Vine isn't growing and most of its top executives have left - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/7/12/12150660/vine-growth-departures-hannah-donovan-app-future <comment><USER3> It's such a shame, really; arguably Twitter, much more so than their competitors, tries to stick as close to the original form of their product as they can. I admire that.

Facebook (and Instagram) and Snapchat have both transformed from their original incarnations, in ways that have improved the companies' valuation, but have not always improved the experience of users. It seems every single social network is trending towards feature parity with each other -- Facebook now has streaming video, Snapchat now has a decent text chat with messages that need not disappear, Instagram has an algorithmic no-longer-timeline wall and private messaging, they all have ads, even Tumblr now has IM and livestreaming. Some (important) differences remain, but from an observer time- travelling forward from 2012, the social networks of today would appear nearly interchangeable.

But there's Twitter. All these years, it has stayed remarkably close to the original concept of microblogging. Instead, it developed (or acquired) other formats and cultivated them as separate services, separate communities. It's unfortunate that not even wide societal impact can make a service profitable, or at least quell the pressure to feature-creep outside of your original scope.

<comment><USER4> Twitter just doesn't have an idea about where to evolve. They've tried small changes, and nothing helped their bottom line. Rumors are that part of the reason is that they are not sure what their "secret sauce" is, so they are reluctant to change anything in fear of harming it.

Also, they are dying. They have never turned a profit. Facebook or Google or Microsoft will eventually buy them, because of the users - but they have so far given no indication they can survive independently. And they have had a few billion dollars in funding and ten years to give that indication.

<comment><USER3> Twitter (the service, not the company's) secret sauce is:

You can have a public platform, using an identity you choose for yourself, to broadcast snippets of information.

Where do you evolve this? Blogger, Blogspot, Livejournal, Tumblr, Medium, they're all in this same space, except they focus on traditional, long-form content. I don't see Twitter as a social network (although many do, that's okay). I see it as a broadcast medium, a soapbox, a blogging platform.

But _if_ you see Twitter as a social network, you're subject to a different set of pressures than a blogging platform.

Also, Twitter holds no value to FB, Google, MS, or Yahoo. They all have subsumed parts of its core functionality into their offerings. If they ever get acquired, it's by some 'outsider' that wants to enter this space, like Verizon or Yandex.

<comment><USER5> >> I don't see Twitter as a social network (although many do, that's okay). I see it as a broadcast medium, a soapbox, a blogging platform.

A few years back Peter Kafka wrote an article [1] about how joe/joan-shmoe twitter user will probably never have their tweets read by anybody at all. It was astonishingly small number of folks who broke 500 followers (writing 3/4 years ago)

ex. "The median Twitter account has a single follower. Among the much smaller subset of accounts that have posted in the last 30 days, the median account has just 61 followers."

It is from a few years ago, maybe things have changed but if that's the experience of the average person why invest time in it?

[1] [http://allthingsd.com/20131223/almost-no-one-is-reading- your...](http://allthingsd.com/20131223/almost-no-one-is-reading-your-tweets/)

<comment><USER6> This is such an important point, lost in the punditry.

Twitter gets a lot of love from journalists and people with a profile, who write the articles about twitter and control public perception. They have an interest in maintaining a personal brand and have enough visibility that Twitter works for them.

If you listened to those people, Twitter's biggest problem would be trolls writing mean (and often abusive) tweets about them.

Most twitterers would be lucky to be threatened with the rape and murder of their families, frankly.

Which is why Twitter is dying-- there are so, so, so many news curation and aggregation sources. Twitter isn't even _all that_ good, frankly. Reddit does the job way better. (Still a lot of folks that want to fuck my mom though.)

As a social network, it's crap, has been crap and likely will remain crap. The time-based feed tends towards livelock from professional content producers. Their curation mostly suggests people I can follow who would generally prefer I do not engage with them beyond promotion of their brands and gentle applause.

<comment><USER7> Twitter is better than Reddit because it is decentralizes the information from single, topic-related feeds people can post to, to one feed per person that you can subscribe to. This makes it much faster and more convenient than Reddit for getting status posts on things you like, i.e. an independent game developer's latest WIP.

Some people have split accounts that you can choose to follow to receive different kind of status updates from them, so an example of this is a person with a 'oh look this interesting thing happened in my life' account, and a separate account for 'oh jeez I'm really angry and need to vent about this to a subset of people I know in relative privacy'. Because of the nature of twitter it feels easier to throw away or make lots of accounts than, say, facebok.

The real connection comes not when you follow celebrities, but when you're a creator (Or a budding creator), and you interact with other people who are creating things for support or advice; or you have an interest in what your friends are posting and doing, and like viewing their traveling posts and their reactions to things. If you have those sorts of relationships twitter helps facilitate them extremely well, and if you don't, or the people you interact with in that way don't use twitter, then it won't have that value for you.

<comment><USER6> I suppose all I can say to that is, I do not believe this level of gamesmanship to extract Twitter's value proposition is going to work out. I think they're asking too much of their users, and if they can't figure it out, they're gonna fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The founders departed very early after the acquisition, like Rus and Dom. None of the 'top executives' were ever the original visionaries that created the product to begin with.

It's sort of shocking that after Jack left but hailed back to save Twitter, that the board didn't have more wherewithal to retain the founding team of Vine. Textbook post-acquisition problem.

I agree with other commenters that they should integrate Vine into Twitter. Like Instagram and video (or Facebook and Facebook Live), there's really no reason for it to be separate. Twitter needs better content generation tools at it's core. It's really starting to feel like a washed up RSS aggregator and nothing more.

<comment><USER9> > they should integrate Vine into Twitter

Twitter already does video better than vine though, whats the point?

<comment><USER8> I guess you made my point. I care very little about Twitter now because their 2016 innovation was turning a star into a heart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That thing every time a 'startup' that never actually had a monetizable product makes headlines for not doing super awesome.

<comment><USER11> Twitter's firehose is extremely valuable data, just not at the lofty valuations the company was given.

<comment><USER12> What exactly is valuable about it? I keep hearing this but it is just a jumble of collective stream of consciousness. Has anyone that has read Ulysses actually made any sense of it? Twitter is the collective analog of Ulysses.

<comment><USER13> It can be pretty useful for sentiment analysis across large populations - <USER2> a lot of different purposes/clients

<comment><USER14> Do we have sentiment analysis techniques that actually work now? Last I checked they weren't so great.

<comment><USER15> It is insightful to point out the widely held belief that Google Reader would never be cancelled because its an incredibly tightly curated data set of what real humans actively seek out and hard working devoted humans actively filtered the wheat from the chaff. All for free, for google to monetize.

Everyone knows, that everyone knows, that its a very valuable dataset. But nobody is apparently interested in paying for it or otherwise monetizing it. Shades of "emperor has no clothes". The end result is Google Reader got cancelled.

If twitter was not standalone and was a mere subproject of a real company, it would likewise be long gone. They have no plan B so they'll have to keep doing what they're doing until they run out of money or are purchased, pretty much a Yahoo situation. Its like a decades old portapottie at a concert venue, everyone goes there does not mean its worth anything to anyone.

It would be a nice, cool world to live in where sentiment analysis is a thing. Its such an obvious and tasty idea, that unfortunately is completely wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How on earth does Vine need all those people with inflated job titles to deliver tiny videos over the internet?

<comment><USER17> This question gets asked pretty much every time there is an article about the size of tech companies. If you think about what is required for running something at the scale of Vine, 50 people makes a lot of sense, and if anything that seems somewhat lean.

<comment><USER18> You still didn't explain _why_ they need that many people.

What exactly _is_ required for "running something at the scale of Vine"? Yes, they have/had a lot of traffic, but traffic in and of itself does not require a large staff to manage.

<comment><USER17> I'm not going to explain the individual job functions of 50 people, and for folks who work in the industry this should seem like a reasonable number just from their own experience.

However, let's do some rough numbers. It says they had 3 product managers. I would guess this means 8-10 engineers. 3 QA folks would be a decent enough ratio. You've then got a GM, a head of product, head of UX, head of data science, head of BD, editorial lead, and head of engineering who all just left. We're up to 26 people already. Now we've got some HR staff, maybe a recruiter or two, finance team, people underneath the UX, editorial, data science and BD teams (let's generously assume 1-2 hires each), and we're over 40 people easily. We haven't even discussed marketing, help centre and customer support, a DBA, ops, or IT support.

Does that all make sense now? It's a company within Twitter and there are a lot of specialized roles to keep something with 25-30 million active users a month running smoothly. I'm not then going to go into what each person does each day, but with a product that you're trying to drive growth and new features for, while supporting existing customers, and just generally running a company, that takes a lot of bodies if you want to do it effectively and not cut corners.

<comment><USER18> > I'm not going to explain the individual job functions of 50 people

Good thing I didn't ask you to.

> It says they had 3 product managers

Seems like a lot of product managers for a company with one product which isn't especially complicated. Smells like a sign of hiring really fast to try to grow.

> I would guess this means 8-10 engineers

The fuck do they even do? You don't need that many people to make something like Vine. Unless I'm missing something and there's more to the service than the video-related social CRUD app?

> You've then got a [bunch of dept heads]

Eh, I can see those I guess.

> Now we've got […snip handwaving about team sizes and numbers…] over 40 > people easily.

OK.

> help centre and customer support

Yeah pretty sure Vine doesn't have a custom support team.

