Swift 5 Release Notes for Xcode 10.2 - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode_release_notes/xcode_10_2_release_notes/swift_5_release_notes_for_xcode_10_2?language=objc <comment><USER2> Very cool. App thinning seems to be the golden feature of Swift 5. I am dying for the day (if it ever comes) that UIKit and SpriteKit work natively with Linux and Windows frameworks, so that I can finally make Swift a daily driver.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, UIKit and SpriteKit will never come to other platforms. They constitute part of iOS' and macOS' competitive advantage.

Swift's progress also has little to bear on that front as UIKit and SpriteKit are written in C, Objective-C, and C++; their use in Swift depends on Apple's Objective-C runtime which is _not_ released as part of the non-macOS/iOS port of Swift for Linux.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, libobjc _is_ open-source: [https://opensource.apple.com/source/objc4/objc4-750.1/](https://opensource.apple.com/source/objc4/objc4-750.1/)

<comment><USER5> That is a very tiny part of Objective-C story.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I don't think Apple would open source Foundation, App Kit, UI Kit, and a bunch of other things; that by itself precludes inclusion with Swift. Aside from that, a lot of those things rely on the full version of Core Foundation in C; I think the (open source, non-Swift) implementation of Core Foundation, CF Lite, is heavily reduced compared to what ships with Apple's OSs and would make an ineffective base for redundantly reimplementing those frameworks on other systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Migrated a substantial project today and other than updating a pod and fixing a few warnings it's been smooth sailing. Probably my smoothest swift migration yet. Won't be surprised if Swift 6 breaks almost nothing!

</comment><comment><USER7> "Unqualified references to Result in any of your code that imports the Foo module will resolve to Foo.Result" That feels like it potentially can have weird unintended consequences

<comment><USER4> This was done so Swift's Result doesn't conflict with your library's hand- rolled Result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who hasn't yet put in the time with swift, i get the sense that every version release of Swift includes a surprising amount of breaking changes. Are these edge cases that don't really effect anyone or does every Swift project you undertake basically cement itself into a swift version?

<comment><USER4> Swift has largely stopped making source-breaking changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It is a shame this language does not get any momentum besides the Apple ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER7> Swift matrix use looks pretty gross compared to Julia, R or Python (NumPy) [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accelerate/simd/wo...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/accelerate/simd/working_with_matrices) Is there an other way?

<comment><USER10> That's not Swift matrices. Swift hasn't defined a language-level numeric matrix type. That's a C library type imported into Swift.

You can alternatively import Python and use NumPy directly, as well as any other C library, or you can define numeric operations in Swift. (On the other hand, if you are using fixed-size 3x3 or 4x4 matrices, the simd_floatNxN types deliver vastly better performance than NumPy can. So it depends on what your goals are.)

<comment><USER7> the point of using swift is to be faster than Python. if your computations are using numpy and most of your time is spent in these computations, passing through the python interpreter every time, it's going to have performance similar Python

<comment><USER3> > the point of using swift is to be faster than Python

There are plenty of other compelling reasons to prefer Swift over Python such as its type system or its easy, somewhat native, integration with existing Swift, Objective-C, and C frameworks available for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Speed isn't the only driver, and I'm sure not it's not "the [only] point".

<comment><USER7> no I meant for data science applications specifically, sorry</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wolfram Alpha: Why didn't you plan for a lot of traffic? - <AUTHOR>

Is anyone else having a horrible time using the site? I can understand it probably has a lot of traffic right now, but come on! you think they would plan for that. Nothing worse than a hyped up site that you can't even use. I'm turned off already. <comment><USER2> I can remember when it was even harder to download the first version of Netscape (which wasn't even called Netscape that long ago, if I remember correctly), so I'm used to the first day or two of business being overwhelming on new servers. But the results seem pretty good, once you get through, so I don't think that this is an epic fail quite like Cuil, but rather a new venture with growing pains.

<comment><AUTHOR> look what happened to netscape... I bet Google Squared won't be slow when it goes live.

<comment><USER3> you're comparing the resource, infrastructure and experience of Google, THE internet company, with those of a shrink-wrap software vendor?

<comment><USER4> Netscape wasn't just some "shrink-wrap software vendor." They were " _the_ internet company" of their day. They didn't just make a browser; they made a lot of their money on the server side.

Obviously Google does have the benefit of a decade and a half of additional experience and technology and so on, and they can definitely scale better than anyone past or present. But let's not mangle our history too badly.

<comment><USER5> They made pretty much all the money selling web server software. That was the plan, anyway.

A bit like giving away MP3 software in the hopes that it will boost sales from your music store</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Voice to Integrate with Gmail as a VoIP Service - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-voice-to-integrate-with-gmail-as.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if this would inspire them to release Google Voice internationally. If it turns (even half way) into a VOIP service then it seems strange to limit it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is the profit center for such services for google? Can they really get enough revenue by putting ads on voicemail?

<comment><USER4> Sometimes I get the feeling that all of these free services are Google's way of hedging against possible decline of search/contextual ad revenues.

"Oh, looks like contextual ad revenue will be down 5% this quarter, let's slap some ads on Google Docs and Google Voice for a month to bring it back up!"</comment></comment>


Cloudflare is returning SSL errors, also affects DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/ImdL1IU

<comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://twitter.com/search?q=digital%20ocean&src=typd&f=real...](https://twitter.com/search?q=digital%20ocean&src=typd&f=realtime)

<comment><USER2> I get redirected to a mobile sign up / install app page. Any chance of a summary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The image appears to indicate the problem is with DigitalOcean, not with CloudFlare.</comment>


GWT: The Good Bits - <AUTHOR> http://gwt.fr/ <comment><USER2> While I haven't used GWT recently, I did a lot of development with it from 2006-2011.

Good bits:

\- abstraction from different browsers

\- ability to set breakpoints and debug code running in browser (browser based tools were not so full featured as they are now)

\- refactoring

\- Java code organization (packages, classes, interfaces)

\- could share validation logic between front end and back end

Bad bits:

\- abstraction broke sometimes. I remember one bug that drove me crazy--only showed up when I deployed the optimized code (vs the detailed code which was human readable), and was due to a namespace collision with a global js variable.

\- compilation was another build step and sometimes not a quick one.

\- far better for full page applications than drop in js widgets (we used it in both ways)

Overall I think it was a great solution for its time. Now a lot of the JavaScript ecosystem has caught up or surpassed it.

</comment><comment><USER3> GWT may have been an impressive solution for a problem that existed when supporting legacy browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 was still an issue, but its time has passed.

The general idea was that you get the mature tooling and strong typing of Java, and abstract away all the browser nastiness. Best of both worlds right?

The problem with GWT is that you are only using the Java language, and so you are missing all the libraries that make Java such a rich ecosystem when run in the JVM. The abstraction layer it forms keeps your developers locked in a world that is neither Java, nor modern HTML5/ECMAScript. So instead of learning to use new browser features, your team is stuck fighting GWT's idiosyncrasies and waiting for it to finish compiling.

If you are considering frameworks for a new web application, go for Ember or Angular. GWT is obsolete and will hold you back.

<comment><USER4> > * If you are considering frameworks for a new web application, go for Ember > or Angular.*

Why not React?

<comment><USER3> No particular reason beyond my inexperience with React and the impression that Ember and Angular are more mature at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The JavascriptObject AJAX bit doesn't really apply anymore, it's now jsinterop and is really nice.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwVGJUurq6uVR1Y5anV5TC1SQkk...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwVGJUurq6uVR1Y5anV5TC1SQkk/view)

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/10fmlEYIHcyead_4R1S5wKGs1...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/10fmlEYIHcyead_4R1S5wKGs1t2I7Fnp_PaNaa7XTEk0/edit)

</comment><comment><USER6> I have been using GWT since 2007, so I'm rather biased. I have come from a Java/Swing Development, so developing with GWT was rather easy for me. Over the years as I've been training junior developers to develop with GWT, I found it is rather hard for them to get their heads around the framework. But, once they do - it becomes easier.

GWT is for large codebases, if you are trying to make a small project with GWT - you won't find much benefit from it. As the development is Java based, there is a lot of cross-pollination of good ideas, practices and tools. For example, you could use familiar testing frameworks, DI frameworks and debugging tools.

Finally, you can share code between Server, Web Clients and (Native) Mobile Clients. This is one feature which is hard to beat in today's code multi- platform world. Checkout [https://drive.google.com/a/vaadin.com/file/d/0B3ktS-w9vr8IS2...](https://drive.google.com/a/vaadin.com/file/d/0B3ktS-w9vr8IS2ZwQkw3WVRVeXc/view)

</comment><comment><USER7> We used GWT quite a bit. I am not sure we will in the future, because:

\- it's so complex and frustrating. A lot of time you find yourself just fighting GWT and spending an afternoon to get two nested DIVs right.

\- it is slow to compile/run and way more verbose than just Java

\- when opaque code generators break, it is a royal PITA to understand what goes on

\- everything is just over-engineered. Using a CellTable requires way too many steps. Sometimes you just want to display 10 rows and that's it.

\- using cells is opaque and leads to way too many little classes

\- GWT templating (UiBinder) is very weak - no way for example to define the columns in a CellTable

\- styling the UI is a project in itself!

\- you cannot use in a shared class some "server" features, even if they are not used at all on the client. E.g., an Address class cannot reference a java.sql.Connection, even if you only use it on the server.

