Pixelopolis, a self-driving car demo from Google I/O built with TensorFlow-Lite - <AUTHOR> https://blog.tensorflow.org/2020/07/pixelopolis-self-driving-car-demo-tensorflow-lite.html <comment><USER2> Damn it... Just before the pandemic I had started piling up hardware to start building something similar(I was intending to use a raspberry pi). And since I couldn't go and look for parts in person(I'm not that crafty with my hands so I genuinely need to see in person the part in order to be able to tell if it's going to work) so I postponed it. And today I see this... Feeling kind of sucks, even though I can't really explain why.

<comment><USER3> You should still do it! I'm sure you will have a lot of fun, and it's perfectly normal to do something that has already been done before, it happens all the time. Your solution doesn't have to be better, but it will be different and interesting.

<comment><USER2> Got other things lined up at the moment for better or worse, might go back to it at some point. It's just that "the Simpsons did it" kind of feeling, you know...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazon has been selling it's self-driving AWS Deep Racer car[1] and has been promoting race tournaments for a while now.

Has anyone got that? Is it worth the price to test self-driving algorithms in the hopes of making it to the full sized vehicle one day or is it best we make our own self-driving toy card with Nvidia Jetson?

[1][https://aws.amazon.com/deepracer/](https://aws.amazon.com/deepracer/)

<comment><USER5> I personally don't but there's a DIY robocars event near me where people compete in races using little self driving cars. Some people were using the AWS one but more popular in the "stock" division was the Donkeycar -

[https://diyrobocars.com/](https://diyrobocars.com/)

[https://github.com/autorope/donkeycar](https://github.com/autorope/donkeycar)

I haven't made one, I just go with my kids to show them how cool it is to be an engineer, but Donkeycar seems popular and performs well in the contests.

<comment><USER4> Thank you, donkey cars seems to be very approachable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They were trying very hard to use Tensorflow. It's amusing that their first pre-training operation failed because they trained on straight roads. Direct camera to steering is possible but not really the best approach.

Micromouse competition, 2019.[1] The first run, it's learning the maze. The second run is a speed run.

[1] [https://youtu.be/sKFIBQ64_zs](https://youtu.be/sKFIBQ64_zs)

<comment><USER7> Well yeah, the whole point was to _demonstrate_ Tensorflow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 105.41 MB transferred

Maybe think twice before putting a 40MB GIF on a website?

<comment><USER9> Well how else are you going to do video on the web?!

<comment><USER10> Animated PNG?

<comment><USER9> Now that's a billion dollar startup.

<comment><USER11> Billion dollar startup or or billions in bandwidth costs?

<comment><USER9> yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wonderful. Are there any other "robotics" projects which use android phones instead of rasberry-pi or microcontrollers?

Imagine in future there are generic robots. Rather than trusting its custom AI/processing, I can connect my phone to the robot and my phone gets hardware/robotic extension and is personalised for me.

Its like ironman suit for my phone :)

<comment><USER13> FIRST uses android phones but they drive a hardware board that handles low- level stuff like motors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> does anyone how the android phone is interfacing with the rest of the car hardware ?

i did not know that android phones could do realtime i/o like this. Is this the "Android Things" or "Android Accessory Protocol" ?

<comment><USER15> It's in TFA: "the Pixel 4 also controls the motors and other electronic components via USB-C".

There's an STM32 micro-controller which presumably acts as an USB slave and controls the servos.

<comment><USER14> what SDK is this ? i have hunted and not found any easy way to do serial I/O over usb-C in the android SDK

<comment><USER16> Just google "arduino android" the interface had been used by many projects for so many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One thing I have always failed to understand about self-driving tech -- what's the motivation for each car to do its own self-driving computation in busy metropolitan areas?

Are there technologies that integrate with some kind of _existing_ infrastructure like beacons, etc. that would just _tell_ the car where the streets are? If not, why not?

<comment><USER18> Smart roads have been attempted for years. Usually with some sort of antenna or wireless/light transmitter embedded in the road itself. The cost per mile was just too high. Far simpler to use what's already there with computer vision and map metadata. Now that cars have GPS, A-GPS, and RTK need to tailor roads for autonomous vehicles has been diminished.

<comment><USER17> > The cost per mile was just too high.

That's why I specified "in large metropolitan areas". I can see that it's impractical to outfit anything outside dense cities with such beacons, but inside the city they could augment, if not replace autonomous driving systems. Or so I imagine.

> GPS, A-GPS, and RTK

Thanks for telling me about RTK, I did not know about this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is a definite resemblance to Duckietown[1], a robotics class/competition done developed at MIT.

[1] [https://www.duckietown.org/](https://www.duckietown.org/)

<comment><USER20> We had something similar at DTU in Denmark, albeit long before the times of TensorFlow and other "modern" ML.

Lane keeping was a solved problem back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can this be scaled into building many small cities for self-driving cars training? Could it be used for real scale? Kind of like GTA V is used for training.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Please excuse the crudity of this model. I didn't have time to paint it or build it to scale" — Doc Emmett Brown (Decidedly not Google)

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that they went for expensive microcontroller based servos, I guess they consider Realtek chip RC cars to be just toys.

<comment><USER24> Probably for making steering easier with angle control.</comment></comment>


New browser tool for Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://www.swiftpreview.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Works on other sites as well.

</comment><comment><USER2> Very useful tool</comment>


I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb - <AUTHOR> http://needwant.com/p/buying-apartment-airbnb/ <comment><USER2> If anyone is interested, this looks like the link to the place:

[https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/643721](https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/643721)

Another thing to add to the "if you're thinking of doing this" list - don't write a post about it where you and the location can be identified. This is probably against the HOA agreement (short term leases are prohibited).

It also could be a safety issue if you aren't actually living there. Once someone knows the apartment number, someone could see when a particular place isn't going to be occupied and use that to their _(ahem)_ advantage.

Seriously kids - don't do this. You'll probably be breaking a bunch of contracts and a fair number of hotel and zoning laws. Not to mention the insurance and liability issues that aren't even remotely discussed in the post.

<comment><USER3> I recently bought a condo in Maui to rent and those places are sent up for this sort of thing. They even call them Condotels. Being designed for short term rentals brings a lot of benefits like resort manages check-ins/outs for you.

Also, there is an echo chamber in the tech community regarding AirBnB as the standard for short term rentals. From my experience, VRBO has been much better and provided significantly more bookings. ymmv and it could be your customer type as a two bedroom condo in Hawaii gets a lot more families and older bookings.

If anyone has any questions about this, my email is in my profile.

<comment><USER4> Rather than saying "don't do this", it would probably be better to say "Step 1: make sure it is legal to do this".

As you've pointed out, there are plenty of places where it is perfectly legal to do this. My guess is that it's harder to find a profit opportunity, though, because the more profitable use (legal use as a short term hotel) is already priced into the unit.

I suspect that one reason airbnb is so profitable in areas where it is not legal is that the restrictions on short term rentals suppress the sale price of the unit. So you buy a unit that is cheaper precisely because it is illegal to use it as a hotel, and then you profit by using it as a hotel. So in cities with very strict zoning and tenant protection laws (like SF), I guess they're selling the assumption of risk.

<comment><USER5> > As you've pointed out, there are plenty of places where it is perfectly > legal to do this.

