Google's Inevitable Ruin Begins - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372489,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000584&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ziffdavis%2Fpcmag%2Fdvorak+%28PCMag.com%3A+the+Official+John+C.+Dvorak+RSS+Feed%29

<comment><USER2> I've found the combination of google instant plus the new previews to be impressively useful when using Google professionally.

I'm working with clojure at the moment which is new to me, so I find myself doing a lot of rapid-fire Google searches to answer "is there a library for x?" or "how do I do y?" like questions.

Before instant and preview, I'd typically do a search and then open a list of the most promising answers in tab - and then possibly do the same with other variants of the search. Then I'd use keyboard shortcuts to move through the tabs and close the irrelevant ones.

Now, I've found that I can usually refine the search to a single good one using instant, by looking at the immediate feedback of the results being returned, and preview lets me quickly see which of the results are junk and which are actually salient before I even get as far as opening them in a tab.

They've made an operation that I do many times a day considerably faster and more interactive and reduced the cognitive load. This is usability where it matters - bringing information closer to my mind so I can get things done quicker.

Most impressive to me is that these improvements seem make a more significant difference for the long tail of professional work, rather than the more trivial searches for new products or celebrity gossip etc. I'm thankful to see Google choosing this as a priority.

I'm reminded of the famous Steve Jobs story about faster boot times saving lives: [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Saving_Lives.txt)

Google's saving lives too.

</comment><comment><USER3> JD;DR. See also:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the- plug-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-should-pull-the-plug-on-the- iphone) <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1923151,00.asp>

Has Dvorak ever been right about anything? (And no, he doesn't get credit for the keyboard layout, that was a different guy.)

<comment><USER4> Prediction: Apple Computer Corp. will switch to Intel processors within the next 12 to 18 months.

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,939886,00.asp>

(Technically, he was short by 9 months, but Apple did the inconceivable, eventually.)

<comment><USER5> I think this is an instance of the broken clock rule. People had been throwing this rumor around for years. That he repeated it at some point before it actually happened (but got the timing wrong even with a big window) is unremarkable.

For example, the rumor is mentioned (though rightly dismissed as impractical at the time) in this eWeek article from 2002: [http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Apple/Apple-Keeps-x86-Torch-Lit- wit...](http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Apple/Apple-Keeps-x86-Torch-Lit-with- Marklar/)

<comment><USER5> Also, I just double-checked the dates. Apple switched to Intel in January 2006, which is 16 months past the end of his 18-month window, not nine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if it will bring on ruin, but I certainly found the old image search much more friendly and usable. Both this and page preview seems like "another useless feature that someone thinks improves the experience when it does nothing but show off the fact that someone can code JavaScript or some other display manipulation language." Clean and fast wins the day with me ... Duck Duck Go?

<comment><USER6> this. the "improved" image search is terrible. very finicky and even hard to use--hardly simple.

re: ddg. regular user, but as others have pointed out already the ajax load for results is annoying (because it's slow and flashy/jerky).

<comment><USER7> Note we now have html (non-js) & lite versions at <http://duckduckgo.com/html> & <http://duckduckgo.com/lite>

<comment><USER6> excellent, just appended '/html' to the default browser search engine url.

would be great if instead of having to use specific urls that this could be set up as a preference in settings. still, i'm a happy camper :)

<comment><USER7> If you hit the front page without JS enabled it will automatically submit to the html version. And similarly, if you hit it with a textmode browser it will automatically go to the lite version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> John Dvorak seems to have an unlimited supply of complaints, and rarely anything constructive to say.

Wikipedia suggests he's never built anything of his own. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Perhaps that's part of it?

<comment><USER9> It's possible to be a good tech journalist without having coded something yourself (though that's not to say that Dvorak is a good journalist). Sure, it would probably be an asset, and a lack of technical context can make people write some stupid stuff, but not having built something does not automatically invalidate anyone's opinions.

Most journalists have never worked in their fields, but nobody's complaining about that. The asinine idea that nobody's allowed to have an opinion about any tech company without being a programmer is getting old fast.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. But Dvorak seems particularly quick to call tech companies stupid, and I wonder if that's a result of not having been in the trenches himself.

<comment><USER9> He's pretty much made a career out of making inflammatory statements about companies whose fans get riled up easily. It's not a result of ignorance, it's a result of calculated attempts get hits on his articles (I think he's more- or-less admitted this multiple times). The obvious target has always been Apple, but Google (espcially Android) fanatics have been equally quick to get their backs up lately—maybe he's just diversifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the man who invented trolling and link-baiting: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg>

At best it's satire, not to be taken seriously--if you get up in arms about what he says, he wins and joke's on you.

</comment><comment><USER11> Flagged. Anything with Dvorak's name should be auto-flagged. If he ever raises an argument that's credible to the HN audience than that means he failed his own quality criteria: that is to write a specious argument designed to appeal to the uninformed reader but that fails any sort of detailed analysis so hard that anyone with half a clue who reads it will be compelled to debunk it and thus angrily drive traffic to the article.

</comment><comment><USER12> Rather astonishingly, he presents no data whatsoever on whether users (y'know, the ones who matter) actually like instant search and the new image search.

Without that, his argument that Google is in some sort of "decline" because of their introduction can't be taken seriously, and the article is nothing more than a rant about how he dislikes them. This is a fact about John C. Dvorak, not Google.

</comment><comment><USER13> I disagree with the author, and think that he hasn't used google image search very extensively.

"Instead of the single page of thumbnails, you get over 20 pages of large thumbnails all on the same huge page."

The (near) endless scrolling model works better for rapidly sorting large sets of images, not worse.

"There is no information, just endless thumbnails. No sizes, no locations to scan, nothing! ... Now you have to place the pointer on top of each image for ... size and location information."

If you are optimizing for a an interface for sorting the most images possible, removing text makes sense to me. Also, sorting options for the image size is now on the left, which I find more useful than reading text below each image.

The pop-ups also contain controls which the author ignores that are very handy: similar images, and different sizes of the same image.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah, a bit shock-jockish, which is funny considering the pcmag source. I forgot they even existed. Oh, probably because they dropped in relevance like a friggin rock.

</comment><comment><USER15> Putting 'Dvorak' in the title would have saved me some time.

<comment><USER16> I'd upvote you twice if I could. I actually audibly groaned when I saw who the author was. Didn't even read the article, I knew it was going to be full of crap. I can't believe I graced him with a pageview. Ugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Knowing nothing about the man. I only got through the first paragraph before I realized the man has no idea what he's talking about. I am not likely to listen to anything he says says ever again.

Edit: grammar;

</comment><comment><USER18> Agree with the many other people commenting here that the article was full of nonsense. And the idea that these changes spell "Google's inevitable ruin" is pretty hilarious.

That said, I do hate the changes. I found the old image search far nicer to use. The most important negative change is that when looking for an image, I like to open up multiple options in new tabs, sort of making a shortlist from which to chose from later. To do this I, while scanning the images, click on ones of interest with my middle mouse button. With the new version of Google images, the images don't become actual hyperlinks until you have hovered over them for about a second, so there's a considerable delay when trying to open multiple images in new tabs quickly.

I also dislike the live results stuff, I'm not sure if there's any specific reason or just because I'm used to the traditional method - I haven't actually used it nearly enough to know if I'd get used to it, given the chance. I use <https://encrypted.google.com>, which hasn't rolled out that feature, thankfully. (Possibly my issue is this: I'm a very fast typer, so I can complete my exact search query without it taking noticeably longer than completing half of my query, and it's therefore more efficient to wait until I get the most accurate results, rather than hoping that a less accurate search will have found what I'm looking for.)

<comment><USER19> >With the new version of Google images, the images don't become actual hyperlinks until you have hovered over them for about a second, so there's a considerable delay when trying to open multiple images in new tabs quickly.

That is patently untrue.

[source: I just tried. I middle-clicked as many links as I could as fast as I could. Each one resulted in a new tab instantly]

<comment><USER18> I just tried in Chrome and it's as you said. In Firefox, however, it's a different story (and FF is my primary browser.)

<comment><USER19> Oooh. I see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some valid usability criticisms, swamped in less useful ones and linkbaity headers. I actually agree that some of the new features are a little too bandwidth hungry, but am OK with that because I want to see greater demand for last mile broadband on the west coast. Reading about the speeds available on FIOS makes me cry.

I'm surprised he didn't take a few stabs at Google News, which really does have fundamental problems. He has touched on them [1] but the criticisms are rather shallow and miss the mark.

1\. <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2363874,00.asp>.