> ops [and] IT support

If they're managing their own servers that would add a lot of overhead I suppose. If they're just running off EC2 or Linode or whatever then there's not a whole lot of staff there.

> Does that all make sense now?

No.

> there are a lot of specialized roles to keep something with 25-30 million > active users a month running smoothly

I think it takes more people to work out a revenue model for Vine than to sustain 25-30 million active users.

\---

Basically, bullshit. In Vine's case, you really don't need a big engineering team, which means you don't need a lot of people to manage your engineering team. I find it much more likely that Vine hired a bunch of people (engineers and otherwise) with VC money when they were growing fast.

<comment><USER17> If you think you can come run a team more leanly and successfully, I invite you to come do it - clearly, if there is a market inefficiency here you could reap the rewards.

<comment><USER19> This kind of reply isn't really that constructive, the guy raised some fair points... A lot of smaller companies and startups seem to do incredibly well with not even 10 employees, let alone 50. I understand there's more to running a company than meets the eye, but I really do wonder if all 50 people spend their days at vine being productive.

<comment><USER20> Please name a company of 10 people that manages a user base in the tens of millions with similar technical requirements as Vine (bandwidth, storage, etc). If such a company exists I believe it would be an outlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've seen this cycle a few times now. Just give it a merciful death (vine and twitter). Some things are meant to be ephemeral. I think vine and twitter are in that category. Just like a forest needs fires to be a healthy ecosystem. People should be more willing to let go of business ideas that see explosive growth but lack the business fundamentals to be sustainable.

Instead what's gonna happen is that it is going to be a slow and steady march of attrition until only the husk is left and people just feel sad every time either twitter and vine are mentioned.

<comment><USER21> As a Twitter user I wouldn't like to see that happen. What other platform do you suggest I use instead?

<comment><USER3> Most power users who command an engaged audience ('influencers' or 'VIPs' or 'celebrities' or 'streamers' or insert-your-noun-here) already cross-post on every single service. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, Twitch...

Staying exclusive to a particular platform only pays if the platform literally pays you for your content. Otherwise you want to reach as wide of an audience as possible.

<comment><USER21> I'm certainly not a power user. I mainly use Twitter to keep up with friends and acquaintances in the tech community. None of the other platforms seem appropriate for that.

<comment><USER3> Tumblr is another blog/social hybrid, but in your particular case you're subject to network effect (or the lack thereof) in your community of interest. Also, Tumblr is similarly faltering in engagement and owned by a corporate parent that is trying to leverage it as part of a wider strategy to turn its fortunes around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I loved Vine, it's a really interesting medium/format. But the userbase killed it for me. Young teenagers posting stupid clips with music edits about some boy band, TV show, or anime. I'm not interested in any of that. I liked the artsy clips, sports highlights, and comedy but it became increasingly difficult to find when using the app. I felt like an old man being somewhere he didn't belong. I still enjoy a funny Vine now and then, but I only see it when it pops up on my Twitter feed.

</comment><comment><USER23> I knew things were getting bad when I got like three push notifications in a week to pretty please open the app to see what my friends were not posting anymore.

</comment><comment><USER24> Makes sense, Instagram has essentially beat them at their own game.

<comment><USER25> What game is that? "Collecting zero revenue until you're somehow bought by Facebook"?

<comment><USER26> Well, despite the fact that both companies were acquired by larger social companies...

"Instagram will surpass Google, Twitter in US mobile display ad revenues by 2017" [http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Instagram-Mobile-Ad- Revenue...](http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Instagram-Mobile-Ad-Revenues- Reach-281-Billion-Worldwide-2017/1012774#sthash.hhuGqYyb.dpuf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A "6-seconds video" app had organigram with executives? really?

<comment><USER28> "Why is 140 characters worth billions?" Et cetera, et cetera, as nauseam

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The part that has impressed me about Twitter/Vine/etc over the past few years is their content embeds in other sites/services. Their main apps are so riddled with junk that I hardly use them. The real estate in their feeds devotes more to ad space than micro-blogging, and everyone knows that followers (/follow-for-followers) are a marketing cesspool.

Twitter et al. should really become the _blockquote_ service for the internet.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have no idea why it wasn't just a minor product feature in the main Twitter app.

<comment><USER31> Because it had the potential to create a community around it. If they just wanted the feature they could easily have built it into Twitter for less than $30M. What made Vine work is the same thing that made Instagram work: a killer app. If Viners had to compete with everyone else on Twitter their work would have been too diluted to get traction, and you wouldn't have seen the same creativity and commitment.

<comment><USER32> Critically, the vine community is a younger demographic. Maybe Twitter wanted to keep them separate because they didn't want an eternal September killing the "bird in the hand" Twitter community.

<comment><USER33> That Vine's userbase consisted largely of younger people probably should have given Twitter pause, and in retrospect might have made them rethink that $30M valuation. Those are the same users who are most likely to drop your service overnight when it becomes uncool, for reasons that may never be clear or make sense. (See also: Myspace.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thank god. While vine may have some significance, it's a wasteland of content, full of stupid crap, and unfunny memes that even /b/ would hate. I think that Thomas Sanders is one of the very few people on Vine actually producing interesting content. And most things on vine could be recreated as gifs with subtitles without missing much.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've seen people moving to different platforms. There seems to be always a platform replacing another platform. I have yet to see this with Facebook. It seems like the new Google Hangouts and their new messaging app (allo?) might be in the radar. But, at this point is it even possible to have a facebook replacement withing the next 3 years?

</comment><comment><USER36> Such a shame, I love Vine. Integrating it into the twitter feed just means videos will not be seen as they have to compete with all the other stuff that's taking space on your feed.

</comment><comment><USER37> i think snapchat covers pretty much the same demographic and the product has a lot of overlap.

</comment><comment><USER38> Instead of launching Vine a 6 seconds micro vlogging service. Twitter should have integrated that as a feature in their own app. That would have made so much sense. Every social media company for e.g SnapChat, Facebook etc. are closely integrating video content within the core of their app and Twitter had a huge opportunity and the managed to below it away.

</comment><comment><USER39> Vine is the least of twitter's problem

</comment><comment><USER40> The content creators are running for the hills. Almost all of the popular folks I followed no longer post content on a regular basis. It's usually posted as an afterthought. I really enjoyed the comedy section and the time constraints on the video length was great to show off creativity.

</comment><comment><USER41> The key to scaling video content is automatic production, like Wochit, not shortened duration, like Vine.

</comment><comment><USER42> Why would you need multiple executives to handle a business that is mainly silly 6-second video clips and could never be more than that without changing the name in which case it becomes an unknown brand?

What do top executives do for these types of companies. It seems like a joke.

</comment><comment><USER43> Twitter should just combine all of their video apps into the main twitter app.

</comment><comment><USER44> Does vine load terribly for anyone else? Always amazed that it's considered a "production-ready" level product when ti doesn't even play videos consistently across multiple sites.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm not surprised. Using livestream apps (or in Vine's case short videos) I've noticed that broadcasters are incredibly addicted for a month or so, and then they disappear forever.

</comment><comment><USER46> Twitter is very very broken.

"Retweet with Comment" are not showing up as Retweets: [https://medium.com/@Maver1ck/is-twitter-unreasonably- broken-...](https://medium.com/@Maver1ck/is-twitter-unreasonably- broken-9ff4df0b93a8#.7n3zl9vd9)</comment>


Huge solar storm which could wipe out modern technology expected by 2020 - <AUTHOR> http://www.express.co.uk/news/science/737882/solar-storm-WIPE-OUT-modern-technology-carrington-event <comment><USER2> This article and not to mention the entire site is way too sensational to consider.

<comment><USER3> It's also barely an article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fake news?</comment>


How the No-Glasses-Required 3d on the Nintendo 3DS works - <AUTHOR> http://www.kombo.com/features/How_the_3DS_Works/

<comment><USER2> Looking forward to seeing it on a future iPhone with an extra camera for 3D FaceTime calls.

</comment><comment><USER3> The 3d is wrong... he's ruining it for people who will think they are seeing 3d by crossing their eyes. The 3d he shows is parallel view.

Someone trying to see what he shows will be disenchanted with the 3d experience. They will think they can't see 3d. I wish I could go into the internet and punch this guy. I love 3d things and this guy ruins them.</comment>


Learning Probabilities: Towards a Logic of Statistical Learning - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.09472 <comment><USER2> I'm intrigued but confused. Is this meant to be a practical advancement in learning? What does it achieve that's new?

At first glance, it seems like if you know little or nothing about the accuracy of an assertion, you can't assess its truth without acquiring more info about it from 'outside' your closed world. No formal method can change this.

So is this method a better way to manage your _lack_ of knowledge? Perhaps to better choose what question(s) to ask to resolve your uncertainty?</comment>


Search all 130 GiB of source code within Debian - <AUTHOR> http://codesearch.debian.net

<comment><USER2> Interesting. It could be a good starting point to relaunch the now defunct Google code search. It seems to be based on the <https://code.google.com/p/codesearch/> library.

Until now, we cannot look at the source, it will be released in January.

<http://codesearch.debian.net/faq>

"While DCS is an open-source project, I cannot share the source code until January 2013 (when I hand in my thesis) because otherwise there might be attribution problems — that is, when you make contributions, is it really clear what's my work and what's not."</comment>


Show HN: The Unofficial MicroConf Video Directory - <AUTHOR> https://microconf-vault.webflow.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some local San Diego IndieHackers and I were excited when MicroConf released all of their talks, but we wanted a way to easily filter through talks on specific topics.

