What a Real Train System Looks Like (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://newworldeconomics.com/what-a-real-train-system-looks-like/ <comment><USER5> That's 2009. The Shinkansen goes to Hokkaido now, via underwater tunnel.[1]

Japan has a plan to run a superconducting maglev train between Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. It's a huge job. The "Japanese Alps" are in the way. Most of the route would have to be in tunnels cut through hard rock.

It's not just talk. _The first section is already running_. At 500km/hr. There are working trainsets running on 42km of track, mostly in tunnels. Stations are under construction. Tunneling continues. Construction started in 2014. Completion in 2027, to Nagoya. Osaka 10 years later.

Many Asian cities now have large new monorail systems. Daegu, 30 stations. Mumbai, 17 stations. Chongqing, 64 stations. Many smaller systems, too.

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

<comment><USER6> For comparison: here in West Seattle, we will get what essentially is a tramway in 2033. It's less than 15km from downtown.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When you look at the Tokyo railway map it looks like a totally unnavigational maze.

Actually, and despite the fact that services are provided by more than half a dozen independent companies, it's quite easy to navigate. Even when you run into vertigo when seeing it for the first time.

Each line, no matter if Tokyo metro, private metro, JR, private railway is color coded and has a fixed one or more unique letter designation.

Say, you want to go to Ginza, to just take one example. You don't even have to remember the station name. You just need to know the station codes. In this case M16 (red), H08 (gray) or G9 (orange). The letter designates the metro line, while the number represents the station for the respective line. And each combination is unique.

That, in combination with a PASMO or SUICA smart card makes orientation very straight forward and seamless.

<comment><USER8> I was able to navigate the Tokyo system on my first visit better than I could navigate the New York system, even though I had lived in New York for years. I credit the high quality signage.

<comment><USER9> Yes, 100%. That, combined with Google Maps for routing made any sort of train or metro interaction in all of Japan utterly painless.

The only time I got lost was when I couldn't immediately find a Tokyo Metro station and Google Maps sent me to the JR station on the other end of the mall. Even then, it only took me a few minutes of wandering around to find what I was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jane Jacobs talks about how cities generally fall into one of two different kinds of equilibria: a public transit equilibrium, and a car equilibrium. In each one, the preferred kind of mobility further shapes land use to make that kind of mobility even more preferable.

Most of North America is so stuck in the car equilibrium that it seems hopeless. There's not even a handful of cities that would be nice to get around or live in without a car. This seems like it would take decades to correct, even if most North Americans actually wanted to. As an semi-extremist urbanite I'm incredibly pessimistic about this.

I'm somewhat hopeful about new mobility methods like bikeshare or even rideshare, but none of them seem to be actively driving land use changes.

<comment><USER11> You don't need a huge public transit system to make the jump. You need high density + mixed use over a relatively small area with good public transit in that area. Which lets two car families drop to one car family's. This reduces the need for public parking pushing up density and property values. It also makes links to that core of good public transit more valuable.

The main problem in the US is you don't get both high density and mixed use.

PS: His harping on Vienna Fairfax completely misses the point, it's the last stop on the orange line, the parking allows a vast area to commute via the subway including many people just visiting DC. The Pentagon City and Crystal City stops for example directly connect to shopping next to huge residential sections and have minimal parking.

<comment><USER12> I'm amused by the Fairfax bit. I used to live within walking distance of that station. Almost all of the green space in the article's image is now designated for commercial use (the remainder has housing), has plans ready to go, and is just waiting for the developer to start putting shovels into the ground. But the developer apparently doesn't think it would be worth the cost of construction, so it just sits there.

I'm not sure what else you could do there, unless you want to have the government heavily subsidize commercial development, which seems like a recipe for empty, decaying buildings in a decade or two.

<comment><USER13> The American fascination with single use zoning is so counterproductive. If commercial doesn't work, just put housing next to it! Or build the housing first, or something. Pair with a tax designed to disincentivize land squatting.

And it doesn't need to be eight story apartments with elevator, garbage, the whole shebang; a four-family house like this would still be a massive improvement over most American suburbs. [https://activerain- store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/upload...](https://activerain- store.s3.amazonaws.com/image_store/uploads/1/5/4/4/9/ar137731682494451.jpg) Plus with how expensive DC is, you could do worse than selling houses.

<comment><USER12> This one is the opposite. The developers would be happy to build nothing but housing, but the government wants offices and retail too. The developers built as much housing as they were allowed to without doing the rest (my house was one of them) and then basically bailed out.

<comment><USER13> But what the government wants isn't necessarily what the market will support. Fairfax has a very high office vacancy rate, particularly in newer buildings, so I'm not surprised that developers don't want to build buildings that will stay vacant. [1]

When I say single use, I'm not talking about the neighborhood, I'm talking about the land itself; it sounds like the developer is restricted from building anything other than commercial or retail on that particular portion of the neighborhood. Even in the overheated property markets of New York, the new all-office World Trade Center is struggling with vacancy, and Hudson Yards had to be revamped from all-office to mixed-use because there's simply too much office space on the market. And even after they did that, the city had to offer tax breaks so that companies would populate the new district.

[1] - [https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/04/23/in- fa...](https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/04/23/in-fairfax- county-obsolete-office-buildings-are-in.html)

<comment><USER12> That portion is supposed to be a mix of all three. It's possbible that some modification of the mix would be profitable, but supposedly the retail is non- viable without a population of office workers to provide steady traffic.

Oddly, the massive success of mixed-use development at the nearby Dunn Loring station is being used as an excuse to sit on this project, because they say it's too close and couldn't compete. (Meanwhile, a massive new mixed use development is going up just half a mile down the road.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In these discussions there is always a lot of griping about the US's poor rail infrastructure when the US actually has the 2nd most used rail networks in the world. It's just almost entirely used for freight. An equally valid question is why does Europe transport almost all of its freight by truck?

Obviously geography and population density - network effects scale with the square of population in reasonable service area - are huge factors. A multi- day freight trip is quite common while only a tiny fraction of passenger trips are more than a few hours - the reasonable service areas are vastly different.

In Europe you have multiple overlapping country sized rail networks. While this gives the impression of a continental sized network (especially to Eurail pass riding in American tourists) very few people are taking trains journeys more than a few hours even in Europe.

