Antibiotic-Resistant 'Superbugs' Creep Into Nation's Food Supply - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/100653575 <comment><USER3> >These bacteria are finding ways to get around antibiotics in animals

>"We've actually run out of antibiotics that really keep animals healthy," Price said. "We're finding strains of bacteria in animals that are resistant to so many antibiotics."

How about this novel solution: stop raising animals in a way that requires them to guzzle down tons of antibiotics in order to survive.

I love how this article fails to even mention the _possibility_ that livestock animals do not need to ALWAYS BE SICK. Preposterous.

<comment><USER4> The problem with capitalism is that pure capitalism does not account for social issues, be them human-related or animal-related. Neither does communism.

But people still believe that raw capitalism (or, in cases like North Korea, communism) can succeed.

<comment><USER5> Agriculture in the US is absolutely nothing like "raw capitalism". It is extremely regulated. Farmers are subsidized. It's nothing like "raw capitalism" in several very important ways.

<comment><USER4> If it were "extremely regulated", then there would not be regular news reports about contaminated meat scandals and stuff like "The Meatrix" would not exist. Simply put, if there are regulations, then they're either just pro forma or not enforced enough.

<comment><USER6> There are thousands of pages of regulations on federal meat standards. I think your statement would work better if you said, "If it were 'well regulated/sensibly regulated'..."

It's also possible that regulations are confusing, unenforceable, out of date, or addressing symptoms instead of causes.

I don't disagree with you, but I think your comment needed some clarification.

<comment><USER4> I would rather say that "Big Money" is preventing existing regulations from being enforced.

The biggest issue is, of course, the sequester and the general lack of funding for food inspection - if there were enough food and animal safety inspectors, food scandals would simply not exist because of inspection pressure.

The second issue, tightly connected with the funding issue, is lobbyism. The "food lobby" has only recently lobbied for making recording of animal rights violation a crime...

<comment><USER7> People are denial about fascism in the USA. Just look at how many pharmaceutical products are approved by the FDA only to be eventually recalled. Of further concern are the pharmaceuticals advertised as having side effects which "may result in death."

How can the FDA allow these products?

<comment><USER6> Just to play devil's advocate: sometimes the dangers of a drug aren't evident until many years after exposure. The FDA tries to balance the benefit of the drug with the dangers. Otherwise, many beneficial and lifesaving drugs wouldn't hit the market until decades after the initial trials.

<comment><USER7> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5583878>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the only thing where I fully support the policy of the Green parties worldwide.

Overusing antibiotics and other medicine, just to be able to grow up more animals in the same space, is plain greed and animal cruelty.

The state should set a fixed minimum for meat prices (under which no product may be sold) and at the same time impose minimum levels of animal rights (roaming space, food variety, no declawing/tail cutting etc.). I know many will shoot me for advocating state regulation, but the free market most obviously has FAILED here.

<comment><USER8> But why buy meat at all? In terms of efficiency and "feeding the world" the cow lags behind quite seriously compared to that other GMO soya

<comment><USER3> High quality meat is irreplaceable in the optimal human diet.

<comment><USER9> [citation needed]

EDIT: I'm a vegetarian. I'm well aware there are nutrients that are harder to get on purely plant-based diets, but it's far from impossible. I'm getting my Omega 3s (all DHA and EPA, not merely ALA) from algae, and my B-12 from plant sources, too.

What am I missing by not killing sentient things for sustenance?

<comment><USER10> We have canines for a reason: our evolutionary and digestive history includes meat.

I'm sensitive to the moral issues involved, and understand the arguments against eating pigs and cows; however, I think it's reasonably ethical, and biologically optimal, to at least eat fish and eggs. And no matter what, farm animals should be raised humanely (pasture farms, not factory farms).

<comment><USER11> Evolution dictates that we live long enough to reproduce and fight off anything that wants to kill our young. There is no reason to assume that it might somehow be a guide to what an "optimal human diet" (silly expression) might be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lance Price is quoted in this article.

Here is his testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health. It's a pretty short read.

[http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/file...](http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Testimony- Price-Health-ADUFA-AGDUFA-2013-4-9.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you've ever had grass fed beef as opposed to the stuff you normally find in the grocery store, you know that the meat is much tastier, and much better for you. For example, grass fed beef is a good source of omega 3s.

The problem with most livestock in the US is that it is raised on corn, which is not a nutritious food for them (<http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_shouldn%27t_cows_eat_corn>).

However, it does fatten them up. So, while they are fed this unhealthy diet, they are also fed antibiotics to keep them alive long enough to be sold.

You are what you eat. If you want better food and humanely raised livestock, then educate yourself and stop buying the cheap stuff.

The USDA regulates antibiotics for animals, while the FDA regulates them for humans. The USDAs job is to promote agriculture, and they do not appear to be as concerned about the kinds of side effects that the FDA is. Two very different missions.

It's too bad irradiating food has such negative connotations, as it would be safer than the current approach.

</comment><comment><USER14> Original source data:

[http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/A...](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/AntimicrobialResistance/NationalAntimicrobialResistanceMonitoringSystem/UCM334834.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER15> Why don't we have more food irradiation?

<comment><USER16> Giving antibiotics to livestock causes them to gain weight. I suspect that this profitable feature is the primary reason that antibiotics are used in cattle. Does anyone in this field have any info to verify or refute?

<comment><USER17> The primary reason for anti-biotics is due to the fact that the farmers feed their livestock nutritionally devoid but massively cheaper corn - <USER2> weakens the overall immune system. Antibiotics are not needed when "organic" measures are put into place and cows are free range and fed better, nutritionally beneficial foods to begin with. But that's costlier, so, not going to happen on a commercial scale, regardless of how inefficient and unsustainable it is to continue.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I got a ransom request threatening DOS attack.  What to do? - <AUTHOR> I got an email threatening to DOS one of my servers.
Do I take this seriously? Or is it just some sort of spam?
Seems to me the best thing to do is ignore entirely and presumably they will move on to some other target.
Anyone else dealt with this? <comment><USER3> No experience. [https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small- business/openforum/...](https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small- business/openforum/articles/should-you-pay-ransom-to-cyber-attackers/) looks quite relevant.

</comment><comment><USER4> Usually it's just a con in my experience, but more information is needed though to tell you if you have any real concern. Here's a few things myself or others would likely need to know to provide any real help:

1) What site were they threatening to DDoS? 2) Who made the threat? 3) What amount are they demanding?

<comment><AUTHOR> They identified the site by specifying its IP address, but there's no magic to that.

The email did come to an address which is not the domain registration address which indicates perhaps that a human is involved at least in terms of determining the correct address to contact.

The threat says it will do a demonstration DOS to prove it is a real threat and says to look in the web server log to see activity - no action yet - <USER2> it still might come.

Threat claims to be from anonymous but I don't buy that.

They wanted 10 BTC.

<comment><USER5> Check your upstream provider and inform them of the situation regardless (some will just null-route your ip if they're not prepared/willing to deal with it), some might already have protection in place to mitigate certain types of attacks.

If possible, check-in with an actual DOS protection service and move your public service to a new IP behind it, whitelist only the providers IPs, free service from CF might even be sufficient.

Don't pay them, there is nothing to say that they or someone else might threaten again, 10BTC is a nice chunk of change these days.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where is the money? - <AUTHOR> Yesterday, I saw an article[1] stating that many programmers are earning $200k USD, or even $300k or $400k.
I thought I was doing good making $75k, and now I think I've been playing this game wrong.
So, where is the money?
Where is it geographically? (Is this just a US thing? San Fransisco-bay area only?)
What field is it? (Are we talking generalist programming? web development? app development? data analysis? machine learning?)
Who offers this sort of compensation? (Is this just Facebook, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix?)
Thanks for any insight. I think I could do this, but I can get there from here if I don't know where 'there' is.
[1] "Are we in the middle of a programming bubble"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18961173 <comment><USER2> DC area. SF Bay of course. Atlanta/Birmingham and Austin are both markets I've heard of.

All of the above for fields -- I know web devs making well over 100k. The more specialized you go the higher you go salary wise.

Lots of companies. Defense / gov is huge in DC area.

