Show HN: Skruge.in using machine learning for stockexchange - <AUTHOR>

http://www.skruge.in I've worked on a project that analyze social network and news and also find pattern in stocks (as the black friday. As i need fund to continue to work on this, it seems fair to me to give tips and ask people to make donation when they will make a benefice with our tips.
We mainly use python / django / rethinkdb & postgresql  / ipython / scykit for data learning and stats.
One of our goal is to explain each time why you have to buy. <comment><USER2> I've worked on some similar projects. Would love to see the code. Have you thought about open sourcing?

You could use something like, [http://assembly.com](http://assembly.com), to crowdsource development. Or get a starter seed through Kickstarter.

Best!

</comment><comment><USER2> Clickable: [http://www.skruge.in](http://www.skruge.in)</comment>


Google just discontinued SMS search - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/mobile/sms/search/

<comment><USER2> What was SMS search?

<comment><AUTHOR> It allowed you to access services like yellow pages, weather, directions through text messages.

For example I could text google (466453) "directions chicago, IL to San Francisco, CA" and it would text me a full list of directions in response. Or I could text "weather" and it would respond with a 3-day forecast. Or I could text "taco bell miami, FL" and it would text me a list of taco bells in miami with their addresses and phone numbers (limited to a page of 5, with the ability to request more.)</comment></comment>


Americans Are Receiving Unordered Parcels from Chinese E-Criminals - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/27/americans-are-receiving-unordered-parcels-from-chinese-e-criminals-and-cant-do-anything-about-it/#3c9f763c73da <comment> LV-426 This article appears in the second top post of this (currently front page) thread, made 9 hours ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940318)

It was also submitted seven hours ago, here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15944653)

The original submission 19 days ago is here, with 90 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15803725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15803725)

<comment><USER2> Ah thanks! With that last link this is unambiguously a dupe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have ordered stuff from aliexpress and got "ePackets." It always seemed strange and now it is even stranger because, apparently, the shipping costs are subsidized NOT by China but by the USPS itself ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how- the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-usps- epacket-gives-postal-subsidies-to-chinese-e-commerce-merchants-to-ship-to-the- usa-cheap/#1078f4dd40ca)).

How did this "deal" happen? Who is getting paid, and what benefit does the USA get from this?

I mean this is just consumer shipping we're talking about, small potatoes compared to commercial B2B shipping. But still it must add up to something significant as well as being demonstrably hurtful to US-based small business.

<comment><USER4> >How did this "deal" happen?

Although no expert, I do know enough to possibly answer your question. This has been going on since the 60's and to some extend the Universal Postal Union goes back to 1863[1]. At the time, when you wanted to mail a letter, it was fairly complex. You had to arrange for the details of your shipping for every route your letter took. Meaning you had to calculate for every leg of the shipment ahead of time. So they came up with these 3 points (From Wikipedia):

        There should be a uniform flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the world
        Postal authorities should give equal treatment to foreign and domestic mail
        Each country should retain all money it has collected for international postage. [2]

The problem is that this system hasn't really been updated that often. So rates do not make sense anymore, especially not since ecommerce took off.

Along came USPS and signed a special deal with China in 2010 to increase their presence in China (well, that's the official statement anyway[3]).

That statement however leaves out a very important part. Which is that USPS lost so much money under UNU, that although they had a net loss of $29.4 million in 2012[4]. They would have "lost another $1 million or so in 2012 had Chinese shippers opted for regular mail instead of ePacket."[4].

So basically the USPS was already losing a ton of money, and this is a way of minimizing the damage.

The real issue is that the broader picture isn't really taken into consideration. Which is, that China is literally sending things for rates cheaper than Amazon which is estimated to pay USPS $2 per package[5]. Take the fact that most items are manufactured in China for cheap anyway, and you have just signed away a lot of domestic business opportunities.

[1][http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/01/i_mailed_a_letter_to_paris_.html)

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

[3][https://about.usps.com/news/national- releases/2011/pr11_037....](https://about.usps.com/news/national- releases/2011/pr11_037.pdf)

[4][https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/the- postal-service-is-losing-millions-a-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from- china/)

[5][https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-30/it-s- amaz...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-30/it-s-amazon-s- world-the-usps-just-delivers-in-it)

Anyone feel free to correct or add information, it's an interesting topic.

<comment><USER5> > So basically the USPS was already losing a ton of money

The USPS isn't losing a ton of money. It is profitable.

The "loss" is that congress mandated that the USPS accumulate 75 years worth of employee retirement funds and gave them 10 years to do it. So they "lose" $5B a year because they are not able to pay that amount into a retirement fund.

<comment><USER6> Don't knee jerk this as a political thing. They're saying that the USPS loses money _on this service_. It has nothing to do with their overall profitability or Congressional action or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The USPS Inspector General did an audit [0] of the ePacket program in 2014, finding that the cost of the program could not be effectively calculated, though the USPS certainly lost money on this service in the preceding two fiscal years:

> ePacket volume and revenue have increased, but the Postal Service still lost > at least $39 million during FYs 2011 and 2012. Until accurate costs for > ePackets can be identified and used as a basis for pricing, the risk of > revenue loss for ePackets remains high.

Wade Shepard first wrote about this [1] for Forbes in 2011, following the USPS's announcement of the program [2]. His commentary sets the program against a backdrop of a global shipping war and plummeting postal service revenues. He writes, "Essentially, U.S. shippers are partially paying higher shipping rates to make up for the hit the USPS takes giving subsidies to the Chinese."

[0]: [https://www.uspsoig.gov/document/inbound-china-epacket- costi...](https://www.uspsoig.gov/document/inbound-china-epacket-costing- methodology)

[1]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how- the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/11/05/how-the-usps- epacket-gives-postal-subsidies-to-chinese-e-commerce-merchants-to-ship-to-the- usa-cheap/#6e70553f40ca)

[2]: [https://about.usps.com/news/national- releases/2011/pr11_037....](https://about.usps.com/news/national- releases/2011/pr11_037.pdf)

<comment><USER3>
        > He writes, "Essentially, U.S. shippers are partially paying higher shipping rates to make up for the hit the USPS takes giving subsidies to the Chinese."

Yeah, but why?? What is the intent of this program? Is it some kind of global trade "kick-back" in exchange for something else or is it just a dumb idea? Even the audit doesn't address the reason for this bilateral agreement made in 2011.

Moreover, even if the program "makes money" for the postal service it comes at the expense of hurting competitiveness of domestic mail-order. There must be some other side to the story, right? Protectionism is harmful in itself, but this seems like the exact opposite: active harm to domestic business in favor of Chinese business.

<comment><USER8> From the linked Forbes article:

> They came up with the ePacket, which is actually meant to be an improvement > over the rates set by the UPU. In exchange for providing tracking and faster > delivery times, ePacket partner countries agree to pay slightly higher > rates.

So the Chinese pay more for ePackets than they would for standard mail by UPU rates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Title is clickbait. "E-criminal" implies that the contents of the packages are bugged or something, but it's just a specific form of growth hacking.

<comment><USER10> The act is criminal. It's just that the recipient isn't the victim, but merely incidental.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of Bill the Galactic Hero ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill,_the_Galactic_Hero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill,_the_Galactic_Hero)).

He solves an important waste management problem by using the free postal service.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered- merchan...](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unordered-merchandise)

Fortunately, it seems unordered merchandise is yours to keep. If I was targeted by this, I'd probably find a local store to take them rather than just throwing it all away.

</comment><comment><USER13> Our great mail mystery has finally been solved!

~50 hair tie packets, ~5 beanies, a scarf, and some makeup.

My wife sometimes wears the light blue beanie they sent and the scarf. I still hear her say "I need a hair tie. Can't find one anywhere" every couple of days. Keep 'em coming guys.

<comment><USER14> I laughed so hard when I saw this article; a few months ago a got a package that contained another package that contained another package that contained a single scrap of Chinese newspaper. It was so bewildering I took pictures of it and sent them to my friends to see if anyone could make sense of it. This is the second mystery HN has solved for me this week. :)

<comment><USER15> Whats the other mystery?