Another big issue is the incompatibility of freight and passenger rail services. It is very difficult to run both services on the same tracks at high service levels. The US focus on fright has hampered long distance and even regional passenger rail services. While in France the government decided to focus on passengers and eliminated all but a few freight routes. It would take an additional complete parallel rail infrastructure to do both well which would be quite expensive. So far the US and Europe haven't thought this was worth it. China might be going this way.

Perhaps this simply makes sense given the differing situations.

<comment><USER15> It's not a huge difference. By tonne-km, the EU uses rail for 17%, and the USA for 31%.

So I accept that the USA uses the rail network almost entirely for freight, but it's not true that the EU transfers "almost all" freight by truck.

Freight trains in Europe tend to run at much higher speeds than in the USA. For example, in Britain container trains can run at up to 75mph, and 140km/h in Germany. But compared to the USA, Europe already has a complete parallel infrastructure: pretty much every route has two tracks. I've only been on one long-distance passenger train in the USA, but there were long periods where there was only a single track.

[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Freight_transport_statistics_-_modal_split)

[https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles- freight](https://www.bts.gov/content/us-ton-miles-freight)

[https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight- tr...](https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/how-fast-are-freight-trains-in- the-uk.16067/)

<comment><USER14> By your own references the EU28 transports around 75% of its freight by truck while the US is around 40%. Seems like a huge difference to me.

And EU28 stats are distorted by Northern and Eastern Europe where rail freight is big. Italy and France are over 80% truck and France and the UK are over 90%. Even Germany - famous for its freight rail network 150 years ago - transports only about 19% of freight by rail and 72% by truck.

While I understand why US doesn't have a national rail passenger network - <USER2> distances are simply too far between most population concentrations - it is somewhat of a mystery why so little freight travels by rail in Europe and so much by truck. Did the passenger rail network cannibalize the previously existing freight network?

If passenger trains just replaced freight trains and trucks replaced cars, is this really the model to emulate?

<comment><USER15> >> Perhaps this simply makes sense given the differing situations.

I think that's the only reasonable conclusion. There are so many differences: in economies, wealth distribution, consumer preference (e.g. for local produce), population density, landmass shape (international shipping isn't in the EU statistics, but is at least as significant as coastal shipping in the USA), infrastructure (EU has no problem building new pipelines), ...

I can't find a good source of statistics, but it seems very possible that the USA simply transfers far more goods for more km (overland) than the EU.

> Did the passenger rail network cannibalize the previously existing freight > network?

I'm aware of a shortage of rail capacity in particular places, e.g. traversing/avoiding London, but I don't think that's a general problem.

More likely, the same types of journey on both continents moved to road (e.g. farmer to local market/distribution centre, factory to another factory in the same general area), but in the US long distance transport of imports from Asia increased.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lets get real here, its partially a chicken and egg problem, but the population and density has to be there to support such a dense and useful train system. Parts of my city (Chicago) support the kind of rail stations he talks about. Some parts do not as the density here varies greatly but generally speaking...

Tokyo has nearly 10 million people in about 1000 square miles of land

Chicago has nearly 3 million people in about 10000 square miles of land

Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities of greater than 1 million people within 600 miles.

Chicago has none, New York is about 730 miles away.

Clearly a world of difference in the sort of density and distances that just don't necessarily support the same kind of rail system.

Even then parts of Chicago closely match his experience in Tokyo, though certainly not to the same quantity and quality.

A picture of a far north chicago L stop I lived near at one point in my life, right near the end of the line.

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-87.6681...](https://email@example.com,-87.6681424,1178m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x880fd1ae5bbe3967:0x43666fdee150c8fd!8m2!3d42.0082839!4d-87.6659537)

Nearly every stop along that train route is in the center of a neighborhood at least going north.

Where Chicago screwed up was putting L stops in the middle of freeways rather than in the center of neighborhoods for certain sections and lines. It honestly makes those areas feel like the heart of the neighborhood has been cut out of it, there is no central spot where people have a reason to be. And who really wants to live right next to a 12/8/6 lane free way? No one, and certainly that's where Chicago neighborhoods no longer feel like the cozy place where people hang out, eat, drink, and catch their ride into work.

<comment><USER17> > Lets get real here ... > Tokyo probably has at least 5 metropolitan cities > of greater than 1 million people within 600 miles.

Greater Tokyo is about 38 million people within 50-80 miles (5.200 sq mi)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's too bad he never mentions the Netherlands. We have few metros but take his 'walk to the station' idea and introduced 'cycle to the station'. You can always store your bike at a Dutch trainstation and coupled with good cycling infrastructure this increases the area served by a station.

We also have cross-country trains every 10 minutes and if you get to a station where you don't have a bike you can rent one from the train company. Or rent a car if you're a bit further away.

There's always room for improvement but right now they have a 90% on time record on an open rail system they share with competitors, foreign train services, and freight trains.

Adding bikes to the equation could solve America's "but our urban communities are too sparse to be served by a metro/train". A bike gets you quite far in 10 minutes. Let alone an e-bike or an electric scooter.

In Utrecht, the main station in our star-grid, they just opened a bicycle parking with 22.000 spots! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3M_GM_MDg8)

edit: this is what our national rail looks like: [https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaar...](https://www.spoorpro.nl/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/spoorkaart-20181.jpg)

<comment><USER19> The Dutch and Danish approach to cycling is just from a different world. Even cities that I consider decent for cycling, like Berlin, pale in comparison to any larger Dutch or Danish city. And once you introduce cycling into commuting systems at that scale, yes, it enables you to design those systems in new ways.

<comment><USER20> It also requires a shift in focus away from prioritising cars to prioritising pedestrians and cyclists. In the Netherlands, you can be sure that every town planner owns a bicycle _and commutes on it frequently_. I live in Ireland. I've met regional town planners here. None of them own a bicycle.

Traffic planners here call the traffic state when pedestrians are crossing the road "dead time".

<comment><USER21> One of these days when I've got nothing better to I'm going to put together a little photo essay of the bike racks I know of in my city that don't even work. Using a conventional U-lock you can't even lock your bike to them.

Some are too fat for a U-lock to fit around. Some are placed so close to a wall that you can't fit your bike in. Others have these vertical slats that you can stick your front tire in between, but you can't lock your frame to anything secure.

