Paris city centre goes car-free for a day - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/27/all-blue-skies-in-paris-as-city-centre-goes-car-free-for-first-time <comment><USER3> What I think this demonstrates is something that a lot of cities are waking up to. The car is not a friend of the urban landscape.

A lot of cities are now prioritising walking/cycling/public transport over the ability to drive anywhere and everywhere and this is having a profound effect on health and well being of their residents. It is hard though.

Events like this show what is possible.

<comment><USER4> I think it's possible, but one time events are misleading, in my opinion. People use exceptional measures that are not sustainable in the long term - out here, some people even took a vacation day when our cities did the "day without cars".

<comment><USER3> The issue is one of persuasion. By having these days it gives local authorities the ability to demonstrate what is possible and makes actual implementation of smaller leaps (e.g. segregated cycle tracks) easier to swallow.

<comment><USER5> If no cars is the goal, how are segregated cycle tracks a leap in the right direction?

<comment><USER3> Because it is not about "removing" the car, but making it the most difficult thing to use vs any other type of transport. For example, you can make the most direct route to a place via bike or walking, but if you use a car you have to use the ring road to get from one side of the city to the other. You enable cars to go into a city, but not through a city.

The other issue is that people equate the idea that people can walk and cycle together. This is really uncomfortable for walkers. You need to segregate space for each type of transport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Never having been to Paris, I am surprised that it doesn't seem to have a car- free inner city anyway (correct me if I'm wrong). I find this one day already a great idea, but why not make it permanent? Almost ever city here in Germany has what we call the "Fußgängerzone" \- pedestrians-only zone - in the town center. It makes for a very pleasant atmosphere when you don't have to watch out for cars all the time, and that part of town looks a lot more attractive for it. (Often you will find this area is located in the oldest part of town, so you get to admire all the old buildings even better.)

<comment><USER7> Paris does have Fußgängerzonen as well (around Les Halles for example, in La Defance, Latin Quarter ...) but this is a huge city. Only Berlin comes close, and there are cars all around Potsdamer Platz, Brandenburger Tor, Ku'Damm ... But I agree, Paris would clearly benefit from a no car zone from Rivoli to maybe Luxemburg. The roads are too small for serious car traffic anyway.

<comment><USER8> "... Paris is a huge city. Only Berlin comes close, ..."

yeah, right

Paris: 2,241,346 (2014)

Berlin: 3,562,166 (2014)

<comment><USER9> And Boston has only 600k inhabitants, right?

(4M if we count the Metro area)

<comment><USER10> Most of Boston seems doable for car-free too, but I don't know if the public transportation can handle it. It's already taxed at rush hour and other peak times. I can't imagine everybody could get to work on time if _everybody_ had to use it without major skewing of some schedules.

It seems like a strong telecommuting infrastructure and culture should be a part of this.

<comment><USER11> Public transit in Boston is already choked at rush hour, and badly in need of repairs (including complete fleet replacements for two subway lines, now scheduled to start in a couple of years) -- witness the total breakdowns last winter, which had some lines out of service for weeks.

<comment><USER12> And witness the repercussions. On the third day of the crisis, the Red and Orange lines were out, and a lot of people who normally came on them, drove instead. The result was that Cambridge was utterly crippled with traffic. On my way back from Kendall to Medford, I walked, and I got home earlier than anyone I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A small shortcut in this article that I can't help to point out:

> The Volkswagen scandal over emissions-rigging has increased pressure on the > French government to act on car pollution.

The current mayor of Paris has been taking actions like this one since she was instated. We regularly have to deal with "50 km/h max speed" measures and it has nothing to do with the VW rigging scandal.

Small sidenote:

> In the rest of the city, cars were allowed but at 20km an hour.

I'm not sure this is true, but I assure to you no one was driving 20 km/h in my neighbourhood.

All in all this was a great opportunity to see the streets of Paris without any cars whatsoever.

<comment><USER14> The most annoying this about those speeds, is that a car is far more efficient at 50km/h, than at 20km/h.

<comment><USER15> Except you are lucky if you can get even to 20 km/h in Paris, forget about 50 km/h. "Fluid traffic" is a red herring in such circumstances - those _other_ cars always get in the way ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was in Paris this weekend; it was great to be able to participate in this project.

It was pleasant on multiple levels - the lack of traffic, absolutely, but also the sense of community and sense of belonging. There's definitely a feeling of 'taking back' your city when you can circulate freely.

One of the most interesting aspects was that the road tunnels were also open. Paris has quite a few tunnel systems in the center of town, and most of these were available to stroll through, proving a unique insight into what is an oft-overlooked part of the city.

That, and the ability to run / ride / skate through the system, made for a fun day. It's definitely something other cities could adapt

</comment><comment><USER17> I was in Paris from Fri-Sun, and the difference between having cars and not having cars in the city centre was incredible. I've been to Paris a few times before, but the calm, lack of noise and general feeling of pedestrians was incredible. More cities should take the lead from Paris/Germany/etc. and reduce the number of vehicles in city centres.

</comment><comment><USER18> Would not having cars in the small centre actually clear up smog in a couple of hours? I would suspect that changes in weather (wind/rain) would have a far greater impact on air pollution. Along with the notes of happy people, I'd imagine this is more a psychological effect. Cities do seem pretty neat without cars (judging from when I've been out during crises and there's been no other traffic).

Also: "emboldened to cycle in from the eastern edge of the city without a helmet" \- I'm not sure, but are cars a massively dominating factor in bicycle safety? I'd imagine there's still risks, like hitting someone, or a curb, where a helmet might come in life-saving.

<comment><USER19> There is _a lot_ of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet.

Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality [2].

This may sound very disturbing if you come from a country where helmets are mandatory. In France, they are not.

In case you wonder, there are also stories (albeit probably less than unanimous) that cycling at the red light is safer. It is my personal belief that I'd never go ahead when it's green for the cars in my city (Lyon), but it's much more controversial. Some cities (like Paris[3] allow jumping the red light).

Finally, many European countries, including London and Paris, have developed bike stations (take a bike, 1.50€ for a 24hrs card, with deposit). Making helmets mandatory would be a problem.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/1999/jun/15/healthan...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/1999/jun/15/healthandwellbeing.health1) [2] [http://www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html](http://www.cycle- helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html) [3] [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33773868](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33773868)

<comment><USER3> Hat tip to this link [http://road.cc/content/forum/165819-whats-wrong-bicycle- helm...](http://road.cc/content/forum/165819-whats-wrong-bicycle-helmets) but let me quote a comment from there:

Just to save everyone else the time and effort as well as repetitive strain injury I am going to summarise the entire crux of how these responses will go:

Someone will kick off with an anecdote about how they or a friend's life was supposedly saved by wearing a helmet.

This will be followed by a post saying it isn't much use wearing one when getting driven over by a HGV.

Someone else will then link to the University of Bath research.

Following again with another anecdote where a helmet was ineffective or lead to more injury.

Now someone is going to come and call everyone else morons and telling the other posters to stop pressing for mandatory helmet wearing- despite the fact no one has done so.

Someone else will now make an observation about why car drivers or pedestrians don't have to wear them.

Mr "Stop-making -me-wear-a-helmet-despite-no one -actually-calling-for-it-to- be-law" will then quote the Australian experience before again insulting those imaginary posters no one else can see who want to make it illegal to ride without a helmet.

Someone who hasn't read the previous comments will again post a link to the University of Bath research.

A sensible post will then mention Chris Boardman but this will be ignored as the pro and anti-helmet debate hots up.

Someone makes a reference to "noddy hats".

Someone makes another sensible statement about not forcing anyone to wear one, that it should be personal choice and they choose to wear one. That will then be ignored as the rest of the posters get nasty and call into question each others moral and intellectual standing, again despite NO ONE ARGUING IT SHOULD BE COMPULSORY.

Another person again posts about making pedestrians wear helmets.

These same comments will then be repeated ad nasueum until suddenly there are hundred of posts all saying the same thing and mirroring the exact same helmet threads that seemingly appear every few days which no one then reads because once you have read one, you have read them all.

<comment><USER20> You're forgetting the 'Someone' who will remark that road design plays an important role.

Relevant links from the past week that compare two approaches:

[https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/come- an...](https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/come-and-see- horshams-east-west-cycle-route-this-saturday/)

[https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/the-f325-fast-...](https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/the-f325-fast- cycle-route-arnhem-nijmegen/)

IMO, almost all cycling accidents are avoidable, also those where the fault is with others (pedestrian, cyclist or car driver) you have no control over.

Problem is, to do that, you need to pay attention whenever there is potential for danger. Good cycling infrastructure decreases the fraction of the time that that potential is present from close to 100% (for example, if you are riding a 1m cycle lane next to a row of parked cars, you _must_ look forward to check whether there are drivers in those cars that might open a door into the cycle lane, and stay in that 1m wide lane, and check for cars making a turn into your lane) down to 10% or so. That makes it a lot safer to ride when you aren't in the physical and/or mental state to pay attention 100% of the time (which is almost always)

Oh, and "Chris Boardman". I like making sensible posts, and accept that 'being ignored' sometimes is the price for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was in Paris this weekend-just-gone and sat on the bench on Sunday on Champs-Élysées watching all these people walking down the road. I thought it had always been like this. Then I saw the police at around 6pm start to ease it up and march in front of the cars to open the roads again and back to normal with cars beeping their horns and nearly hitting cyclists.