Can't speak to out of the US, it seems that salaries are significantly lower.

I think the 200k+ salaries are probably limited to very senior engineers in regular companies, or people in the FAANG companies -- note that those companies are not exclusively in the SF Bay area.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rule of Thumb #1 : The closer you are to affecting the marginal profitability of the company, the more you make.

e.g. Updating actuarial tables on a 20 yr old insurance system = low pay. Using ML/AI to re-build the actuarial tables into more profitable products that someone else loads = high pay.

<comment><USER4> At some point it changes into "The closer you are to the money, the more you make". The pattern since the 80's is, folks who can write checks for the company, write them for each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Understand the business goals. Understand the _customer's_ goals.

Bring better ideas to the table on how to achieve them using your understanding of what is the ideal mix of easy/hard and long-term/short-term.

Track your efforts against the bottom line financials. Earn the raise you seek.</comment>


Twitter Launching Paid Business Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/6635221/Twitter-launching-paid-business-accounts.html

<comment><USER2> This is a very good idea. I've already noticed small businesses messaging me back when I mention their services and products; clearly, they're taking some time out of their day to manage their Twitter reputation.

Given the breadth of different companies I know have been involved with Twitter (from small local restuarants to boutique culinary appliance manufacturers to Comcast), there must be thousands of companies who would pay for this service, especially if Twitter can lower the barrier to entry for them and provide metrics so that company Twitter advocates can gin up some kind of ROI.

<comment><USER3> It seems like Twitter is beating GetSatisfaction at its own game.

<comment><USER4> Could probably take Yelp's business too. I know I'm much more likely to Tweet about something than write a review on Yelp.

<comment><USER2> Couldn't happen to a nicer couple of companies.

<comment><USER5> Was this sarcastic? Honestly I have no idea about these two except that Getsatisfaction got some bad press from 37signals etc.

<comment><USER2> No, it wasn't. Both companies make money by harnessing unpaid volunteers and using their work to prey on small businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bingo. Access to stats and a "verified" marker would be huge for businesses.

I just hope they don't have "levels" of paid accounts based on followers for example. A single $20-$50 per year would make sense to me. But I imagine whichever route they choose, and no matter what cost, they'll sell anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm just thinking that for any larger company (think Fortune 500), $20-$25 would be a rounding error. I bet they'll charge their premium accounts significantly more ($hundreds at least). Their "analytics" would have to be pretty kick ass though for any company to take the next step and pay for the service.

I think the key part of it is the "verified" part of the deal.

<comment><USER2> They could provide a single PHP+ImageMagick bar chart and if the "analytics" shaved 15 minutes a week off some marcom person's workload, it would be worth thousands of dollars.

#1 rule of startup pricing: CHARGE MORE.

<comment><USER7> I totally agree with you. I think Twitter is basing the pricing decision off avoiding blowback from charging $1,000 a month from the people who will under no circumstances pay Twitter so much as $2 a month.

<comment><USER8> My first thought is that pricing should based on the number of followers;

0 - 999= $9/mo 1k-10k = $29/mo 10-20k = $39/mo 21-30k = $49/mo 31k-50k = $59/mo 51k-100k = $79/mo 100.01k-300k = $129/mo 300.01k-1mm = $259/mo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Twitter, which is valued at around $1 billion, has yet to settle on a business model for the service..."

<comment><USER10> Yes, the irony is thick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm assuming Twitter will design a way to charge large companies significantly higher fees and less for small companies and startups.</comment>


How Ransomware Is Stealing Away the Bitcoin Victory - <AUTHOR> In 2016 a new illegal industry emerged in the bitcoin ecosystem. Ransomware, a malicious program with the ability to encrypt a file or lock the user out totally from a computing device. Hackers invented a way of blocking user access to very important servers and demanding a ransom of bitcoin in exchange for an unlocking key.<p>Data security has been one of the biggest and longest running questions since the emergence of modern computing. Reverse engineering enables people to unlock a stream of coded security locks. Lately, hackers have invented a new way of maliciously getting payments in bitcoin by using Ransomware. Coinidol explores what ransomware is and how users can safeguard against it.
What is Ransomware?
Coinidol.com spoke to Shivank Dalmia, an ICT specialist from India, about what ransomware is, when it came into existence, who can design it and how it can get onto a user's computer system. In response he said: https://coinidol.com/ransomware-is-stealing-bitcoin-victory/ <comment><USER2> So... what's the main point of this?</comment>


This supersized drone will fly you to work (or anywhere) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/06/184-delivery-drone-for-people/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, although challenging to see it actually land somewhere. And with a 23 minute hard deadline, if you were backed up at the drone landing pad at work, well you would not want to idly wait for traffic ahead to clear up :-).

Also very curious about those motors. Given a 260 lb passenger limit, the total system is probably 500 - 600 lbs and you then need to move 650 lbs of air through three engines (if you want engine out recoverability). So a single engine generating a nominal 200 lbs of thrust? So 800N over 23 minutes is about a megawatt if I did the math correctly. Not sure if you can store enough energy in that volume at a low enough weight to meet their specs. But I'd love to see it fly.

[1] Great discussion of airplane engine power -- [http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/propulsion/q0195.shtml](http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/propulsion/q0195.shtml)</comment>


You Don't Truly Understand It Until You Think It's Obvious - <AUTHOR> http://excid3.com/blog/you-dont-truly-understand-it-until-you-think-its-obvious/

<comment><USER3> This is akin to how a society comes to understand something and why genius ideas sometimes take so long to become accepted. I believe "context" is the underlying principle here.

Arthur Schopenhauer said, "All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; Third, it is accepted as self- evident."

If you present a truth to someone whom doesn't have sufficient context for what you are saying, it may seem outrageous and ridiculous to them because the gap between their understanding and the insight you presenting is too great.

They would have to build up their understanding of the context around it until it expands to a point where they find a connection to what they already know. Then they can start to relate to it and eventually they may see it as self evident.

Jeff Jonas has a great metaphor for explaining context in terms of puzzle pieces and how it relates to big data (see this short TechCrunchTV segment - [http://www.techcrunch.tv/watch/s4ZnZyMTrtWTaKSxWF2WEPPXkBtMj...](http://www.techcrunch.tv/watch/s4ZnZyMTrtWTaKSxWF2WEPPXkBtMjZc3#ooid=s4ZnZyMTrtWTaKSxWF2WEPPXkBtMjZc3)).

This is how Richard Feynman approached problem solving -- he wanted to connect new ideas to what he already understood and understand the context of everything around it:

"It's not quite true that Feynman could not accept an idea until he had torn it apart. Rather, the idea could not yet be part of his way of thinking and looking at the world. Before an idea could contribute to that worldview, Feynman wanted to turn over the idea, to see why it was true, from any angle that he could find...In other words, he wanted to connect a new idea to what he already understood and thereby extend his understanding" ([http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/08/how-richard- feynman-t...](http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/08/how-richard-feynman- thought/)).

Once you surround a new concept with enough puzzle pieces, it attaches to what you already know and then eventually it becomes obvious.

<comment><USER4> Poe's Law seems very relevant to your comment.

<comment><USER3> Maybe in more ways than one. Paul Graham wrote about this in his essay, "What You Can't Say" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > I remember that in 7th grade when I tried to teach myself programming for > the first time, I didn't realize that you were supposed to reuse variables. > I would just create a new variable for every single value I needed to store. > Boy does that seem stupid looking back.

What? Making new variables is better. The compiler will generally figure out the scope of variables and re-use the space taken by variables.

This tends to suggest that at least for him, the functional/immutable meaning of variables was more natural.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a hangman game in GW-Basic. It was the messiest code I've ever written. 38k lines for a simple 3 letter only hangman game.

<comment><USER6> Wow, that is indeed impressive. I admire the determination it must have taken to get to 38000 lines of code for a three letter game. Was this text-based or graphical (I can't remember -- did gwbasic even support anything beyond basic CGA video modes?)?

Edit: Wait, was that BASIC line numbers reaching to 38000, or 38000 actual individual lines?