\- Has anyone tried to use server Regexps vs client Regexps? or Calendar?

\- It's a couple of years we are waiting for GWT v3, and it's always just around the corner.

It had some definite plusses, like dynamic loading, and very efficient JavaScript. And of course you can easily, and safely, refactor.

<comment><USER8> Some of this has been fixed. For example there is a @GwtIncompatible annotation for putting server code in a shared class.

[http://www.gwtproject.org/javadoc/latest/com/google/gwt/core...](http://www.gwtproject.org/javadoc/latest/com/google/gwt/core/shared/GwtIncompatible.html)

<comment><USER7> I know, but at this point it's way too many DTOs and nobody really wants to change that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> GWT widgets are no longer recommended, and they plan to stop including them in GWT 3.0. The good side of GWT is using it for evwrything else. You can use it with GWTPolymerElements and make your app more mothern. Or you can use it with Errai for some serious enterprise capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER10> Neither the link above nor the offical docs site ( [http://www.gwtproject.org/](http://www.gwtproject.org/) ) explains what GWT is!

Just in case anyone else is wondering I got this from wikipedia: Google Web Toolkit (GWT /ˈɡwɪt/), or GWT Web Toolkit, is an open source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java.

</comment><comment><USER11> My previous company used GWT. I won't rehash the good and the bad points, as that's already been done in this thread, but I will add that if for some reason you're going to use it, I would look at Vaadin (it uses GWT):

[https://vaadin.com](https://vaadin.com)

I think they're the primary backers of the GWT project now that Google has dropped support of it.

</comment><comment><USER12> There are some good changes in the works for GWT, it just needs a little more love to get them done. GWT 2.8 (currently in beta) is a good step in the right direction, and hopefully after that it'll see a bit of a reincarnation to strip out dead wood.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does GWT still generate a 1,000 nested tables to render one component ?

<comment><USER14> I don't remember this being an issue. Maybe you are thinking of ExtGWT (now GXT)?

If I recall, the problem was more about ExtJS using overly complicated DOM structures to build its widgets than about the barebones GWT components themselves.</comment></comment>


Want fiber Internet? That'll be $383,500, ISP tells farm owner - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/08/want-fiber-internet-thatll-be-383500-isp-tells-farm-owner/#p3

<comment><USER2> Funny how the ISP charges the person for the whole setup, but then keeps that setup to serve future clients.

The only scenario where it's acceptable to pay for that sort of installation is if you own it and share profits made out of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> 15 years ago it was common to get a "f __k you " price quoted by a cable company or other provider when they don't want to serve you.

Back then, few people called their bluff, but today the internet is more valuable than it was before. Now, for instance, if you spend $50,000 to get fiber optic to your house, your property value goes up by at least that much. In many places that are a buyer's market people are finding they can't sell a house at all if it only has DSL.

Similarly if you work from home doing computer stuff, faster and reliable internet (i.e. not DSL) can greatly improve productivity and lower your stress.

For more and more people you find it is a no-brainer to put $50,000 on their home equity line, so what happens is they say that want it anyway, and then "big internet" finds some other excuse why they can't provide service.

Lately there have been huge increases in the "f __k you " prices being quoted because the last thing big ISPs want is for people to raise their expectation.

<comment><USER4> Most people don't work from home so it seems unlikely people can't sell their home because they don't have fiber.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but people want to have internet and cable and often the difference between having a good wireline connection and not having it is 500 feet.

If you bought the 46th house in a subdivision with 45 U-Verse ports, for instance, you are SOL.

The difference is not "fiber vs cable" but "DSL vs everything else". However if you are going to build new infrastructure today, fiber is the only thing that makes sense in terms of cost v. capability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, network engineers have to plan the network, then get land use permits to dig, a directional drilling company has to actually dig in the fiber, install premise equipment, circuit engineers build the circuits, test the circuits, setup any network monitoring and service level assurance.

I am pretty sure all those services don't just happen.

<comment><USER6> From the article, the ISP in question receives $175 million per year from the Federal Government to run "rural" internet.

A different provider (whether they also get money from the government is unclear) quoted essentially the same run at 1/9 the price.</comment></comment>


US employee 'outsourced job to China' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693 <comment><USER2> This story doesn't ring true to me. Particularly the part about how his day consisted of cat videos, Reddit, and eBay — that's a caricature, designed to fit the popular conception of "wasting time at the office". The whole story, in fact, has this quality. The way that it touches on fears of being outsourced to China is another example. And the saucy peasant outwitting his masters is a common trope in folk tales.

The original report, which seems to be gone but is cached at [1], reads more like a chain letter than anything a corporate risk manager would write. It's weirdly unprofessional and internally inconsistent (the salary numbers change along the way). It even shows signs of a liar getting carried away with his own tall tale: by the end of the story, Bob has "the same scam going across multiple companies in the area". How did he arrive at all of them at 9 am in order to watch his cat videos?

This story should be considered guilty – of being an urban legend – until proven innocent. The fact that it has been posted to HN a good ten times under different guises shows what a demand there is to believe it.

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://securityblog.verizonbusiness.com/2013/01/14/case- study-pro-active-log-review-might-be-a-good-idea/)

<comment><USER3> That part about 'multiple companies' was a kicker for me, too. That's the part where I thought, 'hmm, really, now?'

That would mean that 'Bob' would have to have multiple identical working situations with several companies, including trust, tenure, workload, bosses (some are more micromanaging than others) and willing to let him work 100% remote over VPN.

I mean, if 'Bob' was smart enough to set up what amounts to an outsourcing business, why wouldn't he just take a higher contractor's rate and go legit with his outsourcing? Why bother with getting hired at multiple companies when he could make so much more as a contracting outsourcing group, while not running into even a smattering of trouble?

Well, because Bob isn't real, that's why.

<comment><USER4> If you only need to go into the office once a fortnight (common with telecommuting jobs) you can have 10 on the go at once. Many telecommuting jobs will be much less office time than that too, I've done several where I never went I've never even been to an office.

<comment><USER5> True, but can you handle managing 10 remote workers at once and still have time to watch cat videos?

<comment><USER6> This.

Managing multiple remote teams across multiple timezones on _disparate and unrelated_ projects (and for multiple companies, no less) is hardly trivial.

This second-hand article is purporting that not only is it trivial, but it in fact requires so little time that it doesn't even bear mention in the so- called "daily schedule".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The moral of the story is: route your Chinese subcontractors through your own VPN first, so they appear to be coming from your house.

Also, use your freaking time to do something more interesting than surf Reddit and Facebook.

<comment><USER8> Agreed.

If I did this, I think that, given my employer is paying me for my time, I should still focus on stuff for the company whether my work has been outsourced or not. Rather than use it as a way to slack of, I could do way more, meaning pay rises, bonuses and additional opportunities. It would make doing that more worthwhile, in my opinion. If I run out of work to do, awesome, I'll ask for more, making my productivity gains clear as day.

<comment><USER9> Your employer is paying you to deliver things that make them money. They're not paying you for your time.

<comment><USER8> It comes down to time. My employer pays me money with the understanding I will dedicate a slot of time to working solely on the projects he needs me to work on.

Yes, he's paying me to deliver. If he was paying for my time and I wasn't delivering then there's a problem. If I deliver, however, I can't just get up and walk out in the middle of the day.

<comment><USER10> _If I deliver, however, I can't just get up and walk out in the middle of the day._

Then you're working outside the IT-sector or in an old fashioned company.

In modern IT-companies (most startups that I know, including some with >150 people that barely qualify as startup anymore) the above is perfectly acceptable and normal for programmers.

You are expected to meet your deadlines, to be present for appointed meetings, and usually during a fixed set of "core working hours". Sometimes there are Sprints or "crunches" during which everyone is expected to be a little more present than usual.

In these companies nobody cares what you do with your remaining time as long as you meet the above criteria. Quite a few of my co-workers I've never met in person or only after already skyping with them for months. Others I'll see every time I hit an office because they're more the 9-5 (or 11-22..) type of guys. The line between "employee" and "consultant" is blurring rapidly.

<comment><USER11> If I had to pick one thing I dislike about HN, this is it.

Not everybody works for a startup, and not everybody works in San Francisco. The _majority_ of programmers work in 9-5 office jobs where if you left every day at 4 PM you'd be fired as soon as your supervisor(s) caught on. It doesn't mean you're working outside of IT (although that's likely) and it sure as hell doesn't mean you're working in an old fashioned company.

Do you think any bank, healthcare provider, or BigCo business lets the programmers come in whenever they want and leave whenever their work is "done?"

<comment><USER12> They are very good about making sure there's always more work for you to do.

I work as a coder in a business unit at Bank of America. What you say is true, to some extent.

If I need to take off for the day at 1 pm I just tell my boss I've got to go take care of some personal stuff and he's completely ok with that, since he knows I get my work done.

<comment><USER11> We're both lucky then in terms of programmers in BigCos. I'm a developer in a non-IT Fortune 1k company and it's very much the same here (honestly I didn't expect BOA would be that good to you). Truthfully, if I had to leave at 1 PM I'd probably have to take a half day of vacation, but 3-4 PM? Hasn't been a problem the few times I've asked.

3-4 PM every day? "Get out of my office."

<comment><USER12> Well, I don't make a habit of it. Yesterday I remoted from home until 11 am, then I took the wife and sick kid to doctor and that ate the afternoon.

