Fuck Your 90 Day Exercise Window - <AUTHOR> http://zachholman.com/posts/fuck-your-90-day-exercise-window/ <comment><USER2> Here's an easier fix: assume any options are worthless before you accept a job offer, then if you want to leave you can decide what the lottery ticket is worth. I keep seeing ways to "fix" various aspects of startup compensation, but it doesn't make any sense to me. The market determines what companies will pay for employees, and options are a form of payment. If no one was willing to accept 90 day exercise windows, they wouldn't exist. You can make the argument that startup compensation is predatory toward uninformed or naive employees, but that's a two-way street.

<comment><USER3> The fact that there is a 90 day window probably is not volunteered when the job offer is made, and asking about what will happen after you leave the company isn't something most people are comfortable doing in a job interview. It's hard for market forces to correct this when the information is not readily available to prospective employees.

<comment><USER4> It's similar with asking about severance pay. Employers, in fact, often count on the candidate feeling too nervous that they will look bad to ask about negotiating a severance benefit. However, in start-ups in particular where someone being wrong about growth or certain forecasts can mean significant risk of short term layoffs, almost at any time, getting a severance agreement is quite important. And if the company won't do it, because they think you're somehow trying to game the system for your severance benefit, or because they say something dumb like, "well, no one else has asked for a severance benefit" \-- then you know it's probably a company to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In case anyone else needs to look it up:

"What's the difference between an ISO and an NSO?" \- [http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2008/03/05/whats-the- dif...](http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2008/03/05/whats-the-difference- between-an-iso-and-an-nso/)

Even reading that, it's still not clear to me whether there would be tax implications at the time of conversion when converting incentive stock options (ISOs) to non-qualified stock options (NSOs).

<comment><USER6> The difference is when you exercise NSOs, you also have to pay withholding tax (ordinary income tax rate) to the company who then pays it to the IRS.

For ISOs, you don't have to pay tax at exercise, but you may be subject to Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) especially if you have a large spread between your strike price and the fair market value at the time of exercise. ([http://employeestockoptions.com/amttax/](http://employeestockoptions.com/amttax/) for more information about AMT)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another alternative could be what my company did for me: they gave me special permission to sell some number of my shares to one of their investors, who were always hungry for more shares. This allowed me to exercise all of my options, then sell off just enough to cover my tax consequences.

This seemed like an extremely good-faith maneuver on my company's part: they acknowledged that my options were a reward for past work, and they didn't want me to miss out on the benefit of those just due to some tax-related time pressure. They also knew it was really no skin off their nose if the investors got to acquire more shares at a price they deemed fair.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have an unpublished blog post on this very subject so I've done a bit of research into the matter.

I first thought Pinterst was the first one to extend the exercise period to a great length, but I discovered that it was in fact Quora who was first. They have a 10 year exercise period. Pinterest was followed by Coinbase.

First time founders will have a hard time rocking he boat because of the great fear of not being able to raise capital. Thus it's really on the shoulders of the late stage companies and repeat founders to lead the way.

</comment><comment><USER9> And I thought this had to do with physical fitness.

</comment><comment><USER10> "And now, in part because of your success, it's too expensive to own what you had worked hard to vest? Ridiculous."

I think people expect too much. Companies don't owe their employees anything. They are businesses which aim to make money and/or to accomplish some goal, but that goal is almost always not "make your employees happy and wealthy".

You may work your ass off, but if you do, do it because it is the right thing to do and you want to do it. If you do that, you'll never be disappointed unless you let yourself down. Don't do it because of options.

If you do take options, because you have to or just want to, you are gambling. You might be able to keep the upper-hand if you know what you are doing, but even owners/partners get screwed sometimes (often).

<comment><USER4> > You may work your ass off, but if you do, do it because it is the right > thing to do and you want to do it.

 _Lana Kane style noooope._ Do it for a wage/equity/benefits/vacation package that is satisfactory in helping you achieve your goals. In fact, if you accept anything less than that, you're not just doing yourself a disservice, but also all of your peers because you're sending a market signal that you currently devalue your own labor. If you reached that decision through careful thought and really determined such lesser forms of compensation were OK for you, given other trade offs, then fine, so be it, that is your market price. But that's not usually what happens. Usually it's an inexperienced engineer who had no way to know any better because she/he had never been exposed to the important points of stock options, never knew what or how to ask, and followed some dopey advice like "just work hard because it's the right thing to do" because someone seemingly older/wiser/with more authority kept telling them to stop whining for more compensation and just do the work.

It's precisely because a business doesn't have the explicit goal of making employees any wealthier _than it has to_ that we have to be vigilant to demand our full market compensation, whether it means negotiating a better exercise window, or better accelerated vesting terms, or a real wage instead of a but- we're-a-startup wage, and so on.

<comment><USER10> I thought this way for many years, but don't buy into it anymore. I still want to get paid as much as I can for the work I do, but I'm not any happier because of how much I make. Even today, I'm only happy when I've accomplished something I was trying to do. Sure, I want my family to be happy, but they would be happier if I were happier. Don't just do it for the money.

<comment><USER11> Dare I say there are non-monetary benefits to being paid at top of market.

I've been near the top of band of my particular subfield for the last few years, after working for years at a bog-standard SDE comp package, and IMO there are some pretty compelling reasons to demand better compensation beyond, well, having the money.

For one thing people stop fucking with you when you're getting top of market comp, for a lot of reasons - many of which are bullshit, but hey. The perceived quality of your work is _higher_ because you're demanding (and getting) more for it - and people are more willing to treat your professional judgment seriously.

In general companies and the people in them want very much to believe that they're getting what they paid for, so being known for being at the top of market (quite unjustifiably, of course) raises the default perception of your work.

It also opens the window for alternative arrangements - work from home, more vacation, all that is considerably more on the table when you're perceived as a top-dollar high performer.

Conversely, willingness to accept less than market seems to signal to management that you can be pushed around on other matters (true or not), and even if you're well capable of fending off this jerkish behavior, why not just avoid it _and_ get paid more? I've personally seen founders' dispositions toward me improve, and just get more professional respect in general, by naming a high price and sticking with it.

This isn't to say that one should take a horrible job because it pays top dollar, but in the current state of the industry you can have your cake and eat it too - you can work with good people on interesting stuff while staying within the top decile of your niche.

<comment><USER10> "For one thing people stop fucking with you when you're getting top of market comp"

This may be true for some, but here is what I've seen and experienced personally + family members and friends I've talked with:

1\. You are a full-time employee who is either very skilled or not as skilled but getting paid in the top 5-10% as a senior or principal software engineer. For a while you get to work on whatever you want to as long as it makes the company better, so you write open source projects, etc. Then, something happens. Either your company gets outside investment, or is bought- out/merges/buys another company, or they fall on hard times, or there is competition, or someone in management reads some new book or goes to some conference, or you just get different management, and now you all of a sudden either have been driven to cut corners which leads to a mess, or morale sucks or people buy into management's crappy philosophy which which leads to no innovation and suddenly it feels like no one else is using the crappy libraries and frameworks you had been using, or things for some other reason just suck.

In this case, you're still making a lot of money. Happy now? Sure you _could_ have found a new job, but wait hold on a second- you are in the top 5-10% so jobs that pay that well may not come as easily. Looks like you're fucked.

2\. You work your ass off as an independent, grow the company, and are doing well working for large company X in NYC. You had an awesome time putting your family through hell in the beginning for peanuts, but somehow you managed to make it past all that.

And now, what do you have? You're making a lot and have several guys/gals depending on you and you are still working your ass off and now you feel like if you quit, you take all of them down with you. Maybe even you're still on your own, but if you quit to take a break, your family will suffer because they won't have what they did.

What I suggest: do what you believe in as long as you can survive and meet the needs of your family. Push hard or don't, but be happy if you can. This will make the world a better place. You may end up making too much and getting into the same predicament, but if you're lucky, you'll at least not be focused on more money than you need. And if you do get more money than you need- share it. Much good in the world has come from those with money sharing what they have.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's Crystal Ball  - <AUTHOR> http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/20/googles-crystal-ball/

<comment><USER2> One confounding variable here might be the fact that conservatives are actually less likely to use Google. There has been a strong backlash that I've seen personally, where conservative members of my family actively encourage me to stop using Google because it's in some way "liberally biased" and that it has a "hidden political agenda" and is trying to "impose its radical views on the world." I'm not making this up, there are even books on this very subject. One example is "Search and Destroy."

Google has an advantage in mindshare in that it's effectively the "default" search engine on the web, but its population is still, to a degree, self- selecting. Whether this effect is pronounced enough to skew the data, I can't say.

<comment> brown9-2 Just curious - what search engine, if any, do your relatives recommend you use instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Counter point:

<http://xkcd.com/1122/>

It's an interesting hypothesis, but it would have to be tested over a large number of elections before you could claim any statistical link.

</comment><comment><USER4> All this energy to figure out what people will think on a particular day. And so much energy spent trying to manipulate their opinion as that day approaches. We should be figuring out how to make the system better respond to what people think all the time, just as entrepreneurs do in any industry.

Yes, people try to influence us when we are at decision points. But many things are about long term relationships and trust. Shouldn't we be striving for that?