So we decided to build it. Using no-code (Webflow with Jetboost), we categorized all of the videos and made them easily searchable.

Search by title or speaker Filter by year (2012-2020) Filter by edition (Keynote, Attendee Talk, etc) Filter by tag (Bootstrapping, Marketing, User Feedback, etc)

With no-code tools, we were able to get the list imported and searchable with a couple hours of work. The hardest part was making sure all of the talks were tagged well, which was hours of manual labor.</comment>


This is Your Brain Off Facebook - study offers glimpse of unplugging - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/health/facebook-psychology-health.html <comment><USER2> > Expect the consequences to be fairly immediate: More in-person time with > friends and family. Less political knowledge, but also less partisan fever.

Well, since lots of my friends and all of my family live in different countries, I'm sure the consequences for me would not be more in-person time with friends and family at all. In fact I may lose the connection to lots of friends forever. I'm sure I'm not the only one in that situation.

<comment><USER3> I'm in a similar position, and actually found I had more interaction with family once I got off facebook.

It turned out I wasn't actually interacting with them at all. It felt like I was, having consumed what felt like a few thousand baby photos daily - but we weren't actually communicating, just congrats, happy birthday, like.

Chats, messages and the odd skype call seem to work out much better - if I stop responding, so do they, and it's noticeable. Facebook's bucket of noise approach tricked me into feeling like I was interacting with family when I was actually just scrolling past them.

<comment><USER4> can those people afford to have that much 'connection' time one on one with more than you?

i never feel i'm interacting with someone on fb if i 'scroll past' or 'like' something. i do feel like that when i actually post a response and have a back-and-forth, much like in person conversations go.

<comment><USER5> For personal, 1:1 contact, a little goes a long way. On a couple levels.

First off, it really takes very little 1:1 contact to maintain a deep relationship - no more than 10 minutes a month on the phone for some of my most meaningful and long-lasting friendships, sometimes less.

It's true that, without the Facebook feed, I don't get a play-by-play of every single even that happens in their life via the Facebook news feed. I see that as a positive thing - it leaves us with something to talk about when we do make time for each other.

Second, I definitely am in contact with fewer people than when I was on Facebook. The relationships that I have maintained since then have been more fulfilling, though, so, at least as far as I'm concerned, it's still a net positive. (Think of it as giving your social life the Marie Kondo treatment.) I'd like to think that's a two way street - if I'm getting more out of the interaction, then that means I'm probably giving more back, too.

So the end result is that my friends are not, overall, spending _that_ much time interacting with me without Facebook. I can't speak for them, but, I at least view it as an enjoyable way that we can spend some time together, if not physically in the same space. I'd like to think they do the same. It'd be really weird if they thought of me as a friend but didn't actually enjoy having conversations with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quit like a year ago, it's great. So much less attention drain. Then I quit Twitter not long after. But now there's Instagram, a bit tricky as my whole yoga community hangs there. Back to square one.

<comment><USER7> I'm always curious when I hear this. How did a social media platform get to the point where you can't use self-control and discipline to simply use it less and within moderation? Why does it have to either be nothing at all, or total immersion?

I see a lot of friends juggle with some sort of internal battle between being off and on with this stuff, and then there are friends who just slowly "cruise" with it without affecting them.

<comment><USER8> Because social media companies hire people to make them addicting. They are literally programmed to make you come back for more constantly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This won't be very HN favorite view, but I will say it anyways, I enjoy using Facebook and don't find it affecting my productivity.

Not everyone uses Facebook the same way though. I have no family on Facebook, very few friends. I use it mainly for the Groups I participate in - some of them quite useful. The Facebook groups are more personal than sub-reddits and people generally seem to behave better.

</comment><comment><USER10> I mean, a lot of relatively smart people I know these days have gotten over fb and I don't see many of people in fb or social media that much. Fb gets old after college and then it takes people a few years in their mid twenties to grow out of it. By late twenties I'd say the majority of smart folks know to keep their distance from fb and such ilk.

<comment><USER11> Does it really matter what social network it is, FB, Reddit, HN, etc.? The effects are similar - people immerse in the digital while at the same time being absent from the physical.

<comment><USER12> I think one of the things that makes HN and Reddit very different, is that the content is not personalized and tailored to maximize user engagement. Facebook seems to constantly show me things that make me more upset or concerned or outraged about something. I remember reading articles documenting this effect, but I can't seem to find them now.

The other type of posts I tend to see are about friends bragging about how many km they ran today or how great their vacation was. Not that it's that bad to post these things, but I wouldn't be surprised if exposing yourself to them constantly increased feelings of jealous and reinforce one's need to compare oneself to others.

On the other hand, I've discovered a lot of interesting books and projects through HN and learned about different topics, since there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable people here that comment on topics I know nothing about. The only type of posts that may be prone to making others feel worse are the ones about salaries / financial issues, but they are not that common.

<comment><USER13> >I think one of the things that makes HN and Reddit very different, is that the content is not personalized and tailored to maximize user engagement. Facebook seems to constantly show me things that make me more upset or concerned or outraged about something.

This really depends on whether or not you set up your own account with subreddits in reddit. It is just as personalized and outrage generating as Facebook if you self-subscribe to it.

<comment><USER12> Fair enough, though the separation into categories possibly helps somewhat. If someone is reading r/some-topic-they-are-interested in, it wouldn't also show them stories about, say, cops shooting unarmed civilians in the back 67 times, in between the topic-specific content.

This is probably different on the main page though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ironic that participants were initially contacted via FB ads.

In light of the recent "Research" app disclosure, and that in both cases a fee was paid for participation, it makes me wonder what people _won 't_ do for a few extra dollars in their bank account given a similar scenario.

The NYT article is almost apologetic about its inconclusiveness. I might wonder - should I happen to be wearing my tinfoil hat - that it is designed as a means of placation, an ode to the status quo, rather than a deterrent for the average consumer.

</comment><comment><USER15> See also Cal Newport's terrific book "Deep Work".

<comment><USER16> The problem today, is to even be able to achieve "Deep work".

<comment><USER17> That responsibility is on us though. We must be the masters of our own minds. That isn't to say it's not challenging, and some companies seem hell bent on making sure their workers are as ineffective as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Less political knowledge

If you got your political knowledge from facebook, you should probably get off of it right away.

</comment><comment> vhost- I really hate the use of "unplugging" lately because it implies that Facebook IS the internet.

<comment><USER17> I know you probably hear this all the time too, but for a lot of people Facebook is functionally "the whole internet". It's incredible how effectively phones and apps have siloed the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazing, I made some of these same points last night on reddit and tried to discuss it here as well. Amazing.

</comment><comment><USER20> I dislike Facebook and rarely use it, but this article and the study were a refreshing change in that they showed both what was and what wasn't for the study participants, without being one sided or appearing to be biased. I hope more such studies are done on a larger scale (payment would be an issue if this same model is followed) and across age groups.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Less political knowledge" right....

</comment><comment><USER22> Does someone have an agenda against Facebook on HN? I see four stories a day on the front page.

<comment><USER23> If facebook wasn't continually mired in controversy, then maybe it wouldn't feature so frequently and so prominently.

Today, I've just read a paper copy of the Daily Telegraph (UK). The front page is a story about how a depressed 14 year girl committed suicide after being led into a downward spiral of despair by being fed a continual stream of self- harm images by a facebook property. Those lovely algorithms could have been made to make positive contributions to people in need of help. Instead, they caused a vulnerable teenager to end their life by making a bad situation even worse.

I do feel that companies like Facebook should have a social and moral responsibility to their users. They are in a position of great power and responsibility. And yet, they have shown scant evidence of any care in this regard, and they do have a case to answer. Not just for the single story I highlighted, but many years of utter callousness and greed in defiance of what most of us would consider acceptable ethical conduct.

<comment><USER24> Let's generalize:

I do feel that companies should have a social and moral responsibility to their users.

Sadly, companies only have a social and moral responsibility to their shareholders. It's one of the reasons why corporations are not people, they're more often immortal sociopaths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder what the NYT will write about when FB and Trump finally stop being newsworthy?</comment>


Graphite is the new Gold - <AUTHOR> http://thefrustum.com/blog/2013/8/29/graphite-is-the-new-gold

<comment><USER2> I honestly thought that it had something to do with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite) when I looked at the title... I was almost going to go to the store and buy all the pencils I could get my hands on. But then I clicked the link.... :/</comment>


Eliezer Yudkowsky: That Alien Message - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/qk/that_alien_message/ <comment><USER2> The AI-Boxing Experiment remains one of the most interesting things I have ever read: <http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox>

In the "Alien Message" Eliezer Yudkowsky has flipped around the AI-boxing question so that now we're the AI in the box. Perhaps the results are more palatable that way.

If you really want to stretch your mind dig around the archives of: <http://www.sl4.org/>

<comment><USER3> re: the AI-Boxing experiment, Arguably a human can take over a human mind: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming>

<comment><USER4> _Arguably_ homeopathy can cure the common cold. The balance of evidence seems to be on the side of the skeptics...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm flattered by the attention this essay still gets! I just wish I understood better _why_ some of my writing is so much more appealing than other writing. Things I _designed_ to be viral, like <http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues>, don't keep getting HN'ed and reddited like this does. Not knowing what you did right is almost as frustrating as not knowing what you did wrong.

