Google Takes Its First Steps Toward Killing the URL - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/google-chrome-kill-url-first-steps/ <comment> move-on-by I'm against chrome taking always the URL. While they make points about security and dumb users, I don't believe they have altruistic motives.

An issue with AMP is the terrible URLs- because they are hosted by google. Once Chrome no longer has URLs, then Chrome gets to decide what name to show you in the address bar - potentially a name that has very little to do with the actual location of the document. Maybe I'm being a bit extreme or pessimistic, but do not believe this is a good change for the web, and I don't think Google can be trusted to be the stewards of the internet.

<comment><USER2> They don't say anything about "dumb users", and I wish the conversation around this didn't even use that phrase. Hardhats aren't just for clumsy people, seatbelts aren't just for bad drivers, and memory protection isn't just for careless programmers. There's no shame in engineering a situation to maximize safety for the people who will use it.

There's a whole lot of smart people who like static typing for the safety benefits it brings to their programming. Web browsers are the front lines: where one click on a stringly-typed reference can cause unknown third-party code to run on your computer. You are protected only by your human ability to spot the visual difference between two strings, one of which is constructed by someone trying their hardest to trick you. If you advocate for type safety within software, you should also advocate for a better system than URIs.

<comment><USER3> Or advocate for disabling the ability for your web browser to run 3rd party code just by clicking a link.

Google is not trustworthy because between Chrome and Search they have too much of a stake in the eventual outcome of anything that could replace URLs. Any system that eventually does replace URIs should be able to tell me at a glance: is it http, ftp or a local file? Is there a TLS cert? What is the domain of the server I am accessing? Approximately where in the site directory am I?

I simply don't trust browsers or sites which try to obscure what is actually useful information because some UX guru told them it was unnecessary. If anything, I want URLs with even more information. Which version of "http" is in use would be a nice start at this point.

<comment><USER4> Feels like every point you mention can be designed in a user friendly way. I'm a UX designer and have some ideas for this.

<comment><USER5> Please write them down and publish somewhere; we need more proposals that empower users to be out there to see and discuss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like the plan is to use heuristics and machine learning to guess which URLs look "tricky".

I'm highly skeptical of an approach that involves training users to rely on a black-box ML system. That just makes them ever more dependent on technology they can't possibly understand and puts more power in Google's hands. By being the sole arbiter of what is "tricky," Google gets to blacklist the entire Internet.

It would be better to help users understand the URL. I don't mean expecting users to parse the syntax on sight; I mean finding ways to display or represent it so that the important information is easier to see and fraud is easier to spot.

<comment><USER7> Along the lines of your last thought (helping users understand the URI, displaying it in an idiot-proof manner), this wouldn't be at all hard if they simply had 4 separate areas for protocol, hostname if any, domain & public suffix combined, and path. e.g.:

        https://www.example.net/foo.html

becomes:

        [https] [www] [example.net] [foo.html]

Then they can colour the public suffix e.g. black and the rest of it light- grey, much like they do already, BUT it's _also_ clear which box you always need to look at to determine the site's identity.

It could go even further and obscure the contents of the first, second, and fourth boxes, until you mouseover or focus it (but all of the boxes should appear light red in background for http, and light green for EV, even if you can't see the text in them), and the last one should be far from the one before it, to avoid e.g.:

        [https] [www.example.net] [example.org] [foo.html]
        [https] [www] [example.org] [www.example.net/foo.html]

(It would be easy to accidentally think you were somewhere at example.net with both of the above, even though you're really somewhere at example.org)

Clicking on any box (or the regular Ctrl+L) could turn it back into one box (for easy URI copying) and defocusing it will revert it again. Power users could set a knob to simply always display the 1 bar they've been looking at for the last 25+ years.

Maybe there could even be a conditional 5th area for the query parameters (GET variables) which isn't even shown by default (without input area focus), who knows.

        [https] [news] [ycombinator.com] [reply] [id=19032043&goto=item%3Fid%3D19031237%2319032043]

Just my wild 4am ideas... probably lots of things wrong with it I can't imagine right now.

<comment><USER8> I'd personally invert the order of the 2nd and 3rd areas. Yes, it'll look ugly, but it's way easier for users to parse for phishing:

[https://example.com.phishing.com](https://example.com.phishing.com) -> [https] [phishing.com] [example.com] [foo.html]

<comment><USER9> You can go Big endian all the way,

[https] [com] [phishing] [com] [example] [foo.html]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great example of why we need diverse browser culture, instead of a Chrome monoculture.

When we hand Google a browser monopoly, we hand them de facto authority over _everything_ related to the web.

It will effectively be up to a _single for-profit entity with questionable-at- best motives_ how we see the web in fundamental ways.

That's not to say the work they're doing here is bad. Might be good. And it's a long ways from production. But that's besides the point.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. Having recently switched from Chrome to Firefox, I'm puzzled by language such as "Google is thinking about killing the URL". Nope, still featured prominently in my address bar, protocol and all, and Google has zero say about whether it stays that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't see the outrage here. Using heuristics to determine the likelihood of a URL being fake, sounds like a good idea as long as it's weighted against false positives.

That said, I've never understood why browsers do not highlight the hostname separately from the path. Many phishing domains are of the form: google.com.auth.something.else.realistic.looking.tk/fake-path-stuff and are so long that the user just sees google.com and moves on. Something as simple as underlining the hostname or making the path a slightly lighter hue would be a huge usability improvement in being able to stop phished hosts.

<comment><USER13> Firefox does highlight registered domain "looking.tk" in white font and the rest of the URL is colored gray ("google.com.auth.something.else.realistic.looking.tk" and path).

<comment><USER14> For me it is black for the domain vs. dark grey for the rest (FF65). I actually never noticed this before, nice!

<comment><USER15> I think its dependent upon your theme. For example with a dark theme it is like so : [https://i.imgur.com/bwsyhjN.png](https://i.imgur.com/bwsyhjN.png)

<comment><USER14> Oh of course! Much more pronounced there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Changing the UX for URLs in a browser that has overwhelming market share is going to change how people think about and assess the identity of websites they visit.

Over time, it could make other browsers feel less familiar, old fashioned, and maybe even shady for most people.

It may end up improving security for some (we'll see), but it may also improve the security of Chrome's market share (whether that's the motivation behind the move or not).

</comment><comment><USER17> The article talks about showing warnings when accessing misstyped URLs, not "killing URLs."

Nothing in the article I've read suggests they're doing anything of the kind. What a bunch of clickbait bs.

If you search this HN comments page, you'll find 3-4 other people claiming the same thing.

This article is an insult to news reporting.

<comment><USER18> Yes, I was very confused by the title as well. The introduction briefly talks about "changing the way site identity is presented" but after that it talks about just flagging suspicious URLs. Nothing in there about actually "killing" them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There HAVE to be underlying motives at play here. If Google really cared about "dumb users" – I agree phishing and such attacks do pose a threat to the average net surfer, but surely they can use ML to bolster and enhance the warning or safe browsing system that they already use, and use that as an additional plus point or marketing point. To imply that this is being done merely for the sake of the "user" is laughable.

This is simply a red herring to (eventually) guide user interface behavior towards a system or set of systems that moves towards obscure, non-transparent and centralized control.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very misleading headline. The article does not say Google wants to kill the URL; it says Google wants to take steps to make sure users can more easily see what domain they're on and make it harder for scammers to spoof legitimate domains.

<comment><USER21> It wouldn't be good journalism if the idea of the change wasn't all twisted to some conspiracy theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is why I stopped using Chrome years ago. My current Firefox is configured to display the protocol along withe the FQDN, without any munging thankyouverymuch.

Google is self-isolating into a walled garden. Good riddance.

<comment><USER23> All of these "help the dumb Chrome user" additions to Chrome _really_ need a way to be turned off. All the Chrome team needs to do is have a Developer Options section, which they already do in Android, that allows us advanced users to undo all the asinine changes to the browser over the past 2 years:

\- OS-style scrollbars were removed [1]

\- Backspace no longer goes back [2]

\- Can't click on the "Lock" in URL bar to see certificate info anymore

\- Tabs were redesigned, and take up more space

\- Extensions are no longer a simple list, but are now gigantic unnecessary "cards"

\- "Chrome Web Store" link from Extensions section is now hidden underneath hamburger menu

\- Half the themes for the old design are literally broken now

Those are the biggest buggers for me, and Google simply throws up the middle finger <^> to advanced users and expects us to understand these changes are better for everyone. _NO they are not!_ Let us turn these "features" off in Developer Options.