Its a bit absurd that we cannot change our minds later. Wouldn't having that ability make politicians more honest?

I'd prefer to see proportional representation in both the legislative and executive branches (Switzerland does it) PLUS the ability to change who represents me whenever I want. We have much better technology now, so shouldn't we use it to make our electoral decisions more effectively?

</comment><comment><USER5> I think he hints at the concept that, because of the emergence of the internet, certain statistical analyses may now be redundant, or worse yet, not actually accurate. If the average voters' feelings can be adequately captured using aggregate search data, what other types of polling can be augmented or replaced with data from Google, or Facebook, or Twitter?

Pure statistical analysis and true polling will probably never be replaced, due to their sheer importance and applicability, so I'm not trying to suggest that people start using Google data rather than creating their own surveys. But I'm certain that there exist some academic researchers who would leap at the idea of using [Aggregate Facebook Statuses, 2010-2011] as a source for their next piece of research.

<comment><USER6> If people start paying serious attention to this sort of analysis, motivated parties will begin to manipulate the data.

<comment> brown9-2 What would be the point of manipulating the data used to make a prediction? How would that influence the final event - the number of votes cast?

Seems like if you have the ability or money to influence the search traffic, you could find plenty of other areas related to the election where you would get a higher rate of return.

<comment><USER6> Political entities try to create an air of inevitability for their eventual victory. You can see this at work right now in the spinning of various polls.

Manipulating the data used to create a prediction is a variation on that theme. If they could reliably do it, they would.

Influencing search traffic statistics could be done pretty low-cost, so the return wouldn't have to be that high.

It's all part of the gestalt they try to build anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's really cool.

Polls are pretty useless. I'm a fan of using prediction markets like betfair to figure out what's going on. When people stake money on an opinion, it gives it a lot more weight.

For awesome analysis on prediction markets and the elections, check out the signal: <http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/>

<comment><USER8> Where do you think bettors in prediction markets get their data?

Compare the market price on Obama to what Fivethirtyeight estimates based on poll data. Pretty close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does he say what Google search data he is looking at or where he got it?

<comment><USER10> Search trends, presumably: [https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=voter%20registration...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=voter%20registration&geo=US&cmpt=q)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If Google searches can predict election outcomes this well, imagine what they can do for the stock market...</comment>


Kali Yuga, an age of discord in Hindu and other myth, set to end in 2025 (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://grahamhancock.com/dmisrab6/ <comment><USER2> To me the Vedas in this Modern age seems like ML/AI. Very few will be able to Use it, Study it, Understand it and Create it and most people will know some of the parts. This woll help some people to reach Type 1 and Type 2 civilization and then in Krita yug some will have full control over Type 2 for long time and will leave Our Solar System and then the descending will start, many will start lose knowledge and then same story, again there will be new cycle with new people with new twist... and elsewhere in universe Humanity will continue

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Obviously speculation, but interesting and nicely thought out nonetheless.

<comment><USER3> Nah its mostly gibberish and the few facts in it are cherry-picked. But what would be the point of arguing about it? If someone finds this useful so be it.

I will say that the mainstream view is that the Kaliyuga is 432,000 years long and started in ~3102 BC. And it makes little difference to anything in practice what yuga it is.

This only became an obsession with a certain type of Westernized Hindu in the 19th century in the same vein as (and largely in imitation of) the kinds of Christians around that time who were trying to "scientifically" trying to investigate Noah's flood etc.</comment></comment>


$100k of FPGAs, Mining Bitcoins at 110 Ghash/sec - <AUTHOR> http://bitfury.org/bitfury110.html <comment><USER2> I think the incentives of the bitcoin system to hoard money and the massive bias towards early adopters will be the downfall of bitcoin. All the advantages of anonymity and irreversibility are voided if there is every reason to keep hold of your money and let it increase in value. Several people on HN claim to have hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, making them worth more than 0.1% of the entire economy. Whilst the real world has its (possibly unfair) share of billionaires, the majority of these have come through substantial business innovation. Bitcoin "billionaires" come through luck and early adoption, and in my view it makes it more unfair than our current system.

I think that bitcoin will continue to have some success in areas that wish for privacy, but will not reach the heights that some people predict.

<comment><AUTHOR> No. The "hoarding" argument has been beaten to death. Evidence shows people are not hoarding the coins: every day, 40 thousand coins change hands on the single largest exchange: <http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html> This is six times the number of coins created daily (7 thousands).

In other words, people are not hoarding them, but are trading them very, very frequently.

And this is _just_ measuring MtGox's volume. Other trades (merchant sales, other exchanges, etc) are likely surpassing MtGox's volume in aggregate...

<comment><USER3> How many coins were created daily 3 years ago?

<comment><USER4> The same 7200, it halves every 4 years.

Add: so 7200 coins/day in 2009, 3600 coins/day starting 2013, 1800 coins/day starting 2017 etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Discussion thread on bitcointalk.org: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=82941.0>

I don't know what the skeptics think, but to me, the fact that at least 2 wealthy individuals or entities have invested $100k in 360-FPGA farms should send a signal that at least some consider Bitcoin sufficiently reliable, trusted, and stable to warrant this kind of investment. They put their money where their mouth is.

I will soon write a blog post documenting the numerous other FPGA board vendors that started designing custom boards targetting the Bitcoin mining market.

Disclosure: I am myself a long-time miner.

<comment><USER5> The more logical conclusion is that they simply see money to be made.

I don't believe they are sending ANY signal that Bitcoin is reliable, trusted or stable. In fact I personally see this as a clear sign that Bitcoin is fundamentally unfair and easily gamed.

<comment><USER6> They are taking a huge risk with this investment. With the mining reward set to automatically halve in 2013, and the currency still in its infancy, its a bold move. And despite dropping 6 figures on the hardware it barely a percent of the total hash rate.

<comment><USER7> They are only risking the amount that the hardware depreciates while they own it, which is apparently quite a lot less than the purchase price for this hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure what 110 Ghash/sec means. Can someone give me an idea of: at current Bitcoin <-> currency conversion rates, what return per hour should you expect from this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Roughly this farm makes $10k per month.

110e9 (hash/sec) * 3600 (sec/hour) * 730 (hour/month) / (2^32 * 1733208 (current difficulty factor)) * 50 (coins/block) * 5.1 (current exchange rate: usd/coin) = $9903 per month

Minus about $730/month in electricity for the 10kW it consumes, assuming an average worldwide rate of $0.10/kWh.

<comment><USER8> I think I'm right to say this will drop off as the potential number of Bitcoin dwindles (although I don't know the mechanics)... I wonder how long until this thing pays for itself, assuming Bitcoin value stays roughly constant

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to give you an idea of how does it compare to different solutions: <https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_Hardware_Comparison>

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know enough about Amazon and Bitcoin to know how many bitcoins you'd get for a $10,000 spend on Amazon EC2 GPU clusters?

<comment><USER11> It's not worth it. See: <https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8405.0>

<comment><USER12> ... unless you're paying for them using stolen credit cards.

<comment><USER13> or just use the stolen cards to buy goods from amazon?

<comment><USER12> Handling physical goods is an easy way to get caught. Bitcoins are a very effective way for criminals to cover their tracks.

<comment><USER13> They would still have to buy the BTC using the credit card, although I agree it is not as easy to trace as physical goods, the eventual BTC for physical transaction could be traced all the way back to the credit card payment for BTC.

So could be a case of security by obscurity here?

<comment><USER12> They wouldn't be _buying_ the bitcoins, they would be _mining_ the bitcoins -- and newly mined bitcoins don't have any history showing who paid for the GPUs which found them.

<comment><USER13> I don't see how paying for the GPU instances using a credit card is any more anonymous and less traceable than paying for physical goods?

Sure mine the BTC and it won't be possible to trace back to the machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Using the excess heat for household hot water and space heating is a great idea.

<comment><USER14> Not really "excess". You put 10kw of electricity in, you get 10kw of heat out.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps you should read up on the laws of thermodynamics. You do not get "10kw" of heat out.

<comment><USER16> He is more than 99.9% accurate, so perhaps you need to go read the laws of thermodynamics. _Heat is energy transferred from one system to another by thermal interaction._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A great way to sell showels in a gold rush.

</comment><comment><USER18> I started a small bitcoin consultancy as well. I thought bitcoin was going to be the next gold rush and replace currency all together, so I started building a super efficient OS. I have since moved on, but I still believe in bitcoin.

If anyone is interested in the project, you can check it out here: <http://projects.tonigemayel.com/bitcoin-os/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how long until we see worms/botnets that use the infected PCs to mine bitcoins.

<comment><USER20> They already do: "I operate a ~10k botnet using a ZeuS software I modified myself, including IRC, DDoS and bitcoin mining (13GH/s - 20GH/s atm)." - reddit IAmA [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/sq7cy/iama_a_malware_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/sq7cy/iama_a_malware_coder_and_botnet_operator_ama/) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3960034></comment></comment>


European roaming charges will end in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/15/roaming-charges-die <comment><USER2> This has huge psychological implications, similar to not carrying a passport while crossing borders and paying with the same coins everywhere: All these measures help to get the feeling that Europe is indeed one place, one community. Weekend trips to other countries are not a privilege of the 1 percent over here, more like the top 30-50%. I love to see what is happening right now, and I'm confident it will survive any current crisis. Maybe without the UK, but continental Europe is sufficient great for me ;)

<comment><USER3> You need a passport (or other form of government issued-ID), you don't need a visa.