I don't like seeing Dvorak called a troll. Disclosure: I wrote for PC Mag in London for a while, so there's a bit of collegiality at work, but I've always seen him as a gadfly - a literary nickname for the horsefly, an annoying creature that buzzes and has a painful bite, but which perform useful functions of pollination, providing forensic evidence, and contribute to the weeding out evolutionary misfits. Trolls (by my definition) deliberately seek to mislead or irritate others for amusement's sake - occasionally everyone's, but usually only their own. Dvorak honestly thinks the things he complains about are broken, even if he's often wrong about how, why or what extent. He is the Ur-User :-)

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes! I agree completely with this. I was just trying to do an image search on google earlier today and it drove me nuts having to hover over each image to see the size and then get shunted off to some weird ajax light box display after finally picking one.

It was bad enough that I abandoned the google search and went to baidu, which was actually the more minimalist option for once.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm not going to actually go check, but I'm pretty sure the images still load one page at a time, when you scroll to the bottom of the last page (or farther). How can you have a job at PCMag and not acknowledge or even be aware of this?

</comment><comment><USER23> Old men don't like it when things change, and assert their opinion as fact, trust me.

<comment><USER24> Old men? You could have just said _people_ and been done with it. When Facebook moves a button there is outrage and mass demonstrations. You younguns and your confirmation bias. Amiright?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been impressed by both the new image search and the web previews. With the introduction of Rock Melt, the instant page preview while simultaneously browsing my searches was a productive environment and now Google added it to their page.

The image search I feel is even faster now that I don't have to click through every single page. Before I used Cool Iris. The whole point of image search is supposed to be a visual experience. If you liked an image, check its size. Also, why is his browser crashing? What's he using?

</comment><comment><USER26> Hahaha, just a few days ago this article hit [http://www.fastcompany.com/1701119/adwords-is-dying-and- goog...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1701119/adwords-is-dying-and-google-knows- it-and-they-are-doing-something-about-it)

which is a LOT better look into what Google is doing and why. The sky is not falling Dvorak, never has been, never will be.

</comment><comment><USER27> Technology people may not like Google's recent work (me included), but two things must be kept in mind:

1\. techies are the minority

2\. Google is said to split test heavily, maybe even pathologically

So if a new feature stays it's probably because non-technical people liked it and Google is probably doing the right thing from a business perspective.

</comment><comment><USER28> I like some of Google's recent changes, but I must agree that the new Google image search is a mess. I much prefer the old one.

<comment><USER29> I don't really understand people's complaints on this issue. How could you not prefer to have hundreds of images on one page instead of clicking for the next page over and over? It's the difference between a mousewheel scroll and click/scroll, click/scroll.

<comment><USER28> My complaints are mostly around the Javascript mess that has stolen our direct access to the images.

The image I want is usually in the top row of results anyway, so an endless collection of thumbnails isn't much help.

I don't want to view an image in some kind of weird half-sized shadow box. I want to see it alone, at full size -- or directly download it. In the old Google image search, these tasks were as easy as a right click on a context menu.

Now we get strange hover boxes that are only 50% larger than the thumbnails, and clicking a thumbnail takes you to a confusing pseudo-page that isn't the full size image, nor the actual source site. Who does this help?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> DanI-S OMG something changed, the end is nigh.

</comment><comment><USER30> Apple is dead! Long live Windows! BSD is dying! NetCraft confirms it!

... and now:

Google is dying! John C Dvorak^W^W^WAn internet troll confirms it!

</comment><comment><USER31> Just when I was going to sell my Google stock, Dvorak goes and pays it his highest complement. Guess I'll wait a few more months...

</comment><comment><USER32> You know a writer does not have a convincing case when he adds "trust me" to the first paragraph.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think Google deserves the benefit of the doubt, for now.

</comment><comment><USER34> dvorak is a troll

</comment><comment><USER24> Dvorak could legitimately be described as a professional troll.

 _"you get over 20 pages of large thumbnails all on the same huge page....And because thousands of useless large thumbnails are loaded, a huge waste of user bandwidth takes place each time."_

Beware commenting on things you don't understand, because often it just makes you look like a fool.

In this case, Dvorak apparently didn't notice that while all of the images "were on" the same page, they were simply placeholders until you scroll.

If an image exists outside of the viewport, does it exist? Not necessarily.

As to them being large images....welcome to the high speed world, John. We've graduated beyond dial-up.

 _"So instead of being able to scan the entire page with a simple glance to find an image from say, usgs.gov, you have to put the cursor on each and every image and wait for a pop out with the information."_

Who searches for images by domain like that? Few users of Google image search, I suspect, with the average user casually looking for some images to "borrow" for their book report or blog. The source domain just doesn't really matter to most users, again speculating (though presumably Google has actually verified this).

But say you really want to see images from usgs.gov? site:usgs.gov, e.g. [http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=site%3Ausgs.gov+...](http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=site%3Ausgs.gov+cheese&);

And of course you can search by size (larger than, or a specific absolute size), and so on.

There will always ( _always_ ) be people who complain about change. John, in this case, is just plying his trollish trade, however.

<comment><USER35> Beware splitting hairs when you are ignoring the main point. The new google image search is worse than the old one imo so dvorak's point stands even if he got a few technical details wrong.

I also agree with him that it's a bad sign when a company seems to be doing things just because their competitors did something similar.

<comment><USER24> _Beware splitting hairs when you are ignoring the main point_

Splitting hairs?

These are the specific things that he complains about being wrong with the new version, and they're ignorant bullshit.

 _The new google image search is worse than the old one imo_

I think the new image search is vastly improved. I doubt I'm alone. For the purpose of finding images it is much more efficient and usable, and if you want advanced searching, it's still there for your advanced searching needs.

But of course, we're just two people with subjective feelings. If Google changed it back, however, I wouldn't cry like a baby and pound my fists because it no longer specifically targets me and my personal usage needs.

It is human nature that whenever something changes the complainers tend to be the loudest. The fact that _you_ don't personally like it, and Dvorak affirms your opinion, says absolutely nothing to whether it was a good move for Google or the average user.

Though I have no doubt that everyone with a gripe with Google's image search changes will we drawn into this discussion to add their "Rah rah yah yah!" I hope we're all wise enough to know how to judge that and to not overestimate the scope of that group.

It's also suspect to argue that they did it "just because their competitors are doing it". Could it be that the state of the art on the tubes is improving? Did Apple add multitasking to the iPhone just because Android did it, or because it's actually a good feature to have?

<comment><USER36> I wouldn't first argue that Dvorak spits out 'ignorant bullshit' while claiming that all design preferences are equally valid.

I personally prefer the older Google Images. For one, I lose the ability to scroll the website immediately after finding it. I do this, for example, when I'm searching for some algorithm by first finding a diagram that I think is clearer and then going directly to read the explanation, or when searching for a recipe by looking for the image first.

I find the new interface to be slightly cluttered to use (with all the animations and uncomfortable feeling when scrolling), At some point, Yahoo (and others) had pretty cluttered interfaces and people eventually shifted to Google, commonly citing simplicity. For this reason, I find that taking the leap to 'everyone complains about changes' to trivialize the fact that many people may, in fact, appreciate simple interfaces.

There sometimes is a superior interface, and discussing the pros and cons of a new interface is very valuable.

<comment><USER24> _I wouldn't first argue that Dvorak spits out 'ignorant bullshit' while claiming that all design preferences are equally valid._

Indeed. So who claimed that all design preferences are equally valid? Oddly you seem to be inferring that _I_ did, but I actually didn't, making your lead-in just some noise in hope of soliciting a bias from readers.

 _At some point, Yahoo (and others) had pretty cluttered interfaces and people eventually shifted to Google, commonly citing simplicity_

But can you see that perhaps Google was pursuing simplicity by making their image search all about the images themselves? Further they made perusing large sets of images simpler.

For users who don't care about source pixel sizes or originating domains -- which I suspect is most -- that was just distracting noise on the page. Google simplified the search to a dense, and often beautiful, collection of images, with some powerful functionality on the left.

 _For this reason, I find that taking the leap to 'everyone complains about changes' to trivialize the fact that many people may, in fact, appreciate simple interfaces._

Everyone complains about changes, good or bad. That is a simple truism of the world. It does _not_ trivialize the usability of the interface, which is why I specifically talked about the usability of the interface -- all Dvorak cares about is what used to be there and now isn't. He doesn't care about the advantages of the new interface, because all he's focused on is the negative change (for him).

It's ignorant bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article is awful. Terrible, terrible awful.

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally I love the new google images. However I would quickly point out that some of the reasons people have left google is their frustration with the magnitude google relies on "the numbers" I highly doubt that the changes are hurting them, becuase if they were... they wouldn't keep it.</comment>


Free Dash accounts now have Twitter dashboard widgets - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedash.com/news/2014-03-26-twitter

<comment><USER2> they say i am a naysayer so pardon me. but may I know who is your 'paid' audience? and ever wondered why don't people like Yahoo!? widgets! and you have built an entire startup around it. remember iGoogle? it nearly didn't work well either.

Apart from this, I am loving the website (UI/UX), and it's the only reason I am sticking around, and perhaps get addicted to it. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The model is a lot like GitHub, actually. We let people create all of the public dashboards they want for free so that people can share live data with the community. They also get one free private dashboard.

