Cars took over because the legal system helped squeezed out alternatives - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/car-crashes-arent-always-unavoidable/592447/ <comment><USER2> Another way of stating this could be "transport is a policy question." How cities are built and what transport infrastructure they're built around.

Im fairly sympathetic to the overall aims of this article. I think a transport system more similar to those in the Netherlands makes for better urban landscapes.

But... this habitual style of treating everything as a conspiracy, built around a personified enemy ("They gave legal force to a mind-set—let's call it automobile supremacy—that kills 40,000 Americans a year)... this way of thinking isn't doing us any favours.

In day-to-day political conversations and articles, it's mostly just formulaic and lazy. Name the conspiracy, point to vested interests that have been influencing policy, find a link to established personifications of evil.. big oil and segregation, in this case.

I'm not saying we should never think in abstractions... but there is a formulaic pattern here that's old, paranoid and harmful.

<comment><USER3> No conspiracy required when a lot of people are acting according to a common view. People see the real advantages of owning a car and the freedom it brings, and that activity builds industries and has an impact on policies.

Of course, GM really did conspire to put the trolleys out of business.

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

However, this is the kind of thing organizations (companies, government agencies, non profits) do when they get to a certain size or have accomplished initial goals and are looking to conquer that next frontier. Just look at the overreach of the SV titans, for example.

For better or worse, we have a car based society now, and pining for the good old days is backwards looking. The next thing should preserve the immense freedom and flexibility that cars brought. Prescribing a top down solution that gives even more power to the state at the expense of the people is a non starter.

<comment><USER4> Can you give me an example of the immense freedom and flexibility that cars brought?

Can you give me an example that doesn't involve driving to the middle of nowhere, that isn't solved by a good public transportation system, and doesn't involve bringing home large amounts of groceries, or furniture, etc?

<comment><USER5> Daily routine for people who do not live, work and socialize exclusively in the city center. Things like going to work, piking up kids, shopping, visiting other people, having hobbies, outdoor activities, returning borrowed stuff,...

<comment><USER4> A city center isn't required for public transportation to be convenient. I've taken public transit through suburbs and tiny towns and out to the countryside.

It just so happens that most of the public transit in the states royally sucks -- even in the city centers.

<comment><USER5> It is not a matter of quality. By definition public transport cannot connect all the dots on the map. It is simply impractical or rather impossible. The car gives us freedom of movement that nothing else can currently match. You personal anecdote of taking public transport doesn't invalidate other people use cases and needs, because what works for your situation doesn't necessary work for everyone. If I may use a CS analogy: public transport is like a collection of linked lists and a car is like one giant dictionary. Totally different use cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Corollary: the biggest impacts to energy consumption lie in land use and building code changes, secondarily in consumption habits.

See LLNL's 2018 energy flow chart:

[https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/...](https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/Energy_US_2018.png) (PDF: [https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/2018_United-...](https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/2018_United- States_Energy.pdf))

Of 101 quads, 28 go to transport. Industrial use. is dominated by relatively clean natural gas (methane), with a large chunk likely being ammonia and other chemical production (I'd like to see breakouts).

Dense and local-first construction enables public. transit, walking and cycling, localised services, shared facilities, and numerous other mechanisms of increased efficience

Denser residential spaces and more cimate-appropriate construction hugely reduces

<comment><USER7> _hugely reduces_... ? can you please complete your message?

Also, do you mean that places like Japan, or the central, older parts of European cities are more efficient?

<comment><USER8> He's taken by CIA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no doubt that we are over-reliant on cars. We (Americans) spent the last century towards developing automobile infrastructure. Now with global warming, it will take many more years to undo the damage. We can agree over that.

But focusing the blame on car companies and the wealthy one-percenters is historical revisionism. It undercuts the fact that these policies were eagerly supported by lower-middle class and middle class people like my family, as well as by many working class people from the countryside. It expanded our agency. It allowed us to vacation to beaches and parks. It allowed us to visit faraway families and pursue work in faraway places. In short, it provided us physical and economic mobility.

We didn't know the damage we were doing. And even if we did know, we probably would have done the same thing. But passing the blame doesn't solve anything.

<comment><USER10> Having grown up without a car in a country with good public transport, I never had trouble vacationing to beaches and parks, visiting faraway families, or pursuing work in faraway places (well that last point didn't apply to me, but certainly did apply to e.g. my parents).

Now, having lived in the U.S. for many years, I still hate driving, but I'm basically crippled if I don't drive.

<comment><USER11> "Modern" times attracted people into wanting faster for less. You can do a lot without cars, but you have to unplug your soul from not walking.

Also society shifted, cars meant larger but further shopping centers, and job areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> em-bee living in a big city in europe i was able to live without a car easily, but when i got a job in the US i fully expected that i'd have to learn to drive and get a car to get around.

BUT, i managed to get an apartment 10 minutes walking from the office. this was in san diego, of all places, a city which is very spread out. a few months later i moved in with friends and we found a place far north. most of my roommates had a car, but i took care that i had a bus going directly to work. it ran only once in 30 minutes, so missing it occasionally was a pain, but it was fine otherwise. it also provided for some memorable displays of humanity. another few months later the company moved to los angeles, and again i found a place with a direct bus to work.

i figured that if i can manage to live in sandiego and LA without a car, then i can do that anywhere. sure enough, a few years later i achieved the same in auckland. another city that is quite spread out and has a lackluster public transport system that rivals the US in lack of options.

not everyone is going to be able to achieve this. as a young programmer i could afford the higher rent in the areas close to the office. (i was a stone throw from hollywood boulevard, and crossed it every day on my way to the office :-)

<comment><USER12> Now try going carless in Montana :)

<comment><USER13> There are plenty of similar places in Europe. I don't see how this says anything useful.

<comment> em-bee well, i did claim that if i can live without a car in san diego i can do it anywhere. dannyw does have a point about places like montana likely being a lot worse.

i can't think of any places like that in europe. european cities are simply not that spread out. so unless you live on a farm far from everywhere, you should be fine.

<comment><USER14> In Europe, urban centers are prohibitively expensive to live in if you want to avoid living in a slum.

Imagine if every city was San Francisco, especially in realtion to income.

In the end, I can live somewhat comfortably if I commute, essentially trading my time for lower crime rates and nicer surroundings.

<comment> em-bee which countries/cities are you talking about? i didn't make that experience in germany for example.

<comment><USER14> Germany is kind of a mixed bag here - situations are getting weird quickly if you search for Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg or Stuttgart, they get somewhat acceptable when you consider Berlin (but listen to them complaining about rent!), and in some areas, living is almost free (most of the Ruhrgebiet).

Also consider that if you are reading HN, you are likely to work in IT, which gives you a skewed idea on average income levels.

<comment> em-bee fair point. i did go by gut feeling, and haven't actually done any thorough comparison. and yeah, i can totally see that working in IT won't let me feel the pain of above average rent.

berlin is indeed interesting, one would think that with it being the capital city, the demand would rise, but i guess that east berlin is less popular, and that berlin also suffers from the overall reputation of east germany.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Jaywalking is also a notion that was created by the car industry, with regulation and a PR campaign to shift the blame from cars to pedestrians.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Origin_of_the_term](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#Origin_of_the_term)

<comment><USER16> Perhaps this wouldn't be an issue if more intersections had a pedestrian scramble [1] phase.

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

<comment><USER17> Where I live there is not a signal at every intersection. In some places there are not even any marked crosswalks anywhere nearby. However, every intersection that's not signaled/marked has implicit "unmarked crosswalks" and according to the law drivers must stop for pedestrians in these crosswalks.

The vast majority of drivers seem to be ignorant of this law, or they just don't care. Enforcement is nonexistent. When I step out into the road, I'm sure most of the drivers think I'm "jaywalking". More often than not they do not stop. I am not "jumping" into the road, nor am I generally walking about in low-visibility conditions.

Maybe fancy urban planning can help, but it's a band-aid on a deeper problem, at least where I live: drivers are ignorant and have bad attitudes not suited for the responsibility of operating motor vehicles. I guess it makes sense that enforcement is nonexistent, because "ignorant and have bad attitudes" is also an apt descriptor of police in America in general. Of course, I _have_ been stopped for jaywalking... because obviously that is _so much worse!_

<comment><USER18> >Maybe fancy urban planning can help, but it's a band-aid on a deeper problem, at least where I live: drivers are ignorant and have bad attitudes not suited for the responsibility of operating motor vehicles.

Which is more likely?

a) everyone is irresponsible

b) your definition of "responsible" is not in line with everyone else's

<comment><USER17> Given my observations of how frequently and flagrantly (and _objectively_ ) drivers (and other road users) break laws put in place to keep _all_ the users of our public infrastructure (including themselves) safe, I'll have to go with a). If your definition of being responsible explicitly allows for breaking such laws, you may want to re-evaluate it.

I'm not interested in hearing the word "anecdotal", either. Check out DUI statistics if you want bite-size proof that vast swaths of the population are fundamentally unfit to be driving, or show me data to back up your own point that the roads are _not_ full of irresponsible drivers.

Oh, here's another good one: "In 2017 alone, 3,166 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers." (from NHTSA: [https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted- driving](https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving))

<comment><USER18> Oh quit your puritanical hand wringing.

Average people can drive in an average manner and go years or often decade, sometimes entire lifetimes without screwing up badly enough to attract law enforcement attention or get in a crash. We as a society have determined that is mostly good enough. Most people are satisfied with the current level of risk/reward of driving and unless improvements come with minimal trade-offs people are for the most part not interested. Society at large does not demand the same religious adherence to traffic rules as you do.