<comment><USER4> I guess the biggest change is: Nobody's checking it.

I travel without lining up in front of a police guy, showing my passport. A border is sometimes easy to miss.

Took two girls from the US to the meeting point of DE, NL and BE after Fosdem a couple years back. It's .. boring. Taking a picture there seems .. worthless. Yes, more or less just a step away from each of these countries and still - so what? No one cares, you can cross freely.

And boring is good for these things, in my book.

<comment><USER5> That isn't that different from 40 years ago. The Dutch-Belgian border has been technically open since 1944 (the BeNeLux as a customs union dates from then; see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benelux). In practice, the border will have opened a bit later, as World War II was still going on)

The Dutch-German border was closed, but in practice, outside main roads, there were only roaming border controls. The tripoint of Germany-Belgium-the Netherlands lies on a hill without main roads, so one could cross the border freely there even in the 1960's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is still at the very high-level discussion stage. The key phrase:

""They agreed that this time next year we will have got rid of these charges," a Brussels source said"

Also, it's not clear how this would be implemented. For example, Vodafone in the UK lets you pay £3 a day and use your calls, texts and data from Europe. Would that be acceptable? What happens to the smaller MVNOs who have been responsible for driving down prices who now need to make a whole lot of roaming agreements? Given that data is regularly more useful when roaming than calls, will this directive require free data roaming too or is it excluded?

If I was a pan-European mobile operator, I'd have been lobbying for this. It will cost them very little to provide the service, mostly some modifications to their billing system. For those operators that only have national presence, they'll need to start making alliances and integrate systems with other operators in countries they're unfamiliar with in a different language.

Original article: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/telecoms/10119159/EU- to-end-mobile-roaming-charges-next-year.html)

(Edited to make clearer why a pan-European operator would support this)

<comment><USER7> I'm under the impression that I would be able to use my plan from one country in another without regard for whether I'm actually roaming or not, for no extra cost. This would include data, and would be excellent for me (at the moment at least) considering I have a cheap unlimited data plan.

I've seen it stated elsewhere that one of the ambitions of this plan is increased competition across borders, for example, operators from, say, the UK could compete with operators in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER8> That is what they seem to be promising (and we all know that then politicians promise something, that's how it's going to be). It's not clear how it will be implemented, and it's not clear why a dutch provider should honor a commitment for unlimited data that a UK provider has made to you.

<comment><USER9> Yes, and what happens if a provider in some small country sets up a limited network for very cheap with the intention of the majority of it's users being in different countries and thus other companies footing the bill.

<comment><USER10> If I understand this correctly, it is supposed to be free to the customer, not the provider. So it is not about whether provider A pays provider B if A's users roam in B's network, but whether A's users pay more _to_ _A_ while roaming.

<comment><USER8> I hope not - because then it means that roaming isn't made free, but rather that giving you a good deal that only works on your home network - even if you want it and never travel - becomes illegal.

This means that any business development that you can't agree with all of Europe on isn't going to happen. One country with poor 3G/4G infrastructure can block large, cheap data packages all over the EU.

No, I hope the regulation is that providers have to sell access wholesale to foreign competitor at the same rate they sell it to themselves (or national MNVOs or something) - meaning roaming won't be free, it just won't be more expensive than getting a local SIM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This will most likely not happen.

European Parliament member Christian Engström has written on the subject that this decision is just one in a row of promised _proposals_ to lower/get rid of roaming charges. He points out that each time an actual proposal has been created, it has immediately been dropped by the same group. The current proposal is intended to be created just at the time the current European Commission's term will be up and next commission can "decide" on the matter.

[http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article16919673.ab](http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article16919673.ab)

<comment><USER12> I've actually a different experience so far. For example in 2009 they flattened the price of sms [[http://www.telecoms.com/10693/europe-cuts-costs- of-sms-data-...](http://www.telecoms.com/10693/europe-cuts-costs-of-sms-data- roaming-charges/)].

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Now, as a European citizen based on a little island called Great Britain, I just hope our short sighted little-Englander politicians don't pull us out of the European Union.

<comment><USER14> I highly doubt they will, there's too much to lose. They're just bluffing hot air to win over support from UKIP/BNP voters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unrelated, but it's interesting how they describe the European Commission as being "a group of 27 politicians who represent the best interests of Europe as a whole, rather than individual countries". I normally hear them described as "a group of unelected bureaucrats". I guess perspective changes when they're doing a good thing, instead of being complained about.

</comment><comment><USER16> The EU already severely regulate the market

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_reg...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission_roaming_regulations#Prices)

In fact it was sometimes cheaper to call on roaming then to call for the price-per-minute after you use up all your plan. Not to mention the data

<comment><USER17> I don't know for the data, but I pay 8 times less (! 25p/min vs 3p/min) to call a mobile in foreign country than another mobile locally in the UK and only 2 times cheaper when making call in a foreign country.

I never really understood, that's just a pay as you go sim from a big player, yet it is cheaper to call a Spanish mobile in Spain with my UK mobile than the Pay as you Go rate from the same operator in Spain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How can this happen? the Daily Mail tells me nothing good comes from membership of the EU!!

<comment><USER13> No doubt the 'Mail will be able to spin it in some convoluted manner to look like another example of 'immigrants' stealing our jobs/money. No idea how, but they will.

<comment><USER19> Well, it's pretty simple. Consolidation of telcos will lead to less C-level executive jobs, less Network Operation Center jobs, less network architecture and planning jobs, so there you have it, this measure can only destroy jobs.

<comment><USER20> I'm pretty sure the Daily Mail will gleefully inform us that as we're all likely to use our mobile phones in Europe a lot more after this change takes place, we'll all have cancer.

<comment><USER13> OMG you're right, the immigrants gave us cancer too! Pesky immigrants.

<comment><USER21> Dirty. Immigrants are supposed to be dirty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article misses the fact that telcos are about to raise prices locally in return.

Personally, I welcome this step since plans are cheap as hell in most countries anyway compared to, say, the US.

<comment><USER2> Not sure about that, it has not happened after the last few price-limitations that were issued in recent years. If mobile internet is 50-100x more expensive beyond national borders I will simply not use it, it's a lose-lose deal (that is hard for the market to escape from, due to the large fragmentation).

<comment><USER23> The telcos make a small fortune every time a business traveller runs up thousands of Euros/Pounds/etc (often at the expense of their employer's shareholders). It's not surprising if the telcos increase everyone's fees a bit if this money is no longer coming in.

And I'm fine with that. Overall, it means previously underutilised capacity will finally be used. 99% of people were unable to use all mobile broadband when abroad, despite it being cheap and abundant. Now they can.

<comment><USER8> I read somewhere in some other coverage of this reform that the measures were expected to drain about 2% from telcos' revenues. Even if they raise their prices by 5% (which isn't given), that's (a) still a decent deal if you travel ever (but unfair that non-travellers would end up subsidising travellers) (b) quickly eaten up by the continuously falling prices of mobile plans.

<comment><USER24> "subsidising travellers"? If anything the travellers must be subsidising the non-travellers now. A couple of megabytes of data do not cost hundreds of dollars to move just because you have to route through one more network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds great as described here, but I do have some doubts as to this being only good and awesome:

\- If this was done with current prices, then I imagine people would rush to buy plans in the cheapest countries. Which sounds like big loss to telcoms. So, will they raise prices? If yes, this means problems for people in those cheap countries, who usually earn less too. Or will telcoms maybe lock-in prepaids to your personal ID, to enforce pricing-per-country? But then, anonymity is lost. So maybe, _maybe_ they might introduce both as options, so you either pay more ("euroglobal price") for anonymity, or less and provide your ID? Any other ideas, anyone?

\- "will mean greater competition, leading to alliances and eventual mergers" \- I'm not economist, but isn't "greater competition" like exactly opposite to "alliances and mergers"?

</comment><comment><USER26> There's a hundred operators in Europe, whereas there's three or four in the US and China. This fits in Neelie Kroes' plan to drive consolidation among operators.

<comment><USER27> Have such plans been announced/alleged?

As far as I know, there are only a handful, multinational operators with own cell tower infrastructure. The rest are more or less just resellers.

<comment><USER26> From a year ago: "M&A could help telcos close Europe's network gap: Kroes"

[http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-media-tech- summi...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/06/11/us-media-tech-summit-kroes- idUKBRE85A12A20120611)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is great, but I fear that the big winners will be the big telcos that have a presence in multiple countries, like Vodafone or Orange. In my country these two companies formed an oligopoly with similar services, similar prices, similar everything, until Cosmote came along.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if prices will be transparent enough and 'equalized' enough that you might even be able to shop around for the cheapest country to get a number in.

</comment><comment><USER30> I get the feeling that this will raise the prices significantly and likely keep fragmentation (it's harder to compete when all companies have the same possible pool).

</comment><comment><USER31> This is awesome! Agree with the others here saying that in the UK we kinda feel like we're outsiders/special/loners but I think this is completely daft and I'd love to have better integration with the mainland.