<comment><USER14> A mystery truck with radioactive material warnings on it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897238](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897238)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I believe I got one of these. It was a book I didn't order, "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. The people at the Post Office said it was mine to keep and there was nothing I could do about it.

<comment> the-dude Did you get stuff done?

<comment><USER17> Post on HN, nuff said.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why do they send the packages to random people instead of sending them to accomplices or just faking everything and not even sending the package? Is it to avoid fraud detection by the marketplace?

</comment><comment><USER19> Ha! After reading the article...this is not a huge problem folks. If people were shipped drugs to be picked up by criminals then i would be more alarmed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there a risc for the receiver of the packages?

<comment><USER21> Yes, there's only a very small set of things you can do. But you can do them very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I only got 1 unordered package from china so it probably was not part of that scam... it was worth $10 too...

</comment><comment><USER23> Of course they do, a three way handshake at that distance takes way too long.

</comment><comment><USER24> >Due to the unbalanced pricing policies of the United Postal Union and subsidies from the U.S. Postal Service, it costs people in China virtually nothing to ship small packages to the U.S.

I'm so happy my tax dollars are going to subsidize this.

<comment><USER25> USPS receives no taxpayer money, so no.

<comment><USER26> You're technically correct when thinking of only the transfer of money, though that's not the whole story. Many here would call tax breaks to regular businesses a tax subsidy to those businesses... after all, there are services those tax advantaged businesses are using that are being paid for by others. In this sense, there is a transfer of "something" from taxpayers to the business, it's just not hard "taxpayer dollars".

However, we see that the USPS does get a lot of advantages that are effectively subsidized by others:

[http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal- service/](http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/)

There are real subsidies that the USPS gets that are funded by taxpayers, it simply that those are not paid in cash. So I think the person you were responding to has a completely valid point. They are not competing and doing business on the same terms as other businesses and squandering their cash is enabled because of the subsidies of other expenses that they don't have to bear directly.

<comment><USER27> They also have to put up with all manner of political interference from Congress with regard to rates they can charge, what they can pay employees & what business plans they can implement.

The Post Office has been a political battleground for 40 years and it shows.

The "they are subsidized & squander their money" angle seems unfair given that. Personally I think they do a fairly good job.

That said I think it's fair to say they are tax subsidized, it's just not much of one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why home values may takes decades to recover - <AUTHOR> http://i.usatoday.net/news/graphics/housing_prices/home_prices.pdf

<comment><USER2> I've been making the same points for a decade. The Bank of England was given the task of keeping inflation low, and their means of doing this was interest rates. When inflation was getting close to the acceptable ceiling, they increased interest rates.

Technically we had an inflation rate below 3%, but only because house prices were excluded from the inflation figures. Mortgage payments were probably most working people's single biggest payment, yet the huge rises in those costs (as house prices increased) didn't go into the inflation figures. If they had, then inflation would have been well above 3% and interest rates would have had to rise, dampening the housing market. I can't help but believe that governments were happy to exploit the electorate's belief that they were doing well financially, when in fact it was an illusion.

House prices will have to fall by about 50% (the figures for the UK look pretty similar to that USAToday presentation). People were prepared to take on ridiculous loans when the bubble was being inflated, because they thought they would be unable to afford property if they waited.

In fact, the situation in the UK sounds like it might have been worse than in the US. There were significant numbers of 110% mortgages available in the UK until a couple of years ago.

The BBC did an expose in 2003 showing that major banks were encouraging customers to lie about their income in order to be able to buy property. Yet this expose has been buried, never to be mentioned. The government and the financial regulators did not want to know.

The median salary for a graduate in London is £24,000; the median price for property is £335,000.

I have friends who came from working-class families who were still able to buy houses when they were students back in the 1970s.

<comment><USER3> I agree wholeheartedly. I remember when I started college I did a quick calculation of how much money I'd have to make for the lifestyle I wanted, and support my potentially future family - which is basically on par with what my parents offered me.

It surprised me how much _more_ I'd have to make compared to my parents in order to afford the same things... almost double really. Most of the difference came due to the fact that the house is now worth three times as much as when they bought it 15 years ago. Housing in general is ridiculously out of whack with reality, and in a selfish way I hope the recession-style home pricing stays for good, it'll allow a lot more young people to buy in and actually afford to live in their own place within their lifetimes.

<comment><USER4> Why selfish?

You'll be able to afford your house. Your friends will too. Your parents will still own the same house. So will their friends.

I don't think it should be any different to hoping ipods will be cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The whole concept of home value recovery is flawed.

We don't talk about the recovery of gasoline prices. The concept that a bubbles peak price is somehow correct is by definition flawed.

<comment><USER6> That is an awful analogy. Aside from those in the oil industry or envirmentalists who want to discourage use, everyone likes low gasoline prices because energy prices are only a cost. The money you spend on gas it lost forever.

The money you spend on a home is money you will some day get back. Whether it grows or not, most people expect its nominal value to at least stay constant. More likely the real dollar value will be constant and the nominal value will rise.

When home prices fall precipatously it is a drag on the economy. Suddenly anyone under water on their mortgage or at a loss on their home can no longer sell, and are effectively locked into their home. This is inefficient because the best labor can not fluently move the most appropriate jobs. The money tied up in a falling home can not be reinvested. An over extended house can not be reversed mortgaged to fund a small business.

It is nothing like gas prices. Low home prices are only good for those (like me) first entering market. But the number of those first entering the market will by definition be much smaller than the number already entrenched in it. Aside from a small percentage of speculative investors the popping of the bubble simply hammers anyone who bought a home in the last 5 years out of necessity and will continue to be a huge problem for our economy for years to come.

<comment><USER4> High energy prices are good for whoever owns energy. Mostly it's countries with natural reserves. But there is nothing stopping anyone from investing in a way that ties his fate with theirs.

A house deteriorates too. You invest in upkeep. The difference between the two are: (A) you buy housing all at once and (usually) pay over time. (B) housing is a manufactured good while oil is a resource.

Sure it would be a difficult "adjustment" for those that saw their house as an investment if prices went into reverse in the long term. It would be a serious hit for those who are invested in multiple houses. But it would be a net win for society.

If you own a house that is going up in value, you win nothing unless you sell. Even if you sell, you are most likely to lose since most people upgrade rather then downgrade or move to renting. If house prices went off a cliff new buyers would win, upgraders would win and "investors" would lose. The long term nature of the product would mena that it would take time for the benefits to affect the averages, but over time people would need to spend less on houses. This would make them weathier.

The problem you describe is not inherent in houses. It is inherent in expectations. People made decisions based on expectation that houses are the best investment. That is the root of the problem. If the expectation had never existed, houses would be seen as goods and noone would be that worried about their house value going down. It would just be like buying an item at price X, one week before it goes on sale. That's not such an economic hit.

<comment><USER6> This isn't an over time thing. This is an all at once thing.

You obviously don't know people going through this so let me paint you a vivid picture.

My grandfather died in March 2008. His home wasn't an investment, it was the house had had lived in for 40 years. He paid $340,000 for it. We have been trying to sell the house for over a year, we finally sold it this month for $150,000.

That is the housing market right now in a nutshell. It doesn't really matter to us because the estate is a gift to us, not our own money really.

But now flip the coin to the people who "normal" home buyers. Say I moved into that house 10 years ago and now my job is gone. I want to sell that house and move somewhere else. What am I going to do if I bought the home for 340k and have to sell it for 150k. I owe the bank almost 200k. I'm not an "investor", I have a wife and two kids and all we want to do is get out of our house. We didn't buy it as an investment and we played by the rules, but now we are completely and utterly screwed.

It has nothing to with investing. It has to do with putting a roof over your kids, and the expectation that if society won't burn to the ground around you. For people underwater in their homes - society has basically crashed and burned around them. They are basically trapped in their current situation whether they want to be there or not with only one way out - default.

People love to blame sub-prime borrowers who shouldn't be in homes, or speculators who shouldn't have bought homes. Sure those guys lifted the prices that everyone had to pay, but the VAST MAJORITY of homes bought during the bubble were still primary residences for people, and all of those regular families are now the victim in this situation.