More people were killed by fires (a hazard that most people would not consider to be a Big Problem(TM)) in 2016 than in crashes related to distracted drivers.

[https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.h...](https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/fire_death_rates.html)

<comment><USER17> > puritanical

> religious

Nice.

Your point has regressed from "most drivers aren't irresponsible" to "most drivers are irresponsible but it's fine". If you can support the former with hard data, great, let's see it. The latter is an opinion; it's one I do not share, and it's not something I'm interested in discussing because there is zero chance of that discussion bearing any sort of fruit.

<comment><USER18> There's no regression whatsoever.

I am telling you, your definition of "responsible" (and by implication irresponsible) is not shared by society at large. I have told you this in several ways. Since apparently my last way of phrasing it wasn't easy to deflect now you're trying to straw-man me.

What sort of citation do you want? You said ~3k people are killed by distracted drivers and implied that it's a regular occurrence and a Problem(TM). I pointed out (with citation) that that's about the same number killed in fires, something infrequent enough that it's generally considered Not A Problem(TM).

Make no mistake, preventable deaths are tragic but preventable deaths as a result of motor vehicles are not the epidemic you portray them to be.

Of course further discussion will bear no fruit. Your mind is made up and will not be changed.

<comment><USER17> Pro tip: projection and strawmanning aren't good substitutes for reading comprehension skills, critical thinking skills, and the ability to form cogent responses in a discussion.

It is my sincere recommendation that you work on the latter three, or possibly on your ability to simulate them when you aren't arguing in good faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> According to Wikipedia [0], the number of MV-related deaths has been right about 10 or 11 per 100,000 per year for the last ten years. Which makes the opening claim "Americans are condemned to lose friends and relatives to traffic violence" seem particularly overwrought.

And while the legal system may have been of some help, I rather suspect the main reason cars took over is because they give the user a tremendous amount of freedom and agency.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year)

<comment><USER20> If you live in a small town of 100,000 people, that means 11 of your neighbors will be killed by drivers crashing their cars every year.

And that doesn't account for the deaths and health costs caused by road pollution, by inactive lifestyles forced on communities due to car-centered infrastructure, etc...

Given the car-oriented status quo, perhaps it's true that cars give owners tremendous freedom and agency (at the costs outlined above, plus tremendous financial cost). But it's also true that many of the most desirable and productive parts of our cities are that way _despite_ cars and not because of them.

<comment><USER21> > If you live in a small town of 100,000 people, that means 11 of your > neighbors will be killed by drivers crashing their cars every year.

True. But for comparison, if we live in this small town of 100k people, then 192 people will die from Heart Disease, 178 people will die of Cancer, 47 people will die of Respiratory diseases, 43 people will die of Stroke, and 16 will die from the flu (influenza or pneumonia) every single year, according to the CDC. "Motor vehicle accidents" are not even in the top 10 causes of death (they're 13th, using 2016's data).

> the most desirable and productive parts of our cities are that way despite > cars and not because of them.

Which is a strong argument _for_ cars. Cars make things drastically more affordable for people. If you remove them, you increase the costs for everything (food, transportation, housing, healthcare, education, etc), to heights no regular person could ever afford. That _also_ carries tremendous costs and even carries it's own death toll.

Paradoxically, making things "more desirable and productive" makes them worst for real people (because that value will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it). Paradoxically, too much safety can actually be less safe overall (that safety will be captured in a pricetag, and real people will never be able to afford it, and will be forced into less safe alternatives) - [https://local.theonion.com/neighborhood-starting-to-get- too-...](https://local.theonion.com/neighborhood-starting-to-get-too-safe-for- family-to-aff-1819578182)

More people died from _suicide_ (45k in 2016) in the US, than died from all automobile accidents nationwide (37k in 2016). The tradeoff here is not as simple as people often imagine it to be.

<comment><USER22> > "Motor vehicle accidents" are not even in the top 10 causes of death > (they're 13th, using 2016's data)

To your point of bringing up suicide, there is "accidental" death; where it's 1. Opioid overdoses 2. Suicide 3. Car Accidents

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Imagine if someone invented cars today? Hey everyone, we want to make you use this killing machine, that kills a million people every year around the world directly, many more indirectly. We just need to clear out the parks currently around your houses to turn into horrible bleak roads, so they can bring the pollution directly to your door.

<comment><USER24> But in exchange you get to go anywhere in America. You aunt in San Jose you haven't seen in months because it's a day's horse-ride. Well you can pop over for lunch, and be home for dinner. You can go see Yosemite and Tahoe in the same day. Your groceries will be 10 mins away.

No. If someone invented cars today, he'd be considered a hero. We'd talk about him in history books.

<comment><USER25> > Your groceries will be 10 mins away.

I doubt your groceries would be more than 10 minutes away even if no cars had been invented. Zoning practices would change to allow more shops distributed across residential areas. That would make more sense than requiring people to ride an hour on horseback.

But yes, the supermarket would be much less 'super' with a much smaller selection of goods.

<comment><USER26> And more expensive. Like buying everything at a convenience store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The "car-tel" didn't just make a legal victory, it made a political victory.

It's nearly forgotten how much anger and resentment that Americans had against the railroad companies back in the day. Back then, railroads could decide if they would build a stop at your town, or even decide to build a new town on land that they owned somewhere along the line. Railroads were perceived as a vast private taking from the commons.

The car on the other hand involves public ownership of the roads and distributed ownership of the vehicles. That leaves a strong majority of the population feeling that the status quo benefits them and encourages them to keep it that way.

</comment><comment><USER28> Another result of this culture that I wish the author would have addressed is how cars have changed how we raise our children. We are forced to keep our children inside because all our houses are surrounded by rivers of death. Why are we surprised that young kids spend all their time sedating themselves with screens? What choice have we given them?

We have designed our living spaces to be ideal for cars, not humans. It is hard to acknowledge because it has been that way all our lives but it is a trade-off we are making.

<comment><USER29> I was aware of this in the abstract before I had kids. Now that I have them, it can be really terrifying. We go for walks even in places with big wide sidewalks and they are oblivious, they would jump out in the street at just about any moment if we weren't holding hands and teaching them constantly to be afraid of cars.

It's really sad. Kids nature is to want to run around and burn off energy, and right outside our door it's safe for _adults_ to do that, but it's still not safe for young children because you still have to stay in the limited pedestrian zone and carefully cross streets.

I've wondered a lot about trying to build a car-free neighborhood with a commuter bus to downtown. I wish that existed, I'd move there.

<comment><USER28> If you build it or find it, let me know. I want to move there too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > Those who walk or bike to work receive no commuter tax benefit

Its all about incentives. And the government is in the driver's seat. I would love to get paid to bike around - that is a brilliant idea. Not to mention the health benefits of having a population exercise to get to work.

I live in NYC where the city was designed for cars. I find it a travesty that prime waterfront property on both sides of Manhattan - really all around the island - is a highway. If Robert Moses had prioritized non-car means of transport, we would have a very different city.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Yet the most prominent way of setting and adjusting speed limits, known as the operating-speed method, actually encourages faster driving. It calls for setting speed limits that 85 percent of drivers will obey. This method makes little provision for whether there's a park or senior center on a street, or for people walking or biking."

This statement causes me to question the veracity of the rest of the article.

Practically every municipality bends over backward to slow traffic near places where children, the elderly, the blind, or even just where too many accidents occur.

"Operating-speed method" is only really used for high-speed, high-throughput, limited access roadways.

<comment><USER32> Municipalities do not do much to slow traffic. The might put up a slower speed limit sign, and post traffic copes - but the cynic who says this is about revenue not slowing traffic has a good point. There are plenty of real ways to slow traffic known in traffic engineering circles, but they are rarely implemented.

<comment><USER31> You are not in Southern California then. Traffic circles and road humps are quite endemic.

This is sufficiently common that I could use road humps as a proxy for "Am I going the correct direction?" back before nav systems. Maybe you weren't going the completely right direction, but a road hump (or traffic circle) meant you were on a road sufficiently useful that it needed a traffic calming measure.

Cities with winter have extra considerations, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This was a revelation.

 _...Even so, 85 to 90 percent of toxic vehicle emissions in traffic come from tire wear and other non-tailpipe sources,..._

So electric cars will mitigate only 10-15% of the environmental problems of the ICE cars?

<comment><USER34> This is misleading.

If you follow the link to the actual research paper you find that it's 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5

That is, not "emissions" in general but particle matter specifically.

This makes sense because modern cars have efficient engines and particle filters so that few particles are emitted from the combustion engine itself. The remaining sources are the tyres and the brakes.

<comment><USER33> Yes.

But doesn't the point still stays that contrary to the popular belief electric cars would not bring about much change?

Research paper: _..it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels._

<comment><USER34> Electric vehicles will bring about significant changes.

As said, and as your quote highlights, this focusses on particles. But the main emission of internal combustion engines is CO2, and other nasty stuff like CO, NOx, hydrocarbons, etc. These are eliminated by electric vehicles.

<comment><USER35> They are _moved_ by electric vehicles to some remote place (where they might also be more efficiently handled), but even as an electric car driver, I don't think of them as eliminated.

<comment><USER34> They are eliminated and electricity production does not have to produce any of them: The short term goal is total elimination across the whole chain.