[1][2] There are extensions that can re-enable these top two removals. The rest cannot be changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > while URLs may not be going anywhere anytime soon

Nothing in the article talks about killing the URL, just flagging spam URLs like G00GLE.com (with zeros) that might be security risks.

<comment><USER25> >"What we're really talking about is changing the way site identity is presented," Stark told WIRED. "People should know easily what site they're on, and they shouldn't be confused into thinking they're on another site. It shouldn't take advanced knowledge of how the internet works to figure that out."

> And while URLs may not be going anywhere anytime soon, Stark emphasizes that > there is more in the works on how to get users to focus on important parts > of URLs and to refine how Chrome presents them.

I read that as "Google is working on decoupling site identity and navigation from URLs."

<comment><USER26> Because scammers are exploiting the way we use URLs for the detriment of users. URLs are great as a mnemonic point of entry but you can easily scam someone out of a trusted website into your cloned version of it without them even noticing; it's a very slow and very dumb attack where the shady URL itself is the corrupt man-in-the-middle.

<comment><USER25> I understand the purported rationale for killing URLs. My comment was clarifying where the google spokesperson made a statement I interpret as "we are going to kill URLs."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> lost in the discussion is that major brands spend millions buying their own name back from google.

see an ad on tv and then type in "progressive" into the omnibox and click on the first link (paid ad by Progressive Auto Insurance on its own brand) and google gets $10+

type in "progressive.com" and google gets $0

<comment><USER28> A bit conspiratorial and counter to Hanlon's Razor, but an interesting and reasonable theory. But $10 for one click? How do you know that?

<comment><USER29> The click price is open info.

a quick google search on keyword pricing would send you to keyword planner that will show click price.

If you think it's fake news just bid on the keyword yourself.

It's a bit offensive to claim conspiracy when facts don't align with your understanding of the world.

<comment><USER28> > _If you think it's fake news just bid on the keyword yourself._

I don't see where I even implied that it was fake news. In fact, I inquired as to where one could find this information.

> _It's a bit offensive to claim conspiracy when facts don't align with your > understanding of the world._

I explicitly called it: _" an interesting and reasonable theory"_ lol. "A bit conspiratorial" does not mean "false" or fake news. And what _is_ my understanding of the world then? I assume you know since you have suggested these facts don't align with it. I disagree, in fact these things align very well with what I consider to be my understanding of the world, but perhaps you can enlighten me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Firefox and Duckduckgo here we come! Recent Google/Chrome changes have me baffled. It's a great time to switch. Vote with what you use folks.

<comment><USER31> This combo works fine. Also, using DDG as your default search engine gives you more diverse results, because you can also just do g! prior to the search terms to automatically send to search to EvilCorp --- oops, I mean Google --- as needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hard to call these the first steps. The entire point of the omnibar is to blur search and address.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is to protect dumb users. Can't we train them instead? I'm getting fed up of everything in my life being dumbed down so that idiots don't hurt themselves with it.

Can we put up a "you must be at least this willing to learn stuff in order to use this internet" sign on the information freeway on-ramps?

<comment><USER34> People aren't dumb just because they aren't experts on URLs.

<comment><USER33> You're creating a false dichotomy.

I am defining "dumb" as "incapable of determining what url they are visiting and therefore vulnerable to scams". That's a looong way from any sane definition of "expert".

<comment><USER35> Am I dumb to not open the can of oil I put in my car and check whether its heavy metal content is too high to be fresh oil? It's just not practical — if Google can mass-check things for me with TrickURI, it will very likely protect me (a professional programmer) against phishing. Let alone non-web professionals who are nonetheless experts in their field.

I'd rather my doctor and car mechanic and grocer get to focus on their areas of expertise than have to learn some baroque rules about links in their email.

<comment><USER33> I have no idea about the car oil thing. I don't own a car and rent one when I need one. All aspects of the maintenance and care of any car I might be driving I leave to its owners. Which is not that far from what Google are proposing - that someone else (Google) takes responsibility for the machine we're operating and makes sure it's safe.

The problem, of course, is that this trains us to be incapable, and leaves us incapacitated if anything goes wrong. If my rental car breaks down I have no idea what to do except ring the rental company and hope they can send someone to fix it. Likewise, if Google's filter makes a mistake (which it will) then the user has no ability to make any kind of decision on their own. They'll click on the fake bank, lose all their money, and whose responsibility will that be? Google won't pay them back - they just provided a free tool. The bank will want to shift responsibility ("you must have done something unsafe, Google stops all phishing attempts, so you must have told them your login details"). The net result is that while most people will be safer, some people will be in a worse position than they are now.

It doesn't solve any problems for anyone, it just makes us helpless if there is a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Showing URLs is essential. Google isn't able to determine what sites are safe. You can test it by signing up for a lot of Google Alerts. I get fed many shady URLs in Google Alerts and have clicked on some of them accidentally because the URLs aren't displayed in the emails anymore. If the URLs had been clearly displayed, I wouldn't have clicked on them.

A tool that warns people when something appears wrong with a URL would be useful, but hiding URLs from users would be a terrible idea. It will create a generation of people who don't even have the capability to visually scan a URL to see if it's safe.

Technology shouldn't be dumbed-down for people so much that many people who are capable of learning how it works will never see enough of the details to become curious. I've even met professional web developers who don't understand URLs well due to the current URL trimming in most browsers.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm a bit confused on when the URL checking is applied. Is the browser going to maintain a list of "good" domains and validate against that? If so then that'll need a lot of maintenance. Getting yourself on that list would need to go through some process that probably isn't transparent. If your legitimate website is too similar to one on the known "good" list, then it'll also probably be a process to get that resolved too all while you're losing visitors. If you attempt to automate this then there's a new risk that someone gets a malicious site in.

<comment><USER38> The existing safe browsing system is more like a blacklist and it sounds like this new system will be similar. [https://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about- safe-browsing.ht...](https://blog.chromium.org/2012/01/all-about-safe- browsing.html) But if the machine learning model is small enough one could imagine building it into the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Safari already does this to some extent and as a dev I hate it. I have 2 jsfiddles open in separate windows. The URL area just shows "jsfiddle.net" so there is no way toa see if 2 identical looking fiddles are the same or different nor which was is the fork and which one is the original.

<comment><USER40> I might be misunderstanding something (not familiar with jsfiddle) but if your problem is that you can't see the full URL you can change that at Preferences>Advanced>Show Full Website Address

<comment><USER41> Not on Mobile Safari :(

<comment><USER42> iPad is TOTALLY a valid laptop replacement!

<comment><USER41> It is for a lot (dare I say, most?) people.

<comment><USER42> excluding programmers or content creators - the people that apple is trying to push away from macs to ipads

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Solutions: True Sight browser extension to identify CDNs like AMP[1].

It shows an icon in the address bar to inform you whether the website is in part or wholly being hosted by CDNs (eg Google, Cloudflare, CloudFront, etc).

You can block partial CDNs (eg scripts, images) using NoScript or uMatrix, for full webpage CDNs like AMP you'd have to observe the True Sight warning and navigate away manually at the moment.

For partial CDNs it's also worth noting the Decentraleyes extension, which loads popular resources from it's offline source rather than the CDNs.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/detect- cloudf...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/detect-cloudflare- plus/)

<comment><USER35> That's useful, but it's not what this article is about.

This article is about a tool called "TrickURI" which detects misleading names like "G00gle.com"

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Google continuing to undermine the founding principles of the web for that sweet sweet ad revenue, a very minor part of the actual web experaince for a dwindling population of ad clickers. Digging a hole straight down sugarcoated with BS and delusion.

<comment><USER45> Its all about control. They want to own you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is an attempt to seal off one of the main pathways out of interaction with its monopoly. "This will make you safer" is a common refrain of those who seek to maintain control over everything you do.

<comment><USER35> The actual work doesn't seem to be at all — it's about a tool called TrickURI that identifies names that are visually confusing such as "G00gle.com". The headline is clickbaity.