Ignoring those problems is to be either incredibly out of touch, incredibly stupid, or incredibly callous.

<comment><USER4> Sorry. I didn't mean to seem harsh. Quick jumps can be very hard on some people. 340k to 150k is very big. But I do think these are more end cases then it seems. The point to note is this:

 _I" want to sell that house and move somewhere else._ "

In the majority of cases, people want to buy at a higher price. Even if they want to buy a cheaper house, you lose the difference between the house prices at the time you buy, the price at the time you sell (buy again), times the rate at which house prices fell. Say you go from a 300k house to a 200k house after a 25% fall (big numbers), you "lose" $25k. If you move to a more expensive house, you "win."

If your house is under water, you are in no worse a situation really then if prices hadn't crashed. You still have the same mortgage.

When you buy a house you lock in your housing costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Comparing median household income to median house prices is probably 80% of what you need to explain the housing market, and this article does a pretty good job. The essence is that you can't sustainably spend more on a house than you make, so there is no reason to expect the historical ratio to change more.

The only way you can reasonably expect that ratio to change in a dramatic way the way it did is if there was some underlying structural change in how people live. For example, a massive migration to dense cities where you're not spending hundreds a month for a car means you can, spend a larger proportion on housing, pushing that ratio up. But of course, we know that hasn't happened and will take decades if it ever does.

</comment><comment><USER8> The data is great, but I really wish they would start the Y-axis of their graphs at zero. It's easy to obscure the true magnitude of a change by picking an arbitrary starting point. </pet-peeve>

<comment><USER9> The true magnitude isn't the point, the relative change is, and limiting the graph to a specific sub-range makes it easier to read because it is is more straight forward to following the tick lines to the actual label numbers on the Y-axis. There are a lot of ways to misrepresent data, and data on graphs, but this isn't one of them. These graphs are especially nice because the Y-axis labels are in a largish font, so it's more difficult to misinterpret the scale.

I do have a minor problem with the last graph though, "Monthly supply of homes for sale". Since this is meant to compare existing homes to new homes, the line graph and the thickness of the line doesn't convey enough of the target information; this would be better done as a bar graph, with two bars, one for existing and one for new, for each year.

I had a boss once who made graphs with three Y-axes on them (two on the left and one on the right) and multiple X-axes, all in different scales, mixed linear and exponential. He tried to use different colors, but would then print it out in greyscale. They were extremely hard to read and get anything useful out of, which I always thought was part of his goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What is the value of homeownership? Why does the government give people incentives to buy homes in the form of tax breaks, etc?

Is this to create more debt and therefore more currency in circulation or is it to benefit the homeowner in some way?

It is failed government policy that set all this in motion, the question is: Why were those policies put in place? Are they for the people or for the government or what?

<comment><USER11> [http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1...](http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13491933) and [http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1...](http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13492469) discuss some of these questions:

"Governments subsidise home ownership because they think it encourages stable, more law-abiding neighbourhoods. The children of homeowners do better at school than the children of renters do. Homeowners are more engaged in local democracy. And, because homeowners must pay off their mortgages, housing supposedly encourages people to save more than they otherwise would."

<comment><USER12> Correlation != Causation

Is it any surprise that the kind of people who save up a huge amount of money to make a down payment and are consistently responsible enough to always make large mortgage payments are 'good' people?

By 'good' I simply mean the kind of people who abide by laws, encourage their children in their school work, take an active interest in local government, etc.

This reminds me of a program they had in Illinois where the state decided to send books to all new parents. Some study found that children who grew up in houses with lots of books did better on a wide variety of metrics so the government reasoned that sending books to parents would somehow help the kids. It never occurred to them that the key was that type of people who bought/read a lot of books where also the type of people who were better parents.

<comment><USER11> Oh, I agree - but I was answering a question: "Why does the government..." Is this scientific policy? Is this good policy? Those are different questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing that is left out of this analysis is the impact of inflation. While the inflation that is being introduced by the Fed buying Treasuries won't necessarily involve wage increases intially, it eventually will distort the price gains again. It's a blunt instrument to reduce the value of these massive debts that the US homeowners have incurred and the negative equity positions that people are in.

<comment><USER14> Inflation only occurs when the sum of money and credit increases. So far lenders have been reducing credit faster than the Fed has been increasing the money supply. Perhaps that will turn around some day, but there is reason to think that we have already passed "peak credit" and such levels will not be seen again in our lifetimes. [http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/peak- cred...](http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/peak-credit.html)

<comment><USER13> That is a misleading analysis. The credit you are referring to as part of the money supply is bank credit, which is created by the central bank when they introduce currency units. Credit has been moving from the private sector to the public sector. The US govt has already run 1T debt in Q1. What they couldn't borrow from abroad with treasuries, they had the fed print money to buy the excess treasuries. Now we're hearing noises about how the fed wants to issue bonds. Inflation is coming, just have to figure out what to hoard.

<comment><USER14> You haven't addressed the "peak credit" point. Deflation is upon us. Hoard dollars.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What does your business stack look like? - <AUTHOR>

What services do you use to help manage your business and code?
=== Example ===
Accounting: Quickbooks
Project Management: Asana & Basecamp
Analytics: Google
CRM: None
Phone: Google Voice
Chat: Hipchat & Skype
Documentation: Self-hosted Wikis
Issues: Github
Email: Google Apps
Customer Service: Zendesk
Time Tracking: Harvest <comment><USER2> openhospital.com:

Accounting: Nothing Formal (yet)

Project Management: Default Notes app on my iPhone

CRM: None

Phone: Grasshopper

Documentation: documents on dropbox

Email: Rackspace

Customer Service: Zendesk, Zendesk API for workflow (Zendesk is awesome!).

Payment Gateway: Balanced Payments

Error Reporting: Raygun</comment>


Numbers That Explain Why Facebook Acquired WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> http://sequoiacapital.tumblr.com/post/77211282835/four-numbers-that-explain-why-facebook-acquired <comment><USER2> America Online President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Pittman said: "Acquiring ICQ fits perfectly into our multiple-brand strategy. Like CompuServe, ICQ substantially broadens our reach in important markets not served by AOL-branded products. In addition to its international reach, ICQ has tremendous appeal among young, technically sophisticated Web users and there is remarkably little overlap with AOL."

<comment><USER3> ... shortly before they shuttered the ICQ service and merged it with AIM.

<comment><USER4> ICQ is still around.

[http://www.icq.com/en](http://www.icq.com/en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I understand the value of WhatsApp now that the network is absolutely enormous, but can anyone shed some light on how WhatsApp differentiated itself at first?

It seems like it's just basic user-to-user messaging over data, with a list- like interface that looks like every messaging app on my phone. How did they convince people that this particular proprietary solution was the best? Did they somehow remove friction in getting your friends to join? I feel like using Google Hangouts or any other proprietary messaging service is the same... I must be missing something.

<comment><USER6> I'm trying to find an explanation for how WhatsApp's network is supposedly worth drastically more than Gmail / Yahoo / Hotmail webmail is. Just because users connect, doesn't mean you have a pot of gold. I believe this is a critical, flawed assumption that is being nearly universally made. Last generation's instant messaging apps were nearly worthless monetarily, and are still nearly worthless even today with tons of users. Why the assumption that today's mobile versions of instant messaging will be worth ... over a hundred billion dollars (apparently)?

I've got an alternate theory. Today's WhatsApps and Snapchats will turn out to be terrible businesses, that aren't worth anywhere near what's being speculated. Today's user (mobile based) obsession will be viewed as not all that different from yesterday's eyeballs (web based) obsession. What are the consequences of that scenario?

<comment><USER7> People do pay for WhatsApp - the article says $1/yr although I think I paid 69p for life (approx $1) for the iphone app. If they get 1bn people paying $1 then that's a decent income. I was reluctant to pay - I'm tight like that - but I had to because my friends were on it and wanted to communicate. Though I note people are moving to Viber to some extent which is similar but free.

<comment><USER8> 1bn people * $1 is a decent income? Bearing in mind that is an optimistic figure and FB paid 16 times that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just for good measure................