.. Why the everloving fuck would this be illegal? What sense could it possibly make? -You have some property and you're letting someone use it for a fee.

I get that this actually _might be_ illegal somewhere - I'm just trying to highlight the fact that it would be absolutely fucking insane.

<comment><USER6> > What sense could it possibly make? -You have some property and you're > letting someone use it for a fee

This is the extraordinarily naive libertarian position. Most people would not welcome a brothel as their closest neighbor for example.

<comment><USER7> Funny that you should mention that. My next door neighbor put herself through nursing school on her back, and by renting her place to others in the same profession when she was at school. They were far quieter and less disruptive than the aging couple on the other side of my place.

If it had been put up for a vote, I probably would have voted 'no', but the reality was not what I would have expected.

This of course is not relevant to the discussion, where someone bought a condo which requires accepting the declaration, bylaws and rules and regulations of the HOA. If those rules, which the buyer accepted, forbid short-term rentals, then there's no excuse for doing it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If enough people do this it will be the end of Airbnb. This is one of the patterns the state of NY is using against Airbnb while Airbnb is arguing that the service is intended for people occasionally renting out their primary residence. If the state is able to prove a significant number of people used this model Airbnb is done in NY and I fear other states will follow.

<comment><USER9> I'm not that familiar with the Airbnb situation in NY. Why is this a "bad" pattern that NY state has deemed to be a violation of the law?

<comment><USER8> There are a number of reasons. Most states have laws regarding how temporary rental properties (otherwise known as hotels) are zoned. You can't suddenly turn a building zoned for residential use into a hotel without getting it re- zoned.

Also, NY specifically worries that it will change the local housing market. If investors buy up enough local properties and turn them into mini hotels, locals may be priced out of these neighbourhoods and those neighbourhoods will in turn suffer.

Plus there are the complaints from the locals. Having a neighbour rent out their place to tourists a couple of times a year is not a big deal, but if it happens every single week it gets annoying. You never know who is coming and going and they aren't always all that worried about noise, garbage, etc.

And just to clarify, I think the state is right to be concerned about these issues. But at the same time I would hate to lose the ability for someone to put their primary residence on a site like Airbnb a couple of times a year. This helps visitors and the residents without significantly hurting anything else in the equation. Things only start to turn sour when enough people create dedicated Airbnb properties as investments.

<comment><USER10> It's a bit sad that you have to explain this to grown up people.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure that residential/commercial zoning laws in US states falls under the umbrella of general knowledge.

<comment><USER10> There's nothing US specific about zoning laws. They most probably preceded the founding of your silly colony.

<comment><USER12> The first modern zoning was in 1916 in New York for height related reasons. Great Britain didn't start zoning until 1947.

EDIT: I was sort of surprised that was the first zoning, when I just looked it up. I always mentally associated zoning with 1920s progressive social engineering.

<comment><USER13> HAHA, take that ole Blighty!

But really, the whole idea that AirBNB should be able to ignore established zoning is another example of why I consider the "sharing" economy to be the "taking" economy.

Sharing space peacefully is exactly what zoning is aimed at.

<comment><USER14> Zoning is still a contested topic, it has been blamed for enabling much of the NIMBYism in America for example. Another one is creating huge traffic and commuting situations that don't need to be there by putting business in one zone, housing in another and forcing people to move between the two every day. It makes such things as shopkeeper residences where the shop is on the first floor and the family who manages it lives on the second or third floors significantly more work.

<comment><USER13> My bustling city (one of those "top US cities to move to that isn't the Bay Area or NYC") has tons of first-floor commercial, second floor residential developments, including a fair number of "row houses" zoned commercial first floor residential second and third floors where both the commercial space and residential areas are owned by the same owner. There's a huge push to build high density in this city that was formerly pretty much all low-density ten years ago.

These are all new builds in the past 8 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Exactly what is the difference between what this person is doing and running an unlicensed extended-stay hotel?

<comment><USER16> They're disrupting an obsolete industry.

<comment><USER17> No, travel agents were an obsolete industry.

Hotels are not obsolete, AirBnB is 'disrupting' the industry by ignoring local laws and regulations. It may be that these regulations exist to protect an obsolete business model but it also might not.

When your path is blocked by a fence before you tear it down, its a good idea to understand why it was put up in the first place.

<comment><USER18> I worked in hospitality for 5 years, and right now I'm staying at a hotel in downtown Vegas, a few miles from the author's Airbnb place. Hotels are obsolete. It's not the business model, short-term housing and hospitality certainly have no risk of obsolescence ever, it's the industry.

Service sucks, rooms suck, tech really sucks. You have awkward kids in bad suits and clip-on ties at the front desk who're trained to use Romantic terminology over Germanic. That's at the better places.

I'm staying at the original, and seemingly one of the better, Fremont Street places, in town for a quarterly meetup for the startup I'm at. The wifi costs $12.99 a day, they throttled my connection the one time I used it trying to make a viddy call, and last night I was connected to the router but nothing was coming through. I've had similar experiences around the country, for the past 10 years, and seen little improvement. I convinced the hospitality company I was at, and some that I consulted with, that the wifi is as important as the running water, but you can tell most don't feel that way.

I got in the other night around 10pm, went to a touchscreen terminal they overpaid for, and I haven't seen a single person use over this week here, but didn't have a confirmation because someone at the company booked it, so used a phone sitting next to the kiosk to call a representative, who directed me around to find a desk that I'd passed and disregarded because it was labeled as "Tickets", then spent a good half-hour getting checked-in because of various confusion and technical glitches and dozens and dozens of key-presses in their property management system.

Then, there are the guests. As soon as someone stays at a hotel, they think they're entitled to act like an asshole. It seems to usually boil down to them feeling like they overpaid, regretting the decision, and taking it out on some staff member. They know that the people around them are either other customers or employees, and treat them with ambivalence because there are no consequences or accountability. Guests can review a hotel, hotels can't review guests.

A couple weeks ago, I stayed at an Airbnb place for the first time, outside of Boston. We texted the host when we were coming, took the T, ending up on an awesome light-rail car at the end that I didn't know about, walked through a beautiful neighborhood, knocked on the door, chatted with the host for a minute, and were shown to our room. Totally painless, which made it easy to feel gracious and respectful of the host and his property and neighbors. Had a great breakfast at a local place, because good places are in residential areas. All you can find around hotels are crappy chains. You know, because of the zoning. And that good places don't want to deal with pissed off hotel guests.

The fence is coming down. Hotels are doomed.

<comment><USER19> I love hotels (specifically, Starwood and Inter-Continental, especially in Asia), and spend about 50-100 nights/year in hotels.

I infrequently use VRBO to rent a house somewhere without great hotels (and have tried AirBnB but outside SF, never worked out really well), but otherwise, the hotel experience is basically awesome for me. There is one set of tweaks I'd like to do (maybe to make a brand-within-a-brand for Westin or something), where guests get a standard network config in any room once they sign in, with MFC device in-room, VoIP phone, their own wifi settings, etc.), but otherwise it's awesome.

Being able to basically trust an international 5-star hotel to have a certain level of physical security and functionality (or to be able to add it) even in a place like Myanmar or Pakistan is great.