Now it completely makes sense why that old French man sat next to me and wouldn't stop talking about the cars and pollution.

</comment><comment><USER22> After spending lots of time in the Netherlands, where bikes and pedestrians are respected, it was a shock to see the situation in Paris when I was there this week. It felt like a car city. Roads sometimes took up a significant amount of space and the sidewalk was only wide enough for one person. Drivers also had such a lack of respect for bikes and pedestrians. It was at times frightening to try to use a crosswalk, as nobody would stop for the people trying to cross. Paris is much better than the states, but they have a lot of room for improvement.

<comment><USER23> I think there are some cities in Europe - can't remember if Paris is one - <USER2> which road traffic _can_ still cross on a green light for pedestrians, maybe only a left turn and if there is no-one crossing. Of course, "no-one" crossing is then taken with a pinch of salt by bullying drivers. This is definitely _not_ the case in London, although traffic still has a tendency to go through red lights late.

<comment><USER24> You're thinking about a right turn on a red light, and it's not the case in France. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_turn_on_red](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_turn_on_red)

<comment><USER23> Oh yes, for places that drive on the right, that obviously makes more sense! It might not be for the same reason, but I've definitely felt like drivers have 'more priority' over crossing pedestrians when in mainland Europe. Even on a pedestrian green light.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure what you mean by "a pedestrian green light". I have never seen a pedestrian green light that wasn't accompanied by a red light for cars? Unless maybe you're talking about cars turning left or right at a green light (therefore crossing the path of pedestrians who also have a green light)?

I think drivers reasonably respect pedestrians in such situations at least in France, but for regular crossings, yeah it can be quite difficult, even though pedestrians theoretically have priority. It's usually better in core city centers, especially those cities which have extensive areas with reduced speed, pedestrian areas, etc. Nantes and Lille centers are somewhat comparable, but even in the "shared space with pedestrian priority" in Lille's very center (which is almost entirely allowed to cars), cars try to not stop for pedestrians, while in Nantes which has extensive car-free areas, cars will stop and generally drive more gently in most of the city.

And just over the border from Lille, in Belgium, things are completely different and cars sometimes stop even if you didn't intend on crossing! I don't think there is any homogeneity in "mainland Europe" on this topic.

<comment><USER23> Yup, I think we're talking about the same thing. Like I said, I couldn't remember exactly where I'd experienced it, having travelled in a lot of mainland Europe. But, as a Brit, it's very disconcerting - here, if the pedestrian crossing has a green light, the cars have a red light, and must not go, no exceptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't know if it's the case too in other countries, but here in France, there are more and more cities which go car-free during a day each month.

Most of the time, these car-free events occurs in the historical downtown of big cities, and there are generally appreciated.

<comment><USER27> Some people complained (on some French newspaper website) about bikes being reckless. Personally, seeing empty boulevards and people walking in all direction is making my heart rate slow down. I'm becoming car anxious...

<comment><USER28> We're French... If we can't complain about cars, we have to find something else to complain about...

<comment><USER27> That's limiting, France is also a country with a big poetic history, let's focus on that part :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Philadelphia had the roads in center city shut down this weekend for the pope's visit. As someone who has no car, it was glorious! I'd love to see it done on a regular basis, preferably without needing the national guard on every street corner.

<comment><USER30> I have lived here for four years. This was by far my favorite weekend ever in Philadelphia.

The feeling of being able to walk around downtown, mingling with thousands of other people, and NEVER having to look over my shoulder make sure that I wasn't about to be crushed by 2 tons of speeding steel was indeed a glorious feeling.

The local businesses suffered, but I'm sure that if the streetscape changed, the "business-scape" would, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Here is a map showing (in dark green) the areas where roads were closed for motorized vehicles: [https://api-site.paris.fr/images/74176](https://api- site.paris.fr/images/74176)

</comment><comment><USER6> Car-free days remind me of the car-free Sundays people tell me about from the 1973 oil-crisis. They used to go cycling on the motorways - wouldn't that be fun to do again?

<comment><USER32> Israel has 1 day per year where there's no car traffic anywhere in the country (yom kipur - no motorized transit of any kind, even trains). It's among some of my fondest memories of childhood, i wish we had something like that in Germany :)

People indeed cycle, roller skate, and skateboard on the highways.

<comment><USER33> Looks like they made this "speedway without cars" thing in Montreuil (east suburb of Paris) during this event. For the 7th year... Montreuil is a much more progressive city than Paris. [http://www.lavoieestlibre.org/#la-voie-est- libre](http://www.lavoieestlibre.org/#la-voie-est-libre)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is the high air pollution due to population density or emissions technology (ie Diesel vs Petrol?) For example, I look up the pollution numbers for 2015 in California Bay Area and the strict California PM10 limits were exceeded for only 2 days in the year.* And California is known for being car crazy and we have had hot dry weather for some time now.

* ([http://www.baaqmd.gov/about-air-quality/air-quality-summarie...](http://www.baaqmd.gov/about-air-quality/air-quality-summaries)) BTW where do I find something similar for Paris?

<comment><USER35> The proximity of the sea might be one reason.

Check www.airparif.asso.fr for the numbers !

<comment><USER34> That would make sense. In California, there is the Central Valley which is far from the ocean but lower population density and the pollution is much worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sorry for the wall of text but this passage from Kundera [1] always comes to mind when I realize (or remember) that noise, somehow, is taken for granted by most people I know: I complain, and they say "stop whining". But it _is_ extraordinary and should not be accepted as a "fact of life". Here's to hope that events like this will make more people aware of that.

 _"Another visit to Prague after 1989. From a friend's bookcase I happen to pull out a book by Jaromir John, a Czech novelist of the period between the wars. The book is long forgotten; it is called The Internal-Combustion Monster, and I read it for the first time that day. Written around 1932, it tells a story set about ten years earlier, during the first years of the Czechoslovak Republic that was proclaimed in 1918. A Mr. Engelbert, a forestry official in the old regime of the Hapsburg monarchy, moves to Prague to live out his retirement years; but coming up against the aggressive modernity of the young state, he has one disappointment after another. A highly familiar situation. One "aspect, though, is brand new: for Mr. Engelbert the horror of this modern world, the curse, is not the power of money or the arrogance of the arrivistes, it is the noise; and not the age-old noise of a thunderstorm or a hammer, but the new noise of engines, especially of automobiles and motorcycles, the explosive "internal-combustion monsters."_

 _Poor Mr. Engelbert: first he settles in a house in a residential neighborhood; there cars are his first introduction to the evil that will turn his life into an unending flight. He moves to another neighborhood, pleased to see that cars are forbidden entry to his street. Unaware that the prohibition is only temporary, he is exasperated at night when he hears the "internal- combustion monsters" roaring again beneath his window. From then on he never goes to bed without cotton in his ears, realizing that "sleeping is the most basic human desire and that death caused by the impossibility of sleep must be the worst death there is." He goes to seek silence in country inns (in vain), in provincial cities in the houses of onetime colleagues (in vain), and ends up spending his nights in trains, which ", with their gentle archaic noise, provide him with a slumber that is relatively peaceful in his life as a beleaguered man._

 _When John wrote his novel, Prague had probably one car to every hundred inhabitants or, I don't know, perhaps to every thousand. It is precisely when it was still rare that the phenomenon of noise (motor noise) stood out in all its astonishing newness. We can deduce a general rule: the existential import of a social phenomenon is most sharply perceptible not as it expands but when it is just beginning, incomparably fainter than it will soon become. Nietzsche remarks that in the sixteenth century nowhere in the world was the Church less corrupt than in Germany and that was the reason the Reformation started precisely there, because the mere "beginnings of corruption were felt to be intolerable." Bureaucracy in Kafka's time was an innocent babe compared to today, and yet it was Kafka who revealed its monstrous nature, which since then has become routine and no longer commands anyone's interest. In the 1960s brilliant philosophers subjected the "consumer society" to a critique that over the years has been so cartoonishly outstripped by reality that we are embarrassed "to refer to it. For we must recall another general rule: reality is utterly unashamed to repeat itself, but confronted with reality's repetition, thought always ends by falling silent._

 _In 1920 Mr. Engelbert was still astonished by the noise of the "internal- combustion monsters"; the generations that followed found it natural; after initially horrifying man, sickening him, noise gradually reshaped him; through its omnipresence and its permanence it ultimately instilled in him the need for noise, and with that, a whole different relation to nature, to repose, to joy, to beauty, to music (which, now become an uninterrupted background of sound, has lost its char"acter as art) and even speech (which no longer holds a privileged position in the world of sounds). In the history of existence this was a change so profound, so enduring, that no war or revolution can produce its like; a change whose beginnings Jaromir John modestly noted and described._