The people who designed and implemented these things must have never used a bicycle for practical purposes. The stupidity is mind boggling. It's not a difficult thing to get right.

<comment><USER22> Stick your rear tyre into those slats, usually this allows locking frame and rear wheel. Wirelock on the frontwheel if wanted. Also, the foldable locks are much more practical than the U-style locks.

<comment><USER21> I'm pretty loyal to the U-lock, it's the fastest. When I was a messenger, locking and unlocking 50 times a day, we all used them. It takes 5 seconds when you got your system down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I feel like the argument weakens when he compares countries. I'm looking at the railway maps of France and Japan thinking: 'this entire country is the size of a single, largeish US state'.

Total land area is a problem to be solved in the US for train travel, and we only have Russia and China to compare to.

City to city comparison makes much more sense

<comment><USER24> > _this entire country is the size of a single, largeish US state_

So why is there no comparable railway network in those largeish US states that are comparable to EU countries? Or in the many (almost all of them) states that are smaller than France and Japan?

<comment><USER25> Because there would be nowhere to go. Imagine building a rail network in New York. Where would it go? How often do people need to get from NYC to Syracuse? And if you built a train to Syracuse, what would you do once you got there (without a car)? The city is the centerpiece of a region with a million people, less than 1/6 of whom live inside the city?

<comment><USER26> The northeast US conurbation is one of the densest conglomerations of urban centres in the world. A proper high-speed rail system would take you from NYC to Philadelphia in less than an hour and to Boston or DC in a couple of hours. The "US is so big and sparsely populated" excuse really doesn't hold water.

<comment><USER27> The US is designed differently than the other heavily developed areas of the world. It's not about being "too big" or "not dense enough", it is more complicated than that.

The Northeast US has a similar statistical density as areas of Europe but looks so much physically different. Take some time on Google Earth and check it out. There is a nonstop blob of suburbs that go almost all the way from DC to Boston. In a proposed train network, most of the population has a long trip to the central station before they can take the train to the other city. They still need a car, and need somewhere to park it. In Europe or Asia cities are more concentrated, and the countrysides are less populated.

Building a center-city to center-city train network in the US is not impossible, but it simply wouldn't be as efficient as it would be in Europe or Asia because of the way the cities are designed.

<comment><USER26> Sure. Obviously it would require a new approach to planning and zoning. As the article says, rail corridors are obvious places for high-density mixed-use development. That aside, driving to a station and taking a train from there is still better than no trains at all.

<comment><USER27> The article presents DC's park and ride station as "a perfect example of WHAT NOT TO DO". But it's really all they can do if they must force a train system into an area without the right kind of density.

I very much agree we need a new approach to planning an zoning. We need to focus on that first. It could take longer than a generation to transition away from the suburban model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > These days, it's easy to make subway systems because we have amazing > tunneling machines, which will bore a train-sized hole like a giant rock- > eating worm. So, no excuses.

I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new 2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago, and will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took 67.

We're not so great at bridges, either. One of my managers observed "We've got 4 floating bridges, and we sank 2 of them." That was back when I was on the Boeing 7E7 project (first flight: 28 months late).

Is it any wonder we can't get excited about the prospect of an "easy" new rail project? We can't estimate big engineering projects to within 50%, and we can't keep existing infrastructure afloat (literally). I always vote for public transit on principle, but I'm also aware it's always going to take longer and cost more than they claim, so I can't really blame people who don't.

Want broad support for infrastructure projects? First, demonstrate you can execute on them reliably. Nobody wants to agree to pay for a tunnel that might end up being the next "Big Dig".

<comment><USER29> > I wouldn't say "easy". It's possible. Here in Seattle, we're building a new > 2-mile tunnel (for cars). It was originally scheduled to open 3 years ago, > and will finally open in 2019. It was planned to take 29 months, but took > 67.

To add to this, some areas are made of materials that are simply difficult to bore through. Atlanta, for example, sits on top of a bunch of granite which at least partially contributes to the difficulties of underground rail expansion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Adding one lesser known example of imho outstanding public transportation service is Vienna, Austria - not the largest of cities, at 1.9 Mio inhabitants, and about half the area of Berlin (or 1/4 of London), still the 6th largest city in Europe.

You can get almost anywhere within half an hour tops, the Metro runs till after midnight weekdays and 24/7 on the weekends, there's an extensive system of Tramways & Busses to cover anything a bit farther from a Metro station.

And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the services for 1€/day, billed monthly.

This is mostly to stress the point of how much you take such a system for granted when it's available and just works - since I've moved here owning a car would be almost an inconvenience, and even London feels like a horrible public transportation experience.

<comment><USER31> > And you can get a yearly subscription, giving you all-inclusive usage of the > services for 1€/day, billed monthly.

This kind of thing is key - make it easy to use transit and lower the marginal cost of doing so. Yearly subscriptions are good. London's approach—unify almost all modes under the same payment system with automatically calculated caps and discounts—also works quite well as you don't have to think about buying passes, individual tickets, etc. Just tap and go and the system takes care of it for you.

Not many places in the US have this level of integration yet. For instance, the NYC Ferry, NYC Subway, LIRR, Metro North, PATH, and regional Amtrak service all use disjoint ticketing methods. It'll slowly get integrated over the next decade, but it greatly increases the mental effort needed to hop on transit. Perhaps the closest in the US is the Bay Area's Clipper Card - <USER3> managed to shoehorn over a dozen area agencies onto the same payment method - but it's still not quite as good as something like London's Oyster.

<comment><USER32> The TAP card in Los Angeles is good for dozens of local public transport companies. For quite a while, this was not the case; you could only use it on Metro (County-level agency). The integration over the years has certainly increased my use of transit in the area; there are many tiny, obscure transit systems in Los Angeles County and I can ride almost all of them now without having to carry any cash or change. Sometimes you can even get cross-company transfer fares with the TAP. It's fantastic.

[https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to- ri...](https://www.taptogo.net/articles/Website_content/where-to-ride)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author, Nathan Lewis, makes frequent references to concepts he established in detail in previous articles. For example, "Traditional City", "Place", "19th Century Hypertrophic City".