Activison-Blizzard – $13.9B

Alcoa – $12.2B

American Airlines – $12.3B

Akamai – $10.9B

AmerisourceBergen – $15.9

Blackstone Group – $17.8B

Campbell Soup – $13.6

Chesapeake Energy – $17.2B

Chipotle – $17.1B

Citrix Systems – $10.7B

Coach – $13.5B

Consolidated Edison (ConEd) – $16.2B

Discovery Communicatons – $19.1B

Dr. Pepper Snapple Group – $10.2B

Expedia -$10.2B

The Gap – $19B

Fidelity – $15.8B

Harley-Davidson – $14.1B

Hertz – $11.5B

Icahn Enterprises -$13.1B

The J.M. Smucker Company – $10B

Kohl's – $11.1B

Kroger – $19.4

Loews – $17B

Macy's – $19.6B

Marriott International – $15.4B

Mattel – $12B

MGM Resorts – $12.7

Monster Beverage – $12B

Moody's – $17.08B

News Corp – $10.27B

Nielsen – $17.6B

Nordstrom – $11.4B

Progressive – $14.3B

Ralph Lauren – $14.2B

Red Hat – $11.1B

Royal Caribbean Cruises – $11.4B

Ryanair – $15.5B

Sherwin-Williams – $19.4B

Southwest Airlines – $14.7B

Starwood Hotels & Resorts – $14.9B

Symantec – $14.4B

TD Ameritrade – $18.4B

The Carlyle Group – $11.1B

Tiffany & Co. – $11.4B

Tyson Foods – $13.1B

Under Armour – $11.4B

Whole Foods Market – $19.3B

Workday – $17B

Xerox – $13.2B

<comment><USER10> That list is restricted to companies at a similar capitalization to "WhatsApp". In contrast, Ford Motor Company is valued at 60 billion (about 3-4 times more than "WhatsApp"). I would suggest quite plainly that the trademark "Ford Motor Company" alone is worth more than the every part of the "WhatsApp" enterprise combined, including whatever technology they may have created, if any.

Obviously the investment banking refugees working at Facebook aren't stupid, and I suspect they're going for the big kill, with other people's money as usual. Maybe "WhatsApp" will be the next big thing. Who cares? If I was writing a check out for 16 billion, it sure wouldn't be for the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.

But...not my money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The nmbers are actually irrelevant. The key thing is that Whatsapp has the potential to become a rival to Facebook (or be acquired by some company that seeks to compete with Facebook).

Facebook needs to avoid that at all costs, so is prepared to pay whatever it takes to acquire potential rivals, thus removing the threat.

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7267516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7267516)

<comment><USER12> You know, since I heard the news I kept hearing people make that argument and I thought, "But Whatsapp and Facebook are completely different products and markets." ... And then I realized that the only thing I use Facebook for is keeping in touch with people. And Whatsapp could easily fill in for 80% of what I do on Facebook. Indeed, they are trying to neutralize competition.

Sadly, I remember the days of Microsoft's near-monopoly on desktop computing, and I'll be getting rid of whatsapp within the week. On to Telegram or whoever is willing to make an identical app that isn't owned by FB or Google or whoever. The question will be whether I can convince others to switch.

<comment><USER13> It surprises me that there people still using WhatsApp given its bad security, and having to pay for it after a year? What keeps people from switching to other alternatives? Doesn't Telegram/Textsecure etc. offer the same, while being completely free?

But I guess Facebook acquiring them explains it: I don't use Facebook either, so now I'm even less inclined to use WhatsApp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 4\. The number of times WhatsApp has through unprecedented incompetence compromised the privacy and security of its users and failed to keep even basic authenticity guarantees in what is a decades old central server model.

Why muck around, they were bought because of their massive user base and user base only. They succeeded regardless of their constant attempts at sabotaging their success, and its testament of massive market failure. We need to abolish the closed gardens to ensure inertia doesn't stop bad products from failing.

<comment><USER15> The twitter business model never fails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm astounded at how frequently people are apparently making breakthroughs in sending raw text between people.

I keep thinking that's a mousetrap, and people somehow keep making money off of* better ones.

Shows how much I know.

* Or at least building huge userbases on...

<comment><USER17> It's never really about the raw text itself, but the context. Facebook, Whatsapp, Forums, Twitter, SMS, Etc... are all just text but in radically different contexts. Something tells me we haven't seen the last of the innovations in good ol' plain-text.

<comment><USER18> I really don't think plain text communication has innovated much since email and IRC.

The money is mainly about users. Facebook are buying users, not technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Facebook is running 2b+ in Ad profits at an 8x YoY growth. If owning social networking and communication stays this profitable and Whatsapp helps solidify Facebook's dominance, the purchase is entirely justified. Remember, Whatsapp basically killed SMS outside the US.

We always scold people and companies for not taking huge bets once they become successful. Huge props to Zuckerberg for staying hungry and willing to take risks.

</comment><comment><USER20> They charge $1/year with the first year free. Last year they had ~250M users and today they have 450M. So, about 50% (or 40% or 20%) of their user base is paying $1/year. So, their annual revenue is $90M - $225M depending on the assumption. Even with a $1M/employee burn rate, their op ex is <$50M. Hence, they were profitable.

Another data point on their finances - The only external funding they've taken is $8M from Sequoia in 2011. It's unlikely that that could last them till now with 32 employees.

<comment><USER21> Profitable sure, but I'm curious what their plans for expansion on that profit is. At best right now, they can hope for $450m next year. Even if they got all of that, it'd take more than 30 years to make Facebook their money back.

So there's something they're wanting to do, a means of making money, that we don't know yet. I'm genuinely curious what they're thinking about.

<comment><USER22> They could just over more `premium' services for more than 1$ per year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the most important of those numbers is the last one, 0 marketing/pr budget. I've seen ads for viber and line on tv/newspapers etc. and the ads immediately discredited those services for me, as in, if they had enough cash to broadcast TV ads in Turkey(I live there), they were probably handing my data over to anyone for cash, probably (and quite a few of my friends thought similarly). So, for such a service, having no ads/pr might actually be more beneficial.

<comment><USER24> > _"...they were probably handing my data over to anyone for cash..."_

How ironic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Let's assume that Sequia owned 25% of WhatsApp for their $8M investment. That means that they turned $8M in to $4,000M in three years.

<comment><USER26> This investment must've returned their entire fund

<comment><USER27> Twice.

It's a $1.3B fund.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> From WSJ liveblog of the FB-WA conf call:

      "Monetization is not going to be a priority for us," Koum says.
      "We're focused on the growth." He says he's looking ahead 10-15 years.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/02/19/live-blog-the- face...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/02/19/live-blog-the- facebookwhatsapp-conference-call/?mod=e2tw)

<comment> pi-err Good link.

> "Mr. Zuckerberg says the deal fits into Facebook's journey to become a > mobile company."

Can you morph from desktop to mobile? Who succeeded in this? I wonder what's the price tag on previous pivots to mobile.

Apple - mostly organic, mini acquisitions. Possibly $3-5b for iDevices development?

Google - half organic with some big (failed) acquisitions (Moto). Possibly $10b net

MS - mostly acquisitions. Possibly $15b including Nokia.

FB - mostly acquisitions. Total "journey" cost so far: ~$20b

This certainly feels like FB is walking in MS steps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> From 5 minutes of reading it seems that it's huge in overseas markets where people want to avoid the cost per SMS message fee, am I correct?

If you have a standard plan with the phone giants in the US, all calls and texts are generally unlimited, but you pay for data now. Is that why it's not as big in the US?

<comment><USER19> Not that alone. Here in the UK SMS is often unlimited. People still prefer to use Whatsapp. I and most of my friends have virtually stopped using SMS.

Another advantage are international SMS. Again more relevant for say Europeans than for Americans.

<comment><USER30> I guess I still don't get it. I can send images and group chat via SMS. Does this really do anything any different? I'm not asking just to be contrarian -- I'm just wondering if I should try it out and try to convince my friends to do the same.

<comment><USER31> \- Unlimited SMS plans are less common than unlimited data plans in Europe.

