Some Notes on Christopher Alexander (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://zeta.math.utsa.edu/~yxk833/Chris.text.html <comment><USER3> This page seems to omit it, but there was a third book in the _Pattern Language_ series where he applies the ideas to a small complex in a city in Oregon. Sadly, I read somewhere that this got tangled in local politics and was ultimately crushed.

The ideas of anyone as truly gifted as Alexander are doomed to failure, at least within their lifetimes. One look at our current celebrated architecture fills me with mourning for what could have been.

<comment><USER4> Where did you read that? The book you are thinking of is "The Oregon Experiment" [0], the "small complex" is the University of Oregon [1], and the project was broadly successful. To quote WP:

> In the late 1960s and early 1970s, students and faculty at the University of > Oregon protested against log trucks driving through campus; against the > destruction of a 19th-century cemetery; against the military draft and the > invasions and occupations in Southeast Asia; and against the idea that the > University was acting in place of students' parents.[4] On top of this, > buildings created since the end of World War II included Brutalist > architecture, which was aesthetically polarizing.

I grew up in Eugene and can confirm all of this. Following the restructuring of Franklin Boulevard, there are no longer any logging or gravel trucks driving through the Ferry Street, downtown, or university areas. The cemetery grounds across from McArthur Court [2] are preserved and maintained. Many of Alexander's buildings and courtyards are still there, along with some of the older brutalist buildings as well as some of the newer buildings built with donor money [3][4].

I would say that the University is tangled not with local politics, but with multinational money. Nike has had a strong grasp on the University's spending habits for many decades, and their influence twists and distorts everything in the area. Despite Nike's attempts to stop it, though, the University still has an excellent architecture program to this day, and the campus is beautiful and walkable. I would say that the experiment succeeded beyond expectations.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Experiment)

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

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

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield- Dowlin_Complex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield-Dowlin_Complex)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Knight_Arena](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Knight_Arena)

<comment><USER3> I was mostly going by this article, which seems factual.

[http://www.rainmagazine.com/archive/1994/alexander-visits- th...](http://www.rainmagazine.com/archive/1994/alexander-visits-the-oregon- experiment)

Just to reaffirm my prior comment, I think Alexander is a genius. Having walked through the UO campus, it doesn't particularly remind me of his ethos. (The cemetery, of course, is quite nice, but not part of the campus.)

I don't see any indication that Alexander was involved with Hatfield-Dowlin or the Matthew Knight Arena. Is there a source on that?

As for the quality of the architecture program, the campus speaks for itself. I particularly liked that quote about "Science losing faith in the Arch". Ouch.

<comment><USER4> I suppose I wasn't very clear. Alexander not only was not involved with those donated buildings, but he would presumably not have liked what they did to the landscape. The Arena, in particular, is bad for traffic.

I am saying that the University both takes input from qualified architectural plans, and also takes cash from folks at Nike. This article is very interesting and provides great historical context, but pales in comparison to the millions of dollars that Phil Knight and friends have poured onto campus, and the corresponding shift in power. Knight has demanded changes to University staff and faculty, and gotten them, multiple times over the decades. He's also managed to keep his influence well-hidden; "Nike" barely appears at all in this magazine article, for example, despite already being a powerful donor on-campus by the 90s.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

To concentrate on the positive for a moment, if you ever get there, don't miss the Dracula hall (Deady?) and there's the most beautiful ancient and massive lounge inside Gerlinger (?). Johnson Hall (from Animal House) is attractive. And Streisinger (?) evokes Escher in a pleasing way.

All of these are quite old, but I'm almost as.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd recommend Thriving System Theory by Leslie J. Waguespack that integrates Alexander's Ideas across the development of systems. - [https://amzn.to/3bdoSxA](https://amzn.to/3bdoSxA)

I also wrote a book where I took a number of Alexander's ideas and applied them to creating a crypto based economic system. - [https://amzn.to/2RGhfIf](https://amzn.to/2RGhfIf) \- Probably not interesting unless you are really into crypto or really into pattern languages.

I was in Berkeley a couple of years ago and went on a bit of a pilgrimage up the hill to find some of the house that he designed. I ended up running into some of his family and felt like an ass for invading their privacy(I had no idea they still lived in one of the houses), but was able to speak with one of his daughters and he was apparently not doing so well back then. Every time I see his stuff come up on here I worry that it is bad news.