All of his articles on cities:

[https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city- post...](https://newworldeconomics.com/category/traditional-city-post-heroic- materialism/)

</comment><comment><USER33> It's a shame this article doesn't lay out any plan for how to get from where the US is now to where the author would like it to be. You're not going to dig up the existing train stations, so how could the parking be converted to shops and housing? How can you persuade drivers and politicians to support whatever other steps are necessary? (eg. converting roads to railways)

<comment><USER34> I wonder what changed in our mindset in the last 50 years that such projects seem impossible now but possible back then. I mean subways were not any easier to build 100 or 50 years ago than today. And it surely was not cheaper.

<comment><USER35> My favorite theory is that the post WW2-era American value shifted to personal liberty and the American dream: your home, your picket fence, and your car. You choose where you go, when you go, and how you get there. Drive on those new interstates! Take the family for a picnic. Go surfing!

How can you be truly independent and live that perfect magazine cover life if you've got to wait on the 9:27 to take you to the B line so you won't be late to work?

<comment><USER36> I think the_mitsuhiko is wondering not about rail projects specifically, but about a loss of confidence about performing large-scale projects in the abstract sense, independent of what the project is for.

For example, in 1930 it seemed feasible to build the Hoover dam; in 1950 it seemed feasible to build the interstate highway system; in 1960 it seemed feasible to land a man on the moon.

Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations. And those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically, politically, and financially) to get such things done?

<comment><USER37> > Now, in 2018, people think it isn't feasible to build some train stations. > And those people might be right! What happened to our ability (practically, > politically, and financially) to get such things done?

Over time and increasing population there is a evolutionary niche filling kind of process that occurs within social, political, economic, cultural and other axes/planes/spheres. After the density of these filled niches increase sufficiently over some threshold, our civilization experiences a calcification of movement across the niches.

Each niche acts as a middleman to extract some portion of energy to successfully navigate across them. This takes the form of some kind of concession, trade, grant, swap, boon, promise, _etc._ Fill a path with enough niches that didn't use to exist before, and we experience it as "we can't get it done" because the cumulative energetic cost rises above a tolerable amount.

Historically, the emergent property in most capitalist structures appears to naturally tend towards influencing government agents via the principal agent challenge to support/enforce increasingly rentier behavior over time and deviate from capitalist structures; I personally believe this is due to scaling issues (Adam Smith was not a fan of the kind of large-scale capitalism we take for granted today). This wasn't supposed to happen according to some economic schools of thought, but here we are. And niche filling, and use of our government to enforce stakeholder extraction claims, appear as another form that this behavior takes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Westfriedhof station pictured is also in Munich, not Stockholm, guess it's a copy/paste error. It _is_ kinda nice, but it's relatively young (15 years maybe?) whereas most of our subway stations are from the 70s and not half as nice.

Edit: it's 20 years old, not 15: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_(Munich_U- Bahn)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfriedhof_\(Munich_U-Bahn\)) and the others pictured are also on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg- Brauchle-Ring_(Munich_U-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg-Brauchle- Ring_\(Munich_U-Bahn\)) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_(Munich_U- Bahn)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidplatz_\(Munich_U-Bahn\))

<comment><USER39> Old does not mean it has to look shabby as the moscow stations demonstrate. Or these from berlin:

[http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful- under...](http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/07/02/beautiful-underground- gems-of-the-berlin-u-bahn/)

<comment><USER38> No of course not, but some stations here have this "this wall was modern in the 70s, also it's kinda grimy and some of the tiles fell off" look - <USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_(Munich_U- Bahn)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendlinger_Tor_\(Munich_U-Bahn\)), but some were worse. They are renovating some - and to be honest if it's structurally sound I couldn't care less if it looks shabby, I was just trying to point out the differences - because some of the newer ones look really nice :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > This is the train map for Washington DC. As you can see, it is an irrelevant > little fart of a train system.

I used to live in Japan, now I live in Southern California near the Gold Line, which is the pride of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The Gold line is approximately as long as the dinky little private Tawaramoto Line that cuts a triangle between JR Oji Stn and Kintetsu Tawaramoto Stn in Nara Prefecture. Except the Tawaramoto Line always ran at least four cars while MTA's Gold Line only runs that many during rush hour. LA's crown jewel Union Station is approximately the size of a mid-size suburban station in Japan. It's incredibly sad.

</comment><comment><USER41> "These days, it's easy to make subway systems because we have amazing tunneling machines..."

 _-spits out coffee comically-_

I suppose compared to 1905 it's easier, but it's still not "easy." Tunneling never goes off without some kind of hitch, and almost always goes over budget or off-schedule.

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

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

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

I agree with the general thrust of the piece though.

<comment><USER42> Nah, the super expensive and always goes way over budget are features of subways only when Americans make them, unfortunately. That's not to say no one else has construction projects that go over budget, but the rest of the world -- more developed countries and less developed countries alike -- all manage to build infra for way less money, and much closer to budget.

If we want nice things -- like trains that work! -- we have to figure this out.

see, for example, [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so- ex...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to- build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/)

and

[https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction-c...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/27/construction- costs-metro-stations/)

<comment><USER41> You're generally right and I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, but the one example I thought of belatedly AFTER hitting "Add Comment" on the above, just happened to be this... in a country that mostly seems to have its shit much more together than the US, too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Archive_of_the_City_of_Cologne#Collapse_of_the_archive_in_2009)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> As a DC resident, I partially agree with his conclusion on the DC metro. But, the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown. Tokyo is a much larger city than DC. so, it's a bit apples to oranges.

It was designed to get people into the city from the suburbs. As such, it completely fails today, where most jobs are also in the suburbs. It fails for reverse commuting as well, because, as noted, most stations are not within walking of commercial hubs.

That said, the expansion to Dulles came with lots of rezoning and denser development. Arlington started this before the expansion with the Courthouse- Clarendon-Ballston areas, with increased density and walkable zones. Reston and Herndon are doing similar things.

Now, if we can figure out how to build a line from Tyson's to Rockville or Bethesda (without going all the way downtown and back out again).

<comment><USER15> > But, the stations he chose are suburban, not downtown.

Why? They could have been constructed downtown (assuming you mean in Vienna or Fairfax, rather than in the middle of the motorway not-especially-near either of them). Or they could have been surrounded by the shopping malls that instead are nearish (but too far to walk).

