meet somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER31> Why would it be too large to enforce? The drug war certainly isn't.

<comment><USER32> The drug war is also a spectacular failure and has been a main source of civil rights abuses until 9/11 response overtook it in that capacity (not that it doesn't continue to provide a healthy competition still). But yes, expecting that government wakes up to reason anytime soon may be overly optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Some people own their own home and still can't use Airbnb because their HOA (Home Owner Association) made a rule that you can't sublet your house. And if you are found in abayence of this rule, they can fine you any amount they want per day, and then if you still don't comply, they can sell your house and kick you out of it.

So people who have houses with an HOA, they don't technically own their house, they are just borrowing it from the HOA while paying the taxes, insurance, and doing all the work for them to keep the house up.

<comment><USER34> IANAL, but my understanding is that HOAs in California can't put a lien on your property for failing to pay fines, only for failing to pay dues.

Furthermore overly punitive fines aren't allowed, and that rule does in fact have teeth (and is also abused by homeowners to make it more expensive to collect fines from them).

That means if you pay your dues, but not your fine, the only option the HOA has to collect is to sue you. Once you pass the maximum for small-claims, that starts to get really expensive.

Lastly, each homeowner has a common-interest in the HOA, including an equal vote in board-members. For large HOAs, that becomes fairly moot, but for smaller ones, it makes a difference.

Now HOAs aren't all sunshine and roses (I prefer to not live in one, primarily since common-interest property tends to be run quite inefficiently), but it's not as bad as you make it out to be.

<comment><USER35> Yes, you are correct, on pretty much all of your points.

> IANAL, but my understanding is that HOAs in California can't put a lien on > your property for failing to pay fines, only for failing to pay dues.

Yes, _however_ , most HOAs _do_ have ways to make it difficult for homeowners who have become delinquent on fines. One common approach is that the CC&Rs allow a delinquent homeowner to be placed as "a member NOT in good standing", which means that the owner will be precluded from using the association amenities (pool, clubhouse, tennis court, etc.) or even being able to vote for board members, until the fine is paid off and the "good standing" is restored.

> Furthermore overly punitive fines aren't allowed, and that rule does in fact > have teeth (and is also abused by homeowners to make it more expensive to > collect fines from them).

Not only that, but the Davis-Sterling Act (which is the California state laws that govern common interest developments) as well as most of the local courts in California are _very_ much sided towards the homeowner and against the overall community. Much of the Davis-Sterling Act was written and approved at a time when there was a lot of concern that large community developments would do things to abuse and harm the individual homeowner, or more specifically, that the will of the majority (within a CID) would do things to make life as difficult as possible for those in the minority. Davis-Sterling (and the many of subsequent court cases that dealt with Davis-Sterling) was basically set up to help prevent that as much as possible, unfortunately sometimes to the detriment of well-meaning HOA Boards that are dealing with a delinquent homeowner that understands these loopholes and uses them to willingly violate rules, or skirt out of paying fines, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Good.

Before Airbnb, when craigslist was the go to for short term rentals, they were not only cheaper but didn't come along with the stigma of ruining the neighborhood or being treated like a customer instead of a guest. There was much more of a mutual respect and even a feeling of gratitude on both sides. Now with Airbnb the whole things wreaks of an (illegal) business transaction with a flimsy guarantee, neighbors who want to catch you, no such gratitude to speak of and the costs have doubled.

The whole thing is obnoxious.

<comment><USER9> Higher prices make a lot of sense. Airbnb provides a level of vetting and feedback that adds a lot of value and security to both sides. It's easy to scam someone on craigslist when there's no reputation system.

<comment><USER36> No it doesn't, I've been scammed as a renter on Airbnb and people have been scammed as hosts. The increased cost comes from the market transition from "let's help eachother while we're both on vacation" to "Come stay at my apartment while I stay at my friends place and make half my rent from you over the weekend."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What's the rationale behind having laws like these in place? Is it protectionism for the hotel industry, or is it more intended to protect apartment renters from unintended liability issues?

<comment><USER38> Its about liability and protection of the other people in the building. This type of law has a long history and a lot of things can go very wrong. This is a totally different story from Uber and the taxi industry.

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure it's all that different from Uber and the taxi industry:

* The medallion system gives owners something significant to lose it they become scofflaws, and while we all have horror stories about cab drivers, anyone who's traveled to Asia (or, for that matter, Italy) knows that we have relatively well-behaved drivers, even in the cohorts selected for worst incentives.

* The taxi companies are required to comply with rules that make taxis part of the fabric of transportation for the whole city (for instance, they're usually required to serve every destination within the city). Uber does not need to comply with these rules, and thus threatens not just cab companies but the transportation system as a whole.

<comment><USER38> I see your point and I guess I went a little far using "totally". In my mind, the governing factor in the taxi stories is a government created scarcity that results in some serious monopolies ($100,000 medallions). There is also a rather larger segment of private transportation other than cabs. The hotel / motel rules are less about scarcity than a history of really, really bad things happening.

People's homes are a pretty big issue in when threatened by neighbors that can destroy everything you own. People get the possibility of a car accident even if it can be much, much worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So, in this climate of protests and such, I wonder which news outlet will go with the "just trying to make ends meet due to the high cost of housing due to all the techies, a couple used Airbnb (one of those techie startups) and got evicted. now their apartment has been rented by a tech startup employee and they are homeless" angle. It seems like the perfect storm type story.

<comment><USER40> These kinds of airbnb-based eviction articles make me laugh. The overwhelming media narrative here is "all evictions are bad, look at this rich uncaring landlord forcing this poor hardworking american into homelessness". But the other narrative is "tech companies are evil". So what happens when an evil tech company (or, by extension, someone using one like AirBnB) gets evicted? Are we supposed to hate the landlord for evicting, or love the landlord for fighting the man.

The articles I read on these subjects always feel schizophrenic

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> The first time I used AirBnB in SF, the renter invited me to use all the facilities of his apartment complex, including as much free coffee as I wanted, the gym, swimming pool, etc.

This struck me as not particularly sustainable. It also struck me as morally questionable. It was only a matter of time before the chickens eventually came home to roost...

<comment><USER11> If that tenant had had a roommate, would that roommate not be consuming the same facilities? If so, would that be morally questionable?

At the end of the day, that tenant is probably paying homeowner's due proportional to the square footage of their unit. e.g. someone with 2 rooms is likely paying twice as much in dues as someone with 1 room.

I know that when I rented the penthouse unit in an apartment building with my father, we were paying almost 2x as much in building dues as the other units in the building, since we has 2x the space. Our roommates used the same facilities we did.

<comment><USER41> The tenant in question had converted his living room and kitchen into multiple additional "bedrooms" so that he could handle more capacity via AirBnB

In some cases the distinction may be subtle; in this case, not really.

<comment><USER11> He had people sleeping in the kitchen? Sleeping on the couch makes sense, but converting the kitchen into a sleeping area certainly sounds like an outlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How is it legal to take a commision from illegal activity? If people are using AirBNB for breaking the law, AirBNB should be prosecuted too.