<comment><AUTHOR> Erm sorry, it was a 38k source file of text. I was actually hard coding everything because I didn't understand it. the whole screen would get printed out (without any sort of looping) each time you guessed a letter.

GW Basic did let you do basic graphics, I eventually got around to emulating a side scroller at one point. Obviously it was just the foreground, but it was quite a lot of fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd actually go one step further than that. I agree with Einstein, who said "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough".

<comment><USER8> Nicolas Boileau, French poet, said basically the same thing in the 17th century:

 _Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément._

(Whatever is well conceived is clearly said, And the words to say it flow with ease.)

<comment><USER9> "Whatever is well conceived is clearly said, And the words to say it flow with ease."

And those words also flow with ease.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But just because you think something is obvious, don't assume you understand it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ha! Being obvious to you does not mean you truly understand it.

At the start of my PhD my argument was obvious to me, but it's taken many years of hard work to turn that implicit understanding into an explicit, proper understanding (and I'm not fully there yet).

<comment><USER12> The more I've learned and studied various areas, the more I've come to realize that true mastery is to really, really understand the 'basics' of a given field. If you can really understand those foundational aspects of a field, all else can be derived almost through intuition. Unfortunately it takes a few years to realize that you don't in fact know the basics, and many more years to really 'get' them ;)

<comment> dan-k I think that hints at what I would consider a more useful criterion for true understanding: being able to apply something in new ways. Any programmer can learn to implement a linked list by being beaten over the head with it in a data structures class until it seems obvious. Someone who truly understands it will be able to pull out concepts like pointers from it and reuse them when confronted with another problem, like making a hash table that can handle collisions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Edward De Bono has long said that "Every valuable creative idea will always be logical in hindsight."

Also "What is obvious in hindsight may be invisible in foresight."

<http://www.edwdebono.com/msg19k.htm>

<comment><USER14> I almost like what De Bono says, but some of it just doesn't click. For example:

      3. What is obvious in hindsight may be invisible in foresight.

      There is no magic in creativity.

It seems to me the magic of creativity is making your foresight see those invisible things. If there really were no magic, we'd have real AI by now.

<comment><USER15> _If there really were no magic, we'd have real AI by now._

That's not at all clear. It could well turn out that more processing power than is easily available is necessary to run the experiments that would give us the answers to how intelligence works.

<comment><USER14> By virtue of P probably not equaling NP, I think the "more processing power" argument is ridiculous. To think up a new math theorem using exhaustive search of the space is simply unthinkable, no matter how much computing power you have. Some currently unknown form of creativity must be applied to reduce the search space considerably.

<comment><USER15> "new math theorem"?

I think it possible that we will not understand intelligence until we can run and tweak intelligent software. Fortunately, we don't have to do anything like an exhaustive search of the space because we have a working example of intelligence that we can copy without having to understand how it works. Doing this will require very large amounts of computing power, but not computronium.

<comment><USER14> _Fortunately, we don't have to do anything like an exhaustive search of the space because we have a working example of intelligence that we can copy_

My point was just that anything besides an exhaustive search of the space is applying some sort of "creativity magic."

Also FWIW, I believe that in order to simulate a brain on a computer we will essentially need to know how it works, which we are no where near. That is my opinion as an AI researcher, but there are certainly others who know more than me and disagree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok>

</comment><comment><USER17> Related to Derek Sivers' idea.

Text: <http://sivers.org/obvious>

Video: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GCm-u_vlaQ>

</comment><comment><USER18> Good article. I've had very similar experiences looking over my old code from several months ago. Even basic concepts like procedural abstraction I've only learned about and put into practice recently; in the past I may have used it but wasn't consciously aware of it and didn't do it consistently. And yet I was able to write a lot of awesome working software (that was hard to read and maintain).

Sometimes I think I would have been better off with a little theory at first, but then I wonder if I would have even developed the passion without the immediate joy of creation.

</comment><comment><USER19> interesting, although there's plenty that seems obvious but upon deeper inspection one realizes he doesn't understand it at all. maybe that's true understanding?

quick example - you hold a ball and let it go. "obviously" it drops, but think about it - why did it drop and I'm pretty sure even the most advanced string theorists couldn't explain definitively why it went towards the ground.

"true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing" - <USER2>

<comment><USER3> Yep, watch Feynman in "Fun to Imagine 4: Magnets (and 'Why?' questions...)" (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMFPe-DwULM>).

<comment><USER19> great clip!

<comment><USER3> Here's one that relates to your Socrates reference -- _"true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing"_.

It's a Charlie Rose segment where Jim Collins is discussing his book "How the Mighty Fall" (<http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10565>). He talks about the five stages of decline in any great enterprise. Stage 1 is hubris -- thinking you know it all.

<comment><USER20> Great little epistemological thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is part of the trouble with patents.

You can't patent obvious things. But once someone invents something it suddenly seems obvious, and people ridicule the idea of patenting it.

<comment><USER22> I don't think you can get more obvious in this day and age than adding "with computers" or "on the internet" to mundane, centuries-old ideas like "showing people things similar to what they are shopping for".

To be honest, I think your argument supports the abolition of patents more than you think it does. EVERY idea was built on the back of previous ideas. "Novelty" is only a matter of degree, and subjective degree at that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> "...Truly Understand..."?

Sigh... It seems author doesn't yet have the breadth of experience to know there are many different levels of understanding appropriate to many different fields, tasks and kinds of mastery.

<comment> dan-k I'm not sure the post really says anything about when such "true understanding" is necessary. That's a whole different can of worms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I may never "truly understand" how a programming language works, but there is a moment of clarity when you can say you really do understand why they did it that way. There are, of course, multiple levels to that. You may not know "how" they did it, but you do understand why aside from repeating what others have said on "why" they chose that approach.</comment></comment></comment>


Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Statement - <AUTHOR> https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/0818-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy-statement.htm <comment><AUTHOR> > In the meantime, there are some longstanding operational initiatives — > efforts that predate my arrival at the Postal Service — that have been > raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the > midst of a devastating pandemic. To avoid even the appearance of any impact > on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election > is concluded.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the worst enterprise software you use every day? - <AUTHOR> <comment> noman-land Jira. It's slow. It's not intuitive. It's cluttered and hard to find anything in. It's easy to lose in progress work in it.

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't think of a single piece of software that's stands out worse than the others but really it's anything that's still using Java or Flash of which there are a number of tools.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably Microsoft Teams but I know I'm lucky not to be using worse.

</comment><comment><USER4> Adobe Creative Suite. Absolutely atrocious.

</comment><comment><USER5> propel. it is the worst ive ever used.</comment>


Traffic apps turned L.A.'s neighborhoods into "shortcuts" - <AUTHOR> https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/waze-los-angeles-neighborhoods/ <comment><USER2> Transport for London Tech Lead here.

In London, we have been collaborating with google waze - we provide them with information at the local level. Streets that waze should not use for route finding (e.g. roads with schools) can be blocked for use by Waze. Both local councils and TfL can provide this data.

The main difference between Waze and Google Maps is that Waze uses real time traffic data. There are multiple map providers that do this in London. There is a plan to provide different data to different TfL data consumers in the future to try and get map providers to seperate traffic across roads (at the cost of surrendering absolute truth).

London is also host to discussions of taxing roads - this is unsurprising when the roads are mostly paid for by the cost of the London Underground (LU makes the majority of public transport money, but 80% of revenue goes into road, traffic and bus management). The London Assembly (who supposedly keep the London mayor accountable) have written a paper "London Stalling" to suggest road taxing related to mileage across London. This, they no doubt expect, will cut down the traffic. However, from my understanding of embellished models of Braess' paradox, this will only result in similar traffic (on maybe slightly different roads) with an optimum equilibrium between how good a route is and what the cost of it is - meaning people may just take longer to commute and pay more tax.

<comment><USER3> "when the roads are mostly paid for by the cost of the London Underground"

Taxes on fuel used in motor vehicles (duties and VAT) are something like 30bn GBP/year in the UK.

London has about 1/6th of the UK's population, so let's assume 5bn/year comes from London.

That's 5x the annual operating profit of London Underground[0].