The town (Vienna) is almost 2km to the north, and doesn't have a station — yet it used to! There's a path/trail labelled "Washington and Old Dominion Trail", which is obviously an old railway line, ripped up and replaced with a bike path.

Since the article mentions Stockholm, I've chosen the metro station furthest from the centre of Stockholm [1], and the station before it.

It's a suburban area, but the stations are still in the middle of the 'suburban centres'. They're within 150m of multiple schools/colleges, a shopping mall, a culture centre and a theatre.

Stockholm also has commuter railway lines ("Pendeltåg") extending further from the city, not shown by Google's map. These stop at some fairly small places, but it will still be somewhere in the middle of each place.

[0] [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-77.2713152,5435m/da...](https://email@example.com,-77.2713152,5435m/data=!3m1!1e3)

[1] [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,17.8132863,1092m/dat...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,17.8132863,1092m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e2)

<comment><USER44> The Orange line in Fairfax County was constructed in the median of I66 to save money. That was a huge mistake. The difference between the Orange line in Arlington where the locals lobbied to have it routed through actual neighborhoods and the Orange line in Fairfax County where it sits in the middle of an eight-lane highway is staggering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The US is indeed addicted to cars, and particularly for those living in the suburbs this is a sunk investment. It really doesn't help that the cities are (usually) NOT built to building codes that actually encourage privacy between units, that needs to get fixed too.

However, an upgrade path would be a great idea. That path must allow for the transit systems (either highly regulated utilities or community owned) to spread.

        * New core has the target service level in place.
        * That service links to a PROPER parking structure at en edge.
        * Such structure should be SECURE (unfortunately monitored)
        * Also package transport services in addition to people.

Renting 'a spot' in that area, as part of a residence OR as part of visiting should be low cost, and shouldn't /punish/ owning a car. The idea is you're incentivizing use of the new zone as well as commerce within it. The parking structures become a gateway as well as additional storage (and should convert to that when use for parking decreases).

</comment><comment><USER46> One thing these articles nearly always gloss over is that these beautiful, clean metro systems stay that way partially because they close down for maintenance at night. The New York system runs 24/7, as does most of the "sorry crap" in Chicago. I presume there's an article here scolding Americans for staying up too late or something.

<comment> a-nikolaev Well, the NYC subway is still grossly mismanaged, about 20-30% of it is down even on the best days, with tens if not hundreds route changes and station closures. On weekends and at night up to half of the system may not work. Because the system is poorly maintained, the trains run slower than what they should be, causing even more delays.

EDIT: edited percentage to 20-30%

<comment><USER47> > about 70-80% of it is down even on the best days,

I'm not usually one to defend the MTA but this is wildly inaccurate.

<comment> a-nikolaev thanks, I meant 70-80% is working

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> In the 50s, the US made a big bet that car based transportation was the future. It was, for awhile, but now it's clear that denser cities are the future, not suburbs. Countries that invested in infrastructure that supported dense cities are providing a higher quality of life compared to the "drive everywhere" culture of the States.

</comment><comment><USER49> "most of the rest of the developed world has quite wonderful subways and trains. They are clean, efficient, cheap, run on time, have as many as 20 or even 25 trains an hour...."

We used to have a lot of railroads in the US. Then the automobile came along, which started them going downhill, but there were still lots of them ... then the interstate freeway system was built (with planning help from the CEO of General Motors), and the railroad system couldn't compete for passengers. Passenger service was mostly gone 50 years ago.

But, you ask, did noone plan for the future? Well ... this _is_ the U.S. We only build it well once, then we argue about who should keep it repaired. Which is why the majority of our bridges are in a dangerous state.

</comment><comment> cuban-frisbee It's kinda funny seing an outside perspective on this. I live in europe and while we do have a decent rail system I always dream of a truly unified european rail network that can eliminate much of the air trafic. I don't know if that is possible with current technologies but a man can dream. Still it is pretty good what we have as the author states. I will spend an equivelant of about 50 us dollars to travel home and back for christmas, around 700 km total, which is actually cheaper than the equivalent cost in just gas if I was to drive (if I had a car that was, also not factoring bridge toll, which would make it substantially more expensive).

</comment><comment><USER50> Image captioned `Westfriedhof Station, Stockholm.` is actually `Westfriedhof Station, Munich.`

</comment><comment><USER51> Does anyone have comprehensive information on typical transportation department budgets in the US vs. some of these countries?

Anecdotally I had a civil engineer friend from Spain who always told me that the transportation budgets in the USA were tiny compared to in Europe.

It'd be great if it was politically feasible for the US government to take some money from the military and put it into ambitious public transportation infrastructure. National rail probably doesn't make sense but there are definitely regional and city systems that need some serious help.

<comment><USER52> Rail projects have a lot of political pushback in the US. They're expected to pay for themselves and realistically rarely manage to do so. They tend to be costed compared to cars, and somehow the cost of building and maintaining the roads is not included in that comparison, except for the relatively small fraction that comes from the gas tax.

So rail projects somehow never look economically viable compared to a magically free road system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Very cool article. Somewhat surprised China wasn't included on the list as they have built a high speed rail network in the last several decades that already has more track mileage than Europe's.

Where there is a will there is a way, as the saying goes, and America, and the UK, with their profit über alles obsession are happy to let infrastructure rot and make people use woefully underfunded and overcrowded rail systems rather than trying something "new."

</comment><comment><USER54> One picture is mistitled. The "Westfriedhof" Station is located in Munich, not Stockholm (also it's the station closest to where I used to live in Munich for almost 30 years). It's a very popular place among photographers.

</comment><comment><USER55> Too bad the article doesn't talk about the not so sexy trains which _were_ numerous and allowed travellers to go from small cities to other small cities.

The big/speedy trains only cover a few paths...

</comment><comment><USER56> subway stations from around the world, the second one is not Westfriedhof Station, Stockholm, it is in Munich Westfriedhof station!

</comment><comment><USER57> Lots of truths in the article.

BUT

Trains is always a system that picks winners & losers. The closer u r to the nearest station - the bigger winner u r.

I lived in London. Any location not within 1km of a station is basically a prison. Even if u have a car, you cant go anywhere (since no parking), and no one will come to you.