\- You can not do group chat via SMS. You send a SMS to multiple people, but they will only see your number and can't reply to the group (unless I am missing something). I feels more like chat room for your friend group or family.

\- In Europe mobile phone providers have historically tried to rip off people with MMS, which may be a reason why they are unpopular.

<comment><USER32> Both the iPhone and recent Android phones support group SMS. The package is actually sent as an MMS containing the message and list of recipients, that allows you to "reply to all" via SMS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> 450\. I can't believe they spent 16 billion dollars for just 450 million active users. That's $35 per user.

32\. Well, they can't be acquiring the talent, because no matter how good they are, it's crazy to spend $500,000,000 per employee.

1\. Speaks to the potential risk that it'll be to monetize this base and change the business strategy considering it's built on the idea of no ads and a low charge.

0\. Fair enough, they created a massively successful product without any marketing. That said, not exactly sure how it translates to future profitability.

</comment><comment><USER34> Tragedy of the commons.

Anything free will be overused. FB is paying $X per user for an overused product. Once they try to monetize (ads, higher fees, user tracking), it will quickly become underused.

<comment><USER35> Just like how they killed the Instagram goose right?

<comment><USER34> very different products: Instagram users, for the most part, want others to see their pictures. WhatsApp users, for the most part, don't want others to read their SMS messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Those numbers don't explain why FB bought them. They don't really explain paying $19,000,000,000 at all.

</comment><comment><USER37> My experience when I first used WhatsApp on a droid phone was... * Absolute piece of cake to get started/configured * Absolute piece of cake to message friends * No 22c charge from carrier per SMS

Pretty good recipe for success.

<comment><USER38> Are you outside the US?

I haven't paid 22 cents for a text message in YEARS.

<comment><USER39> Presumably you're paying a flat-fee that's more than $1/year though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Love how the article repeats how much the founders hate advertising yet their new owners are purely in the advertising market. I guess when someone backs up a truck load of cash your principles go flying out the window. How long until daddy Facebook starts asking for WhatsApp for more revenue via ... ads? I guess that would be around the time the founders cash out and start looking at their next startup.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's not just a numbers game.. I write this analysis a few day ago before the viber and this acquisition. [http://www.hoista.net/post/76404923258/the-rise- of-trojan-ho...](http://www.hoista.net/post/76404923258/the-rise-of-trojan- horse-platforms-kakaotalk-wechat)

<comment><USER42> Yep, what has happened in Asia alarmed Facebook and jack up this deal's price, pretty obviously. What weechat and line have achieved can be easily perceived on whatsup, that scared Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Am I the only one that gets a nervous feeling about Sequoia boosting WhatsApp like this after Facebook's announcement of a 16B acquisition? I'd call it suspicion of a conflict of interest, but I don't think that description quite fits in this instance.

<comment><USER44> Sequioia was Whatsapp's lone investor, this is an insane deal for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> If facebook promised to let whatsApp stay as an independent product and not pollute it with ads then why did facebook purchase it in the first place. They are not going to integrate whatsApp as a part of facebook messenger. They might make something else something all together but still a costly price to pay whatsApp to make whatsApp what its already doing. (could be a different reason to take out competition, either way a pretty expensive agreement.)

One thing is sure, any app which connects a billion users, facebook will go after it.

</comment><comment><USER46> Whatsapp is great and the numbers speak for themselves, but I think that promoting the $0 marketing spend brings a wrong notion to consumer facing startups. Usually it's ok to spend here and there to get your initial user base or to learn about your product/market fit. Otherwise you're just relying on blind luck.

</comment><comment><USER47> Seems to me Facebook just obtained another few hundred million not using their messaging services data...

</comment><comment><USER36> How much did they pay for Beluga in 2011 (which then became Facebook Messenger - an app that does pretty much the same as Whatsapp, if not more)? How little (if anything) did they spend in Marketing that app since? Sounds like a costly mistake.

</comment><comment><USER48> "It's a decidedly contrarian approach shaped by Jan's experience growing up in a communist country with a secret police. Jan's childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped."

How ironic that they sold to Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER49> Presumably the published purchase price is based off what Facebook's stock is currently trading at today? Assuming a correction back down toward the $100 billion range, the acquisition price doesn't seem so wild.

</comment><comment><USER50> I think the main reason is users in non-develiped countries and remote niches that dont really use FB.

</comment><comment><USER51> "After one year of free use, the service costs $1 per year"

With 200M users a year ago - it makes a sense.

</comment><comment><USER52> I can hardly read that grey used on sequoia's blog. Just sayin'...</comment>


Ask HN: Which books can teach me to invent and design a great SaaS product? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> In all honesty, none of them. You can read and learn about many of the practices you will need, but it's entirely possible to understand the practice without being able to perform it.

For example, you can read any book on throwing the javalin and the quality of the book really doesn't matter much: it could be an amazing book, but no book is going to enable you to throw the javalin well. It can tell you how to do it, give you tips on what to try and what to avoid, but it can't help you in the actual doing.

You probably know enough about the practices to be able to design and build something already. The key is action; to do it, and to learn in reality what works and what doesn't. It's like throwing the javalin: the first few are going to be awful, but if you know the principle, after a bit of practice it will start to become a respectable throw (even if not world-beating).

I use the javalin metaphor because people can spend a lot of time building a SaaS. Treat each attempt as a throw, and recognise that if you spend the next three/six months on one throw then you're really not going to learn very much and it's not great practice.</comment>


UBS to take legal action against Nasdaq over Facebook IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/287987/ubs-take-legal-action-against-nasdaq-over-facebook-ipo

<comment><USER3> Well, would they have raised this had facebook shares held there value - <USER2> think not. Fact they are raising this now and not within a few days of it happening is indicative of that.

I would also question who in there right mind submits and order, then constantly resubmits it as they are unable to handle the lack of acknowledgment and at a time when they can see what is going on with regards to delays. Look at it like this: If I request a webpage and it don't load in the time I expect it to then if I spam F5 does that give me a right to claim my lost bandwith from the website - no. As that is in essence exactly what they did.

This type of issue will only get bigger with all the computer based share dealing systems and in that it is there own fault. Sadly blame is something laid upon others before exceptance of your own mistakes.

I would also question why would UBS have clients (who were probably advised) buy a share that was clearly overpriced, that is the real crime and in that UBS are as guilty as any others.

UBS messed up, ok not helped by the NASDAQ but given the timescale it realy is them clutching at straws IMHO.</comment>


Ask HN: Critique my simple service for musicians: booking shows online - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone,
I'm one of those programming-illiterate business guys obsessed with start ups--here's my app (which is actually just drupal beat to hell). I've finally got something of substance though and I'd like to hear what people here think.
Any thoughts or criticism would be absolutely awesome (although the design is a wootheme so you can take that up with them...). I know the whole thing is pretty minimal but is there enough there to entice you to sign up?
Want to dig a little deeper? username: HN password: hn
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> As the creator of HearWhere, I've got a bit of experience in this live music space, and I actually started building a service to connect bands with venues which I ended up scrapping.

To start off, it would be really great to show a demo to artists of what the venues would be getting from you. You've kinda explained how to use your service and what it does, but I don't know that I understand what a venue is going to get.

As a band (which I'm not) I suspect I'd like to see that.

I'm sure you know there has been a few attempts at this space, the most recent one I'm familiar with is <http://www.toursavant.com/>.

In my research when I was looking into this space, I found that venues were wanted to work with local booking agents. The reason (they told me) is that they aren't in the business of promoting or choosing artist, it just isn't what their good at. That is what the local booking agent does. Of course, this depends on the venue a bit.

The big challenge that I think you are going to have is building the database of venues or booking agents.

Right now as I see it, bands can add themselves to your site, but there are very few venues that they can request to be promoted too. I think that is the next challenge for you.

As far as the current site you've got, it's easy to navigate, and add venues, so you've so far managed that process well.

Your logo is quite pixelated, so I'd get that cleaned up a bit. I don't think you have to worry too much about the design at this stage. As long as it looks cool and professional(ish), i think you're good.