So if I go register a name "neolefty" that nobody has ever heard of, TrickURI isn't going to object unless there's a fantastic service out there already called "ne0lefty". Which sounds legitimate to me. Kind of trademark-law-y, but consensus is how language works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Headline is misleading. This is about Google's research into how users are misled by tricky URL's and what to do about it.

<comment><USER48> The article is about how Google PR people are now openly advocating for removing the concept of a "URL" from web browsing for security reasons. What are you talking about.

<comment><USER49> Please don't spoil a perfectly fine comment by putting in a swipe at the end.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER48> This is the second comment I've seem where you being a hallway monitor is far more disruptive and annoying than whatever you're responding to. FYI making it clear that I'm being contradictory is better than a passive aggressive declarative statement, which is a position I shouldn't have to explain, but since you're apparently so concerned about how other people communicate, there you go.

<comment><USER49> I'm sorry it's annoying. Unfortunately, you have a history of incivility on this site. Comments like "what are you talking about" have no purpose other than to add hostility, and other comments of yours have been similar (e.g. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19004244](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19004244) and below). That's not cool, and if you keep it up we're going to have to ban you again. So please just use HN as intended, and then we won't have to annoy you with moderation.

Among other things, that means posting with respect for fellow users, regardless of how wrong you think they are.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Validate and confirm that what you're looking for is good, yes.

Obfuscate what you're looking at, no.

</comment><comment><USER51> The only new bit of information I learned from this article is Google's Trickuri project: [https://github.com/chromium/trickuri](https://github.com/chromium/trickuri)

It contains all sorts of interesting test cases to test how various URIs are displayed in various parts of the UI.

</comment><comment><USER52> You only need a threat to introduce any kind of "safety measures". This is a trend that is done by governments all over the world as an excuse to enter and take, do surveillance and monitor all kinds of activities. It's no surprise that they always put safety in front of measures designed to align with their marketing agenda. The masses will agree unfortunately and blindly subscribe.

I'm still waiting for them to find a "safety-first" reason to ban adblock from the store.

</comment><comment><USER53> Do you know what is not confusing at all? And is also fraud proof? AOL keywords.

I always wondered who Google would be, but I never guessed AOL.

This is a terrible idea, but I suppose it is easier to organize the worlds information this way.

<comment><USER54> Came here to post this; they're re-inventing AOL keywords. It was bad then and it'll be bad now. Chrome is user-hostile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Besides the fact that this article is a clickbait, "killing URLs" is a actually something that is happening. I'm surprised nobody put this in relation with the fact that google has a search engine, something much more important to this topic than the fact that it has a web browser. Hiding URLs and making them 2nd class citizen means nothing alone. The reason it is done is to promote an alternative way of accessing/finding things, with the goal of controlling how people move/navigate (since this is directly translatable to ad-money and behavioral data collection). Just think about every single ad- based (eg lock-in based) social network/service/web-app: they want you to navigate through _their_ searchbox and result page, because they want to control what you see and keep you from going away.

So killing URLs isn't much about this particular action from google or about web-browsers, it's actually embodied by the much broader trend towards searchbox-centered ui and "related stuff"-based navigation (instead of an absolute classification system like trees, tag hierarchies etc). Please f*ck off with your search engines and recommendation systems, just give me some tools to build taxonomies so i can organize myself. I know what i want and i know how i want it classified. IT was meant to organize (and process) databases please just stick to that, i want a library not a bookshop.

</comment><comment><USER56> Exactly! No need to remember websites anymore, just go back to google, search again and click on some ads while you're there. Sorry, but I don't trust Google or their self-serving proposals at all.

</comment><comment><USER57> for everyone that says or implies that "google is out to get us":

we have had users that thought the small green https lock next to the url meant a shopping site (the lock resembles a purse). so seeing it meant "safe shopping" by google.

users are much less knowledgable than anyone here can imagine.

</comment><comment><USER58> Shouln't web certifacates be supposed to solve the identity issue !? It's not the first time Google tries to kill the URL though. The reason why Google want to kill the URL is that they want to replace it with a Google search bar, and that instead of typing in a URL you make a google search. Google pays browsers _a lot_ of money in order to make the url bar work that way.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why not simply show identicons that represent a hash of the domain you're on? [https://vorba.ch/2018/url-security- identicons.html](https://vorba.ch/2018/url-security-identicons.html)

<comment><USER60> I don't think simply and identicons belong to the same sentence.

<comment><USER59> I just watched the talk "don't say 'simply'" the other day [1]. You're right, "simply" is wrong here.

[1]: [https://jameshfisher.com/2018/09/13/dont-say-simply- writethe...](https://jameshfisher.com/2018/09/13/dont-say-simply-writethedocs- prague.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This has been a long time coming. Wacky things like '[https://'](https://') awhere never going to fly with the general public. Though tech support for them is going to get a bit harder now.

</comment><comment><USER48> "Google Takes Last Steps Towards Killing the Open Web by Making Everyone Register With Centralized Certificate Authorities Just to Run an HTML Server."

I sincerely hope I live to see this quintessentially evil corporation go bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER62> > the complicated part is developing heuristics that correctly flag malicious > sites without dinging legitimate ones.

Its not complicated its impossible, google just don't care if they kick other people off their internet.

</comment><comment><USER63> So, google would become an authoritative source of all websites if this goal is achieved?

are they proposing that DNS standard is "updated" so that every request at runtime must verify that a website is legit?

</comment><comment><USER64> The TrickURI tool mentioned in the article: [https://github.com/chromium/trickuri](https://github.com/chromium/trickuri)

</comment><comment><USER65> >"Killing the url" The title is a little clickbait, I guess. Google only discussed displaying a warning when a url looks phishy. Or did I miss the killing/hiding url part?

<comment><USER66> They have been doing it for awhile. Removing [https://](https://), removing the padlock, removing www., Hide the path...

<comment><USER67> Https still shows up for me, as does the padlock, www is still showing as well (that change was fairly quickly reverted after the feedback they got).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Any large software project is taken over by bureaucrats if all basic issues have been solved by the real programmers.

Chrome introduced garbage like rounded corners, now this.

It's the Gervais principle in action.

</comment><comment><USER69> since the problem is with "careless" users when it comes to "noticing" or "reading" a URL, which have a position in the screen that I suppose most users know by now, then, I think that the solution should be designed around UI/UX principles, since one of the purposes of UI/UX (correct me if i am wrong) is to let and help the user "read" and "notice" every bit of information using every pixel in the screen.

if the goal is to help the user "notice" and "read" URLs, then why not just (for example):

-use another font for URLs, one which mitigate the similarities between characters

-make the URL bar bigger with a bigger font

-use a small popup (à la Wikipedia) that shows the URL clearly when the user hover it. Actually something happens when you hover a link in some browsers, a lost, grey container with a black font appears in the bottom left of the window, it contains the URL of the link.

but if the goal is to setup "yet another input device" for a database of shady URLs and domain names, well... you will surely need to integrate not only with the UI/UX parts of the browser which have the greatest usage share.

or if the goal is to hide one important part of the mechanics of the web (and make software feels even more magic...) then, don't show the URL at all.

</comment><comment><USER70> There is an AMP proposal for certificates to replace DNS for web site identity. In that scenario, Chrome would stop showing URLs and would only show the human-readable identity that signed the page, as validated by a certificate. This would allow signed site pages to be navigated offline or replicated widely or blacklisted.

Demo video & more info: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923156](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923156)

<comment><USER71> I don't really want to drill into what's happening with AMP, but I am skeptical of attempts to move from domains to some concept of real world entities with signing. We tried that with EV certs, but it turned out pretty easy, albeit expensive, for bad guys to get EV certs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I am skeptical that they can kill the URL. It's like those smart inbox startups that decided to kill email a few years ago but they ended up shutting down and email has become a stronger and more important tool in communication now. Some things don't need to be replaced or killed. If it works, it works. URL is the foundation of the web and killing it would be more difficult than killing the email. Just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER73> Frankly I'd rather use a browser that blocked all URLs with non-ASCII characters than one which didn't show the plain URL in the address bar.

</comment><comment><USER74> Maybe I missed something, but I didn't see anything about removing address bars or promoting AMP in there... Then again its late here.