This is a particular problem when you adding trains (and impeding car) in an existing city.

<comment><USER58> Weird, so all the people taking the bus in London to and from stations must be hallucinating while they're trapped in their prisons?

<comment><USER57> A train+bus is a much higher threshold for many people.

Will you go to a lawyer that requires a bus+train? A restaurant? A party u r not too sure about ?

Trains are relatively dependable. The last mile is a big problem.

(To be clear : i am pro public transport. I have a bike and ebike which i love, and car i hate.)

<comment><USER59> Yes, millions of people do every single day in London and other cities across the UK.

Not sure where you're going? Citymapper will route across both tube and bus, it'll even tell you exactly when you get off.

You pay using a contactless card, apple pay or similar, it works.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Projects that power GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github <comment><USER2> Is there a reason why Github runs on it's own fork of Rails (I believe it's 2.3 or something), when they could just upgrade to Rails 4, from the official Master (which is faster and probably more stable AND most importantly with most security bugs fixed)??

Pardon me if I sound stupid, I'm just trying to understand why.

<comment><USER3> From my perspective, there have been a few different reasons why we haven't just upgraded:

1\. Time spent upgrading Rails is time not spent building awesome things for our customers to use. We're extremely customer focused.

2\. Performance is also a huge concern of ours. Over the past few years we've driven response times down dramatically. Upgrading Rails not only presents a slower framework (Rails 3/4 is not faster than 2.3), but a different architecture — changing where our performance chokes are. We'd have to do a ton of work on this front just to keep performance steady. Again, time spent here is time not spent making our existing infrastructure faster.

3\. We've spent the past three years working on upgrading the stack. It's not so black and white — we have many of the benefits of newer rails without needing to upgrade everything. There has been a lot of effort here.

In my own personal experience, upgrading frameworks is generally the fastest way to create bugs and work on the opposite of customer impact. I don't think you should feel like you have to be on the bleeding edge.

<comment><USER4> As per number 2, are these GH specific or can they be sent upstream?

<comment><USER5> Not completely sure all the blockers but I think it may have to do with 2.3 being in maintenance mode (may even be unsupported at this point).

Either way, being able to contribute back is definitely one of the things people are looking forward to about being on a current version. I've heard a few mention they'd love to be able to send any Rails performance bits upstream much like we see with the Ruby patches lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Missing something? :)

[https://github.com/git/git](https://github.com/git/git)

<comment><USER7> Actually, they use [https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2](https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2) to create and manage Git repos. "libgit2 is a portable, pure C implementation of the Git core methods"

(You can find that listed on the page)

<comment><USER8> Last I heard (couple months ago) it was used for a couple or three pieces of functionality only.

Based on my experience with it (master incredibly stale, not recommended, and the recommended "development" brittle and buggy), that's not surprising at all...

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry if you've found the development branch to be buggy - we strive for a high-level of stability there, so we'd be very pleased if you would open issues there.

<comment><USER8> Hey thx for the reply!

I was working closely (via IRC, email) with somebody (I forget whom) who discouraged work on master and suggested "development" \-- is that still the case?

The more I delved into git, the more I realized what a large delicate job it seems to be (which is a matter for a different discussion). Regardless -- apologies if I came across to harsh -- I haven't looked at it in months... will re-pull, give it another look.

Good luck w/ the development!!!

<comment><USER9> No, you did not come across as harsh, your criticism is very accurate. The master branch tracks the latest release and is stable, but unfortunately we do not release with great frequency. We work in the development branch and - while we try to keep it stable - there's not a strong guarantee that it is. Especially when there's ongoing work in an area, it may become somewhat destabilized. This is regrettable but, I hope, understandable.

We should certainly be better about more frequent releases. As it is, we tend to overreach. Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No mention of Resque. Is Github still using it, or moved on?

[https://github.com/resque/resque/tree/1-x-stable](https://github.com/resque/resque/tree/1-x-stable)

[edit -- thanks, I see that it is on the list now.]

<comment><USER11> We still use resque.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it true that Github runs a custom Rails fork? And if so, which version is it forked from?

<comment><USER13> Yes it's true (AFAIK). It's a fork of 2.3, and you can find it here:

[https://github.com/github/rails](https://github.com/github/rails)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What could I do to get my JavaScript game engine[1] listed on the JavaScript game engines showcase page[2]?

Or my music player server[3] on the music showcase[4]?

[1]: [https://github.com/andrewrk/chem](https://github.com/andrewrk/chem) [2]: [https://github.com/showcases/javascript-game- engines](https://github.com/showcases/javascript-game-engines) [3]: [https://github.com/andrewrk/groovebasin](https://github.com/andrewrk/groovebasin) [4]: [https://github.com/showcases/music](https://github.com/showcases/music)

</comment><comment><USER9> GitHub has also posted some of the projects that power GitHub for Windows: [https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github- for-...](https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github-for-windows) and GitHub for Mac: [https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github- for-...](https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github-for-mac)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there a special library used to power the comments editor? I'd love to have a library that let me do drag and drop images into markdown.

</comment><comment><USER16> So happy PJAX made the list. With all the JS frameworks out there I think this is the least appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER17> What about any DB? MySQL, or Postgres? Is it all Elastic Search?

<comment><USER18> They use MySQL and the MySQL Project use Bazaar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hey Github peeps! Hubot apparently occasionally looses his brain. Yes, it _looses_ its brain occasionally. That is all.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm actually surprised at how short the list is. Presumably they use a lot more open-source projects than this?!

</comment><comment><USER21> Wonder if they manually curate these lists or if they initially populated them with some sort of machine learning?

<comment><USER5> These are manually curated at the moment.

Though the selections may be inspired by machines. Or rabbits. Hard to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anybody know why they didn't go sidekiq instead of resque?

<comment><USER23> Sidekiq wasn't around when they made resque.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Curious to know if proxymachine is still used, anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER25> thanks for letting me know what should I learn beforehand to work at Github!

</comment><comment><USER26> where is [https://github.com/sexist/julie](https://github.com/sexist/julie) ?</comment>


If you hate women, I hate you - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-hate-women-i-david-yasnoff?published=t <comment><USER2> Ah, promotion of virtue signalling. I don't disagree with the sentiment but the requirement to post gets to me. Sigh.</comment>


IBM's Chris Valesek explains a complex Win32 heap corruption attack - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.iss.net/archive/2009bhtalkexplained.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The flaw they're talking about is memory corruption (in this case an integer overflow).