Being able to show up at 0200 and reliably know there will be people to check me in, that my stuff won't get stolen, that I can leave luggage and equipment, that a meeting with ~16 people won't be a problem with short notice, that the building meets basic fire safety, ...

The crappy hotels like Motel 6 or Super 8, sure, suck, but I avoid those.

<comment><USER20> Yep. I haven't done much with AirBnB and its ilk but I do often try to go the B&B route rather than the-big-chain-hotel (or even the smaller not-so-chain- hotel) route. But, as you say, especially for business travel, a lot of the time I just want something predictable that meets a certain standard. I don't want to be concerned that if my plans change and I don't get in until 9 that there won't be anyone there to let me in, etc. I frankly just don't have the mental energy to deal with on-offs for the whole 1/3 of the year or so I travel.

<comment><USER21> If the only thing that is causing you grief is the check-in check-out process, it is worth noting that some owners do try to streamline this process as much as possible. I for one try to keep contact with the person down to a minimum. Because you guys are right, I don't want to talk to anyone after 12 hours of travel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _It's possible to find a nice apartment in a major city for less than $50,000. The place I found was in Las Vegas and it cost $40,000._

Wow, I had no idea things were that good/bad. Here in the UK, I deliberately choose to live in a cheap part of the country and you'd still be talking $120k or so for an equivalent 1 bed flat. This really illustrates to me why efforts to turn various areas in the US into "mini Silicon Valley" areas could actually work.. when you can have a good, secure base for a year's salary, it surely changes your attitude to risk.

I don't think there's anywhere in the UK you could buy a house for under $100K where you wouldn't be getting bricks through your window or dealing with gangs of chavs on a daily basis. I wonder if this goes part of the way to explain why Brits are far more reluctant to take risks in the entrepreneurial sense.. you gotta be on a darn good salary to have a place of your own _anywhere_ on our isles.

<comment><USER23> I live in London. I'm looking at >$600k for my first apartment. Jon's apartment in Vegas would be a small fraction of my deposit.

Ugh, I feel sick. And need to move.

<comment><USER24> Aren't you guys in a bubble?

<comment><USER23> Maybe - I can't see prices ever dropping significantly though. Maybe 20%, but they'll always be intimidatingly expensive for first-time buyers.

<comment><USER25> Lehman Bros collapsed because their computer models excluded the possibility of a major decline in real estate prices. Investor confidence is a contrary indicator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you're thinking of doing this but aren't sure about the legal side of things, consider buying a duplex or quadplex and living in one of the units yourself. This will let you qualify for owner-occupied rates on the mortgage and insurance, likely insulate you from a condo agreement which would forbid renting, and means that you're the primary party who'd suffer from guest misbehavior, which strikes me as socially optimal. Also, if you tire of Airbnb transient relationships, duplex units are fairly easy to rent out "traditionally."

Downside: more capitally intensive, and requires you to be OK with owning a house.

This is (pre-Airbnb) one of the classic hacks for middle class Americans to start real estate businesses, since you can fairly easily get sufficient cash flow and/or equity after running a duplex for a few years to get a bank to OK you adding other rental properties.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good, concise write up with real numbers which is nice. But the woman who is doing all that cleaning and contact work for $200/month is the one making this possible (so it seems) and that could quickly eat up profits (though the ROI is great enough that there's lots of room there).

EDIT: Also, is there currently an AirBnb manager market? Similar to the cleaner/manager he has, it would be great for people to invest remotely. Do research, fly in to inspect potential properties, purchase and give the cleaner/manager a nice cut? I know there are property management companies but there seems to be some extra finesse (and possible discretion) needed here that I haven't seen from PM companies before.

<comment><USER27> In a couple of the Airbnb places I stayed at, which had remote owners who I never saw, the manager was really just a minimum-wage sort of person who met me, oriented me, and periodically came in to do some light cleaning (I was a long-term (months) tenant). In Berlin, one of the guys had the gig as a "mini- job", and seemed quite unhappy when I tried to do any of the housekeeping myself - it was taking EUR out of his pocket by cutting his hours. I would think that it would be very easy, and cheap, to find assistants like this in the States who were not licensed PMs but were just plain folks.

<comment><USER28> and that can sue you when things go south...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This has to be illegal, right? I can understand renting out your vacation home or apartment when you're not using it, but buying a home/apartment to run essentially a mini hotel has to run afoul of zoning/licensing/regulations in most places

<comment><USER30> wait, what's the functional difference between those two? intent?

<comment><USER29> It's like the difference between occasional bets between friends on sports games and being a professional bookie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hi j0ncc,

Thanks for sharing. I was wondering if you could shed light on your inventory risk, meaning do you find that the market price for your rental and nights reserved is highly dependent on the economy, tourist season and weather conditions or fairly resistant to external circumstances. Furthermore, is your product fairly fungible meaning if you have had to deal with competitive pricing in your locale and/or have had repeat customers.

Also, I'm guessing given the relative low price of your rental income and your buying in cash; real estate fluctuation risk is relatively low. Does your purchase qualify as a first time home-owner tax credit?

For comparison, a $50K investment with 8% market annual return will compound to $68K in 4 years or $92.5K in 8 years. Using cash-flow discount model, assuming that your real estate property value stays the same and annual income the same, you spend $50K to yield $90K ($40K in illiquid property value and $50K in generated cash) in 8 years, making your net present value of your $50K investment to be discounted at $21.8K. Just food for thought.

<comment><USER32> I don't think he would be eligible for the first time home-owner credit since its not owner occupied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> That's messed up for the neighbors. Please don't do this.

<comment><USER34> I don't want to come across as being facetious, but why? At least in my building, there's a large percentage of neighbors who I don't know at all - whether they were renting via Airbnb or owners of their condo, it doesn't make a huge difference to me.

<comment><USER35> Because people don't behave in a hotel as they do at home - they're on holiday after all, so they might come back late drunk, they might want to party, they might make a mess in the hallway. Different people, every night. An unlike an owner, they could be anyone, or bring anyone with them. Basically, you are externalizing all the downside onto your neighbours, while pocketing the upside. It is no surprise that AirBnB started in America.

<comment><USER36> Downvoted for the unnecessary nationalistic swipe.

<comment><USER35> I could be American myself, for all you know.

<comment><USER37> But, you probably aren't, as you went to college in the UK. So please refrain from your crass generalizations about countries.

<comment><USER35> That doesn't mean anything these days. UK universities are filled with students from all over the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _Find a great property manager / cleaner -- Without one of these doing this remotely would be impossible. I managed to find a great local cleaner on craigslist. She charges a flat fee of $200 per month which covers unlimited cleanings._

And she's probably illegal . . . But even if she's not illegal, how can this "property manager" live with himself, taking advantage of people who don't "know" enough (whether of the language or minimum wage laws) to understand that they are being taken advantage of? I was born in Vegas and have seen what that city has become -- if there's one thing in abundance there it's under- the-radar immigrants.

This post represents everything that is wrong with the property management and rental industry:

 _White man want easy money. White man charge high rents. White man hire nice, busy ladies who no speak English to do hard work cleaning. White man hire nice, fast men who no speak English to do hard work painting and carpet replacing. White man take profit for himself and give teeny bit to people who no speak English because they no understand how hard it is to make easy money._

His cleaning lady is even laundering towels and sheets for $200 per month? How nice of her.