 _I say "modestly" because John was one of those novelists called "minor"; still, great or small, he was a real novelist; he was not just copying truths stitched on the curtain of preinterpretation; he had the Cervantes-like courage to tear the curtain. Let's take Mr. Engelbert out of the novel and imagine him as a real man who sets about writing his autobiography; no, it is nothing like John's novel! For, like most of his ilk, Mr. Engelbert is accustomed to judging life according to what can be read on that curtain hanging in front of the world; he knows that the phenomenon of noise, however disagreeable it is for him, does not deserve interest. But freedom, independence, democracy—or, seen from the opposite angle, capitalism, exploitation, inequality—yes, oh a hundred times yes! Now, those are serious notions, they can give a life meaning, render a misfortune "noble! Thus, in his autobiography, which I envision him writing with cotton stuffed in his ears, he grants great significance to the recovered independence of his homeland, and he rails at the selfishness of the arrivistes; as for those "internal-combustion monsters," he has relegated them to the bottom of the page, a mere mention of a trivial annoyance that, in the end, is rather amusing._

PS: Much like Mr. Engelbert, I resorted to ear plugs, going through all the varieties of it as well as noise canceling headphones. Since about 1.5 years now, I use custom-fitted silicone earplugs and they are amazing. Each ear canal is shaped differently, even "within" the same person from side to side, and a custom fitting makes earplugs most agreeable to wear. I highly recommend this if you suffer from a "too noisy world" like me. They are expensive but the fit and apparent durability make them worth it. One of the best investments in my sanity I've made (so far).

_________________________

[1] M. Kundera. The Curtain (Le rideau). Harper Perennial, 2005.

<comment><USER37> I definitely suffer from noise, for a time I believed I just had 'good hearing', but in actuality I believe that it's just that my brain cannot filter the background noise. Since I do not hear people speaking next to a loud road, but they seem to hear me fine.

There are sounds in the world that are actually painful- I mean, causing real physical pain. I'm referring of course to sirens, and in the UK at least they are dastardly loud. (a requirement to offset engine noise of even the most aggressive motorbike).

I lived for a year on a busy road in london, and, never again, the noise is intolerable.

but; where could you go if you wanted a respite from the droning clunking of engines? the more remote you go, the more engines are required.

<comment><USER32> England might be too densely populated for you but I'm sure you can find hiking trails in the forests/mountains that do not go near roads? There are definitely plenty of those in Austria and Germany, you need to get to their beginning with a train or car but after half an hour walk you can be somewhere secluded, especially if you go during the work week.

<comment><USER37> it's about living, not visiting. :\

but yes, I moved to Sweden, the traffic here seems to be much quieter.

<comment><USER38> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opn0L-oX3-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opn0L-oX3-E)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> IMHO I just think that this retrospective isn't relevant. This measures have not had time to really show what it can do. I just think that the past windy and sunny days made the pollution go away. Not really representative of the result of such actions...

</comment><comment><USER40> Instead of outright banning all cars, why not ban only the polluting ones, essentially allowing only EVs in cities? That would also accelerate the long- term goal of cleaning up the city of smog, which is what they're trying to do with these "no-car days", because people would dump their polluting cars faster.

If the no-car days don't drive people to dump their cars too fast or at all, then these acts will be just symbolic anyway and won't have much effect on city pollution.

<comment><USER41> Pollution is only one of a long list of problems caused by cars in cities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Maybe before too long much of the traffic could be replaced by self driving electric vehicles? The hardest part of traffic to deal with is probably trucks delivering goods and maybe those could be replaced by some unmanned electric things that trundle overnight.

</comment><comment><USER43> A link that might be of interest [0]. I haven't read the book, but this guy put a lot of thought into what it would take. 0\. [http://www.carfree.com/](http://www.carfree.com/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Philadelphia recently did this. Your city can, too. Just bring the pope for a weekend.

<comment><USER45> When the pope came to Rio de Janeiro recently they actually did the opposite and closed the metro for a week, the mind still boggles at the reasoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder what would be the political and economical cost to have such a car- free day at least once in, say, Manhattan. The landscape would probably look a bit alien even :-)

<comment><USER47> I agree-Manhattan has far too many cars. I think they should shut down 1/2 of the avenues to car traffic a la Amsterdam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'd like to see some of streets in the city closed to cars during working hours. I've seen this in England, and it's quite nice.

</comment><comment><USER12> Tel Aviv and Jerusalem go car free eery Yom Kippur. Driving ends at sunset, and you can feel and smell the difference within the first hour.

</comment><comment><USER49> L'oligarchie (dont fait partie Anne Hidalgo) continue de prendre le taxi, les riches bobos habitants de Paris peuvent, eux, prendre leur voiture. Les immigrés eux, vont dans le centre de Paris grâce aux transports en commun qui ont été financés par la France entière. Au delà des banlieues parisiennes, la France périphérique, blanche, qui est maintenue en dehors de Paris et sa Banlieue.

</comment><comment><USER50> To be pedantic, Paris has been car free for most of its history.

</comment><comment><USER51> Well, the first time in 110 years.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is the latest political stunt of the hipster left in power that doesn't care one bit for people who actually have things to do during their day, and only cares about tourists and skateboarders who go in circles in the very center of Paris.

Tough luck if you come from far away for work, if you are old or handicapped, if you planned a day in the countryside with your family of four children, etc.

Pollution is much lower when traffic is fluid, and recent road work and legislation have done nothing but help create huge congestions that drive pollution through the roof.

<comment><USER15> "Pollution is much lower when traffic is fluid" \- that's all very nice, but have you been to Paris recently? As in, within the last 50 years? On a usual day (i.e. one without a citywide car restriction), there's no such thing as "fluid traffic" there - you shuffle forward, meter by meter, in a massive traffic jam covering the city.

Also, you are severely underestimating the public transport network - "if you come from far away for work," you have probably left your car at a train station and rode into the city on a RER or a Metro train. Same goes for the other objections, strange as it may seem to USians.

In other words, your arguments seem to hinge on "if Paris were an American type of city, a citywide car ban would suck." Thankfully, it's not one (i.e. driving a car is an option, not a necessity).

<comment><USER52> I've been living in Paris since 1997, so yes, I know what I'm talking about.

I agree that on a usual day, there are massive traffic jams everywhere. That's because of the relentless resourcefulness with which the leftist mayors have been hindering car transportation in Paris, by constructing countless bus lanes, fake bike lanes, road bumps and other extravaganza. They have artfully managed to completely fuck up Paris traffic.

"Driving a car is an option". We'll see when you are 80 years old and can't take the bus or subway alone. We'll see when you have to move after 1am. We'll see when you are disabled. We'll see when you have to move your children outside the city for sports for instance. Trains are all fine and dandy but they don't go door to door.

Oh and btw: I'm young, single, without child, don't own a car and cycle everywhere. I'm just pissed off by all that hipster bullshit.

Last thing: when actual real solutions to traffic problems such as Uber Pop arise, they are crushed by the government. See the hypocrisy now ?

<comment><USER12> "I agree that on a usual day, there are massive traffic jams everywhere."

So, how much of Paris should be leveled to widen roadways?

Do you want to see what a city looks like where there aren't massive traffic jams everywhere? Visit Pensacola or Tampa Bay in Florida. Driving is easy. Nothing else is.

<comment><USER52> Roadways don't have to be widened. Just not continually shrinked like they've been for the last 10 years. Traffic is noticeably worse now than 5 years ago, and much worse than 10 years ago, while the population size hasn't grown as much.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Online Data Management System - Flextory.com - Looking for Feedback - <AUTHOR>

A while back I got some excellent feedback from HackerNews that I think completely made the difference between me having a toy and now having a product that a couple groups now use on a day to day basis.  The original post had id 4330459 for those interested.
I took everything to heart, have ended the beta, and am planning to start charging on 1/11/12.  On that note, I'm really wondering what people's opinions of my pricing is.  Too much, too low?  I've gone higher than planned because I had so many people telling me I was underselling myself (including two of my customers).  I'm also debating whether to impose a item/entry limit and was thinking of it being 5,000/10,000/30,000 entries for the three plans.
Finally, I'm also interested in any general feedback on the software, the website, and where to go with the weeks up until my "launch" (which, at the very least, I'll have two paying customers to start off).
tl;dr I'd like feedback on everything. <comment><USER2> Nice work! Years ago I made flexlists.com which did quite well; we have quite a bit of fanatical followers but no time to work on it. Maybe we should have a chat?

<comment><AUTHOR> We should! You can reach me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> looks cool! I tried building something similar a while back but then life got in the way... The pricing is a little deterring for personal use. I'd offer a basic plan for much less, and then make up on the lost profits by charging business users a lot more. Same goes for the entries limit - 15GB storage means a lot more than 30K entries, even when you add in some file attachments, so maybe something less linear should work: 5,000/30,000/infinity and beyond.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually really wanted to cater to personal use, but I've been having a hard time figuring out the best way to do it. I could make a plan limited to one user and maybe like 2,000 items, a minimal amount of storage, and all for $10 a month. Does that sound reasonable to you?