<comment><USER36> I think the parent was referring to the mining and manufacturing of lithion ion and other components that go into a car.

<comment><USER35> That's a secondary effect. Primary effect I had in mind when commenting was the movement of the emissions from the local tailpipe to the electric plant (which is very far from 100% emission-free today).

<comment><USER34> As said this is so only on 'backwards' countries ;) and certainly it should not last.

Claiming that electric vehicles only move emissions to the electric plant is unfair at best.

<comment><USER35> I think it's more accurate than claiming they are eliminated.

<comment><USER34> It's not but it helps some narratives...

<comment><USER35> OK, I'll play along. Suppose I drive my electric car an additional 450 miles. That will consume an extra ~100kWh of energy from the battery, which will require me to buy an extra 115kWh of energy from my electric utility, which will require them to generate (or procure) an additional 125kWh or so.

Are there any emissions associated with that additional 125kWh of consumed electricity? If so, where? If not, why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Even so, 85 to 90 percent of toxic vehicle emissions in traffic come from > tire wear and other non-tailpipe sources, which electric and hybrid cars > still produce.

First of all, this person meant to say "particulates" [1] and so we are not talking about CO2 _at all_. Secondly, the source that he links to has this table in it for PM10 (the table for PM2.5 would be analogous) [2]. Almost all of this argument is based on "resuspension". Basically, the car's slip stream. _Seriously?_

By the way, these values are (virtually) calculated all on acount of EVs being heavier. Well done I guess for assuming that braking in EVs won't have PM emissions _< nod to regenerative breaking>_.

It's a pity that an argument based on traffic accidents and cars has to reference such a random and irrelevant article. I agree that Americans like cars too much.

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

[2] Table 5

Comparison between expected PM 10 emissions of EVs, gasoline and diesel ICEVs (mg/vkm)

(Vehicle technology) (Exhaust) (Tyre wear) (Brake wear) (Road wear) (Resuspension) (Total)

EV 0 7.2 0 8.9 49.6 65.7

Gasoline ICEV 3.1 6.1 9.3 7.5 40 66.0

Diesel ICEV 2.4 6.1 9.3 7.5 40 65.3

<comment><USER35> I drive an electric; wife drives a gas ICE; I maintain both. No way is electric brake wear 1% or less of a conventional car (what it would take for it to round down to zero in that table). I'd put it at around 5-10% of an ICE, making the total particulate emissions higher.

<comment><USER18> Unless you happen to have two of the same car in ICE and electric you're going to need to do some math to account for different brake pad volume and vehicle weight. There's a pretty substantial number of variables that would go into it. I assume you're using the same product line for all your pads.

<comment><USER35> Figuring out whether it's 25% or 50% may require that.

Figuring out whether it's sub 1% or >= 2% probably doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The whole fucking world is subsidizing this garbage by not charging people for the externalities their lifestyle incurs upon the world.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Since her passing (1995), approximately 1 million more Americans have been > killed in car crashes.

That's a huge cost.

</comment><comment><USER40> Laws follow practicality, so the first thing to do is make sure drivers pay their full costs on a per-mile basis. Things like gas taxes being earmarked for road construction-- when I buy other miscellaneous stuff I pay a general sales tax that can be spent discretionarily by the government. Not applying that to gas is an inappropriate subsidy to cars. Where autos own the road (most everywhere) road funds should pay for sidewalks; where highways divide communities, there should be liberal allowances for pedestrian bridges. Finally, public transit needs to be professionalized in order to provide a fuller alternative, in the sense that transit organizations can't be run with a 'politics as usual' approach-- the point of the system _cannot_ be simply to kick the can down the road on historic pension obligations. If government wants to require public transit to be _better_ in certain respects-- handicap access and perfect safety come to mind-- these desires should be evaluated against the counterhypothetical of, "if you make the system less useful by only opening one set of doors at the stop (for safety) x number of people will die as a result of being forced back into cars."

</comment><comment><USER41> I am unconvinced about this claim.

The legal and political and taxation system in Denmark is anti car and pro public transportation and have been for decades.

We are talking 200% taxes on the cars and constant reduction of roads in the big cities, constant expanision of public transportation.

Yet cars for most people in Denmark is very important.

Cars are the perfect balance between flexibility, scaleability, speed, utility etc.

This is why cars win, not because of some conspiracy.

</comment><comment><USER42> The increasing legal requirements for crashworthiness are self defeating: making vehicles to withstand more energetic collisions requires making cars more heavy — more heavy cars then cause even more energetic collisions.

</comment><comment><USER43> There's a pretty good book on the origins _and_ consequences of the car culture called, not surprisingly, "The Car Culture by James J. Flink.

It was written in 1975 so doesn't speculate on the future of self driving vehicles but part of what made that book interesting is it took an oil shock to really get some attention on the problems.

(let's not forget that one enormous benefit of automobiles was that they _cleaned up the cities_ which used to be full of horse manure. Of course we know now that they pollute in other, destructive, ways).

</comment><comment><USER44> People drive cars because they are the most efficient mode of transportation. Laws and policy followed. Anything else is a moronic conspiracy theory.

Let's just take the two examples in the article. First single family zoning. I would argue that before cars (and cities) people lived on farms and ranches. Cars were not to blame. The trend has been towards smaller living areas, not larger. Second, parking requirements. I think parking requirements came after cars, not the other way around.

<comment><USER45> They aren't the most efficient mode of transportation, depending on your definition. In terms of carbon, energy utilized, or even time, in many places walking/biking will beat cars. It's not a moronic conspiracy theory to suggest that bringing a 2 ton wheel-chair everywhere we go is inefficient.

<comment><USER44> In very few places in America is walking/biking more efficient than cars. The author is not saying autos are inefficient, which is a valid argument, he is saying there is a conspiracy ("automobile supremacy") to supplant other forms of transportation with the automobile. This is simply foolish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's also our values system that allowed the legal system to do it's thing. Cars are also a product of values that focus on "me and my personal needs".

</comment><comment><USER47> > Those who walk or bike to work receive no commuter tax benefit

False. It's possible to pay for mass transit with pretax dollars.

<comment><USER32> Is that in a theoretical sense, or is it something I could do now? If the latter can you be more specific - how do I use pre-tax dollars to pay for my bus fare?

<comment><USER35> Not for an individual fare, but an employer can offer monthly/annual passes on a pre-tax basis (up to $265/mo for 2019)

[https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15b.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- pdf/p15b.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > traffic violence

> automobile supremacy

The language of this article just makes me cringe.

Other than that, it's really quite reasonable though.

<comment><USER49> It sounds shocking if you only travel in car as it doesn't affect you as much but if you ride a bike it's a fact of life in many areas.

For example if you wear lycra, you will probably find that a percentage of people will regularly try to "punish" you because they think you "look funny".

The mildest form of punishment will be them driving as close to you as they dare. That could be 50mph 12"s away. That's like standing on the other side of the do not cross line in the subway as a train comes past.

That's my anecdotal experience but a quick search Youtube will turn up many examples of this. Action camera manufacturers specifically design products to document this.

Worse though, you'll probably eventually have someone be more directly aggressive to you. Maybe throwing something at you or trying to drive you off the road.

In that context I think that the phrase traffic violence is fitting. If someone is using a vehicle as a weapon what else would you call it?

<comment><USER50> I've cycled for decades and never had such an incident of aggression from drivers. Maybe it depends on some other factors in addition to the drivers.

<comment> bad-joke To counter your anecdote, cyclist deaths have risen lately in NYC to the point of public protest:

> Aster Ryan, 25, of Wingate, said "this summer has felt especially > dangerous." In addition to the three cycling deaths that took place within a > week, Ryan said she was hit while riding her bike a little more than a week > ago on Dean Street, and also watched another rider get hit by an opening car > door recently.

[https://www.amny.com/transit/cyclist-die-in-washington- squar...](https://www.amny.com/transit/cyclist-die-in-washington-square- park-1.33653749)

<comment><USER16> These problems are caused by riding in areas where one is not visible to drivers of other vehicles (e.g. filtering to the right of other vehicles that are preparing to make a right turn) and also riding too close to parked cars. A secondary cause are laws that require cyclists to use bike lanes or keep as far right as practicable within the lane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm reminded of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

</comment><comment><USER52> I was in Switzerland recently and was very impressed with how good the public transportation system was - trains, trams and buses. To top it, the water in the lakes and tap were all 100% drinkable.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm vacationing Ireland at the moment, and it really hits me how car-centric it is, and I found the Scottish Highlands be very similar. Quite narrow roads, with hedges or stone fences and very little space for a pedestrian or cyclist.

Southern Germany too, although at least they usually don't put hedges/fences right up to the edge of the road.

I would hate to walk or bike on those roads, despite the beautiful landscapes on display.

Initially I thought there was a pressing need to widen the roads, but then I realized that the real problem is the size of modern cars and how fast most people drive.

While car ownership and driving is currently vital to a lot of rural communities, we need to reclaim the roads for shared usage, and break the imagined car/driver ownership and privilege over them.

<comment><USER54> I've always figured that the narrow roads over there were (much like the ones in the older European cities) created long before cars, when people relied on horses or horse-drawn vehicles for transport. Roads designed after cars became common tend to be much wider.