Business accounts pay the bills, though. [https://www.thedash.com/business/pricing](https://www.thedash.com/business/pricing)

<comment><USER2> Yep I am pondering over it and making a dashboard right now, and can't believe myself for doing so, despite I have despised widgets. This is so nicely crafted and appealing to nerds.

phew! it's here finally. [https://www.thedash.com/dashboard/TTmZcUR0cO](https://www.thedash.com/dashboard/TTmZcUR0cO)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook "Like" Worm is Spreading - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/10/01/warning-facebook-like-worm-spreading-through-javascript-exploit/

<comment><USER2> Sigh its gone now. From what I can tell, the script managed to hijack a facebook page to insert a link under a fake tab "Photo". If clicked, loaded an iframe, and clicking on that iframe liked the page.

<comment><USER2> <http://vinhboy.com/blog/2010/10/02/cool-facebook-like-worm/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This has been happening for months and is nothing new. Even companies that host big name company profiles on Facebook use this tactic to "unlock" content.

Calling this a worm or exploit is absurdly silly. There is no security threat here, just don't click on dumb links.

<comment><USER4> While not completely clear, I believe the article is stating that clicking affected "like" buttons will cause unwanted actions including unauthorized wall posts.

<comment><USER3> No, this has been occurring for forever... is no one on HN on Facebook? I mean, I don't blame you, but when you click "Like" it has ALWAYS posted "Blah likes [omg women kills her daughter] on [stupidspam.com]".

Again, nothing new, at all.

<comment><USER4> I have read more articles to understand exactly what it does:

Standard: User clicks "like" --> _______ likes ________

Infected Page: User views friend's page without clicking anything, an iframe exploit makes them automatically "like" a page.

Yes, I use Facebook.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Checking the .NET Core Libraries Source Code by the PVS-Studio Static Analyzer - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/company/pvs-studio/blog/463535/ <comment><USER2> Someone found an error in the PVS-Studio Static Analyzer

 _"PVS-Studio warnings: V3108 It is not recommended to return 'null' from 'ToSting()' method."_

      s/ToSting/ToString/</comment>


How can there be collisions in Hashing functions? - <AUTHOR> https://np.reddit.com/r/algorithms/comments/6bidyg/how_can_there_be_collisions_in_hashing_functions/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious as to your reasons for posting this. It's clearly a conversation between people who don't understand something and people who can't explain things. But why do you think it's of value for us here on HN? What lessons do you think we should be learning from it?

You've posted it, so you think I should read it. Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well... the conversation piqued my interest partly from a pedagogical perspective, and partly from a philosophical perspective.

The pedagogical aspect relates to the fact that the thread's OP clearly isn't lacking in intelligence nor knowledge, and I would've expected that some of the explanations would be sufficient. I found it interesting as a case study in learning/teaching.

The philosophical perspective relates to the link between our perspective of the world and the actual truth underlying it. The thread's OP was quite certain about the fact they were claiming as true, and was actually making a good argument for it. At least, the argument was good insofar as it was logical and wasn't falling victim to any egregious logical fallacy. It's interesting to consider consider this debate in contrast to a political debate which doesn't necessarily have such a solid underlying truth

On a personal note, I'm also slightly envious of the "OH!" moment that the thread's OP is going to have when everything falls into place in their mental model of hash functions. I remember when differential calculus first "clicked" with me, and when statistical hypothesis testing "clicked" with me. I'm still waiting for monads to "click" with me.</comment></comment>


Softmaker 2018 for Linux released - <AUTHOR> https://shop.softmaker.com/shop/shop.php?go&products&lang=en <comment><AUTHOR> One of the few commercials Linux software that I use. If you want to try out a free older version, try here: [http://www.freeoffice.com/en/](http://www.freeoffice.com/en/)

[I am not direct or indirect affiliated with the company. Just a happy user]</comment>


Maybe Information Doesn't Want to Be Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/business/media/the-information-jessica-lessin.html <comment><USER2> That is something that NYT would love to be true. NYT loving the idea that everyone will pay for every bit of information does not make that idea true.</comment>


The State of LTE in September 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://opensignal.com/reports/2015/09/state-of-lte-q3-2015/ <comment><USER2> The economic benefit of vastly improving data speeds across the country far out weighs the costs of improving the network. As the tech capital of the world, the US should not be #10 in LTE coverage.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/26/does- high...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/08/26/does-high-speed- broadband-increase-economic-growth/)

<comment><USER3> It is a large country and has existing infrastructure. It is hard to compare US to say a West European country and look at internet speeds or LTE coverage. US is just much larger so looking at geographical coverage it doesn't look good at all.

The existing infrastructure part is companies will refuse to update their system for as long as the existing one kinda works. Sometimes with only 1 or 2 companies covering a region. If both stay at 3G, the customer basically doesn't have a choice. So no need to upgrade.

If it was an African country, without an existing network, they might choose to jump to the latest technology (like some skipped installing wired phones and just went to cell phones in the past). In the chart Khazakstan and Uruguay is perhaps in that category.

In the speed category Romania kills it with 30Mbps. That's pretty cool for being a relatively poor European country.

<comment><USER4> > It is a large country and has existing infrastructure.

The latter part is the real elephant in the room here - the former reason is by now a cliché putdown when it comes to infrastructure investment in the US. Kazahkstan and Uruguay are not small, even less dense than the US, and poorer - yet have better LTE coverage.

<comment><USER3> But they fall in the other category -- probably didn't have an existing infrastructure already. So no backward compatibility worries, no need to throw away an existing investment if it already makes money.

<comment><USER5> Same with South Africa. We're a relatively poor country, very large and sparsely populated, but doing quite well on the LTE scale, although we are known as cellphone mad over here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The numbers are all meaningless to everyone but opensignal since they're proprietary. "The proportion of time users have an LTE signal, or LTE 'Time Coverage', is our proprietary metric for looking at coverage holistically, instead of just as a measurement of geographical reach. "

The Canadian numbers are problematic for a few reasons: 1) LTE mainly means you can run through your (typically <= 1gb/month) "bucket" in about 5 minutes, with overage charges starting from the first byte over. So what's the point of LTE is artificially constrained?

Contrast this with France where providers give you a bigger LTE bandwidth cap because it's more spectrally efficient.

2) There are several non-overlapping LTE providers. If one provider has LTE in an area but yours does not, you cannot roam to the other. So what's the point of measuring if a user could get an LTE signal?

<comment><USER7> Hi this is James from OpenSignal.

By "proprietary" we basically mean "here's a cool new metric (ps we invented it)" not "here's a cool new metric (ps we're not gonna tell you how it works)". That said the link to the methodology is a little buried, but you can find the details here: [http://opensignal.com/methodology/time_coverage/](http://opensignal.com/methodology/time_coverage/)

One thing to note is that it's possible that if you only launched LTE in urban areas and the LET users stay within those urban areas, then the time-coverage can be great, even if if the geographic coverage is poor and a low percentage of the population has access to LTE overall. Nonetheless, it is a measurement of the experience that those users that have LTE are getting.

Given this, we do have to be wary about markets where LTE is not mature yet.

Good point re. unlimited vs limited data plans and how the latter can make it easier for an operator to provide good throughput (but overall you might get less volume). This is illustrative of a bigger challenge - there's no single metric that can tell you: "this is the best operator in the world". We're never going to claim that. But our crowdsourced data can offer a global, impartial view that I think has been missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The main reason the numbers are really meaningless is because if you want to test the speeds of just the LTE part it is impossible unless you have access to the carrier's test servers ahead of their hand off to the internet. Otherwise you are just testing the speed of the internet which we all understand varies under a number of factors.

It is good that they have a way of measuring coverage that is not strictly geographically based but since it is proprietary it is hard to actually know what it means.

Lte speeds are faster than Wifi due to the backhaul obviously, typically wireless carriers buy higher BW backhaul that wifi providers since wifi is free so they tend to skimp on that, in theory wifi can do about the same speeds as Lte from the air interface capability by itself.

<comment><USER9> I work for OpenSignal, and produced the data used in this report, so I'd like give some assurances around the coverage aspect. The principle is to calculate the percentage of time that each user was connected to LTE over the period in question, and then average over such users to arrive at an average figure per network. Naturally I'm understating some complexities around minor issues (mainly around cleaning and combining users' measurements), but it isn't like we've gone completely off-road and developed a black-box procedure here - it's pretty much what you would expect.

On the first point, yes, you're completely right that we are measuring the whole package, however we'd argue that this is what users really care about.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for responding. It sounds like a pretty reliable approach, but it almost sounds more like availability than coverage in the traditional sense that we think about it (geographic, which has some drawbacks as well).