<comment><USER3> sounds more than reasonable. I don't think most people even got to line 2001 in an excel spreadsheet anyway...</comment></comment></comment>


You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/you-thought-quantum-mechanics-was-weird-check-out-entangled-time <comment><USER2> The claim of instantaneous wave collapse has rubbed me the wrong way ever since I learned about relativistic time dilation and the flexible nature of simultanaety. Time needs to be part of it all, somehow, for it to really make sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> With a degree in Computer Science and only basic knowledge of Quantum Mechanics my worthless thoughts are

1\. Multiple pointers to the same memory location

2\. Late binding / lazy execution (how about timing attacks to the Universe?)

3\. The distance that matters for information exchange is in a different space where entangled particles are very close despite the distance we observe in this space.</comment>


What do you think of a community-based radiation level mapping app? - <AUTHOR> http://irad.paglabs.com/en/

<comment><AUTHOR> Any comments on the features are welcomed of course -- still unsure of what to add, what to adapt, ...

<comment><USER2> endless redirect loop D:</comment></comment>


The Prototype That Was Banned from Halfbrick - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w <comment><USER2> Wow. That's a really good talk. It evokes thoughts of the famous prison experiment .. not that extreme though. :-P</comment>


Tindie Launches Open Designs and Kickbacks for Open Source Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tindie.com/tindie-launches-open-designs-and-kickbacks.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting! Arduino just covered it as well:

"Fueling the Hardware Revolution with Tindie"

[http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/31/fueling-the-hardware- revol...](http://blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/31/fueling-the-hardware-revolution- with-tindie/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm happy that improvements to original products can be made while still monetarily acknowledging the original authors.

This is a great idea, much as Tindie itself was a great idea. I hope it's successful.</comment>


McKinsey warns banks face wipeout in some financial services - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a5cafe92-66bf-11e5-97d0-1456a776a4f5.html <comment><USER2> _"Most of the attackers do not want to become a bank," said Mr Härle. "They want to squeeze themselves in between the customer and the bank and skim the cream off."_

I'd argue that most of the new entrants would happily become banks if the regulations were more startup friendly.

So while the article paints banks as the victims of tech firms cutting into profits, the reality is that tech firms have been forced to the periphery of banking because few have the appetite or budget to even remotely consider becoming an actual bank.

This creates a lower bound on the fee Stripe can consider charging, for example, and is why bill.com's ACH payments take a week to clear.

Because of the cozy relationship between too-big-to-fail banks and their self- created bureaucracy, the business is out of reach to startups which are forced to compete on the margin.

<comment><USER3> >cozy relationship between too-big-to-fail banks and their self-created bureaucracy

don't know who is cozy but almost everyone in the sell side is being saddled with endless amounts of compliance requirements and unless you enjoy staying into the middle of the night reccing books 500 ways and tagging customer forms and tickets the life has become less and less enjoyable.

i am pretty sure i am right when i say the life was good when the regulators were more laissez faire in the early 2000s.

<comment><USER2> When there was market discipline causing firms to avoid bad underwriting practices, many of those regulations were not necessary.

But now nearly everything but the actual incentives has been blamed for why the market crashed.

Now, when it crashes again, it will of course have been totally unexpected and impossible to predict, so of course a bailout will be necessary, etc.

My overly simplistic take is that the finance industry effectively practices "risk laundering"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google redirect for those who can't see it: [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAGoVChMIwsCEqfmfyAIVgiiUCh0ULQHG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fa5cafe92-66bf-11e5-97d0-1456a776a4f5.html&usg=AFQjCNGENRJZuY3Tx0AD8gk2AZhLoF0Zpw&sig2=D23PEYblinU14gO9_PFgYg)

<comment><USER5> Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I agree with McKinsey's analysis of the strengths of technology companies in driving down margins. However, I disagree with their conclusions. Time and again (at least in the US), banks have proven to be masters of legislation and regulation, putting up legislative and administrative roadblocks that prevent technology companies from competing with them head-on. This is why the payments space is such a difficult one for startups to compete in - the amount of reporting work necessary to ensure regulatory compliance is absurd. Combine that with the fact that the regulation oftentimes limits you to the same technologies that the banks themselves are using, and I don't see existing banks losing their profit margins any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER7> Bank of America wants to pay me 15 basis points APR on my savings deposits. It's so low the bank managers can hardly explain it with a straight face. Ally Bank offers me 100 basis points. Who do you think is earning my brand loyalty? Mobile check deposit eliminated the last need I felt to be near a physical branch and for the first time I can foresee a future where I move all my banking needs to Ally or one of their competitors.

<comment><USER8> _Ally Bank offers me 100 basis points ..._ _Who do you think is earning my brand loyalty?_

Ah yes, the company that made billions of dollars in subprime loans to deadbeats. The company that required a $16 billion bailout from the US Treasury. The company that had a fun time robo-signing foreclosures.[1]

But it's OK. They changed their name, so we can all forget that they were a major contributor to the financial crisis. They're no better and no worse than BofA. None of those companies will get any "brand loyalty" from me.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As it relates to lending, banks absolutely have a lot to worry about. But so too do many of the alternative lenders that are stealing their business.

Many of these lenders are products of the 2008 economic crash and they have thrived because of the interest rate environment coupled with a period of historically low defaults. When the next downturn arrives, we'll see how the portfolios of the balance sheet lenders fare.

The alternative lenders in the business of securitizing loans avoid the biggest risks balance sheet lenders have to deal with, but to generate revenue, they have a never-ending need to originate more loans that they can package and sell to investors. When interest rates rise, or the economy sours, that could get more difficult. A lot more difficult.

Alternative lenders are here to stay, but a "wipeout" for banks would take a long time to occur, if it occurs at all. The alternative lenders are going to have their own problems to deal with soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> The only catch is that the new lenders don't seem very good at lending. For example, I can get a 7% loan at a credit union and 10% at a bank but Vouch/Affirm/Avant/Prosper/LendingClub/etc want 20-30%.

<comment><USER11> You must have terrible credit. As someone who has taken part in the lending side of P2P companies, 20+% APR is the lowest grade of credit and represents a substantial default risk (real returns are <10%).

<comment><USER10> Well, I definitely have an inordinate ability to repay. But the newer lenders, unlike the older lenders, aren't acknowledging that for whatever reason. Maybe they only want the high rate business?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Full article (because it's behind a paywall, then a survey):

The digital revolution sweeping through the banking sector is set to wipe out almost two-thirds of earnings on some financial products as new technology companies drive down prices and erode lenders' profit margins.

This is one of the main predictions by the consultancy McKinsey in its global banking annual review to be published on Wednesday, portraying banks as facing "a high-stakes struggle" to defend their business model against digital disruption.

McKinsey said technological competition would reduce profits from non-mortgage retail lending, such as credit cards and car loans, by 60 per cent and revenues by 40 per cent over the next decade.

It predicted a smaller, but still significant, chunk of profits and revenues would be lost from payments processing, small and medium-sized enterprise lending, wealth management and mortgages. These would decline between 35 and 10 per cent, McKinsey said.

Philipp Härle, co-author of the report, said: "The most significant impact we see in price erosion, as technology companies allow delivery of financial services at a fraction of the cost, and this will mostly be transferred to the customer in lower prices."

He said most technology companies were focused on picking off the most lucrative parts of banks' relationships with their customers, leaving them as "dumb" providers of balance sheet capacity.

"Most of the attackers do not want to become a bank," said Mr Härle. "They want to squeeze themselves in between the customer and the bank and skim the cream off."

McKinsey said banks last year made $1.75tn of revenues from origination and sales activities, on which they earned a 22 per cent return on equity, while they made $2.1tn of revenue from balance-sheet provision at a return on equity of only 6 per cent.

The consultancy said the industry had two choices. "Either banks fight for the customer relationship, or they learn to live without it and become a lean provider of white-labelled balance sheet capacity," it said. While predicting upheaval in the future, McKinsey said there was no evidence that digital disruption had started to eat into banks' market share yet. Banks' share of global credit provision has been constant over the past 15 years.

Mr Härle said one factor that could slow down the erosion of banks' market share was if regulators decided to clamp down on the disrupters by imposing similar capital and compliance rules as those faced by banks.

McKinsey calculated that profits from all banks reached a record of $1tn last year, helped by rapid growth in Asia and particularly in China and as US lenders rebounded from the financial crisis. The average return on equity was stable at 9.5 per cent, as cost-cutting offset falling margins in the low interest rate climate.

Almost two-thirds of developed market banks and a third of those in emerging markets earned a return on equity below their cost of equity and were valued below their book value. "Many in the industry are waiting for an interest rate rise or some other structural lift to profits, but even if rates rise, that will be insufficient to fundamentally improve economics," McKinsey said. "We expect margins to continue to fall through 2020, and the rate of decline may even accelerate."

<comment><USER13> Let me get this straight, banks complain about returns of only 6 per cent?