(Okay, so I'm complaining to the choir here.)

<comment><USER6> I can tell you exactly why "That Alien Message" gets more attention: because it's a _story_ , and a cracklin' good one. Human brains are hard-wired to be attracted to good stories. This is why mythology is so powerful.

BTW, there is a pretty well worked out theory of what makes a good story. Geeks tend to pooh-pooh this theory because it's associated with the "squishy" field of stage and screen drama. IMHO this is a serious mistake. The world today really needs a better mythology. Those in its current inventory are getting obsolete. Some of them are becoming actively harmful. Coming up with a good mythology is not so easy. The last person I know of who did a notable job was L. Ron Hubbard (at least, he's the last one who did it _intentionally_ ). Imagine how much better off the world would be if Hubbard hadn't been a psychopath. I hope some people reading this might start devoting a little time to thinking about this problem.

<comment><USER7> _there is a pretty well worked out theory of what makes a good story_

links please

<comment><USER6> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_theory>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)>

[http://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure- Principles-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles- Screenwriting/dp/0060391685)

<comment><USER6> BTW, the theory is pretty easy to summarize. At the risk of oversimplifying, the essential elements of a good story are:

1\. A _protagonist_ , who is a sympathetic character with a _goal_. In Eliezer's story the protagonist is not a single character, but all of humanity. Their goal is to understand the universe.

2\. An _antagonist_ , who places _obstacles_ in the path of the protagonist to prevent him (or her or them) from achieving the goal. In Eliezer's story, the antagonist is whoever is causing the stars to blink.

3\. A structure that includes (more or less) the following elements in order:

a) An _introduction_ that establishes the characters and the basic ground rules of the world they live in

b) An _inciting incident_ that launches the protagonist on a _journey_. In Eliezer's story this is the stars starting to blink.

c) The journey itself, which ultimately leads to some kind of _catastrophe_ from which no escape seems possible.

d) A _resolution_ , which results in the protagonist being forever changed in some way. It may or may not include the actual achievement of the protagonist's goal. It may, for example, be the protagonist realizing that they chose the wrong goal. Think "Wizard of Oz".

Of course, there's a lot more to say than just that, but those are the fundamentals.

<comment><USER8> See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Way back in 2000 at the Foresight Associates conference, Eliezer stood his ground against Marvin Minsky calling his ideas "rubbish". I was impressed by how Eliezer answered each objection with deep insights into the nature of AI.

<comment><USER10> Minksy is no dummy, but his ideas about AI and cognition are dated (though I admit it's been a while since I've read anything he's had to say on the subject).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is good, but I'd like to point out that it's at least the third time this same article has appeared on HN.

I wasn't sure if I should comment about that or not. I know lots of folks haven't seen it, so thanks for posting, but for those of us who have already clicked twice, it wasn't as enjoyable the third time around as it was the first.

<comment><USER12> Normally I'm opposed to dupes, but every once in a while there's something that _everybody_ should see.

This probably falls into that category, if you couple it with the AI-Boxing experiment (previously mentioned in this thread). The results of that experiment are so profound and disturbing that everybody should have some exposure.

<comment><USER11> I actually don't have a problem with dupes. I just wish there was some way for me to know that I've already read it. Most times I don't remember from the title alone.

<comment><USER12> Ah, understood. Sorry if I misread you.

I totally agree it would be nice to be able to flag previously-read articles, or manage dupes in some other elegant way. It seems like a non-trivial problem, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Jeez, this guy is paranoid.

<comment><USER14> What is it that you think he's paranoid about?

Have you read anything else he's written? If not, you should. It's good stuff.

<comment><USER15> I second RevRal. His articles are some of the most interesting ones I have read in a very long time.</comment></comment></comment>


Good UX in the Wild: Dropbox's attention to detail on their download page - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/GoodUXInTheWildDropboxsAttentionToDetailOnTheirDownloadPage.aspx <comment><USER2> _Techies forget how something as trivial as downloading and running a file can be a huge deal for the average user._

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

I actually wanted to hire someone to do this for BCC but shot the downloadable version of the product in the head instead, which largely solved this problem.

Another example:

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/instructions.htm>

This page was written back in ~2006. It has probably consumed five hours of my life since then, answering just one particular query. The customer complaint was "I can't find the Purchase Now! menu that you tell me to click on." Guess why.

ROT13:

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<comment><USER3> One thing I noticed about your page is that its SEO optimized -- with the "Bingo Card" keyword to be exact -- rather than being user friendly. I think this is also another dilemma we are facing. We can put nice graphics with less text to our landing pages which will be very user friendly but it would also suffer lower SERP because of low keyword recurrence.

<comment><USER2> Kinda tangential, but since I want to help people do better at SEO: That page is not SEO optimized -- it isn't even designed to be accessible to crawlers. It is only linked to from post-purchase emails and me when answering customer support requests. No page on my site other than the front page would ever rank for [bingo cards], certainly not on the strength of on-page optimizations.

If a consulting client told me they were worried about poor rankings because of low keyword recurrence on their landing pages I'd tell them that on-page factors wouldn't make a difference for head-of-the-distribution terms either way and you don't need _re_ -occurrence to rank for tail terms, so that is probably not a terribly big worry. Having insufficient text on a page to rank for anything is a bit of a worry. If you're trying to satisfy the competing imperatives "Conversion rate/user happiness goes up when we take text off" and "Rankings go up when we add text" the solution I'd recommend pretty quickly is "Put the text below the fold, where only Googlebot and the sliver of humans who actually enjoy reading will see it."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did almost exactly the same thing on one of my websites (screenshots showing the user what to click on to complete the download).

I started getting customer support requests complaining that the "Download window could not be clicked on and was stuck to the web page".

Turns out users thought that the explanatory screenshots were the ACTUAL download dialogs and they were trying to click the images in the web page. Oops.

Turns out I needed to resize the screenshots and discolor them slightly so it was obvious they were the REAL buttons to click.

Lesson learned.

<comment><USER5> Wow. That's really something.

I guess Dropbox users are probably on average a _little_ bit more knowledgeable about how browsers work than that... I hope.

<comment><USER4> You would be surprised.

If you distribute software to non-programmers, check your stats for # of downloads started vs. # of applications started (or new users). My guess is that they are way off:

Most computer users do not know what a "Downloads" folder is.

<comment><USER6> On Windows the solution for this is ClickOnce[1]. It's actually really well done, but I've only ever seen one program use it - Chrome[2].

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/t71a733d(v=VS.100).a...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/t71a733d\(v=VS.100\).aspx) [2] <https://www.google.com/chrome>

<comment><USER7> I don't think Google Chromium (Chrome) uses the .NET ClickOnce installer but Google's own Omaha software installer

<comment><USER5> He's referring to a special launcher for the installer that's used on Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This has been done for a long time on many sites. The Firefox download is one that comes to mind.

I see this as more of a no-brainer for a software download than a standout example of brilliant UX.

<comment><USER9> UX isn't about who did what first. It's about doing what makes sense for the user, then reapplying it in every scenario that works. Pull to refresh on the iPhone was utter genius and everyone adopted it. No one is saying, "Well Tweetie did that first!"

Also, it seems like a "no brainer" now, but during the development it's easy for these _no brainer_ things to either be ignored or written off as a waste of valuable engineering time.

<comment><USER10> Well said. I wasn't trying to say DropBox is the only or the first. They had the will and attention to detail that so so many sites don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sadly, their "attention to detail on their download page" doesn't extend to the actual screenshots on that page: they reference Dropbox.exe (which is incorrect -- the downloaded filename actually includes a version number), and sometimes Dropbox 0.7.110.exe (which is worse, because although it does include a version number, that version is a couple of years out-of-date by this stage.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Another site that does a great job of paying attention to the details in the signup process is rdio. They parse out the domain of major webmail providers and give you a link to sign in page so that you can quickly jump in and complete the reg process. [https://twitter.com/#!/andrewjshults/status/1404921933695631...](https://twitter.com/#!/andrewjshults/status/140492193369563136/photo/1)

<comment><USER13> Facebook also does that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Yet you need to download an app to hide their menu bar icon: <http://dropboxwiki.com/MacDropHide>

<comment><USER15> Downloading Dropbox is a common use case. Wanting to hide the tiny icon in the menu bar is a rare use case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Techies forget how something as trivial as downloading and running a file can be a huge deal for the average user._

I learned today that one of my friends (up until this past summer) thought that the internet was something on her computer.

I hold this person in high regard as one of the most intelligent people I know, she just doesn't know computers.

</comment><comment><USER17> As great as this example is, I generally live in fear of browser-specific behavior.

In the best case, it solves the niggling inconvenience of having to click on the correct browser extension to install.

In the worst (and far more prevalent case), poorly coded browser-specific behavior stops me from accessing websites at all if my user-agent doesn't match something on the server's limited whitelist, or nags me continuously to download a "modern" browser while I am, in fact, running the latest build of Chrome or Firefox, simply due to a poorly configured regex.

<comment><USER18> The biggest useragent problem I have these days is clicking a link to a specific article on some site with my phone, and getting redirected to the front page of their totally separate mobile site, left with no way to find the article I was trying to read.