And I agree, the end to end is where the rubber meets the road but I think with the state of LTE, particularly where Advanced features like CA come in to play, we are at times being throttled by the internet more than by the air interface. Although, we are a long way from having that type of tput across the air interface everywhere, but it seems like LTE has the potential to start outstripping what the current internet can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> At least here (Austria) the LTE rollout was faster and more useful for customers than the original 3G rollout. It sounds like companies actually are intetested in it for other reasons than just having nicer looking numbers.

Drei/Three here upgraded every single base station throught the country so that you know have LTE in the mountains and rural areas even, though some of the backhaul is not yet fiber in those areas.

It's bizarre now that the mobile networks are faster than what comes out of the cable.

//edit: i doubt the opensignal numbers. They seem very ... different than real live. Wonder how they measure.

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel the coverage percentages are difficult to visualize fairly, given that they don't take into account the size of each country.

50% coverage in a big country is not really less than 80% in a much smaller one. It would be interesting to have a way to visualize the network coverage taking into account that.

<comment><USER9> Since we're collecting data from the actual user location, we really do capture the true experience of coverage - if a busy, popular, location has good coverage that will be reflected already in the data. This means that a large country could do extremely well, provided it covered the important urban locations. It obviously still takes more effort on the part of the operators to provide this coverage in a large country, but we're less affected by this problem than more traditional geographic coverage approaches.

Although, that said, I think it could still be interesting and it's definitely feedback we'll take on board for next time. I'd say that the gap between 50% and 80% time on LTE is actually pretty important to the user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Global LTE speed is a super unfair comparison. The US has a lot of rural areas where it's not economically efficient for wireless operators to install high speed LTE transceivers.

</comment><comment><USER13> When I do a speed test using open signal the data speed is most of the time significantly slower than using speedtest.net.

So I am not sure how accurate this is.

<comment><USER14> Depends on where the server you're running the test on is. Speedtest.net hunts out the fastest one, maybe Opensignal has less servers/slower servers?

<comment><USER13> But that makes their test results invalid. They can't claim a certain average speed if that speed is way lower than what the network deliver in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Data for Poland is outdated: PlusGSM network already have 80% coverage, and Play has 70%</comment>


Connect from Square - <AUTHOR> https://connect.squareup.com/ <comment><USER3> What about Square's Online Store? It's free? The same thing from Weebly is $25/mo.

Does Stripe have a store builder?

[https://squareup.com/online-store](https://squareup.com/online-store)

[http://www.weebly.com/pricing](http://www.weebly.com/pricing)

<comment><USER4> Yeah the Online Store that comes with their POS is free and pretty great - <USER2> know a lot of small merchants using it and they love it. Looks like this goes one step further and allows you to build a web store without using their hardware POS. Unlike Weebly, Square makes money by the fees on processing credit cards so they can offer the online store for free. Stripe is a only a payments processor so you need to use Weebly or Squarespace to build your store and then use Stripe to accept payments. The thing is most merchants end up using a website builder like Weebly/Squarespace anyways to establish their web presence.

<comment><USER3> (Square + SquareStore - POS) == (Stripe + 'StripeStore' \- POS) -> Stripe should make a store.

<comment><USER4> by that logic Stripe should make a POS also

<comment><USER3> Well, _I_ wish they would make an online store, so I only had to deal with one payment vender. Plus, it's arguably easier to write the store software than the POS software and deal with the hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally. I have no idea why Square didn't do is years ago before Stripe came to dominate. Square has tremendous advantage with large existing merchant base, most of whom need online processing.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if most of their large merchant base do have an immediate need for online processing. I always thought they targeted mainly bricks-and-mortar retail, cafes, small chains, etc.

I havent thought about this a whole lot by my initial guess was that in the past they just had their hands full capturing that large bricks-and-mortar merchant base.

It seems easier to move from that position of strength into the adjacent online payment market than in the other direction.

Timing into the market(s) would also be a factor. Square and Stripe have been at it for quite a while.

<comment><USER5> Even cafes, indie retail and food trucks have online commerce.

I think they've had her hands full with a lot of non-core activities like food delivery and payroll.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's TechCrunch on the announcement: [http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/square-copies-stripe- with-n...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/square-copies-stripe-with-new- online-checkout-api/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm disappointed that they didn't include invoicing through the Connect API. This is my primary method of billing, and it would be great to be able to integrate this into other services.

<comment><USER8> Hi - I'm the engineering manager of the team and thanks for the suggestion and feedback. We appreciate it because feedback guides our roadmap (and hiring, p.s. we are hiring!) - keep it coming (-: \- Jonathan Wolter, Engineering Manager Square Developer Platform

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Exciting to see them enter the space. Can anyone find the pricing on this?

We're using Stripe, and without the ability to initiate an ACH transfer, it looks like we won't be able to use Connect from Square. If they do support it some day, I would seriously look into switching. _Instant_ transfers are amazing and that's why I've switched back to Square Cash from Venmo.

[edit] The Techcrunch article answered my question: "Like Stripe, online checkout costs 2.9 percent + 30 cents per transaction."

<comment><USER8> Hi! I'm the engineering manager for the team. Thanks for the feedback. eCommerce pricing is 2.9 + 30c as you said, while the Register API pricing is the same as if you used Square Register. That plus more are in our FAQ [https://docs.connect.squareup.com/articles/faq/](https://docs.connect.squareup.com/articles/faq/). Also glad to hear you like Square Cash! \- Jonathan Wolter, Engineering Manager Square Developer Platform (we are hiring Product, Engineering, and Dev Evangelism roles)

</comment></comment><comment> the-dude Does anybody know if there any advantages to Square over Stripe?

For us, Stripe charges 1.4% for European cards ( we are based in Europe ).

That is significant.

<comment><USER9> Stripe only charges 1.4% for European cards? I've been paying 2.9% for all cards, even if they're based in Europe.

<comment> the-dude Are you based in Europe?

<comment><USER9> No, US. So if based in Europe charging European cards it's 1.4%? Wish US-based charging US-cards was as favorable.

<comment> the-dude EU:

[https://stripe.com/nl/pricing](https://stripe.com/nl/pricing) [https://stripe.com/de/pricing](https://stripe.com/de/pricing) [https://stripe.com/gb/pricing](https://stripe.com/gb/pricing)

etc.

US and Japan for example: [https://stripe.com/us/pricing](https://stripe.com/us/pricing) [https://stripe.com/jp/pricing](https://stripe.com/jp/pricing) ( no fixed )

Must have something to do with: [http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-15-4585_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-15-4585_en.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I skimmed the documentation so I could be wrong, but it looks like there's no ACH support, which Stripe has. Stripe's ACH pricing is pretty high though, so it would be a pretty big coup for Square to provide a cheaper alternative.

<comment><USER11> Have you looked into Dwolla?

<comment><USER12> +1 for Dwolla suggestion. I use it for client payments, although the customer UX is not as clean as stripe/square here for web applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see "Subscription APIs" in the e-commerce section of the marketing page, but can't find any mention of it skimming through the developer docs. Anyone have experience doing subscriptions/recurring charges with this?

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know if you can now connect to the Square payments processing hardware through the API? I would like to process in person payments through Square but keep the user experience in my application.

<comment><USER13> Yes, this functionality is now available through the Register API (announced alongside the ECommerce API)

[https://docs.connect.squareup.com/articles/register-api- over...](https://docs.connect.squareup.com/articles/register-api-overview/)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately that kicks the user out of your app and into Square's temporarily. And according to the TOS, the customer needs to be supervised by a merchant employee during the transaction. Ideally you would be able to handle the customer's payment seamlessly and unsupervised within your own app.

<comment><USER14> If it's unsupervised and in another app wouldn't that just be ecommerce? Or are you talking about something like a kiosk?

<comment><USER4> Yeah something like a kiosk. I want to be able to process card swipes instead of making users enter their card number (as in the Ecommerce api). The additional benefit is that you get charged the 2.75% _card present_ fee instead of the 2.9% + $0.30 _card not present_ fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is really interesting. Took way too long though. Im curious though how this works for a market place similar to what stripe connect does if anyone has any insight before I dig into the docs.

</comment><comment><USER16> With this release it looks like this may bring Square as a viable gateway/CC processor for 3rd party ecommerce platforms such as WooCommerce. Any confirmation?

Thanks!

<comment><USER13> Yes, this can be used as a payment gateway option for ECommerce platforms (including Woocommmerce). It's already available through both Bigcommerce and Weebly.

<comment><USER16> Yes, these two options were already available, however, anything else was off the table until this release.</comment></comment></comment>


The Cheapest Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/309060/1/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Back of the envelope calculations put the cost of car ownership around $7,000 per year. I'd have to earn an extra $10,000 before tax to cover that. That pays for a lot of "overpriced Apple products" that we millenials are constantly blamed for overspending on. And my electronics are a business expense.

I can't see the use case for a car. I live in the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood of montreal. Everything I need is _literally_ a five minute walk away in any direction. A bike gets me downtown about as fast as a car does in summer, the metro can often cross town faster, and taxis are a minute's call away. You can pay for a lot of taxis with the money saved not buying a car.