Best of luck

<comment><AUTHOR> This is all awesome stuff, Pete (Gotta love HN for this, getting instant feedback from someone whose work has influenced my own). The little things you pointed out are definitely on my todo list, and a demo video is in the pipelines.

There certainly have been, and currently are, a number of people working to solve this problem. I think we can both agree though that it hasn't really been cracked yet. Interesting that you met so much resistance from venues. It may be just the size (small) of the places I've approached, but most have been very receptive. A lot of them currently rely on a mixture of myspace and email, so a streamlined system is right up their alley.

In the near future I also want to tackle the whole choosing the right artist problem for venues. By integrating the echonest API (<http://echonest.com>) I think we can provide far more detail about an artist than other services have in the past.

Once again, thanks for all the encouragement and feedback. You've both renewed my faith in my limited abilities as well as provided great guidance for moving forward. If you wanted to talk more, my email is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Upvote from a guy in the same boat.

Just some thoughts and q's on the functionalities:

1\. Will there be a way to search geographically for both the venue and the band? If you get enough publicity and traction on this, it could be the go-to place for finding local bands and their gigs. 2\. A limited forum would be a good idea for newbs needing help. 3\. Maybe adding a feature to create a band profile on the site would be a good premium item to offer. (ex. beatnex.com/localband) 4\. There are events (not nec. venues, say a local music festival) that need bands or performers, maybe adding something for that as well. 5\. Good luck!

I hope you find a good programmer and graphic artist + a UI and metrics specialist to work with.

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew there were others lurking among the discussions on Erlang... :)

1.) Geo filtering is definitely going to be key for us at some point. Right now the system is designed to handle this, its just a matter of implementation really. 2.) Documentation is a work in progress. I just wrote the FAQ today afterall 3.) Currently a band's dashboard is located at that URL, but you have to be signed in to use it. Beatnex was originally supposed to be a myspace music on steroids (among other things, read: many iterations). I'm focusing on the gigging niche for now to get my foot in the door, and hopefully expand. 4.) The events issue is something I haven't quite thought through yet honestly. I'm open to suggestions! 5.) Thanks, you too!

I'd love to hear about what you're working on too. Shoot me an email if you care to share about struggles of a non-programmer in tech haha.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://beatnex.com></comment>


Dynamicland: incubating a humane dynamic medium dynamicland.org - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dynamicland1 <comment><AUTHOR> No website yet, and the github is closed but the video on the tweets and retweets are facinating.</comment>


MacOS High Sierra tech preview: A quick look at the stuff you can't see - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/06/macos-high-sierra-tech-preview-a-quick-look-at-the-stuff-you-cant-see/ <comment><USER2> It does worry me that Apple is walling itself off from the ecosystem of OpenGL even further. However, if most developers will only ever interact with Metal through game engines, hopefully it won't matter too much since the popular engines are supporting it.

<comment><USER3> Ditto with HEVC and HEIF. With the even higher royalty fees of HEVC and HEIF, availability of alternative royalty free formats backed by Apple's competitors, Apple will be walling itself off once again.

<comment><USER4> HEVC is becoming very standard for 4K (and sometimes for non-4K) video. Even torrent sites have loads and loads of H265 content now.

<comment><USER5> Aside, I really prefer the fallback rendering for hevc in lower bitrate encodes... the "blurry" is way better than avc's "blocky". So even when it's technically less accurate than h.264 in many conditions, it still looks better.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Much Housing Will Be Built? - <AUTHOR> http://ternercenter2.berkeley.edu/examplecities/index.html?city=San+Francisco <comment><USER2> If you click the link and, leaving all the rest of the defaults alone, drop the required affordable housing percentage from 10% to 0%, you lose about 4,000 affordable units but gain 6,000 market-rate ones.

So, would this change increase or decrease displacement?

Well, another recent Berkeley study concluded that a new market-rate apartment has about half the displacement-fighting impact of a below-market-rate apartment: [http://www.urbandisplacement.org/sites/default/files/images/...](http://www.urbandisplacement.org/sites/default/files/images/udp_research_brief_052316.pdf)

Therefore, the benefit of the extra market-rate units fails to offset the damage from the loss of affordable units (6000/2 < 4000). It fails similarly, but to a lesser degree, if you drop it to 5%.

But if you crank it up to 15%, the gains from the extra affordable units are overwhelmed by the lost market-rate units (4000/2 > 784). So it looks like the default value of 10% is the sweet spot.

By the way, the math is even easier for the 25% threshold that Supervisors Jane Kim and Aaron Peskin are proposing ([http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Prop-C-...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Prop- C-a-tool-to-help-solve-our-housing-crisis-7938760.php)), because that would actually lead to _less_ affordable housing being built. Less market-rate, too. A double displacement whammy.

<comment><USER3> The entire concept of low income housing is a scam to keep market rate prices high. Build enough market rate housing that the price falls to what low income people can afford and you don't need any low income housing.

If the government spent the money it spends subsidizing rents on subsidizing construction then the problem would be solved.

<comment><USER4> Government price controls do not fundamentally change the _cost_ only the price. If the government is so efficient and can, somehow, make housing cheaper than it would be in a free market why shouldn't they also take control of the food supply? Computers? Software? _All_ industry?

<comment><USER3> The government created a market failure by passing restrictive zoning regulations leading to a severe under-supply of housing. Resolving the market failure requires either eliminating the restrictions or providing enough cash money to justify the builder's expense in contending with them.

Obviously the better solution is to do away with the restrictions, but politics is the devil's day job and all that.

<comment><USER5> "The government"?

Good thing there's no actual people involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The bay area. The best, brightest, smartest, pedigreed, hardest working most motivated people on earth. And we cant solve the simplest problems in the Maslow's hierarchy. American Indians solved the housing problems with Teepees and Wigwams - so much for being "smart." There was an article recently where a google employee was living in a 24 ft truck in the google parking lot. This Bay Area mess is a self inflicted joke. What I find amazing is Tokyo. Tokyo, 1945, burned to the ground, population 3.5 million. Today, Tokyo is at 13 million and the Tokyo-Yokohama urban area is 37.8 million. And if you've ever been to japan public transportation is functioning and the society seems to nail basic needs much better than smarty-pants bay area.

<comment><USER7> "What do you mean 'we', white man?"

The problem is there's no solidarity with the newcomers, and a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper- filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people _not_ building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for. Not to mention the question of money.

You might equally ask why the tech industry feels the need to be stuck so tightly to SF when it's far more amenable to remote work than most industries.

There's also the little matter of the earthquake zone.

<comment><USER8> "... a strong desire by incumbents to keep the place the same and not turn it into skyscraper-filled Guangzhou. For a lot of people not building housing is an important priority in their life that they will fight for."

Which is _totally reasonable_.

You or I may not like it, or disagree with it, or work against that idea, but it's incorrect to claim that incumbent property owners (anywhere) protecting their perceived value in the status quo is somehow wrong or morally bankrupt or misinformed or illiberal.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, it's morally bankrupt. Four middle class families spend more on housing than most Bay Area single-family homeowners. If it were legal for those families to live in a four-plex, they'd outbid wealthy families for that land. The wealthy pay cheaper prices by using the law to prevent people with less money from bidding against them. The wealthy can't actually afford the idyllic single-family neighborhoods they claim the right to without economic segregation laws.

<comment><USER8> "Sorry, it's morally bankrupt. Four middle class families spend more on housing than most Bay Area single-family homeowners. If it were legal for those families to live in a four-plex, they'd outbid wealthy families for that land."

Yes, I _also_ wish I had a pony.

<comment><USER9> In the face of injustice, some accept it as the way the world works. Others fight to end injustice. Economic segregation laws are abhorrent, and I am fighting to end them in Austin. I hope others fight to end them everywhere.

[https://www.facebook.com/DesegregateATX/](https://www.facebook.com/DesegregateATX/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was a fun game!