</comment><comment><USER75> It's it convenient that Chrome's moves against the URL also makes it easier for Google to MITM/proxy the whole world using AMP?

</comment><comment><USER76> This is a classic example of 'manufacturing' a problem so you can 'solve' it in a self serving way.

At some point technical discussions will have to rise above current naivette and various parroted 'laws' and demonstrate understanding of the real world, corporate and human behavior instead of lamenting after the horse has bolted.

<comment><USER77> While I'm no great believer in their particular solution being motivated by pure altruism, it's simply false to suggest that the problem is manufactured.

Telling whether a site is being served by who you think it is is fast becoming a crucial skill, to the point where I explain at least the basics to even the most technically illiterate people I know who use a computer. It's a real problem, in substantial need of a solution.

<comment><USER78> Why can't the solution simply be education?

I don't buy this learned helplessness. Schools need to evolve with the times.

We teach kids calculus in school, surely we can teach them to read a freakin URL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Why don't all browsers simply visually emphasize the TLD and second level domain (or third level in a case like example.co.uk) in any given URL?

Yes, sometimes it is not easy to recognize the real address in a scam URL like "dropbox.com.scam.ru" but browsers could make absolutely clear what the TLD and SLD are.

<comment><USER80> The version of Firefox I'm on right now does. Most of the current URL is a light gray, while the "ycombinator.com" portion is white which gives much more contrast against the dark gray background of the URL bar. (I'm using the dark theme, but I'm pretty sure the normal theme does this, too.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> I understand their motivation, but in none of the articles murmuring about them "taking away the URL", I have never so far seen any concrete approach how their replacement could look.

Even if you are willing to sacrifice the "you can write them on a napkin and share them with everyone" feature, it's not clear to me what other identifier would fundamentally solve the identity problem:

Even if you forced every website to get an extended validation certificate from a preselected CA and then based website identity solely on the certificates, what would stop you from registering a misleading company name? (There are precedents for that, btw. Search for "World Conference Center Bonn Scandal" if you want to read some hilarity)

Additionally, as the article mentions itself:

> _The big challenge is showing people the parts of URLs that are relevant to > their security and online decision-making, while somehow filtering out all > the extra components that make URLs hard to read._

I feel the approaches we have seen so far rest on the assumption that the top and second level domains of the hostname are the only "important" parts of an URL and the rest can be hidden. I think this assumption is simply false, even for a vast number of non-technical use-cases: Often, "identity" is not just about the organisation behind an URL but also about the content - e.g., you'd like to know which article of a blog a link leads to.

More importantly, many sites are divided into user profiles, where the identity of a user is given by a subdomain or a path segment. Just knowing you're on "[https://facebook.com"](https://facebook.com") doesn't tell you whether you're viewing the actual profile you want to view.

Finally, even the "cruft" is sometimes important, if only for knowing it's there. E.g., I frequently remove tracking/referral arguments before sharing a link - both to make the link easier to remember and to disrupt tracking.

Also, unrelated:

> _The Chrome security team has taken on internet-wide security issues before, > developing fixes for them in Chrome and then throwing Google 's weight > around to motivate everyone to adopt the practice_

Is that how we imagined internet governance to work? Didn't we have standards bodies like the W3C or the IETF that were supposed to make decisions on that scale?

<comment><USER82> > Search for "World Conference Center Bonn Scandal" if you want to read some > hilarity

FYI: I tried, and the only Google result is this exact HN post.

<comment><USER81> Ah, apologies. I guess my optimism was too great that this made more than local news.

I can't find an english-language article about the story, so here is a german one:

[https://m.dw.com/de/der-bauskandal-um-das-world- conference-c...](https://m.dw.com/de/der-bauskandal-um-das-world-conference- center/a-16808295)

To summarize the story:

Bonn used to be the capital of West Germany during the Cold War. When that was over, however, Berlin got reassigned as capital and Bonn went back to being a mostly ordinary small town.

They never quite got over the demotion though and the city made numerous attempts at staying internationally relevant. One project was to become a UN base of operations for Germany. Apparently for that, it's a requirement that your build an oversized hotel and conference venue.

The city had trouble finding investors for the project, but eventually a korean company - "SMI Hyundai" stepped forward.

If you want to believe the official records, then apparently due diligence went out the window at the mention of the name "Hyundai". City officials assumed that they were somehow affiliated with the automaker and were quick to trust them with city-backed loans in the millions.

It turned out they were scammers and not even remotely capable of contributing to the project. In the end, the city had damage of several 100 million euros.

The company had never had any relation to the automaker either. It just "happened" to have the term "Hyundai" in its name...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I feel the end game is that all websites will be served to you by Google, like an invisible proxy. And you wouldn't be able to see it. Google search already modifies the result links with google ones, to see which result you clicked. AMP plays to that goal too.

</comment><comment><USER84> Reminds me a bit of the "URL"/transition component of Doug Crockford's post- web secure distributed app delivery idea.

[https://youtu.be/O9AwYiwIvXE?t=2400](https://youtu.be/O9AwYiwIvXE?t=2400)

</comment><comment><USER85> This is a worrying development. It seems like this tool would help endangered users but also penalize legitimate sites/services. Not to mention, this is Google shaping the internet to its needs again.

Also, the title is clickbait so now I feel bad for upvoting.

</comment><comment><USER86> A better idea might be to allow EV certificates to contain a large logo which is displayed next to the URL bar, and ensure that only trademarks can be placed by their holders into these certificates.

</comment><comment><USER87> Wouldn't displaying the top level domain name in bold or another colour make identification easier, or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER88> Yeah folks at Google want their search engine to be the entry point for the web - not the url.

We need to find (and promote) alternatives to Google (and Facebook). They are making the world a WORST place.

</comment><comment><USER89> Google should never have given pagerank rewards for 'meaningful' URLs, they should have given it for meaningful link descriptions.

URLs should be opaque, then we wouldn't have the mess of people trusting them. Also we would have HATEOAS instead of OpenAPI :D

</comment><comment><USER90> So by obfuscating data from users - Google is salvaging Internet?

</comment><comment><USER91> The way they killed all their other useful products?

</comment><comment><USER60> My wild guess, based on events this week:

The step zero has been partnering with MS to kill Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER92> can we just kill Google instead?

<comment><USER49> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> kill AMP first, then talk about that, Google.

</comment><comment><USER94> Sounds like Google is re-inventing EV Domains. EV Domains attempt to tie a URL to a business securely. Unfortunately, nobody pays attention to EV certificates.

Now we will be getting a proprietary Google replacement of EV Domains.</comment>


Tesla's fight with America's car dealers - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/20/autos/telsa-car-dealers/index.html?iid=Lead

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _Until then, said O'Connell, Tesla will sell its cars the way it wants. If > some states don't allow that, then Tesla will simply sell them elsewhere._

I think this last line of the article is very important. This has the power to get the consumer on Tesla's side of this fight. If enough of the right people in Texas (and other problem states) want this car and think the laws are stupid... they'll need to find a way to make that happen. Laws can be changed. If not then they'll just get them out of state.

<comment><USER2> This is especially relevant at this stage of Tesla. I would guess that there aren't a lot of people wandering through the mall to buy a tesla or making it one stop on their trek through the dealerships. People (right now) are setting out to buy a Tesla. It's also expensive enough to warrant going to one of the already established outlets, even if that involves travel. I doubt not being able to sell physically in North Carolina will really hamper their sales too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a straight-up technological disruption of an existing sales channel. The third-party dealerships are an artifact of primitive 20th century supply chain management - they're basically a caching mechanism to handle latency in the network, to put it in computerese terms. With the power of computers and online ordering, Tesla has no need for these dinosaurs. They can "cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to you", terms every consumer can understand.

The fear for the dealers is not that Tesla will go around them, but that other manufacturers will follow. The big car makers already have experience setting up alternative brands to play with techniques that are too radical for their mainstream business (remember Saturn?), so it would be easy enough for something like GM spinning the Volt off as a new car company, not just a Chevy, and running Tesla-style sales.

If that happens, dealers are doomed.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love how Texas, of all places, puts up the most regulatory hurdles against a new technology and business model.

<comment><USER5> I grew up in Idaho. People there will talk about how important limited government is... until you mention farm subsidies.