Meanwhile, if I had had the cost of running a car, I would have gone bankrupt on several occasions while bootstrapping my business. For no tangible benefit. Now that I've got financial stability, I still can't see why I would want one. If I car to drive myself, there are communauto stations all around me (Montreal equivalent of Zipcar).

If I moved to the suburbs, things would be different, but I have no intent of moving to the suburbs.

<comment><USER3> "Back of the envelope calculations put the cost of car ownership around $7,000 per year."

You could buy a ten-year-old used car every year, plus insurance, for $2,000 or less [1] (assuming insurance is mostly the same as in the US). When it breaks down, buy a new one and sell the old one for parts or junk.

Owning a car provides courses of action you wouldn't consider without it. There's an extra level of planning involved if you have to try to find a car first, or take a train or airplane; if you have a car, the first step to any medium-length trip is to jump in the car, rather than to try to work out the logistics of how you'd get there.

[1] [http://montreal.en.craigslist.ca/search/cta?query=&zoomToPos...](http://montreal.en.craigslist.ca/search/cta?query=&zoomToPosting=&minAsk=500&maxAsk=1500&autoMinYear=&autoMaxYear=)

<comment><USER2> Ok, but what's the total annual cost then? I don't commute, so I guess it would depend on how much I drove – what's a ballpark gas estimate? Don't forget to add the cost of my time for buying + selling – how long would it take to make a good purchase/sale? (serious questions, I don't know the answers because I have had no interest in a car).

My parents own a car, so I know what its like to live in a place with one. Doesn't feel substantially different from what I've got now. As the other comment said, there's a very well developed transport network where I am, including public cars. You could say not every place is like this, but I _chose_ to live here in lieu of a place where this lifestyle isn't possible.

<comment><USER3> It depends strongly on the gas mileage for the car, of course, but my first assumption would be that for most people the cost of public transit is about the same as gas. My daily commute, for example (which I know you don't have, but most people do) is about 50 miles. On days I don't work from home, my choice is between a commuter train which costs $22 round trip, commuting on the long-distance train ($28 round trip), or driving, which costs about $10-15 in gas, depending on the current price of gas. I mostly take the train, because driving into Washington, DC isn't fun; I'm certainly not trying to convince you to run out and buy a car, just responding to the assertion that it would cost $7000 a year extra to keep one.

I lived in the DC metro for two years without a car, before purchasing this one, and having lived both ways, I personally strongly prefer having a car. Without one, I had to structure my life around not having a car. Going to the computer store (Microcenter) to pick up a new video card on a whim was something that would take the bulk of the day without a car (two or three metro lines depending on route). If the store half a mile from my house didn't have something, I had to either plan a trip on a bus to another one (and what if _that_ one didn't, either? So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out in advance online if they did), or just go without. I don't much like shopping for groceries, but I got to do it three or four times a week anyway, because I couldn't carry enough 2L bottles to last longer than a few days, etc... without a car, a _lot_ of my life was concerned with inventory and transportation, in a way that I don't even think about with a car, since I can pop out to any kind of store and be back in 20 minutes.

<comment><USER2> I see. We may have different use cases. I wasn't exaggerating when I said everything is literally five minutes away in my neighborhood. I usually get groceries several times per week, on my walk home from somewhere. Occasionally I take a somewhat longer walk to a cheap grocery store for certain items, but no planning required. I don't drink pop or juice, so no 2L bottles.

Apple store and protein powder describe the two items I can't get within this 5 minute radius. And transit is $4.80 round trip with a pass and takes me anywhere in town quickly. Metro gets you anywhere, so no planning or routes required. Taxi downtown is $12-$15 if for some reason I'm in a rush.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have to love the media: "The boomers voted themselves healthcare on their kids backs, made their kids go into crushing debt for education, put basic housing out of reach for them and look to be financing their retirement via them. How come those darn kids aren't buying cars?"

<comment><USER5> It reminds me of how kids used to work for the parents on a farm or factory to help support their family. Maybe the burden has just been moved, assuming the quote has any validity.

<comment><USER6> Eventually the kids got a farm out of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gen Y here.

I think they answered their question halfway through. Total student debt in the US is currently about $1,134,752,535,374.00 and increasing at a rate of about $2,853.88 per second.

The article title is linkbait -- any generation that spends that amount of money isn't "cheap" (I think the word "exploited" is probably more appropriate).

<comment><USER8> I make a lot more than a lot of GenY, and have less student loan debt, and it is a MAJOR part of my budget. I don't see how someone with an average salary and average student loan debt could get a loan for a car or for a house.

<comment><USER9> How long will it be a major part of your budget? Someone with a typical state university student debt load making a typical SV software engineer salary can be out of debt in 5 years without much discomfort.

<comment><USER8> Probably around that long. Perhaps less if things go well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not sure which letter applies to me, but I'm still under 30. Whenever I think about a car, I think about where I'd park it (either on the street and risk nature damage, or fork some extra cash every month for a parking spot), the cost of gas (more cash), the nightmare that is driving in the city center, finding a place to park it (usually, involving even more cash), maintenance (cash) and the cost to the environment. And what would I get for that? Reducing my commute 15 minutes, and being designated driver at the weekends. Small, electric cars would solve some of those problems, but car makers insist we don't want them.

I really think they are asking the wrong question - instead of "why aren't 'millenials' buying cars?", they should ask "why would millenials buy a car on the first place?".

<comment><USER11> _" why would millenials buy a car on the first place?"._

That's exactly it. It's not the status symbol it used to be, _because it should 've never been one in the first place_. You can't work on cars much anymore, and it's clear that the car-centric planning we've gone with was a terrible fucking idea and has been setting us up for much sadness.

<comment><USER12> You don't understand status symbols. The less practical and more of a pain-in- the-ass something is, the better its potential as a status symbol.

Yachts aren't status symbols among the rich because of their immense practicality & utility.

<comment><USER13> That might be true for the upper class, but for middle and lower classes the biggest status symbol currently is a shiny new smartphone with much utility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a Millenial and I enjoy owning a car, but I definitely don't care about it as an indicator of social status the way older generations did.

I would much rather own a self-driving pod with a comfortable couch where I could work or relax without thinking about driving. Or even enjoying the view! Driving is fun, but for day-to-day stuff, I'd much rather get online as soon as possible to get my work done.

I tend to think of time in a car as time wasted, unless I just happen to be in the mood to drive.

<comment><USER12> _Driving is fun, but for day-to-day stuff, I 'd much rather get online as soon as possible_

this statement makes me recoil. If I need anything, it is to be online _less_ , and driving enforces that, if only for a little while.

<comment><USER15> I used to have that view, but now I don't own a car, and I take device-free walks instead, which I think I actually prefer. I like looking at architecture, trees changing color, birds, whatever, while taking a 30-min walk somewhere. It feels less hectic than when I'd drive.

<comment><USER12> Oh, I'm not saying I need driving to disconnect. Just reacting in general to the notion of getting back online asap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Since when does "not taking loans out for shit you can't afford" equate to cheap?

<comment><USER17> When "frugal", "thrifty" and "prudent" became dirty words.

<comment><USER9> I like "austere". It sounds much more elegant but is actually much dirtier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Speaking as a member of Generation X, having a computer and getting on the Internet early made ownership of a car far less interesting. I did have a motorcycle for a while and occasionally I find myself thinking about a car, but it's an awful lot of money for something I don't really enjoy using.

<comment><USER19> You said it. It just isn't enjoyable to own a car anymore. With all the added crap on-top there is no reason for my simplicity craving brain (even if it isn't true, we simplify to a point of making the process of simplifying complex) to desire the perceived complexities and costs of owning a new car.

That being said, I do own one. It's not new (10 years old now), it's 'cheap' to run (4-cylinder), and is purely for utility (4x4 for snow) as I live in a rural community. Even then, I take the bus between communities to commute to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> At least regarding homes, their prices have skyrocketed beyond inflation in many heavily populated urban areas. This is of course because of the increasing populations in major cities and the limited land available near the city center. It's an extra powerful factor that drives housing prices up on top of inflation.

Housing has become a major, _major_ expense in many cities, so much so that getting into a nice neighborhood in a good location often requires two considerable incomes. This is true even in less popular cities like Houston. For instance, this is the neighborhood west of the university I attended: [http://search.har.com/engine/doSearch.cfm?ZIP_CODE=77005&CLA...](http://search.har.com/engine/doSearch.cfm?ZIP_CODE=77005&CLASS=1&SUBDIVISION=WEST%20UNIV). I remember driving through that neighborhood when I first started college; I had no idea these were million dollar homes of the elite.

Regarding cars, I own one, but I don't enjoy driving in traffic, and traffic is far, far worse today than it was in the 70s or 80s. Commutes are worse than they've ever been. I'd love to go for a drive along a winding country road, but I don't much care to fight traffic on a congested highway with construction and accidents impeding any sort of sane traffic flow. I actually just rent an apartment near the office I work in and walk to work. Driving for me is mainly to visit friends and get groceries.