Government income and expenditure is fungible, so it's hard to determine precisely whether X is paid for by Y or by Z.

But it's clear that government revenue from London road users is much higher than the profit from London Underground.

So it seems strange to assert that roads are paid for mostly by London Underground.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20865111](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20865111)

<comment><USER4> For reference, from the 2019/20 TFL Budget, direct operating surplus' are:

Streets -£167m

Buses: -£722m

Rail: -£49m

Underground: £823m

Elizabeth Line: -£267m

Other: £9m

Professional Services: -£560m

Property: £69m

Media: £145m

[0] [http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl- budget-2019-20.pdf](http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-budget-2019-20.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > These thousands of homeowners and renters have arguably been injured by > Waze's and Google's successful privatization of formerly public streets.

That's a... very creative interpetation of what public and private mean.

If you don't want your side street to be driven on at 30 mph, then you can't drive on it at 30 mph either. Traffic calming measures are a thing. Make it even more winding, add road bumps, bottlenecks. Turn it into a 12mph street, and no one will use it as a shortcut anymore.

<comment><USER6> These "NIMBY" people always make me laught.

if you dont want to have a ton of traffic dont buy a house on a major road.

There is a street on the subdivision i live in with the same issue. it is the main entry point to the subdivision. people bought houses there, then fought the city for years over traffic?

they put up stop signs, speed bumps, etc.

they wanted the lower house prices associated with living on main roads, but then tried to redirect traffic elsewhere?

<comment><USER7> The issue is that traffic apps turned non-main roads into main roads, not that people bought on main roads then tried to block them.

NIMBYism can be a problem, but it's still important to characterize the issues at hand accurately.

<comment><USER8> Well the issue behind that issue IMO is that so many US streets _can_ be used as main roads. They were built overly-spaciously with only the interests of car drivers in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's disappointing to see LADOT neglecting to use a road management tool already at their disposal to stop Waze's abuse of their residential zones:

No Thru Traffic.

Posting NTT signs at entry points into residential neighborhoods and specifying even as little as a $5 fine would make entry for thru routing unlawful, stopping Waze.

Whether or not the city enforces these signs would be irrelevant, as long as the traffic laws were in place _permitting_ enforcement. Their simple presence would require Waze editors to accurately identify all such entry points and force Waze to prefer the surrounding arterials. They are, I believe, requires to denote such signage to their maps so that Waze does not compel unlawful driving behaviors, even if some percentage of drivers might otherwise make the entry illegally.

As an additional possible bonus, by marking zones as NTT, the Waze algorithms would not only exclude those zones but likely also reject periphery roads near those zones, as their value as a shortcut would diminish further versus the arterials they circumvent.

<comment> matt-attack And to what end? I'm of the firm belief that the good done by Waze far outweighs the cost to the NIMBYs. In LA we have a traffic crisis. Sorry but your government built and tax funded residential street is just as much mine to use as it is yours. I won't speed through it but I sure as hell have a right to use it as much as the local home owners.

The city should not be doing what your suggesting until they've solved the traffic crisis and provided actual solutions.

The freeways are parking lots. Housing costs in the city are insane. So workers are forced to have longer and longer commutes. And the city's infrastructure crawls to a halt at rush hours.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

<comment><USER10> Residential streets are not designed for heavy through traffic.

It comes back to "why we can't have nice things". Abuse. Many systems work when they are not abused but break down when they are abused.

<comment> matt-attack Well that's not really what I hear the NIMBYs complaining about. "Hey our streets are forming ruts and potholes from the excess traffic! We need better reinforcing under our street to prevent this!"

<comment><USER11> Good! You can continue ignoring the NIMBYs then! You can both spite them _and_ focus on the actual problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In LA are these shortcuts worth it?

I was surprised to find with Google maps more often than not it suggests to just take that busy highway that is crawling alone because ... it really is faster. I've tried to defy google maps ... rarely do I win.

Granted google maps is wrong at times. During snowstorms it loves to send me down off streets that haven't yet been plowed or ... worse random county roads you do not want to be on during a storm. I think it inadvertently interprets "hey nobody is on this road so it must be faster" when nobody is there because that road is terrible with snow and you're far better crawling along the highway where plows will be or may have been ... or other vehicles have made tracks.

<comment><USER13> I once read (sorry can't find cite) that Waze and Google maps run roughly the same routing algorithm now, but Waze is hyper-optimized for time whereas Google maps is optimized for some nebulous quality akin to "fastest reasonable route" where unreasonable factors are things like using small roads, exiting and entering the high a bunch, extra turns, etc.

So Waze probably is faster by a bit, but not a whole ton.

In my experience, Google Maps ETA has gotten to be frighteningly accurate in the past 6 months. For situations where traffic doesn't materially change during the trip, my ETA will be within 2 minutes of arrival even on trips of over an hour.

<comment><USER14> I've noticed Waze optimizing for quickness. Not fastest, not shortest, not most direct but the route which makes you feel like you are getting there quicker. Often longer stretches with no traffic or junctions for example.

It's as if users main priority is not to be held up. Users don't care if the journey is two minutes longer or a few pence more expensive, they just don't want to be feeling they are making no progress.

<comment><USER15> " they just don't want to be feeling they are making no progress."

I think you may have just convinced me to use Waze instead of Google Maps. I'd much rather relieve the stress of driving a bit than save a few minutes of time.

Well, actually, I'd rather not drive at all. But seeing as that isn't really an option, I'll settle for making it less stressful.

<comment><USER16> I'm 36 and have lived in a mix of rural and urban areas of America and I never learned to drive and have never driven a car.

Just want to make the point that not driving _is_ really an option, just one that most people look for a way to avoid. It's all a matter of priorities and as much as most people say they hate driving/traffic, very few actually do anything about it.

<comment><USER17> At some level that's true. But it's also true it significantly constrains your life choices. I've had one job in my life that I could _maybe_ have reasonably held without being able to drive. (Business travel would still have been somewhat of an issue.) And my entire personal lifestyle would have to have been totally different.

Also, a lot of people just aren't in a position to realistically say "no" to any job that involves a need to drive.

<comment><USER16> I think it's a little ridiculous to say "I would rather not have to drive" and then make 0 life choices to reduce the reliance on driving, which is exactly what most people do.

<comment><USER17> People do often take the length of commutes into account. But, while many would prefer not to have to drive in the abstract, in practice that preference doesn't rise to the level of:

\- Moving into a smaller place in a city

\- Potentially putting kids into worse schools

\- Passing on many of the recreational and travel activities that require driving

\- Passing on job opportunities that have better salaries, career paths, etc.

\- Not visiting friends and family who live places you need to drive to

All of which may be the result of not being able to drive or making a decision to prioritize minimal driving over everything else. There are a lot of things that people prefer in principle but, when presented with the actual choices, they make tradeoffs that favor different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It seems to me that Waze isn't the problem. I've seen very similar problems where I live. When the freeway gets backed up, as it inevitably does, traffic spills out into awfully designed city streets.

I once got stuck in small neighborhood for 2 hours while the freeway was backed up and that was before Waze existed.

In Southern California we have massive urban sprawl most of which is filled with cul-de-sacs within cul-de-sacs. Waze isn't the problem it's just exacerbating it.

<comment><USER19> But usually people don't go into neighborhoods they don't know. Locals might cut through a city but others won't. Now, with Waze and Google, literally everyone can cut through a city even though they've never been there.

This is the problem: these roads weren't build for it and the neighbors are left with busy streets, noise pollution and an increase in traffic.

<comment><USER20> But aren't those public roads, made for everyone to use?

<comment><USER21> "Have access to" and "drive down at 35" are different things. Parks are public but you may not be able to enter one if there's some event and its massively over capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article tries to paint Waze as an "evil" corporation, but to me it sounds like they haven't perfected their algorithms yet. If Waze reroutes 1,000 cars to a shortcut that can only handle 100, that's idiotic and does not provide a good service to users. But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into account, everyone would benefit since there would be no "synthetic" traffic jams.

In my experience traffic apps are imperfect and even dangerous:

\- Waze sent me once to a shortcut via a very shady neighborhood

\- Google drove me through an alley so narrow that I had to fold the side mirrors in order to pass

\- Google twice tried to put me on a toll-road ramp that could only be used by electronic pass holders. As a tourist, I didn't have one.