The second biggest problem is actually with software like Dropbox that's cross-platform, and the download page automatically chooses the version I want. _Dropbox itself actually gets this right_ , by presenting small links to each specific platform right under the main download button, but I'm always running into sites that make it hard or impossible to get at a specific platform's version different from the one identified in my useragent string.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I notice that in the Windows dialogs, the _wrong_ button is often highlighted - for example, _No_ is highlighted in "Do you want to allow changes", and _Cancel_ is highlighted in the Firefox "Opening" dialog.

Maybe it'd be better to highlight the correct option for people who don't bother to read the text?</comment>


MailPilot turns your email into a todo list - <AUTHOR> http://mail-pilot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Came across this on Twitter, it looks like a nice alternative to Sparrow. More on their (funded) Kickstarter page:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1380180715/mail-pilot- em...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1380180715/mail-pilot-email- reimagined)</comment>


India to emerge as largest global talent provider - <AUTHOR> http://www.ey.com/IN/en/Newsroom/News-releases/EY-Press-Release-India-to-emerge-as-largest-global-talent-provider

<comment><USER2> Indian education system is designed to create Employees, not Employers. Business/trade/commerce is exclusively reserved to [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bania_%28caste%29](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bania_%28caste%29) for the past 2000 years in India.</comment>


The Star Trek Computer Is Stupid - <AUTHOR> http://www.science20.com/daytime_astronomer/star_trek_computer_stupid

<comment><USER3> As always with any fiction, vehicles travel at the speed of the plot, technology works efficiently as the plot requires and the universe laws are bent to fit the plot.

Besides, like others have said, if the ship's computer was that good... why have humans there?

<comment><USER4> Of course, _Lt. Commander Data_ is that good, but he looks human so it's OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Against the apparently total absence of breakers anywhere in the bridge console circuitry, the computer's passive-aggressive refusal to anticipate requests seems pretty tame by comparison.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention the holodecks which trapped crewmembers in deadly fantasy worlds twice per season, but were never given a physical "power off" switch.

(Admittedly, a phenomenon of later trek shows more than the first two.)

<comment><USER5> You should always have a "safe word" for when a fantasy starts to get too dangerous.

<comment><USER7> And then you have to trust your partner/computer to _respond_ to it.

<comment><USER5> _I'm sorry, Commander Riker. I'm afraid I can't do that._

<comment><USER7> I was thinking more of " _Why should I stop?_ I _like it._ "

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The only thing that spoiled this for me was every single reference to Star Trek.

 _Star Trek captains never give instructions to or ask questions of the computer in battle_. The captain is always talking to another crew member who's at a control station.

Outside of battle, it's clear that a ship's or station's verbal computer interface is just a spoken command line, complete with scripting capability, and about as dangerous if you don't rattle off a reasonably precise command.

</comment><comment><USER9> Every technology in Star Trek works this way. Everything is borderline magic and incredibly overpowered up until the point that it just doesn't work. Many Star Trek episodes careen between negative to positive deus ex machinae until the plot is finally resolved. The fact that somehow out of this sludge good story writing can even occur is a marvel.

As to the "Semantic Web", it seems to have become this generation's AI future. In reality the semantic web is likely harder and far more limited than anyone has given credit. People have fallen victim to the same old confusion of computers and the human mind. Merely because computers are able to perform quite sophisticated and complex tasks does not mean that they will be capable of performing any and every thing a human mind can. Computer systems will likely work along lines of shockingly different characteristics to the human mind for some time to come. Furthermore, we should not be stacking the future on unproven and questionably useful panaceae. Remember when the future of the web was VRML? Remember when it was "portals"? Predicting the future of the web more than a few years out is a sure fire way to lose a lot of money, time, and effort.

<comment><USER10> On Star Trek: it has, at every opportunity, asserted the ideal of "we are humans, exploring space, because _that is the point_ —the terminal good of our utility function. If we automated everything, we would no longer _be_ humans exploring space, so automate we don't."

For the first instance of this, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Computer> — but it proceeds pretty much like that, although a bit subtler, for every series after that.

<comment><USER11> The "automated everything" approach is pretty much what the Culture do - starships are run by artificial Minds of near God-like intellect and power and they have humans along for pets/companions/passengers.

The ships themselves are fairly memorable characters from the Culture novels (e.g. the Grey Area, Xenophobe and the Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture>

<comment><USER10> Having not read any Culture novels yet (but planning to), is there any mention of how [non-trans-]humans managed to survive an AI Singularity?

<comment><USER11> The Culture books don't directly address the topic of a technological singularity, although _Look to Windward_ has the Culture dealing with a society that has partially "sublimed" - which might be similar.

I second the recommendation for Accelerando below - it is perhaps a little disjointed, but it is really a collection of short stories rather than a single novel, so this is understandable. Few books have the idea density of Accelerando. Charlie Stross hangs out on HN as well!

Personally, I think the best idea of what it might be like in the run up to a singularity is Vernor Vinge's _Rainbows End_ \- the settings and technology are plausible and as a parent the idea of young kids augmented with information technology being fundamentally more capable than the previous generation is fascinating.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, _Accelerando_ looks like a fortunate accident. I have browsed several of Stross's other books in the store and his blog, and nothing else looks remotely as interesting.

<comment><USER12> I found Halting State to be fairly good. It's more "thriller" than sci-fi, but there's a number of good ideas in there.

Also, check out Stross's blog posts on the viability of space travel; I found them rather interesting.

<comment><USER11> I have a particular weakness for Charlie's "Bob Howard" line of stories - <USER2> mixture of Lovecraftian horror, Cold War spying and Office Space.

A rather grimmer version of this setting can be found in his story "A Colder War":

<http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm>

 _It would nice if there was a way of turning Readibility on in a hint inside a link!_</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What tool is best at creating a mockup for a mobile app? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There are other tools like invision and balsamiq:

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally, I use [https://draw.io](https://draw.io)

</comment><comment><USER4> Sketch or figma</comment>


5 things I learnt as a self-taught female developer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/5-things-i-learnt-as-a-self-taught-female-developer-7f5099400a#.r8cugga62 <comment><USER2> >Many people think that being a female developer means facing a lot of discrimination from my fellow colleagues and others, but it isn't the case for me. I have really encouraging colleagues who give me good advice and guide me along the way.

Self-taught coder in Shenzhen here. Same experience with local guys as the author had in Singapore. While of course we have some serious issues with sexism, it manifests completely differently.

The same guys who politely come to me with technical questions far above my skill level and would never dream of making a sexual comment will say stuff like "It will be so sad when you stop coding to become a mother" :-/</comment>


A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX in Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> http://gohe.ro/1wVkvkj <comment><USER4> The article disregards the fact that a car has features that Uber doesn't. One is mobile storage: you can store things in your car that you often need wherever you go. This is particularly important for parents of young children. Another one is instant availability for open-ended road trips. It's not feasible to go visit a friend two hours away with the possibility of staying overnight with an Uber.

If you're going to include the cost of car ownership disadvantages such as tickets, you should also include the cost of Uber-dependency disadvantages such as the occasional need to rent a car, always loading and unloading everything you need to take with you, etc.

<comment><USER5> This is a good point, but there are also several Uber benefits over car ownership. For example, being able to travel when tired/inebriated. Also, not being late if you have an engine issue or get a flat tire. This article tries to enumerate the financial differences, the subjective ones are also very important.

<comment><USER6> "Also, not being late if you have an engine issue or get a flat tire."

How does uber prevent that? I suppose with a fleet of cars, another could pick you up, but you're still going to be late (just not as late)

(edited to add, and on the frontend, I can guarantee that about 45 seconds after leaving the door at work, I'll be starting my car and moving out of the lot, how does uber guarantee that a car will be ready to leave for work within say 15 minutes, so I'd have to burn much more total commute time to make sure theres a realistic chance I won't be late. TLDR is the std deviation of a rental is going to be very large compared to an owned car.)

<comment><USER7> > I can guarantee that about 45 seconds after leaving the door at work, I'll > be starting my car and moving out of the lot.

You can't guarantee that, since car problems to arise.

This is the same issue with bike share schemes. I don't have to worry about anyone stealing my bike, or if the bike gets a puncture or has issues, I pick another bike.

<comment><USER8> Car problems arise much less frequently than hire cars have availability issues, unless you have a particularly crappy car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Geez, $12,744 _per year_?

I've had my current car since 2002, which I bought new for about $14,000 (including interest, which was low because I paid the car off as quickly as I possibly could, short circuiting most of the interest payments).

I go through the exercise of the total lifetime cost of my car, gas, insurance, maintenace, all told every year or two. And it's somewhere around $.30-.40 per mile or about $1 cheaper than Uber.

I recently took it in for its 130,000 mile comprehensive check over and it ended with my mechanic offering me $5,000 for the car (I didn't sell it).

It's expected that I should be able to get another 100,000 miles out of this car easily. And at my current rate of driving, that'll be an easy 10 years.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep this car unless it needs _major_ mechanical repairs, and so far it hasn't.

All this means is that my cost per mile keeps going down. I'm at well under <$4k per year, all lifetime costs included, amortized over the time I've owned this car and and that number is going down every year.

Right now I probably drive under 5,000 miles per year (telecommuting is amazing) and even these astonishingly hopeful UberX costs (60 mph commute times everywhere in cities _bah!_ ) are almost twice what it costs for me to have my own car I do whatever I want with. More realistically, these commute times could easily be tripled in most cities, making UberX even less of an option.

The only thing this answers is "will taking Uber on the occasional 25 minute or less trip cost less than owning a $50,000 MSRP luxury mid-sized sedan?" then the answer is obviously yes.