I'm running for governor next whenever that happens. I really had to put myself in the shoes of a California voter to get the numbers to work out. I think for all new housing going forward, it's important that we enrich the state's coffers so that all y'all don't have to pay as much property tax -- as manded by the State Constitution. I'm therefore raising the fees per unit to the maximum this game allows (really not high enough but it's good as a working model). I also think the whole point of California is big open parking lots and lots of freeways; so I'm going to require that density be lowered by 40% and parking increased by 40%. I've noticed that there's no affordable housing in the entire state pretty much, so each new project will be required to set aside 40% of their units to qualified people-in-need-of-affordable- stuff. It's a real problem and these fat cat housing developers only care about themselves. Additionally, the banks going bust really fucked our economy a couple years ago, so I'm mandating that they charge no less than 10% per year of interest. Finally, as a show of good faith, the State of California is levying a tax on property development of 16% of the total project cost.

With this, there is a 0% chance of any new housing being built. You won the lottery when you happened to be alive 40 years ago to buy a house, and it's my job as the Governor of California to protect that asset for you and your children.

Vote for jrockway!

</comment><comment><USER11> Building denser has to be part of the solution. One way is to build up. Another is to also remove minimum parking requirements:

See [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.html?_r=1) and [http://www.uctc.net/research/papers/351.pdf](http://www.uctc.net/research/papers/351.pdf)

<comment><USER12> An easy fix might be to turn single story strip malls into two story dual purpose buildings. Stores on bottom, rooms on top. I doubt this would do much to change aesthetics.

<comment><USER13> Usually when a strip mall is re-zoned for mixed use, they demolish the older structure.

But on the aesthetic side it's possible to turn these buildings into something interesting if they're renovated by someone creative. Worked across the street from this place when an architecture firm bought and renovated it: [http://www.rchstudios.com/639-larchmont- boulevard/](http://www.rchstudios.com/639-larchmont-boulevard/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Even if all the tougher regs were removed tomorrow, very few builders with the large $$$ it takes to build housing are also stupid enough to risk government seizure in the future. The population _will_ keep growing. The demand for housing _will_ increase. The city leaders have already proven that stealing control of someone's personal asset is something _they will do._ (the personal asset in this case is a pre-1979 mom-and-pop rental property)

After 1979, long-term tenants moved in and the supply of rent controlled units dropped to nothing very quickly. Then what? You can't tell the entrenched 'fast movers' who got there first with the cheaper rent control units "move out and give someone else a chance."

Once a government shows a willingness to steal control of someone's personal assets, NO one who is smart enough to afford to build housing is also DUMB enough to build in rent control zones.

Only enticements get builders to build in those areas. And most builders see this:

\- in Southern California there was a move to 'move the goalposts' and instead of pre-1979 rentals being rent controlled, now everything built pre-1995 would become rent controlled.

\- here recently on the Peninsula the same topic came up -- re-classify candidate rental properties for rent control up to 1995.

Both of those were defeated. But it signaled to developers that the goalposts can be moved.

Until leadership stop stealing control of people's personal assets, it doesn't matter if all building code/zoning/etc. rules are removed -- very few builders will put a new project in a rent control area, where city leaders have already stolen control of personal assets.

"You like to steal control of assets that don't belong to you? I won't be building assets near you."

SIMPLE AS THAT.

</comment><comment><USER15>
        Properties included in the model have total development
        potential, measured by FAR and residential units, of 20%
        or less of the maximum allowed under local zoning law.
        All properties above this level are considered "built
        out" and do not factor in to the maximum potential units
        number.

FAR is "floor area ratio" and controls how many square feet of building you can have on a given lot. I'd love to have a slider for this, since increasing the allowable FAR is a good way to make more efficient use of limited land.

(For example, zoning where I live sets a maximum FAR of 0.75, but most properties are over that limit and grandfathered in, averaging more like 0.90. Allowing people to build to 0.90 instead of 0.75 would not substantially change the feel of the area, and would make a lot more units available.)

</comment><comment> norea-armozel I think the housing troubles could easily be fixed if those jobs which can easily be moved over to telecommuting were done so over time. Like honestly, how many devs and QA staff have to physically be in the same place throughout the work week? I'd understand if we're talking a firm that built physical prototypes for products but a website/service is easily accessible from the high rise office as it is from home office. At some point, software development is going to have to suck it up and be 100% remote for day-to-day concerns (excluding certain meetings with clients and the like).

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks like streamlining the red tape would be a good place to start (19k additional units, 500M in taxes).

</comment><comment><USER17> I could only wish the same can be done for Hong Kong.</comment>


The Invention of Jaywalking - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/ <comment><USER2> I'd never considered that idea before: Cars are now more important than pedestrians. I've always had the opinion that pedestrians are above the drivers, but then again, I don't live in America. Perhaps things differ there.

<comment><USER3> I actually thought that Jaywalking was a joke - until I visited America. And it was incredibly frustrating for someone from the UK to cross the roads. I really loathed it.

In my mind the rule of the road is something like:

Pedestrians>Cyclists>Scooters>Motorbikes>Cars

I always give large mass vehicles and pedestrian carriers a wide berth.

Though a little common sense can go a long way! What's the problem crossing an empty road! Or even speeding on an empty road?

It's the nanny state gone mad!

<comment><USER4> As an American it is funny you say that, when I visited France a few years back I spent time in Nice and Paris and it definitely seemed like road vehicles had the right of way. Pedestrians had to be smart about when crossing (even if that is technically, and legally incorrect).

I don't own a car, and I live in a big Northeast US city so walking and public transportation is my main mode of transit - jaywalking is a way of life in Boston and NYC from experience and is probably similar in other NE cities. However, I also think your order is totally wrong, in my mind it is the opposite, the biggest, heaviest vehicles should have ROW especially at this point in history when the average driver is distracted by so many things in his vehicle. Response times are going to be suboptimal ... pedestrians needs to be mindful of where they are traversing.

<comment><USER5> > in my mind it is the opposite, the biggest, heaviest vehicles should have > ROW especially at this point in history when the average driver is > distracted by so many things in his vehicle. Response times are going to be > suboptimal

This sounds to me like you're saying that the law should reward people for wielding more power (bigger heavier vehicles) less responsibly (driving distracted). A prudent pedestrian will and should be mindful of where he's going and I don't think anyone with an instinct to self-preservation would say otherwise, but shouldn't the law serve the interests of the vulnerable where they conflict with the powerful?

<comment><USER6> The law recognizes reality; a motor vehicle, even one driven by a "perfect" driver, has far fewer degrees of freedom in any given situation than a pedestrian. The vehicle has momentum, limitations on the braking force that can be applied to this momentum, limitations on the ability of the steering system to change the direction that the vehicle mass is traveling in, and sensory limitations for the driver that can decrease the reaction time available. A pedestrian can not move as fast or as far in reaction to such a situation, but they can change direction of travel far more quickly and have a better ability to hear or see the oncoming vehicle.

<comment><USER5> In a place and time where the motor lobby had not been so successful, the law would probably recognize this reality by imposing strict limitations on the use of machinery which, as you describe it, is so intrinsically dangerous. Locomotive Acts, for example

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article suggests that drivers who kill people get off lightly in NYC and that may be true. But what statistics say is that the City has been progressively getting safer for pedestrians over the past decade.

There were 4.87 fatalities per 100,000 in NYC in 2001 and that number has dropped to 2.8 per 100,000 for 2011.

Perhaps City officials found it more useful to make safety improvements and changing the behavior of all drivers than to harshly punish drivers who made a fatal mistake after the fact.

[http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4...](http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2011b%2Fpr460-11.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1)

<comment><USER8> What I really don't understand is this obsession some people seem to have with jailing people for a mistake that will already haunt them for the rest of their lives.

<comment> T-hawk Deterrence. Motivation for all the other drivers to pay attention and keep control of their cars at all times. Legislation alone can't stop pedestrian deaths, drivers must change their behavior.

<comment><USER8> The desire to not go to jail is stronger than the desire to not kill someone? I know when I slow down for pedestrains I'm thinking about not hitting people, not not going to jail. Maybe I give others too much credit.

<comment><USER9> I don't know about other places, but on the highway in Michigan near construction sites they sometimes have signs saying something like "If you injure a worker, it's a $5000 fine and up to 25 years in jail".

Note the precedence of the $5000 fine before the 25 years of jail time. Clearly the Michigan DOT thinks that fines and jail time are necessary incentives to not kill or harm construction workers.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure they think it, but does that make it so?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting.