</comment><comment><USER43> As a resident in Manhattan where the situation of Airbnb renting facilitating illegal use of apartments. We pay a lot of money to have security in our buildings with doormen and other secure systems. We do not want transients in our buildings.

Airbnb is intentionally setting up a situation where people are breaking the law and this should not be tolerated. They could easily have a questionnaire that vets facilities for legal Airbnb use as part of the signup process for cities such as NYC and SF. Moreover, they should have Airbnb employees verify that the apartments listed on the Airbnb site are following laws.

The real issue is that a number of reputable firms are funding Airbnb and it is these firms people should pressure. They are in fact, funding a firm which knowingly facilitates illegal activities in NYC and SF.

According to Crunchbase these firms include: Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, Jeff Bezos, Ashton Kushner, and others. Some of these firms such as Sequoia, Greylock, and Andreessen Horowitz get funds from other organizations or individuals and these funders of Sequoia, Greylock, and Andreessen Horowitz should withdraw their funds if their funds are knowingly used to finance illegal activities or a site that facilitates illegal activities.

These firms are knowing funding a firm which they know is helping people to break the law and should be held accountable for funding firms which break the law.

These firms should hire as managers of Airbnb and other firms which they fund who have _zero tolerance_ for breaking the law or trying to violate the spirit of the law.

 _I do applaud_ Airbnb's attempts to lower the cost of transient stays in NYC and SF. But this should be done through a legal mechanism such as building low-cost hotels in NYC and SF (with partners perhaps) and then listing these low-cost hotels on their site.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think there is an interesting comparison to be made between Airbnb and past file sharing companies like Megaupload or Napster. In the ideal situation, these services can be used completely legally. However, a majority of these businesses' customers seem to be using the service for illegal means. These companies profit on the scale of their business, so they have little motivation to cut down on that illegal activity. The only real difference is the victim of the "crime" taking place. The victims in the case of file sharing companies were a powerful and centralized industry. The victims in the case of Airbnb are its customers. Is the fact that the laws are being broken by the same people they are meant to protect enough to make Airbnb more viable long term then the other businesses founded on illegal transactions?

</comment><comment><USER45> I don't think this entirely will kill AirBnB.

For example, I used AirBnB when doing an internship. Since it was >30 days, it was legal. I liked that I was able to read reviews, verify identities, and in a worst case scenario contact my credit card company's fraud department and get my money back.

There's a huge demand for medium term sublets in SF. People doing internships, people who need a place to get some breathing room for a couple months while they hunt for a more permanent space, that sort of thing.

Is it worth billions? Probably not. But I'd say it plays as useful a role as say, Craigslist.

</comment><comment><USER46> Many posts here express dismay at Airbnb's selective disregard for the law.

Companies often ignore laws when it is expected to be profitable. It's a simple matter of risk management. And it is a straightforward consequence of our economic and legal system.

See this 2012 article "Should Companies Obey the Law If Breaking It Is More Profitable?" [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-radcliffe/should- companie...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-radcliffe/should-companies- obey-the-law_b_1650037.html)

<comment><USER47> Then we should change the equation. Maybe if we started prosecuting executives that break the law instead of just fining the companies, we would start having companies that follow the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I never understood the Airbnb business model.

Sure, some regulations seem designed primarily to protect existing interests, but more often, there are very good reasons for the regulation.

For instance, I believe hotels must maintain a record of visitors car license plates. And they are often inspected by health departments.

I'm all for innovation, but I don't think we can throw out an entire regulatory framework that took decades to develop. There is just too much that can go wrong.

As for 10 or 20 billion dollar valuation for Airbnb? Reality says "Ridiculous!".

<comment><USER39> A 10+ figure valuation for something that extracts 80% of the value of a hotel chain while sustaining 1% of its costs and at the same time handsomely remunerating the vendors that provide its inventory does not sound at all crazy to me.

<comment><USER48> Boy I would sure hate to see what crazy sounds like to you then:)

<comment><USER39> Something where you can't draw a straight line between execution and billions of dollars in profits?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'd guess that the number of people receiving eviction letters "out of the blue" is pretty small. I recently had a couple run-ins with my management company and the last thing they want to do is evict me. They just want me to stop the offending behavior.

I think the important thing is the agreement between tenant and landlord (or condo association, etc). From my perspective, if those agreements are specific about no subletting then I don't see how it even matters if there is a city- wide ban? There isn't a city-wide ban of smoking in residential buildings in Atlanta but I am not allowed to smoke in mine. That seems to be analogous.

I believe the fault lies with both AirBnB and the renter. I see people mostly harping on AirBnB and it does seem they could do more to make the renter think about the legality of the situation or check a box stating that they have the legal right to do so. But as a long time renter, I've always been well aware that in every rental agreement I've signed, it is a violation to sublet at least with out consent from my landlord.

The idea that there is some connection between morality and abiding by all laws is silly. There are so many ridiculous laws on the books, it is laughable. Over here in Atlanta, it is illegal to engage in oral sex. I don't believe I'm am a bad person for breaking that law as often as humanly possible. Again, I think that violating a piece of state or city legislation of which I had nothing to do with enacting is far different from me violating an agreement which I myself signed.

<comment><USER50> I imagine renters are more likely to get eviction letters out of the blue if they are living in a rent controlled property and their landlord is thus incentivized to evict and raise the rent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ah, the never ending chain of well meaning laws that require more questionable laws, backed up by objectionable laws, with the gaps filled by laws only Stalin would be proud of.

People visit from out of town and use town resources, so we need to tax them without taxing the locals...let's create a hotel tax. The locals don't pay it, so no one cares.

How do we track the hotels to make sure we get our tax money? We'll need a licensing process. Again no one cares.

Hotels form a lobby and say, hey, we're paying these taxes and getting these licenses, maybe you should create a few laws to protect us and limit the licenses so we stay in business. Some people care.

Finally, a neighbor sees my house and my frequent guests (because I have a lot of friends that visit) and reports me to the Gestapo and says I _might_ be renting my place out on AirBnb. Without any due process I get fined for violating a law meant to protect an industry that pays taxes to pay for the visitors that use city services that I actually live in and pay taxes. Now I really care, but it's too late.

Violating your lease is wrong, but so is violating due process. I also believe I have the right as a property owner to rent out my property as long as its purpose doesn't change.

</comment><comment><USER52> I have a fairly libertarian view of local regulations, and, unlike many commentators on the issue, have little sympathy for NIMBY attitudes from neighbours. In my opinion, if someone rents out a rented apartment, that should be subordinated to the subletting clause in their lease, but if someone owns an apartment, they should be able to rent it out to whomever they please, at whatever frequency, and charge whatever price they like to do so. They are, of course, obligated to take responsibility for any disruptions, nuisances, damage, etc. caused by the guests, as per normal building regulations, but I don't think the possibility of renting itself should be impaired by any local regulations. The Airbnb model is simply disruptive, and hotels don't like that. That's how I see it.

I am especially unsympathetic to the argument that the neighbours have a "right" not to live "next to a hotel". There's nothing inherently hostile about a hotel as an application of an apartment, versus any other less controversial applications of an apartment that result in occasional comings and goings of strangers, such as parties and social gatherings. If the hotel causes them specific problems, they have a right to redress those specific grievances. That's about it.