It helps to have bosses with small kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another version of this story got flagged, but some of the comments are interesting (in particular, patio11's): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5064586>

Also, the original Verizon report: [http://securityblog.verizonbusiness.com/2013/01/14/case- stud...](http://securityblog.verizonbusiness.com/2013/01/14/case-study-pro- active-log-review-might-be-a-good-idea/) (seems to be down, cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://securityblog.verizonbusiness.com/2013/01/14/case- study-pro-active-log-review-might-be-a-good-idea/))

</comment><comment><USER14> And once again, The Onion was way ahead of this one: [http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers- outsourc...](http://www.theonion.com/video/more-american-workers-outsourcing- own-jobs-oversea,14329/)

<comment><USER15> Wow - it even has the guy watching funny animal videos on YouTube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it."

-Attribution unknown because the interwebz say several people said it.

<comment><USER17> My brother's an officer in the Navy, and just told me about a book he's reading about a German general, I think from WWII. He classified his staff into four categories, and treated them accordingly:

Stupid/Lazy: harmless. Keep around doing whatever you can get them to do.

Stupid/Energetic: fire immediately before they do damage.

Smart/Energetic: useful, give them lots of middle-management work.

Smart/Lazy: put in high-ranking positions, they'll find efficiencies that will trickle down to everyone.

I'll ask him the source and post it later.

<comment><USER18> I think it might have originally been the Prussian Field Marshall von Moltke:

[http://old-soldier-colonel.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/field-mars...](http://old- soldier-colonel.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/field-marshal-moltkes-four-types- of.html)

<comment><USER19> parent is right - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein- Equord#cit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein- Equord#cite_note-8) and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein- Equord#cit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein- Equord#cite_note-9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The guy must be a really talented manager if he really managed to pretend to do the work and yet the work was actually done well enough to look like it was done by the guy in the same room (which is EXTREMELY hard to achieve with remote people). So whatever salary he had, he wasted his time. He must run his own consultancy and make millions. If he discloses his name openly he will become hugely successful.

<comment><USER21> Certainly. I was thinking two things, this man is having more success than most companies at outsourcing, and this company he was outsourcing to seems really good.

<comment><USER22> I want to know the name of the company he was using!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The BBC calls him a scammer. I call him an entrepreneur!

Corporate life doesn't agree with this fellow. Assuming he's not facing any lawsuits it sounds like a great time to launch his own software firm (where he outsources the work of course).

Or - he could go into consulting to show companies how to effectively do outsourcing.

</comment><comment><USER24> _The employee spent a nine-to-five workday surfing the internet._

Unprecedented.

<comment><USER25> It is. Everyone knows that reddit often doesn't have good stuff until at least 10 or 11.

<comment><USER26> And it usually runs out sometime around 3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For all the comments disagreeing with calling him a fraud, here's a broad difference.

You guys are clearly impressed by the act. But truthfully, it wasn't smart to send his 2KA to another country, that too China.

He was __trusted __. That's the keyword here to work remotely. Idea being that telecommuting may leave him with more hours and thereby increase his productivity. What he has done is

1\. Taken advantage of the trust

2\. Exposed his employer/team/project to security breach

3\. Missed the primary part i.e. use the extra time to enhance his skills.

Eight hours Internet browsing? Guy is a scumbag.

<comment><USER28> I have to agree. If the company had wanted to outsource this job to people in China, it would have done so. Obviously, it felt it had a reason not to, and that reason may have had to do with more than just the quality of the work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Odd that the article keeps calling it a scam. He was their most productive employee.

<comment><USER30> No... "he" wasn't.

The outsourced company was.

The company would be smart to fire the fraud and hire the outsourced company though since they already have access and knowledge of their systems.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, but who picked the outsourced company? I wouldn't have fired him, but have him do the outsourcing, and see if he can make it work for the entire department.

<comment><USER32> Plus, just allowing access to code and having them deliver it isn't the end. You need to be involved in Quality Management (code reviews, testing, etc.) to make sure they are doing a job to your standards (or better!) That stuff takes time and it looks like he was managing it well if he was getting good reviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Some people here said US$50000 is very low and therefore the Chinese firm has ulterior motive. I have worked extensively with vendors in China, especially in Shanghai. First of all, Shenyang is a small city compared to Shanghai, with way lower living expenses. Second, this contract comes at RMB311K, which by no means cheap. For bench mark, hiring a decent engineer (I only aware of the iOS and PHP group) in Shanghai with 3 years of experience would be around RMB200K. For Shenyang, I guess RMB150K would be feasible, therefore this amount can cover two full-time engineers for the whole year. On top of that, outsourcing companies will and do interleave projects and will not put senior people in projects for too long, therefore this figure is entirely feasible. Just to conclude, I would think this looks like a regular outsourced project as done by thousands of outsourcing companies in China, Philippines, and India. All those conspiracy theories are a bit too much.

</comment><comment><USER34> He should have setup a US workstation with a webcamera for the Chinese developer to log into. The webcam could show a live feed for the RSA token. So now he can still use his RSA token, while giving his outsourced worker access to it as well. Not that I would do this....

<comment><USER21> Yup, especially not on a webcam page easily accessible from your phone so you don't have to carry it around. I sometimes wonder if I advertise this as a service how many people will mail me their tokens.

<comment><USER34> They do offer smart phone apps that do "soft tokens".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> He's being punished because only the corporate executive class has the right to do this.

<comment><USER6> He gave access to company infrastructure to some anonymous party overseas. That is a major security breach.

<comment><USER36> I'm so tired of "Security" getting in the way of being able to do your job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Now that's what I call a straight shooter with upper management potential.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'd be really interested to find out how prevalent this is. I personally know one person who claims to pay someone in India about 10% of his own salary to do his job for him. Anyone else know someone that does this?

<comment><USER5> Now this article has been released I see it becoming more prevalent , not less.

It already happens a lot at big companies in a way, though not usually externally. Middle managers pick the parts of their job that they don't want to do and find some reason to get assigned budget to hire an extra person to do them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Isn't this one of the very things that Tim Feris suggests people do in his Four Hour Workweek?

<comment><USER36> That was one of the first thoughts I had. This is the example of what that book lays out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Would a private VPN from China to the original employee's home exchange followed by a hop onto the corporate VPN have prevented detection?

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands Interesting. I feel like this is the same thing as the guy wrote a script to automate his data entry job:

Reddit: <http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/tenoq/> HN Post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3950595>

Interesting how similar I think the situations are - yet the responses seem to be quite different from HN posters.

</comment><comment><USER41> This happens all the time with devs I hire whether in the US or outsourced (the outsourcers outsource too). We started requiring web cams and IP log ins.

</comment><comment><USER42> So why didn't he just arranged Remote Desktop access to VM at his house, instead of giving direct access to corp VPN?

<comment><USER36> This is what he should have done. They wouldn't have had any reason to look into that traffic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> They should promote this guy and have him replicate the process across the entire organization.

Cutting up your job into tasks and instructing others to do it is actually quite difficult. If this guy got away with it for so long, it probably means he is an excellent manager.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's pretty amazing that he beat his company to the punch and outsourced his own job before their could.

I think this should be something MORE people look into both companies/people as a team of people could do more especially if the job is "not challenging"

<comment><USER45> Agree! Can't see why only large corporations should benefit from outsourcing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Instead of firing this gentleman, a smarter company would have put him in charge of finding which other corporate tasks could be effectively outsourced for 20% of their current cost.

</comment><comment><USER47> Meh, the problem with this is mostly lying to your organisation and giving confidential access to external workers. If that wasn't the case, that would be a whole different story.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is interesting as a hack, but it puts a really bad light on telecommuters. Because it basically proves two things to your employer:

1) That your job can be done cheaper if outsourced to another country, in this case china, and just as good. (Just in case there was any doubt this was possible, now the doubt it is gone).

2) That you can't trust telecommuting employees.

It is stupid for so many reasons, but as a friend of mine would say: "It is stupid if you get caught."

<comment><USER49> Actually 1) is wrong. The issue is, in software development how good of code you write usually doesn't matter at all. Just deliver a solution that does what management wants and you win. Unless other people work on the code base, literally no one cares how well it's written. This guy was just doing arbitrage on that.

<comment><USER48> True. Not everybody cares about the quality of the code. But getting what management wants takes a bit of a quality. If the code doesn't work then you are not really giving what management wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Assuming this is real (which it doesn't appear to be) this man should be promoted and paid double. Somebody that is able to successfully coordinate, manage and off-load work to a Chinese consulting firm is a very very valuable asset especially for firms that are looking for 24/7 development and services but unable to find quality employees in the US who are willing to work graveyard-shift development jobs.

</comment><comment><USER51> Can anyone verify the story?

<comment><USER52> Came here to post this. I call bs. It's a "case study" in the way that consultancies make them up out of whole cloth - "We analysed the P&L figures from FooCorp's regional affiliates and succeeded in raising revenues by 300%".

Really astonished that the BBC is posting this without any attempt, it seems, to conduct independent verification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This guy is an excellent manager who can manage outsource project with success. Too bad they let good talent go.

</comment><comment><USER54> I hope Verizon promoted this guy to dev lead/manager. He showed that he could get the highest quality (at least by VZ's standards) work done for a fraction of the cost. I'd promote the guy and give him & his team (internal and/or outsourced) more challenging projects to see what they could do.

</comment><comment><USER55> The upshot of this is that the guy who outsourced his job successfully figured out a way to manage outsourcers well. He deserves to get paid well to do that right?