In the UK jaywalking is legal but there has been an increase in pedestrian deaths. The assumed cause is "zombies" - pedestrians listening to music via headphones not paying enough attention.

Same has happened to zombie cyclists.

Funny story is a friend who jay walked at 2am in a western European village. Arrested and fined. Go figure?

<comment><USER11> _Funny story is a friend who jay walked at 2am in a western European village._

It seems to be illegal in Germany at least. Individual liberty as a concept has a stronger history in the UK than on the continent.

<comment><USER12> I got stopped by a cop in Germany once. Everyone was waiting for the walk light to appear. There was no traffic and one small lane to cross so I went; we're talking 20ft(7m). Next thing I know the cop is asking for my passport. He told me it was illegal but let me go after he ran my passport.

<comment><USER13> I noticed getting the stink eye from people in Copenhagen while crossing empty streets against the signals. It actually happened several times before I was able to figure out what I was doing that was annoying them. :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Having been brought up in the UK, I think this is one of the situations where we look at the rest of the world and think they are quite literally insane...

Why would you not have right of way on public roads? Everyone is a pedestrian at the end of the day!

That said, I found California's drivers surprisingly like those at home.

What is also interesting about the UK is how the laws are balanced.

UK:

\- no concept of "jaywalking". Pedestrians have right of way.

\- but no vehicular manslaughter/homicide laws. They even removed an old law called "reckless driving" due to being too hard to prove (it required proving state of mind).

\- there are only specific offenses while using a vehicle "causing death by dangerous driving", "causing death by careless driving while unfit through alcohol/over prescribed limit" and a few others.

</comment><comment><USER15> I was in Vietnam recently. To the westerner their city streets look chaotic and impossible to cross as most people get around by motorbike and there is rarely a gap in traffic. Though it turns out if you cross the road slowly and predictably, it's safer than crossing the street in any western cities. The motorbikes will just go around you or if that's not possible they'll stop. You have to be a little more careful of cars though.

Overall they seem to have little or no concept of anyone having right of way on the road (technically that doesn't apply here either but people seem to think they have right of way). Drivers just always have to be on alert.

<comment><USER16> It's not safer. The US has 15 deaths per 100,000 vehicles per year. Vietnam has over 1,200 deaths per 100,000 vehicles per year.

Even if you only look at road fatalities per capita, they still have 50% more than the US.

See also: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic- re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic- related_death_rate)

<comment><USER17> It's would help to get deaths per mile driven, too. Do Vietnamese cars drive more or less than Americans? My auto sits in my garage all year, quite safely.

<comment><USER15> Could certainly be factor. Though the other thing is that all those vehicles in Vietnam are motorbikes, so any accidents at speed are likely to be more fatal. Though for the original topic then pedestrian fatality stats would be useful as well.

In any case I'd personally rather live in a city that is well served by public transport rather than lots of people riding around on motorbikes or driving cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The responsibility for crashes always lay with the driver."

This is still the case here in Sweden.

</comment><comment><USER10> check out this guy who tried to drive his car into the Paris metro.... Apparently there was a sign that said"parking".

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17829438>

Some compare cars to guns. This is in terms of danger to life.

some research suggests car accidents should be treated like an illness or disease.

</comment><comment><USER19> Over here in Europe, or possibly only Slovenia, we have a similar thing going on. If the driver does something stupid and plows into a pedestrian - that's manslaughter.

If an accident happens and they end up on the sidewalk ... well then it's not really anybody's fault. It was an accident.

I'm not sure why you would really want to press criminal charges against somebody who, following a difficult situation on the road, ended up unfortunately damaging someone.

However, if the person is on a crosswalk. Then it's the driver should be charged at least with manslaughter ... unless they're rear-ended or there's some other circumstance out of their control that made them unable to stop.

<comment><USER20> > I'm not sure why you would really want to press criminal charges against > somebody who, following a difficult situation on the road, ended up > unfortunately damaging someone.

I've been driving in New York City since I was 16. I'm 31 now. I've been in _many_ difficult situations, even a major collision, but I've never found the need to plow into the sidewalk.

There are people out there who are _cowards_. By that, I mean they would rather risk harm to others than to themselves. When you are about to collide with another vehicle on the road, you do _not_ swerve into the sidewalk. No. You take your chances with the collision.

People who endanger others for the sake of their own skin are trash and should be prosecuted. You use your driving expertise to stay on the road and if you do not have the skill-set to do that, you shouldn't be driving.

<comment><USER21> > You use your driving expertise to stay on the road and if you do not have > the skill-set to do that, you shouldn't be driving.

Unfortunately, in most many places in North America you cannot function in society without a vehicle thus even if you know you shouldn't be drive the penalty is so great that almost all keep on driving. If there were reasonable alternatives like mass transportation then we could reasonably expect thus unqualified to use them, but in suburbia mass transit does not work.

To me this is as rediculous campaigns against drunk driving that don't push for local busses to operate until at least an hour after bars close.

tl;dr: one cannot reasonably expect people to behave responsibly without there being reasonable alternatives

<comment><USER22> Actually there is a reasonable alternative: Don't live in cities that fail to provide a reasonable alternative. A car is only a reasonable alternative in rural areas and as a mode of inter-city transport.

<comment><USER21> I think in Canada that describes only 3 cities, and even then a lot of the tech companies are on the outskirts since the offices are cheaper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I live in Japan 1/2 time. Apparently, when a driver here hits a pedestrian or cyclist, he's got a lot of explaining to do.

As a result, the drivers are so attentive that it is not at all unusual on reasonably busy secondary routes to see a mother pedaling her bicycle with an infant in the basket and another small child following behind on a kids bike.

And like most parents, we let our son walk to school by himself from about 2d grade along a route where he had to cross some fairly major 4 lane streets.

</comment><comment><USER3> I sometimes think it would be better to just remove the sidewalk and enforce a low speed restriction on roads. Sidewalks in the UK must cost a fortune, and often the roads without are more attractive (I'm thinking country/village lanes as opposed to motorways) .

<comment><USER24> In the US we have a weird property of our speed limits. The norm is for them to be under-posted. So a 45 mph road is usually one that you can (and in some circumstances, should) take at 50-55 mph. And on most of those roads, you won't get a ticket for going 5 to 10 mph over the speed limit, because that's the normal speed.

There are two problems with this. First, there are a lot of country roads that are properly posted, and the typical 5-10 over is seriously unsafe. I would rather increase speed limits where appropriate and enforce them.

Second, in urban areas, the limit is set for reasons not related to road safety, and those reasons are a lot less flexible. 10 mph over the typical urban speed limit (of 25 mph) is the difference between about a 15% chance of killing a pedestrian and a 65% chance.

The reality is that people don't respond strongly to posted speed limits. They just aren't enforced often enough for the posted limit to be a major consideration for most drivers. Traffic calming is far more effective (if also controversial).

<comment><USER25> I saw a study showing the best way to cut down on pedestrian deaths in residential areas was to eliminate the center line. When cars have to watch out for other cars they slow down and pay more attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> interesting author name

<comment><USER17> "aptonym"

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wow. I live in Cincinnati and my name is Jay. Unfortunately I wasn't around to coin the term.</comment>


ARP poisoning with Python.  - <AUTHOR> http://danmcinerney.org/arp-poisoning-with-python-2

<comment><USER2> Can a user spot ARP poisoning?

How about static ARP entries and taking note when any hostname-to-ether- address mapping changes?

ARP monitoring with BSD

      arp -s hostname ether_addr

Then

      [ -f arp.dat ]||>arp.dat
      arpwatch -df arp.dat

Or what if the user disables ARP on the interface? Assuming driver was named "eth" as in GNU/Linux:

      ifconfig eth0 -arp

<comment><USER3> Err, I think you are missing the point. We know ARP poisioning can be mitigated by using tools like arpwatch.

That isn't the point of this article.. I don't think it suggests it's any more reliable than existing methods to poison.

Generally, It's a great example of using scapy - in a nice clean manner. Thanks.</comment></comment>