 _I have about 3 or 4 sets of sheets and towels. This way the cleaner doesn't need to wash everything in the 3 hours between guest check in and check out. They can simply take all the dirty sheets and towels home, wash them, then next time they swing by the apartment have a clean set of everything ready to drop off._

<comment><USER39> It's even more abusive because the listing says, "$35 cleaning fee." If he rents it to 6 different people, he has already recouped his costs and the rest will be profit.

Edit: I don't think I communicated my meaning well here. Bottom line is, Hilton doesn't charge me to clean the room--it's a cost of doing business and is rolled into the cost of the room. The practice of adding on a 'cleaning fee' reeks of profit grabbing... similar to an airline charging for checked bags, except that this is a fee that is a requisite for staying in the room.

<comment><USER40> Seriously? It's abusive because he makes a profit and doesn't do all the work himself?? Watch out, all of business, ever!!

<comment><USER39> It's abusive because he is passing the cost of cleaning the place to the user... which in fairness should then be variable based on its usage. 1 OCD person gets charged the same fee as multiple slobs that brought their pets and smoked in the apartment. That 'fee' should be rolled into the rental cost/cost of doing business. He is using it to augment his profit.

<comment><USER41> _It 's abusive because he is passing the cost of cleaning the place to the user..._

All costs of a business are passed to the consumer. Where do you think the money a business makes comes from? Sure, if there's a cost increase, a business can decide to lower the profit margin to avoid increasing the price, but the costs are still being passed on.

 _which in fairness should then be variable based on its usage_

Why? When did it become wrong to charge flat fee for a service? The cleaning lady is also charging a flat per hour fee even though it's cheaper for her to do a single 3-hour job instead of 3 1-hour ones, is she being unfair too?

Nobody who offers a service can or should be required to charge proportionally to the costs. It's irrational to demand that.

 _That 'fee' should be rolled into the rental cost/cost of doing business._

I suggest he eliminates the cleaning fee and raises the prices by $35/visit. Apparently the morality of a fee depend on whether it's itemized.

 _He is using it to augment his profit_

The nerve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Just buy houses in Flint or some other lowly rust-belt city. Buy the property for $5,000, fix it up a little (wait to see why) and then find a renter for $700/month. If you're lucky they'll be section 8 so you don't really even have to worry about them skipping out on the rent.

Worst case you spend a few months evicting them and then spend a couple grand fixing it up after the house is completely trashed from piles of trash and holes in the walls and urine and feces in the floors. Then the next family moves in and the cycle repeats.

<comment><USER43> There's an article online about a guy who did this for dozens of properties in Detroit. It didn't work out so well because rent is more like $400 a month. The typical fix cost on a $5K property is $20K because of tax payments in arrears and liens and so forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thanks for this, I wondered what the details might be like.

I don't suppose you've had the County come after you for occupancy tax yet have you? While in general there are a _lot_ of hotel rooms in Vegas (something like over 140,000) the hotels are a pretty strong political block and have been a thorn in the side of some folks who went the VRBO route.

<comment><USER45> Hotel stays in Vegas are also very cheap. I'm rather surprised he gets a price that lets this work.

<comment><USER43> Yes, $90 is more than I usually pay in Vegas for a quite nice place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Stuff like this makes me sad. When I first used Airbnb three years ago, it was easy to find a real person letting out their room or apartment to make some extra money. Nowadays, it's very difficult to tell who is a real person and who is just like this guy: an absentee landlord for a place they've never lived in. It's an abuse of the system, and it's people like this who are going to get Airbnb shut down. Blame them when it happens.

</comment><comment><USER47> Does Lockitron work for someone who happens to not have mobile phone service where the rental is? As convenient as it is, it seems like short-duration travelers to a country don't always bother with having a working mobile phone where they're going. If so, I'd hope it's obvious in the listing.

<comment><USER48> You need a working mobile phone with service, but it doesn't need to be a smartphone.

[https://lockitron.com/help/mobile#smsaccess](https://lockitron.com/help/mobile#smsaccess)

EDIT: Included more detail about needing a working mobile phone with service, due to ahlatimer.

<comment><USER49> His question was does it work without having service. In other words offline mode. I think the answer is that no it does not.

<comment><USER48> I thought I answered that, while also providing additional information. I apologize if that seemed rude in any way.

<comment><USER50> You did not. The OP was asking if you had a phone in the equivalent of "airplane mode" or just no service where you are, would Lockitron work? You have a mobile phone, which meets your criteria, but Lockitron would not work with SMS access, since you can't send an SMS. Would it work for smart phones? I have no idea. The page you linked to didn't say one way or the other (or if it did, I didn't see it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> That's roughly a 25% annual return. nice. We're renting out our place in Buenos Aires. We're clearing 10% return and I use it when I go back there to meet with the team. Stays about 80% -90% full, great location. Guests love it. My wife (who doesn't work full time) manages it remotely. It's been a very positive experience and my takeaways are similar to the writer's. It's not passive income, but it's steady...

<comment><USER52> Would like to know more about this as an Argentinian!

Airbnb prices are so steep in buenos aires, how does it make sense for tourists? Even Zonaprops has way cheaper places for weeks and such.

In argentina Airbnb is not going to get regulation issues ever..

Would you mind if i gave you my email? Plus we might know each other already.

<comment><USER51> Sure my email is in my profile... it's $110 US/night but 4 can stay. Cheaper than a hotel and separate bedrooms. So compared to a hotel, way cheaper. Also, safer than zonaprop or BYT where you have to show up w/$700 cash for a week PLUS $700 deposit. Then they argue w/you about the deposit, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> $200 monthly for a local cleaner who does unlimited cleans AND handles the bookings/inquiries??? That's quite a steal!

<comment><USER33> she's probably getting ripped off in this deal.

<comment><USER40> She probably signed away her right to stop working for him, and is now stuck working $2 per hour! It can't be that she's a free person able to choose to work for a given rate. She must be a victim!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Could someone explain to my ignorant self why zoning a property as hotel and paying hotel tax is necessary? What is it for and why was it created?

It seems like a lot of these new startups are the same old business model but skirt costly taxes and regulation (Uber for taxis, Airbnb for hotels, Bitcoin for money transfers)

<comment><USER55> I believe hotels are regulated and inspected? Not all taxes and regulations are invalid on principle.. Regulations on hotels, car services, and money transfers are usually sold on being in the best interest of the people - protecting their health, safety, and preventing them from being scammed.

<comment><USER56> That is the theory. However, these sorts of local business regulations are the kinds of things that I think you should be particularly skeptical of. A few points:

1\. It's hard to imagine that there's a ton of democratic oversight over hotel regulation. Prior to AirBnB, did anyone EVER, in your life, suggest to you that you should be concerned about the specifics of hotel regulation in your town?

2\. These are local laws. Smaller government components, like city, county, and state, are probably more vulnerable to being captured by medium or large businesses than the federal government is, due to less sophistication and professionalism of the politicians (especially) and bureaucrats (less so).

3\. A big hotel has a lot of incentive to try to corrupt local regulation to quash competitors and shore up their business. It directly affects their bottom line.