</comment><comment><USER32> I know I'm late to the comment party, but my two eurocents.

In EU it's no longer an issue to talk or message abroad even when roaming. Since last roaming cap was introduced voice and messaging has become relatively cheap. What's most welcome about this (if it will go forward becoming mandatory) is the possibility to get data abroad, which is VERY expensive right now even with offerings from Europe-wide carriers.

</comment><comment><USER33> Awesome, because the times when I _especially_ need mobile internet is when in other European countries!!

Currently the solution is to buy a local simcard.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm going to go ahead and assume that, once this is complete, you will be able to go to one country and buy a phone, then use it to make a call from a second country into a third... and probably still pay less than the average Canadian local cellphone call.

</comment><comment><USER35> Some operators already offer flat rate packages for several countries. E.g. my operator the Finnish-Swedish TeliaSonera offers me unlimited data, calls and sms for Fennoscandia (fi, se, dk, no) and the Baltic countries.

</comment><comment><USER36> Nice, then maybe I can get rid of some of the ~20 SIM cards I'm carrying around, and not having to research the mobile market for each new country I happen to pass by..

</comment><comment><USER37> It's about time, the charges are exorbitant and clearly not justifiable. Imagine if americans, had to pay roaming charges whenever they drive to a different state.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've always hated roaming charges, especially within Europe. This is _WIN_.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is good news for me because my job entails traveling a lot mostly within eu.

</comment><comment><USER40> Are international calling fees within the EU going away as well?

</comment><comment><USER41> This proves again that Neelie gets it.

</comment><comment><USER42> To make it clear: we all were paying roaming charges not because "evil companies" arranged in a cartel, but because some politicians (who control telecom licenses) were deciding prices and rules. Now they decided to drop some requirements and we all fell warm and happy about it. Does anyone wonder, wouldn't it be better if Brussels didn't have such power in the first place?

<comment><USER43> You are either horribly misinformed or simply trolling. The reason MAXIMUM roaming charges are set by Brussels is that the competition in the telecommunications market EU wide is not working. The main reason for that is a particular market structure: In most countries, landline telecommunication service was provided by the government, and the operators only later being privatized. The now private company could in a way free-ride on the original investment made in the infrastructure by the government, which is why an attack on the market by foreign companies is difficult. Furthermore the telecommunications industry has very strong network effects, so that the dominant natural provider could even be a sort of natural monopoly.

The licences for example for 3G/4G networks are mostly offered in a public bidding contest in most EU countries, so the state intervention is quite minimal. Unless you are suggesting government should have nothing to do with it at all, and every operator should simply use any frequency he desires and let's see what happens?

Please read [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_on_roaming_charges_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_on_roaming_charges_in_the_European_Union) to see how bad the situation was before EU intervention!</comment></comment>


Open Docs: GitHub org to host sites/screenshots/demos related to the project - <AUTHOR> https://opendocs.github.io <comment><USER2> > Perhaps you don't want your account or your own organization account to be > littered with automatically generated documentation repositories? Perhaps > you want to move all such generated documentation repositories to a separate > place which remains out of sight when someone is browsing your GitHub > profile or organization?

I know they meant the documentation source code would be out of sight, not the docs itself, but the wording here is unfortunate. Having your docs out of sight is the opposite of what I want. And in my case the same is true of its source code.</comment>


Biggest Spike in Traffic Deaths in 50 Years? Blame Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/tech-distractions-blamed-for-rise-in-traffic-fatalities.html <comment><USER2> Headline: "Blame Apps"

Evidence given in the article:

\- "Safety experts say" that it's true. The experts are not named or quoted. No evidence or reasoning is given to support the claim.

\- Highway fatalities are up this year. However, they're still significantly down from 2007, when the iPhone was first introduced. Mobile has been booming for almost a decade - if we should "blame apps", why hasn't it been a concern before now?

\- One driver who caused a fatal accident was using Snapchat shortly before the crash. This driver was also going at 115 mph. It goes without saying, therefore, that Snapchat is to blame, not speeding or general recklessness.

\- "Insurance companies are convinced", according to one Robert Gordon. Gordon is actually named and quoted. However, the quote again doesn't provide evidence or reasoning.

Maybe it is actually true. I don't know. However, the evidence given is nowhere near strong enough to be convincing. There's also the issue that newspapers are direct competitors with the apps they're railing against (for ad dollars), and have been losing badly: [http://charman-anderson.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/newsp...](http://charman-anderson.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/09/newspaperadsdecline2.jpg).

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if I've become more cognizant of bad journalism over time or simply hold journalism to a higher standard with the rise of publicly available data sets which could be used for real insight into questions like this. Whichever one, I am infrequently satisfied with the level of evidence that supports an article's conclusion. I would love to see a truly data-driven news publication that made quantifying uncertainty a priority over creating a digestible narrative for people who'd rather the author does the thinking for them.

<comment><USER4> Well said, and I share this intuition and desire 100%. I've been working on building a platform for data-driven journalism at [https://numer.al](https://numer.al) \-- It's a prototype that turns public APIs into live D3 charts. (Working on embedding those into articles so that they stay up to date, link back to show their provenance, etc.) I think there's a lot that can be done to bring journalism into the 21st century. If you're interested in the things we're working on, feel free to drop me a line: firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER5> This is pretty neat! My only complaint is that you haven't labelled the axes. You can estimate the Y-axis pretty well based on the listed number, but the X-axis is a mystery until you click the graph. Even two date labels at either end would be welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apps are a plausible contributor. But I also noticed that some new cars ship with infotainment systems that consist solely of a (bad) touchscreen; as new cars slowly replace old ones, the number of cars with actual physical buttons for the music player or radio is dwindling. This is awful because the lack of physical buttons prevents the tactile feedback needed to operate the device without having to look at it.

Luckily, some manufacturers go the other route and put music controls as paddles on the steering wheel, which is amazingly useful.

Also, the widespread 'safety feature' of cars refusing to pair bluetooth while in motion may actually defeat the point. If one forgets to pair in the beginning, they may just keep using the phone when the need arises -- when a notification arrives, the phone rings, or they remember they want to stream some music.

<comment><USER7> I can't stand touchscreen systems. Instead of a single physical switch to turn AC on or off it's two latency laden taps. Part of it's menu design but I can't help but feel like it's always gonna happen with touchscreen centric designs.

<comment><USER8> It's unbelievable how far behind the technology curve most car companies are.

We recently test drove a used 2015 Suburban with a touchscreen console. The MSRP for it in 2015 was almost 90k, and the touchscreen was laggy, unresponsive, and terrible resolution. 20 years ago I worked on a touchscreen point of sale system that was better than that shit.

<comment><USER9> Consumer electronics are designed to fail in 3-5 years. Cars aren't. If my 2012 Honda Accord started failing this year, I'd be really upset. If my 2012 iPad mini started failing this year... well, I wouldn't be surprised given it's age.

I don't want my car's firmware failing or even slow when my ABS system needs to kick in because of an icy road. We must hold automobiles to a higher degree of quality and consistency than consumer electronics and I don't believe these things are on par at all, nor should they be held to the same standard.

<comment><USER10> You think the features of car touchscreens will still be relevant in 5 years? The point them in because it adds planned obsolescence.

<comment><USER11> I really don't think it's planned obsolescence - it's just that automotive entertainment systems are subject to the same amount of testing as everything else in the car, which means your average media system is 5 years behind. I have a 2005 Land Rover Discovery 3 with a touch screen, and at 11 years old, it still works the same as on the day I bought it. That's what you want. Software and hardware which continues working fine for more than a decade.

On the other end of the scale we have Tesla, which clearly does very little testing of their media systems, and pushes updates over the air, so things get broken or changed with every update. But "hey, it's not a big deal, we'll just push another update in a month!" \- that's absolutely not acceptable with cars.

For example: [https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is- grea...](https://medium.com/@michaelmeier_90534/tesla-model-s-is-great- except-1638f3f4d96f#.jzkq6mr8u)

I would be absolutely furious if my car did this. I would rather have a shitty system that stays shitty for the lifetime of the car, than have a good system that gets broken through an over-the-air update.

<comment><USER10> I agree the tesla system is pretty bad, but software needs to be updatable. How many exploits do you think your 2005 land rover has?

<comment><USER12> Does it really matter if the vehicle is not connected to the Internet in any way?

I mean, if an attacker has physical access to the insides of your car, all bets are off and is now his vehicle.

<comment><USER7> The issue is that an attacker could gain access to the inside of your car only briefly, but leave a device that continues carrying out the exploit

<comment><USER11> And do what exactly? make the car crash? If you want to do that just cut a break fluid line, don't even need to open the car for that.

I mean, I take your general point, but I'm almost certain that 99.9% of people breaking into cars do it to steal them, not to install a virus that will track your location or make your car crash. Both of those can be achieved trivially without even opening the car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a cyclist in SF, Uber/Lyft drivers are the most dangerous thing going. They're driving by staring at their phone's map for directions and pickup/dropoff. Once they stop, they stare at their phone for the next ride. Very little situational awareness.

It'd be nice if there was some sort of way for them to indicate they drive erratically. Perhaps by painting their cars all yellow or something...