<comment><USER53> That's sort of my point. cars are way too big and go way too fast for a lot of roads, and there is often no room to widen them. So we let the cars squeeze in anyway, to the severe detriment of pedestrians and cyclists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Did this happen in other countries too? There are varying degrees, but cars are king the world over. I'm suspicious of the idea that it was due to laws or government.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is generally how I think self-driving will squeeze out human-driving, through regulatory capture. Don't love it for many reasons, but there is precedent.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm extremely interested in seeing micro-mobility options expand. The more forms of transportation we have that aren't cars and buses, the more seriously the public will consider things like taking one lane of traffic and dedicating it to bikes, scooters, trikes, quadricycles, golf carts, and the like. If we can make it easier for people to get around this way, we can slowly push cars to the fringes of cities, and maybe with the money we save, even eventually replace them for inter-city transportation.

</comment><comment><USER58> i will probably get downvoted but this all thanks to the oil industry, they even knew about climate change since the 60s

</comment><comment><USER59> Not just the legal system but also the city planners who designed all sorts of things like suburbs, malls, etc. that favour cars and are pretty much copy- pasta all over each city on the whole continent. All these people want bike lanes, I want my horse lane.

<comment><USER60> I want the majority of the road network roofed with turf into a long hill with occaisional exits, or lowered and moved completely underground.

<comment><USER32> I've concluded the opposite: leave the cars where they are. What I want is a separate pedestrian level to the city - a skyway system (though I'm fine with it being underground). Let the humans walk in air conditioned comfort while not cars to worry about. This is much cheaper than the underground roads.

<comment><USER60> How about air conditioned skyways for pedestrians in cities and underground roads everywhere else?

<comment><USER32> Underground roads are orders of magnitude more expensive, so it isn't worth creating them (with some exceptions). With unlimited resources we could create as many as we want, but I have better things to do with my time/money than build roads.

Skyways are significantly cheaper than bridges. It would still be cheaper to make the ground level of your city a building, but not having to support the mass of cars and trucks means skyways can be significantly cheaper.

In the modern world trucks and buses are far too useful to ban completely from cities where people live. People need their stuff delivered, and need to get longer distances once in a while. Thus I'm saying reserve the ground for those uses and get humans away from them. It is a compromise, but I think it is a good one.

<comment><USER60> Not worrying about the humans in particular. Uncovered ground level roads are just death traps and fencing them off is even worse in many ways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> "Given New York's lax enforcement record, the Freakonomics podcast described running over pedestrians there as "the perfect crime.""

I was driving in Oakland when the car in front of me didn't slow down for a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The pedestrian disappeared in front of the car. I stopped my car, got out, found the struck young woman trembling and bleeding in the street.

The speed limit was 30 miles per hour. I don't think the driver was going quite that fast — maybe 20, 25 at most.

The woman driving the car was elderly. It's tough to gauge her age — pushing late 70s, maybe 80? She said she didn't notice the girl in the crosswalk.

I was upset. I stayed the entire time, talked with the cops at length, gave a statement. I wanted to see the lady's license taken away. Or a ticket at least. Or heck, even a talking to about if maybe she's no longer fit to drive.

The cops let the old lady drive away. No ticket. No talk. I was stunned. Surely if you hit someone with your car at that speed, in fucking crosswalk, you at the very least need to prove to the DMV that you're safe to drive. Especially if you're an elderly person. But nope. They said they had no grounds with which to take any action at all.

Still bothers me. I hope that lady hasn't killed anyone.

<comment><USER62> Wait, what!?

In Europe if you strike a pedestrian on the crosswalk you'll definitely loose your license and be looking at manslaughter charges too while your insurance company will murder you after paying the victim's medical/disability/court bills.

<comment><USER63> I have hit a pedestrian. Instead of using the nearby crosswalk she walked in between the cars and when she walked in front of me it was too late for me to brake. She flew a couple of meters and landed on the crosswalk. In the police report is was stated that I hit the person on the crosswalk as I couldn't prove otherwise. The woman was taken away in an ambulance due to a broken leg.

I was 16 at the time. Really shaken up about what had happened. But after collecting myself and fixing the dangling headlight I was able to drive home. I got a ticket for not giving way to the pedestrian (€45 I believe) and insurance covered everything regarding the woman. Didn't even get a letter other than one that they would take of everything.

So yes it happens here too (The Netherlands)

<comment><USER64> How were you driving when you were sixteen?

<comment><USER65> Because that's when you can get a license in many states.

<comment><USER66> But not in The Netherlands, which he explicitly stated he was from. The real answer is that he probably wasn't driving a car.

<comment><USER67> Has it always been that age? We do not know how old the poster is, nor whether or not he had a regular lisence or a permit.

<comment><USER66> It hasn't been less than 18 since 1934, if not further back. Since last year it's possible to get a provisional license at the age of 17 (no earlier).

<comment><USER67> Ah, ok. I truly didn't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Yet another fantasy article that tries to suggest roads were built for "the car loving 1%ers of the 20s" and not for public transport and all kinds of other infrastructure needs, including the army's.

<comment><USER69> What public transport used roads (not streets) in the early twentieth century of the US, when much if them were built? According to [1], by 1929 the private car was doing 175 billion passenger miles, while the bus was doing just 7. As they write, "Although intercity bus travel climbed from nothing to over seven billion passenger miles in 1929, it was always the choice of a relatively small number of people."

And of course, trains don't use roads. What other public transport is there?

[1] [https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-bus-industry-in-the- united-s...](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-bus-industry-in-the-united- states/)</comment></comment>


Weekly free delivery service from Amazon.com: AmazonTote - <AUTHOR> http://tote.amazon.com/AmazonToteLearnMore

<comment><USER2> This is a great step.

I think what would complete this is if you could leave items in the bag that you sell on Amazon Marketplace, and Amazon would pick them up and deliver them to the buyer.

Then you'd potentially have a packaging-less, production-free, nearly energy- ideal system for moving around used goods.

Imagine instead of having a tag sale, you'd just scan everything you want to get rid of into Amazon, and they'd come pick things up as they find new homes for them.

Add in automatic market-based pricing, and you basically have near perfect liquidity for used goods. That'd be radical.

The step after that is just to allow people to distribute home-produced goods. Harvest tomatoes from your back yard on ToteDay, drop them into Amazon mini- totes, and have them delivered, at market prices, to people in your area.

It'd be like the economics of the App Store applied to all goods.

Shit, I'm going to go apply for a job at Amazon.

<comment><USER3> You can already ship all of your Marketplace items to Amazon and they'll sit in their warehouses and be packaged and shipped by Amazon for you, for a fee of course.

See: [http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by- amazon....](http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One day in and the Woot acquisition is already bearing fruit -- Amazon is now selling Woot's famous "bags of crap."

Being Prime subscribers, my wife and I get a shipment from Amazon usually on a weekly basis. I might try this just because I'm sick of throwing away Amazon boxes. Bags I can send back seems like a nice idea.

edit: Bad design on the part of Amazon. It lets me sign in with my account to see when my delivery dates would be, and even gives me an answer once I've signed in. However it doesn't tell me that all of the shipping addresses on my account are thousands of miles away from the only place the service is offered.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Currently, AmazonTote is available in the 98112 ZIP code."

<comment><USER6> Likely soon to expand to more of the AmazonFresh delivery area:

      98004, 98005*, 98006*, 98007, 98008,  98011, 98012,  98019,
      98021, 98024*, 98027*, 98028, 98029*, 98033, 98034,  98039,
      98040, 98052,  98053,  98056, 98057,  98059, 98065,  98072, 98074,
      98075, 98077,  98101,  98102, 98103,  98104, 98105,  98106, 98107,
      98108, 98109,  98112*, 98115, 98116,  98117, 98118*, 98119,
      98121, 98122*, 98125,  98126, 98133,  98136, 98144*, 98146,
      98155, 98164,  98178,  98199

A subset of Amazon-fulfilled items hand delivered to my doorstep? I already get that directly from AmazonFresh, where I use such purchases to boost my order size to get free grocery delivery.

It's especially useful when buying booze from them, where the order size minimums are much higher because the delivery must be attended — instead just leaving it in a plastic crate at my doorstep, _the driver puts it in my fridge for me_.

I probably won't ever use this unless it covers close to the full set of Prime-eligble items, which would involve them keeping no local inventory unlike what they're doing with Fresh already.

<comment><USER3> Note: this is not a subset of Amazon-fulfilled items as with AmazonFresh, this is pretty close to everything that Amazon ships. (It's basically just Amazon delivering otherwise super-saver shipments the last mile to your door using their own trucks, where available).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Who Remembers <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozmo.com> :)

note: Don't take the above comment to mean I think Amazon is going to fail with this. 10 years ago an unknown company couldn't make this work. Im sure Amazon will do fine in Seattle with this.

<comment><USER8> I remember Kozmo. I also remember they had a competitor in NYC, but I can't recall its name. I just remember having them bring me some delicious lobster&steak from Fulton Fish Market or somewhere. Anyone remember their name?

<comment><USER9> Urbanfetch, I believe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ironically, I feel so bad when I order five things in one order (ship when everything is ready, free shipping) and them Amazon sends me five different packages at great expense, that I am almost relieved they are offering this.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely; same here. I try to group my shipments even though shipping cost is no longer an issue with Prime. In reality they probably have a deal worked out so that 2-day shipping doesn't cost practically anything, but I still feel that guilt when the expedite that $3.35 item to me. I wonder if guilt's part of the Prime business strategy? I still haven't figured out how it works out in their favor (which it has to, or they wouldn't offer it)

<comment><USER12> There is also the guilt of having an item flown across the country and delivered by truck. An item that costs $10 and is readily available at a store 1/2 mile from your house. I've done that, because I can be done with it in two minutes and forget about it.