The problem is that Win32 randomizes the heap to make exploitation of these flaws difficult.

The solution, which is clever, pivots on the idea of finding a global ("hard") memory leak and a "soft" memory leak . Soft leaks aren't really leaks, but rathe allocations with a lifetime under the control of the attacker; for instance, memory that won't be freed until after a connection is closed.

By making a pattern of allocations that brackets a "soft" leak with two "hard" links, an attacker can cause the Win32 allocator to free memory of a known size without that memory being merged into another block (because the adjacent blocks are leaked).

Because of the way Win32 caches free blocks, doing this means that an attacker can predetermine the size of a block that will be returned by the allocator, and can use that information to reliably overwrite heap metadata, and thus gain control over the process.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is even better kungfu than the Flash bytecode verifier bug (from the same team!).</comment>


Today's JavaScript trash fire and pile on - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@cnorthwood/todays-javascript-trash-fire-and-pile-on-f3efcf8ac8c7 <comment><USER2> A pretty good actual summary of the problem.

As the article says, I'm not convinced code signing would have made this not happen - given the distribution model you could trivially just have node library updates check to see whether the owner/maintainer had the same user name.

Similarly it is absolutely not the fault of the old maintainer - no one should have to commit to permanently supporting a library they wrote years in the past. And if you weren't maintaining a library why would you necessarily be opposed to transferring ownership over to someone who is at least apparently working on/with it?

<comment><USER3> Because they could have and should have just forked it.

I wouldn't want my name being forever attributed to something I stopped working on years ago. If I make a lib with my name on it it's my lib and my name's gotta stay on it forever. Feel free to clone it and do whatever you want with it, but this one should stay mine for no other reason than the one we're seeing today. Then link to the latest maintained fork in your README.

<comment><USER2> The problem is not the github repo, it's the npm directory - specifically all those libraries that depend on libX resolve the library by that _name_. If you ever want to migrate ownership/maintainer of a library host through npm you have to take over the name.

The alternative is changing the name (should libfoo.js become libfoo2.js? Libfoo-maintainer_name.js) etc.

Then all the libraries that depend on it have to change their deps and their actual code (require(x) or import x are both based on library name).

If they don't then any libraries that transitively include the old version of the library could be compromised by any bugs that happen to be included in the old version, so you also can't say "everyone who cares about the library should update" because library A may depend on library-B which isn't updated.

If anything the problem here is that npm doesn't have any real "the maintainer has changed" notification, and that's couple with the average developer not having any way to know if that change is legitimately ok without auditing the published code.

<comment><USER4> Alternatively, they could add a _freeze_ option that locks to the last major version, and all newer releases would be a full release version when you switch maintainers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> crooked-v We don't need a standard library, they said. Letting basic functionality be spread out through a hundred thousand separate packages is fine, they said...

<comment><USER4> There is a standard library... what comes in Node, or what comes in the Browser... anything beyond that is non-standard. I'm not sure where your problem is here. It's true of any other platform on the planet, some things are in the box, others are not.

<comment><USER5> The complain is that Node/the browser's "box" is too small. OP wants a "batteries included" standard library.

If size/resource consumption is a concern, the library could be broken up and `import`ed as necessary now that modules are a thing. Whatever standards body that chooses to implement this wouldn't even need tot worry about breaking old code and name collisions, as it could all be opt-in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aside from validating your dependencies, when you run the code ensure it can't phone home.

On AWS, lock-down outgoing traffic. The Node instance (heaven help you if it's in a browser) on the back-end shouldn't be able to get out to anything, with the necessary exceptions of your codes back-end data store, and, perhaps temporarily, your deployment store.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe it could come down to requiring npm modules be accessible on a publicly accessible git repository with enough instructions in the package to build that package's output. Exceptions would be the more custom/large packages than the rule. Binary packages would of course also need some exceptions.

There could be a concept of "trusted" packages. That have had at least a review step. So either your package is trivial and easily automated or difficult with manual review. Where the costs are absorbed is the thing.

In the end, I do feel that anything that's being published publicly should have publicly available source, and that the build should be repeatable at the least... that wouldn't prevent such a thing (if it was checked into git), but would at least make it harder to hide.

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing I'm a bit confused about --

The attack was present in the minified JS, but not the source JS.

(I'm ignorant about NPM.) Does this mean on NPM, the publisher gets to publish the source AND the minified version? Is there no validation that the minified code is sourced from the true source code?

<comment><USER8> Publishing a package on npm is not much more than uploading a .tgz. You could put _anything_ in it as long as it has a package.json at its root. Nothing is done on Npm's side to ensure things are what they claim they are upon publishing: they only check (superficially) if you are not by any chance trying to republish the latest version. Even that is done locally, not at the registry level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The trust issue is a fundamental issue with volunteer / anonymously- contributed open source.

At least with paid software, in theory if not in practice, the organization publishing the software is responsible for verifying it, and for keeping track of whom it is employing to contribute to the code, so you can figure out who to lock up if they intentionally push malicious code.

</comment><comment><USER10> Another guy blaming a programming language because a third party independent company dont check out every single piece of line for malicious code. Kids these days think injecting 400 dependency libraries is a better idea than writing their own code. P.S Always remember, it's your responsibility to check out what code library you adding to your project.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry if it came across as blaming, I was trying to establish the structural issues with the ecosystem and reflect on ways we can improve on it. The classic "reflect, iterate & improve" cycle. Thanks for the feedback that that message was lost, I'll try better next time.

<comment><USER10> Two reasons. Either you clickbaiting with some catchy titles or you really believe it's reasonable next time someone push malicious code to Nuget I will start writing an article with a title "Why C# sucks..."

<comment><AUTHOR> If "clickbait" is writing enticing headlines, sure, I'm proud to be "guilty" of that, but the usual definition of clickbait is if the article contains no substance. I hoped that timeline and reflections would add value though. If you want to write a blog post called "Why C# sucks" if you feel the language and ecosystem specifically enables that go ahead. I don't really understand your hostility here, and I'm sorry if you feel I wasted your time with the summary. I'll choose not to engage further with you at this point as I'm not finding your feedback constructive.