That said, these apps provide huge value by telling you about road conditions (e.g. accidents) and routing you around them, estimating your ETA, and telling you how to get to your destination even if you miss a turn. I would not want to go back to the old way of navigating using paper maps and just hoping for the best...

<comment><USER11> > But if their algorithms took the road's capacity into account, everyone > would benefit

The people getting extra non-resident traffic on residential streets don't benefit.

But let's ignore them and look only at current drivers. It's quite possible for routing even one car through shortcut neighborhoods to be a net negative, because they have to spend time leaving and merging back with the main traffic flow.

<comment><USER23> >The people getting extra non-resident traffic on residential streets don't benefit.

Those streets being public roads, they don't have any right to exlusively using them. Furthermore, a public resource should be used efficiently.

<comment><USER11> It's not just "roads". There are arterial roads, collector roads, and local roads. Everyone is allowed to use them, but everyone is supposed to use them for their actual purpose. The lowest tier of road is only supposed to be used for the first/last mile of a trip. It is not "efficient" use to pretend all roads are arterial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm always surprised when people blame L.A. traffic on Waze rather than a lack of transportation infrastructure in the city. After all, maps existed before Waze and people could have used these shortcuts the entire time.

</comment><comment> valiant-comma When these articles show up now and again, it's not clear to me why the various impacted cities don't choose to ban through traffic. Some articles have implied that this is not possible. Los Altos did this a while back[1]. Is there a legal issue the communities surrounding Los Angeles want to avoid, that Los Altos simply took the risk on?

[1] [https://slate.com/business/2017/06/suburbs-finally- figured-o...](https://slate.com/business/2017/06/suburbs-finally-figured-out- a-way-to-get-rid-of-pesky-drivers-on-waze-shortcuts.html)

<comment><USER25> > it's not clear to me why the various impacted cities don't choose to ban > through traffic

Can you physically turn the streets into cul-de-sacs? Where I live a lot of domestic streets are cul-de-sacs presumably to prevent too many people driving past.

<comment><USER26> Speed bumps go a long way too by dropping the effective speed.

<comment><USER27> My city seems to do this with more unorthodox methods: cheap out on road maintenance and engineering.

Oh sure, take that side street with all of the sunken sewer grates.

My mom's street was riddled with potholes. We were happy when they repaved it, but blew it when they put up speed bumps.

<comment><USER28> This is partly because drivers aren't actually paying there way, and are subsidised by others a ridiculous amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> You can blame traffic apps, but in reality it's just a democratization of knowledge. Locals already knew the best way to evade a traffic, now outsiders know it too.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure if it is a cultural thing or different problem scales but the whole complaint strikes me as massive narcissistic self-entitlement to public resources.

In my northeastern experience everyone uses neighborhoods as shortcuts when the normally faster roads are congested enough that it is faster in spite of the lower speed limit and increased stops.

</comment><comment><USER31> I try to minimize not total driving time, but something I call "agony" (term borrowed from Hipmunk). So, I'll take meandering side streets over a stop-and- go highway if it means I'm moving most of the time, even if the total wallclock time is greater. Or I'll take 3 right turns to avoid a harrowing left hand turn. Anything that keeps my blood pressure down. AKA, "long cuts."

Assuming there are at least some out there who feel the same, it occurred to me once to try to publish/monetize these agony free routes but I realized it'd pretty much instantly lead to the Waze problem.

<comment><USER32> Yes! Something here in Boston that Google and Waze never take into account is that there are some left turns that at rush hour that can really only be accomplished by the most aggressive drivers. Sorry, I'm not doing that.

<comment><USER33> I don't understand why they don't fix either one so it stops giving you left turns onto busy highways at intersections without traffic lights. It's just idiotic. And surely there are already guidance systems for delivery companies that optimize routes with all right turns. That would be a nice checkbox option along with avoiding tolls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The comedian Pete Holmes has a bit about Waze that is extremely relevant to this article: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuDCxQdsbmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuDCxQdsbmc)

<comment><USER35> Not often you see Conan upstaged. Great bit, appreciate the sentiment of enjoyment over efficiency. I have been seeing that reflection more and more lately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> LA is a very strange place to me - I read about all this havoc, but whenever I fly in there and do stuff it seems fairly quiet and almost somnabulent.

<comment><USER37> Try commuting into the greater LA area during rush hour. It's really something else.

Once I was taking my then-fiancé to LAX for an 11:30am flight. About 2-3 hours into the drive, we were on the 105 in completely stopped traffic. A man in a convertible next to us began to absolutely _lose_ it, smacking the steering wheel with loud, desperate yelling "ARRGH!!" again and again. We decided he must have been late to a mandatory child custody hearing and would lose the right to see his kids—or something equally life-shattering.

There's nothing like LA gridlock to give you a sense of utter powerlessness.

<comment><USER33> I have never tried to drive into NYC, but when I think back on being there, there were a lot of cars...I guess. So _someone_ drives there, and lots of them. I don't want to, but I wonder what it's like, and just how the people in the parking spaces managed to obtain them.

<comment><USER38> The traffic in NYC is bad but I think there is more of a natural equilibrium that arises from the fact that if traffic gets bad enough, some portion of people will switch to the alternatives (public transport, biking, even walking), making traffic less terrible and equalizing everything. People don't really have that option in Los Angeles so it seems everyone is just stuck driving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not talked about here - that the upper (and middle) class intentionally built their communities to be minimally accessible to keep the riffraff out. That of course making the traffic hell that people are trying to get away from. Nobody can live near where they work because they can't afford it. Traffic is as much a housing and economic problem as it is an engineering one.

<comment><USER40> Or because the communities were built before car culture totally took over the area. I think it's more dependent on geography/geology.

Some of these gnarly streets are in places like the Hollywood Hills, where people try and get around the chokepoint that is created by the Sepulveda pass. But plenty of them are in working class neighborhoods like Echo Park, like this very steep street: [https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me- lopez-echo-pa...](https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-echo- park-traffic-20180404-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is a function of living in an unlivable city -- not technology.

It is physically impossible for there to be enough roads to move 14 million SUVs to and from home each day.

<comment><USER42> more like a function of driving in a place that physically can't accommodate the sheer number of cars. the city could be very livable if public transport was the better option than a private car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I did a quick search on the relationship between traffic systems and Nash's Equilibrium and ran across this. A good read.

[https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks- book/netwo...](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks- book/networks-book-ch08.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER44> I had no idea Waze was powered by anon crowd sourced map editors. If anybody here is doing it, what's the motivation? Personally I'd never disclose my shortcuts or free parking spots.

<comment><USER45> Not quite the same thing but I've contributed a correction to Google maps before. My motivation was that my address on maps was in the middle of a cornfield and I was tired of explaining exactly where my house really was when new people came over.

<comment><USER46> Have you tried using Plus Codes as a solution to this? [https://plus.codes/](https://plus.codes/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> L.A. has been a shortcut city for a very long time. It is almost 50 years since I resided there; back then good shortcuts got mentioned in the gossip columns, and magazine articles were written about great shortcuts. The difference now is that the solutions are newer, high-tech, and more expensive, but the problem is much worse.

</comment><comment><USER48> The obvious solutions seem to be either:

1\. Add enough speedbumps, unsynchronized traffic lights or even unnecessary timed barriers to make the route slow enough that it's no longer optimal

2\. Add cameras that fine anyone who doesn't have a permit to pass, which would be given to residents for free and anyone who pays a sufficiently high price

<comment><USER49> that would make sense if those were private roads. public roads belong to the public. I have the right to use the road in your neighborhood just as much as you do.

<comment><USER33> As is well known to any homeowner, typically anyone who owns property has certain responsibilities to care for the public property adjoining it. For instance, you have to clear snow off in a timely manner where I live. Isn't it logical that if you have responsibilities for public property next to where you live, that you may also have some rights as well?

I think you are assuming a naive dichotomy between public and private that doesn't reflect the way things actually work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes, the same thing happens in Belgium and the Netherlands. Waze, Google Maps et al. will route traffic through any road they can find if it saves times.