Suddenly they'll speak convincingly about the benefits of centralized markets, price controls and protectionist trade policies with no sense of irony.

<comment><USER6> And Democratic partisans will attack regulation when Republicans are making it, and many Republicans are perfectly glad to use the power of the state regulatory agencies to stymie abortion clinics in any way they can get away with. Everyone and their dog makes an exception for whatever's expedient; bottom story of the day, honestly.

If you want something _notable_, get me a politician standing up for principles which may be _against_ their immediate self-interest (e.g. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo, on recent IRS shenanigans).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Money can't buy press like this. Suddenly Elon Musk is the underdog fighting the vested interests that be and Tesla is the little engine that could.

<comment><USER8> Fortunately for Tesla, they have a good decade of playing the underdog card ahead of them. Ford and GM do $280 billion in sales combined.

<comment><USER9> It isn't Ford and GM fighting this, it is the dealers. I actually doubt that GM and Ford care much about protecting the dealers. My guess is, or should I say hope, that GM and Ford executives are looking at Tesla and thinking about how they might make more money with that business model in the future.

<comment><USER8> It was understood that it's not GM and Ford fighting on this issue. The point was, in reply to the OP, Tesla will be able to play the underdog card for a very very long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article brought up the point that Tesla owns all of the service centers. I don't care if Tesla owns all the dealers, but having a monopoly on Tesla repair would be bad for consumers. If the process for becoming a "Tesla mechanic" allowed competition with the Tesla service centers, that would be OK.

<comment><USER11> Do the provisions of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which basically say you can get your car serviced anywhere you want without voiding your manufacturers' warranty, not apply to Teslas?

<comment><USER12> Going to have to wait for an owner to challenge it, or repair shop which tries to obtain the necessary technical information to do so.

disclaimer, I work a major auto parts supplier, etc. It will be very very interesting to see if tries to circumvent this law, which I doubt he can. If anything shuts down his expansion it may be through this route. As in, they may force them to curtail selling until they can provide the independent support.

<comment><USER13> >they may force them to curtail selling until they can provide the independent support.

Wouldn't that just be the same manuals, training videos, and parts-ordering- system credentials that they give to their own mechanics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The American automotive industry is where sleaze bags get trained. It is home of the biggest scum of the Earth. I currently contract with a startup that caters to it, and am impressed daily with how vile these people are. Its is downright evil.

</comment><comment><USER15> > The traditional dealer franchise system is best for car buyers, Wolters > insists, because it preserves competition between dealerships selling the > same products.

I'm not sure I understand this argument. If I follow this argument to completion, what they are basically saying is that when you have lots of middlemen selling the same product, that "preserves" competition between them, limiting the amount of additional cost they add. Wouldn't removing the middleman also remove that additional cost?

<comment><USER16> I think the idea is that if the manufacturer was the only one selling, that they could inflate their prices higher than what the middleman overhead would be since they're the only one offering that product.

Why he thinks competition between brands isn't enough to counteract this I have no idea.

<comment><USER15> > I think the idea is that if the manufacturer was the only one selling

But aren't they the only ones selling tesla cars to the dealers anyway? Couldn't they just inflate their prices to the dealers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. In "The Land of the Free" a company cannot sell its own products as it pleases and is potentially forced to go through middlemen that provide no added value other then forcing folks to haggle?

This is not medicine we're talking about (where I can see pharmacists as an important part of the system).

How can it even be suggested to be illegal to open up a store and sell your own product? Should Apple be barred from selling their own products in Apple stores and go through Walmart instead?

</comment><comment><USER18> there's a reason they call them stealerships.

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't this _exactly_ what happened to Preston Tucker?

</comment><comment><USER8> In a sane system, America's car dealers would be viewed as an illegal cartel that interrupts trade and would be abolished. Indeed, a trade-interrupting cartel is exactly what they had in mind as they pursued a legislative agenda for decades to make it nearly impossible to sell new cars in the US without going through their system.

</comment><comment><USER20> Will Elon Musk fold under the pressure and cooperate with the dealer network when they offer to sell at low to no markup to bring him into the extortion racket of Car Dealers?

I loathe buying cars so much because of the snakes that run those Dealerships. They want the car buying process to be so excruciatingly painful so people will leave money on the table to "Just take my money and make the pain go away".

How far are Dealers willing to go to make it illegal for Tesla to sell cars anywhere? Would they go so far as to outlaw the production of Tesla vehicles in America because it goes against the Dealer protection racket?

<comment><USER21> _They want the car buying process to be so excruciatingly painful so people will leave money on the table to "Just take my money and make the pain go away"._

Well, this is why I bought my last car used from Carmax. Sure, you probably spend more than you you might spend if you were willing to go to a dealer and haggle, but I found it to be worth the premium.

<comment><USER22> I don't understand this unless you have absolutely zero tolerance for negotiating a price. Why could I not simply print out a Carmax price of a used car in which I'm interested, then take it to any other used car dealer with a comparable car?

"Can you beat this price?"

"Yes." --> I just beat the Carmax price.

"No." --> I leave with my money (this one won't happen).

<comment><USER23> Car dealers are genetically incapable of giving such a direct answer. You can either deal with their evasive swindling and haggle anyway, or just assume the answer is "no".

<comment><USER24> If you can't haggle for a better priced car, have fun trying to close real deals / acquisitions...

<comment><USER25> I don't haggle. At all. I've sold a startup before for 7 figures. You know how I closed deals with Fortune 500 companies when we were selling our product? "Here's the price. Please feel free to shop elsewhere if you're not interested." Same with selling the shop. "Here's the price (based on our fundamentals). If you don't want to buy it, cool, someone else will. Or it can keep printing us cash."

Haggling is overrated.

<comment><USER24> Could've been 8... ;-)

<comment><USER25> Meh. I only need so much money.

<comment><USER24> I'm only kidding dude!

<comment><USER25> I know :) I'm just giving you a hard time!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - Banksta - <AUTHOR> Check it out at http://banksta.com/
In short, Banksta is a simple and fast-paced auction site. It pairs up users anonymously and randomly as they bid against each other for an item. The highest bidder wins the item while the second-highest bidder forfeits their bid. This was, of course, inspired by Professor Bazerman's classic in-class example of human irrationality. And in staying true to that inspiration, we are currently allowing users to bid on 20 dollar bills. But we would like to expand into other items.
We think it would be remarkably insightful to watch real users actually use the site. So please feel free to explore the site. You can click on 'BID FOR FUN' to get a feel for how it works.
Would love your feedback on the idea, execution, and its direction! <comment><USER2> For lack of a better, more constructive comment: This is no good.

This is clearly the framework for those shady penny auction sites like beezid, quibid and whatever the hell other thousand clones have sprung up.

These sites are unethical. I feel like your about page is trying to present banksta as some other more positive purpose when it's really not. The design is lacking and of course the sample bidding thing consisted of me clicking a button... not sure what I was supposed to get out of that...

I do not support your site.

<comment><USER3> You're right, they are unethical and they face some problems at the moment. In germany swoopo is laying of 50% of their staff and dealstreet closed. The main problem is, that their "customers" never come back once they've been ripped of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is incredibly silly because nobody will ever win a $20 for less than $20. As an example, let's say you & I are bidding on the $20 bill...

\- After bidding for a while, I eventually place a bid of $19. At this point if you quit I make $1 and you lose $18.

\- So now you bid $20. At this point if I quit you would break even and I would lose $19.

\- So now I bid $21. Why bid $21 on a $20 bill? Because if I win I only lose $1 (rather than $19) and you lose $20.

\- Now of course you would rather lose $2 than $20, so you're going to up the bid to $22, right?

I'd be interested in hearing from somebody more knowledgeable than I in game- theory: When should an agent quit bidding and accept their losses?

<comment><USER5> I'm not an expert in game theory (I just had a half-completed econ degree once upon a time) but your analysis is spot on as far as I can tell. The pareto efficient outcome is for the first agent to bid $1 and for the second agent to quit without bidding. If there is a counter bid, then the first player will have an incentive to bid higher to avoid a loss. The second player would then have to counter bid in order to avoid a loss as well, and so on. At the $20 mark nothing changes: at that point both players are now trying to minimize loss. In any case, any other alternative from the pareto efficient $1 vs $0 bid will cause at least one agent to have a less preferable outcome, and hence that strategy would be chosen by a "logical" player.