<comment><USER13> _is readily available at a store 1/2 mile from your house._

How did that item get to the store?

<comment><USER14> True. But it was probably accompanied with many other copies of itself. Also the truck arriving at the store likely delivered more cargo per mile driven than a UPS/FedEx/Mail equivalent. Those services are more expensive ($/gasoline/packaging/...) than just shipping a truck full of toothpaste to a distribution center and then hundreds of tubes to a multitude of stores because of the piecemeal fashion in which they pick up and drop off at the ends of their networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see the benefits for someone with Amazon prime. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER16> I don't think it's really aimed at Amazon Prime people.

I think it's really to get people to order more from Amazon, even for orders <$25. Tote will probably cost them enough that those orders don't make them anything, but it will build loyalty (and they let you keep the tote bag--keeps Amazon in your mind).

<comment><USER17> Will it really cost them that much more though? Since they assign your "Tote Day" for you, it seems like they could save a ton of money on the efficiencies gained in their delivery/location scheduler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This definitely makes me miss the plastic WebVan crates (I think I accumulated >40 of them).

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder: Is Amazon now trying to compete with Fedex? What's the benefit to them of building out a shipping network on top of their distribution network?

I'm sure there's some margin that could be potentially captured - and it might be neat to be dealing just with amazon - but why not focus on stuff that doesn't involve becoming a competitor to established shipping services. In my view, the US Postal services are already kind of underpriced....

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the idea of it but at the same time I feel like most items you require on a weekly basis should really be obtained in a more sustainable way. It's wonderful we can (currently) afford this luxury of putting items on an airplane, flying them to a local hub, and driving them right to your house twice a week but there's more to consider than just the cost of the service itself.

<comment><USER21> The sustainability of Amazon-style shipping is pretty complicated. If you buy items on Amazon, yes, they must be shipped, but you can bet that Amazon will find the cheapest (and likely relatively low-energy) way of shipping it to you.

Meanwhile, you don't have to have as many physical retail stores, which consume tremendous amounts of electricity, and contribute to the suburban sprawl that causes "car culture."

<comment><USER20> It's definitely complicated. I was thinking of a few different scenarios and in some cases it's not clear that local distribution is always a better route. For example if your local store gets a shipment of 100 items and only sells 10 what happens to the other 90? Do they get shipped back? Thrown away? Who knows... If the UPS truck happens to be down the street and needs to go 1 mile out of its way to make a delivery to me that's better than my own 10 mile trip. Even with your example of less physical stores we'd have to consider that means less jobs, less revenue for the town in the form of property taxes when the business closes, less sales tax for the state -- apparently Amazon only charges sales tax in 5 states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I live in 98112 and nothing is showing the Tote button, even items with local same-day delivery available (another fine Amazon perk for Seattle residents). Where are the Tote-able items hiding?

</comment><comment><USER23> I like the idea. Too bad they aren't running it in my area. I reusable tote would save a lot of boxes.

</comment><comment><USER24> It seems to me they are trying to cut out logistics here. No longer needing a courier in many cities will lower costs dramatically,.

<comment><USER25> Looks like it's operated by these guys (who are described as an "amazon affiliate" in the FAQ):

<http://fresh.amazon.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a small typo in there. It's supposed to be "Shop Until You're Cut Off" if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER27> No, the cutoff date is the date and time by which you can't add anymore things to the tote-bag (ie. in this case 10 a.m. 2 days before your delivery day).

<comment><USER26> You're right, I read that in the wrong context. Thanks for clearing it up for me.</comment></comment></comment>


How Fractals Can Explain What's Wrong with Wall Street (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/multifractals-explain-wall-street/ <comment><USER2> The article is by Benoit Mandelbrot. For better or worse, the illustrations are linked but not embedded. They add considerably to the article.</comment>


Show HN: Kickstarter project for snap-together, desktop trebuchets - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1803756771/trebuchette-the-snap-together-desktop-trebuchet

<comment><USER2> This guys need 1600 pre-sales to make this happen? (their unit price of the smallest product divided into the fundraising minimum goal)

Even if they get an array of donations/sales for their smallest to biggest versions, that's a lofty goal to set as the minimum requirement to produce these things for the public.

I call that this is truly a niche product and the fundraiser won't hit $48k...

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's a combination of two things:

1) We wanted to keep the price / trebuchet low, so our margin after materials is slim.

and

2) The laser cutter that we need to produce these is expensive.

But such is life!</comment></comment>


RISC creator is pushing open source chips - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/08/19/risc-creator-is-pushing-open-source-chips-for-cloud-computing-and-the-internet-of-things/ <comment><USER2> Assuming Moore's Law is slowing down, and there's no rabbit about to be pulled out of a hat by Intel or others, it's going to close the gap significantly between what is possible on an $x billion and an $x million budget. This makes it a great time for initiatives such as this to take place.

In 2001, an unexpected delay of 18 months could mean that you release to competition running at 2ghz instead of 1ghz. These days, Intel's 32nm, 22nm chips (and 14nm, from what is known about Broadwell) are more or less identical from a consumer's perspective.

As an aside, Patterson's book (coauthored with Hennessey), Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, is one of the best I've ever read. Right up there with SICP.

<comment><USER3> Well there's two predictions you can think about that could happen sometime in the future:

1\. Nobody can put more than XXX transistors on a square millimeter (where XXX is some physical limit to chip material)

2\. "Everybody" can put YYY transistors on a square millimeter (where YYY is a number sufficiently close to XXX so that the difference does not matter much)

The first means some stagnation in the chip market: not only does Moore's Law not apply anymore, but not even does a weak version of Moore's Law ("chips tend to get faster/cheaper over time") apply. But if that scenario becomes true, it doesn't necessarily mean that the democratization of the second scenario becomes true. The ability to put YYY transistors on a square millimeter could still be limited to a select few companies investing billions in the production of these chips. After all, how many fabs worldwide are currently capable of producing 45nm chips, which could be considered "commodity" [1]?

Is it really true that it becomes _much_ cheaper to produce chips on smaller process nodes over time? Sure it becomes cheaper since less original R&D is necessary, but is it reasonable to think that producing 20nm chips ever becomes a question of investing anything less than, say, 100s of millions? Does the second scenario ever become true, at least in the forseeable future?

I don't know much about chip fabs so I wonder if someone more knowledgeable could share some insight on this.

[1]: I genuinely don't know the answer to this, but I don't suppose it's very widespread?

<comment><USER4> If 2 keeps not happenning — if producing custom ASICs remains expensive — it becomes increasingly attractive to produce cheap as-good-as-they-get FPGAs in massive quantities.

Ironically, FPGAs as endgame would be way more disruptive than an "ASICs to the people" endgame.

FPGA density, price/gate and power efficiency trail "native" hardware but constant factors of overhead but it should be possible to reduce the gap compared to now. More FPGA volume means better economies; the hardware architecture could be optimized further; most importantly IMHO the current design tools are heinously unfriendly and could benefit a lot from programmer attention (once programmers realize a more-or-finalized FPGA structure is the "new assembly" to optimize for).

I'm not sure if a constant factor of disadvantage would become very acceptable (because we'll drop the throw-faster-hardware-at-it mentality) or very unacceptable (because robots with FPGA brains always lose at high-frequency chess wrestling to robots with native brains).

<comment><USER5> Would ideally need to have some kind of open source FPGA catch on (and be manifactured with competitive performance). Companies like Xilinx and Altera are not at all keen on open sourcing their technology and tools. IMO, through their actions, they're shooting themselves in the foot, keeping FPGAs from becoming what GPGPU is right now (or something even better, in fact).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Chicken, meet egg:

 _We did not include special instruction set support for over ow checks on integer arithmetic operations. Most popular programming languages do not support checks for integer overflow, partly because most architectures impose a signi cant runtime penalty to check for overflow on integer arithmetic and partly because modulo arithmetic is sometimes the desired behavior. [1]_

Please Regehr, don't hurt them. [2]

[1] Spec, section 2.4 [https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/riscv.org/riscv- spec-v2.0...](https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/riscv.org/riscv- spec-v2.0.pdf)

[2] [http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1154](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1154)

<comment><USER5> I happen to be implementing my own JavaScript JIT compiler and I can tell you that SpiderMonkey, V8 and my compiler all perform a lot of overflow checks. This is because in JavaScript, all numbers are doubles, but JITs typically try to represent them as integers where possible, because integer operations have lower latency.

Scheme and Common Lisp also rely on overflow checks to optimize small integers as "fixnums" instead of always using arbitrary precision arithmetic. Not having hardware support for overflow checks would complicate the implementation of many dynamic languages, and reduce their performance significantly.

Not sure what this guy was thinking. It can't be that hard to implement some overflow flag you can branch on, I mean, adders basically produces that information for free, don't they? Seems like a poor design choice.

<comment><USER7> Hmm; carry is free, not sure about overflow. But more generally, it's an extra output, for what would otherwise be one-output operations. Put it this way - if a lot of javascript operations could modify a piece of global state, that would be trivial on a trivial interpreter, but I bet it would add a lot of complexity to your JIT. Same goes for CPUs - no problem for simple implementations, but it would add complexity to an out-of-order or other clever microarchitecture.

<comment><USER8>
      > Hmm; carry is free, not sure about overflow.

Overflow is just the final carry out XOR the second-last carry bit, so it's practically free.