But neighborhoods are left with all the negatives. Is it really worth it to route hundreds of vehicles through a small street with a school just to save drivers 1 minute of their time?

</comment><comment><USER50> I often wonder if we ought to try to double the US's highway capacity. It's pretty obvious that the American appetite for public transportation is pretty low, and that car ownership in our continent is here to stay. Why not lean into that, focus on the roads, build bus lanes for public transit?

<comment><USER33> I remember a long time ago reading an article about the bus system in Curitiba, Brazil, which supposedly was innovative and worked particularly well at a much lower cost than subways, but more efficiently than most buses.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> _A Waze spokesman, oblivious to the irony, reflexively sneered that "a group of neighbors can't game the system."_

 _[Ryu] told constituents that Waze would designate a liaison to work with the city, and then the company stopped returning calls._

 _Krekorian's office reached out to Waze and the operators of similar apps and got "a complete stonewall," he says._

 _Why the pseudonyms? "They all fear legal liability in case of a bigger accident or traffic situation," suggested one Level 1 editor, who tried to obtain the email and contact information of a higher-level editor to no avail._

The time for "partnering" with arrogant/dismissive/evasive app companies is over. Municipalities and state governments have been dealing with this problem for 5+ years. Why is it taking so long to legislate?

</comment><comment><USER52> The one solution that no one will fucking mention is to increase road capacity to zoning ratios. The city planners are allowing congestion by allowing density that is too high, then everyone has to fucking drive with 1 million other people in the same space. Also, it doesn't have to be JUST road capacity. Putting in some actual subway capacity would allow the higher densities, but you have special interest groups fighting that shit NON stop.

No one WANTS to take a side street over a freeway. You do it because the freeway is jammed. This means the city planning has FAILED. The money has been misused. I read somewhere that homeless in LA are having housing built for them. Sounds great, right? The cost per unit of housing is something like $450,000 .

<comment><USER53> Capacity and congestion is the wrong way to think about traffic planning. The natural response to capacity increases is to accept a longer-distance commute in exchange for lower housing costs. Instead, it's better to think in terms of accessibility - people need to go to work, buy groceries, etc, and the system must be able to accommodate those goals within reasonable amounts of time.

Crucially, this means that it's just as valid to ensure that people live within a fifteen minute walk to a grocery store as it is to ensure that traffic can allow people to drive five miles to the grocery store within fifteen minutes. Density itself can _help_ traffic, so long as it is properly located with respect to jobs and various amenities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> As a side note just want to point out that I had Google Maps route us thru side streets marked with "No Thru Traffic" in a newer neighborhood last week in Myrtle Beach SC area to save 1 min. This was the first time i encountered this case.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's interesting to see you post that because I feel like I've read articles where cities in the US have tried the same approach with Google and they generically responded with "Formally change the rules/laws/speeds/whatever and we will follow that but we don't make random, single changes for the whims of the city" (my rephrasing of what they said).

I'm having trouble finding the source but I believe I saw the link here on HN and it was to an article about a city asking for Google's cooperation in regards to a sharp/blind downhill turn or something? Hope that jogs someone else's memory.

</comment><comment><USER56> If the city's failure to prevent gridlock at major intersections across the city is any guide, LA will never get a handle on this problem. It will never have enough DPT and police to enforce any proposed solution.

</comment><comment><USER57> Can confirm.

When I compare LA traffic to Seattle traffic, I describe the comparison as they are both bad - but LA is much more active driving. You can always get somewhere quicker by zigging left, then zagging right (usually through a neighborhood) because it's built on a grid, where Seattle is more passive traffic because there are choke points everywhere due to water / bridges / non-grid roads, which means zig zagging is not likely to save much time, or possible at all.

</comment><comment><USER58> This happens in Fremont in the bay area. Its right between 880 and 680 so when one freeway backs up people flood onto the streets to save a few minutes. Also there is a section of Mission blvd that runs parallel to 680 that people started taking as a shortcut. Many of these streets are not designed for that level of traffic. The city resorted to strategically adding some stop signs and "no right turn" signs from what I heard.

</comment><comment><USER59> Since years I'm surprised that Google maps suggests routes through small roads. This makes no sense, maybe I see a minute but it's so much more stressful to navigate. Big roads are actually built for traffic, there is no point to use small roads for transit traffic. Also it is much more likely to compete with bicycle drivers and pedestrians for road space.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is an issue on country roads as well. I was driving down to Cinci and Google had me cut from one freeway to the next via some county side roads. We got flicked off by some guy at his house, and from the traffic, it seemed like he was frustrated how many cars were now going down his once quiet road.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is not the fault of Waze. This is the fault of city planners and the people who live in those houses who have opposed mass transit expansion, and highway expansion. If all else fails we will just go back to making our own routes through neighborhoods and side streets.

</comment><comment><USER62> Living in Europe, I have yet to see a smart navigation app, which would allow to take into account:

\- tolls and fuel consumption (Via Michelin is great at offering 2-3 routes with different and realistic costs, but the app is an ad-nest and their navigator is bad; Here can avoid tolls but the UI is bad; Google Maps is useless if you want to optimize the costs).

\- altitude changes (a marginally shorter road which has to climb and descent 1000 m / 3000 ft is not the same as doing extra distance on the flat ground).

\- the shape of the road, prefer wider and more direct roads (there are many narrow and extremely curvy roads that can't be driven fast, and some may be very stressful to drive).

\- the realistic median speed as an estimator (not the speed limit; sometimes it is set unrealistically high; also do not assume that all tarmac roads are equivalent).

\- local and temporary traffic restrictions (respect car-free hours in some areas and restrictions on a particular kind of vehicle or engine).

\- eventual stops during long trips

Google Maps is far from an ideal navigation app at this point. The only reason it is used, IMO, is the abysmall UI experience in built-in car navigators. (Anecdotal evidence: I rented a car last week, it took me five minutes to enter destination, and then I couldn't figure out how to interrupt navigation. Eventually just used the phone to drive around).

Tl;dr: Dear Google, Waze, etc., distance is not everything.

</comment><comment><USER63> GPS jammers?

</comment><comment><USER64> I feel like I must be missing something because the following potential solutions seem obvious to me:

\- Mark a street as "No thru traffic," or charge tolls (via video camera) to vehicles not registered in the neighborhood and not stopping on the street.

\- Suspend the driver's license of anyone using Waze, and use that as negotiating leverage with Waze to give edit access to city planners.

What's preventing local/state government from doing so?

<comment><USER65> Suspend the driver license of someone using an app?? That hardly seems legal.

<comment><USER64> Why? It's legal to suspend the license of someone using a cell phone _at all_ , is it not? Saying "You can use cell phones, but only if ___" seems at least as legal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> If the government wants to be the big daddy of traffic control then it should also build sufficient lanes to keep the roads moving.

<comment><USER67> Traffic doesn't work like that. You seem to have a mental model where traffic is modeled like a liquid (traffic has a definite volume and does not expand to fill its container) while many studies show traffic behaves more like a gas (traffic expands to fill its container). Basically, more lanes doesn't mean less traffic, it generally means the same amount of traffic.

<comment><USER66> That research is wrong. [http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=9781](http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=9781) [https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-induced-demand- myth](https://www.cato.org/blog/debunking-induced-demand-myth) [http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=5583](http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=5583)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Can't this just be banned? "It is illegal for any individual or corporation to offer a driving route that uses streets designated as "Local" when the travel distance using streets marked as "Express" is shorter. Violators will be assessed a fine of $1000 per route offered."</comment>


Google: You ain't seen nothin' yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=0d0fa453-8a22-4dd0-b244-53f03146da8e&k=11216&p=1 <comment><USER2> "You Tube is responsible for about 10% of all internet traffic."

What? This can't be true.</comment>


Ruby-traileraddict: easily display movie previews in your application - <AUTHOR>

http://github.com/aarongough/ruby-traileraddict <comment><AUTHOR> This is a fairly simple wrapper around the TrailerAddict 'API' that makes it possible to get the trailer embed code for a movie automatically.