4\. These regulations have accreted over time, leading to complex regulations that have lots of loopholes and potentially anachronistic components to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Was there anything specific when applying for insurance? Did you need to disclose it was being rented out or anything (I'm assuming if you had to this would affect premiums)?

<comment><USER58> You must be kidding! This is "disruption" we're talking about, after all. That means all precautions, regulations, contingencies, licensing, and everything else are _out the window_ , full stop. What are you, some kind of last-century luddite who hates progress? What do you want, for the bad old pre-startup ways to contaminate things and spoil the party? "Insurance" is for non- entrepreneurial losers, and no one cases about them, because they're not really people anyway!

Just do a textual search for "insurance" in the article. Zero results found. Yep, it's "disruption" all right! Full speed ahead!

<comment><USER59> The only way to buy insurance would be to lie and commit fraud. Home owners associations also require insurance.

<comment><USER60> Why would he need to lie? Landlord insurance is trivial to get and IIRC (it's been a few years) cheaper than regular homeowner's insurance.

<comment><USER59> You can't buy insurance for an illegal activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61>
        Average monthly revenue: $1,634
        Rough monthly profit: $1,134 (after cleaning, bills and other expenses)

subtract $200 for the monthly maid service, $196 for Las Vegas' 12% hotel tax.

HOA fees, utilities, cable, and everything else is only $104 per month? Something doesn't add up here. (But I'm a botanist, not an accountant, so I may not understand something)

<comment><USER62> I'm not familiar with AirBnB but I'd guess there's no hotel tax being paid?

Assuming a $300 for utilities + HOA fees sounds believable

<comment><USER61> I just had a look at his listing on AirBNB and he charges a $35 cleaning fee. That also shifts the numbers into the more believable range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This guy's twitter handle is @jon. Color me jealous.

Smart idea though. I've heard of some people who do this in NYC on a larger scale and all of them have reported raking in the cash and even hiring managers so their income is pretty much entirely passive (they just deal with the manager(s)). Seems like a pretty sweet gig if you have the capital.

</comment><comment><USER25> As a condo owner and resident, the last thing I want is to find myself living in a boarding house. My personal belongings, safety, privacy, the quality of the grounds, and the value of my property all seem to me to be threatened by AirBnB's take down of local regulations, taxes, and HOA covenants. As an individual, my rights are eclipsed by disproportionate corporate power. What are the realistic prospects for Class Action Lawsuits against AirBnB and other scofflaws ala the States vs Big Tobacco?

</comment><comment><USER64> If anyone's interested in creating HDR photos for real estate, check out my startup TurboHDR ([https://www.turbohdr.com](https://www.turbohdr.com)) which is a service to generate HDR photos in the cloud.

Strictly speaking it uses "exposure fusion" which isn't true HDR but the end result is similar to a tone-mapped HDR image and is generally more realistic with fewer artifacts.

FWIW it's written in Go and hosted on Google App Engine.

</comment><comment><USER65> How are you promoting Lockitron when they are still not shipping? [http://blog.lockitron.com/](http://blog.lockitron.com/)

<comment><USER66> So the whole post is suspect?

<comment><USER24> That's what I'm thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Getting the cleaner to manage 'guest relations' for this cheap is probably a great deal not easy to replicate.

Handling them poorly could quickly result in bad reviews.

On the other hand, those kind of profits are really just short term until the market catches up. People are not stupid to not take easy profit and / or governments will crack down with regulation and taxes.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wonder what the monthly rent is there. It might just be a better idea to skip abnb and rent out the place over a 12 month lease.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder what the neighbors think.

<comment><USER59> When the HOA finds out he's breaking the terms that he agreed to when purchasing the condo, they'll fine him per offense. Then get a lean on the apartment.

<comment><USER69> Nitpick: lien.

But yes, if I'm a neighbor there and I find out this is going on, I get angry.

<comment><USER59> I wonder is the HOA would have the legal authority to change the locks ?

<comment><USER70> In many cases, the HOA can do all kinds of stuff- like fix your house and bill you for it. If you don't pay up, they slap you with a lien.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I wonder could you buy a car and rent a guy and then rent them out on Uber?

<comment><USER72> This is already being done, there are stories about a driver starting with his own car and building up a fleet of drivers/vehicles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Stuff like that is what's going to kill AirBnB. Sooner or later they will have to crack down on this, because if they don't the municipality will, and if they won't (and they will), HOAs will.

</comment><comment><USER74> Shouldn't he be paying tax? I believe hotel/bed tax in Las Vegas is 12%. On $19,613, that's $2,353.

</comment><comment><USER75> So you have roughly, a 27% ROI for your first year -- which seems good. Have you accounted for: Income tax? Property tax? Insurance costs? Legal risks: (i.e., you potentially in violation of law)? Liability risks: (i.e., something happens to a tenant)? Property damage risks (may be included in cleanup costs)? Labor costs (i.e., your time)? Property value appreciation/depreciation (could be a positive)? After that is all taken into account, I wonder if you end up netting more from a passive investment.

</comment><comment><USER76> Under the Las Vegas Code of Ordinances (assuming the condo is in the city), the issue is going to be whether the guy is considered an "operator" of "an establishment that rents or holds out for rent guestrooms on a daily or less- than-weekly basis." In that case, he needs a license and needs to pay taxes. See: [http://library.municode.com/HTML/14787/level2/TIT6BUTALIRE_C...](http://library.municode.com/HTML/14787/level2/TIT6BUTALIRE_CH6.46HOMORO.html#TOPTITLE)

Beyond that, all that really matters is the "Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions" (CCRs) document that is recorded in the land records when the condo was created and any other local and state regs governing renting of rooms.

The Rules and Regulations statement about short term leases is easily overcome. Just create an operating company that you lease the condo to under a long-term lease - run all the money through the operating company, pay the rent to the owner, and distribute net income. The only "lease" will be the long-term lease to the operating company. Again, there may be local regs about this (or the state's Landlord-Tenant statute: [https://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-118A.html#NRS118ASec180](https://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-118A.html#NRS118ASec180)), but the "prohibition" under the Rules and Regs is easy to deal with. Again, what matters are the CCRs that are recorded in the land records. If they allow it, my bet would be that this guy's scheme is fine.

Plus, I'd also bet that he talked with an attorney about this. If he didn't, he's a damned fool.

</comment><comment><USER77> It sounds like travelers to Vegas, the hotel capitol of the US, are savvy enough to check airbnb. And VRBO it seems as well. This is a big pain for searchers. Hipmunk shows each of these, but not very well as they only have a handful of the 1000s of listings from Airbnb. We've tried to help with this at [http://AllTheRooms.com](http://AllTheRooms.com) by aggregating everything we can find.

</comment><comment><USER78> _I live in constant fear of getting a bad review._

I wonder when is someone going to come up with an idea how to fix this. As far as I can tell there's not a lot a supplier on airbnb/ebay/etc can do about them. It's all too consumer centric... My subjective opinion is that most bad reviews are unwarranted, left by customers that have unrealistic demands.

<comment><USER79> TripAdvisor and others came up with a good solution a while ago - they let the property owner write a reply to a bad review, and post the reply right underneath the bad review.

<comment><USER80> That's the same thing eBay does. You know what? I never look at them on eBay. All I ever look at is the percent of positive reviews.