Maybe he shouldn't have given his 2 factor auth key to the contractor, but still. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER56> This must be the most effective and efficient example of outsourcing I've ever heard. Normally it costs 60-80% of salary to get an equivalently productive team and you still need to hire a full time PM to manage them.

This smells too good to be true.

</comment><comment><USER57> Moral of the story: You aren't getting 10x out of your average joe programmer. Instead of finding a 10xer for an average corporate job find a 1xer in China that will work for 1/5th the pay

</comment><comment><USER58> All this because he didn't knew better to route vpn through local box... ccc.... I am sorry for the guy, but the way some corporations were, I thought I could easily get away with same.

</comment><comment><USER59> Someone read "4 Hour Work Week":

[http://www.amazon.com/The-4-Hour-Workweek-Escape- Anywhere/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/The-4-Hour-Workweek-Escape- Anywhere/dp/0307353133/)

<comment><USER60> Haha..funny yet true..well all the guy needed was his manager's permission..without official approval..this was a security breach!

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> _The employee, an "inoffensive and quiet" but talented man versed in several programming languages ... six-figure salary ..._

Hey that's me in a nutshell. Why don't I earn a six-figure salary?

<comment><USER62> Have you applied for openings which offer six figures?

<comment><USER61> I think that's the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a sign of good times that the community here is largely supportive of what this gentleman did. I certainly hope the economic situation will not change any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER63> He allowed an unauthorized company from another country full access with his credentials to the company code base. It is a massive security breach.

He deserved to go.

</comment><comment><USER64> If he had done this above board, he would have a very profitable consulting firm. It's the subterfuge that got him.

</comment><comment><USER65> i couldnt imagine this being true. Any developer will have to answer questions about specific items he was working on and integrate it with other teams. As soon as they asked him any questions i'm sure he would have been completely stumped and everyone would have known immediately he wasnt doing the work

</comment><comment><USER66> If the story is true, this guy ought to be promoted their chief outsourcing officer right now.

</comment><comment><USER67> >He physically FedExed his RSA [security] token to China

Haha. This guy is my hero.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wonder how much it would cost to have them finish my thesis for me?

</comment><comment><USER69> How is this a scam? The work was getting done... no harm done IMO.

</comment><comment><USER70> This hoax originated on The Onion. It's now on BBC. Wow.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'd get so bored just watching Youtube etc all day!

</comment><comment><USER72> This seems to be a win-win-win strategy :-)

</comment><comment><USER73> They fired him and hired him as the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER74> And Americans say, they are unemployed.

</comment><comment><USER75> My God, the Chinese people will take away our jobs!

</comment><comment><USER76> I thought about doing this. The problem would be finding someone that is not only good enough, but can get things in a timely fashion.

<comment><USER77> On a contract in 2011 while expressing frustration at a p.o.s. assignment I told the requesting manager "this stuff is such bullshit I've even considered outsourcing it". His response was one of praise, and suggesting that if I'd done so he'd consider hiring me in future.

The problem with doing this are of course the risks you mention, in addition to one more: so you've found some cheap-assed Asian contractor to do the work for you, only they decide to stop committing for 3 weeks, and then on the Monday of week 4 you arrive to an e-mail announcing they couldn't give a shit any more, committed the past 20 man-days of unreviewed mess and have disappeared for good.

And here is where you got what you paid for: the original work, in addition to a big chunk of crap you have to read and understand since you can't throw it away because it partially/completely implements some features your customer has already signed off.

<comment><USER78> To avoid that problem you could always hire a second contractor to supervise the first contractor.

<comment><USER79> A redundant array of inexpensive contractors. At 1/5 takehome pay for each you could at least afford RAID, err, RAIC-1 mirroring.

RAIC-5 contractor array is the traditional "I'd like nine women to successfully cooperate to produce a fullgrown baby in one money"

<comment><USER80> You'd probably want to go for a RAIC 1 setup, with a decent RAIC controller to oversee everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> If only he used full disk encryption...</comment>


Apple Finally Approved a Native Google Voice iPhone App - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5641271/apple-finally-approves-a-native-google-voice-iphone-app-again

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to view in iTunes: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gv- connect/id347835665?mt=8></comment>


Ask HN: My skills are aging.  Where can I go to try to keep up? - <AUTHOR> I was humbled at a job interview yesterday almost to the point of a beat-down and realized that although I know what I know, my skills are getting old and I'm getting to where I don't know what I don't know, which for a tech guy is a bad thing.
I was wondering if there were any sorts of "top 100" book lists for programming, development, architecture, or really just technical stuff. I don't know if I can keep current just doing my day to day job, so I need to make sure I at least know what's out there.
And/or, are there well known blogs I should be keeping up with for software development?  How about conferences?  I am going to try to hit No Fluff this year, but is that something I need to be investing in every year?  Java One?  Anything else?  I don't mind spending the time/money, but I want to know it's worth it. <comment><USER2> Here's the cruel harsh fact that you need to know: You are not going to "keep up".

Years ago, you might have been able to remember every parameter to your favourite 20 shell or windows commands. Probably even the difference between the differing version of that operating system. However, if you're anything like me, one of your browser pages is permanently on stackoverflow or j2se docs or pydocs etc etc, as I just can't remember the fluff (heh).

But here's the good news. You don't have to keep up. You don't need to know the 200+ different ways of sorting a list. You just need to know that different ways exist. Then .. JFGI ! You don't need to know what version of java or python feature xyz was added or deprecated... JFGI !

My answer to any interview that has the question "what is the output of the following program?" is always "Well let's ask the computer - that's far better at this kind of thing than me and it will take a lot less time!". I remember someone asking me about self-modifying C-code and what the output would be. I said "one dead programmer - because if I ever met someone who wrote code like that I would shoot them dead for leaving such a mess".

Don't learn the fluff, the parameters, the options, the function names, the versions. Learn how to find them.

<comment><USER3> That's a good strategy for as long as you know what you don't know. The OP said he's worried that he's getting to the point where he doesn't know what he doesn't know.

<comment><USER2> Aha. Ok. In that case, my advice would be

"pick an industry leader (ie facebook, google, apple etc), research as to what publicly available technologies they use, learn those as the rest of the tech world will follow".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As per my knowledge these technologies are currently being used and are in demand according to type of application:

A)Large Enterprise Applications - .Net/Java(J2EE)

B)Web application

1)Server Side - Python+Django/Ruby+Rails/PHP+CodeIgnitor/node.js

2)Client Side - HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript/Ajax Libraries like jQuery, Yui, Closure/backbone.js

3)Database : MySQL and any noSQL database like mongodb

C)Mobile Application

1)For iPhone - Objective-C

2)For Android - Android SDK/Java

D)Web APIs - Facebook,Twitter,Google,Google+(when available) and Amazon Web Services

E)Desktop Application - Large companies like google, yahoo, etc still stick to C++/Visual C++ but in general C# is also a decent choice.

Keep checking sites like HN, Stack Overflow, Quora, Reddit etc and be genuinely interested about whats happening in technology and startup space. Who are the emerging startups and which technologies they are using..etc stuff.

Try to learn one technology per month in weekends.

I would also suggest you to read two books from 37signals - Getting Real and ReWork.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did you read "The passionate programmer - creating a remarkable career in software development"? I really loved that book, it contains a lot of practical tips and advice for how to improve your skills (among other things).

I read books on the commute to work (on the train) so this time feels less wasted. I especially liked: \- Implementing lean software development \- Implementing scrum \- Domain Driven Desing \- Head first rails \- The leaders guide to radical management \- Presentation zen

This is not only technical stuff, but I think the non-technical books are important too - they give you context and perspective.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think learning as much as you can about everything is possible, or even necessary.

Instead, play leap-frog. Make an educated guess about where some portion of the industry is going to evolve and start learning those skills _before_ they becomes uber popular. Then after 4 or so years, do it again.

I did this recently (within the last 18 months) and jumped into mobile development. That decision now allows me to freelance from home making just as much money if I were in a cubicle.

</comment><comment><USER7> Learn a REST API, JavaScript, Objective-C/iPhone and Android. If you do people will beat down your door. It is where the market is heading. What they all have in common is the client manages the UI and REST is your link to the programmable web.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think I'm asking a bit more meta, though; what you said is valuable and I appreciate it, but it's valuable _right now_. What I'm trying to find out is are there any outlets to find out what's valuable right now, for all values of "now"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _"I was humbled at a job interview yesterday almost to the point of a beat- > down"_

Sounds like a workplace to avoid - either because it is part of the corporate culture or they didn't bother reading your CV (malice or incompetence take your pick).

<comment><USER9> The same thing happened to me a few months back. I was just told I am "not passionate enough" and although I am not sure what that means but I understood that I didn't have anything "new" to bring on the table. Perhaps something similar happened to the OP?

<comment><AUTHOR> There were a number of factors.

* There were several interviews by teams of people. One of them was the "beat down" team, although I don't think by design; that guy was just hard. A later interview said that he's known for that, not to take it personally, that he actually thought I did pretty well, and he's known internally as the "Kobyashi Maru" interview (for you Trek fans).

* I have a lot of years experience on my resume. I think I've become someone not with "X" years experience, but "X/3 years experience, repeated 3 times." That was the humbling/humiliating part; to have that realization.