Their normal API interface requires that you supply the movie's 'tag' which is a TrailerAddict specific string that may or may not be similar to the move title.

Suggestions and constructive criticism welcomed!</comment>


Newspapers' online readership has seen little to no gains - <AUTHOR> http://www.medialifemagazine.com/think-papers-websites-are-gaining-think-again/ <comment><USER2> I have to say, that's a poor use of a line graph. The line implies a progression. Without reading the axes, it appears to be a graph of readership over time. I only noticed it wasn't because it made no sense that the print line was increasing.

A simple bar graph with different colours of bars for print and online would be much more intuitive.

<comment><USER3> I was kind of surprised that they wouldn't show the actual change over time (say the last 10 years). Those snapshot values don't really tell a story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to read the New York Times. And by read, I mean I read the front-page, and then did the crossword puzzle. Then I stopped reading the front-page, and just did the crossword. A dollar a day for a decent crossword isn't the worst, but I stopped having time to do it, so I cancelled.

</comment><comment><USER5> These findings don't account for huge centralizing effects of online readership. We would expect for several winners to take all, since there are no barriers for readers to navigate towards the highest quality content. I am also puzzled by the absence of The New York Times, which I think would be one of those winners eating into local audiences elsewhere.

The concept of a "newspaper" itself makes little sense online, where traditional newspapers compete with aggregators like Reddit and Facebook, and mixed content providers like Breibart, Huffington Post, FiveThirtyEight, Vice, BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera and so on. Should we count those as newspapers? The word "paper" suggests that our categories are inadequate to the task. Other studies show that people are reading more news than ever online. This study should simply conclude that readers no longer call their news sources "newspapers."

Imagine a paper that would discuss the stagnation in online shopping by looking at traditional retailers, without mentioning Amazon or Alibaba.

</comment><comment><USER2> Very surprising data. I would have expected that in the two under-35 age groups, online readership would be higher than print. Especially in the youngest age group, although I wouldn't expect either to be particularly high there.

Interesting that they're specifically speaking about "in-market" online readership. Does this mean that there's significant out-of-market readership that isn't being counted? I know personally I generally read top national and international papers online far more often than the local paper.

Of course, part of the answer is people getting news in different ways. Like HN! But also various social media, blogs, etc. But that doesn't account for the relative popularity of print news over online newspapers among young people. Again, surprising.

<comment><USER3> The up to 25 readership is probably because they still live with their parents to some degree, so they would tick a 'have access to paper news' box in a survey.

Also, tabloids might be pretty prevalent in the less educated group, which is pretty big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spend time reading press releases, or read books with actual information. I pick books. I have my computer read them to me.

<comment><USER3> I stopped reading "the news" (as presented as a product) earlier this year and haven't looked back. I don't miss major events, because they're everywhere anyway, and I can look up the facts the way I want, not according to the rhythm of the narration of sensationalist media outlets. I have much more time to read in-depth books and articles that I select for myself. I feel better informed since I have stopped reading newspapers and online news.

This is actually basically what I read in Nassim Talebs books years before but thought it was a bit over the top at the time.

<comment><USER7> Likewise, I stopped reading the global news years ago. I only read the local news, as it's nice to know what's happening directly around me.

<comment><USER3> That's interesting, what kind of 'local' is that? Living in a big city and reading city-related news, or more suburban or rural context? (because I live in Berlin and local/Berlin news would be just as messy garbagy as global news)

<comment><USER7> I live in Amsterdam, so I mostly read AT5, www.at5.nl</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


JPEG XL Reaches Committee Draft - <AUTHOR> https://jpeg.org/items/20190803_press.html <comment><USER2> Ugh, I honestly couldn't tell if this article was a joke or not (it seems to not be). The more you read the more absurd it becomes.

I've not heard of JPEG XL before now. Why would you name it that? XL certainly doesn't make me think "wow that sounds like way better compression".

JPEG Blockchain: come on! Are you really so worried about being relevant that you have to talk about blockchains in your press release?

JPEG AI: I could image that this is real, but I'm fairly skeptical of anything that is taking about machine learning and blockchains in the same context.

Its so unnecessary too. A 3x quality improvement is massive. Why not just let that speak for itself? This press release makes me hope just a little bit that JPEG XL loses out to WebP or HEIF.

</comment><comment><USER3> Massive (3x) quality increase + lossless jpeg recompression option.</comment>


Ask HN: closely related patent held by bankrupt company - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on a project and was writing the provisional patent application when I came across a closely related patent which is held by a fairly large company which declared bankruptcy and was then bought by another large company.
The patent doesn't expire for quite a few years from now.
One of the big differences between my application and the existing one, is that the existing patent has such a general scope as to how it would work that it could not conceivably create a reliable result.
As a comparison point, I'd say their patent is like somebody patenting 'a system for the search and retrieval of webpages where results are ordered by relevance' where my application is much more like google pagerank, which describes the method for calculating and creating the relevance order. Note: neither patent is related to web search.
Any suggestions on how to handle a situation like this?  I figured there would be prior art, but hadn't been able to track any down until now. <comment><USER2> Read the new FTC report and then drop a few hundred bucks on consulting a personable patent lawyer who has a positive opinion of it: <http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2011/03/patentreport.shtm></comment>


Stanford's Most Popular Major Is Now Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/07/01/stanford-top-major-computer-science/ <comment><USER2> I cringe a little bit in some of these education threads. On one hand, students who chose to major in something that isn't very marketable right now are lambasted for making a poor decision based on what sounds interesting to them, and they get blame heaped on them for being in debt and having nothing to show for it. On the other hand, when people choose CS - a field that has very good earning prospects right now - their intentions are immediately questioned and we ask "Are they just doing it for the money?"

It must kind of suck to be someone entering college right now without natural interest for and aptitude in a STEM field.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with people choosing CS for the money? The more people become literate in our field, the better off we are as a society, probably.

<comment><USER4> While that's true, I feel like there's going to be plenty of awful programmers in the group that's just in it for the money (although that's not to say there won't be passionate programmers who are also awful - they're just more likely to want to improve themselves).

With much of CS and programming being so collaborative, those that just don't have the talent or the heart for it generally cause more hassle and grief for the rest of us.

Of course, I'm also not assuming that I'm not an awful programmer myself, but I really do love CS and try to improve myself all the time.

<comment><USER5> CS weeds out the bad programmers so they never graduate. If you can pass Stanford's CS program you are probably pretty smart.

<comment><USER6> This is totally untrue.

<comment><USER7> Why's that? Do you have any information to back this up? I'd be interested in that.

<comment><USER6> Because you're making a fallacious assumption with Computer Science in relation to programming/building webapps, just like many others here. You're assuming just because one is good at CS, he/she must be a good programmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The funny thing is most of those kids probably just want to learn how to make iphone apps and pretty websites but before they realize it they're stuck figuring out sorting algorithms and regex theory.

<comment><USER9> Sorting algorithms are high school material, I think they'll handle it. Especially if the professor is kind enough to say "...And never use these out of the classroom without a good reason to (and there is no good reason to use BubbleSort). Just use the built-in sort()."

Actually using regexes seems _a lot_ more common in the working world than in academia; as for the theory the basics of finite state machines are about as hard as sorting algorithms. (Or do most CS programs these days cover even more ways to implement a regex parser? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4194707> I have no idea what most CS programs do other than produce BigCo BigLang employees, Stanford's _sounds_ better than that from all I've read and heard.) So no, instead of sorting algorithms, maybe they'll give up at suffix tries or Haskell Monads or Lisp macros or relational databases or garbage collectors or JITs or Bayesian networks or operating systems or... And while I don't know much about iPhone apps, I think Android apps are at least as hard as InsertionSort() and probably more frustrating. You even have a consulting business around them-- does anyone have a business around sorting algorithms?

Who knows what their motivations are? Someone at Stanford should do a poll. I'd bet the same amount on "want to make something easy-sounding and specific like phone apps", "want to make lots of money doing who knows what" (maybe even as concrete as working for BigCo or doing a startup), and "because it sounds interesting/friends are doing it/other social reasons". If we're going to imagine them as fairly dim, it's easier to imagine they have no concrete goal in mind. (Edit: and according to my sibling comment, since majors aren't declared until later we probably shouldn't be imagining these students as dim.)