<comment><USER14> My one and only experience using Uber was with a driver who had no clue where anything was, clearly wasn't from around the place, and from what I could tell violated two traffic laws.

So what do I do, give him a bad rating? No, because this person probably needed the money, and a rating under 4.5 gets you shitcanned in an already rigged system.

Quite the revolution indeed.

<comment><USER15> Isn't that the point of the rating system? I don't want to be killed by my next Uber ride because you feel bad rating them appropriately.

I've never had a bad Uber experience but I have had some downright frightening cab rides and I'd love to be able to rate that.

<comment><USER14> Yes, except it's not really a fair system. A 4.5/5.0, to me, is an excellent score. That's an A- if it were a grade on a math test. Yet in Uber, a 4.5 means you get your driving privileges revoked. How does that make sense? It isn't a system in which I can fairly and accurately vote someone's work.

<comment><USER16> Continuing the test analogy, I don't want to eat at a restaurant that got rated a B by the health department. There are many cases where not being good enough to get an A- means you aren't good enough to do it professionally. This is no different.

<comment><USER10> It depends on what the score represents. If a 4.4 means you take a wrong turn here and there then I don't mind. If it means they constantly speed but other users don't care then I do mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm of the belief that while phones have contributed, it's just not hard enough to drive anymore. Try driving a manual shift, non power steering vehicle some time and using your phone. That's the world the roads were built for, not this ultra easy, power assisted, auto-speed control, auto-lane control world where you don't even feel the speed difference between 60 and 90.

I used to hear people say they couldn't drive without the radio because they "needed the distraction". I never got that. Isn't driving supposed to be the only thing you're doing while driving?

All the hands free apps in the world can't solve split focus. Even a bluetooth, voice activated system requires you to commit brain cycles to the conversation that's coming through that will take away from your ability to drive.

We sit and argue about how bad context switching is, how important it is in our careers as developers to focus on what we're doing, then we build apps and devices that are competing to be the best attention stealing devices they can be.

<comment><USER6> In all fairness, the 65-70 mph posted on most rural interstates is usually an uneventfully featureless speed, on uneventful, featureless roads. Meanwhile the urban grandfathered interstates are like NASCAR with a concrete wall to one side, and ruthless traffic inches to your side. And even sometimes on a suburban parkway signed for 45, with four lanes going the same way, you fear for your life as SUVs heading home from work weave around you to get two cars ahead.

There is a wide variance in driving difficulty throughout the day, even on the same stretch of road, and varying with the amount and nature of traffic, the sun in your eyes, wind, the weather. And as you say, driver assist and safety systems like widespread adaptive cruise control, electronic stability control, blind spot warning, emergency brake assist, and curtain airbags encourage a style of driving that's 'not truly defensive' at best, oblivious at worst. Because why not go the speed limit if cars are so safe and they've got your back?

This isn't misplaced nostalgia for the days when driving was more dangerous, but I do believe as cars get safer, situational awareness worsens and riskier behaviors are less likely to result in serious accidents -- so some drivers continue to take more risks.

<comment><USER18> > 65-70 mph posted on most rural interstates is usually an uneventfully > featureless speed, on uneventful, featureless roads

This is true. 95% of the time, it would be just as safe to be cruising at 90 mph. But for those other 5% where there's an unexpected tire in the middle of the road, a deer, a driver who swerved into your lane or any other danger... a few extra milliseconds to react and respond is what makes the difference between a close call and severe damage.

This means driving is condemned to be a mostly boring activity, and in our present age where boredom is to be avoided at all costs, it becomes a magnet for distractions.

One solution is to drive a vehicle that requires more immersion: a stick shift car, a convertible, a jeep, a motorcycle, etc. These are vehicles which let you _feel_ the road.

<comment><USER19> People drive way too fast and don't leave enough buffer.

<comment> nommm-nommm The buffer thing amazes me, I know people who drive 70 MPH leaving a 5 foot buffer between the and the car in front of them. I have a close my eyes sometimes it makes me so nervous. And it's rude to comment on other people's driving...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What does a journalist think when he writes something like "biggest spike in traffic death in 50 years"? The NYT even has a nice plot, that clearly shows that there are two, perhaps three significant, spikes in traffic death, and overall traffic death were reduced to a third of the late seventies. I mean I just eyeball the plot, but to me it seems the story is that there is a plateau since ~2010.

<comment> squeaky-clean > After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last > year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years.

So I guess the title makes sense, but I think it's extremely misleading.

<comment><USER21> It is - and it is a title that is misleadingly designed to be "click bait".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> et-al As an aside, sometimes I wonder about how much more efficient we are today due to smartphones. Places where we've lost time:

\- at the stoplight, the driver in front of you is too busy looking down to notice the light has changed

\- in the bathroom, people check social media on the toilet

\- on the sidewalk, folks walk slower because they're pre-occupied with texting

\- meeting up with friends, it's more acceptable to be late because one can always send a last minute update, "I'll be there in 10 minutes!" (read: just got on lyft)

\- even talking with people present: "Sorry, could you please repeat that? I was just responding to an email."

I know of digital detoxes (gag), but the inevitable seems to be this distracted-presence as our new reality (until we go full virtual-reality).

<comment><USER22> If those people weren't reading news or playing games on the toilet, they would be reading shampoo bottles. In periods of downtime people need something to do and smartphones can make that time more effective (when not used to look at cats.)

<comment><USER23> But when you're done with the toilet it's easy to put down the shampoo bottle. It's easier still to sit there for another ten minutes on a page like tumblr or Facebook which endlessly scrolls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The UK, Germany and Austria have banned the use of phones in cars entirely with a whitelist of permitted uses (like passively using it for navigation). I am pretty sure that is something that is happening all over Europe now.

<comment><USER25> New Zealand too. If you want to make calls while driving, you have to have a hands-free system. It baffles my mind that there are countries in which people can legally interact with their phone while driving.

<comment><USER26> I'm surprised people are allowed to use their phones at all; there is a study showing talking on a hands free causes the same attention impairment level as someone under the influence of alcohol.

<comment><USER27> We should also ban people talking to their passengers.

<comment><USER28> I remember there were recommendations for new teen drivers to not have passengers.

<comment> nommm-nommm Not only recommendations but actual laws banning teen drivers from having some number of passengers under 21 or some such.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not necessarily just apps, how about IOS: The worst for me is the delay in rendering the bar that occupies the top of the screen when navigation is in use or when tethering is in use. I often look at the screen, then tap, but in between those events the bar appears and receives my click.

It's nearly always inconvenient to get the phone back to the intended screen.

It seems that the delayed appearance of the bar is an intentional UI 'feature' because in all cases the state is known prior to waking the phone.

<comment><USER30> Yeah there is nothing more annoying than looking at where Waze wants me to make the next crazy turn and the directions are blocked by a notification. I take my eyes off the rainy, busy road to ensure I am turning into the right street and instead see that I received recruiter spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Incredibly misleading title/premise.

Should be titled: "Traffic deaths slightly spike, but remain lower than 2008 or any other year after 1956."

It has increased slightly since 2011, but less than 10%. What we might be seeing is that vehicle deaths has plateaued. We kept seeing decreases because technology kept being introduced (e.g. seat belts, air bags, ABS brakes, crumple zones, partial overlap resistance, safety cages, better safety testing, etc). That kind of slowed at the end of the 2000s and is now picking up again (e.g. automatic braking, lane keep assist, blind spot warning, cross traffic alert, backup cameras, full automation, etc).

The whole article is trying to manufacture a story out of statistical noise. We'd need more data (more years) to even start to speculate on an actual increase in deaths.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've seen so many drivers either texting or using their phones while driving and not paying attention to traffic signals, stop signs, and pedestrian crossings. I wish there was a way to stop smartphones from displaying notifications and other things that distract users.

</comment><comment><USER33> We need automatic driving so people can remain connected. Volvo has the right vision. See their commercial.[1]

(\Volvo is about to be the first with production automatic driving. Next year, Volvo will put 100 self-driving cars on the road with real customers driving. They'll only self-drive on certain roads in Gothenburg at first. The user is not required to watch the road, and if anything goes wrong, Volvo accepts full responsibility. Tesla talks big, but Volvo gets it and has it.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDB6fFflTVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDB6fFflTVA)

<comment><USER34> _if anything goes wrong, Volvo accepts full responsibility_

Nice comfort I'm sure as you lie in your casket.

<comment><USER35> There's an old saying "Put your money where your mouth is".

I think the idea of mentioning it is that it is a comfort as you hand control of the car over to the automated system.

<comment><USER36> If only Volvo wasn't as expensive, or boring to drive.

<comment><USER37> Expensive compared to Tesla?!

<comment><USER36> Compared to other manufactures. We have 150% tax beyond 25% VAT, to make matters worse, there is hardly any tax on micro cars, so price differences are exacerbated greatly.

For the price of an estate Volvo, one can buy no less than 6 micro cars.

<comment><USER37> I know it's a "premium" brand, but we're talking about self-driving cars here. What other alternatives _are_ there?

Only expensive ones ;)

<comment><USER36> For self driving, not many atm, and Tesla is more expensive. But right now, I not going to use self driving abilities as a parameter for buying the car. Maybe if it could handle most of my commute for me, but it cannot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I drive three to four hours a day in Los Angeles a few times a week, mostly on the 405. The number of people I see looking down or down an to the right at their phones is staggering.