My view of this is strongly connected to the idea that property rights to real estate should incorporate the freedom to use the property as you'd like, as long as it doesn't harm anyone. I don't find much plausibility in the idea that renting it out in and of itself harms anyone. Many things that Airbnb renters can do can cause annoyance or harm. So can a drunk friend getting rowdy at my dinner party. So what? I can't have guests? Oh, I can? What about guests that stay a few days? Yeah? Why not paying guests then?

<comment><USER15> I've seen a few versions of this comment. You are stating your interest in converting a single family house into a hotel, and then stating that you see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to do this.

I disagree. While I understand that renting out bedrooms on airbnb is a far more profitable use of a single family house than providing a place for your kids to sleep, I purchased a house in an area zoned for single family use. When I purchased, I traded my right to turn my house into a hotel in exchange for a legally enforced expectation that the neighbors I share a wall with won't do this either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'd be interested to find out where this push of evictions is coming from. They mentioned a surge of complaints from neighbors of renters, but I think it's more likely to be the hotel industry pushing back, or perhaps the city making a point about evading hotel taxes.

<comment><USER54> Or just landlord who is looking for a reason to evict someone and get market rate for the flat.

<comment><USER55> Bingo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> It's a recurrent theme to see somewhat illegal startups becoming massive and then adjusting for the laws. I.e. youtube, airbnb, rapgenius.

That's one kind of unfair advantage that startups have over bigger organisations where they can spread and grow quickly even if a bit illegal (or on the grey line).

I'm just speculating here but I'm wondering if it couldn't be a good indicator of success for upcoming startups.. I.e. something a tiny big illegal gaining some adoptions. But then, it's fair to ask, how far are founders willing to go in the "illegal" side for the success of their startup?

</comment><comment><USER57> One problem in Boulder is that various entities (people, speculators, etc.) can be more aggressive about investing in affordable property, especially condos and smaller houses. Which they then operate as distributed, high-margin hotels. I don't think this is what Airbnb had in mind anyway, and it's obviously going to cause friction as the range in property costs collapses up into the high end (which is holding relatively constant).

Boulder is a tough market by design, but anything with this sort of impact is going to be closely scrutinized and evaluated for long term effects on the community.

</comment><comment><USER58> On a related note, the city of Amsterdam recently distributed a clear and friendly leaflet regarding the do's and don'ts of private short-term rentals: [http://www.iamsterdam.com/holiday%20rental%20guidelines](http://www.iamsterdam.com/holiday%20rental%20guidelines)

Clearly it's a prelude to a crack down, but the rules are clear, reasonable and communicated well up front.

</comment><comment><USER59> Our condo association is updating the bi-laws for forbid short-term subletting. I'm sure other owner-occupied places will eventually, too, especially in many high-priced urban neighborhoods. Who wants to live in an expensive home they purchased to only have neighbors renting it out for short- term rentals?

</comment><comment><USER60> I guess I'm surprised to learn that any such subletting is illegal in SF.

Even prior to AirBnB it was really common to see offers on Craigslist or simply through traditional networks of friends and acquaintances, "Sublet my apartment while I'm traveling for six weeks," or "SFO-NYC apartment swap."

<comment><USER61> Six weeks would be legitimate in most places, depending on how the city defines "short term rental". Most cities have such a definition.

Of course, if you are a renter your rental agreement would need to allow for subletting or you would permission...

<comment><USER60> Or two weeks, or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I wonder what the rights of a short term renter is in SF. Lets say 30 days or some other small fixed time that is legal. Can you practically stop paying rent and live there for the years it takes to get you evicted? Would they have to pay you the $~40k relocation payments to get you out eventually?

<comment><USER63> > I wonder what the rights of a short term renter is in SF. Lets say 30 days > or some other small fixed time that is legal.

Except for properly licensed hotels, short-term rentals are illegal in SF.

<comment><USER62> The article says over 30 day rentals are legal. It's under 30 day rentals without a permit that are illegal. But I'm wondering if there is a difference in treatment vs a person who has been there for a year or more.

<comment><USER45> I am also interested in this. It could end up being a nightmare scenario. Someoen signs up for a month, says "You know what, I like it here. I'm not leaving."

Even if they kept paying rent, they might be an unpleasant person. If they also stop paying rent it could be even worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> "Airbnb's website tells people to check local laws and their leases. A specific section on San Francisco explains the prohibition on short-term rentals and links to various city codes."

So why doesn't AirBnB simply disallow listings from SF? Worried that will impact their valuation?

</comment><comment><USER65> How about SF focus on the shanigans of corrupt poiticians, like Leland Ye and others, and STFU about an actual great service like AirBnB.

If they want to regulate it, make AirBnB carry massive insurance - divide that cost of insurance across the thousands-of-user-hours per nightly rental.

</comment><comment><USER66> Subletting rental property means you are abusing your landlord's assets, almost certainly violates the terms of your lease and probably violates their insurance policies. Eviction is an appropriate and proportionate response.

<comment><USER67> The City of San Francisco is using this law to threaten people who do this with the explicit permission of their landlords. Or who own their own place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Is there any risk of legal action from being an airbnb guest in SF?

<comment><USER69> Probably not since you aren't the one profiting, but if you know that it's illegal for the host, you probably shouldn't do it just to avoid being a jerk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Something similar happened in Singapore too last year.

<comment><USER71> Somehow I'm not surprised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> This is rich coming from a city with more dingy rent-by-hour flophouses than any other I've ever seen

</comment><comment><USER73> San Franciscan crony capitalism at it's finest.

<comment><USER74> In Seattle, there was a HUGE stink after the City Council passed a law regulating services like Uber & Lyft. Given that we (Seattle) are always compared to the Bay Area in terms of innovation (and the stifling thereof), it's nice to see that at least our two city governments are aligned in their ineptitude.

<comment> steve-howard "Regulating" in the same way that choking someone is "regulating" their air. Still, even though I really liked UberX's service, they deliberately set out to ignore the law and then cried foul when the city started putting some teeth to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I read to about here:

 _" Using an apartment for short-term rentals is a crime in San Francisco," said Edward Singer, an attorney with Zacks & Freedman who filed the notice against Katz._

Considering private attorneys don't prosecute crimes, this sounds like a landlord that wanted to raise the rent and found a good excuse to evict the current tenant.</comment>


Amazon Wants to Turn Lord of the Rings into the Next Game of Thrones - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/3/16605272/lord-of-the-rings-jrr-tolkien-game-of-thrones-amazon-studios <comment><USER2> They should make the Malazan series into a tv show: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen) Or some of Michael Moorcock's books: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elric_of_Melnibon%C3%A9](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elric_of_Melnibon%C3%A9)

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

Hell even Conan would make a pretty good series if they kept it true to the original stories. There's never been a really faithful Conan adaptation yet.

I was never a fan of the George Martin's books, I couldn't handle the characters. They were all reprehensible and the Lord of the Rings have been done to death at this point.