</comment><comment><USER6> Recently I had to think about Alexander when I saw the empty streets of New York. Without people you will notice much more how the buildings overwhelm and cast shadow everywhere.

This is exactly what Alexander was fighting against: building structures that go against human nature.

I read a couple of his books and saw some of his talks. It sometimes makes me a little sad to see through his eyes how we are building today.

<comment><USER7> Shadows aren't bad. They're the best thing that can happen during summer. Well... Them and the wind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Alexander's books have been on my bucket list for a while. He is one of the few thinkers bridging between traditional and modern, and designing lived experience. It is no accident his work extends beyond building design and into human user experience and software architecture.

<comment><USER5> Don't wait. The timeless way of building can be finished in an afternoon and is worth your time.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the encouragement.

I was also eying his other books because I realized that the principles of those design also extends to society, community, and governance. Meaning, with the right living architecture, we can have permissionless community, a lot of similarities to the "Te" chapters of the Tao Te Ching.

I know one of the things that keep coming up is how can one balance between global and local concerns. Our society is coming apart at the seams with a culture war, and the pandemic highlights that tension between global and local. Everything I have read about Alexander's work suggests that he cracked open a way to pull that off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just read A City is not a Tree, linked somewhere here ([http://www.patternlanguage.com/archives/alexander1.htm](http://www.patternlanguage.com/archives/alexander1.htm)) and found it quite interesting.

<comment><USER10> Santa Fe Institute has a podcast on complex systems. There's a chapter on cities that might be interesting if you liked 'A City is not a Tree': [https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/4](https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/4) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> He missed that Notes on the Synthesis of Form inspired the software design perspectives of coupling and cohesion

<comment><USER12> source?

<comment><AUTHOR> They may be referring to the mention on C2.

\----- ([https://wiki.c2.com/?NotesOnTheSynthesisOfForm](https://wiki.c2.com/?NotesOnTheSynthesisOfForm))

I'm struck by the resemblance between the rule of CouplingAndCohesion and Alexander's formal treatment of the "main" problem of design - <USER2> decomposition of the set M of misfit variables (the "things which might possibly break") into subsets which

        maximize the connections between their components (high cohesion) but also
        are minimally connected with each other (low coupling)

In other words, the issue of CouplingAndCohesion isn't just central to software design - it is central to all design, if Alexander is to be believed.</comment></comment></comment>


Ex-Apple employee charged with stealing self-driving car secrets - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/ex-apple-employee-charged-with-stealing-self-driving-car-secrets/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate of: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17502247)</comment>


Sorter:organize ideas, tasks and information using bullet points and hashtags - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vitogit/sorter <comment><AUTHOR> Author here: I develop this app to organize my ideas and tasks. Not sure if anybody like to use bullet list to do this, but I find it helpful.

It uses my library for syncing with Google Drive [https://github.com/vitogit/gDriveSync.js](https://github.com/vitogit/gDriveSync.js) if any is interested.</comment>


I'll Be Watching You: NSA Surveillance and the Male Gaze - <AUTHOR> http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/the-beheld/ill-be-watching-you-nsa-surveillance-and-the-male-gaze/

<comment><USER2> I think there is a fundamental difference between the "male gaze" evaluating and "objectifying" females and the "Sauron's eye" of digital surveillance these days. Sure, men may make you uncomfortable, pay you less, and make your overall self-esteem go down, and that's an injustice, but the other knows, or can know, _everything_ about you. Every out-of-line or could-be-racist comment that you have ever made, any weird porn site you accidentally stumbled upon one day, every angry message you have sent to an ex, any "private" confession you have made on the internet, everyone you care about, everything that you like or don't like, your political and religious beliefs, can be pulled from these databases and used against you. And that is something that I don't think the "male gaze" can do.

I will also say that I was not terribly surprised either. Neither were a lot of people. How could anyone believe their Facebook accounts would be kept private after reading Mark Zuckerberg's chat messages with his friends? ("They trust me, dumbfucks"). I don't know how anyone believes what they say on the internet is private or "anonymous", that is just so naive. But that doesn't make it right to allow it to happen if we know about it.</comment>


Ask HN: Any activites in Bay Area? Except work-bar-sleep? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Hiking. Lots of great hiking trails.</comment>


Evil Software Du Jour: Google's Cocktail Party Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://www.skynettoday.com/content/briefs/google-speech-separation/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note also the excellent point left at the bottom by Jerry Kaplan. Tricky to claim how unreasonable coverage was here, we agreed to be fairly critical of it but there is certainly room for disagreement.