Of course RISC-V doesn't have a carry bit either!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you'd like to be paid to work on a fully open-source RISC-V SoC, we're hiring. See [http://lowrisc.org](http://lowrisc.org)

</comment><comment><USER10> Please explain: What would be the benefit of an open source chip?

At the end of the day, the chip is a physical thing that have to be produced by someone. As long as there is no 3D printer, which can build nano structures to makes chips, I can only implement it into a FPGA. The main FPGA providers are either Altera or Xilinx and both a very expansive. So they are good for prototyping or very low volume. But for anything beyond, I need a specific implementation. Okay, I could go to a foundry like Samsung (or other) and order according to my design. But, even that requires a very high volume in the millions to make it affordable and viable from a business perspective. Especially, if it is intended for the IoT market. On the other side, I can buy ARM Cortex M0 and Cortex M1 for cheap from NXP and other for less than $1. They are power full and power consumption is very low.

Just to mention, the other day the WRTnode[1] was released for less den $25 or look at an Raspberry PI Compute. Don't get me wrong, Yes, I would like to see those with an open source chip. But would that be really a viable business case, except from the University context?

[1] [http://wrtnode.com/](http://wrtnode.com/)

<comment><USER11> What's the point of an open source operating system? Most people buy their computing device with the OS installed, so the cost is marginal.

<comment><USER10> You are not from the hardware business?

In hardware design you cannot build a "minimal viable product" and then do "continuous integration" from that on. A hardware product either works within its defined limits or it doesn't. Then, depending on your limitations, you need additional approval by FCC, FDA, and such organizations within the US alone. The same thing then with their counterparts in every different country. Chip design is then the next level up. Because changing a mask later on, because you found a bug, means you produced a million chips just for the dust bin.

That means the entry barrier into hardware, especially chips, is very high.

<comment><USER11> Reading your comment fully (something I should have done), I see you address the differences in the analogy. Sorry.

Perhaps the cost situation will change over time. Perhaps, in coming decades, the ability to fab microchips will itself become something achievable for thousands instead of millions of dollars. And as for regulation: That only matters if you're selling. If you're researching or making it for personal use, the FCC doesn't (or shouldn't) matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Talking about the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture

[http://riscv.org/](http://riscv.org/)

Why would you need 128bit addressing? Isn't 64bit address space plenty big? This isn't a "nobody'll need more than 640k scenario, right?"

[https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/requirements- tab...](https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/requirements-table.gif)

<comment><USER13> There's motivation in the relevant part (RV128I Base Integer Instruction Set), starting on page 81 of the 2.0 ISA specification ([https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/riscv.org/riscv-spec-v2.0...](https://s3-us- west-1.amazonaws.com/riscv.org/riscv-spec-v2.0.pdf)).

A choice quote:

 _It is not clear when a flat address space larger than 64 bits will be required. At the time of writing, the fastest supercomputer in the world as measured by the Top500 benchmark had over 1 PB of DRAM, and would require over 50 bits of address space if all the DRAM resided in a single address space. Some warehouse-scale computers already contain even larger quantities of DRAM, and new dense solid-state non-volatile memories and fast interconnect technologies might drive a demand for even larger memory spaces. Exascale systems research is targeting 100 PB memory systems, which occupy 57 bits of address space. At historic rates of growth, it is possible that greater than 64 bits of address space might be required before 2030._

<comment><USER14> _if all the DRAM resided in a single address space_

Key point, and that's a _huge_ "if". All large systems are NUMA, and trying to treat that like a uniform address space will be absolutely horrible because of the extreme latencies that arise.

<comment><USER15> You're correct of course, but I wanted to point out that people shouldn't dismiss everything >64 bit out of hand based on this reasoning. There are architectures that can make use of those extra bits, and not just for addressing a universe of RAM. The Transmeta processors weren't perfect or anything, but there's merit in the VLIW approach. The first generation Crusoe chip was a 128 bit part, and the second was 256 bit; this was a decade ago, in chips designed for ultra-light consumer laptops. As I understand it, some key people from Transmeta ended up at P.A. Semi, which of course was acquired by Apple in 2008. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we're talking about VLIW architectures again by 2016 or at least 2020.

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Efficeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Efficeon)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_word](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_word)

<comment><USER16> 1) Instruction size is irrelevant to address size

2) Yes Transmeta was VLIW internally, but I see that as an implementation- detail over other forms of superscalar; either way you have a linear stream of instructions generated by the compiler, with hardware turning that into parallel execution by the CPU at runtime. Calling that "VLIW" is about as interesting as calling a modern x86 "RISC."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From the article: "Popular chip architectures historically have been locked down behind strict licensing rules by companies such as Intel, ARM and IBM (although IBM has opened this up a bit for industry partners with its OpenPower foundation)."

IBM's new openness isn't really open at all. It's just what ARM has always been doing: they allow you to pay them a lot of money so you can use their ISA in your CPU.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe a bit OT, but I've just started learning programming for MMIX, Donald Knuth's RISC computer. I've been wondering when, or if, it could one day be implemented in hardware.

</comment><comment><USER19> This paper [http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-14...](http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-146.pdf) pointed to in the article posted here, claims higher performance per Mhz and lower power consumption than ARM in table 2.

Still, that requires some chip maker to build a SoC around a RISC-V CPU that attains these efficiencies in the real world.

The paper makes these arguments for RISC-V:

• Greater innovation via free-market competition from many more designers, including open vs. proprietary implementations of the ISA.

• Shared open core designs, which would mean shorter time to market, lower cost from reuse, fewer errors given many more eyeballs3 , and transparency that would make it hard, for example, for government agencies to add secret trap doors.

• Processors becoming affordable for more devices, which helps expand the Internet of Things (IoTs), which could cost as little as $1

The first point is not very concrete. China has long had some of their own MIPS-based RISC CPU designs, and they are most likely to act on the transparency issue. That leaves super-cheap processors for IoT. ARM may be able to deliver pricing and value that's better than free.

And all this assumes very low friction in the form of, say, Android adding this ISA to the standard set of compilation targets for native code, and, to ART pre-compilation.

</comment><comment><USER20> Perhaps the most important contribution Linux has made to the world is that because of its impact, you can run an OS on nearly any instruction set architecture (ISA). That drops a pretty huge barrier in terms of getting to something from nothing. On RISC-V though, unless it was some sort of SoC (which most people won't build) I don't see the impact. But carrying that line a bit further ...

One of the challenges that Microchip has faced was that the affinity for C that the ATMega architecture had from rival Atmel meant it lost a few significant design wins (Arduino perhaps the most serious). They could use RISC-V to try to offset the Atmel SAM series. But other than that I don't see the motivation for folks to not use ARM, granted a full processor license would be expensive but if you are looking at volumes where that would be an advantage, it isn't _that_ expensive.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is licensing an ARM core really a barrier in a business/community venture, once you take into account the enormous costs of just getting a fab to make your chip?

I feel like the fabbing cost is so high, that at that scale, the CPU license fee is really nothing.

Correct me if I am wrong. This is coming from the mind of someone who knows next to nothing about how hardware is really made.

<comment><USER16> I think the bigger consideration is that the ARM IP is encumbered. You can't tweak it and publish the changes you made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> David gave a nice lecture on RAID over a decade ago when I was taking a computer architecture class at Stanford.

Perhaps the next edition of his textbook (bible for computer architecture) should use RISC-V, it would probably help as a learning aid and spread the gospel about RISC-V.

Of course, it's possible that the current edition of the text already does this.

</comment><comment><USER23> Every time I hear "RISC Architecture" I think of the movie Hackers.</comment>


Flux Electric Mopeds - <AUTHOR> http://www.fluxmopeds.com <comment><USER2> 2 other options: this one is in a similar price range (kickstarter)- [http://www.gizmag.com/moto-parilla-carbon-e- bike/43224/](http://www.gizmag.com/moto-parilla-carbon-e-bike/43224/) this one is around $10k and up - [http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/shop/index.php?cPath=1&myCoun...](http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/shop/index.php?cPath=1&myCountry=223)

<comment><USER3> I could buy a Harley for that amount.

<comment><USER4> But then you have a Harley...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My friend from college is the founder of this company. He has spent many years building Flux and trying to bring electric scooters to the US. (They spent several years just iterating on the design before the DOT would approve them for use here.) I have a Flux moped in San Francisco, and it's great for cruising around the neighborhood.

<comment><USER6> Tell him to make a sexier bike. The Italian moped look is lame.

Why didn't they follow the Tesla model? Sexy high-end bike first, then move into more economy-class rides later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have one of these in Chicago. It is fucking brilliant.

The 20 mile range with 2 people is more than enough for tooling around all day. I bought an extra $70 charger that I keep on the bike so I can charge a bit if needed. It gets a full charge in about 3-4 hours.

The bike being silent is really, really nice. That makes it much easier to be aware of your surroundings. It's also really nice to be able to scoot between cars at stoplights, especially when turning left at a street during busy times. Cars can get stuck for 2-3 turns of the light, and since the bike has really good acceleration (without being obnoxiously loud) you don't end up impeding the cars at all.

Getting around twice as fast as an Uber (only during heavy traffic) for ~$0 marginal dollars is quite satisfying.

The guys actually have an office here, so they're able to fix any issues pretty quickly.

If you can't tell I am very happy with my purchase :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Uh, those aren't mopeds. Mopeds, as their name implies, have pedals.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I'm confused why they don't call these scooters.