There's so many great fantasy series that would do really well as a tv show. It's too bad they want to make more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I think they may do better finding another series to adapt to a TV show format instead. Lord of the Rings is good, but it's been done to death so much that I'm not sure what'd be left for an adaptation here. I've seen a few people mention a possible adaptation of The Silmarillion, but I also hear Tolkien's son forbids any adaptations of it due to his dislike of the movies based on his father's works.

But a different series could work better here.

</comment><comment><USER4> I for one would love to see a proper adaptation of Gormenghast, but I doubt any American production company would touch it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like we have hit peak American imagination.</comment>


FacePay? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/05/when-buying-is-as-easy-as-liking/#.i6feph:9K0k <comment><USER2> "Facebook split Messenger off into its own app to save you one extra click on the Messages tab."

Uhm, what? What they did was forcing their users to open up a separate app to do something with was working great already within the app, without having to open up a separate app. But now every time you want to do messaging, you have to wait the extra two seconds for "Messenger" to open up. What a terrible example by the TechCrunch author. Maybe he was ironic?

<comment><USER3> If you took a moment to think of use cases other than your own, you would realize that there's a lot of us that ONLY use facebook messenger. I haven't checked my newsfeed in ages.

<comment><USER2> Good for you, and all other Messenger-only-users. But why force all other users who are using the Facebook-app to open up a separate app when they want to send or read messages?

<comment><USER4> They expected to add a TON of complexity to the messenger product (they announced messenger as a platform at F8) and they needed a way to decouple the already complex main FB app. It buys them a bunch of things, like easier maintenance, extensibility, and ability to push updates independently among other user experience benefits.

They also didn't want to split the user experience of using Facebook messenger on mobile and hence the forced switch.

It was only a big deal because of the surface area of the world that the main Facebook product (w/ messenger) covers. I guarantee you that if Google did something like that no one would care (at least not enough to give 20,000+ 1 star reviews)

<comment><USER5> Yeah I'm one of the messenger-only people, and (obviously) I'm really happy I can use the messenger-only app, but, wow, the way they handled the integration w/ the main FB app is ungodly inelegant, almost to the level of being insulting to the user, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honest question: has Facebook done anything to indicate that they are willing and able to protect user data? Because social and financial are two words that I don't like seeing near each other. I ask because I deleted my account years ago because I felt I had too little control over what was shared and with who, concerning when the service is from a company with no financial incentive to keep any data private. I have no idea if those behaviors have changed and no real interest in looking into it myself.

<comment><USER7> I very rarely post to Facebook but I do feel that I know who my data is shared with when I do. They seem to have stopped their ridiculous habit of resetting all my privacy settings to public now as well.

Like Google I imagine they do actually try to protect the data they have beyond what I explicitly share at least to the extent it's not sold (I'm assuming they use the same model as Google and sell ads from the data instead of just selling the data, but their ads are so badly targeted it's hard to tell).

That said I don't see myself giving them financial details because I don't really know what they do with data that's not explicitly shared by users (which like I said has become a lot clearer) and I don't really particularly trust them. Plus I'd be amazed if they ever managed to show an ad I was remotely interested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's also Line Pay for places where that's prominent

[https://help.line.me/line/android/categoryId/10001102/](https://help.line.me/line/android/categoryId/10001102/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv25NjPxzW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv25NjPxzW4)

<comment><USER9> Better URL: [https://pay.line.me/](https://pay.line.me/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do retailers really want Facebook owning the entire marketing sales funnel, including the customer relationship? This article makes it sound like this is a new feature for businesses, but it sure doesn't look like they have the best interests of businesses at heart.

It's not friction if you have to smile and say hello to the guy at the apple cart before you buy your apples.

</comment><comment><USER11> > What if buying something was as easy as Liking it? You'd probably buy a lot > more, and buy it through whoever made it so damn simple.

Exactly. There is Paypal. Afaik, Amazon and Google discontinued their similar service that was in competition with Paypal (API for third party website payments) - but why? (I think that were the services: Amazon WebPay, Google Checkout)

<comment><USER12> Google Checkout shutdown because it had reputational issues among merchants, and culture clash issues with the rest of Google. Payment platforms require human support personnel, and this is something that Google is diametrically opposed to. They algorithmically suspended many merchant accounts early in the service's life, with no explanation as to why and no one to talk to about it. This happened to me; I wound up filing a BBB complaint and they responded saying the reasons that they effectively stole thousands of dollars from me after months of operations without a single chargeback were "proprietary and confidential". I was not alone; the Google Checkout support forums were filled with stories like mine.

This is why no one should ever use Google for any critical function that may require support (cloud servers etc.). Google just doesn't do the whole "human" thing very well. If it goes terribly wrong and they refuse to talk to you, good luck suing them unless you are a Fortune 500 company.

<comment><USER13> Im not in the US, so I wonder: If big company like Google owes you money - isn't there some institution that will help you get it? Maybe the BBB?

Especially if Google wrongfully kept the money from many customers. I would think some government run institutions would get going. Something like the "public prosecutor's office" or so.

<comment><USER14> If Google were doing this at a large scale, the US Government or state government/s would usually be willing to sue them over it.

At a medium scale (in # of cases), you might find a law firm willing to take on a lot of cases, in exchange for a big cut. You can also choose to pursue your own situation individually.

At a small scale (just your case let's say, and a small'ish sum of money), you're going to mostly be limited to small claim's court, which can work perfectly well sometimes:

[http://consumerist.com/2008/01/21/suing-big-companies-in- sma...](http://consumerist.com/2008/01/21/suing-big-companies-in-small-claims- court-is-fun-and-easy/)

<comment><USER15> But isn't it illegal? Isn't there a criminal prosecution aspect to it?

<comment><USER14> The correct answer to that is: it depends, aka not necessarily.

Most likely what Google is doing, is dancing in the gray area. For example, is it criminal when PayPal hits you with a chargeback because a customer lies about x y or z? Given their size there's no question they do that a lot. Google would argue their business choices, like shutting down someone's wallet account (with money in it), falls into a similar category of business discretion - rather than being criminal.

This is why almost all of what the SEC does is civil enforcement, fines, etc. In business there are almost always cases of financial loss due to ignorance, incompetence, discretion, risk taking and so on - most of that is not properly going to be criminal, but rather civil.

Were Google doing something inappropriate in an area involving business discretion, the government may decide it's not ok, but not criminal (eg lacking the _intention_ to defraud). In that case, they'll typically try to put a stop to the behavior, and use fines to do so. At times it can be incredibly difficult to show a company is intending to defraud its customers, the Feds would need a hard trail of evidence (emails, communication, etc. showing Google was trying to defraud customers).

<comment><USER15> Wow- great answer. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Facebook has a huge opportunity here to build the mobile payment killer app. If they can get this integrated with NFC, you can pay for the tab at a restaurant and split the check among you and your friends. Realistically, you could use it to split nearly ANY bill - Facebook just has to build an interface.

The only question is if the payment processors and Apple/Google will leave the door open wide enough.

</comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see they're catching up to WeChat (Tencent) in China, who's been doing similar functionality for a while now (messaging brands).

<comment><USER11> I heard good things about WeChat/its chinese counter part. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/rosatrieu/2014/07/02/what- chinas...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/rosatrieu/2014/07/02/what-chinas- tencent-is-getting-right-in-mobile-payments/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This won't be like WebPay or Checkout. Considering all the businesses and Family/Friends already in FB, this can be put into very good use.