* The interviews were for a particular role, and by people who had OTHER roles that needed filled. So I was being interviewed by people with needs other than what was advertised; they interview in such a way that if I wasn't a fit for the particular role (I wasn't), that I might be good elsewhere. So there's still hope for me at that company. We'll see.</comment></comment></comment>


America's Fastest-Growing Loan Category Has Eerie Echoes of Subprime Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-fastest-growing-loan-category-has-eerie-echoes-of-subprime-crisis-1484060984 <comment><USER2> The title made me think that this was going to be about subprime auto loans, which are definitely in "crisis" territory.

This whole mess (subprime auto, renovation, and home loans) comes from the increasingly rent seeking nature of Wall Street. It used to be that fortunes were both made and _lost_ on Wall Street. Now, for large investors ("whales"), it's 3.5% or I take my money to another fund. If I don't have a consistent positive return, then it's something wrong with the fund/firm, not the natural order of things. This behavior encourages siphoning from pensions, the retirement funds of average people and "fudging the numbers" on packaged securities in order to keep up with the expected returns of the "whales".

The sad thing is, I don't see a change. We're going to keep going from crisis to crisis because banks can't say no, and the government(s) deems them too big to fail. This shit is fucked.

<comment><USER3> > We're going to keep going from crisis to crisis because banks can't say no, > and the government(s) deems them too big to fail

Consumers can say no, and if they had better financial education and/or financial prospects, maybe they would.

The elderly woman in the article initially refused the $50k renovation to her 5 bedroom home, but then agreed because she thought the government was going to subsidize it for her.

The contractor was able to sell her the loan because she needed to reduce heating/utilities/energy costs in her massive (for one or two people living on SS presumably) home, and she thought the savings from the PACE program would pay for the solar panels, smart lightbulbs, etc.

I don't know the exact details of her situation, but it seems like perhaps the correct decision would have been to sell the house and move to a smaller, more efficient house if the current house is too expensive to maintain given the number of occupants and their age/level of income. I'm 24 and currently rent half a large house in the suburbs from a single guy in his 60s who needs the extra income to maintain the house which he bought when he had a larger family.

Unfortunately it seems like the loan was misrepresented to her by the contractor when she agreed to go into debt, and obviously many will do anything to avoid moving out of homes/communities they've been in for a long time. Others have no family to rely on or go to even if they do want to move.

I'm not a huge fan of Wall St. and big bank loan & derivative making and selling culture, but it's not entirely to blame, nor was it entirely to blame during the financial crisis of 2007-08 as many consumers took on home loans they had no intention of ever making good on (maybe there was some fraud/misrepresentation on the part of the contractor in this case, maybe not). People have always been greedy since the beginning of time - we are just struggling overall at the moment to raise financial literacy and strengthen altruism: family/community/country-wide ties (patriotism) due to poor economic conditions for the majority of Americans.

<comment><USER2> > Consumers can say no, and if they had better financial education and/or > financial prospects, maybe they would.

I think that is blaming the victim. As the article says, you have repair people describing the terms of the loan to people. If they don't understand what they're selling (and I'm sure they don't) then how can you expect the average person to? Not to mention the pressure selling that is probably being used on targeted groups (I'm looking at the elderly, minorities and groups that are generally less financially sophisticated).

Most people generally aren't in a position to "vote with their wallet". This is because most people are leveraged to their eyeballs with rents. This is a problem with Wall Street that trickles down, not a problem with the consumer that worked it's way up.

> many consumers took on home loans they had no intention of ever making good > on

I disagree with this as well. People generally are not scam artist. On the contrary, most people like paying off their debts. Were people probably overly confident in their ability to repay, sure. Saying that people intended to default however, is not true.

\---

Wall Street (and it's derivatives... I'm looking at you, ad funded Silicon Valley) is full of fraud. The fraud stems from the fact that the only people who can realistically perform checks and balances on this group(s) are the groups themselves. You may be able to blame the consumer when they have full and clear knowledge of how the system works, but that's not the case. Wall Street is full of so many obscurities and 40k ft descriptions that the average consumer really has no chance.

A good example of how the average person thinks financially... how many homeowners do you know that consider their home an "investment". Probably most, if not all.

<comment><USER3> I'm not blaming the victim, I'm appealing for a more nuanced viewpoint than "fuck Wall St." There are at least 2 sides to every loan - the originator and the borrower - and it helps to examine dynamics on both sides of the table.

Is the book in the US generally stacked towards originators? Certainly, as I argue, with financial literacy being so low, most home-owners wanting to do anything to avoid moving, and family/community ties dissolving. Hell, I went to business school and read 10Ks for a living, and can still barely manage to figure out all the terms and conditions on my credit cards.

I just want to point out that alternatives (usually uncomfortable, but often necessary) do exist to taking on opaque loans.

How does someone get into a situation where they are "leveraged to their eyeballs with rents"? Sometimes it's purely out of necessity (need to be close to sick family, within commuting distance of work, keeping a rent controlled unit) but otherwise most people in the US generally have a choice of where to live and how much to pay in rent. I could live in the city and pay 1.5x what I'm paying now to live in the suburbs in an unorthodox situation, but I don't because then my rent would be >30% of my annual income.

Maybe I'm wrong and I'm one of the lucky, shrinking few who still has this option, the option of mobility than once made the US great? Because I'm young and employable?

Also, if a homeowner considers their home an "investment" that means they should be willing to liquidate that investment at some point when it makes financial sense to do so. People get sentimentally attached to their homes, which is not true of most "good" (read: fungible/liquid) investments.

We're definitely both against fraud, but unfortunately these government programs that make life better for some by subsidizing mortgages, home renovations, tuitions, etc. can and will always be gamed by unscrupulous individuals. Question is - is the payoff to society (higher homeownership, literacy, energy efficiency) worth it?

<comment><USER2> > I'm not blaming the victim, I'm appealing for a more nuanced viewpoint than > "fuck Wall St."

I think we can amicably disagree. I'm not in the "fuck Wall St." camp. I understand what it is supposed to do and the value it is supposed to provide.

> Maybe I'm wrong and I'm one of the lucky, shrinking few who still has this > option, the option of mobility than once made the US great? Because I'm > young and employable?

Yes. You have the option of mobility because you're young and employable. Probably just because you're employable. The average person has horrible job prospects where they are. Moving into uncertainty of even worse job prospects probably isn't a realistic option. I think most people would try to make it work with the job they _have_ (and get stuck with rents because of it), than leave their job and possibly not be able to find one where they move (and to have spent money moving).

> Also, if a homeowner considers their home an "investment" that means they > should be willing to liquidate that investment at some point when it makes > financial sense to do so. People get sentimentally attached to their homes, > which is not true of most "good" (read: fungible/liquid) investments.

I'll go ahead and say this. Your home is _NEVER_ an investment. A house that you own, maybe. But, I repeat, your home is _never_ an investment.

> We're definitely both against fraud, but unfortunately these government > programs that make life better for some by subsidizing mortgages, home > renovations, tuitions, etc. can and will always be gamed by unscrupulous > individuals. Question is - is the payoff to society (higher homeownership, > literacy, energy efficiency) worth it?

I agree here, but I think the better question is, "When the unscrupulous individuals form a large, easily identifiable group, why sit idle and do nothing?"

<comment><USER4> >Your home is NEVER and investment. A house that you own, maybe. But, I repeat, your home is never an investment.

Can you expand a bit more on this?

Usually it might not directly turn into an investment, but it does act as a 'savings vehicle' in many cases. For example when I moved to US a long time ago, the choice was between a 1200 rent and a 1600 mortgage (assuming I put a down of 25k or so). At that point it felt like a very reasonable investment and the market worked out afterwards where in it turned in a great ROI. If it wasn't for that move, I would've still been pissing off money in rent.

Also the actual investment options today are not as cut and dry as it seems either: There is no real 'assured' gain anywhere even though I do see the 3.5-6% returns number touted in the reddit personal finance circles. In the long term, I would ideally split money between these, not eschew home as an investment vehicle. With the right amount of thought and reasonable location choices, it can indeed turn out into a great investment. This is not to ignore the risks people take by overextending themselves / doing 'home flipping' but to each their own.

<comment><USER5> Everyone is born short housing. Buying your first house is covering a short position. Renting instead of buying is maintaining a short position. Buying your second house is taking a long position.

(Copied directly from my other post in this thread [0], though if you do a search I've said the same thing several times.)

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13376763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13376763)

<comment><USER6> Others have elaborated further; here's Felix Salmon and Nick Rowe:

[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/07/17/who- cares-a...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/07/17/who-cares-about- future-house-prices/)

[http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2009...](http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2009/07/we- are-born-with-a-short-position-in-housing.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like an example of how it's easy to be "fastest growing" when something is really small. These loans started about five years ago and the cumulative amount loaned is about $3.4 billion. Most of the activity has been in the past year, so of course the rate of growth is over 100%. But the absolute numbers are utterly tiny. For perspective, subprime loans peaked at over $600 billion per year, and total mortgages outstanding are around $14 _trillion_.

<comment><USER8> you'd make a lowsy newspaper salesman.

<comment><USER7> I cannot dispute this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> W/o paywall [http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/americas-fastest- growing-...](http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/americas-fastest-growing-loan- category-eerie-echoes-subprime-crisis/)

<comment><USER10> You da real MVP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Title is definitely a bit overblown, while it sounds like there's a definite problem with the incentive structure that incentives people to sell loans that borrowers can't afford, 22B isn't close to the size of housing bonds during '08\. Further peppering the article with comments about it being the 'fastest growing category' don't take into account the fact that the absolute size isn't really that large. It sounds like someone should take a look at better regulating these loans, but the sky isn't falling.