</comment><comment><USER21> I had the option of getting my dad's old car for free, recently. It works fine, looks nice and is about 9 years old, but I decided not take it (so he's giving it to his troubled sister).

I live in a suburb of NYC (Floral Park) where it might be useful sometimes, but its just not worth it just considering the cost of monthly insurance. I take the bus/subway everywhere and can take many taxis a month before a car makes more sense.

</comment><comment><USER22> The obvious dual to "the cheapest generation" is "the poorest generation". College is twice as expensive, and there are half as many jobs.

<comment><USER23> And they are worse paid in comparison to before. And the generation is probably far more educated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "We just think nobody truly understands them yet."

I don't think that's true. I think that auto manufacturers don't want to accept that millennials don't associate cars with freedom, independence, maturity, and sex in the same way that cars were viewed by previous generations.

At most they're a way to get from point A to B for most millennials, at worst (if you're a car maker) they're viewed as dirty machines that the world would be better without.

<comment><USER12> It's always weird to hear other GenY say this. At least for me, growing up cars were _exactly_ all of those things.

<comment><USER15> Maybe it's because they were nearly ubiquitous in the middle-class part of suburban Houston I grew up in, but even though lots of people hard cars, I somehow didn't really associate any status with them. Someone always had a car, and if you didn't, someone would pick you up. Nobody except rich kids owned their _own_ cars, so you weren't driving anything particularly interesting anyway, just your mom's station wagon. As long as one person in your circle of friends had use of a car for the day/evening, they could pick everyone up, and it served the utilitarian purpose of covering the long-ass distances between stuff, which were impractical to bike or walk (and of course there was no public transport).

<comment><USER12> Sure, cars weren't status symbols to me or my friends, and I didn't meant to say they were. I said cars were everything my comment's parent listed- notice that comment didn't list "status symbol".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> One possible explanation for why Gen Y and younger aren't interested in buying cars is that the smartphone has replaced what the car once was: The primary tool for social interaction & experiencing the world.

<comment> vezzy-fnord I've always seen it from a highly pragmatic perspective as a mere method of transport.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's an intriguing idea and there's probably something to it, but what kind of shitty journalism is this?

> Needless to say, the Great Recession is responsible for some of the decline.

Yep, but somehow that's a boring assumption that doesn't gel with the authors' thinking so they just brush it aside completely.

> First, gas prices more than doubled, which made car-sharing alluring.

Because the cost of a car-share is somehow independent of gas prices? Really? (Gas prices may make people less likely to drive everywhere, making a car less of a useful purchase, making car-sharing more alluring – I'll grant them that.)

Then it continues with three examples of the "sharing economy", because obviously three examples is enough to declare a trend.

Sigh...

<comment><USER27> > Because the cost of a car-share is somehow independent of gas prices? > Really?

Zip car rentals include gas.

<comment><USER28> But the rental price _includes_ the price of gas. If gas prices tripled tomorrow, Zipcar would have to raise their rates.

It's a bit more decoupled for the customer, but it has the same impact overall.

<comment><USER29> If gas prices are expected to be continuously high, you will try to structure your life in a way that can minimize car usage (say, living in an urban area). That can make not even owning a car at all a viable option.

If you're such a person, and do happen to occasionally need a car for something, that makes you much more likely to be a ZipCar customer. Zipcar doesn't make new customers by having driving be practical, they make new customers by having driving be impractical enough to be (almost entirely) avoided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Thread with more than 200 comments discussing this 2012 article from a year ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4421897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4421897)

</comment><comment><USER31> _Our government not only doesn 't care about us, it schemes to make things worse._

This is the main issue for me, I think about it a lot as it seems to me that we're starting to see the beggining a major change in how people view and respond to government.

For me, the main (only?) problem with democracy is that it requires citizens to pay attention and get involved. Voting is the bare minimum. Taxpayers have to be the watchdog over public spending (it's their money), monitor the ethical behaviour of elected officials and, ideally, be involved in their favorite party to keep political careerism low and avoid electing corrupt/for sale candidates.

Banks can only get as big as regulators allow them to. So it's people that need to force the regulator into action on their behalf, instead of just complaining about getting screwed over by a bank rescue due to incompetence or criminal behaviou.

Whining won't help, only serious participation can save us from an increasingly shitty life imposed by low IQ and/or unethical politicians.

<comment><USER23> Such faith in the democratic process, when all the evidence points to a corrupt dysfunctional system.

Occupy Wall Street did a bit more than your minimum of voting. what happened as a result? Nothing. Obama promised big changes including closing of Guantanamo. Has that happened?

Voting validates the corrupt system.

<comment><USER31> Sistematic protests are fundamental, but hardly all that's necessary.

I saw a guy defending a thesis that makes sense to me: register for a party and become politically active within your own possibilities, e.g. participating in local assemblies, voting for candidates, etc. Change has to come from within.

Obviously, you can't do anything by yourself. You'd need taxpayers to rally up for a massive participation in political parties; that's why it's so hard.

But anyway, I'd be happy to know some alternatives to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When the author wrote this article yesterday:

[http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-to- wri...](http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-to-write-the- worst-possible-column-about-millennials/281129/)

Had he forgotten about co-writing this trenderrific, millenials-as-failed- commodity dreck last year?

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if the slower car sales have anything to do with the quality of the cars? Modern cars are a triumph of engineering and marketing over fun. Over damped throttles, layers upon layers of "safety" computer systems , auto gearboxes to cheat the emissions tests , wide tyres and a lack of feel and fun.

</comment><comment><USER34> This article is older than the Cheapest Generation.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here are some scattered observations and opinions as somebody in this generation. I'm basically just dumping gut feelings here--don't expect a lot of well-written explanations.

 _There is not a lot worth buying that is long-lasting._ Most everything feels mass-produced and cheap, and the things that aren't are pretty obviously marketed at people trying to buck that trend. I don't want to pay 10x more for something without getting that increase in quality, and the fact is that I won't get it.

 _There is no reason to trust the banks._ They're a bunch of fucking crooks, and the smaller the bank (or credit union) the less room they have to be crooks.

 _Credit rating is bogeyman._ Ever since I was old enough to spend money I was told to worry about my credit rating, and to take out credit cards, and do all that other stuff. These messages occurred at about the same time we saw everyone getting hammered over credit-card debt, and heard the Republicans chest-beating over sound fiscal policy. It's plainly obvious that you aren't expected to actually be fiscally sound--otherwise why would they keep flooding you with credit invitations?

 _Cars are expensive and limited in utility._ Insurance rates are high despite companies never actually helping you when you need it, gas is expensive as hell and is clearly being gamed in the commodities market, and commuting is bullshit as white-collar work becomes either redundant or distributed.

 _Our parents set our city planning up for failure._ I live in the fourth- largest and sprawliest metropolitan area in North America (Houston). Every decent improvement is blocked by some greedy Boomer sonovabitch whose business or view would be mildly inconvenienced by the impact of construction. We have food deserts, and suburbs actively designed to discourage walking.

 _Our government doesn 't care about us._ Nobody in my generation believes that Social Security or Mediwhatever will still be around to support us in our old age. Nobody believes that our vote matters, that the politicians sitting in office will kowtow to anybody who won't pay for a fucking dinner or make a fucking donation.

 _Our government not only doesn 't care about us, it schemes to make things worse._ Because the Boomers and Generation X are still considered important, their views and more importantly fears are turned into policy. This gives us the TSA, crazy FDA regs, patent trolling, and all sorts of barriers to progress.

 _Our companies don 't care about us._ Congratulations, we're all contract workers now. Pensions? Hah. Healthcare? Cheapest we can justify. Vacation? Go fuck yourself you needy snowflake. No loyalty, nada, and they expect that they can reach you on the phone or email at all times.

 _We don 't believe in advertising._ We've had so much marketed to us for so long so pervasively that we genuinely do not respond to advertising. It's a developed blind spot, and with the social tools we have available we see no need to be advertised to--we know what we want, and can just search for it.

 _We don 't believe in the police._ Police are pretty obviously not policing neighborhoods and aren't on the beat--they're chaotic actors who get involved and always always always make things worse. The news is filled with stories of DAs fucking over little guys, of state troopers harassing innocent drivers to raise a buck, of SWAT teams kicking in homes and shooting dogs.

 _We don 't believe in the news._ It's become easier than ever to find different coverage on the same stories, and to spot patterns in news-speak. Every talking head sounds the same, and the news is always obviously slanted to one side or the other. There is no journalistic integrity anymore, there is nothing in the mainstream news we can trust.

 _We believe in each other._ The sheer amount of fakeness delivered through ads and bullshit mass media has made us very interested in "real" things, in hanging out with our friends, in starting families. It's not that we're self- centered--it's that so much of the rest of the world is presented through some exploitative nostalgia that we hold it suspect.