<comment><USER11> It seems reasonably constructive to me. If I were to simplify what they're saying, with a nicer tone, it'd be "if you mean what you say, say what you mean".

I like to think of academic journal articles in that regard: the title neatly summarises the abstract (which itself summarises the article), so there's as little ambiguity as possible.

I have no opinion on the article either way, might just be something to sit at the back of one's head for next time. I get the feeling HN has two crowds: those who prefer newspaper-style articles and those who prefer academic journal-style articles. Difficult to find the happy medium (sic).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any thoughts on how these situations could be automatically detected by a third party given the current realities of the JS ecosystem? Here are some quick ideas:

1\. Detect commits that are radically different from previous ones in the same repo by some measure (tricky)

2\. Detect npm publish events whose contents are different than source repo

3\. Detect author/ownership changes in the context of npm packages

What else?

<comment><USER4> Require all public packages published from accessible source code built/compiled by the package repository project directly...

This would have the side effect of requiring likely paid exceptions for popular binary packages or those that have more complex build requirements. However, the vast majority of npm packages could probably be built via some form of template.

npm test - must have a configured script in package.json and must not error (this is easy enough to work around, but should be required)

npm run build - should be added as a required step, where the output to be packaged is outputted process.env.BUID_OUTPUT as a directory.

This would at the very least minimize some of the risks... signed commits could be an additional step, but coordination to make tooling for this easier to use would have to happen.

Also, ownership changes should have a FREEZE only allowing a new Major release after transfer of a package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I don't understand, how come there are no automatic red flags/or permissions when a deep dependency attempts to write on desk or make network calls?

I mean in theory any npm package could have a payload that would hijack the machine or override other system functions, where is the security in any of that?!

</comment><comment><USER14> This is so superficial. How can you talk about ecosystem fragility when NPM is one of the best open source companies and which actually cope with problems (unlike most package registries who are completely passive)

<comment><AUTHOR> The ecosystem is more than just NPM the company (or tool, or registry...). And I think the problem is far from superficial, if it was superficial it'd be trivial to fix.

In theory the same applies to PyPI or Rubygems or whatever else you use too, but it's the fact that JavaScript packaging culture has grown to have many, small "does one thing well" packages that makes it harder to be across those which you are giving trust to.</comment></comment>


Time for Developers to Take a Stance - <AUTHOR> Im very pissed these days. Countless fellow developers are expressing concerns about the Apple Store. The way the company positions itself is disgusting.
01: Always behind on the browser capabilities (on purpose), so they can force everything down their own pipeline.
02: Taking a huge cut of developers revenue, forcefully.
03: Unfair and inconsistent rules/guidelines, that they alter as they wish to fit their business.
04: API restrictions for certain developers, as they see fit.
05: Apple does not allow for third party browsers. Everything is a wrapper around Safari (on purpose again)
You see, the Apple Store is nothing without developers. We ARE the ecosystem of Apple, and its time we take a stance. What would the Iphone be without spotify, netflix, snapchat, facebook, youtube and all of the other famous third party applications?
Now this is where it becomes troublesome. These big billion dollar companies have the money and capabilities to go after them, forcing them to play fair. It might take some time, but they will.
This leaves the average Apple Customer happy, as they can use these top applications, eventually, and the circle continues.
We totally forgot that we are the ones in power, as a collective, we control apple, literally. What would happen if we took down everything from the store as a union with a message explaining how Apple is abusing its power, and we decided to take down our applications until Apple decides to play fair.
You think the average consumer would buy an iphone next time? heck no. Apple will sell a lot less phones, forcing them to rethink this fully closed and controlled system. We need to show the world that Apple is a closed and fully controlled system, and it limits what you can do. Because its the truth. You do not really own the Iphone you have in your pocket. Its bad for developers, businesses AND consumers. People will realize this as soon as we take a stance. <comment><USER2> You're not alone! Take a look on this guy (he's a seasoned developer; I've seen him here on HN I think yestarday):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FpRI-i5NNo&t=629s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FpRI-i5NNo&t=629s)

I've shown a middle finger to Apple long time ago when they stopped producing macbooks without a non-glare displays and asked for additional 400 USD for removing a glass panel from a regular glare display unibody mbp to achieve a "similar" effect. Lol.

That company is dead to me. What they call "pro" now should be rather called "lol" instead.</comment>


What do you think is the most popular sport in the world? - <AUTHOR> https://askopinion.com/football-is-the-most-popular-sport-in-the-world-do-you-agree <comment><AUTHOR> Fifa Football is loved to watch.</comment>


70 Lost Japanese Games Have Been Found in a Folder of ROMs on a Private Forum - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3anja/labyrinthe-japanese-game-discovered-on-private-forum <comment><AUTHOR> > This hesitation demonstrates the often tense relationship between game > preservationists and private collectors. According to a screenshot uploaded > by Saint, the private collector threatened to pull the entire folder of > content from the directory and stop uploading games altogether if anyone > leaked Labyrinthe.

I really can't empathize with the attitude of the private collectors. It's extremely selfish to want to keep a work "lost" so that your copy is more valuable and special. This attitude also greatly increases the chance the work will become _truly lost_ , since you'll die eventually and your heirs may not realize its significance. Why not just take credit for finding and releasing it to the world?</comment>


Reverse Engineering the MOS 6502 CPU  - <AUTHOR> http://www.pagetable.com/?p=512 <comment><USER2> Well, this is going to be an awesome talk (on the 28th in Berlin), but other than the title and a pretty picture, there's nothing in the link...

<comment><USER3> Click the picture and you get this: [http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4159.en.h...](http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4159.en.html)

<comment><USER4> But that's it. I hope they post the slides/video/text to the talk once it's done.</comment></comment></comment>


Writing own regular expression parser - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/OwnRegExpressionsParser.aspx

<comment><USER2> Russ Cox (Plan9, RE2, Google Code Search, Go) wrote a really good article on implementing regular expressions: <http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html></comment>


Jenkins Is Dead (For K8S CD) - <AUTHOR> https://komodor.io/jenkins-is-dead-for-k8s-cd/ <comment><USER2> Jenkins is not even mentioned once in the marketing piece, other than the Jenkins image used at the top.</comment>