This is ridiculous. Stop complaining, you still make more than inflation.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hands-Free Heart Rate – Measure Pulse with Selfie Camera (iOS for Now) - <AUTHOR> https://heartrate.hedronvision.com/dl?s=hn <comment><USER2> I saw a video showcasing this idea some time back. They showed slowed-down video that exaggerated both the colour red, and the lines on your face, neck and hands, following a steep logarithmic slope.

Basically it showed that we imperceptibly blink and undulate like freaky globular aliens, and even consumer level cameras can pick it up. Not so different than a deep ocean jellyfish. Really fascinating stuff, so I'm looking forward to the Android version of your app.

Let me know if you want a beta tester for Android. I can test if it matches the heart rate monitor on the stationary bike, and there's all kinds of weird lighting at the gym I go to. Plus I do HIIT, so my heart is purposely increased/decreased to significantly different target rates every few minutes.

<comment><USER3> That's totally right! It's incredible just how much ambient information is visible to consumer cameras that human eyes and brains can't or don't process.

We're always happy for more beta testers, especially with a variety of diverse situations and environments (true heart rate, lighting conditions, etc).

To sign up as a beta tester, fill out the Android Sign Up form at [https://heartrate.hedronvision.com/](https://heartrate.hedronvision.com/) \- that will let us reach out with a beta app when we build it!

<comment><USER2> Done deal. I'll put in a little sweat for you when it's available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Co-creator here! Feel free to ask us anything.

Check it out if you can — it downloads really quickly, and it's free!

<comment><USER4> Looks really awesome! Does it work in a variety of lighting conditions?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've tested across quite a few--and it should control for constant, weird lighting.

But there are definitely edge cases that are hard to control for--a faint, pulsing red light would probably be the worst one.</comment></comment></comment>


Can anything stop Tesla's stock - <AUTHOR> http://buzz.money.cnn.com/2013/04/23/tesla-stock/?iid=s_bn_mid <comment><USER2> April 23?</comment>


Show HN: Python advanced string formatting in Golang - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/slongfield/pyfmt <comment><AUTHOR> Library I wrote that mimics Python's advanced string formatting in Golang.

I found that the most interesting part of this was actually testing how closely it matches Python's formatter. To do that, it goes through a cgo wrapper and cffi, then uses the Python Hypothesis[1] library to generate random examples.

[1]: [https://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://hypothesis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)</comment>


Real Go Projects: SmartTwitter and web.go - <AUTHOR> http://blog.golang.org/2010/10/real-go-projects-smarttwitter-and-webgo.html <comment><USER2> I've been thoroughly impressed watching web.go come together. It's now the top Go project on Github in every category they track: <http://github.com/languages/Go>

Personally I'm of the opinion that language expressiveness matters more than real world performance, but only to a limit. Go is definitely carving out a nice niche for performant systems-related apps.

And the fact that Smart Twitter serves 90k concurrent users from a VPS without breaking a sweat is freaking amazing. I suspect this is the reason the service can remain free.

(edit: err, for the "watched" categories)

<comment><USER3> I imagine at some point Google will make Go their fourth official language, when they perceive it is mature enough. I do hope they'll add a Go version of App Engine, as well.

<comment><USER4> It's Go on Android that I want...

<comment><USER5> It's getting there. Ken and Russ have been fixing a lot of the bugs I left behind in the arm compiler and it is passing most of the tests now. There is still work needed to get the API ported/linked but at least there is should be closure on the compiler front.

<comment><USER6> There's also quite a bit of interest from some of the Android guys internally, so I'm optimistic it'll continue to grow in that direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What do people find interesting about Go? It's barely faster than the best dynamic languages - [http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=go&lang2=racket), and it offers few conceptual innovations (in comparison to say Racket, Scala, Haskell, hell, even JavaScript).

So it seems too slow for systems programming and too "blind-folders on" about where CS is going. I'm honestly curious, what are people actually excited about?

The only scenario I could see people using it is in the situation where speed is not of the essence but memory consumption is. Perhaps I'm naive and this is a bigger category of software than I'm aware of.

<comment><USER8> The thing is you are actually comparing mature dynamic languages implementation to a very new static language implementation. In the long term, if any of the previous events in the matter are of any importance, Go is very likely to climb that list without much effort. That's just the reality of compiler optimization : It's much more easier to do for a static language.

On a related note, you sound very "dynamic language" centric. Some people actually like static typing, and i won't relaunch the debate here but both sides have pretty good argument, especially when you throw type inference into the mix.

In the static camp, here is a few advantages i can see to go (i'm not actually an user of the language) :

\- Easier to get your head around than Ocaml/Haskell \- Arguably better than java (pros: actually has proper closures, and a sane system for polymorphism. cons: no generics) \- Compiles to machine code rather than byte-code, so doesn't depend on a VM. Can be important for some tasks.

I actually think Go has quite a lot going on for it. It just doesn't have any 'wow' factor. But that's not necessarily a bad thing

<comment><USER9> > so doesn't depend on a VM

But "dependence" on VM is nothing tragic if the GC is not in the game. If you'd imagine a VM without GC then what remains is just the potential for run- time JIT and optimization which can actually be a good thing! There's a long history of p-code interpreters which provided the more compact code, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_P-Code> At that time tracing and JIT would have been too heavy thing to do but today it could maybe be interesting to have something like that.

And as far as I know, Go doesn't "depend" on VM but does on GC, but D also generates the native code but doesn't have to use GC and I think that is an important advantage for such a kind of the language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice, this made it to TechCrunch via HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1816945>

</comment><comment><USER11> Well done marketer. Glad to see this getting some more publicity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Gotta thank Hoisie for writing this. Nice shout out to HN. :-)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the post :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> awesome!</comment>


Ask HN:i need Money and i need it fast - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN readers
Sorry for my bad English it's not my native language. Well im in first time strange situation. im in big debt in the bank..
I have family to feed and a mortgage to pay me and my wife are hard workers and we work all our life's still do . So I ask straight to the point:
Im software engineer with more then 12 years experience in the enterprise software bossiness I never did any thing on my own im sure I can use my development skills .
im reading on the net that there is possibility to earn some money (not scam kind of thing  ... ) but real things which I have no idea what they are …
Maybe creating niche little software and try to sell it ..  im confuse and in a big anxiety from the situation. Can someone please give me direction direction?
Thanks <comment><USER2> If you live in a country considered cheaper than most western countries, you could try to do some freelance work online. You could be better paid than in a job in your country?

I don't think creating a new software is a viable solution when you are in need of money.

<comment><AUTHOR> im not from east Europe or India or china if this is what you mean .. i looked in all the freelance sites i can't bit the prices the people from these country propose ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You could try freelancing as a extra income source ( <http://www.odesk.com/> or <http://www.elance.com/>)

<comment><AUTHOR> see my reply , or maybe i wrong and people do have positive experience with oDesk and such , i never used it only browsed the sites.

<comment><USER4> It's absolutely possible to make a decent living freelancing on job sites, even if you live somewhere with a high cost of living. I put myself through college (in Colorado) freelancing on Rent-a-Coder(now vWorker) and Scriptlance, doing web development and system administration. I started at $25/hr, and worked up to $75/hr by the time I called it quits (got a job at Google).

The key to doing well on these sites is to spend the time to prove to potential clients why you're worth paying a higher rate. The best way I found to do this was to ask lots of questions about what people wanted, describe in detail how I'd go about solving their problem, and do my best to show that I really cared about building them what they needed, not just what they thought they needed. I did all this before I would quote them a price.

It's also key to be choosy about what jobs you bid on - you'll need to spend at least an hour per job you bid on, so you'll want to make sure to choose ones that are going to be worth your time.

Lastly, view jobs that you get through these sites as interviews. I found that once I'd done a project or two with people through the site, we usually were able to work out an arrangement where they just paid me directly by the hour for further work. The money I made outside of the sites with established clients was by far the majority of the money I made.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks , This is very helpful tip

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You could also try 99designs (<http://www.99designs.com>).

If you can't design yourself, perhaps team up with someone that can.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can freelance locally. A thousand business cards and a laptop, and you're in business. Getting customers is the hard part, so don't be shy and ask around.

</comment><comment><USER7> get a second job.. i know its hard.. but sometimes you have to suck it up, and even mcdonalds, or some other part time job can help

<comment><AUTHOR> i must say this is option i consider , but im sure as we developers can use our skills to generate more revenue then working in MacDonald ,but again i don't disqualify any thing and im open minded

<comment><USER8> Working in MacDonalds can be a good experience. You learn how to interact with people. And maybe you could get a chance to improve your English skills there.

Remember, there is dignity in every form of work, and you can learn something almost everywhere.</comment></comment></comment>


Finland is the poster child for why the euro doesn't work - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/23/finland-is-the-poster-child-for-why-the-euro-doesnt-work/ <comment><USER2> Ah yes, bad luck. One of those things Heinlein was a master at dissecting.

Choices were made, and pipers will be paid. Signing on to a currency that a historically frugal nation can't individually control is perhaps not a wise choice when the others who influence the value of that currency have been historically, let's say, less frugal; spending on things that do not increase productivity but pushes the problem to the next generation; creating a bureaucratic structure that dissuades innovation because stability is considered more important, and so on.