But I was kind of waiting for Youtube competant from Facebook for sometime now. I think Facebook is one of the major sources for Youtube and FB has ability to do something about it.

<comment><USER11> YouTube belongs to Google. I too wonder why Google hasn't focused more of their attention on YT. It's their social network hub that works fine for about one billion people.

Do the G+ comments below YT videos make sense? No (from the users point of view) . There used to be insightful replies to YT comments including video- replies. All that has vanished, only spam remains. Beside that, anyone remember their older social hubs Google Buzz and Orkut?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think the author of this article has ever used Facebook or actually read the details on the thing he's writing about. Facebook having a payment method doesn't solve a single problem with either Facebook or payment methods in general.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is also a good way to add unlimited context to a transaction.</comment>


Setting up a HTML5 animation loop using requestAnimationFrame - <AUTHOR> http://javascriptclub.org/post/7932322449/html5-animation-loop

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. It didn't work for me on Firefox 5.0.1 but it did work for me on Google Chrome 12.0.742.122. Thanks for posting this!</comment>


Nobody expects ENTITY sections in XML, either - <AUTHOR> http://mikeknoop.com/lxml-xxe-exploit/

<comment><USER2> The point is that nobody reads the standards.</comment>


New Languages Considered Harmful: "Learning new languages is a waste of time." - <AUTHOR> http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/2008/04/02/New-Languages-Considered-Harmful.aspx <comment><USER2> I think he's operating with the assumption that all languages have the same concepts, just with different "lexical and syntactical bureaucracy." But I think the point of the advice to learn more programming languages is to expose yourself to different programming paradigms. And in order to do this, I don't think you need to become an expert in the nuances of that language, but you need to become comfortable in thinking in new ways.

If your language of choice is C, and you learn Pascal, then you haven't gained any new concepts. But if your language of choice is C, and you learn Prolog, then you will be exposed to a whole new way of thinking.

My native state of coding is procedural with a sprinkling of OO, mainly to represent families of concrete data types. I find functional programming appealing on an emotional level, and my attempts to learn how to think functionally have changed my native coding habits, even in non-functional languages.

My pragmatic advice is learn enough of a language from a different programming paradigm so you can apply that new way of thinking to your native language.

<comment><USER3> That's exactly it. Saying that learning a new language is just a matter of learning a new syntax is like saying that an English-speaking, non-German speaker could translate a German text to English by taking a German-English dictionary and going through and translating the words one-by-one. It's not quite as simple as that.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I'd compare that to saying that two languages are the exact same except for some of the words -- that JavaScript is exactly like Java except System.out.print is renamed to document.write. Saying that learning a new language is just the syntax is more like saying that translation between English and German can be done with just a German-English dictionary and a full knowledge of the grammar.

However, just as lambdas cannot be directly translated into languages without lambdas, some languages have unique concepts. For example, the German language has a part of speech called the particle that conveys a general feeling into sentences. While the statement "Er wisst das." could be easily translated with a dictionary and knowledge of conjugation rules into "He knows that," adding a particle to make "Er wisst ja das" could be variously translated as "Of course he knows that," "He obviously knows that," "He most definitely knows that," etc.

<comment><USER5> Ja, genau.

<http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t971.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A real phenomenon: there are people who never get anything done because they are constantly dabbling in the language flavor of the moment.

Another real phenomenon: some of the best programmers in the world still rely entirely on C. _[Late edit: "and outperform developers in modern languages"]._

<comment><USER7> I agree, absolutely. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that "dabbling in languages is counterproductive". That's like concluding that martinis are fundamentally wrong because some people are alcoholics.

I'd also suggest that of the two pathological conditions -- Overdabbling and Underdabbling -- the Underdabblers outnumber the Overdabblers by a huge margin. We just see a lot more of the latter on the Internet, because for many obsessive dabblers the whole point is to brag about it.

You need to find a balance. In the end, I think this essay is much more about that balance than its title suggests.

<comment><USER6> I agree, let's not jump to conclusions.

I'd like to see you defend your argument, that "underdabblers outnumber the overdabblers". Control for talent, please. Clearly there are thousands of VB forms developers out there; let's stick with the people working on interesting problems.

<comment><USER7> Well, if I'm not allowed to casually wave my hand and invoke my legendary army of VB forms developers, my "argument" will evaporate, as you no doubt suspected. :)

Because, alas, I can't name any talented folks, working on interesting problems, who are obvious under-dabblers. This may be because I have led a sheltered life: Too many of the programmers I know are from MIT, where until recently they inoculated everyone against underdabbling by making them take an entire course on Scheme. I tend to work on open-source stuff that's hosted on Linux, another community where underdabbling is rare and overdabbling is the danger. I read news.yc, which incorporates plenty of dabbling -- much more than I have time for, really, and perhaps more than you have patience for. ;) Finally, I myself am only a programmer because I kept dabbling in software while I was supposed to be working on physics. If I had the personality that found it easy to focus strictly on one thing, I'd be a semiconductor process engineer right now.

Of course, the statements that the original article took such exception to -- the ones like "you should learn a programming language every year" -- are largely _intended_ for the less-talented people that have just been defined out of the discussion. And, again, that's kind of where the original author ends up: "Once you learn one language... oops, make it two languages... no, five! Once you learn five languages, you should definitely stop dabbling!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A different view point.

From Peter Norvig's "teach Yourself Programming in 10 years"

"Learn at least a half dozen programming languages. Include one language that supports class abstractions (like Java or C++), one that supports functional abstraction (like Lisp or ML), one that supports syntactic abstraction (like Lisp), one that supports declarative specifications (like Prolog or C++ templates), one that supports coroutines (like Icon or Scheme), and one that supports parallelism (like Sisal)."

<comment><USER9> These days, I don't know if I can trust advice on the internet anymore. Could be they just want to send the competition down the wrong path (Norvig is commercial now, working for Google). Follow their advice, and you waste a lot of time, while they are busy making progress.

<comment><USER10> If you're trying to compete with Norvig _right now_ , for god's sake don't waste time learning more languages. You have a business to build.

If you're willing to bide your time and you hope to develop jedi-level expertise _eventually_ , then I think it's still good advice. But again, it will pay off only in the long term.

Likewise, if someone is beating you up after school every day, don't start studying a martial art that will take you 5 years to learn properly. Learn something quick and dirty. But if you want to learn to be a true master of martial arts, it will be a lifelong study and you will likely need to learn at least several styles.

<comment><USER11> _Learn something quick and dirty._

But, as noted, brass knuckles (or a gun) will not cause you to grow up as a person. The martial arts teach patience and poise, which is almost exactly the opposite of a quick fix.

More concretely, Sig Kufferath (who basically carried the Danzan-Ryu torch to mainland USA) apparently beat the hell out of a couple guys who tried to mug him, then got them medical help and sent them flowers in the hospital. (The story may be apocryphal, but I would not have put it past him) Norvig's motives appear similar -- he is an acknowledged Jedi and has little to fear, in general, from helping others to raise their game. Having crossed paths with both guys, I feel reasonably justified in my perception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> His thesis: that learning the basics of most new languages is an exercise in tedium and trivia with little or negative benefit. He instead recommends reading high-quality code, learning computer science theory, and mastering a few quality tools (not Java).