Now I can call it from afar because there's a commonality to the lack of speed control and lane keeping. They meander left-right on the lane, don't maintain speed and break abruptly as they look at traffic and have to re-synchronize with it.

So, yeah, I don't know if I'd blame apps in particular but the advent of "smart" phones is definitely having an impact on our highways and, from what I see often enough, it isn't positive.

</comment><comment><USER39> Blame apps?

No, that's secondary. Blame smartphones.

Perhaps that too is secondary. Blame humans.

<comment><USER40> Smartphones, and mobile phones in general, make drivers less attentive to external events while driving. It was fine before that, so I don't see why you think we should be blaming humans?

<comment><USER41> Because it wasn't fine before that. Most drivers take irrational risks, drive with zero margin, and are generally fucking stupid behind the wheel. The other half are even worse. Seriously, there needs to be far more restrictions and punitive damages to bad drivers. With all the media attention on terrorism, there are 10 times as many deaths in the US _every year_ due to stupid drivers as there were on 9-11.

<comment><USER40> I agree completely, but the human factor will only be removed once we have fully autonomous vehicles. Until then, we need humans to operate vehicles; this is the base case.

Now, do smartphones make humans worse at driving, or does their use while driving still result in the base case? My argument is that smartphone use does in fact significantly worsen a human's ability to drive properly. As a result, I believe that, for the time being, we need to somehow tackle the issue of smartphone use while operating a vehicle.

<comment><USER41> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> With cars being built to safety standards that make cars from even 1-2decades ago seem like tin cans, - spike in traffic deaths as I see it is likely due to: 1) distracted driving/apps 2) increase in prescription pill usage/drunk driving. I don't think it's #2 at all.

I don't need statistics to tell me that I am on of few drivers that puts my telephone in my pocket/center console so that I don't look at it. I will cop to hands free telephone talking and I admit it makes me a worse driver, but at least I have my eyes on the road. Bad journalism or not this is a real, infuriating, DANGEROUS, and completely preventable problem. I also can't believe how many people don't want to hear that they are doing something that makes them much more dangerous and much more likely to have an accident. I guess people just don't "feel" like it's wrong if they're sober. I am hoping that autonous cars are cheap and safe before my 9 year old starts driving. People don't seem capable in general of choosing either texting or driving and not both.

</comment><comment><USER43> Every time I ride a taxi or something I'm stunned by how many drivers I see futzing around with their phones. I don't find it hard to believe.

> When distracted driving entered the national consciousness a decade ago, the > problem was mainly people who made calls or sent texts from their > cellphones. The solution then was to introduce new technologies to keep > drivers' hands on the wheel.

Which by the way don't help

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm not sure if it's apps alone. At least in The Netherlands I'm seeing multiple reasons for this (we are also seeing a spike in accidents):

* Cars are too easy to drive. Drivers have no clue about speed and danger. This is especially true for trucks. You can steer tons with your finger, but you have no idea about the real powers going on.

* Individualization: The 'fuck you' way of driving.

* Social media.

<comment><USER45> In the Netherlands, a possible cause also is cyclists using mobile phones in traffic. Bicycles apparently are too easy to drive with all that nice infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This appears to be a false premise, traffic deaths per miles driven shows a rather steady decline according to wikipedia.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

</comment><comment><USER47> This article neglected to mention the apps most often used while driving, map apps.

<comment><USER48> I bet facebook would be number one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> The author neglected to mention that miles driven in the United States increased by a record 107.5 billion last year, up 3.5% [0]. Even at 2014's all-time low death rate of 1.08 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled [1], that increase in driving would lead us to expect 1,161 more deaths on the roads. There were actually 2,417 (7.4%) more deaths in 2015 than in 2014, so the increase in driving accounts for "only" 48% of the increase in deaths.

What accounts for the rest? More notable than the increase in deaths is that the death _rate_ increased from 1.08 per 100 million VMT to 1.12 (3.7%), only the second year-on-year increase in the death rate in the past two decades. The only other increase in the death rate occurred between 2011 and 2012, and the biggest _decreases_ in the death rate over the past two decades occurred in 2007–8 and 2008–9.

What was happening in those years? First the Great Recession, then an economic recovery. The years of the Great Recession were saw the steepest declines in miles driven in decades, and the last several years of economic recovery have seen the sharpest increases in driving (to an all-time high last year). The recession years were also the only years vehicle registrations fell in recent decades, and the number of licensed drivers flatlined for the first time since the previous recession in the early 2000s; licenses and registrations ticked up again during the recovery years, and were up strongly in 2014 [2].

So we saw the death rate fall as the recession hit and people drove less, fewer people got licensed to drive, and fewer vehicles were on the road. Then during the recovery we saw the only increases in the death rate in decades, as people started driving more and more new drivers got licensed and hit the roads.

Here's a hypothesis: the death rate fell sharply during the recession because (a) fewer cars were on the road, making roads safer, and especially because (b) the cohort of drivers changed, shifting older, more experienced, and more cautious as fewer young people (who were hit hardest by the economic downtown, and who have the highest rate of death by car) could afford to drive. Then during the recovery those changes reversed and people began to die on the roads at a higher rate.

Corollary: this article about apps causing driving deaths is mostly journalistic nonsense.

0\. [http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/...](http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/15dectvt/)

1\. [http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx](http://www- fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx)

2\. [https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/d...](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2014/dv1c.cfm)

</comment><comment><USER50> No mention of lower gas prices which means more driving ?

I'll be curious to see if this had a bigger impact than apps.

</comment><comment><USER51> The article fails to provide any statistics to show that apps are the cause. It just publishes a few case reports where apps were involved in an accident, and notes an uptick in traffic fatalities.

I think apps have reduced my chance of causing a traffic death:

My cognitive load for driving is much less than it used to be.

I no longer need to scan my environment for street signs, store signs or exit signs. I never need to look at a physical map/notes. If I miss a turn/exit, I'll recover. I don't have to suddenly shift lanes because I'll be in the correct lane a kilometer or two before the actual exit. Confusing signs telling me which lane to use are a non-issue.

I'll also drive fewer kilometers because of optimized routing. Sometimes it's more, but that's because I'll be diverting around congestion. I can also wait out the traffic and know exactly when to leave at a time that has fewer cars on the road.

Music streaming apps mean I don't have to fumble through radio stations, or clunky physical media.

<comment><USER52> Polar Opposite of other parent: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12964329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12964329)

Both purport situational awareness" to have vastly different consequences and effects.

<comment><USER51> In my locale, possibly for legal/insurance reasons, Uber drivers far too often keep their phones very low, and out of sight from other vehicles. Therefore, they have to keep looking far down.

For Uber drivers, the app is like a slot machine: you have to keep checking/interacting with it, lest you miss your next fare. With a navapp in a personal car, if it says I need to take no action for the next 1/10/100km, I know I can focus on the vehicles around me instead of signs for roughly that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think someone wants to sell some more hands free solutions before the holiday season, so lets use some bogus "evidence" to make choices easier.

Oh look, it just may happen that some tech companies are offering some that aren't selling well !

</comment><comment><USER54> You'll probably can't prevent this. That's why cars should be self-driving asap and common safety features like autonomous emergency braking, lane assist have to be mandatory in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER55> I don't know why this is bothering me...

But does anyone know why the title wasn't: " _largest_ spike in..." As opposed to "biggest spike in..."?

<comment><USER56> What's the difference? Biggest sounds more familiar to me. Maybe local cultures differ? For that matter, why would you ever need the word "large"? Doesn't "big" always have the same meaning?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I wonder if mobile phones have been responsible for more deaths or more lives saved over the past 10 years, and how you could attempt to calculate it.

<comment><USER58> Sounds like a good PhD project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> If one believes the premise, this is a situation where better voice control could literally save lives, as well as my sanity.

"Text John"

"I'm sorry, I can't do that right now"

...

</comment><comment><USER60> [http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/5979/we-need-an-nra-type- lob...](http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/5979/we-need-an-nra-type-lobby-for- human-driving)

Ill admit, I have not read it yet, I'm reading an ecology paper currently, but I will read it tonight.

<comment><USER61> Weird. I thought you were currently writing this comment.

<comment><USER60> u following me?!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> what about the increasingly number of auto-vehicles? how about the increase in the speeds people travel at? how about the materials the cars are made nowadays compared to 50 years ago?

<comment> nommm-nommm The materials cars are made of today vs 50 years ago are much safer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This link takes me to the login page.

</comment><comment><USER64> Other side of the coin is that law makers who have held up self driving cars and govt not funding enough grants is to blame

</comment><comment><USER65> Expected to see a nice big chart showing the spike. was disappointed so didn't read the article :\</comment>


RIP Syd Mead (Blade Runner, TRON Designer) - <AUTHOR> http://sydmead.com/gallery/ <comment><USER2> Here is a video slide show of some of Mead's art: [1], some of which still looks very cool and futuristic even today, and an interesting interview with him: [2]

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edVznYyqpJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edVznYyqpJU)

[2] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkAMSnRvMBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkAMSnRvMBI)

</comment><comment> W-Stool I put Syd Mead in the same bucket as HR Giger - two absolutely brilliant artists with completely opposite visions of what the future might look like.