<comment><USER10> Aren't scooters those two wheeled skate things with handles?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks cool and the price is appealing. For me personally, the range is a bit short and 30mph doesn't cut it - in some cities it'd work, London is full of 50mph roads.

I'd love to buy a Zero (linked lower in the thread) if I had a safe place to store it or some good insurance (motorcycle theft is common in the UK).

WRT weather and other concerns - frankly, the time saved by riding a motorcycle in a congested city blows that out of the water, IMO. In conditions other than gridlock you can maintain an average speed ~50% higher than all other traffic.

I'd love to see electric bikes go mainstream because I think they address almost all of the concerns people have about cycling (sweaty, no good for the unfit/disabled, etc).

You can park 4-5 scooters in a car parking bay, tuck them away at the side of footpaths and in front of stores, if the roads became populated with them it'd possibly double or triple throughput for single riders.

I currently own a 125cc motorcycle and it's a godsend. Especially in the summer months it turns commuting into a joy, and reduces the time taken to perform errands by 5x over public transport (there are plenty of places I can ride to in 20 mins or take a combination of buses and trains to get to in 1.5 hours).

I think living in a large metro area for an extended period of time would be unbearable for me without owning a motorcycle. Most cities have radial transport networks - concentric journeys outside of the core have ridiculous routing as a result.

<comment><USER12> Living in Europe, a moped can be an utter joyous way to get around the world. I've dusted mine off and gotten it ready for the road, and there are great days ahead, on it. Having an electric version - no brainer for me. I'd buy an electric replacement for my Vespa in an instant, were there one...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do anyone know why electric mopeds are still rare in US, even in big congested cities? In China there're already hundreds of millions of them running on the road.

<comment><USER14> Top speed of 30mph limits the usefulness of this for me. I could motor around in my borough just fine, but if I wanted to get to my nearest major city (10-15 miles away), I don't know if I can do it without going on a road that has a speed limit of at least 35, and that road has a lot of 18-wheelers with whom I would not want to share the road.

None of that stuff is an absolute dealbreaker, but if I have a bicycle to schlep around the borough and a car to get into the city, getting something in the middle is a tough value prop.

<comment><USER15> Ignoring range issues (wouldn't be an issue for some of the shops near me I frequent) many of the bigger roads around me have 45mph standard speeds. I don't want to try driving 30 on them on something the size of a scooter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The problem with these (for me) is 1) rain and 2) winter. That's a significant part of the year in many parts of the US. Something like this covered, four- wheel bicycle seems more useful: [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/podride- a-practical-and-f...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/podride-a-practical- and-fun-bicycle-car/x/14054493#/)

<comment><USER17> I bike through winter here in Canada. As long as you dress for weather, make other plans during blizzards, and live in a city with good road clearing it's not nearly as bad as people think.

Just bundle up like you did when you were little.

<comment><USER16> I don't mind bundling or the cold—it's biking on ice on two wheels next to traffic that scares me. :-) Perhaps it just takes some practice?

I suspect it is also a function, as you said, of the road cleaning and available bike paths. Smaller cities and towns with lower traffic flows are probably not as effective at this for the purposes of bicycle traffic.

<comment><USER17> That'd be it. I live in a place where they're _very_ aggressive with road-salt and plowing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So basically a reasonably priced electric replacement for the 50 cc "moped" class scooter. So interesting...

How bad are the laws still? A lot of places specifically define a moped in terms of internal combustion engine displacement. Is there a generally accepted electric motor equivalent for the purposes of the exception?

What is really needed is a reasonably priced scooter that can go 50 MPH. It is hard to commute in most cities with something that can only go 30 MPH. You are better off going in the other direction and getting an e-bike, which in a lot of places gets you access to the bikeways. ... or heck, since you are willing to be rained on, just get a stinking bike and be much more likely to survive the experience...

</comment><comment><USER17> Hah, here in Canada e-bikes are sadly the domain of DUI convicts and other losers. They're sold and Wal-Mart and generally ridden by the social underclass.

We develop the perfect solution to fighting global warming and then immediately hate on its adopters.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have been working on classic mopeds (with the pedals) for the last 10 years. I know everything there is to know about internal combustion mopeds. I wish I could ride a clean electric version. But the Italian-style, legs-together scooter look is just so painfully lame.

Men want to ride something sexier. This is my benchmark: [http://bikevx.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/featured5.jpg](http://bikevx.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/04/featured5.jpg)

There is plenty of room for batteries and a drive train on that type of bike.

Please do this Flux!

</comment><comment><USER19> What's the battery chemistry, does anyone know? I had an electric scooter in China until recently. It was pretty great. Lead-acid battery, 40km range, 40 kmph top speed (about 25 mph).

<comment><USER15> It's on the FAQ page. It's a Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's the news? Electric mopeds have been around for several years now.

(A couple of years ago I almost ran into one when I absentmindedly walked on the street because they are completely silent. Their silence makes me wish gas mopeds were outlawed (at least in residential areas))

<comment><USER21> You are correct. Electric Mopeds have been around in multiple types of formats but they have not become a platform of hyperlocal transit. That is our goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> These look nice! Are they belt or chain drive?

Wow. Regen braking too.

What does one of these weigh?

</comment><comment><USER23> How are these different than the Chinese electrical scooters?

<comment><USER21> They may look similar but the Flux EM1 meets DOT standard and, more importantly, is built to meet the high standards of the American consumer to be a very low maintenance, fun and dependable vehicle for years.

E-mopeds in China often come with no warranty and the market is fix them regularly to just keep them going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been riding electric mopeds in SF for a while now through Scoot. They're pretty great except when they run out of batter.y</comment>


Intel Patents 'Multiplying Two Numbers' - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-patent-uspto-cryptography,12614.html#xtor=RSS-181

<comment><USER2> Intel's patented a variation on the Karatsuba algorithm. It hasn't simply patented 'multiplying two numbers' as stated!

More info: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karatsuba_algorithm>

<comment><USER3> That said, the (original) algorithm is well-known and even novel algorithms shouldn't be patentable.

<comment><USER4> "even novel algorithms shouldn't be patentable"

Even though I have a couple of patents to my name I am generally against software patents, sometimes I think that for genuinely novel algorithms there should be an exception (e.g. RSA encryption). However, as there is clearly no way of objectively defining what a "novel" algorithm is (i.e. there is no algorithm for it) we can't really have this exception.

So yes, I would agree that algorithms should not be patentable.

<comment><USER3> Even if RSA really is sufficiently novel (note that it had already been discovered by a secret service four years before publication), is that really worth a 20-year monopoly?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


California State Controller: Out of Cash in 50 Days - <AUTHOR> http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/california-state-controller-out-of-cash.html

<comment><USER2> The reality of this is that the State Controller has sent several of these letters and nothing's really come of it. I mean, as a state we're in the territory of $150 billion in total debt and knowing that full well our legislature still budgeted for more than we could afford in the current fiscal year.

Not went over by accident, they actually passed a budget that was more than we could afford.

I hate to say it but at this point our financial situation boils down to this: There's no way we can meet our obligations, every part of our government refuses to take their heads out of the sand and the United States can't let the state of California fail. So the rest of you are going to end up bailing us out one way or the other.

Sorry.

<comment><USER3> It's OK the National Government is doing the same thing.

The real apologies go out to future generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Solution: Fire people. Bankruptcy's reality's way of telling a government it has to get smaller.

<comment><USER5> [http://myprops.org/content/S.F.-is-gonna-be-broke-whether- yo...](http://myprops.org/content/S.F.-is-gonna-be-broke-whether-you-like-it- or-not/?ref=patrick.net)

Take a look at the list of San Francisco's top-paid employees. These numbers ignore benefits and pensions, which are fairly generous.

Chief of Police: $256,000

OK, tough job with major impacts on public welfare, must be hard to find capable candidates, I'll buy that.

Police Officer III $237,000 Police Officer II $230,000 PD Sarge. III $229,000 Lieutenant (Fire Dept) $225,000 (PD) Inspector III $223,000

Wait a second, guys

There are two major unions with members who do jobs which are quintessentially blue collar who are getting paid on the same scales that resulted in those. I love cops, don't get me wrong, but there is no way to justify $100k+ for a beat cop except through union capture of the budgeting process.

85% of Sacramento's budget is employee salaries.

In Oakland, out of a budget of about $415 million, police cost $212 million, fire $103 million, and debt service about $40 million. Want to know why they're in debt? Hint: look what they spent 75% of the money on. Those costs went wild in the last two California booms as the unions voted themselves gold-plated contracts, and they've successfully defended most of them even though the booms have busted.

<comment><USER6> I'm a nurse and I work for a hospital in Silicon Valley. Pretty much all the hospitals in Silicon Valley are union. The California Nurses Association has been very politically active, as have the state employees union.

And, it's pretty common for nurses to make 100-150k a year in this region. I know for a fact that there are a few nurses that work at Valley medical center in San Jose that make over $200k.

While astonishing, those nurses tend to work a _lot_ of overtime. And, it's in the overtime that those people pick up the money. The nurses that are making over $200k are working 16 hour shifts, 6 days a week.

Before people start disparaging unions... The union rules here are really nice. For instance, this is one of the only jobs I've ever had, where I get a break on a regular basis. The union contract says that I get 1 hour and 15 minutes of break time every 12 hour shift I work. If get off work at 11:30pm, and I have to come back at 7am, I get double time. The unions actually force hospitals to treat their employees more humanely. Silicon Valley is one of the few places in the nation where there isn't a nursing shortage.