I thought this was going to be a "let's make fun of this idiot" Reddit-type post, but I was wrong.

</comment><comment><USER13> I promised myself long ago that I would never engage a "language war" thread. Not sure if I'm actually breaking my promise, but this article was too compelling to ignore. The author states what I've intuitively known all along, but was never really able to explain.

I am proficient in about a dozen languages, but only use 3. I go back to the SPS, PL1, Fortran, and COBOL days, and would rather chew razor blades than ever use them again. Today, I use javascript on the client and php on the server; I have yet to find a problem I couldn't solve with them.

In the years in between I discovered BASIC and have found it to be the Swiss army knife of apps. Not the old Dartmouth Basic, and certainly not anything Microsoft bastardized, but there are many other versions that seamlessly integrate with relational data bases that I think are a dream. <laughter dies down>

It's actually reached the point where I "think" in BASIC, design my app, and then sometimes write in in javascript or php.

I certainly wouldn't recommend my approach to someone else, but I think that's the whole point. Use the right tool for the job and get good at it. I see no need to learn new languages just for the purpose of learning something new. If I get "curious" or want to expand my mind, I can think of several hundred app problems waiting to be solved in any language, take your pick.

Thanks, Gustavo Duarte, for the chance to put a little thought into this. Time to xfer control back to work (GO TOs not allowed).

<comment><USER14> You should write What Made Basic Different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think he misses the important benefit of being more marketable as a programmer. I have a major problem when I interview people and they are totally focussed on one language (e.g. Java). It's not the language that ends up worrying me, it's the lack of curiosity.

For that reason I often ask people in interviews to tell me about the computer they have at home: what OS does it run and why? And I ask them what they hack in their spare time. That tends to be very revealing.

<comment><USER6> The unfortunate fact is that if you're optimizing for marketability, you're going to learn PHP, Java, and C++.

<comment><USER16> Purely anecdotal, but I went to a Boston Ruby group meeting a couple weeks ago. I didn't hang out for long, but both of the 2 people I talked to were there to hit on developers! One offered me a job in the elevator. Last week, a funded startup called me with a job offer out of the blue--they new a friend of a friend.

I think it depends on the job you're optimizing for--ruby and python are good choices when optimizing for startup jobs.

<comment><USER17> > I didn't hang out for long, but both of the 2 people I talked to were there > to hit on developers!

+1 for using the dating metaphor for recruiting/finding a job. How often do developers get hit on in the dating world? On dates or even just talking to a girl, I find I quickly steer the topic 'what do you do' to something like 'Heard of Facebook? I want to build stuff like that'

<comment><USER16> For a brief moment, I experienced the revulsion an attractive woman might feel when leered at like a juicy steak. It was enlightening.

<comment><USER17> > It was enlightening.

I assume you didn't give them your digits/contact info.

Wow. Can you expand on this? Is it really like that for women when we go ga- ga?

<comment><USER16> It happened when a b-school grad tried to talk me into joining his startup. I contract sometimes, so if he was funded, I'd have "given him my email." It was the sense of having something someone really wants when what they are offering isn't something you're interested in. The predatory leer also triggers some part of the "flight" instinct.

It was also enlightening in the sense that the rejection wasn't about him (he was a Sloan grad, and a nice enough guy), or his idea--it just wasn't a match. I work on unfunded startups, I'm just busy now and didn't care for his idea.

When I had to politely repeat how busy I am, I could suddenly see how being an attractive woman who had to fend off advances could be exhausting, and how easy it would be to stop being polite if you had to do it all the time.

<comment><USER18> People who become total jerks because others show interest in them deserve no pity.

Regardless, the analogy is broken because one case is about what you are and the other is about what someone wants to take from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the article would be received more warmly if it were put into the perspective of a company project. I.e., don't implement this new product in XYZ just because I want to know/learn XYZ and it's all the rage right now. _That_ would be a waste of time.

I'm a full-time Java programmer now because it pays the bills. But you'd better believe I'm learning other lanaguages on the side, because it's pretty clear that Java 1.) has some serious limitations that other languages don't have, and 2.) is falling out-of-favor as a web development tool to more flexible, less statically-typed, more functional languages.

It's not so much to "open my mind" as it is to keep myself marketable after Java's impending demise.

<comment><USER17> > It's not so much to "open my mind" as it is to keep myself marketable after > Java's impending demise.

As someone who is starting to step out of the comfort zone of Java, I agree about marketability. However, Java is not going to disappear, it's firmly entrenched. It's like COBOL. I'm not sure how Sun pulled it off exactly but Java in it's 13 years has spread itself in a lot of corporate systems/applications/backends (some of which may be COBOL). Ruby on Rails and other minority languages are the minority in some companies precisely because the majority don't like the minority ("RoR? We don't use that"). However, there are some rogues in companies who are trying to bring RoR in discretely (I'm trying to be one - developing business cases for RoR adoption on small projects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Waste of time? Quite a lot of fun things could be considered a waste of time. Learning new languages can be fun. People learning one language and sticking with it for life is why COBOL stuck around for so long, and Java seems to be going the same way.

EDIT: I just read the article. Maybe it's just that many of the languages I've been learning have had little syntax and no operator precedence quirks (or any operator precedence whatsoever). I also noticed the article made the same comment about COBOL and Java that I did. I really should read these things first. Anyway, I guess as a high school freshman I'm still at the point where learning new languages is really the best I can do.

<comment><USER21> By all means, play around with different languages when you're getting started. I think it's really important to be exposed to different languages as part of your education, be it undergrad or (for you as it was for me) junior/high school.

But even in your situation, I'd say balance languages with other knowledge that is important. It's easy to play with languages because it's fun, but there's a lot of other important stuff to learn, some of which might make more practical difference to you.

But by all means, learn and have fun. If you're getting a kick out of languages, have at it, especially if you've got plenty of time.

<comment><USER22> _I think it's really important to be exposed to different languages as part of your education_

And is one's education supposed to stop?

<comment><USER21> No, it's supposed to evolve. And what makes sense when you're getting started may not be the best use of your time later on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's just his opinion.

Learning new languages teaches you what you know and most importantly don't know. Coming from a Java working background, I find Ruby on Rails pleasantly abstruse and remarkably concise (which makes it hard to learn, coming from the land of boilerplateness).

I have a long commute on the train and I find that when I am trying to debug/learn - (learning Ruby on Rails) - the time flies by like that. If that isn't a benefit (making time fly by when you're having fun learning), I don't know what is.

<comment><USER23> Here here. Learning a new language can be fun - opportunity cost be damned.

<comment><USER17> Learning RoR is fun because I like personal challenges. If it were easy, it would be boring. It's like a new way of thinking, not just programming. And like jjburka said, it's like taking a vacation from the land of Java.

I don't want to pretend that I am not learning RoR to be more marketable, and it's a joy to learn RoR, to build little RoR apps that I can use from my iPhone that make my life less stressful/easier.