Yet the "answers" from Krugman and his acolytes such as the author is to spend future influence (what does the author think devaluation is?) to make things look better in the shower, and poohpoohing those who recognize that devaluation is short term theater.

When these _decisions_ don't work - we will call it bad luck.

<comment><USER3> The article calls Finland's recessions basically the Nokia recession. Nokia suffered the fate of many large companies with established products, their existing business was too good to threaten with radical new products. Then a fresh faced competitor appears with the disruptive technology you had been putting off and cuts your legs off.

While this is clearly partially due to a lack of vision at Nokia, to the Finnish government it is just pure bad luck. They don't control what companies do, they just collect taxes and provide services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More Washington Post anti euro propaganda? Shocking

<comment><USER5> It seems to be pretty common. Does anybody know why so?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finland's government went on a recent spending "spree": [http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/government- spending](http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/government-spending)

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/upshot/finland-shows- why-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/upshot/finland-shows-why-many- europeans-think-americans-are-wrong-about-the-euro.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I think a better title is: "Finland is a poster child for Apple decimating 4% of your economy" (Nokia)</comment>


Gene editing to stop Lyme disease: caution is warranted - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2019/08/22/gene-editing-to-stop-lyme-disease-caution-is-warranted/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also a longer journal (open access) paper written by the same author:

[https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/69/9/746/5543171](https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/69/9/746/5543171)</comment>


Backbone.js, now realtime with Pusher - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pusher.com/2011/6/21/backbone-js-now-realtime-with-pusher <comment><USER2> I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around why someone would platform- source something as tightly coupled as client-server push services. I can see not _developing_ it in house -- something like Socket.io comes to mind -- but signing up for a service to proxy communication between your app and the browser for "push" services seems a little bit on the lazy side.

Pushing complexity out to specialized platforms is a popular trend these days. PaaS vendors are popping up in every area, but there's a threshold where this type of outsourcing makes sense.

* How complex/specialized is the problem?

* How close is it to our core product/competencies?

* What are the comparative costs in development and maintenance vs using the service?

These are the core questions I ask when I'm evaluating PaaS vs in-house solutions.

Q: How complex/specialized is the problem?

A: Unlike HTTP, WebSockets aren't widely supported, so real-time browser communication is a complex problem. However, it is a generalized issue. It is not a problem that we will have to solve alone. There are probably libraries available to assist in the implementation of our own "push" stack.

Q: How close is it to our core product/competencies?

A: A core feature of our product is real-time exchange of pricing data between clients (browsers) and the server. The faster clients receive feedback on their pricing, the better our product works. This means real-time browser communication is central to our product. It is not core, but it is very, very close.

Q: What are the comparative costs in development and maintenance vs using the service?

A: An initial review shows that there are popular libraries that abstract a significant portion of the complexity away, including fail-over for browsers that don't have support for WebSockets. Availability of commercial support isn't clear, but source code is available. We will have to build our own API, but we have the benefit of tailoring it to our application, rather than using a generic API. Back-end message queuing services will need to be added to our monitoring suite.

In a more general sense, we also evaluate how the use of PaaS would affect our product in the event of downtime. Every PaaS you use in your application spreads your exposure out over their systems as well. Can you afford for "push" to go away? What will a fail-over system cost you? We opted to make real-time communications part of our app, so the redundancy we built in to our app hosting also covers our real-time services.

For my money, I just can't see outsourcing something like client-server "push" communication.

<comment><USER3> Hi, I work for Pusher and wrote that article, so I feel the need to respond:

When people ask "Why would I use Pusher instead of running my own realtime services in-house?", they often overlook the other complexities involved in the problem. Eg, scaling, maintaining, ensuring uptime, etc.

Looking at any service (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) from the outside is an iceberg problem. You can see the public API (REST based API + WebSocket API), and you know what it does for you, however, what you don't see is what lies beneath the water, the other factors and things that have been thought about for you so you don't need to think about them.

The thing that really needs to be thought about is this: by building your own in-house realtime solution, you'll probably face similar problems to those that we have to face building and maintaining Pusher, such issues might include: 1a) How will you communicate with your realtime service? Will it be a REST API (like Pusher) or something else? 1b) How will you maintain the infrastructure required for the persistent connections and consistent distribution of messages throughout your cluster? 1c) How will you handle sudden (unexpected) growth in usage, and do you want to have to worry about that? 1d) Who will ensure that you're up-to-date on the latest websocket specification (we're at draft-07 being released in firefox 6, and draft-09 is currently being edited).

I should note at this stage, that hosting websockets is in no way similar to hosting standard HTTP, there's a lot more to the problem.

By the same logic, you could apply that to any PaaS or SaaS or IaaS product. Do you use Amazon Web Services or another cloud based host, or do you use a non-cloud based host? Thats a place where you're outsourcing the management and maintenance of your infrastructure; that is, unless of course you maintain your own data-centers and install all your own servers?

Having built a websocket server for Node.js, I know the issues involved with maintaining and keeping up to date with the latest protocol specification. Is it cheaper for you to use Socket.io instead of role your own solution, because honestly, something might go terribly wrong within Socket.io. Do you want to spend time maintaining that?

This is all about choices, for some projects, it may make sense to handle everything where you need absolute control over every aspect of your application and infrastructure. However, from experience, I can say that I probably wouldn't want to be having to maintain absolutely everything in my application. If AWS/EC2 goes down, then yes, I should worry, however, I think EC2 is less likely to go down than my own hand-installed network infrastructure.

I'm not going to try to sell you on Pusher, however, just take into full account absolutely everything before you decide to roll your own realtime solution.

– Micheil.

<comment><USER2> I'm really happy you responded :) My critique was more of the decision making process than the product, so I'm really happy to have the feedback. I try to always assume that my thinking is flawed, so after I read your post, I tried to go back and read my own as if someone else wrote it. I know that sounds silly, but it often leads to insights I wouldn't otherwise have.

You make a good case for the complexity, which is one of the factors I consider. One of my unspoken concerns is that an open source library like Socket.io is going to get stale. I keep an eye on the commit log, and it looks like development is pretty active, but a look at the impact graph shows that there was a lull, and it looks like development might be changing hands. This is par for the course with open source projects, but I question whether "par for the course" is best for our project.

My other big concern is running "yet another server". We're currently running a very standard Rails stack on VPS infrastructure. We're not on a full-blown "cloud" provider, because I don't trust them. Heroku has had too much downtime for our company. AWS offers multiple AZ redundancy, but there's an inherent complexity there that we're not ready to tackle.

Unlike most startups, our revenue generating traffic isn't spread out over thousands of visits. Our revenue is made during a purchasing event that runs for a half hour. Some days, there might only be a single event. If our infrastructure is down for that event, we stand to lose $25k-$50k. I know we're not the only one with this problem (some would lose millions over the same time period), but we're a bootstrapped company. A major outage like the ones Heroku has experienced could put a serious hole in our cashflows.

Because of this, we run a very straight forward Rails hosting stack (Apache/Passenger/MySQL) on a straight forward Xen VPS host at data centers in Dallas and NYC. I fully expect that at some point in the future, one of these data centers is going to disappear off the net and we'll have to be ready. If our entire hosting provider disappeared, I could bring up every one of our customer app instances in a half-day. I know this because I've done the drills using local VPS builds from scratch, and we use third-party, off-net backup locations.

Any XaaS product we integrate in to our core product would have to demonstrate a similar focus to uptime and redundancy. The recent AWS outage that took several high-profile websites offline is a good example. Lot's of seemingly smart companies hadn't deployed across multiple AZs because of the complexity. I can't partner with a company that makes those kinds of decisions.

I know you don't want to try to sell me Pusher, but I'm genuinely curious about Pusher's commitment to uptime. I'd love to see a blog post, or knowledge base article that talks about Pusher's redundancy and disaster recovery plans. I'd love to "just trust" that XaaS companies have this sort of thing covered, but history has taught me otherwise.

Thanks again. I really appreciate the response.

<comment><USER4> You are smart to ask these questions. Reliability is a serious topic that <http://www.pubnub.com> fits in. I work at PubNub and believe it is the best offering for reliability and uptime being a globally distributed service. During the EC2 outage on the East Coast USA, we lost our servers there. However! Our automated redundant routing system transferred traffic to the surrounding nearby healthy data centers. Customers didn't notice the switch, and went about their day.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Discussion on renaming master branch gets heated, then shut down - <AUTHOR> The discussion about renaming "master" branches to "main" or "default" in git for windows to address issues with "non-inclusive naming" has become very heated. The vast majority of developers argued against the change, some very vocal.
This resulted in git for windows administrators to go full exclusive and shut down the discussion completely for non team members, block many users and delete or minimize a large number of tweets.
https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/2674
The end of the thread looks like a massacre. <comment><USER2> That's over a 100 comments, many of them very calm and neutral, marked off- topic, over 10 people blocked, and then the whole discussion locked. I get that this is can be a heated discussion, but honestly most (although surely, not all) of those comments are about as neutral as it gets on this matter.