<comment><USER35> Late Gen X here.

If these feelings are widespread amongst Gen Y, that actually makes me optimistic for the future. Thanks for writing it up.

<comment><USER36> 30 year old, borderline Y here. OP's points #4, 5, 9, 10 and 12 really nail it for me. I think I've driven, maybe, 6 months out of my life. Bikes, carpools and the bus have so far worked out. From the Oregon Coast to Southwest Idaho... I've never wanted to own a car or even really drive for that matter. I'm glad there might be more people like me out there.

Full disclosure: I wouldn't mind an '83 cutty, however.

<comment><USER37> I enjoy driving. I don't enjoy sitting in traffic or mindlessly plodding along a freeway alone in a steel box. I bought a car that I enjoy driving, but I'm also actively looking for a house in a location that means I don't have to drive to work. That's the ideal for me: a car for doing auto-x or HPDE or road trips or whatever, but not _having_ to drive to work or the store or the bar or…

Edit: Gen Y here (24). I also agree with most of sentiments that OP has.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a spontaneous social network - <AUTHOR> https://blog.box.com/blog/box-graph-how-we-built-spontaneous-social-network/ <comment><USER2> Drawing implicit and explicit relations with organized content and relations to people is a key path for every domain in the coming future. This is a great read and research and has high prospects</comment>


Let's all grow up - <AUTHOR> http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/01/28/lets-all-grow-up/

<comment><USER3> Antonio,

on HN, you wrote --

"I hate how being harsh has become fashionable. Whatever happened to manners?"

on your blog, you follow up by saying --

"I stand behind those words. Acting bitter on the Internet seems to be increasingly gathering the popularity amongst an audience that's used to being amused and entertained by cheap attacks."

Two points: the first is that you use the word "bitter" to back up an anecdote of someone using "fucking" as an adjective to describe a poor User Interface experience. I disagree with that assessment, as there's nothing that suggests bitterness by using "fucking." It's merely a more extreme descriptor of the user's anger or exasperation, but it doesn't suggest bitterness, which has a distinctly different flavour (if you will excuse the pun).

Secondly, I don't believe anything "happened" to manners. There have always been people, often a vast majority of a given population, who used much coarser language to describe their everyday life and experience. Often this was a class distinction, thus the reference to "swearing like a sailor" etc. I expect that many people posting here were exposed -- in the context of software engineering or computer science -- to colleagues who were either used to communicating in an academic or professional context. Although coarse language is to be expected to some extent, written communication about features, bugs, etc. in a corporate US context tends to avoid direct expletives for various reasons ("lack of professionalism" etc). This isn't the case in parts of the OSS community or parts of Europe. You may have seen this before -- <http://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/> \-- the number of fuck/shit/crap uses in the Linux source code. Do you similarly think that the Linux contributors who provided the patches (or indeed Linus himself) need to "grow up?"

Different contexts, different modes of communication.

But the truth why that dude used "fuck" all over the place? It's a very quick and easy expression of dismay or outrage, and it gets cheap laughs. Whether or not that's an adolescent desire I can't say. Yet some of the most serious commentators on, say, international politics heavily use 'fuck' throughout their own communication. Read some interviews with Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, for instance -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh>

</comment><comment><USER4> "Arrington has every right to write about what he wants, however he wants to - and to do so without being harassed by the community."

 _The community_ didn't harass him, a few nutcases did... depending on your threshold for what constitutes harassment.

<comment><USER5> This is getting really boring.

If your business model depends on being "well known"/celebrity (37singles, Arrigton, Seth Godin etc), then you have to accept the trappings that come with that. If you're not prepared to accept the bad things, then don't become well known. Simple. Change your business model so it doesn't rely on your personal 'fame'.

Sorry, but it's just a fact of life. If you become 'famous', you attract criticism, crackpots, abuse, death threats, etc etc.

<comment><USER6> _Sorry, but it's just a fact of life. If you become 'famous', you attract criticism, crackpots, abuse, death threats, etc etc._

Indeed. A case in point (just one of myriad so): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh#.22The_Crime_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh#.22The_Crime_of_the_Century.22)

 _The Lindberghs eventually grew tired of the never-ending spotlight on the family and came to fear for the safety of their then three-year old second son, Jon. Deciding, therefore, to seek seclusion in Europe, the family sailed from New York under a veil of secrecy on board the_ SS American Importer _in the pre-dawn hours of December 22, 1935._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think there are two different phenomena going on here. First, you have anonymous jerks making stupid comments and threats all over the web. No surprise there; people are less thoughtful when they don't have to put their identity behind their words. The second phenomena is when someone tries to make a name for themselves by criticizing something or someone popular. Again, no surprise; it's been shown to be an effective way to get attention.

I don't really have a solution for either of these problems, but I think it's important to make the distinction between these two cases.

</comment><comment><USER8> A trend I think we'll see in the next year: blogs starting to only allow comments that come through Facebook Connect or similar identification services. In my opinion, that would be a change for the better. People actually think about what they say when their name is attached to it.

<comment><USER9> I don't think so. The nutjob that apparently threatened Arrington did so on his own blog too.

I really dislike the attention this is gathering, mainly because it just furthers the ego of the few people stirring trouble.

You can never sacrifice liberty and personal privacy for pseudo security. Do you really want a system where you have to login to an internet terminal with your SSN and it logs all the actions you do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One million dollars to the first person who can make Internet users nicer.

\- No, stabbing doesn't count. DANCE does.

\- Tie everything you do to your personal, real-you identity? Too much, privacy concerns.

\- Raise awareness about how being good to others is better? Since the dawn of mankind we've been trying.

\- Mark it as an unsolvable problem? Nah, not here.

\- Have somekind of "boy scouts of the internet"? Give recognition with badges (achievements for you gaming folks)?

\- Setup a website (this is an old idea I had) "the-golden-rule.com", where you post what YOU want others to do to you, and users can do these stuff to people they know, and brag on the website how they did it? And earn good-doer points?

\- Slashdot moderation applied to random content? Imagine if you could select a DOM node (like Firebug's inspect) and label it "flamebait", "funny", which is sent to a central server, so your blog software can filter your comments not showing some? Or users can assign opacity to "bad" content? (I actually thought of this when I saw Snipd working)

Whatever it is, I think the solution goes around promoting good content, and downplaying bad. Just like in real life... bad people are cast aside, becoming pariahs. Yes, I am fully aware it'll be hard to determine what's good and what's bad. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

But anyway, it would be cool to see some kind of tool along these lines.

<comment><USER11> A million bucks to make Internet users nicer? I think Flickr got paid a lot more for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Awesome. The question is, how can we encourage good behavior without creating the very animosity we strive to prevent?

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember a common phrase from my early computing days which I feel applies to all the hubbub over the TC threats, etc:

 _Don't feed the trolls._

</comment><comment><USER14> I think part of the problem is that we now spend most of our lives interacting only with people our own age. As a 26-year-old grad student, I spend the vast majority of my social life interacting with people 23-30 years old. We have to find our values anew with each generation, we don't have the presence of older, wiser people to teach us such values as class.

This is at least one area where I think the new secular, educated culture has regressed from the old, traditional one. Interaction between people of different ages is natural, and I think healthy. It may prevent the sort of inbred cultural environment where perspective is lost, such as was demonstrated by the spitter in that assaulted Arrington.

</comment><comment><USER11> "This spontaneous reaction was in response to a blog that attempted to be humorous by using the word 'fucking' multiple times in reference to Adobe's UIs which were perceived as lacking a native look and feel."

I assume he means this hilarious Adobe UI gripe blog: <http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/>

If growing up means not appreciating that blog, then color me prepubescent.

<comment><USER15> There's a sliding scale between being the type of idiot child who thinks that anything at all, no matter how obnoxious, is funny, and being a boring goody- two-shoes who can't take even the slightest joke.

Mr. Cangiano seems to self-identify pretty strongly in the latter camp if he finds that site offensive in some way. "Attempted to be humourous"? Geeze, sounds like Cangiano wouldn't know humour if it was chewing his leg off.

IMO the far ends of both side of the scale - lack of judgement, and lack of humour - are equally problematic. Faced with a choice, I'd probably chose the former, since I fear restriction of speech far more than I fear being offended.

I also note that Cangiano's evident lack of any humour at all would probably be a pretty good reason in itself for people to want to play jokes on him. Sometimes these problems are self-created. Some of the most stable, respectable, mature people I know would find it hard to resist taking a self- important bore down a peg or two, given the chance.

<comment><AUTHOR> How dare you? I'll defend my humour till the death. :-)

On the contrary, I can certainly appreciate humour, including augmented forms in which swearwords are used for effect. I love jokes and humour in general, and I indulge in humour myself, in one form or another, most of the time. You place me in the awkward position of having to claim my own qualities, but most people who know me consider me a hilarious person. I also find no basis in your assumption about my self-importance (my humour is often self-deprecating) or my attracting undesired jokes. I don't believe in fact, that I get hassled more than most other prolific bloggers.