<comment><USER81> Being able to post a reply is a solution to a one-off or occasional bad review having an unfairly negative impact. If a large percentage of the reviews are bad, the best solution is probably to solve whatever problems are causing the bad reviews.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> isnt he missing income taxes? In germany you would have to pay up to 42% income tax on the profits, depending what other earnings you have.. Still an okay return though.

<comment><USER82> adding to this: if hed use the profits to pay off the loan on the apartment, he probably wouldnt need to pay income taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Hmm I don't see any mention of equity here but only profit. If you're able to cover the cost of mortgage + HOA/property tax + expenses of running the place then the equity is the profit. Assuming the price of the place is the same in, say, 10 years. Then you've built up 10 years worth of equity buy having someone else pay your mortgage...

Of course if this place was bought cash, you could have done the same thing in reverse. Take that money and loan it to an individual to buy a house. The only difference is there's no extra profit to be made but also no added risk of not finding clients, repairs, etc. (unless someone wrecks the place and it becomes worthless)

<comment> jack-r-abbit I could be wrong but I got the impression he bought it outright and not with a mortgage. But even so, if his mortgage was a traditional 30/yr fixed loan, his monthly payment would ridiculously low. And then he is free to massively over- pay his mortgage payment each month... which is going to pay it off in about the same 4 years he mentions in his write-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> This is illegal in the netherlands.

[http://nos.nl/op3/artikel/562868-airbnb-mag-alleen-nog- met-t...](http://nos.nl/op3/artikel/562868-airbnb-mag-alleen-nog-met- toestemming-van-de-vve.html)

</comment><comment><USER85> I think this is pretty common already.... I used ABnb twice last week and both hosts were doing this....one of them currently lives in Nigeria actually. I googled one of the condo's I was staying in and the rent was around $1300 a month, I then looked at the calendar for unit and realized the rent would be paid with about a week and 1/2 of bookings which was present. It's a nice hustle. I'm thinking about doing it though I live in the NE and a comparable unit would run me $2000+ a month I think. I need to do some research but this posting gave me some more ideas

</comment><comment> j-m-o I really like the mention of Lockitron, the whole 'keyless entry' idea really is going to be the future of AirBnB rentals.

I have several customers who are AirBnB hosts who use my service, Ringo [1], which lets their guests into the units via the apartment buzzer. That combined with Lockitron, and you never need to worry about key transfer again. You can effectively live on a different continent than your AirBnB property.

[1] [https://www.tryringo.com](https://www.tryringo.com)

</comment><comment><USER86> Having had more than my share of asshole neighbors, I'd be very worried about their representation in such a constantly churning population.

And I would have little sympathy in compelling the local authorities to enforce any and all laws and regulations that would put a stop to the resulting disruption.

I see far too many instances, today, of people thinking of and acting on "me, me, me", while ignoring those around them whom they are screwing over.

</comment><comment><USER87> Thanks for posting this. I've been debating getting one of these micro homes ([http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nomad-micro-home-easily- as...](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nomad-micro-home-easily-assembled- under-30k)) and setting it up in Whistler to do exactly the same thing as you are... Airbnb it year round.

<comment><USER88> I love these design/idea. I wonder if you could setup micro-condo living or "ski bum" living by buy a few of these and small parts of land. I could also see something like this being ideal for a small beach house getaway as you won't be out $XXX,XXX or even MM if it gets taken by a hurricane or storm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Sounds risky. Four years is a long time. The price of the property can fall sharply, cities might decide they don't want "commercial" one-room hotels, and finally a renter might wreck the place or sue you for something.

Yeah, I know, reputation system, rare chance, but rare chances is the kind of thing you often don't want happening to 60K investment!

<comment><USER90> Four years is a ridiculously quick time to recover the entire cost of an apartment, and that limits the risk a lot. For example, if this gets stopped somehow in the next year or so, he would only lose out if property prices also fell more that 25-40% in that same year or so. The chances of both happening at once seems very, very small to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> We're building a service called Airenvy (airenvy.com) that caters to short term renting on services like airbnb. We could have been tremendously helpful to the author had we been in the Vegas area. We are growing rapidly in SF and our property owners love all the money we're making them! On average we increase income by 30%!

</comment><comment><USER92> Haha - Nice dude!

I scraped AirBnB last year to compare it to local prices with the same intent last year to automate. Totally do-able and profitable. Local tenant & housing laws are the most important thing to keep track of IMO. You can outsource the Q/A with guests.

</comment><comment><USER93> I wish I could do the same in London. But in that price range, I can only rent out a closet.

</comment><comment><USER49> How do you go about insuring this? As a second home or as a rental property?

</comment><comment><USER94> HackerNews? Is this like saying I sell things on eBay, because it's the new world economy? I would be more interested to hear about the tax situation than furniture delivery times.

</comment><comment><USER95> "I'm buying up this incredibly valuable resource to lease it to people who only need it temporarily so I can turn a profit! Cool, right?"

<comment><USER40> Quick, pick a business where that isn't the way things work!

Guy: 'I run a Valvoline' Douche: 'OH! So you BUY UP all the mechanics and then CHARGE PEOPLE to access them?!' Guy: 'Uh, yes. This makes me, the customers and the mechanics better off, dipshit.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> 50k for an appartment in LV ? That sounds way cheaper than I expected. Impressively cheaper. Would you consider making it your full income at that pace ?

</comment><comment><USER97> I wonder how he deals with unruly guests.

<comment><USER98> More specifically: What if they completely trash the place? How remote is he, and could he travel to do the repairs on sudden notice? Could legal wrangling over the damage make it no longer worthwhile? What about future guests who are displaced by a damaged and unlivable apartment? What would you do if your neighbor became fed up with unruly guests and tried to do something about it (legal or otherwise)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> AirBnB + Lockitron = major win, always surprised AirBnB hasn't offered a package like getaround does.

</comment><comment><USER100> I think this is great. Vegas is the perfect spot. It was overbuilt, there is lots of extra supply, and lots of tourists. Great they made it happen.

I would think there are two dangers:

1) It can take a lot of time, and time is money. If you make 200K/year, your time is worth ~100/hour. Spending 100 hours on this takes away a 10K profit.

2) You are the on the hook for big surprises: Theft, something breaks, etc.

But again, great for the OP!

<comment><USER101> > If you make 200K/year, your time is worth ~100/hour. Spending 100 hours on > this takes away a 10K profit.

Stuff like this doesn't make much sense if you're salaried. People like to break down salaries by the hour, but it's just not true. You can put in all the overtime you want and not see an extra penny of profit, at least not directly. You'll only benefit from it if you actually get a promotion or raise as a direct result of the extra work.

If you're contracting, though, and actually charge by the hour, then this calculation makes sense.

Also, this is tangential, but $200k is hardly an even remotely typical salary for a developer in the US.

<comment><USER100> Ok - 100k and it's 50 an hour. You could be freelancing with that time. Unless you get enjoyment out of rebuilding homes and customer service. In that case, knock yourself out and do 2 more. Or plow the earnings into a housing empire and do it full time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Wow $40,000 for an apartment that provides ROI in one year. if only you could do that in London...