<comment><USER8> I wasn't trying to imply they are dim, I'm sure at Stanford they're brighter than the average students. My comment was more about CS degrees in general. I have talked to quite a few CS grads that were expecting more of a software engineering degree and were disappointed with what they thought was too much useless theory. I probably could have picked better examples to make my point.

<comment><USER9> Ah, thanks for clarifying. I've heard and read similar complaints, though they usually take the form that the CS programs just do a bad job with both the theory and the applications. I've read some and asked some to break down "a bad job" in theory, it leads to complaints like "outdated", "seems useless", "is useless", "needlessly complicated when we have X", "bad teacher", "presented slowly", "nothing bleeding-edge/it's all from the 60s", and so on. Breaking down a bad job in applications is mostly "didn't teach me X."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Recent Stanford alum here. I think it's difficult to parse out exactly why CS is becoming popular at Stanford now.

I would argue that the principal reason for the popularity of CS is because of the amazing teaching in the introductory courses, not the recent tech acquisitions or news coming from Silicon Valley.

Very few departments at Stanford put in the kind of effort to bring students along that I've seen in computer science (most prominently, the use of an army of qualified undegraduate students to serve as TAs for the introductory courses). Almost every engineering student I know has taken an intro CS course, and an easy majority of everyone else has at least attempted to do so as well. They're fun, easy, and accessible.

I would be interested to see the same sort of effort put into say, introductory physics or chemistry. The now-second most popular major, Human Biology, also represents a very big effort to reach out to students.

<comment><USER11> That is amazing because most universities tend to have the dullest CS teaching crew. I mean, serious insomnia treatments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm amazed there could be negative reaction to this. Just think of it this way: every year there are literally armies of smart young people, who are fully capable of being top-notch programmers or engineers, who graduate and become lawyers or go to wall street. Many of them spend their time on things that add _negative value_ for the economy. Every single one of those people who goes into engineering is an entire career that helps the US economy instead of hurting it.

(Note: if you like, read "western capitalist democracy economies" instead of "US economy").

</comment><comment><USER13> _"A quarter of all undergraduates and more than 50% of graduate students [at Stanford] are engineering majors."_

I can attest Stanford really feels like a tech school in disguise, especially at the graduate level.

<comment><USER14> Actually, I was surprised that the number is that low... but maybe it's because i'm around techies all day and tend to consider the fuzzies as cute, inconsequential thingy that hang around our campus like butterflies do around a pond :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Luckily, many people can major CS but only the competent can pass...given its a respectable program.

<comment><USER16> It's Stanford! Like medical school, once you're in, _nobody_ fails.

If you need tutoring, money or a sympathetic shoulder, there's plenty available.

<comment><USER14> Oh, people do fail. They just withdraw, keep attending the course, and retake it for a grade the quarter after. As long as they get the subject eventually, it's all that matters, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What are the implications of this popularity for us non-Ivey league current Computer Science majors?

<comment><USER18> I would say that the only difference that you have to overcome is the tight- knit community of alums. As a CS/OR major from a Top 4 school, I haven't ever gotten an internship offer simply because I was at the school I'm at. Stanford especially is good at fostering connections in the startup community for their students, but Princeton has NY and Harvard has Boston.

<comment><USER19> What is an OR major please? Google didn't help.

<comment><USER20> I don't know about Stanford, but in several other schools, it stands for Operations Research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting to know how many applicants got interested in Computer Science from watching Stanford's excellent iOS courses on iTunesU.

Additionally, it would be interesting to learn how many students declare Computer Science before they enroll and how many students switch into Computer Science because "all their friends are doing it" now that it's the most popular major.

<comment><USER22> Or how many people went into CS after seeing The Social Network.

vvv - luckily programming polices itself. Those who are not seriously motivated will unlikely survive a serious CS gauntlet.

<comment><USER23> _shudder_

This is a caveat of trying to popularize programming.

Sometimes I wish it was still purely for 'nerds'.

<comment><USER24> Why should you care why people got interested in computer science? As long as they're capable of doing it (and if they graduate from a place like Stanford, they probably will be) why should you care about their motivation?

I personally think anything that makes more people interested in technology is "a good thing".

<comment><USER25> If people pursue a discipline because "the industry is hot", rather than because of genuine interest in the subject or enjoyment of learning / improving, bad things happen to them when the industry inevitably cools down.

I think about the CS majors during the times of the .dom boom, or the architecture majors during the housing/construction boom, and wonder how many students were stuck with a degree that was difficult to find a job with, _and_ were not inherently interested about in the first place.

<comment><USER26> The approach to problem solving you acquire from any rigorous scientific endeavor will benefit you for the rest of your life. These benefits will probably still apply regardless of whether or not you go on to be a practitioner.

I suspect we can find more than a few data points here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mehan Sahami. Eric Roberts. Julie Zelenski. Jerry Cain. (bonus: keith schwarz). Look no further for explaining the rise in popularity and quality of the Stanford CS intro course. I had the privilege of sitting in the class of each of these guys and they were all respectively the best professor/teacher I ever had. Period.

</comment><comment><USER27> What was the most popular prior?

<comment><USER28> HumBio (Human Biology) for quite a few years and I think before that, it was either International Relations or Economics. HumBio is really popular because of pre-meds and other people who want to get into bio-related jobs/grad programs.

<comment><USER29> HumBio also tended to be the major of no major, the major people declared and the classes they took when they were required to declare a major but hadn't yet figured out what they wanted to major in. The first couple of years of classes were considered relatively easy yet still mostly applicable to many other majors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Bubble?

<comment><USER31> Bubble. No way are all those kids going to be real programmers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or so you think...

<comment><USER32> Worst case we have a surplus of maintenance programmers.

What could possibly go wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _"... the new focus on X, for the moment, suggests how much faith we're putting — for our careers and our overall future — in the Y world. ..."_

Replace X with engineering or book binding and Y with steam powered or printing and it looks similar to other eras of technological growth.

</comment><comment><USER34> And how many of them "reach the end"? How many of them are women?

</comment><comment><USER35> I think the rise in CS at Stanford is due to a confluence of several factors, not any single one thing:

* The Social Network & The Death of Steve Jobs (capitalized for a reason) & The Rise of Elon Musk, Mr. PayPal-Tesla-SpaceX & the other software billionaires doing exciting things getting media coverage

* the software/startup "bubble" -- the perception of it anyway; the crazy big acquisitions of young one soft-product companies with low/no revenue and only 1-3 years old, etc.

* crappy job market right now for 18 year olds, or even a twenty-something graduate with a non-STEM degree

* iOS & Android app development, the tutorials, how easy it appears you can make money at it. iPhones as a gateway drug leading in that direction for some percentage of it's more ambitious users. Rise of Apple in general and the Mac, an additional vector leading in this direction.

* the recent rise in online "courses" by Stanford, etc.

* the high pay and perceived higher job security of this field, at least right now

* more serious people (or those with smart advisors) who sense the future trend of greater software automation, mobile apps, robots, drones, embedded logic, etc.

It's probably a mix of the above, different for each person. All adds up.</comment>


A home phone line powered by Skype and ready for prime time - <AUTHOR> http://skypejournal.com/blog/2011/04/13/a-home-phone-line-powered-by-skype-and-ready-for-prime-time/ <comment><USER2> Since Google hasn't bothered to resurrect Gizmo5 in any real way (no, calling from gmail isn't the same), does anyone know of a real competitor? I would like to replace my Vonage line with something much cheaper, seeing as how we use it about 60 minutes per month. And it needs to be a "real" home line -- that is, plug voice adapter into wall, plug home phone into wall, voila.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google voice forwarded to a sipgate account works wonderfully well for me.

Skype is getting more expensive everyday. And now with added connection fee badness.

</comment><comment><USER4> ummmmm... wtf? This sounds a lot like a setup of google voice. I create a GV account for my "home" phone which is forwarded to my cell phones. If only I had sprint cell service in my apartment. Works literally everywhere but there.</comment>