Your own comment made me laugh for its gross misrepresentation of who I am. And I wonder how much this is due to you reading too much into my post, without knowing me, and how much I accidentally came across as a uptight person with my "serious" post.

To help counterbalance this skewed perception I invite you to read a couple of other articles of mine: [http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/04/01/announcing- ruby-on-cra...](http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/04/01/announcing-ruby-on- crack/) and <http://antoniocangiano.com/2008/09/09/a-status-update/>.

PS: The Adobe UI blog is hilarious, but I feel it's cheapened by trying too hard. I think it would have much more comedic value if it took the sarcastic "Dear Richard" ([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/4344890/Virgin-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/4344890/Virgin- the-worlds-best-passenger-complaint-letter.html)) approach, but that's just me. This wasn't the focal point of my article of course, but rather a, perhaps weak, incipit.

<comment><USER15> Oops. Seems I erred a bit there - I was trying to make a general point but dirtied it up by applying it to you personally, and in error, obviously.

In my defense, I did say "if he finds that site offensive in some way". Re- reading your blog post, you don't mention the word offensive - I had assumed so, since you singled out that site as "nasty", but obviously not. Yeah, it is kind of boorish and try-hard, I agree! I guess my hair trigger impulse to attack anyone who finds "offense" in swear words misfired pretty badly in this case :/

Anyway, sorry about that. Oh, and by the way, I think any Ruby programmer worth their salt has heard of you, so quit with the "virtually unknown" false modesty .. ; )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Occasionally bitter and angry is justifiable (don't I know). Assault is not. There's lots of better strategies for revenge.

</comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of the spider in Bruce Sterling's novel _Distractions_ which crawled the net for people saying bad things about its owner. When they had crossed its threshold their names got posted on an enemies list website, which was read by nutcase supporters, who then tended to go out and try to assassinate the listees.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very relevant, I think: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=220878>

</comment><comment><USER19> So true.

</comment><comment><USER20> Well said, yet completely wrong. People are thinking this stuff, so why should they not say it? The internet is different from real life - everyone with an opinion lands here, and can give their honest opinion. Let them give it, for those of us who grew up in the old polite days, this may be strange, but it's the new world! We are entering a time of REAL freedom of speech, and now that you are confronted with it, do not run away.

Look at YouTube comments, that's how the world really is like. You want to regulate this away? You think you actually can? Welcome to the new world, it's not worse, it's just different. Insulting people is the rock 'n' roll of 2009, if you can't deal with it, well, there's a cable plugged into your wall that you can simply pull out.

Times are changing, folks. Profanity, insults have become way cheaper, because anonymity also has. Arrington may complain, and all the people in this little community of ours make shake their heads and nod sorrowly and agree that something has to be done, but do you realise exactly how small your community is? You are reaching nobody, and nobody can hear your voice.

What we have is a herd of elephants thundering down a slope, heading towards a world of extremely democratic and free speech, and a bunch of rabbits form a council on the side and decide that they choose that the elephants should all start walking the other way.

Pointless, I say! Change sometimes goes your way, but sometimes change goes the way you don't like. This time it is that way, and very frankly, all these beard stroking and discussion about this will have little effect.

So, we can't just all grow up, because the internet is young. It will stay young, so if you want a place where everyone is grown up and civil, build a gate and hide behind the walls.

And don't forget to tap hard on the walls when the rock 'n' roll music of the neighbours gets too loud.

<comment><USER21> _Look at YouTube comments, that's how the world really is like._

I think the better way of putting it is "Look at the _Internet_ ; that's how the world really is like." YouTube is not the world. Many people never comment on YouTube. (For the record, look at the comments on classical music. They're cultured and sophisticated an learned. Piano virtuosos comment on amateur videos giving tips. Isn't that incredible? My favorite pianist comments on videos on YouTube. That's marvelous.)

 _Insulting people is the rock 'n' roll of 2009, if you can't deal with it, well, there's a cable plugged into your wall that you can simply pull out._

Kind of a bizarre way of putting it. Isn't the idea that if you can't deal with insults, you just make a community with fewer insults? Freedom and all? Freedom _from_ insults is also a potential solution.

 _You are reaching nobody, and nobody can hear your voice._

Right now, my professor is having a discussion about the suicide on Justin.TV, a YCombinator company. So here's one classroom that's been affected by something that I read on Hacker News.

 _What we have is a herd of elephants thundering down a slope, heading towards a world of extremely democratic and free speech, and a bunch of rabbits form a council on the side and decide that they choose that the elephants should all start walking the other way._

Wow. Not at all. If you think trolls are as powerful as elephants you've got to take another look at the world around you. If 4chan is considered powerful, then Google has to be looked at too. I'll take a million trolls to a company that's making a lot of people billionaires and is doing some social good with their work, too. I think the billionaires have a bit of elephant in them too.

 _This time it is that way, and very frankly, all these beard stroking and discussion about this will have little effect._

It's that way until somebody reading this decides to fix the problem. The cool thing about the Internet is that one person can change it all. And Hacker News is an incubator: it's a place for smart people to talk about things.

 _It will stay young, so if you want a place where everyone is grown up and civil, build a gate and hide behind the walls._

It's already old. The most-visited sites online are sites like CNN and Fox: the ancient bogies of the media. They won't last forever, but the sites that replace them will _not_ be the Gawkers. The replacements will be just as civil and just as everyman-friendly.

 _And don't forget to tap hard on the walls when the rock 'n' roll music of the neighbours gets too loud._

Online it's more, "If the music gets too loud you can always create an alternate universe where you dictate all the rules."

<comment><USER20> You don't get what I mean. YouTube is representative of the general internet, and by extension, the general attitude of people. The cool thing about the internet is that one person cannot change it all. Everyones voice is equal. Nobody can change it.

CNN and Fox are not civil and friendly. They are heavily filtered - they don't allow their readers to say anything.

And please stop patting your back that this community is so smart. It's just a bunch of HTML makers who want to become rich by joining Paul Grahams incubator. Slashdot has people with real indepth knowledge about topics commenting, here it's just a bunch of opinions from people without deep knowledge.

The entire premise behind this community means that it's not smart - it's a bunch of college kids with ideas gathering here. There's a lot of talk, a lot of ideals and little real knowledge and experience.

So stop patting yourself on the back - go to usenet, you'll see real smarts. The comments here are really not that smart.

The problem is that when your measuring yard is reddit, even this place seems smart by comparison. What other sites do you visit that you use to measure this place by? Do you have an appropriate yardstick?

<comment><USER21> _You don't get what I mean. YouTube is representative of the general internet, and by extension, the general attitude of people._

 _You_ don't get what _I_ mean. There _is_ no general Internet. There is only the Internet. Youtube is no more indicative of the entire Internet than MetaFilter is. The places I frequent look much more like Metafilter, in fact.

 _CNN and Fox are not civil and friendly. They are heavily filtered - <USER2> don't allow their readers to say anything._

That's what I mean by civil. They're popular because they don't let external sources muck themselves up. And it's working for them.

 _And please stop patting your back that this community is so smart. It's just a bunch of HTML makers who want to become rich by joining Paul Grahams incubator. Slashdot has people with real indepth knowledge about topics commenting, here it's just a bunch of opinions from people without deep knowledge._

The one Slashdot article that stuck in my mind was the article where CmdrTaco called the iPod lame upon its announcement. I don't frequent the site because the articles that don't interest me, but the few times I've read the site it seems like the people are no smarter than people anywhere. The Slashdot people merely have more time to kill.

"Smart" isn't the right word, though the people here certainly are smart. "Mature." That's the word I want. A bunch of people with ideas who don't steamroller over each other.

 _The entire premise behind this community means that it's not smart - it's a bunch of college kids with ideas gathering here. There's a lot of talk, a lot of ideals and little real knowledge and experience._

Ideals are what matter. They always are. The people that move the world forward are very rarely the people who've spent 20 years doing generic work, it's the people who think they can do everything, then do. Hacker News has got some old and experienced people, and it helps temper the community out.

 _So stop patting yourself on the back - go to usenet, you'll see real smarts. The comments here are really not that smart._

Usenet? I've been there a few times. 99% of it is spam. What's more, it's ugly spam. I've never seen a Usenet interface I like. And I'm one of those people who thinks that a part of intelligence means flocking to something that feels good to use. Pretty sites attract people who care about pretty, and I care about pretty.

 _The problem is that when your measuring yard is reddit, even this place seems smart by comparison. What other sites do you visit that you use to measure this place by? Do you have an appropriate yardstick?_

I measure everything against everything. I don't compare HN to Reddit: I don't care much for Reddit. I compare it to Tumblr, SomethingAwful, Metafilter, Slashdot. I compare it to the blogs I read. There's not much more I can compare it to.</comment></comment></comment></comment>