</comment><comment><USER103> very interesting post, it's always great to read about other sources of income. I wonder if renting on airbnb is more lucrative than renting in general.

<comment><USER104> Depends on how quickly you can re-rent. If you sign a long lease, the landlord typically offers something lower than "market rate" in exchange for lower risk and less time un-rented.

One thing he doesn't say is what percentage of the time the room was rented; he only says that it wasn't always making him money because he and his friends occasionally stayed there.

<comment><USER103> That's true about re-renting. I'm guessing he chose AirBnB over traditional renting so that he could stay at the place once in a while too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> I still don't "get" Airbnb. How can anyone be comfortable letting a complete stranger into their home?

I'd freak out if someone were to start fiddling with my electronics, perusing my Laserdisc collection, etc.

<comment><USER106> i think the idea is that you do not keep valuables or expensive things in the apartment when there are guests there. either that, or perhaps you also live in there at the same time and only rent out a room or a couch, thus mitigating some of the risks as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> I think this article was just an ad for Lockitron.

</comment><comment><USER108> Why did you choose to do this remotely?

<comment><USER72> He probably lives in an area that is less touristy.

<comment><USER109> He lives in SF-- high property values

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER110> A house for 40,000 usd? Thats cheap...

</comment><comment><USER111> Its called a timeshare.

</comment><comment><USER112> So what happens when

1) Your apartment gets trashed. They break your walls, pour cement down your drain, break the furniture, etc?

2) Tenants refuse to move out. I'm sure there are all kinds of laws protecting them, and it's very hard to kick them out even if they aren't paying.

3) Somebody gets injured on your property (slips in the bathroom and breaks an arm), and sues you for a shitload of money.

Also, you forgot amortization in your calculations. Things will wear and tear.

</comment><comment><USER113> Too bad it's illegal.</comment>


The Lioness Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/louisdh/lioness <comment><USER2> Interested to know why this language made the front page?

<comment><USER3> Same reason everything else makes it - enough people thought it looked interesting to upvote.

<comment><USER2> Any elaboration on what is interesting exactly?

<comment><USER4> Not sure why this was downvoted. I don't see anything in the design which shows that the language is designed for math. The math functions included in the standard library seem basic, even when compared to general purpose languages. I don't mean to rag on someone's work, but why would I use this over Sage/MATLAB/R?

<comment><USER5> Matlab is no free and R often has confusing syntax. Why would you use it over _Julia_ (which it looks like, syntactically)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's the actual point of this language? If you want a good set of mathematical functions, why build a whole new language instead of just building a library of mathematical functions for an existing language?

</comment><comment><USER7> Not sure how many people know the back story based on the comments I've read. This language was designed by Louis D'hauwe for his iOS app Pixture. He wanted a language that could be used for shader like features on his app but Apple doesn't allow user executable code or compilers so he built his own in Swift only.

</comment><comment><USER8> From the examples, it looks like any other general purpose C-like language. In which way is it designed for mathematical purposes? Is it because of better precision of floating point numbers or something like this?

</comment><comment><USER9> >All numbers are floating point

But why?

<comment><USER10> This could enable NaN-tagging as an implementation technique.

<comment><USER9> Oh. Learned something new today, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having only IEEE 754 floats is a very limiting design decision, but okay.

</comment><comment><USER12> I couldn't find in the source code where types are inferred.

</comment><comment><USER13> The link under standard library heading leads to a 404.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be fixed!</comment></comment>


MIT: Building on Julia programming language to open up AI coding to novices - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/mit-were-building-on-julia-programming-language-to-open-up-ai-coding-to-novices/ <comment><USER2> Julia's ecosystem is rapidly catching up with R and Python (and it already has interop with those languages). I am quite fond of the language and would not be averse to using it as a main language in the near future.

This seems like a welcome addition. The tutorials are clear.</comment>


Textie for the iPhone - From the creator of Tweetie - <AUTHOR> http://textie.me/ <comment><USER2> I'm just trying it out with my wife's iTouch to my Droid. So far there's about a 50% loss rate on texts sent from Textie and a few that never got received (maybe 10%). A small sample, obviously, and it is free. Still, not a great initial showing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hasn't this been done with WhatsApp for iPhone and BB? Or am I missing something here?</comment>


Ask HN: What % of YC companies were "pro" - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
I'm curious to know what % of YC companies or founders (last season lets say) came from professional working backgrounds at successful companies. I've read the bios of some founders. It seems quite a few came from engineering positions at Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
Are there a lot of these guys? Are their companies more successful than guys out of undergrad/grad school? <comment><USER2> You mean which have some kind of post-school work experience? Certainly the majority. Maybe 80%. Though interestingly some of the biggest successes (e.g. Loopt, Dropbox) were started by people straight out of school.

Young founders have more variance. They often flame out, but when they don't they often do really well. For that reason we've made a conscious effort not to get conservative and fund only startups that seem safe.

When we first started, we had no choice but to fund risky startups, since those were the only ones that applied. Now that we're better known we get a lot of applications from older, more legit seeming founders. It would be easy to start funding only them and ignoring the 20 year olds, but that would be a mistake. The median 20 year old is going to fail, but the best one is Sam Altman.

<comment><USER3> _[risky startups] were the only ones that applied. Now [...] we get a lot of applications from older, more legit seeming founders_

Have you seen a shift towards less risk-taking applicants aside from the fact that they are now older and more experienced?

Speaking as a complete outsider to YC, it seems to me that the first cohort was in many ways the most successful one; leaving aside the question of whether my perception here is accurate or not (I don't expect you to comment on this any more than I'd expect someone to say which of their children they like the most), I've wondered for a while if Y Combinator becoming "mainstream" has diminished a formerly beneficial applicant self-selection advantage.

<comment><USER2> I believe the median applicant is now a less risk-taking sort of person, because YC now seems a lot less risky of an option.

It may well be that the first cohort will be the most successful, but I believe that was a fluke due to small sample size.</comment></comment></comment>


Two men wrote the original Adobe Flash in 1993 - where are they now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.attendly.com/two-men-wrote-the-original-adobe-flash-in-1993-where-are-they-now/ <comment><USER3> The Flash history lesson is cool. However, the idea that Adobe has "admitted defeat on mobile" is just plain wrong.

In spite of the massive hype differential vs. appcelerator and phonegap, Adobe's AIR is one of the best ways to build & deploy cross-platform mobile apps right now. That's flash, that's mobile, and it's a far cry from "admitting defeat".

Flash on the desktop browser is increasingly limited to a small set of niche uses. Flash inside a mobile browser was never a good idea, and it's dying. The decline of those two specific use cases should not be construed as a general death of the flash platform.

<comment><USER4> _Adobe's AIR is one of the best ways to build & deploy cross-platform mobile apps right now_

As someone who has built and deployed a cross-platform app on AIR, I must respectfully disagree.

AIR doesn't give you access to a lot of native features of smartphones. As the most glaring oversight, I had to do some deep hacking on AIR's launcher to support in-app billing. Phonegap's extensible plugin approach looks a lot easier.

And the user experience is different, too. After months of work, my first review rolled in: one star, and said simply, "AIR crap." And no wonder. Without so much as the ability to display my own splashscreen beforehand, AIR simply asks the user, "Hi, would you like to do a 16 MB download to support this app that you don't even know what it does yet?" I've had my _friends_ give me funny looks at that prompt. "When I'm done looking at this, I can delete that, right?" one of them asked.