Maybe more interesting would be to have each agent pick a bid in advance and reveal the bids simultaneously. Of course, the optimal strategy there would be to just bid as close to $20 as possible and hope for winnings to accumulate over time.

And in all of this it's not clear how the proprietor of this site will make money out of this deal.

Feel free to correct me if someone thinks this is wrong: perhaps there is a reason I never finished that degree. :)

<comment> a-priori Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

<comment><USER6> _A_ strange game :)

(<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/quotes#qt0453844>)

<comment> a-priori I stand corrected :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For a lot of questions here concerning the psychology of the $20 bid:

<http://mfinley.com/experts/bazerman/bazerman.htm>

</comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like the scam auction sites which are actually gambling, as described by Jeff Atwood here: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/profitable-until- de...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/profitable-until-deemed- illegal.html).

Sorry to be harsh if I understood this wrong, but right now it sounds like this is nothing more than a way to get money from people who don't know better. It might work, but I'd never go there myself.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is highly unethical. Like Jeff Atwood has said, they're gambling: [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/05/penny-auctions- they...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/05/penny-auctions-theyre- gambling.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Here's the best tip I could give you: Hire a designer.

Personally, I don't see a business here. I even tried to bid for fun and it wasn't fun. I guess you're trying to create a new form of gambling?? The thing for me is that it sounds like such a losing proposition I don't know why I would risk my money. There are plenty of other forms of gambling that, at the very least, have better odds, surely..?

</comment><comment><USER11> How do you prevent gaming the system with a limit of two bidders? With low user numbers at a given point in time, is anonymity enough?

With an unlimited number of bidders it's not dissimilar to the pay per bid model used by the likes of MadBid and Swapoo and at least as potentially profitable, at least until the point the government realises it's essentially gambing and decides to regulate accordingly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gaming the system was an early concern - one that we believe we solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> your site just screams scam to me...not only the actual business model, but the actual design too

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2952>

</comment><comment><USER13> What software are you using to deliver the auction status updates which appear directly below the image of the $20 bill?

</comment><comment><USER14> Clickable: <http://banksta.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> This is really a banksta paradise!

(not that real banks are much better, mind you)

</comment><comment><USER16> Are you pairing only 2 people for an auction?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's the idea. In the event that another user is not available at the time a user joins an auction, that user is paired up with a bot.

<comment><USER16> Why limit to only 2 people?

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason really - 'cept to study one-on-one auctions.

<comment><USER17> Are you trying to "study" auctions or make money? You need to be more explicit about the goals of your site and as other people suggested: hire a designer.

Another really bizarre aspect of your site is the use of Adsense. If this is supposed to be a real business why attempt to make some small pocket change off Adsense? It's really quite confusing.

These things all add up to make you seem untrustworthy. 3 things to do:

1\. Clarify your purpose. 2\. Clean up the design. 3\. Get rid of Adsense.

Unless you're a content site that is living off ads it makes no sense to have Adsense. Given that you're running a gambling site, the inclusion of Adsense just makes it seem even more obvious that you have this naive get rich quick ambition.

<comment><USER18> 4\. Move it out of the jurisdiction of Costa Rica... no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> \- Why would the auction loser forfeit their money?

\- Bidding on a $20 bill is stupid.

\- I understand you wanted to get it up fast and try it out, but you couldn't design it a little better?</comment>


The time is right to re-examine the L.A. freeway - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-new-et-cm-why-i-reviewed-the-new-405-20150805-column.html <comment><USER2> Why is congestion pricing never brought up in any of these conversations about traffic?

Simply charge people 10 or 20 dollars to drive at heavily impacted times of the day. Take every last cent of that toll to subsidize buses and eventually mass transit on the same route.

People in a hurry win because their time is valuable and they get to buy it back relatively cheaply. People not in a hurry win because they get subsidized mass transit. Everyone wins because traffic and pollution go down.

In a country where we allow people to live in misery just to uphold the "Free Market", why do we allow our streets and freeways to become unusable twice a day just so freeways remain "free"?

<comment><USER3> Isn't this basically FasTrak?

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

It seems to represent everything else in the state of California: you get what you pay for. It creates a classist, elitist society.

<comment><USER4> Wow, are those transponders still that big or is that an older model? We have Good2Go here in the Seattle area, and the little RFID cards are about as big as a credit card (though a bit thinner I think).

<comment><USER3> I've lived in Los Angeles/the US for 4 years now.

They just started implementing them on some freeways, like I-10 (maybe 2 years ago?). They eliminated the (free) carpool lane and put this in place.

I know city workers who brag about getting their transponders subsidised and get to ride in the cool fast lane.

EDIT: The FasTrak lanes/"ExpressLanes" are actually combined with the free carpool lanes. Sorry for the confusion.

EDIT 2: This is how it works: [https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml](https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml)

The transponder and opening an accuont (both required) still costs money.

Further info: [http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/...](http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/ExpressLanes_FAQ.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I have lived here for about same number of years. I just happened to finally sign up and try it. It was an interesting value proposition. Pay 5+ dollars but remove the stress of possibly being late. The $5 is high enough to make this not worth it as every day default but I am glad to have it as an option in a pinch. Seems to be working well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Three decades ago, according to Fortune, about 70% of American 17-year-olds > had a driver's license; the figure today is 46%. More U.S. teenagers now > have a smartphone than a license.

I'd guess that the rise in cell phones, text messaging, and now smartphones was a big contributor to the decline in early licenses and also in the urgency of teens to get their own car.

Before such easy communications, you generally were not in contact with your friends except when you were actually physically with them at school or at pre-arranged times outside of school. You could call then on the phone, of course, but that only worked if they were home to take the call, and you had to compete with the rest of your family for the phone in your house.

This made spontaneous arranging of rides from friends a rather uncertain endeavor. Unless your parents were very generous in the policies for sharing the family car(s) with you, getting a car of your own meant a tremendous leap in your freedom.

Nowadays, a large fraction of teens have cell phones, largely smartphones. They make heavy use of them for messaging services and social networks (and, I've been told, they sometimes even actually use them to talk!). They update their statuses several times a day, and send on average something like 100 messages a day.

Because of this, today's teens (and younger) are much better informed as to where their friends are and what they are doing when those friends are not physically present. They know which of their friends with cars are not busy, and it is trivial to propose a joint trip to the place they wish to go.

Accordingly, having your own car is not as important as it once was. Your social group is now more efficient at sharing cars than social groups were back before widespread mobile communications.

</comment><comment><USER7> The OP talks of fewer kids having licenses. That has little to do with smartphones and technology. Beyond the increased costs, operating a car today is more emotionally expensive than ever. Driving is now a rationally terrifying experience for kids.

1) Traffic fines are no longer trivial. Beyond the money, if a teen is part of any graduated licensing program ANY ticket may delay them getting their full license many months.

2) Parking is dangerous. Wrong place or wrong time doesn't mean a simple ticket. Your car may be disappeared to some distant impound lot. The ransom demanded will likely be more than the vehicle's worth (at least given the junkers I had as a teenager).

3) Police encounters. The most likely place for a teen to interact negatively with an officer is during a "routine" traffic stop. Turn on the news. A minor incident can quickly spiral into days or weeks in jail.

4) Teenagers now fear failure above all else. A test failed is far worse than a test not taken. Teenagers are adverse to any test that isn't absolutely necessary. (See many threads here). So they avoid the DMV.

5) Cars increase mobility, but have you seen the streets in most cities? Gridlock makes people feel trapped. For a child in today's world of apparently constant violence, being stuck on a city street is scary. Whereas you or I might see a simple frustration, kids today see physical danger.

Teenagers have plenty of reasons to avoid driving. It isn't because they once needed to physically move in order to communicate. It's because they have good reason to fear the road.

<comment><USER8> >A test failed is far worse than a test not taken. Teenagers are adverse to any test that isn't absolutely necessary

The driving test is stupidly easy. Whereas very smart kids have well-founded anxiety about SAT and AP testing (genuinely difficult, can make or break your life ambitions), only the most incompetent of the fuckups ever came within a thousand miles of failing a driving test. These were the kind of poeple where everyone else wondered how they managed to stay alive, how they would ever be adults. For those above the 5th percentile of general ability level, passing the driving test on the first try was pretty much guaranteed.