<comment><USER3> It's almost as though there were a prevailing orthodoxy, and dissent is so much CVS code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I had actually started with "default", and was told it might be triggering > for folks in financial trouble?

So now 'default' is out too ? This is absurd.

<comment><USER5> Trunk is out too, since people hunt elephants.

<comment><USER3> We need to reconsider using the Roman alphabet and English language at all, if Progress is to be achieved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a rabid liberal, I think this is a stretch.

</comment><comment><USER7> git master means "Mastering a skill", "Mastering a recording", or to "Master oneself".

Please no virtue-signalling crap like this. It's a harmful distraction.

<comment><USER8> You sure about that? Might want to google "git bitkeeper master slave" before making up your mind.

<comment><USER9> The meaning should be assesed in today's context, not based on an obscure piece of software that existed decades ago, and most people have never heard of.

The person could be factually wrong, but in a cultural sence he is correct - the word has another meaning.

<comment><USER8> OK, but those are only your opinions, even though you're stating them as if they're facts. Someone coming from a different culture might have a different opinion, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But its not master as in master/slave (which I assume is the concern?) There is no slave branch. Its master like main or premier. Like a master bedroom.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure about that? I've seen a number of reports over the last few days that "master" in git is basically a holdover from BitKeeper which had master/slave repositories (and that in BitKeeper you use repos to "do" branching). I haven't looked into this in enough depth to convince myself either way, but I would do so before echoing your first sentence. Certainly a _lot_ of people are assuming it means "master copy" and has nothing to do with master/slave, but there do seem to be reasons to believe that's not actually historically true, i.e. a flawed assumption.

Edit: getting downvoted for pointing out something true; somebody's feeling uncomfortable...

<comment><USER10> You're right that I do not know the history. It might not be historically true but I would argue that's irrelevant to the conversation. (even as non relevant the conversation is to begin with!) Current perception is what matters.

Beyond that, seems like if it actually did refer to a master/slave architecture, it seems like there would be more reason to keep it describing what it is. Maybe the term invokes some violence but so does the kill command.

<comment><USER11> I used to use 'master' and 'read-slave' database nodes. I'm happier with 'writer' and 'read-replica'. I would say this is definitely in context.

<comment><USER10> Yeah. "Slave" doesn't really make sense for read replica. What would be a better term for a build master with worker nodes?

<comment><USER12> Build coordinator and build workers, or even build manager and build workers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like a non-story? I'm not sure what the value is in linking it here, other than to try to provoke a similarly controversial flare.

</comment><comment><USER14> Whilst in theory, I'm neutral to the change on ethical grounds, I think in practice it will make things very confusing.

Master/Slave is such an established pair of terms in tech that they have a loaded meaning as soon as you see them.

If I see 'Master' and 'Slave' on an old hard disk, I know what that is. If I see "Configure one device to the master setting and the rest to slave.", I get a understanding of the relationship for free.

I don't think we will get that with replacement terms, at least not in the short term, and we're just setting ourselves up for confusion.

<comment><USER8> Right. And the fact that you don't find those terms offensive is part of your privilege. You're being invited to step outside of yourself and consider that for some people, it's not as clear-cut / apolitical as it is for you.

<comment><USER15> Every non-white person I've seen commenting on this change has expressed they couldn't care less and do not give a second thought to these naming conventions. Maybe we should let their voices be heard rather than continue to try to speak for them?

<comment><USER16> It is the few that speak the loudest and will _never_ be happy, no matter what. There will always be something that needs to be changed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've always found the term "master bedroom" weird.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think that there is no need to change these things. If you make a new version control system, then you can use whichever name you think is best (presumably whichever one is most descriptive, but not too long), but we need not change existing ones, nor change projects using them to use different names.

I personally don't use git, but the naming of the default branch has nothing to do with it. I use Fossil, which uses "trunk" as the name for the default branch. I don't know what reason they chose this, but I don't really care much; I just use that because it is the software I use (even if some people hate it, which I suppose is inevitable).

I also think that other terminology such as blacklist/whitelist, master/slave, etc need not be changed, unless the old terms are confusing or incorrect, which in some contexts there is the possibility that they might be. In some cases, such as motherboard vs mainboard, BC/AD vs BCE/CE, both sets of terms are in use so it is helpful to know them.

Political correctness has gone mad (although this is nothing new, really).

<comment><USER19> > I use Fossil, which uses "trunk" as the name for the default branch. I don't > know what reason they chose this, but I don't really care much

The "default branch" of a tree is a trunk, from which branches emerge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> School master? Head master?

<comment><USER21> They don't use those terms anymore as I discovered when talking to a great friend who is very decorated by the establishment for being a "Head Teacher".

<comment><USER22> Master of Ceremony, Master Switch, Gramdmaster

<comment><USER14> Master Boot Record

<comment><USER23> Master of Social Science ... ohhhh

<comment><USER24> Dammit I got called to the head default room again...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Who genuinely gives a shit. Name it whatever you want. The less important things are, the more people will discuss them.

</comment><comment><USER16> Let me state first of all that I am fully aware of the fact that I do not know what it is like to be the target of (classic) racism. Nor will I deny that there are some things that are just not right.

However, where things go wrong in this discussion is the people who make complaining their profession. Surely you can think of some textbook examples of this. If you as a society conform to these people, the stock is not finished. Then there comes the next problem and the next, and so on and so forth.

Part of the population, often a minority, is very much in favor of this. Another part of the population feels attacked by this and will resist strongly. The rest will be somewhere in between, but what is almost always the case is that these kinds of discussions lead to divisions within society. Division is often accompanied by strong emotions and strong opinions, which in turn leads to hateful behavior against each other. That often expresses itself in racism.

And in principle that is not necessarily an insurmountable problem, provided there is enough interest in change. But there we come back to the point that many professional activists will never be good enough. Of course, it cannot be the case that all aspects of a culture and a country must be fully adapted. Certainly not at the expense of cohesion within society, with all the negative consequences that entails.

What you get now is that everything, irrelevant and unnecessary, that can be classified as politically correct, is allowed. In fact, a critical view of the whole situation is immediately perceived as incorrect and racist. You now have the choice of fully conforming to this politically correct thinking and action, or you may experience serious negative consequences. Then I am talking about dismissal or a completely destroyed reputation. If you are also a white person, the consequences are only greater.

And that is why I talked about classic racism in the beginning of my speech. Racism unfortunately also takes place the other way. A colored person may as well be a racist and a white person may as well be a victim of racism. What is completely ridiculous, however, is that there seem to be many people who believe that racism can exist exclusively with a colored person as its victim.

Anyway, what I mainly want to go to, is that we should take a critical look at abuses within our society, but certainly not lose sight of reality. We need to live together more and better and not just get further away from each other. That also means that you sometimes have to be able to say: "now it is enough", "this is going too far". And that you will not then be called Hitler.

If you tell your partner you love him or her every 10 minutes, it will lose value. It is no different in this matter.

And let's not forget that there is always someone who can take offense somewhere. Should we just adjust everything? (Of course people take offense again ...)

Note though that colored people are (much) more often victims of racism. Racism doesn't necessarily have to be words to someone.

I treat people the way they treat me. If I don't know them, I treat them the way I want to be treated. I have never (consciously) been guilty of racism.

What I take offense is that I cannot safely express my, quite subtle and nuanced, opinion on this topic. Not because my opinion is so radical, but because it is apparently not allowed to apply nuance at all and it only consists of right or wrong.

The fact that I am white also means that I can afford less in this discussion. And I experience that as discrimination and racism.

<comment><USER26> I was inclined to agree until the choice to use the term "colored person". That's an obvious and well known racist trope with very recent historical ties to segregation. I'm not sure if it was a deliberate statement on political correctness but I really think it undermines your argument and makes it seem like a disingenuous crock of horse manure.

<comment><USER27> for me as a non-american, I have to say it's really a mine-field what word is offensive or not in this decade. Black was wrong in the nineties iirc, but's okay now. Colored, seems to have a connotation as well, which to a lot of foreigners is just arbitrariness.

The intolerance for non-american cultures who use other words, which might be controversial in america, is just baffling.

> I was inclined to agree until the choice to use the term "colored person".

You are disqualifying a person from discussion while his intent and tone were pretty neutral (imo). If you don't see the irony of that, then god help us all (idomatic, bc I'm an atheist.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't get it, if it makes someone uncomfortable, why not change it. What difference does it make?

<comment><USER10> There's a ton of software that assumes the main branch is labeled master.

<comment><USER8> That software is broken if it doesn't allow you to configure this (just as git does).

<comment><USER10> You're right. But there's a lot of broken software out there that just trudges on with momentum.