If you do Phonegap -- or heck, even just raw HTML5 -- I'm not sure your users even need to _know_.

<comment><USER5> Yikes - sounds very similar to trying to deploy Java desktop apps. Not a pleasant experience. Why don't they just bake the AIR runtime into the original download? Sure it would be bigger and you'd end up with duplicate copies, but almost anything is better than trying to get end users to download runtimes.

<comment><USER4> Well, 16 MB is a really quite a nasty large size for an app. For reference, one of the low-end phones I target has 180MB of internal memory. (And I don't think I can tell an app -- and certainly not an AIR app -- to install itself on the SD card, though a wizardly user certainly can.) You can get away with 16 MB in a graphics-heavy game, but something that's mostly forms and screens really ought to come in under a megabyte.

Phonegap gets to bundle the platform because their hello world is only 300k. I really don't think AIR could get away with that.

But I agree, the user experience might be better if that was an option.

<comment><USER6> I think bundling makes it a lot smaller than 16MB. Rather something like 8MB (which is still a lot of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jonathan Gay also coded Dark Castle -- an early, awesome Macintosh platform game.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting, but a shame the article doesn't go deeper. They looked up a guys LinkedIn page and grabbed a paragraph from a 2 year old article about the other guy.

I'd love to know why Jonathan Gay made the switch to small business in agriculture.

<comment><USER9> I grew up cutting lawns, doing landscaping with my Dad. Now I'm in a 9 - <USER2> job, I often dream of simply escaping this programming world, growing something, and applying my IT skills to get the best of both worlds.

It feels like I'm missing the world, by being behind a computer 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. In the end, it all just doesn't seem very fulfilling.

Programming has always been a passion, and a hobby. I always wonder if I've made the mistake of combining it with a career.

<comment><USER10> I agree completely. I used to get excited when I saw a new framework or language out and would always download it, play with it, etc. Now I just think " _another_ one? I hope I don't have to learn that one day."

Maybe I just need a break to get my enthusiasm back. But it's going to have to be a lot longer than two weeks. It's a shame, because I worked really hard to get into the software industry in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Flash still has a future in gaming. They now have hardware accelerated 3D and with AIR you can bring your high quality 3D games to the browser, mobile and the desktop.

That said, the Unity Game Engine can do the same thing and will soon support a full featured flash export option, so most people wont develop their games in Flash directly but as a browser gaming deployment option it will be around until WebGL and HTML5 is mature enough.

</comment><comment><USER12> Won't there always be a dominant plugin? If it's not Flash, isn't there some other optional-yet-ubiquitous installable that gives certain sites an edge over the lowest common denominator of browser tech?

<comment><USER13> That has sort of delegated to browser choice now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Seems a bit of an oversight that he doesn't have his own Wikipedia page – > any enterprising soul care to rectify this?

Well someone tried and it get deleted because Wikipedia :)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's time for Flash to die now, however it had a good run. We've had usable video on the web for a decade thanks to it -- and even now, HTML5 still hasn't caught up. Flash did a great job of advancing the web while open standards caught up.

<comment><USER16> Please can you direct me to an open source HTML5 (or not) alternative to Flash for video that supports advertisements and DRM? Flash can't (and will not) die until such a thing exists. It isn't time for flash to die until there's something to replace it.

<comment><USER17> Open source and DRM are fundamentally incompatible—if neutering the DRM is a mere recompile away, what good is it to the sorts of organizations that require DRM?

<comment><USER18> DRM'd media is encrypted and cannot be "neutered" if you don't have the decryption key. [Well-designed] DRM relies on secret keys, not secret source code.

<comment><USER19> Here's the problem: either you have the decryption keys and can get to the content, or you don't and can't. If you can watch a movie on your computer, you already have everything you need to pirate the movie.

<comment><USER20> Which, of course, is true for any cryptography, regardless of the openness of its implementation. It may be harder to keep the keys obscured in open code, but then the keys usually don't stay secret that long anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great to see that the original FutureSplash authors are doing well. Flash is a great example of how far software can diverge from its original audience and goals.

Regardless of Flash's future on the web, it is still excellent for animation and Adobe seems to be refocusing back on this market, which is much closer to Adobe's core competency. My most fond memories of Flash are back in the v3 and v4 days (you could barely write loops in Actionscript) but it was so much fun drawing and animating with a tablet and making cartoons. Then MXML and RIA's came along and we all know what happened next.

</comment><comment><USER22> People who say "Flash is dying!" don't know what Flash can actually do. Flash is active technology. If you think Flash is obsolete and outdated, STOP USING ALL OF THESE IMMEDIATELY.

\- Most PC browser games HTML5 is not ready to handle rich games for many practical reasons. You may not have an interest to games, but browser games have a big market and very lucrative.

\- Quite a lot of iOS/Android apps Using AIR to develop crossplatform applications. Currently HTML5 solutions such as PhoneGap have a major performance issue because of the lack of iOS JIT. AIR compiles ActionScript codes to LLVM and compiled code runs relatively fast (and I think it's a clever and balanced way to develop applications on low perforamnce smartphones. C++ is inefficient to develop, and JavaScript is too slow).

\- AAA console games on Xbox360/PS3/PC Using Scaleform to redner 2D user interfaces. Do you know the title screen, game menues, HUDs and so on are actually SWF? Game artists author them with Adobe Flash CS!

\- Streaming video sites Hulu never exists without Flash DRM streaming.

\- Many kiosk terminals Using Flash for their UIs. Both Flash runtime and the authoring tool (Flash CS) are needed. Indeed HTML5 is coming but HTML5 can only replace runtimes.

Certainly Flash has many problems but it's not so bad technology overall. And it will used for relative long time (I guess 5-10 years or so). Flash has many reasons to be used widely.

And you must admit that HTML5 is improving rapidly because it is trying to overcome plugins like Flash. Flash is a very good stimulation for browser vendors. Because of this, I can say so-called "plug-in free" is not a good idea. Copmpetiton is healthy (WebGL developer also is saying so!).

Actually, there is a great demand for Flash animators to develop recent social games. Currently Japanese major social game company GREE forcuses Unity and AIR and they are saying HTML5 doesn't meet their needs for now. Of course that will change in coming 2 or 3 years though (looks like iOS 6 has some important improvements. Web Audio API, requestAnimationFrame and multitouch bug fix).

By the way, this author Scott Handsaker made this Flash grave picture? Soft of obsessive. I look down on the guys like this. They don't have respect for important technologies.

Sorry for my poor English, but I can't stop saying something for the current situation. Flash is a poor and underestimated technology.

<comment><USER23> Do not take it literally. Being "dead" doesn't mean there are no users anymore. It means that it's a walking corpse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Being a flash game developer from the very first day of my game dev days, it really feels sad to see how flash is being "overcome" by HTML5 and stuff. :( But I'll still be a Flash game developer always :D _flash FTW!_

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting read. Ironicly had they both gone into the field of selling flash expliots then they would of made more money form that than they did from flash. It's a mad World.

Though I can't help but feel they are both grounded people doing what they like and for that there probably happy people.</comment>