Honestly, if your starting point is a Lexus, you're not really all that concerned with your transport costs to start with.

 _edit_ I don't even think the math is right.

Let's assume his 24.2 mile commute in 25 minutes ( _haha!_ ). Uber charges $1.10 + $.21 per minute or $1.31 per mile at 60mph. So let's just make the numbers easier, 25 mile commute in 25 minutes, so the commute ~ $1.31 * 25 = $32.75. But I have to go home again in the evening. * 2 = $65.50 per day. * 250 work days in the year = $16,375.

He's off by about $10,000 even _assuming_ these ridiculous commute times.

<comment><USER10> Wow, car costs per mile are extremely cheap in the United State, if $.30-.40/mile is typical. The government estimate in Finland is about $.90/mile, and almost nobody has it that cheap. If I recall correctly, I calculated my own costs at around $1/mile, and I drive a 14-year-old car which requires very little maintenance.

<comment><USER9> As of 2014, the allowable tax deduction for business reimbursements for personal vehicle usage is $.56 per mile, which is supposed to cover gas _and_ wear and tear on your personal vehicle.

Finland: according to Numbeo [1] fuel runs around 1.66 Euro per liter. In the U.S. it's $.96 per liter (or .73 Euro).

I'm guessing there's probably some kind of auto tax in Finland which appears to be fairly expensive. I've heard it's ~20% of the current cost of the car per year, but I can't figure out the tax code from looking on-line. In the U.S. it's complicated, but in places that have a personal property tax, it's usually pretty low. I think the tax on my car is something like $250/year.

Wear and tear can cost a lot as well. I live in a pretty weather prone part of the U.S., but I'm guessing it's nothing like the typical Finnish winter.

1 - [http://www.numbeo.com/gas-prices/](http://www.numbeo.com/gas-prices/)

<comment><USER10> There's "usage tax" which is something like $200 - $400 per year. If the car is a diesel, it's significantly higher (but diesel is taxed at a lower rate). Diesel cars are cheaper only if you drive a certain amount of kilometers per year.

There's also the 'car tax' you pay when you buy a new car, which is rather high. A $31k car in the United States is about $48k in Finland.

Winter does increase car ownership. Cars rust more, and you also need two sets of tires (and winter tires tend to wear out faster than summer tires).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I live in Los Angeles, I have sold my car and now take UberX everywhere. I have a number of reasons for this:

1) I am not a great driver. I learned to drive in a rural area where the dynamics of sharing the road were simply different. It's not fun for me to drive in LA.

2) Parking in this town is a challenge.

3) I telecommute.

4) When I go on a long-drive vacation, I simply rent a car.

For me and my family, in our calculations, for a family with a telecommuter in Los Angeles, UberX is well worth it. We don't have to worry about parking when we get somewhere, we don't have to worry about maintenance, and when we _do_ want to go on a long road trip, we simply rent a nice big car that makes sense for that particular trip.

<comment><USER12> LA is also a very bipolar town, car-wise. If you have a 5+ mile commute, it's going to be way worse than the same distance in most US cities, because of the traffic. But the flip side is that there is far more density to the LA suburbs than most anywhere else in the country—it's hard to even use the same word to describe suburban LA (7K/sqmile average for the whole urbanized area per Wikipedia, with parts significantly higher) as, say, suburban DFW, where the population density is half that for Dallas proper alone, let alone all the suburbs.

So if you live near where you work, you can bike or walk or bus and there's a decent chance you'll be in walking or biking distance of some shops and restaurants as well. And then the occasional Uber or cab for longer trips (or just bumming off of friends who have cars) is extremely practical.

But if you don't telecommute, being able to live near where you work is something that's a lot easier for those without a family. And then those Ubers would add up fast!

(The other thing I've anecdotally noticed since moving to LA, is that the willingness to sit in traffic for an hour each way to commute seems way higher in LA natives than in transplants—and the reverse is true of the willingness to pay the premium to live close to work and avoid that.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having done these calculations a while back, I was seriously thrown off by this claim:

> However, Americans who drive less than 9,481 miles in a year should > seriously consider ditching their car, because UberX will be cheaper.

Well, maybe. I drive 5k miles a year and determined that it would be more expensive to shift to either UberX or Zipcar. Let's see what is up with the math:

> Costs of ownership

The largest error is here, where the author uses a constant number regardless of miles driven -- and then compares it to variable w/ miles UberX costs!. But maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and fuel costs are all costs that increase with miles driven.

Secondly, all these costs are taken from AAA numbers that are looking at 5 year depreciation of a new car. If you drive an older vehicle, your costs are nowhere near this high. (if they are to be believed, my cars' annual depreciation would be 80% of the value of my car!)

> Parking costs at $1300/year

First off, the claim on ABC is "average American family", not "average American" ([http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/average-american- spends-1300...](http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/average-american- spends-1300-year-parking-21216093)), so this is likely off by a factor of nearly 2. Secondly, this is massively skewed by location. In dense locations (say SF), this can shoot into $2000+ a year, but in lower density places (say San Jose area), this may be well under $200. Finally, workplace parking can be paid by pre-tax dollars which lowers this cost by another 30% or so.

> Opportunity costs

Where is the assumption that car driving is at 0% productivity and UberX riding is at 50% productivity coming from? (I definitely don't believe this empirically) Also note this is ignoring any opportunity cost of having to wait for an UberX to arrive. The real opportunity cost difference may be insignificant.

My own conclusion: A single article won't allow anyone to make a determiniation. UberX may win in some cases over owning a car, but it is highly dependent on individual behavior.

<comment><USER14> The only way i can see the average American paying $1300 per year or $100/month is if they are including the added cost of have a parking space at home. Remember, $1300 is the average. Most Americans pay nothing for parking except for a few $10-20 parking fees when going to a big city.

I'm guessing the assumption is that if you rent a place for $1500 per month and it has a parking space, $100 of that is the cost of the parking space. Technically correct, but an odd way to look at it.

<comment><USER15> I think the assumption was parking for work. Many times if you work in a city you end up paying $8-$20 a day to park your car for the work day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I found his point of being a young black male and not having to be pulled over again to be striking.

I am sure that black people are pulled over more times by the police then whites are. What could be the reasoning and the solution(s). Is it because...

\- The cops are really racist? \- The cops are looking for a suspect that matches those unfairly targeted? In which and unfortunately points to a statistic that black males (those from low income areas & raised without a parental unit(s)) are more prone to crime. In the area I live there are really bad parts of town you do not want to enter due to high crime, gangs, murders, etc and that part of town the majority is black.

Is there a solution because I know I would be pissed just because I am getting pulled over because I resemble a suspect the cops are looking for.

Though maybe the cops are just racist?

I don't know just pondering here as this is a current affair topic one that is being talked about more and more these days.

<comment><USER17> Yes.

The cops really are that racist - I'm not black - I'm about as white as you can get even (somewhere in my history there is a Norwegian bachelor-farmer :-P) but I've asked my friends of color, how often they felt they had been pulled over because they were a person of color in a place where a person of color perhaps ought not be - and all of them, uniformly answered "Yes, at least once a year, often more"

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> His calculations are simply wrong. In his examples, the cost of annual car ownership remains $12,744 despite the different mileage estimates.

If you drive only 5,000 miles per year, your ownership costs are going to be much less than if you drive 13,000 miles. Why did he not adjust the cost of ownership?

<comment><USER6> "In his examples, the cost of annual car ownership remains $12,744 despite the different mileage estimates."

Its actually even worse. The ownership cost lists "Total cost per year (assuming 15,000 miles driven a year)" and that 15K miles is compared to Uber at 5K, 9K, and 13K miles. I am not surprised to discover that it costs more to drive a car 15K miles than 5K miles.

There are other assumption problems. For example like almost all people I can't will myself to generate $2500 of extra marginal after tax revenue while driving (and all the math in the article assumes a zero percent income tax rate, which seems optimistic). Frankly in a taxi I'd probably be about as productive as I am in my car, listening to audiobooks. Parking costs tend to be very binary, if you live and work urban its incredibly expensive and the $1K/yr might only be a fond dream. For me, I'm lucky enough not to live urban so its free. I'm mystified how he's both making car payments on an almost new car and paying hundreds per year for maintenance at the same time. My '14 toyota came with a sales incentive or whatever its called such that I won't be paying for anything but gas until the payments are done after which a couple oil changes a year for the next 15 years aren't going to cost $400/yr. I just paid my registration at $75 which is up from $25 two decades ago ago while he's paying over $350. I do not pay property tax on my car, I don't put it past the more uncivilized areas to try that, but its not an issue for me. Maybe he's breaking down the fraction of gasoline fuel pump cost which is taxes, I could believe the numbers in that case.

The arithmetic in the article doesn't make much sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He completely omits the effect of surge pricing but expects you to use Uber to commute to work.

</comment><comment><USER20> The cost of car ownership in this article is inflated by almost 200%. It accounts payments / depreciation + interest + registration as $5,561 yearly for a mid sized sedan.

I've leased two mid-size sedans for $200/mo and $300/mo including interest, all taxes, dmv / title / registration fees. So, I am paying $2,400 / year for one car, and $3,600 /year for another, compared to $5,561 represented in the article.

</comment><comment><USER21> Uber is great, but the biggest cost is that you need to pay for the services of someone driving for you. I live in Montreal and regularly use [http://communauto.com/](http://communauto.com/) They have two services, 1) for ~$2,50/hour + $0,10/km, where you need to make a reservation, you get the car from one specific parking lot and have to return it there. It's useful only if you plan in advance, if you haven't reserved a car for the weekend by Wednesday forget about it.