</comment><comment><USER12> As someone who just signed up for grid tied residential solar panels, this made me review my loan documents again.

Nothing in my documents mention PACE, or the debt-to-tax levy that ruined the old ladies' financials in the article.

</comment><comment><USER13> As a real estate investor, I lick my chops when I see news like this. But as a human being it's so terrible to see happen over and over again. Watch "The Big Short" if you haven't - everything will crash again.

<comment><USER14> So when are you and your fellow investors gonna stick to being human beings? This game has gone on long enough. We're talking about peoples' lives. We're talking about an entire generation of people who can't afford to buy houses because the generation before them gave in to bad credit. We're talking about entire generations of people who are going into a personal debt based economy of fear and coercion. Is that the kind of legacy you want to leave?

<comment><USER15> Nonsense.

<comment><USER16> I downvoted you because that's not a substantive response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > America's Fastest-Growing Loan Category Has Eerie Echoes of Subprime Crisis

Quite possibly the most uninformative and click-baity title I've seen so far in 2017.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's very similar. I was working at a mid-size bank a few years ago that was into this. Buy up or make auto loans, bundle them and have them securitized and rated by by a credit rating agency (Moody's, S&P, etc) then you can sell the loans on the open market where they are scooped up. There are lots of state pensions and other retirement plans that end up buying these securities.

It's the same problem as before--banks are incentived to make the loan, but not hold onto it and therefore the banks don't really care about the quality of the loan so long as they can sell the bag to someone else.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can we just not? I'd prefer to avoid all that mess again ... hopefully, like the ever-impending tech bubble (ie. .com 2.0), the threat of a bubble will temper investors enough to slow growth to healthy-ish levels

</comment><comment><USER20> I work in the clean energy industry, including with PACE, and can help to answer some questions about PACE/Property Assessed Clean Energy Financing if anyone is interested in specifics.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wish I could read this article... but i can't. It's been a problem for a while here on HN. I wish moderators would not allow articles with paywall.

<comment><USER22> As long as there's a workaround, it's allowed.

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

Within the past few days the WSJ has changed access to their site and the previous workarounds no longer work. I wouldn't be surprised if a new workaround isn't found that WSJ submissions will no longer be accepted.

<comment><USER21> Thank you for explaining this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder: If it's actually a tax assessment does it transfer with a sale of the property to the new owner? I can foresee a scam of buying a property, fixing it up with the max loan available and then flipping it to an unaware buyer who checks _last year 's_ taxes as an estimate of what to expect and then gets a nasty surprise.

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/americas-fastest- growing-...](http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/americas-fastest-growing-loan- category-eerie-echoes-subprime-crisis/)

Link for those without wsj access.

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/americas-fastest- growing-...](http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/americas-fastest-growing-loan- category-eerie-echoes-subprime-crisis/)

</comment><comment><USER26> How do I short this loan category?

</comment><comment><USER27> Okay, it's fastest-growing, but is energy-conscious lending anywhere near the size of subprime mortgages?

Even if it is, it doesn't seem like as big a tragedy if the bank seizes your solar array as of they seize your home.

<comment> nommm-nommm That's not how it work though.

These loans are added as a tax assessment on the property so the local government adds the premiums on the tax bill and collects with tax payments. Because its added as a _tax assessment_ if you stop paying on your loan its the same as if you stopped paying taxes. Which means the city seizes your entire house.

This structure makes it so the PACE loan is ahead of even the mortgage holder in the creditors line.

That's even assuming its possible to seize your solar array, central air, insulation, or windows. These loans are for adding permanent features; permanent features of a house can't just be seized individually. They can't seize your solar array in the same way they can't seize your extra bathroom.

If that's not bad enough these loans are being issued without a credit or income check. They are being issued based on the amount of equity the borrower has in their property without regards to financial health or ability to repay and without the same lending disclosures required by other loans.

<comment><USER27> Ah, yeah. That's problematic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Is this why most buildings in Pittsfield, MA are covered with solar panels?

</comment><comment><USER28> my beef with these loans is that local governments are using them as profit centers and the having them paid with property taxes changes the level of enforcement while likely keeping consumers in the dark as to the full implications of the loans and penalties

</comment><comment><USER29> Note that the headline is (perhaps intentionally) misleading: it _wasn 't_ a subprime crisis.[0]

[0][http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heres-what-really-caused- housing...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/heres-what-really-caused-housing- crisis/)

<comment><USER30> The main study and previous evidence being cited here says that it wasn't _disproportionately low-income_ loans that caused the financial crisis:

> Taken together, the evidence in the paper suggests that there was no > decoupling of mortgage growth from income growth where unsustainable credit > was flowing disproportionally to poor people.

It was still a subprime crisis if the crisis was caused by unsustainable credit received by those who would not otherwise have had access to it.

They are saying it was not the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that caused the crisis, as the contributing loans were not subject to CRA legislation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> OK - The 'web' search/link isn't working for me anymore. Maybe it's time to start rethinking WSJ submissions.

Based on the first paragraph, this is the exact same article:

[http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/loan-boom- echoes-s...](http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/loan-boom-echoes- subprime-crisis/ar-BBy7eg1?li=BBnbfcN)

<comment><AUTHOR> AMP version worked for me through the 'web' link.

<comment><USER32> For lazy desktop-browser users: [http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/americas- fastest-growing-loa...](http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/americas-fastest- growing-loan-category-has-eerie-echoes-of-subprime-crisis-1484060984)

<comment><USER33> They've broken that link since.

<comment><USER34> Just worked for me. Maybe because I'm blocking javascript.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Easier, cheaper and beautiful bookkeeper - <AUTHOR> https://easybook.io/ <comment><USER2> Hey, you might want to correct the spelling of 'Pricing' on the home page.</comment>


Global heatmap of cycling and running routes - <AUTHOR> http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#2/-72.60058/23.12465/gray/both <comment><USER3> Map creator here if you have questions.

The data is aggregated into a quad tree based on number of GPS points in each pixel. Tiles are then served on the fly using Go and C using CGO.

Cloudfront tackles most of the load, but the load balanced i2.xlarge instances can do about 300 tiles a second.

<comment><USER4> Would Strava be OK with people using this data to trace paths for Open Street Map?

I noticed there are quite a few paths through Golden Gate Park in SF (as just one of many examples) that are pretty clear running/biking paths that are not in any of the typical basemap providers' maps and not currently in OSM. If you reached out to the OSM community and gave the go ahead, this would be a great way to improve the trail data in OSM.

<comment><USER3> We have a self-hosted version of the iD editor that already includes this data as a tracing layer. [http://strava.github.io/iD/#background=Bing&map=16.97/-122.5...](http://strava.github.io/iD/#background=Bing&map=16.97/-122.54464/38.05472)

I've also built another tool, Slide, to help use this data for faster editing, see [http://labs.strava.com/slide/](http://labs.strava.com/slide/)

<comment><USER5> I'm amazed that there hasn't been more conversation about this - kudos to both you and Strava for this. These tools and this data set seem to have huge potential for crowd-sourced mapping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In line with [http://xkcd.com/1138/](http://xkcd.com/1138/), i'd request this map be adjusted by the population density in the mapped areas, so be to be able to get more data than "a lot of people live here" and "a lot of Strava users live here".

<comment><USER7> Look at the dutch/german border, it's clearly not a population map if market penetration/usage is not homogenous.

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#8/6.26125/52.11946/gray/both](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#8/6.26125/52.11946/gray/both)

Especially there is no gap between the Ruhr area and the Netherlands

[http://imgur.com/SLF6dIM](http://imgur.com/SLF6dIM) Source: [http://www.ivie.es/es/actividades/noticias/2012/ws_res01.php](http://www.ivie.es/es/actividades/noticias/2012/ws_res01.php)

<comment><USER8> As I'm living and cyling here [0] most of the year, my impression is: It's a mix of things.

      * In Germany cyclists are not treated well on streets [1]

      * The nature is much more beautiful in NL/Belgium/Luxemburg [2]

      * It is population density and "hilliness", too. I.e. there are
        more people using a bike, when it's flatter, imho.

      * The infrastructure and law in Netherlands and Belgium are much
        much more cycling friendly.

      * The culture in Netherlands and Belgium is much more outdoor
        sports friendly, thus the average person and car driver
        treats you better. Guess where all the "classics" of road
        cycling are?

[0]: [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#8/6.26125/52.11946/gray/both](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#8/6.26125/52.11946/gray/both)

[1]: Mainly due to the focus of the media (ARD, ZDF) on the doping problem, using road cycling as a scapegoat and the sacred car culture in Germany. Each time, I'm training on German roads, my life gets threatened at least once since 2006. Thus I train in Netherlands and Belgium for 99,9% of my time.

[2]: Especially in the link provided by mxfh in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7688974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7688974)

<comment><USER9> You mean competitive sports cycling. Everyday commute or leisure cycling is awesome in Germany. (Well, I often get aggressively almost run over by ruthless sports cyclists who treat every way as their highspeed training center every now and then...)