I think this is wrong. I'd much prefer a world where some normal people can't get drivers licenses and moat people on the road are professionals or robots, but if the state says, "No, you're not a good enough driver" then you can't really carry on a suburban life. So it has to say yes to all but the most egregiously incompetent, or lose its tax base.

<comment><USER9> I've known people that failed their driver's tests, but they were also people that deserved to fail... Otherwise, it's really just a question of experience. If you've been driving lawn mowers, ATVs, or farm equipment since you were old enough to reach the pedals, the way many rural children do, then passing the driving test is a piece of cake.

Driving is really fucking easy to do, as long as you have a bare minimum of situational awareness. It's not like most people are even driving stick and so have to keep track of what gear they are in and avoid stalling. Just keep it between the lanes, keep your hands on the wheel, put the damn cellphone down, and keep your eyes open.

<comment><USER10> > If you've been driving lawn mowers, ATVs, or farm equipment since you were > old enough to reach the pedals, the way many rural children do, then passing > the driving test is a piece of cake.

Not necessarily! When you go into the city for the driving test and encounter a bunch of crazy shit that doesn't exist on the dirt roads you drive, like stop lights and crosswalks and congestions, it's totally easy to fail a driving test just because you aren't familiar with the mechanics of how traffic works in areas with higher levels of development.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Many streets in LA are wider than even the widest highways in certain countries (UK comes to mind). You can't broaden the 405 much more, nor would such a scheme work for the 10.

The obvious answer is more mass transit and please, pretty please, protected bike lanes on major throughways.

If Amsterdam can squeeze a dedicated bike lane, cars and trams on roads that haven't changed in hundreds of years, surely LA can figure it out.

<comment><USER12> I don't know if you've been to Holland, but it's flat. It's flat _everywhere_. Their steepest hill is a joke, it was less steep than the hill I lived on as a kid in the UK, which in UK terms was a pretty standard hill.

That's why everyone cycles. And that's why Amsterdam squeezed it in because they knew they were going to be used.

I cannot stress how much of a difference it makes everywhere being flat.

<comment><USER13> In LA, it's not the flatness, it's the distance that makes having a car necessary. Everywhere is _miles_ away from everywhere else. I haven't been to Amsterdam so I can't comment on that, but the first two sections of this excellent article[0] touch on that.

[0] [https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/city-by-city/los- angeles...](https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/city-by-city/los-angeles- plays-itself/)

<comment><USER12> To be honest, miles on a bike is not much difference from miles in a car. Average speed is like 10 mph, without any of the traffic jams.

<comment><USER14> 2 miles maybe, not 10 or 20 though... plus the searing heat ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I lived in LA for quite some time. The 10/405 interchange cannot under any normal circumstances be declared a work of art, unless in an ironic, soul- destroying sense of immense fuck-upery.

LA would have all the space it needs if freeways were one way. Yeah, I'm serious. Separate the two directions of traffic by a city block or two and suddenly four lanes will fit in more places, the interchanges become less complex, and there's no spillover delays from rubbernecking the other side of the freeway.

Also, they only recently realized that freeways need to obey the pressure principle: lots of exits, few entrances with meters and long acceleration lanes. That discourages short-distance trips and gives many outlets for relieving congestion in the case of accidents. Long acceleration lanes reduce merge pressure and help reduce the jamming caused by fast traffic hitting slower traffic.

<comment><USER16> >> The 10/405 interchange cannot under any normal circumstances be declared a work of art

While I agree with you now and have always done so, the point made in the article was that cultural norms have changed so greatly these decades. Our antagonistic view was once exceptional, but it has become mainstream.

As a parallel, I still see immense beauty in the internet's form and function, but many of those of a younger generation who grew up with it might already be seeing the internet as a ubiquitous, soul-destroying, immense fuck-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I went to go have lunch with a friend on a Westside, coming from Burbank (20 miles), and the roundtrip took me close to 3 hours. LA is a strange place in that way.

The other day, I overheard someone, who is 'non-minority', tell someone else that they took public transit (bus) to work. The other person was slightly dumbfounded, wondering why anyone would subject themselves to that.

I really do want to see a more bikeable Los Angeles (see link below), and I do want to see the freeways as not part of the problem in this city.

[http://www.williamha.com/bike-commuting-to-work-in-los- angel...](http://www.williamha.com/bike-commuting-to-work-in-los-angeles/)

<comment><USER18> If you press people about why they don't like taking the bus, you get some _interesting_ answers, usually containing some riff on the phrase " _those_ people". It's pretty shitty.

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure who you're talking to, but generally when I ask people why they don't like taking the bus the response is usually much more likely to have something to do with the fact that getting anywhere by bus in LA takes easily double the time one would spend in the car.

The crowds and the lack of cleanliness on the busses are usually mentioned as well.

Dirty, crowded, loud, and slow? No thanks. I've taken the bus numerous times in LA out of necessity, usually when my bike unexpectedly broke or I was just too tired to ride home, and it always sucks. I avoid it at all costs.

The subways are better, but not by much. They're still insanely crowded during peak hours and not really any faster than driving when you factor in the time and effort it takes to get to and from the stations themselves. However, I'd take the subway downtown more often if it just ran later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I asked my teenaged nephew the other day, while he was playing a car racing game, what he thinks would be a reasonable good first car for him. He is two, maybe three years from driving age. He grew up in the suburbs and both his parents have cars. Dad has a classic car for weekend pleasure driving. You get the picture. My nephew hadn't really considered getting a car. I can see the first car thing being a whole lot less of a thing for his generation than it was for his parents'. He would rather spend time tinkering on his computer than under the hood or behind the wheel like his father did.

<comment><USER21> Give him 2-3 years and he'll tell you. Especially once his friends start driving and owning their own cars.

<comment><USER8> I'm having a hard time imagining what world you live in where teenagers have ~$3000 + gas money in disposable income from their $7.25/hour jobs and no pressure to save it for college. My suburb was probably in the top 1% of property values in the state and only a few (~10 out of 250) kids "owned" cars, which their finance-industry parents bought them.

Most garages were 2-car, and you don't want a car outside of a garage in snow. I was actually offered my grandmother's car for free when she died, but my parents refused it because they didn't want to deal with 3 cars in a 2-car driveway and garage.

No one else had any say in what car they would drive; 99% of the time it was Mom's minivan or Prius, with constant tension over when the keys would be brought back home. 95% of my graduating class went to college, and all but a few of them lived in dorms (at least for the first year) where car ownership was neither necessary nor permitted.

None of us will be thinking about buying cars until we graduate. And even then, those who will have money to buy cars they want, instead of the cheapest thing that starts, will be the San Francisco software engineers and the Manhattan investment bankers, i.e. the people who don't need them. I know a few people who got cars out of necessity for internships in remote places, and on all accounts it was a ~10-year-old, boring, practical castoff of a middle- aged relative who wanted an upgrade, to be sold when no longer necessary.

Personally, I'd love a Jetta but I can't imagine what I'd use it for, and for the same amount of money I can get a fully-loaded rMBP, an iPhone, and less student debt.

<comment><USER22> I agree with you... However, where do you (or your parents, I guess) live where you have a 2-car garage but not enough space to park a car on the street in front of your house? (snow isn't a real excuse, plenty of people in snowy places don't park their cars in garages)

<comment><USER8> Municipal ordinance - parking between midnight and 5am by permit only, only _n_ nights per year per resident. Not sure how common this is for suburbia, but I gather it's not hugely unusual.

<comment><USER23> Where is that? I've lived a lot of different places in the US and I've never seen anything like that outside the downtown areas of really big cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not directly on topic here, but anyone else feel this was a monstrous jump to make?

>Younger drivers see cars less as tickets to freedom and connection and more as obstacles to those things, in part because the one time that they can't tap out texts or post pictures to Instagram is while they're behind the wheel.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why I drive to work and don't take the bus:

* The bus still takes longer (2-3 times as long)

This might change, but only if normal traffic gets worse.

* Loss of freedom

I have the option of visiting friends/family in other locations if I drive.

Loss of freedom is also related to the very poor intra-networking; the entire transit system in the area is designed as a star pattern for getting workers to the city.