<comment><USER3> Maybe because they worked on some of the same films together, Mead feels closer in spirit to Mobius than Giger. Mead had the cool cars and Mobius the mad psychedelic landscapes.

Either way, Mead was an inspiration and his world is one I've wanted to inhabit as long as I can remember.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rest in Peace designer of our aesthetic futures.

Gritty neon mechanical electronica.

Peaked in his late 40s which should give hope to many...

<comment><USER5> I agree that he peaked later on but the work he did for US Steel as a 28 year old is iconic and amazing as well - the guy was a talent from very early on:

[http://www.gavinrothery.com/my-blog/2012/8/6/syd-mead-us- ste...](http://www.gavinrothery.com/my-blog/2012/8/6/syd-mead-us-steel- portfolio.html)

<comment><USER6> These are gorgeous and still feel very fresh and vibrant. Thank you for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thanks Syd, for 2 of the most iconic movies I love and their seriously incredible design.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Confirmed here: [https://www.facebook.com/groups/syd.mead/permalink/101580502...](https://www.facebook.com/groups/syd.mead/permalink/10158050277754244/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Bladerunner aside, I always wanted to live in Syd Mead's future. Sunsets and an orgy of chrome. Well, orgies anyway. ;-)

Before Tron and Bladerunner I had come across his stuff in books and magazines and was blown away. This walking cargo machine from 1969: [http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1970-walking- cargo...](http://cyberneticzoo.com/walking-machines/1970-walking-cargo- vehicle-syd-mead-american/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Syd Mead's designs are some of my favorite. Always loved that retro futuristic look.

</comment><comment><USER10> He was a designer for the 1990 movie _Solar Crisis_ , and you can see a lot of the elements that he used earlier in _Blade Runner_.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100649/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100649/)

</comment><comment><USER11> thanks for one of the most iconic and _different_ entries in the Gundam universe.

Tomino, the primary creator of the series, has publicly regarded it (Syd's designs and hire) as a mistake, but i've always loved the different ultra- future aesthetic that Mead brought to the franchise.

[0]: [https://www.cardesignnews.com/designers/the-lasting- appeal-o...](https://www.cardesignnews.com/designers/the-lasting-appeal-of- syd-meads-turn-x-gundam/39413.article)

[1]: [https://www.otakuusamagazine.com/gundam-creator-blasts- today...](https://www.otakuusamagazine.com/gundam-creator-blasts-todays-voice- actors-designer-syd-mead/)

</comment><comment><USER12> RIP. Syd Mead was an inspiration for so many artists. I love the clean lines and crisp simplicity of the shapes he uses. It reminds me of design work by Dieter Rams, but for the entertainment industry.

</comment><comment><USER13> Rest In Peace Mr. Mead!

Your inspiration will not be forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER14> What do you think Syd would think of the future we are currently receiving?

</comment><comment><USER15> .</comment>


All quiet in the IPv4 Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.apnic.net/2016/09/15/quiet-ipv4-internet/ <comment><USER2> The lack of usage in static blocks isn't entirely surprising. A lot of universities got their IP space early and utilize it poorly. I know this because it is in part my fault.

When we were assigning IP addresses for the dorms at Berkeley, we gave every dorm a /24, and then reserved the first 50 IPs for "future use" and "internal use". Most of those were never used. And unless 200 people signed up per building, some of the top end was missed too.

My understanding is that they have since fixed this on the wifi since many people bring three or four devices now, but the hard wired connections are still poorly utilized.

<comment><USER3> I have several clients that have a class B or class C and use it mostly for their internal address space instead of using private address space. What a waste.

<comment><USER4> It's a very good way to make sure that if those clients need to route their internal networks to each other, they don't have to renumber. If two companies using 10.x.y.z networks merge, you are likely to end up with a mess. Heck, if you need to VPN to a 10.x.y.z network and your local network is also 10.x.y.z, you'll end up with a mess.

(The IPv6 solution here is Unique Local Addresses, where fdXX:XXXX:XXXX::/48 are _all_ permissible local networks, and if you use a decent RNG to generate the 40-bit number XXXXXXXXXX, you're unlikely to hit a collision with any other actual, active site, let alone one you might want to route to.)

<comment> X-Istence Instead of using fd with a RNG, you should follow the RFC...

SixxS even runs a registry for ULA prefixes: [https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/](https://www.sixxs.net/tools/grh/ula/)

Put in your MAC address, get back a ULA. Then register it so that in the future if someone happens to have the same mac address you don't accidentally use the ULA.

<comment><USER4> I'm following the RFC: "Locally assigned Global IDs MUST be generated with a pseudo-random algorithm consistent with [RFC 4086]. Section 3.2.2 describes a suggested algorithm."

I happen to be of the opinion that /dev/urandom is more likely to comply with RFC 4086 than the suggested algorithm, but I may have an unfairly low opinion of the distribution of timestamps and MAC addresses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Slides from IETF96: [https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-maprg-1...](https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-maprg-1.pdf)

Paper: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.00360.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.00360.pdf)

Edit: If you have some time and like high quality networking commentary (aka 'rants'), I strongly recommend to listen to this packet pusher episode with Geoff Huston, where he plays devil's advocate for IPv4.

[http://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/show-275-future- of...](http://packetpushers.net/podcast/podcasts/show-275-future-of- networking-geoff-huston/)

<comment><USER5> (I know this is drifting off.) Geoff Huston is a phenomenal speaker (and researcher of course). If you have even more time and want to learn more about how the address spaces and routing tables are evolving, I definitely recommend his talk on BGP at RIPE 68 (2014) which I was lucky enough to attend.

Video: [https://ripe68.ripe.net/archives/video/131/](https://ripe68.ripe.net/archives/video/131/)

Slides: [https://ripe68.ripe.net/presentations/156-2014-05-12-bgp2013...](https://ripe68.ripe.net/presentations/156-2014-05-12-bgp2013.pdf)

[EDIT] In another talk he indicates where you can get that kind of data on the Internet address space: [http://www.routeviews.org/](http://www.routeviews.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great talk, thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm happy that my ISP gives me a /29 ipv4 block :).

An example of a real world effect is one of the largest fibre ISPs in the U.K. They are the only provider afaik to assign users internal IPs, which is then NAT'd. This then gets NAT'd on the router again - double NAT, woohoo! :) I know they desperately tried to get enough public space for all their customers, but were unable to buy a large enough space for it, so were forced into this position.

Interestingly, the U.K. has at least two /8 ranges that aren't even advertised on the public internet, owned by MoD (25/8) and Department of Work & Pensions (51/8). That's 32 million addresses unused as far as anyone can tell from the outside.

<comment><USER5> Seriously? They assign internal addresses (10/8, 172.16/12, 192.168/16) to all customers?

Are you able to name the ISP?

<comment><USER7> Is it rare?

I think BT's cheaper broadbands do this, for one.

<comment><USER8> I certainly have never encountered this, and would be really unhappy if my ISP pulled this stunt.

<comment><USER9> Only the early players get the luxury of large IP pools, everyone else has had to resort to carrier-grade NAT.

Fortunately some of those can un-NAT you if you ask politely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They're only looking at IP addresses that access a big CDN as clients. They won't see servers that way.

As mobile devices migrate to IPv6, the address space problem should be less. It's too bad that most mobile devices don't have permanent IPv6 addresses - more peer to peer applications would be possible.

<comment><USER11> I'd say it's more like most mobile devices don't have IPv6 period, at least not here in the US. Every time I've done or seen network tests on a phone on the major cell carrier networks here in the US, there's been no IPv6 to be found.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Major Mobile US Networks Pass 50% IPv6 Threshold for IPv6-Enabled Hosts"

[http://www.worldipv6launch.org/major-mobile-us-networks- pass...](http://www.worldipv6launch.org/major-mobile-us-networks- pass-50-ipv6-threshold/)

Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12338993)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Public IPs are about $10/each on the market. If you're running a serious service, $10 is a fairly small cost, so you just buy whatever you need. IPv4 exhaustion has mostly affected people that were getting addresses for "free".

<comment><USER13> _Public IPs are about $10 /each on the market._

Bah.

 _mostly affected people that were getting addresses for "free"._

There are still a lot of "free" IPv4 addresses out there.

The problem is the cost of IPv4 addresses is not evenly applied. There's hoarding by some early adopters. E.g. I see that Stanford gave back its original /8 allocation, but MIT did not.[1] And why is Prudential Securities still sitting on a Class A block?

If MIT or Prudential had to pay 16,777,216 * $10 per month for their IP addresses, you can bet that most would be returned within 48 hours! Even if they had to pay only $16 million per year, you can bet they'd return most of those addresses.

A true capitalist solution to the IPv4 "shortage" never happened. That's why you have the current situation. Some organizations are sitting on huge swaths of unused addresses, others (the free market) are forced to pay $10 per month.

There are about 4 billion possible IPv4 addresses (sure, some are reserved for e.g. multicast, but those could have been reclaimed). If each and every IPv4 address cost $10 per month, there would _never_ have been a need for IPv6. Even if each and every IPv4 address cost only $1 per month (about $50 billion per year in aggregate), there would never have been a need for IPv6. Or at least IPv6 could have been postponed for a while and "done right".