<comment><USER8> Good point. I know many fellows, who forget that they are moving way faster than expected and it's the competitive cyclist to blame. Oddly enough, I know a few groups who basically race in the traffic; However, the ones I know, reside in Netherlands. Most of the time, when I see conflicts between cyclists and cyclists or pedestrians it is due to bad design (of the pathways of each of one). In Germany often simply a few red stones in the sideway are defined as cycling path. Recently, cyclist traffic gets detached from the sideway and placed on the road. What is good and basically copied over from Netherlands and Belgium. A downer at this point is, that the state doesn't change the width of already existing roads, though it would be possible sometimes. Thus cars constantly are driving on this "cycling lane" or simply forget it is there.

Basically, I'm speaking of (road)cycling and cyclo-cross. Not necessarily competitive. Considering commuting it gets better, as nature and sustainability is more in political focus these days. However, it is _really_ far away from the infrastructure you see in Netherlands and Belgium.

But it is also depending upon what you compare here. So, considering a global view, I guess that Germany is way over the top. Considering good design, Netherlands and Belgium have my wholehearted appreciation. Netherlands even much more than Belgium.

On a side-note: I do not believe Strava neither has much commuter nor too much "leisure" data, imho, most of them are somewhat ambitious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can see how much Google skews their map for China, such as by looking at Beijing: [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15/116.46747/39.94133/gray/b...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15/116.46747/39.94133/gray/both)

Vs a similar map for Tokyo: [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15/-220.36217/35.60747/gray/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15/-220.36217/35.60747/gray/both)

<comment><USER11> It is unclear to me whether Google is skewing or Strava. I would tend to assume the latter, but I'm a little biased in that regard.

<comment><USER12> I've built map applications while based in Beijing. Google is definitely skewed here, by decree of the Chinese government. The interesting thing is that the skew is different for various regions in China, but it hasn't changed for years. If you correct for the offset in Beijing, everything will be fine as it is the same across the whole city. You can create a map of offsets for the major cities and be done with it.

They claim that the offset is for security purposes but this simple fix shows that the excuse is bullshit. In reality the Chinese put all kinds of barriers to entry for foreign companies to make it difficult to penetrate the market. Another example is that you have to dual home your servers to both china unicom and china Telecom, as the traffic between the two networks is degraded on purpose. You thus have to purchase a special DNS service that differentiates between requests on the two networks.

In the same vein, the purpose of the great firewall is more economic than political, being a highly successful form of protectionism.

<comment><USER13> Why don't non-china mapping companies have a table of these offsets and simply apply them everywhere (well, maybe except chinese IP adresses) ?

It seems a tiny amount of work compared to, say, gathering the actual street data itself; and it would be an useful thing to make this data available to the public like openstreetmap data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I found something very interesting in Minneapolis (where I live); it's a path that you wouldn't be able to find using google maps or probably even any bike- specific route finder.

Here's the area in google maps:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-93.3338652,1914a,35...](https://email@example.com,-93.3338652,1914a,35y,0.68h,16.27t/data=!3m1!1e3)

and here's the same location in the Strava heatmap:

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-93.33287/44.98897/gray/b...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-93.33287/44.98897/gray/both)

I'll have to check it out in person but I'm guessing it's a mountain bike trail or something, which is what this heatmap would be great for helping people find.

<comment><USER15> Those are the official mountain bike trails at Theodore Wirth park. Google Maps is bad for finding mountain bike trails--it doesn't show the other Twin Cities trails at Lebanon or Murphy-Hanrehan either. They're the sort of trails you could find if you wanted to, though, by some searching or asking at bike shops.

I agree in general, though. Even if you have your own routes or know friends who have theirs, this helps break out of that rut and find some new rides. This would have been great for finding rides just across the river in Wisconsin (though as-is it wouldn't help find hills. I've always wanted a map similar to this that showed all roads in terms of both ridability and steepness).

<comment><USER16> Yep, came here to say pretty much the same thing. There are also some mountain bike trails of so-so quality down by the "blue bridge" in North Minneapolis over the Mississippi. I grew up around there so haven't checked it out in 15+ years, but it was both fun and kinda sketchy at the same time back then :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looks like 17721 Bruce Ave. (or neighbor) might be a good place to steal a nice bike (Los Gatos Strava users tend to ride CF race bikes).

Turn on & off recording right at your house & you're advertising:

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-121.98018/37.23843/gray/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-121.98018/37.23843/gray/bike)

<comment><USER18> Can't remember the terminology they use but Strava allows you to define privacy areas (within a configurable radius of a point) where no points are shown on your individual routes. Exactly to stop someone working out where you live/work from browsing your history.

Either they haven't honoured this when calculating the global heatmap or, more likely (and harder to fix), such locations are given away by friends uploads (who don't have the same privacy areas defined).

Oops.

<comment><USER3> On this map I took out any point within 1km of the start or end of every ride. This is stronger than what users have set and eliminates 1000s of "hot spot".

I've looked into a couple of these cases and it's friends "coming by for a ride" or them stopping at their house mid ride.

I'm working on further eliminating these points by just not included "stopped" points. I've also tried doing some image processing to remove these hot spots but have had mixed results.

<comment><USER19> There's some similar interesting artefacts in Sydney of very narrow red 'streaks' that look to be between 10 to 40 metres long.

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-208.78860/-33.89894/gray...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-208.78860/-33.89894/gray/both)

Any idea what these are? I've only seen them in the bike layer

Edit: I found more in a university [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-208.81832/-33.88863/gray...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-208.81832/-33.88863/gray/bike)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow, this is incredibly useful for planning touring routes.

I often ride 100+ mile trips to areas I don't know very well and the hardest part is knowing what roads are more-or-less bikeable to plan a route.

Google Maps bike directions are basically worthless on long trips since they divert you way too often into neighborhoods and side streets. Strava is a perfect data set for this use case.

This is damn useful as-is, but if someone could turn this data into long-range bike directions I would absolutely pay for it.

<comment><USER21> The Strava route builder incorporates the popularity of other users routes when you plan your own. So, in an extension to the normal find-shortest-path algorithm between two points, penalties are given to paths not used by other users or bonus given to those that are popular. The result is that you end up with the better roads to ride on. Especially on the bike this is really useful as I can plan new routes in unknown areas and they are pretty good.

For running I found it remarkable how these heatmaps show the inclination to run along water bodies or in forests. It can almost perfect predict where I would or wouldn't run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The famous Delmar dividing line is quite visible in this view of St. Louis:

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#13/-90.28904/38.64610/gray/b...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#13/-90.28904/38.64610/gray/both)

<comment><USER23> I noticed that, too. Grant's Trail is well represented.

What is the source data? I've ridden through North St. Louis using Everytrail and my rides are public.

Edit: It is from Strava itself. I didn't know they tracked routes. lol

<comment><USER22> I follow a guy on Strava who is in the process of riding every street in St. Louis City. He's been all over the Northside. But, as this map shows, it's not a popular place to go cycling.

<comment><USER24> _...not a popular place..._

There's a difference between "cycling" and "cycling while using Strava". I suspect that few people who cycle because they can't afford to fix their car, or they lost their license, or their wife commutes in the single family car, etc. belong to the latter group.

<comment><USER22> You're right, of course!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interestingly, at least for the cities in the southeast where I've lived, these maps are amazingly good proxies for gentrification. For example, have a look at Houston, TX or Memphis, TN.

In the Midwest, the trend is much less clear. For example, Madison, WI is covered with bikepaths, so there's no clear relationship. (Same for Anchorage, AK. You can see the main trail system, and it pretty much circles the city.)

In a lot of other places, the pattern is controlled by topography/parks (e.g. Birmingham, AL)

I'm limiting things to cities where I've lived, but does anyone else notice similar patterns?

</comment><comment><USER26> Around MIT, the route around the river is pretty popular as the map shows. Except at one point you have to choose between a fork in the road -- do you take a right and run right next to the river and enjoy the water, or do you keep running straight and enjoy the rush of cars on Storrow drive as you run. Im more of a car person, but my girlfriend likes to run by the river. Strava shows me that the Storrow alternative is indeed less popular :(

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-71.07863/42.35498/gray/b...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-71.07863/42.35498/gray/both)

</comment><comment><USER27> Awesome idea and data set, however I'm very skeptical about its quality. Random analysis: the city where I live in Brazil (Curitiba/PR) shows major avenues and bus lanes as heavily used by bikes and for running, which is partly true but it's far from as heavy as the map makes it seem; my hometown 500km from here (Praia Grande/SP) has 7x more exclusive bike lanes and running trails and yet its usage is just average while everybody I know there rides a bike (not to say the most used bike/run path the maps shows there is actually a interstate freeway).

<comment><USER28> My family almost got killed once because of a bad judgement based on computer maps.

My wife and I were on a cross-country bike trip, with our dogs in tow. On this particular day, we were shooting for the Chicago area and had a long way to go from Ransom, Illinois where we woke up. There was nothing but corn, windmills, and an Air Force special training center. But we had a friend in Oak Park, and we were determined to get there and take a rest day.

After following a number of scattered trails and highways, we wound up lost in a kind of industrial alcove, trying to cross one of the canals. After a little backtracking (which is the _worst_ ), we stopped to ask for help from a bald guy in a pink tee shirt whom I'd noticed cycling earlier. He was a German guy named Rolf and he apparently biked about 60 miles a day just for fun. He told us we still had pretty far to go, and he rode with us about ten miles or so to his car, where he had a map book. He gave us detailed directions saying exactly what would be the best and safest route. We thanked him and went our separate ways.