That said, I'm pretty sure you can just make a main branch and delete master in your personal repos. I don't think git itself needs master, does it?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


My fully optimized life allows me ample time to optimize yours - <AUTHOR> https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/my-fully-optimized-life-allows-me-ample-time-to-optimize-yours <comment><USER2> I like to see how other people try to "optimize" their lives. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet, but definitely some takeaways from this lifestyle I like:

* Multiple blender pitchers (to not have to keep rewashing one)

* The multi-photo frame on the desk (I would probably put cars/places to travel or that I have already traveled)

* Dedicated 3pm time to exercise

Most of the actual activities of this "fully optimized life" are completely subjective. This optimized life description is really just a routine and sticking to it. If everyone actually stuck to a routine, they would also have ample time, but most everyone allows distractions to de-rail them.</comment>


Should the United States Increase the Federal Gasoline Tax? - <AUTHOR> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.554.7122&rep=rep1&type=pdf <comment><USER2> why not a carbon tax?</comment>


The Bull Case for Snapchat - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/17/the-bull-case-for-snapchat/ <comment><USER2> After initial skepticism, I like Snapchat for reasons in the article (lower pressure). And I think they "get" the younger generation and have good product strategy, a lot like Facebook succeeded in a crowded space for similar reasons with a similar amount of skeptics.

Problem to me is they seem more like Twitter than Facebook in that their only real monetization path is ads, but their ads don't seem that valuable.

If I'm selling watches, I want to pay Google to advertise to people who just searched for watches. If I'm selling retirement planning, I want to pay Facebook to advertise to middle aged people who like personal finance topics. But who wants to buy Snapchat ads? Some people who want to do brand awareness marketing on a trendy platform but not much else. So I think just because they can get lots of users does not guarantee success.

<comment><USER3> In Snapchat, people actually routinely engage with ads by spending time setting up and taking photos using branded filters, then sharing that ad with friends. That's starkly different from the typical loons you see replying to an ad on Twitter.

<comment><USER4> But the [multi billion dollar] question is do they then buy the stuff from the sponsoring companies? Most advertising on Snapchat is experimental, we'll have to stick around to see if the experiments are successful.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't matter, it helps brand image/awareness, which indirectly affects sales. They're already very successful.

<comment><USER6> If they want to justify $25 billion plus valuation they will need to open the platform to be useful to businesses other than the high spending brand advertisers, which is certainly a lucrative segment but not the totality of advertisers. Once the people at Snapchat just accept that buying things is also apart of the human experience, then they'll be able to build in direct response ad formats and sales tracking (online and offline). Right now their ad formats are on the level of vanity, though vanity does sell it doesn't sell to all. In the long run, for Snapchat to justify $25bn and greater the local Chinese restaurant needs to be able to send an ad with a call to action to Snapchat users in a vicinity of their choosing, and also be able to track conversion by who walked in. This is all technically feasible, and Snapchat may open up to more sales conversion advertisers. But, that same Chinese restaurant could be doing this advertising campaign today on Facebook and Google. So what makes Snapchat special? They will need to train their users to accept advertisements from unknown entities, because right now their ad content leverages previous brand recognition and borders more on entertainment than sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Snap to me smells too much like a company based around a particular fashion, rather than a fashion company - if the analogy makes sense.

They do the one thing really well, but it's going to go out of style at some point as these things tend to - and I'm not sure I believe they have enough other projects going on to overcome that.

I could be wrong, for sure.

<comment><USER8> >They do the one thing really well, but it's going to go out of style at some point as these things tend to

I sort of get your point, but this exact same thing has been said about Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. To counter my own point, there's also MySpace, Path, YikYak and Google+. However, I imagine that Snapchat has surpassed the "terminal velocity" in user growth/size to a point where I don't think its going anywhere anytime soon.

<comment><USER9> Facebook asks for a lot of information from users and grew its way into government contracts and safer high $value arrangements due to how much data they store. Even if you're not "on" Facebook, people you know will establish a presence for you in Facebook's data.

Twitter accounts are cheap and the platform only has value as long as advertisements can run unchallenged by a large number of users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sorry but the day I take financial news and advice from TechCrunch is the day I've official gone looney tunes.

</comment><comment><USER11> Snapchat makes money on premium accounts which are mostly amateur porn accounts. Idk if that helps or hurts. edited to say: I don't know how much money they make but they seem to have a pretty substantial direct-to-consumer porn platform going on lol.

</comment><comment><USER12> On the other hand they have zero user lock-in and are heavily losing money. That's a risky combination.

<comment><USER13> If they have zero user lock-in, then Instagram/Facebook have zero user lock-in too.

<comment><USER14> That would be the case if Instagram/Facebook's only source of lock-in was a user's established friend connections. However, Instagram/Facebook also have extensive history of each user's actions and content.

This is valuable, and why Facebook creates retrospectives for its users (in the last year you posted X times... here's where you were 2 years ago... etc). Snapchat lacks this due to the very ephemeral nature of the service.

Edit: grammar

<comment><USER15> This is an asset for their users, not a liability.

If you were to try to compete with Snapchat on the basis of having history, you would fail.

<comment><USER16> A product of similar nature to Snapchat (posts are deleted after n hours) could quickly grab all Snapchat users if Snapchat fatigue sets in and the other product looks new and shiny. All it takes for users is to download another app.

<comment><USER17> All it takes is for users to download the app _and convince all their friends too._ That's the tricky part, and definitely the incumbent advantage.

I'm not sure x hours is enough of a pain point (if it is at all) to get people to move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This feels like a tone-deaf week to publish an article suggesting that Snapchat will become a $100B company in 2020 by acquiring Magic Leap.

</comment><comment><USER19> The thing is, everyone says it's a 'fad' yet look at Twitter and Facebook--a decade later and still going strong. There is something about web 2.0 that makes it immune to the boom and bust cycle that beset web 1.0 companies (like Myspace, Aol, Yahoo, etc). Everyone seems to be using it..and the mobile rich media makes it ideal for advertisers, who pay a lot for those ads

<comment><USER20> Twitter still going strong? Check the latest news on that. What's interesting about the tech scene and Snapchat right now is that there are a lot of popular startups/apps, but only some are wildly successful while others are struggling to make money. There isn't a 1:1 correlation between popularity or number of users and profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Snapchat will be the next biggest bust since Theranos and Magic Leap.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sorry, tuned out at $100 Billion. This is doing keg-stands of your own Kool- Aid.

If you think Snapchat has the same macroeconomic value to the world as Intel, Cisco, or McDonald's... Then you've lost the ability to evaluate a technology business.

I'm not sure whether to accuse this of being shill or to systematically prove how flaky the argument is. The fact is that it doesn't save photos is as much lack of a feature as it is character. The users of this app know how to take a screenshot... It's the ICQ of a different 3 years worth of teenagers that will get stomped by the next messaging app that is different from the one other people used for the past 3 years.

Snapchat is valuable because of demographics. Unfortunately those demographics grow up quickly, and the ones that replace them will rebelliously reject what preceded them just like teenagers have done for the last 50 years.

The fact that they are worth $18bn now is nothing but a prime example of the times. Mind you I know the company I'm in. VCs invest based on their bet and the reason that valuation sticks is more marketing than it is reality.

Snapchat just isn't that valuable to the world.

<comment><USER23> > It's the ICQ of a different 3 years worth of teenagers

Snapchat is already 6 years old and my mum joined it last week to keep up with all her friends and family.

That's the thing with the bear case, you're right 95% of the time because most businesses fail but you never have to justify or be accountable for the 5% of times you're wrong.

HN history is littered with pessimism about tech companies - Facebook isn't worth $30 billion[1], Facebook isn't worth $50 billion[2], Facebook isn't worth $100B[3], Uber isn't worth $10 billion[4].. Snapchat isn't worth .. repeat. rinse.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2062145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2062145)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002857)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7911560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7911560)

<comment><USER22> Personally I'm not a chronic pessimist, but my view on Snapchat is the same as Twitter, and look at what is happening with them.

They are only worth their Market Cap in the sense that investors literally bought-in that much because of a hypothetical upside based on scale. What happened when they tried to sell the company? The realization sets in that the company just isn't worth that much money, nor can anyone foresee how it could be in the near future.

It is a self-sustaining situation with these companies. Nobody wants to write off that big of a loss, so the valuation is sustained.

Many others are sustained on the inflated belief that the market for Ad views is adjusted for the prevelance of fraud. How many times has it been shown that click, view and user bots are used in staggering numbers. The companies making all the money have little incentive to correct this. But of course Ads clearly work in many situations. I'm just saying these bloated valuations based on ad revenue have not been adjusted for the fraud reckoning. Google struck gold because the underlying utility of the search engine is so unquestionably powerful and ubiquitously necessary to the idea of the internet that it guarantees a truly awe-inspiring user base. The value proposition of getting that service for free makes viewing Ads a second thought - it is a reasonable deal for the user.

What do people _need_ from Snapchat that will keep them there? Sharing pictures and text messages is rapidly, and I mean rapidly, approaching a commodity service on par with landline telephones.

Anyways, the blanket optimists are subject to the same odds. If you believe everything is going to succeed, inevitably you will be correct. Everyone has confirmation bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Snap has nothing to do with Augmented Reality. HoloLens is AR, Google Glass could have been AR but were too underpowered. Snap Spectacles are nothing more than passing fad.</comment>