Because I don't have 2-3 years of experience, I realize that I won't be able to pass a rigorous RoR interview. Especially those at interesting startups. My workaround to this might be by developing one or two Ruby GEMS that add value to the ecosystem (going to RailsConf '08 will help me get my bearings)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article's not bad. His main focus, and he states it, is not to constantly learn new languages for the sake of profit. As a hobby cool, but not for profit. I can agree with that. There are all sorts of topics you could learn for fun and profit, and investing in a new language is not necessarily the silver bullet to mad coin.

Who cares though? I think as long as we're constantly learning, whether it's new programming languages, economics, or snowbaording, it makes life interesting. New skills always seem to come in useful at some point. Make the investment in learning things that interest you and it'll always pay off. Don't let someone else tell you what NOT to learn. That's jut silly. Heck even learning COBOL or FORTRAN would benefit you with a little insight, and might be fun in a retro sort of way.

<comment><USER13> "Heck even learning COBOL or FORTRAN would benefit you with a little insight, and might be fun in a retro sort of way."

<sarcasm>

So would gargling Drano.

</sarcasm>

(I always thought about COBOL like this: Let's spend 3 hours getting dressed to go outside and pick up the mail.)

<comment><USER25> Yet you profess to think in BASIC, and FORTRAN is very, very similar to BASIC.

I don't follow the metaphor about COBOL. Although it's syntax can be burdensome, the language is very efficient for the same reasons FORTRAN is: static typing, no dynamic memory allocation, efficient file I/O and the best compilers available. COBOL programs are not necessarily flexible, but the are fast and efficient.

Also COBOL has correct "accounting math", something that almost no other language has as part of the core. In fact I can't think of another language specification that implements fixed-point math as part of the core: usually it's part of an external library and is cumbersome to use.

<comment><USER13> I guess this is why I never post in language threads, we can go on and on all day. No one is right or wrong. Anyway, I'll try to address your comments.

There are so many different versions of BASIC; it's possible we are visualizing very different versions. I am accustomed to using INFOBASIC dialects as in JBase or IBM'S U2 line. Everything numeric is represented as strings (integers) including dates, times, and decimals, so there is no "typing".

As for efficiency, I used to benchmark like crazy, looking for the slickest algorithms and the best implementations of compilers and I/O routines. Not any more. Hardware has gotten so fast that I am more concerned with human time, not machine time. (Naturally, anything that runs 8 million times per second BETTER be fast.)

These days, I generate most of my code, so the verbosity of COBOL (if I used it) shouldn't be an issue. But it is. I have to drop down to the source so often and I work on the code of others often enough, that I am most concerned with getting the whole job done with the LEAST code. This is where "juniors" fall down the fastest (IMO); there's too many places for things to go wrong.

I know what you're thinking, if this is the case, why not learn even more advanced languages and frameworks with even less code. I dunno.

I guess I've "settled into" what works best for me (as everyone should). Is it the best? Probably not. Am I open to better ways? Probably. But not today. Too busy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think that the writer is deliberately being controversial just to get a rise out of the readers. Having said that - he does make some valid points.

The bottom line is that you have to use the right tool for the job: it could mean using what you know, learning something new, or even inventing something totally new and original.

</comment><comment><USER27> I get the impression that the author didn't think through his argument before he wrote it. He starts off saying one thing and proceeds to contradict himself. Really there are advantages and disadvantages to everything. Spending too much time learning new languages and never master CS basics is clearly a waste. However, never learning a new language, or more importantly, never programming in a fashion or environment that is unfamiliar to you, can lead to an insular way of thinking. "If all you have is a hammer, all problems begin to look like nuts," or something like that. Its a matter of being a little bit selective and aggressive with your choices. If a new language is too easy, its probably not teaching you much.

</comment><comment><USER9> Relax, people - he still recommends learning something else than Java.

</comment><comment><USER28> I disagree with this completely. Refusing to learn new things in favor of what you already know is the domain of fools.

<comment><USER29> Is this about a refusal to learn new things, though? He does, after all, point out towards the end that good programmers use multiple languages - so whilst a refusal to learn new things is a bad thing, isn't a bit of prudence in how to budget your time a good thing?

<comment><USER28> True he does qualify his initial assertion near the end of the post by saying that to be marketable you need to know multiple languages. I guess what bothers me about this piece is the sense I get that the author is writing from the perspective of optimizing ones personal profit. He is basically saying the only reason to learn multiple languages is for competitiveness in the job market and even then you should learn as few as you can get away with as well as possible.

That sounds like the argument of a technology major to me rather than a comp. sci or engineer. He totally ignores the fact that many languages are based around the same core principles and if you know those well learning a language is like learning a new word from the dictionary it just happens naturally when it needs to be done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've read this article three times over now, trying to find a way to agree with it. I'm sorry, but since this guy thinks learning Dvorak is a better use of his time, I'm afraid I'm going to have to write him, and this terrible article off.

</comment><comment><USER18> Or less inflammatory: After a certain point, the cost of learning another language can outweigh the benefit.

I don't know many people who learn languages without the intent of ever spending time to do something with them.

</comment><comment><USER31> Learning new languages can be mind-expanding, but taken to an excess, you might spending more time tinkering with languages than getting stuff done.

</comment><comment><USER32> i just read up to here (2nd parapraph): "The theory is that by learning a new language you "expand your mind" and become "a better programmer". Right. By that kind of argument we should all be eating LSD (don't)."

this sounds very much like inexperience.

<comment><USER7> You should finish it. By the end of the essay, the guy has successfully argued himself out of half of his original thesis, and has laid the seeds for finishing off the other half. That's one of the good side effects of essay writing: You can start out arguing one thing and eventually find yourself having to argue something else.

One of the things the guy missed is there in plain sight in his essay:

 _You need to get to know the libraries, struggle with the environment, find or tune a text editor, look for tools, and so on. Most of the effort has to do with housekeeping chores, which are surely not mind-expanding by anyone's measure. If you hope to be productive in the new language, things are even bleaker: proficiency has less to do with the language itself than with the myriad technologies you must master to use it effectively._

Unfortunately, everyday productivity _is_ a lot of housekeeping chores, one after another. While your higher mind is soaring with the architecture astronauts, the rest of your mind had better be editing text efficiently, and running _top_ and _netstat_ , and administering the version control system.

And more than half of the point of learning a new language is to force yourself to experiment with a different tool ecosystem. The point of learning Ruby isn't just to learn Ruby: You get to learn about Rails and Capistrano and the obsessive use of test-driven development and, in my case, git. (If I'd been a kernel hacker, I'd have known about git. I presume the Rails folks learned about git because some kernel hackers, seeking to learn a new language, wandered into the Rails community.) You want to be forced to experiment with different tools because sometimes they're better: git is just a _much_ better tool than Subversion, and don't get me started on CVS. Even when the alternatives aren't better, you become a better technologist by playing with them. If I'd never played with a Java IDE I would have no chance of understanding how Java programmers think. If I'd never actually deployed both Rails and PHP I wouldn't understand why PHP deserved to live. (Yes, it's filled with stupidly broken parts, but it's _so easy_ to deploy, and it's fast, and it's not that hard to comprehend.)