I know that Police work a lot of overtime, too. I'd be willing to bet that those officers are working 80-100 hours a week. I'm sure their union rules are similar to ours regarding scheduling, etc... And, while a cop making $100k sounds outrageous to people not living here in Silicon Valley. Have you looked at housing prices in San Francisco?

If you want your cops to live in San Francisco, you're going to have to give them a wage that lets them think about buying a house there. The median home price in San Fran id $550,000, which means a mortgage payment of about $4000 a month. So, factor that in to your outrage at public employee salaries.

<comment><USER4> You're right, housing is a problem. That is yet another lobby. If you look, Palo Alto might have a land shortage, but it does not have a volume shortage. Think of all the space in the air and underground that is not being used because of ridiculous agricultural zoning.

Also, it's true that unions help make sure that their members are treated more humanely. But it gets troublesome when they capture budgeting, like the previous poster said. Definitely an argument with many dimensions and, within those, sides to it.

But one thing's for sure: if the Cali government is going bankrupt, it has to either raise taxes or fire people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Leonard Susskind on Feynman, the Holographic Principle, and Unanswered Physics - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ycombinator.com/leonard-susskind-on-richard-feynman-the-holographic-principle-and-unanswered-questions-in-physics/ <comment><USER2> Nit: its "physics canon," not "cannon." Like "canonical."

</comment><comment><USER3> For those who were attracted by "Feynman" in the title, here's Susskind's talk about Feynman, also mentioned in the interview:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpjwotips7E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpjwotips7E)

</comment><comment><USER4> Feynman reminds me of a more material/practical Alan Watts. Also, kudos to the article for the index.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not sure what it is, but his lectures are amazing to go to sleep to. Thinks it's the voice.

Also really interesting stuff too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Listening to this, I realized how being a skeptic as led me away from my physics background. Namely, how ER=EPR is a fact due to recent findings even though our history of science is being "correct" until we find new information to discredit past beliefs.

<comment><USER7> The idea that old physical theory always becomes false or incorrect when a new theory supersedes it is elementary mistake. For example "Classical physics is wrong" or "all theories are proven wrong in time" fallacies.

<comment><USER8> It isn't really a fallacy, just pedantic. We can't really assert a philosophical concept of 'truth' in physics, because there is always uncertainty. By extension, any statement that 'this is how the world is working' has a good chance of being wrong in theory and practice.

For example, as I know we have random variables in the current models of quantum physics. Based on our historic experience with the universe, they may yet prove not to actually be random. Until quantum physics, random variables were always a theoretical construct to fill in gaps in our knowledge - eg, "experimental error" was expected to be limits in our ability to measure rather than something fundamental.

Classical physics is really handy, but it doesn't accurately model how the world works in a can-I-simulate-reality-according-to-our-best-knowledge sense. That falsifies the theory.

<comment><USER9> Nope. The randomness of quantum mechanics cannot be erased with more detailed knowledge-- ascribing any number of "hidden" properties to particles to explain their quantum behavior produces mathematical inconsistencies. See:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem)

<comment><USER10> Actually technically Bells Theorem says you can't have hidden variables if you want to retain _locality_. If you allow nonlocality Bells Theorem still allows hidden variables.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Experiment with Google Consumer Surveys: how you ask the question matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/view?survey=dqkem4z4e57i6&question=1&filter=age%3A65%2B

<comment><AUTHOR> In a nutshell, you get very different results on 2 similar questions: "Is it ok to pray when you smoke?", vs. "Is it ok to smoke when you pray?"</comment>


Survive the digg effect with Amazon Web Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/webapps/survive-the-digg-effect-with-amazon-web-services <comment><USER2> For some reason this article sounds fishy to me. I can't put my finger on it exactly, though this paragraph caught my attention:

quoting from the article:

> Using AWS isn't for the faint of heart. You need to have a very good > understanding of Unix, you need to be able to install a Java runtime > environment on your local computer in order to use the Amazon command line > tools and you need to do a good amount of reading in order to get things > initially setup.

Reading this carefully, it just doesn't add up. Installing a JVM is a null operation on os x and solaris, virtually painless on windows, a minor and rapidly shrinking annoyance on linux, and for now indeed a pretty major step on freeBSD. In other words, in the vast majority of circumstances, it's simple. Hardly "not for the faint of heart". The other point, the ability to manage unix, is something you pretty much need -anyway- if you're going to go with the only reasonable alternative (host your own or use virtual dedicated hosting). I guess you could theorize that managing a windows box is easier for certain individuals, but unless you're using ASP on IIS, windows isn't really easier to maintain. This sentence almost seems like its designed to convince the casual reader using a rhetoric trick.

The other thing I don't really get about S3/EC2, though probably I just misunderstand the amazon services, is this:

When your userbase is small, you don't need it - it's just needless complication. If your userbase grows, in almost all cases, you'll want to be able to tell a potential suitor that your website isn't intricately bound with a service operated by the competition.

Did I miss something?

</comment><comment><USER3> Good introduction.

I've been using S3 to host media files for the last several months, on a small scale, and have found it to be reliable and surprisingly inexpensive.

The simple setup, and ability to forward subdomains to S3 buckets, is a great combination.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think Google make ReCaptcha harder for users who block ads? - <AUTHOR> For the last few months, ReCaptcha has become really hard for me to solve... and some very important websites use this service, like my bank.<p>If often take me about 10 tries to get through their unpaid slave work. <comment><USER2> Yes Recaptcha needs a lot of work before it becomes usable again. It's not super friendly for humans and just as easy for bots to break failing miserably on both ends.

I've also noticed that Google search has become a lot less friendly. One of my favorite queries is "site:stackoverflow.com keyword" but 1 out of 5 times I see that annoying captcha (i think google gets triggered faster when I use this keyword to limit my searches to SO only) and then I have to tag a barrage of unending streetlights and cars just to get an answer :(

It has actually been quite beneficial to help me break my Google habit and move to another search engine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Same here... I think Mozilla should implement a voice only captcha service to improve the common voice project like google does with image recognition... i would prefer to help mozilla with their AI instead of google ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes.

This is well known.

In general one use of profiling is to tell bots from humans since the average human stomps all over the web with muddy boots.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I need to get with my bank and try to get them to drop Google.

<comment><USER4> There are other vendors who sell tracker based authentication to banks, government agencies and others conceded with fraud.

A related category is vendors that will ask you questions based on the content of credit and consumer files. (E.g. What color car did you get a loan for in 2012?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's even more fun when you try to block Google entirely from your network. Logins requiring recaptcha fail silently without any indication why.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes. I'm a power user and I find the constant captchas as of late absolutely terrible.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you use TOR browser, you will constantly get capatchas, as your traffic cannot be distinguished from spam, they also become increasingly hard to solve too.

I guess privacy isn't free...

<comment><USER8> Lack of privacy also isn't: a huge amount of page traffic and latency is tracking and tracker driven advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes it's gotten harder, but it dawned on me a month ago: I just leave the site if it has captcha. Done.

<comment><USER10> While I cant avoid them all, I do send emails to their admins, and execs expressing my inability to use their services. A few have already dropped some google cruft.

<comment><USER9> It's not just the wasted time, it's the fact that we're all training Google's services for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It also means your blocking of google's trackers is better than average.

</comment><comment><USER12> While we are on the subject i have noticed that recently (the past week or two) many news sites have deployed anti adblocking technology and refuse to show articles until you disable adblock.

Is there a particular reason for this sudden wave or is it a coincidence?

<comment><USER13> An almost comical consequence I've noticed is that if I browse with content blockers, but in incognito mode (mobile safari), the adblocker detectors don't seem to block me...

</comment></comment><comment> LogIN- I am experiencing the same thing. In average I loose 2 min per captcha, and that adds up in a day. I am loosing my mind over that, so irritating! I really don't like when some service implements Google recaptcha.

<comment><AUTHOR> It actually makes me hate Google a lot more. I used to not care so much about what Google was doing even if they were harvesting all of my private Gmail emails.

It's almost like Recaptcha is the new banner ads from the 90s, but worst, because in addition to being annoying, they are also wasting a lot of your time...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are some good off the shelf modern alternatives for those of us who need to distinguish humans from bots?

Maybe if a couple of those were higher in developer consciousness we'd get fewer recaptchas?

</comment><comment><USER15> In part due to Spectre and Meltdown, in general starting prior to their being revealed out of paranoia I think is entirely justified, I do financial transactions in a separate browser instance, which is started for each site and exited after finishing, and runs no extensions like ad blockers. I don't get see ReCaptcha while doing this, so if running an ad blocker or other defensive extensions are the cause of your problem you might want to try it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Life is an eternal struggle between Good and Google.

</comment><comment><USER8> It sure feels that way to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> mandatory Podcast about history of Captcha: [https://play.podtrac.com/npr-510289/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.n...](https://play.podtrac.com/npr-510289/edge1.pod.npr.org/anon.npr- mp3/npr/pmoney/2019/04/20190424_pmoney_pmpod908v2.mp3)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how much money Google makes from ReCaptcha...</comment></comment>


Pythonista - <AUTHOR> http://omz-software.com/pythonista/

<comment><USER2> Title of this submission: "Phythonista"

Title of the linked article: "Pythonista"

And people wonder why they can't find anything with Google searches.

Moral: COPY your submission title, do not try to type it -- you will get it wrong.</comment>