* Commuting in a carpool is hard when you aren't a shift worker: your hours and those of other workers aren't the same, you might not even have multiple workers from the same area at a small company.

* Commuting in a carpool is hard when you aren't a full time worker: (I don't have this problem, but friends do) if your hours aren't consistent or you might be called in at a moment's notice.

I think the answer to all of this is flexible pooled transit. Probably an extension of what we know of today as taxi/ubur; but much more Johnny Cab (80's Total Recall).

</comment><comment><USER26> I would love to see a future where on-demand car services and / or self- driving cars shrink the traffic volume of Los Angeles back down to the scale it was originally designed for.

As you could imagine, native Angelenos are culturally disposed towards car-as- identity thinking. But the value shift away from that is definitely visible amongst younger people, and trends and values in LA have a tendency to spread at an accelerated pace. So it's possible after a certain tipping point, this could become reality much sooner than we think.

But I'm doubtful we'll be turning the 10 into a park anytime soon. Much more likely that it will just shave off some of the stress of trying to get to a meeting in Santa Monica from Downtown on time

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Jevons Paradox: if the convenience and cost of taking the automobile goes down, the usage will go up. It just might suck less because you can go anywhere, from anywhere, and drunk.

<comment><USER27> That's what scares me about self driving cars. right now a three hour commute each way is not really feasible but if you could sleep in your car it would be very possible.

We may end up with even more sprawl and more cars on the roads.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Or worse: Mini RVs that let people live permanently on the road, taking up even more space.

I'm reminded of the guy in Snow Crash who hooked himself up into a repurposed fire truck that smashed through the LA freeways like a tank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If only there was some way to move a large number of people a mile a minute...

Of course, it wouldn't be built in the US.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_S1,_BCR)

</comment><comment><USER29> I think it's great that people are questioning car use in big cities like Los Angeles. I've visited a fair number of cities in my life, and those without many cars are much more pleasant to hang out in. Much healthier, too. Subways, bicycle paths and walking streets work very well in large cities.

However, I hope people won't make the mistake of trying to get rid of cars in rural areas and small towns. Public transportation does not work well here.

Many left-wing politicians don't want cars anywhere, whereas many right-wing politicians want cars everywhere. Some people seem to have difficulties seeing that different solutions work well in different situations.

<comment><USER30> I don't think any left wing politicians give a shit about public transit in rural areas. The battleground is the dense suburbs.

<comment><USER29> Maybe that's the case these days in the US. However, where I live (Norway, Europe), left-wing politicians want high taxes on new cars, gasoline etc. in order to discourage car use everywhere. Hopefully, the US won't end up like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The L.A. freeway system is not about L.A. It's about Southern California. Comments that suggest public transportation don't take into account the unique layout of SoCal. Here are just a few of the things to take into account, coming from a guy that grew up in NYC and now lives in SoCal.

\--SoCal is not like NYC or SF where you can walk a few blocks and take a bus or a subway. SoCal blocks are incredibly large. I get in my car to go 2 blocks away, because those blocks are huge. Two of those SoCal blocks are like 6 of my old NYC blocks.

\--SoCal is made up of many, many cities over a large, large area. There is no way to get from one corner of Fountain Valley, in a subdivision, to a job in Irvine (relatively close) where the office in an office park is no where near a bus stop. And that's just Fountain Valley to Irvine. This is definitely not an easy situation like covering Manhattan (a single, centralized destination where many of the jobs are.)

\--There is no way to setup a workable network of busses/trains to mesh all the cities involved. What's the solution for Costa Mesa to El Segundo? Torrance to Burbank? West Covina to Anaheim? Newport Beach to Norwalk? And so on.

\--The bus system we have usually covers a single city and maybe an adjacent city. Going to work for most folks involves going thru 7-10 cities. A simple commute from Costa Mesa to Manhattan Beach could involve going thru (winging it here from memory): Costa Mesa to Fountain Valley, to Huntington Beach, to Westminster, to Bellflower, to Long Beach...(catches breath since I'm not even half way there on the 405 Fwy) to Wilmington, to Carson, to Torrance, to Redondo Beach, to Lawndale, to Manhattan Beach. And you're only at the freeway exit -- now you need to get to the exact office location which means driving thru Manhattan Beach. Take a series of buses, if even possible at all, and you're looking at a 3 hours commute one way.

I would _love_ to take public transportation. It's just not possible. I can't even walk to get lunch. In centrally planned Irvine, they put the housing in one area, the commercial offices in another and the retail commercial spots in another. Even when they are semi-adjacent, the blocks are huge. It would take 30 minutes to walk to the nearest strip mall to get a burger. It's 5 minutes by car.

It sucks, but it's not just an issue of freeways. It's how SoCal is designed.

\</comment><comment>----

Edit: adding my solution ---> tax breaks for businesses that allow telecommuting. Keep us off the road and the problem goes away.

+higher quality of life

+less wear and tear on the cars

+less pollution

+less expenses on gas, eating out for lunch

+less maintenance on the roads

+less need for new buses/trains/employees to run them

+less congestion for those that need to be on the road

</comment><comment><USER32> Mostly nonsense article with no answers.

Get rid of carpool lanes and add some dang lanes in the meantime.

<comment><USER33> It's pretty well known that adding lanes actually increases congestion. Here are two cited articles that came up in a quick search:

* [http://transportationist.org/2015/03/02/elements-of-access-i...](http://transportationist.org/2015/03/02/elements-of-access-induced-demand/)

* [http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.ht...](http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/roadbuilding-futility.html)

<comment><USER34> In Northern VA they have the #1 or #2 worst traffic in the country. They knew there was going to be growth, but no roads were built to handle it and no rights of way were purchased when they were easy to purchase. I know someone who worked in the Federal Highway Admin at the time (late 60's early 70's) and recalls how they tried to do rational planning for the expected growth but were shot down. They were told that building roads would just cause growth. Now they have had the growth and don't have the roads. That's definitely worse than having both. Contrast this with the other side of DC where MD put in the roads and set aside rights of way. They are way better off. Not perfect by any stretch, but better.

<comment><USER35> NoVA's traffic is bad because of suburban sprawl. Car travel simply doesn't scale to that level, no matter how many roads you build. The only part that did anything correctly is Arlington, which focused it's development in areas that are walkable and can be serviced by mass transit, resulting in decreased traffic volumes on most roads in spite of a large increase in population.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Protocol aware recovery for consensus-based storage - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/02/27/protocol-aware-recovery-for-consensus-based-storage/ <comment><USER2> An interesting and well-written paper.

The authors not only advocate remarkably well their approach for protocol- aware recovery of distributed systems, they also give a broad overview of storage faults, their adverse impacts on consensus protocols and the possible recovery strategies.</comment>


Ask HN: review my website VentureLynx.com - <AUTHOR>

We've tried to build a platform to make it easier to run your business. We think we're at the tipping point of being useful. Usage is still low. What's missing? <comment><USER2> Seeing this in Chrome Canary, OSX:

"The page at '[https://www.venturelynx.com/'](https://www.venturelynx.com/') was loaded over HTTPS, but ran insecure content from '[http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Shadows+Into+Light|Op...](http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Shadows+Into+Light|Open+Sans:400,300,600,700,800'): this content should also be loaded over HTTPS."

Changing the http of the font URL to https should fix that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you - will get our front end programmer to take care of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Also, I'm not Canadian, but what's the competition about? And why is that even front-and-center on your homepage?

And why does your site icon look like ... I don't even know what that is? [https://www.venturelynx.com/assets/porto/HTML/img/favicon.ic...](https://www.venturelynx.com/assets/porto/HTML/img/favicon.ico)

<comment><AUTHOR> The favicon is a lynx head (as in VentureLynx). I guess that wasn't obvious? Our logo is a bunch of dots, which looks really silly at favicon size.

The competition is a chance to be introduced to investors, run in partnership with the country's top VC and a major legal and accounting firm. It's front- and-center because we're trying to drive traffic to it ... and point taken. I guess it is distracting to non-Canadians. Hmmm. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> probably nothing but you should migrate to bs3 ASAP

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I didn't understand this comment. I don't know what bs3 refers to.

<comment><USER3> sorry for the late reply, Bootstrap 3</comment></comment></comment>