The other thing this guy doesn't seem to understand is that there's a difference between tourism and living in another country. When you "learn a new language every year" that doesn't mean you have to become a _pro_ in your new language. You can visit, kick the tires, read a couple of introductory books, write some simple code, read some code to something more complicated, and then move on. Yes, that means you're a dilettante -- but it's better to be a dilettante than to blindly plug away at the same thing for a decade.

<comment><USER33> I think really what he is arguing is the marginal benefit of learning a new language diminishes with each new language. Which is probably true if you only learn the syntax and then move on. But thats not what software development is ,the language is a tool that a culture uses. Using your example with Rails , alot of its culture (MVC , TDD , etc) seem to be being adopted in other communities. I would argue that the reason is someone had a extended vacation in Hotel Rails liked what they saw and then brought it home. Finding out how different people do different things and adapting them to your needs is valuable in all contexts.

<comment><USER34> Rails isn't really MVC, though.

<comment><USER33> how so? I'm rather new to rails and from my understanding of rails and mvc it seems to follow that pattern. Good Practice wise atleast

<comment><USER34> In real MVC, you want to put everything related to your business rules, storage access, etc. in your model. Then you wrap the View and Controller around that as a very thin web <-> model glue. That's all a web framework should do, web-enable your model classes. Things that should not happen in the Controller include touching the ORM (or SQL queries), validating input, any business logic, etc. Just pass the request to the right model, see if the model did what you asked, and display the success page or the error page.

Here's a short talk I wrote on the subject:

<http://www.jrock.us/fp2008/catalyst/start.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> totally agree with the article. I've stuck with APL for years. Can do anything I want efficiently.

BTW, building a web framework using APL. Anyone care to help?

<comment><USER36> Just curious, what version of APL and what does your answer to the Arc challenge look like?

A web-style APL should let you do something like that as tersely as APL lets you compose operations like +.×/ for the inner product.</comment></comment>


Career mistakes developers make - <AUTHOR> http://www.techworld.com.au/article/599885/7-deadly-career-mistakes-developers-make/ <comment><USER2> > "The danger is becoming a mercenary, a hired gun, and you miss out on the > opportunity to get a sense of ownership over a product and build lasting > relationships with people,"

"Opportunity", "ownership", "relationships". Oh boy, such many buzzwords in a single sentence.

And adblocker detector, triggered only after switching to next page. How about no?</comment>


Amazon buying video doorbell company Ring - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/amazon-buying-video-doorbell-company-ring-1519763306-7c7fb313-0bc7-4fbc-a50e-7dbe4a6ab0dd.html <comment><USER2> I thought they already had back in October. I thought the CloudCam was just a rebranded Ring doorbell.

[http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/25/technology/business/amazon-k...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/25/technology/business/amazon- key-delivery/index.html)</comment>


Textbook Revolution:  364 modern free texts - <AUTHOR> http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php?title=Special:Ask&offset=0&limit=500&q=%5B%5BCategory%3ABook%5D%5D&po=%3FAuthor%0A

<comment><USER2> My Economics Professor at Emory writes:

      One might argue that authors have fewer incentives
      to write good textbooks if the expectation is that
      they should be made available for free.

      One way around this is advertizement financing;
      and if you download [our] micro textbook, you'll
      see that its full of ads targeted at students!
      This a small price to pay for the zero sale price,
      but the book itself is not the highest quality.
      Nonetheless, it is a useful reference.

</comment><comment><USER3> Am I just behind or are there a surprisingly high number of free textbooks online recently?

I wonder how this is affecting/going to affect the textbook industry.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why's it's not technically what most people would consider a 'textbook,' I'm surprised _Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby_ isn't there. I would recommend it to anyone interested in a solid (yet quirky) introduction to Ruby. It's license is CC-Share-Alike, so it clearly fits under the category of 'free.'

You can find it online here: <http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/>

or buy the paperback ($6+shipping) here: [http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback- book/whys-(poignant)-g...](http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback- book/whys-\(poignant\)-guide-to-ruby/7739507)

</comment><comment><USER5> My Physics professor* uses one of the textbooks listed there. It's a very entertaining book, well outlined, informative and teaches in a way that inspires you to look at our physical world rather than "plus number into formula to receive answer."

And the free price tag is highly welcome.

*I'm taking 1st year remedial physics because it's been too long and my previous credits no longer count etc.

<comment><USER6> Which textbook are you talking about?

I have a moderate hatred for most entry-level physics textbooks, which manage to pad about 100 pages' worth of information into a thousand-page tome full of glossy photographs in order to justify the $100+ price tag. So if there are any good free texts that would be great.

<comment><USER5> sorry for late reply. Book one, Newtonian Physics from <http://www.lightandmatter.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since I had a look at a couple of them, I suppose I might as well provide reviews.

"Introduction to Proofs and the Mathematical Vernacular" -- this is actually pretty good, and I kinda wish I'd had a copy of it at the start of my university mathematical education, if only to teach me what the hell a "Lemma" was, exactly. It's also fun to read.

"21st Century Physics Flexbook" -- very odd. Admittedly intended as a K-12 textbook rather than a university-level textbook, but not much of a way to learn physics even for the kids. Virtually no mathematics whatsoever, let alone calculus. A random grab-bag of topics from "gravitation" (with an attempt to explain relativity which would be more confusing than enlightening) to "nanoscience" and "biomedical imaging". Basic mechanics finally comes in at the end as an afterthought. Not recommended to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER7> The book on Abstract Algebra looks really good:

[http://www.math.uiowa.edu/~goodman/algebrabook.dir/algebrabo...](http://www.math.uiowa.edu/~goodman/algebrabook.dir/algebrabook.html)

It's written in the vernacular.

It opens with a chapter full of concrete stuff -- patterns and symmetries -- that's obviously useful in a lot of different fields.

It draws a bright line between the important results and the extra stuff you wind up knowing as a byproduct of working through the extension problems. (I'm looking at you, Artin.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Incidentally, I already had eight of these books in my reading list. Of those eight, I have read three cover to cover. They were really good. One percent is not a sufficient sample size, but I have high hopes for the remaining 361 titles.

<comment><USER7> _... I have read three cover to cover. They were really good._

Which ones?

Endorsements > Statistics

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are these copyright free textbooks? I am curious to how this free textbook thing works. There are so many free textbook projects going around the world. Can anyone use the content, reference the content and use it for commercial purpose?

<comment><AUTHOR> Table with licenses: [http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php?title=Special:Ask...](http://textbookrevolution.org/index.php?title=Special:Ask&offset=0&limit=500&q=%5B%5BCategory%3ABook%5D%5D&p=format%3Dbroadtable&po=%3FAuthor%0A%3FLicense%0A)

So yes and no, depending on the book.

<comment><USER8> That is great information. Also, when it says "GNU Free Documentation License" does it mean that anyone can use the text for commercial purpose?

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it. But I am an electrical engineer, not a lawyer. So...

[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=GNU+Free+Documentation+License&l=1](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=GNU+Free+Documentation+License&l=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a very good resource.</comment>