The 2) service though you just swipe your metro card on the panel for an auto- mobile car parked somewhere, drive for $0,30/minute and leave the car anywhere (in some very big zones in the cities). It's exactly like [https://www.car2go.com/](https://www.car2go.com/) except their auto-mobile vehicles (hybrids and electrics) have backseat, so we can go around with kids (whereas you can't with a Smart).

I commute by bicycle to work, so we use this only on the weekends. It takes around $7 to go from our place to the center, while public transport would be $5, so it's really great for the convenience and speed.

By far it really beats owning a car in Montreal in cost and convenience. Parking space is limited and very expensive ($8 for 2 hours in city center). If you have a car you have also to keep changing parking even if you don't use it because there are very few buildings with garage and they clean the streets at least once or twice a week for the entire year. I've been car-free for over 20 years, it's a huge relief to not have to worry about taxes, maintenance, robbery, etc etc that comes with the responsibility of owning a car.

Come self-driving cars, we might have only some very few people that will keep owning their own vehicles due to some nostalgia feeling.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wow, I was floored by the average cost of ownership. Mine is nowhere near that low:

1\. $0. I don't have payments is 15 years old, so it's not depreciating significantly. 2\. $1250. I fill up about once every two weeks. Old cars have less safety features, which me ans better fuel efficiency. 25 mpg. 3\. $0. I've never had an auto loan. 4\. $300. Old car and perfect driving record. Still have good coverage (uninsured motorist, etc.). 5\. $500. Here's where an old car starts to bite. 6\. $355. I have no clue so I'll go with what they said.

Total ownership: $2405. That's not significantly more than riding the bus would cost.

<comment><USER23> Fewer safety features /= better fuel efficiency. New cars, loaded with safety feature can get better fuel efficiency than 25mpg.

Regarding the 25mpg, is that a recent calculation or are you going off the info sheet your car had when you purchased it. Unless you took excellent care of your car, I'd bet you're not getting 25mpg.

<comment><USER24> Not the OP, but...

My car is 10 years old - 170k miles on it - I still get > 25mpg, and I calculate every fill-up. Long trips I get ~30mpg. Around town it's 26-28, depending on how much I use the AC and at what times I'm driving.

Could I be off in my fill-up estimations? Possibly some now and then, but it's been pretty consistent for the last several years.

<comment><USER6> I've been driving for awhile, and as I think back on all the mileage related mechanical problems my 87 horizon had that would cause an insta ODB-II fail on my 14 toyota, I'm thinking OP is older-ish like me.

My '87 was one of the last models with a carb (or am I thinking of the '81 ?) and it had a mechanical choke that would get stuck on a regular basis in the winter and the thermostat also broke / got confused. I think most of the time I was driving around with what on a modern car would be at least 2 or 3 engine code violations. It was reliable as in it always got me to work, but it was not economic or efficient and was usually broken at one level or another.

Modern cars are just more reliable and self diagnose very effectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> He makes average assumptions about car ownership but then makes optimistic assumptions about UberX. Like no surge pricing, productivity and wait times.

The biggest thing is of course Uber is available in a few cities. Places like SF and Manhattan it might be convenient since everything is nearby but in LA and Silicon Valley everything is spread out.

<comment><USER26> The other biggest thing: uber is a one company, and a startup. They may be forced to radically change their business models, their service may turn to shit, and they might even go up in smoke overnight.

<comment><USER27> And if that happens, there are plenty of car dealers ready to take your money. It only takes 2-3 days to buy a car, people do it all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "In fact, he believes one day all the Uber cars on the road may be driving themselves."

What piece of "cars driving themselves" does Uber have? Uber has an app. Google has self driving cars and they can also build an app. So he is basically describing Google's future, not Uber's.

<comment><USER29> Once self-driving cars are available, Uber would be a major company deploying them (assuming Uber is still around and similarly positioned). They could either buy their own cars, or somehow allow private "drivers" to deploy their cars on the Uber network.

<comment><USER27> That is certainly the thesis behind the wild valuation of Uber - but so far Uber hasn't really shown the ability to lock customers into its taxi network. Whoever develops the self driving cars can build the Uber app/network part of the system much more easily than Uber will be able to build the self driving car part of the system.

<comment><USER30> It's not clear how you _could_ lock someone into a taxi network - <USER2> definition, each taxi journey is a separate purchase, unaffected by previous decisions (once you've installed the app in the first place).

Prepay discount mentioned above is about the only legitimate possibility. There are plenty of not-so-legitimate possibilities (see the Uber vs Lyft poaching discussion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> For Los Angeles, UberX, Lyft, and others have the potential to solve the "last mile" issue of public transit. Especially with newer carpool features like UberPool and Lyft Line.

LA is currently investing a lot into building more light rail infrastructure. However, regardless of how much LA invests in rail, for most commuters the rail will only get them most of the way to their workplace. Before UberX and Lyft, the only options for the last leg of the trip were bicycle (which has a lot of limits), bus (too unreliable), and taxi (too expensive).

UberX and Lyft provide an option that didn't exist before. And it's cheap and reliable enough to a be a very good option. As LA continues to build more rail, I think it has the potential to greatly change commuting in the future. Maybe it will become common for young single people to not own a car and rely on Uber/Lyft combined with rail. And then when they get married and have kids, then buying one car makes sense. The result would also greatly reduce traffic and air pollution.

<comment><USER32> Great points! I actually fear that investment in light rail is going to look misplaced in just 10 years when automated electric cars operated by private companies like Uber and Lyft and whomever are going to scoot multiple people between two common points.

<comment><USER15> Potentially. But LA has millions of daily commuters. Automated electric cars will still clog up the freeways (thought hopefully less so due to less accidents, etc.) but the light rail should hopefully move more people quickly for 80% of their trips with Uber and Lyft providing the last mile.

I personally think they should stop construction on the subway to the sea and roll our light rail across the city.

<comment><USER32> I hear what you're saying. But what is light rail but several electric cars daisy chained? If you can put 4 people in one (a la car pooling) and give them a dedicated HOV lane between places.......

<comment><USER33> Jesus, I guess, but compare the space efficiency of a rush hour train in an urban area to 4 people in an electric car. Not that I would want to sit in a car with 3 strangers, or my spouse and baby with 2...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is great work! Most comments here are always going to go negative on the data he collects. "This is not true! I own a 1981 VW diesel with 220,000 miles on it and the only thing I've had to fix...."

Avoiding those ratholes for a moment I want to look at the other side. The Uber economics. Uber's pricing is based on the assumption that you're not using Uber as your full time car replacement. Put another way, I'm waiting for the Uber monthly subscription that gives me up to X miles per month for Y cost. If I commit to that many miles I'm pretty sure that can drive down the cost per mile in a meaningful way....say 20 - 30% vs the current "pay as you go on demand model"

Lastly I think the first logical place to look is the 2 car family. You can shelve one and still have your own car for long family vacation trips or other immediate requirements while using Uber for that person that's got a pretty predictable 5 day a week commute etc.

<comment><USER34> >This is great work! Most comments here are always going to go negative on the data he collects

That's because the "data" is crap. He's picked numbers to get an unreasonably high idea of the cost of owning a car, then used rosy assumptions to show that Uber is cheaper.

Change the input and you change the conclusions, so I'm not going to give the guy a pat on the head just for effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The model assumes 50% of full working productivity while taking an UberX ride. I doubt many people are going to meet that over the course of all their rides, not to mention that if you're salaried you aren't losing wages by not working in the car.

<comment><USER36> You may not be losing wages, but you are losing time. I think that the 50% assumption in the model is wrong, too, but in the opposite direction. There are activities that many people can do while riding in a vehicle with no loss of quality, like reading.

Randy Pausch - Time Management [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0)

<comment><USER35> Good point, I didn't think about the value of being able to do other activities. Hard to quantify with a monetary value though!

<comment><USER36> Actually it's not difficult. Calculate your hourly wage (salary + benefits)/hours_worked, and value all of your time as such. It will help you a lot to avoid wasting time doing stuff you don't like that you can pay people to do for you at a lower cost to you.

<comment><USER37> That makes the assumption that you can earn that wage in the incremental time you gain by having someone do a task for you. Maybe if you're an independent consultant or otherwise have a business where you bill by the hour and are turning down work you simply don't have time to do but would otherwise be happy to take it. But that doesn't describe most people.

I do pay to have a number of things done for me on a regular basis that I either don't like to do or don't consistently have the time to do (like getting my lawn cut), but it's more about how much I'm willing to pay for the service as opposed to how the $/hour compares to what I earn.

<comment><USER6> "like getting my lawn cut"

This is a particularly bad example, because not only would I have to pay someone to mow my lawn for me, to get my light exercise I'd also have to pay to use someone else's treadmill to get my exercise. This is starting to get expensive and rapidly looking cheaper to just mow my own lawn.

"turning down work" \- If I have 8 hrs of work per day and waste 2 hrs of time per day on the internet, I'd rather waste internet time on the couch at home, than try to sneak it in at work because I did some of my work elsewhere. If I work extra hard for free, my great-great-great-grand-boss might get a bigger bonus, but all I'll get is less free time in my life, absolutely nothing more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The biggest flaw is the assumption that people who live in cities where Uber is available drive an average of 13,476 miles per year (with avg commute distance of 25 miles).