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks)

<comment><USER14> Note that a secondhand IP address costs $10 to buy, not $10/month.

IMO Postel's allocation of IP addresses can be rationalized from a capitalist viewpoint as a form of homesteading. Some people end up with windfall profits three decades later, but it's a small price to pay for a peacefully functioning market. Owning a $100M asset that's underutilized is already an economic incentive to free up addresses (just don't tell _my_ company); a Georgist property tax on IP addresses would provide even more incentive but it would also likely cause a revolt.

Since there are going to be 4B devices on the Internet soon if not already, talking about "there would never have been a need for IPv6" seems to imply the existence of an address-less underclass.

<comment><USER13> _Note that a secondhand IP address costs $10 to buy, not $10 /month._

Yeah I really screwed up on that one!!!

I got confused because often the _retail_ price is in that range. E.g. Comcast Business will give you a static IP for $20/month.[1] But reading further, they will give you 13 extra IPs for $40/month, so clearly I didn't think it through.

[1] I can't link directly to that information on Comcast's site, but it can be found here by clicking on Static IP pricing. [https://business.comcast.com/internet/business- internet](https://business.comcast.com/internet/business-internet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've pondered the IPv4 issue a lot, having recently acquired a /24 block for running an Anycast network (blog post coming soon).

People have asked me my thoughts on IPv6 adoption, and I have to honestly say I'm pretty bearish on IPv6 being quickly adopted. I try to enable IPv6 on all my friends' routers, but even today, many routers, though they support 6 (notable exception being DD-WRT.. WTF), don't enable it by default, which means they don't enable the dual-stack configuration needed for transition. People then place these routers in a dusty area under their computers or behind their couches, where they sit, basically untouched, for 10+ years until they blow up and require replacement.

The people I've talked to that happen to control a lot of IPv4 addresses tell me that even at the current ~$10-12/ip strike price, nobody is interested in selling because the IPs are more valuable to them for use with datacenters and leasing than for selling them at auctions. And nobody's putting pressure on the people that own huge IPv4 subnets (and I genuinely doubt use all of it) to start splitting them up and releasing them. Not to name names, but the original developers of the Internet come to mind (huge research universities like MIT).

As such, I'm expecting the price of IPv4 addresses to increase substantially over the next 10 years, and I'm really not anticipating that price to drop for longer than that even. Because at the end of the day, if you want to support everybody, you need 4. And even today, dual stack is not the default option (despite ISPs like Comcast being ready for it). IMHO, If you need IPv4s for something like an Anycast network or a hosting service, the time to get them is now.

As for IPv6 transition, the best way to improve this problem is to do your part to get ready for it: [https://blog.apnic.net/2016/05/04/you-have- ipv6-turn-it-on/](https://blog.apnic.net/2016/05/04/you-have-ipv6-turn-it-on/)

<comment><USER16> Are you sure about DD-WRT? I found this [https://www.dd- wrt.com/wiki/index.php/IPv6#Enabling_IPv6_Sup...](https://www.dd- wrt.com/wiki/index.php/IPv6#Enabling_IPv6_Support)

<comment><USER14> Let's count the ways this is broken: IPv6 is off by default (and it sounds like some builds don't have it at all). To enable it, you have to enable two settings (presumably if you only enable one you'll end up with half-broken IPv6). Firewalling is not included. There's no mention of prefix delegation, but there's plenty of instructions for configuring deprecated 6to4 or deprecated tunnel brokers.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, this is beyond broken. On my DLink router at home, I had to literally click one "setup" button to get IPv6 working. That's how it should work: either be very simple, or work by default out of the box (preferred).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Assuming consumer-grade router manufacturers started fully enabling IPv6 by default (and ISPs did too), how does Grandma get the automatic firewall-ish security benefits NAT provides? Does the end of NAT mean Grandma has to start caring about firewall settings?

<comment><USER18> By using a stateful firewall with a default-deny policy on the external interface?

One would hope that SoHo routers that ship with IPv6 support are configured that way by default so they mimic the apparent behavior of NAT (though NAT is not, and is less effective than a firewall).

<comment><USER19> Notice that this should still be easier to implement, and use less memory (read cheaper devices) than NAT.

NAT is an ugly hack. Uglier yet when you remember that the internet is not only TCP.

<comment><USER20> Less memory? A complete inside-outside-remote address triple for IPv4 NAT uses less memory than even a single IPv6 address. And keeping state requires two.

<comment><USER19> You are correct.

Let me rephrase it correctly: implementing that uses less memory than IPv6 NAT.

Yet, all the practical implications from my previous comment are gone. This correct version is useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> On this topic, does anyone have any advice for pressuring ISPs to move on IPv6?

I've tried calling and public shaming Wide Open West to no avail. They don't seem to care at all. Time Warner Cable is the next fastest ISP (and they do support IPv6), but they want almost the same price for 1/12th the speed (600mbit/s WOW vs 50mbit/s TWC); so I begrudgingly stick with WOW anyway =(

</comment><comment><USER22> One thing I cannot understand about the transition to ipv6 is why weren't all ipv4 addresses converted via encoding to ipv6. This way ipv4 and ipv6 could talk to each other.

And all service websites could jump on the ipv6 bandwagon without hiccups.

By encoding, I mean every ipv4 segment would be encoded as a hexadecimal set and that would be merged into an ipv6 category under a special prefix.

<comment><USER23> That is not the problem. The problem is how does a 32 bit address represent all possible 128 bit addresses?

It can't, period. Ipv4 devices cannot route to ipv6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As the article points out theres a big difference between addresses being allocated and addresses being used.

</comment><comment><USER25> Still waiting for any ISP in my area to start supporting IPv6. They seem to have fallen asleep about it.

</comment><comment><USER26> That site barely loads for me and I can't find an archive/cached link. I would expect a RIR to be able to handle this internet thing a bit better.

<comment><USER27> Working for me. Looks like Archive.is has it already too: [http://archive.is/yhSBN](http://archive.is/yhSBN)</comment></comment>


The Death of Iowa - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/04/the-death-of-iowa-110655 <comment><USER2> This looks political but I think it raises a different, more important point about the naïveté people exhibit when it comes to software and complex technology. This was exhibited by the developers of course who promised and/or agreed to a time scale that did I not include any sort of reasonable performance or user testing, but also the faith that the elections folks had that magical technology could simply spring from the ground fully grown like Athena from the head of Zeus.

In addition, whatever you think of the Iowa process, this was in the end a technology failure and unless the tech was deployed to address some other deficiency (which as far as I know it was not — it was just intended to be an optimization), it's failure should change nothing.

However the failure could be used as a scapegoat. It brings to mind the 2000 election in which a technology failure (of a manual punch) lead to a rushed adoption of a worse approach that had the gloss of magical computerism.

<comment><USER3> I see it as a flaw to even consider needing complex technology.

Elections are a system that require little more than simple addition. Encryption is helpful for authentication and data protection, but this technology exists already and just needs implemented.

If you've gotten to the point where you've made counting complex, you have failed IMHO.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps its the ability to manipulate the results that gummed up the works?

<comment><USER2> Cute but unlikely. They did keep a complete paper record so anyone concerned could do a recount.

<comment><USER4> Then why has a full count taken so long to do? The paper records were supposed to be failsafe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It may look old-fashioned, but you can't beat paper and pencil ballots, with counts watched carefully by scrutineers from all the major parties, and the results sent to a central tally-room where once again, scrutineers from all the major parties can act as checks and balances to ensure that the final results are accurate and wide-spread.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is straight politics. From the HN guidelines:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're > evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or > disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's > probably off-topic.

<comment><USER7> Except the whole debacle springs from a spectacular series of software failures, making this somewhat relevant.

How bad can a few bugs be? Bad enough to destroy the hopes of 7 presidential contenders making it to the White House?

Maybe that's an overstatement, but it makes the party look incompetent, and by association, all the nominees. What does it take to convince someone not to vote? How about "they'll probably just mess up your vote anyway, look at Iowa". And yes, that's a dumb statement, and no, as we've seen that doesn't make it unconvincing one. The narrative is key, and the narrative is bad. And it was a poorly implemented piece of software that caused it.

Seems like something worth talking about.

<comment><USER8> Oh hai. I have a bridge to sell you. It's in New York City. It's in good shape. You can make really good money on the tolls. Drop me a line!</comment></comment></comment>


Legal struggle alleges 'Love' artist Robert Indiana exploited in final years - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/07/25/artist-robert-indiana-brought-love-to-the-world-was-he-being-exploited-in-his-final-years/?utm_term=.c6f4f92ddab4 <comment><USER2> The paywall offers a "Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription" with the following perk:

> No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking

But trying to buy it paints a whole different story:

> By subscribing, you agree to the use by us and our third-party partners of > technologies such as cookies to personalize content and perform analytics. > Please see our Terms of Service, Digital Products Terms of Sale and Privacy > Policy for more information.

Greedy assholes. Here's a PasteBin without any of the tracking bullshit: [https://pastebin.com/raw/JqsxZfUB](https://pastebin.com/raw/JqsxZfUB)</comment>