We followed his directions until after dark (at which point we would normally have stopped). We'd already traveled close to ninety miles that day, and were getting anxious to get off the road. At some point, we called our friend to see if we were close. We told her Rolf's directions and asked if that would get us there. She said she would look online.

She called us back with a different set of directions, and, figuring that she should know her own neighborhood, proceeded to follow them. This took us onto a road that, we later learned, wound through what is essentially a wildlife refuge, and which quickly became extremely dangerous. There were no street lights, and cars were coming around turns at high speed. We decided to stop and barely got off the road in time to avoid being hit. We then had to get our bikes, dogs, and trailer across the street so we could walk the path. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life.

I later found out that our friend had never been on the road she recommended, and was going only by what it "looked like" on Google maps. (This was 2008, by the way.)

So yeah, quality. And there's no substitute for human expertise.

EDIT: and yes, it was our bad judgement as well, for taking bad advice... and maybe for not having our own maps in the first place. Although I've done thousands of miles of cross-country (in the US), and I think you really do have to wing it.

<comment><USER29> One big difference with this data set is that it's pulled from tracks traced by Strava users. So, modulo malicious uploaded tracks, these are all tracks that have been ridden, by definition. And if a given route is "hotter", that means more people have ridden it.

<comment><USER27> I'd fight with all my soul to prove that's utterly wrong, at least regarding the issues I've mentioned above. If the data is not 100% open it's impossible for it to be so reliable. And even if it is, that doesn't mean it's good data at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> More cycling in UK and Scotland than northern Italy? Hrrmm... I'm guessing that it's indicative of more strava users than representative of total activity.

Cool map though - as others have mentioned, zooming in provides a lot of interesting detail.

</comment><comment><USER31> SO, as a 100% bike commuter for the last ~4 years... I find this map to be ___interesting_ __and definitely beautiful -- but utterly useless.

What I would love to see is: Given two points on the map - what is the most common path between them based on multi-path tracks of others...

What were their avg speeds along those routes.

How frequently did they stop.

Also, looking at SF, clearly there is no bike path across the Bay Bridge (as an aside rant, how did we spend $7.5 Billion dollars on half a bridge, adding no additional capacity and no full span bike/pedestrian throughway)...

It would be great for this map to ID bus/bart/public transit options that connect across such things like the bay bridge.

Also, the fact that the dark red is the more trafficked route(?) that was completely non-obvious to me....

<comment><USER32> "What I would love to see is: Given two points on the map - what is the most common path between them based on multi-path tracks of others..."

Check out strava.com/routes, as others have said in the thread. It doesn't have your feature requests, but it does point to point routing based on popularity.

<comment><USER31> Awesome thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It would be great if the heatmap had query options.

This would then make it really useful to cycle advocacy and safety groups and even to those researching where to open cycle related businesses.

An example scenario: Say I wanted to open a bike shop and cafe in West London and I'm looking around Holland Park: [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#14/-0.19582/51.50592/gray/bi...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#14/-0.19582/51.50592/gray/bike)

It's clear that there are two main East-West routes on the North and South sides of the park (created by Hyde Park splitting traffic along two roads).

But which is the better location for the shop? The North side? Or the South?

If the line thickness could be adjusted to see differences between the two it would be helpful.

If the days of week or even hours of day could be just to restrict the data included in the lines it would be helpful.

That would allow you to determine whether the lines are purely commuters or include a decent number of weekend recreational cyclists too (more likely to give you trade 7 days per week).

Such query parameters would also allow cycle safety groups to have access to basic insights about cycle traffic loads without having already completed counting (leaving people with tally counters at junctions).

</comment><comment><USER34> Looking at Iowa, it is pretty cool to see how many bikers do ragbrai - <USER2> 2013 route is what connects Omaha and Des Moines, 2012 is to the north of that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Quick deep-linked url to look specifically at San Francisco for those interested (this map really only starts getting interesting when zoomed pretty far in to a specific city)

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#13/-122.45242/37.76345/blue/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#13/-122.45242/37.76345/blue/both)

</comment><comment><USER35> Any idea what this starburst over the USC campus police headquarters is all about?

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-118.29075/34.02060/gray/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-118.29075/34.02060/gray/both)

<comment><USER36> Since it only shows up on the bike activity, I'm assuming it's people parking in the structure and the GPS losing accuracy inside.

<comment><USER37> Interestingly, the same patterns happen in Vancouver when downtown near all the highrises: [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-123.11986/49.28436/gray/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-123.11986/49.28436/gray/bike)

The noise may well be indirectly tracking building height. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Perhaps unsurprisingly, you can use this to see what areas of town (e.g., Oakland) people consider safe and which ones they consider sketch. There's also no doubt a high correlation with socioeconomic status and path intensity.

</comment><comment><USER39> Uhh... water bicycles? [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#12/-122.98491/37.73441/gray/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#12/-122.98491/37.73441/gray/bike)

<comment><USER40> The actual activity is self reported. Maybe they are doing a triathlon / iron man. Quite a few pro athletes use Strava.

<comment><USER41> It looks like a boat/jet ski ride. Lot's of loops and turns, no right angles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Does anyone know, if strava supports showing you the heatmap of all routes and the routes you recorded as two layers of different colors on the same map?

If not, it would be a cool feature for exploring new routes on my bike...

</comment><comment><USER43> (I come from Belgium)

Belgium heatmap is really funny. Flemish people bike so much compared to walloon people: [http://cl.ly/image/1R2G0z2k1K2S](http://cl.ly/image/1R2G0z2k1K2S)

</comment><comment><USER44> Earlier discussion, although it only got a few comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681301)

</comment><comment><USER45> In India, every poor person's primary mode of commute is a cycle. But such cycles are not GPS tracked, and hence his tracks will never feature in such a map.

</comment><comment><USER46> Based on what the map says about my local area, the results seem quite er... surprising... in that they don't really match what one sees on the ground (especially for cycling). And when I say "don't really match" I mean "are completely out of wack"...

I suppose it's because the results only reflect users of this app, and there's a correlation between app users and certain types of usage.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is a trail-poacher's dream. It'd be wonderful to have this cross-indexed with any extant publicly available data sources (state/national parks, property lines etc.) to try to determine the legality of a given route. Illegal trails are likely illuminated by this heatmap, but their illegality is not.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is pretty impressive. In 2012 I worked in a research project where we did something similar but for a smaller area (vienna). See [http://meineradspur.at/](http://meineradspur.at/) including color coded information about the speed of the cyclists.

</comment><comment><USER49> I found an industrial park that appears to be the next best thing to a Velodrome for local cyclists. Very cool map!

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15/-119.86045/34.43307/yello...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#15/-119.86045/34.43307/yellow/bike)

<comment><USER50> Industrial parks are popular for criterium races ("crits") and practice races, which is probably what you're seeing there.

Here's one I've raced in a few times. Looks like it's not quite as popular, though! [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-89.48204/43.05660/yellow...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-89.48204/43.05660/yellow/bike)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Yes, Yes, and more yes. This is awesome. for someone who likes to roughly map out routes before trips, being able to see "Do locals ride this road or this one" is huge. Might convince me to create a new strava account (lost my old one when I quit facebook a year ago)

</comment><comment><USER52> (Is there a Hacker News Strava group?)

</comment><comment><USER53> wow! I just found some trails right next to my house, didn't even know they existed!

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-122.11865/47.78666/gray/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#16/-122.11865/47.78666/gray/both)

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder what's going on here: [http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-0.01296/51.49360/gray/bi...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#17/-0.01296/51.49360/gray/bike)

The location corresponds to a supermarket.

<comment><USER55> Just speculation, but I've sometimes seen GPS traces like that when a unit enters a building. You can get a very erratic, low-accuracy set of data points back that look qualitatively similar to the pattern in your link.

<comment><USER54> Interesting. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Interesting. In the United States it would appear to be an excellent proxy for affluence.

</comment><comment><USER57> Without looking too deeply into the data, in my neighborhood it showed two long routes for both biking and running and seeing these spots every day I would absolutely fear for my life if I attempted to run or bike on either of them.

</comment><comment><USER58> It seems like a lot of intersections are darker than the streets surrounding them. I'm assuming this is due to stop signs or stop lights. Perhaps this could give us some information about poorly-timed lights?

</comment><comment><USER59> Okay, this is just hardcore.

[http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#11/-117.10332/36.51021/blue/...](http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#11/-117.10332/36.51021/blue/run)

</comment><comment><USER60> my conclusion from this is that a lot of people in Brookline and Allston need to buy "Great Runs in Brookline"[1]. No affiliation on my part, just the knowledge that book put me onto a lot of great running routes that aren't covered very well at all by these Strava wearers. There is more to the area than Beacon St, Comm Ave, and the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Great-Runs-Brookline-Vicinity- Lowenste...](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Runs-Brookline-Vicinity- Lowenstein/dp/0982248504)

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder how many of those data points are mine? Disappointingly I can't find any route that I alone have run or ridden - that's something to fix this summer I think.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681301)

</comment><comment><USER61> Interesting to compare a view between running and cycling. Runners tend to run on the same side of a road in both directions.

</comment><comment><USER62> A lot of the trails in the Santa Cruz area aren't legal riding. Interesting how people report these publicly on Strava.

</comment><comment><USER63> I wonder about that bike track to the summit of Mt Rainier...

</comment><comment><USER64> That map is no where near accurate. Most of Europe is essentially nothing but a cycling and running route and should essentially be lit up red all over.</comment>