Those numbers are the national average, but I'd guess the average miles per year is significantly lower for people living in major cities.

When I lived in rural New York I easily drove 10-20k miles in a year. But now that I live and work in San Francisco, I drive about 3-4k miles per year, with a daily commute of 7 miles round trip.

It'd be interesting to see a similar analysis that limits the data set to people who live and work in major cities where Uber is available.

<comment><USER39> > I'd guess the average miles per year is significantly lower for people > living in major cities.

I'll agree, with the exception of Los Angeles, which is atypical in how spread out it is. 13.5k is perfectly believable.

[http://laist.com/2012/06/30/map_how_many_major_us_cities_can...](http://laist.com/2012/06/30/map_how_many_major_us_cities_can_fi.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every article about Uber, Lyft, and electric vehicles ends up with the majority of the comments saying something along the lines of, "This is stupid because it doesn't fit my situation."

For what is usually such an open-minded group of individuals it seems as if personal transportation is the topic where that open-mindedness doesn't extend.

(Though that might be true for the population as a whole--gas prices is a legitimate political issue.)

<comment><USER40> Opining about the negative convenience aspects of relying on a car service is hardly being closed-minded, IMO. There are very legitimate hurdles to Über et al displacing private cars. Talking about those hurdles (aside from the joking alpaca one) is normal, not evidence of closed-mindedness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I will probably remain a holdout for personal vehicle ownership even if the economics don't work out, but I think in my case they don't, anyway.

2006 Audi A4, paid off (worth about $12k as it sits), with 126k miles. $300/yr reg, $600/yr comprehensive/collision/liability insurance. I spent about $600 every 2 years on tires (so, $300/yr), $500-1000/yr on maintenance otherwise, and drive about 20k miles/yr. Free parking at home; $260/mo parking in SF, and $4-6 bridge tolls about 20 times a month. I get about 22mpg with premium gas, so $4.20/gal or so in California. I think my costs are around $0.40/mi. In any case, less than $0.57/mi, so it's "free" when reimbursed. Plus I actually like driving.

Being able to go from home to office in 17 minutes off-peak, or ~30 minutes 98th percentile traffic, vs. 50+ miles via transit, and not having to be around SF people for 2h/day: worth every penny.

(Also, having earthquake, colo-emergency, etc. stuff stashed in the trunk all the time, and a _huge_ battery and generator for laptop, cell, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER42> Should've run the numbers with Car2Go.

Uber in LA costs 67 cents per minute (avg. speed in LA is 26MPH). Car2Go in LA costs 25-41 cents per minute (41 per minute with a max of $15/hr).

Unsurprisingly, one of the more expensive parts about Uber is having a human being driving the car for you. Car2Go (if you don't mind driving janky little SmartCars) trims that cost now.

<comment><USER43> You can't work during the commute in that case, however - the author referred to this as an opportunity cost of driving. Working in tech one would imagine in many cases work would be much more productive than driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I lived in LA for a year and don't even have a license. I bought a road bike and cycled to and from work, though if drinking was (frequently) involved I'd throw my bike in the back of a cab. Assuming the average fare was around $60, and I used a cab five times per week, that was $300/week. I was considering buying a motorbike to evade this rising fee when our company was bought by HTC, the company reshuffled, by job disappeared, and I was suddenly placed in to a US visa expiry grace period where I had 10 days to get out of the country or face being an illegal immigrant (despite many people wanting to employ me, I had to leave and return to comply with their visa rules). I opted out (once bitten, twice shy re: visas), and was very glad that I only had to sell my road bike at a loss... rather than a car.

</comment><comment><USER17> I grew up in LA - Uber is a practical car replacement option if you stay largely within your neighborhood or city.

This isn't how most people in the basin live however - many (if not most) live at least 10, but usually closer to 20-25 miles from work, and rely on the freeway to get them to work - 50+ miles a day even in an UberX is not practical from a cost basis - not when you consider the large number of people who don't go out and buy a large luxury car, but instead pick up a beater economy car from craigslist, or something that they bought new a decade or more prior.

The comparison however does work when you consider someone who commutes under 10 miles each way a day, and buys a new car every 3-5 years.

</comment><comment><USER45> The math in this article is awful. Constant cost despite varying the miles driven. Making money out of thin air. Yes you can talk about intangibles, such as the ability to do work while not driving. You can even give that a monetary value to do comparisons. But I'm not going to make more money by working while not driving, so don't add this opportunity cost to the cost of the car. Or maybe you should add up the opportunity cost of waiting for the uber car. You also can't just ignore surge pricing. Not everyone needs to own a car. But there are a lot of advantages, some that are hard to put a dollar figure on.

</comment><comment><USER17> "About two years ago I sold my Lexus GS 300 and replaced it with a sleek single-speed Pure Fix commuter bike"

This brought a vision of someone trying to descend from capitol hill here in seattle on a fixie (something I saw the last week) - a fixie, while still stupid is at least workable in LA (though I'd still never own one, I prefer gears), it still seems wholly impractical for seattle.

<comment><USER46> I see single-speed bikers as the luddites of cycling. I live in a relatively flat city, Dublin, but I am still constantly shifting gears. I think a lot of people don't understand how good gears really are. In a similar way, there are a lot of people cycling mountain bikes around the city, and I didn't appreciate how much better actual road bikes are while I still had my hybrid. And for non-cyclists: 15 mph (25 kmph) is a fairly reasonable commuting speed.

<comment><USER17> neo-luddites perhaps, when I was an active cyclist a bit more than a decade ago the fixie was an unknown thing. There were single speed bikes then - <USER3> well known beach cruiser - it was a single speed, yes, but it also could idle along without peddling and had a rear drum brake - I can see a place for that kind of thing - no one has been able to explain to me how a direct drive fixed gear bicycle is better than even that option.

<comment><USER47> It's like a manual vs an automatic vehicle. You aren't forced to constantly pedal, so much as your legs must move at the same speed as the pedals. At low speeds you are much more connected to the bicycle. Taking a low speed, sharp turn is more akin to walking and feels much more natural.

Also, it enforces good form, like pedaling thru turns.

Small speed adjustments are natural and easy. Also, when accelerating, the pedals are moving regardless of input, so you can simply tap them down on the downstroke, hovering your foot above the pedal on the up stroke.

There is a reason a fixed gear is a popular configuration and it has little to do with being cool or hip.

<comment><USER48> Why do I want to pedal through turns? I've never ridden a bike that way.

<comment><USER47> It's like accelerating thru a turn while driving, it's proper form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> The calculations also aren't factoring in resell. Sure I might buy a car for $25,000, but when I sell it I am going to get at least $10,000 back out of it so the car itself only costs $15,00.

If you combine that with buying used, better gas milages in cars and piece of mind the calculation becomes harder. Especially if your in an urban city with multiple transportation options.

</comment><comment><USER50> The numbers are skewed because the car ownership costs are based on national averages(lower than LA averages, presumably).

I think any Angeleno would kill to pay the national average for fuel costs and commute 25.2 miles in 25 minutes.

<comment><USER51> I live in LA, we're LUCKY to go 10 miles in in 25 minutes.

<comment><USER17> a decade ago when I still lived in the basin - I found 30 miles an hour bumper to bumper was a pretty normal commute - its better than seattle still :-P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> None of this is relevant if you have a child or dog. I know that Uber are starting to make provisions for children but there's a long way to go. But try getting a 140lb dog to the vet without your own car...

<comment><USER53> Why do people insist on bringing up things like this that are totally irrelevant to the common case? Only half of American households own dogs and 140lbs is a 99.9th-percentile dog body weight so this little issue of yours is relevant to at most one of every 2000 households.

You also can't haul an alpaca in uber, since we're enumerating corner cases.

<comment><USER52> Hahahaha, true I have a ridiculous dog, but the classic family pet (I'm thinking lab, retriever, pit, etc.) is easily in the 40-90 lb range. I have no idea what taxi or Uber policies are for this situation, I know that they turn a blind eye to dogs small enough to be held on your lap. To literally replace the family car all these cases need to be covered, not just the convenient single urbanite cases

<comment><USER53> To make a huge positive benefit in our transportation system and built environment we need only take 10% of cars off the road, so I think they won't come to take away your family car just yet. Certainly there are many excellent reasons to own one. But on the other hand the impossibility of car-free and car-light lifestyles are overstated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> 25.2 miles in 25 minutes in average? it means 60.48 mph or 97.33 km/h. doesn't sound right to me. you can't have that overall average even you always travel intercity.

</comment><comment><USER55> Who drives less than 5k miles/year? And if you do, public transportation is probably excellent?

</comment><comment><USER56> This is a great start. I would love to see a calculator similar to NY times mortgage calculator.

</comment><comment><USER57> Lyft is actually a little cheaper isn't it? So how does that affect the calculation?

</comment><comment><USER58> Self driving car = best of both worlds

</comment><comment><USER59>
        This brings total costs to $18,115 per year ($1509 per
        month) if you used UberX to drive everywhere.
        Unfortunately, even without car payments and
        depreciation, fuel costs, interest, insurance,
        maintenance and repairs, registration and taxes, parking
        fees, speeding tickets and opportunity costs, Uber is
        still slightly more expensive for the average American
        who drives 13,476 miles per year. In this case, it would
        be cheaper to own and drive the medium-sized sedan.</comment>