</comment><comment><USER2> We need a convenient shorthand for "stop being afraid of everything" that doesn't require several paragraphs of explanation</comment>


U.K. Scientists to Make Broadband 2,000 Times Faster - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/11/07/u-k-scientists-to-make-broadband-2000-times-faster/ <comment><USER2> _In order to achieve the multi-gigabit speeds, the Ocean project at Bangor University in north Wales is using an existing technology from wireless networks and digital broadcasting known as Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, or OOFDM, to reduce dispersion._

How much change to current infrastructure will be necessary to implement this technology? How will American ISPs react - will they increase capacity, or will they continue to charge us more for less?</comment>


Detroit's Decaying Old Train Station Has 5 New Windows and No One Knows Why - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/detroits-famously-decaying-train-station-has-5-new-windows-and-no-one-knows-why/5766/

<comment><USER2> _One would assume the mystery could be solved through city permit records, but according to Todd, there are no permits, even though there should be. "For that kind of work and the dollar amount that would come with it, yes, permits would be required," says Todd._

Wow, you need a permit in Detroit to put glass into a window?

<comment><USER3> I live in a 10 story condo building in San Francisco, and had a window crack during a Giants fireworks show. After speaking to our building manager I found out the cost to replace a window above the 3rd floor is about $10k. You need all sorts of specialized permits, a contractor, and a paramedic on site during the work.

<comment><USER4> paramedic on the window floor, or at ground level?

<comment><USER5> To what, catch the guy if he falls?

<comment><USER3> On the ground. I believe the concern is over falling glass picking up speed on the way down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simplest explanation: The owners had them installed to test different contractors, designs, and/or materials. Wouldn't you have someone put a few in before you signed a contract to put them all up?

<comment><USER7> Typically no, you wouldn't. Building contractors aren't teenage web designers, they don't put up with that sort of nonsense. Either you give them the whole job, or they walk away.

<comment><USER8> You think someone is going to walk away from a job that size because you asked them to put in one window to start with? I seriously doubt it

<comment><USER7> Maybe not in Detroit, but most places, yeah. If a customer signals that they're going to be a pain in the ass, the contractor will bail. There's no shortage of work for builders.

<comment><USER9> There are hundreds of windows to be added. The owner is a billionaire. The contractor will do whatever he asks.

Also, maybe they're testing window designs and not checking out the contractors work. "Does it fit?" "Let's order 3 and try." It's not hard to imagine why someone would want to install a few windows in a big abandoned building before installing all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're going to renovate the building into something like apartments or offices, wouldn't you want to create a model unit to photograph (from the inside) and use for later?

<comment><USER11> There won't be any "model" units in this building anytime soon, unless you staff it with 24/7 security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ah, the owners are the 'bridge to Canada' family: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4695608>

<comment><USER13> Thankfully the voters voted _for_ the new bridge. [http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/11/michigan_pro...](http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/11/michigan_proposal_6_call_for_v.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My guess is that someone was doing a video or photo shoot inside, and needed a window for their scene.

<comment><USER15> That was my guess too. But the owners do seem to be oddballs, so maybe seeking a sensible reason is unwarranted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Will be interesting to see if anything starts moving with this. I drive by it everyday (our office is downtown Detroit) and it never ceases to amaze me how you can practically 'see-through' the building with all the windows missing.

</comment><comment><USER17> The funny thing is that according to Freshwater Railway's fictitious "history of Michigan Central Station" page [1], 2013 is the year that the Marouns sold the station to Freshwater Railway Corporation to begin constructing a commuter rail depot.

[1] <http://fwrail.org/mcs.htm>

</comment><comment><USER18> "Work is continuously occurring in the interior"

Might be nice to have a window in a room so you have a dry area to stage your work from or take a break in.

Maybe pair it with a lockable interior door for overnight storage.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would have thought it should have 8 New Windows and no start button.

</comment><comment><USER20> I assumed art, but also like the test theory

</comment><comment><USER21> Article doesn't it say whether the train station is abandoned or still functional.

<comment><USER22> > Michigan Central Station stopped serving trains in 1988 with multiple plans > to redevelop the building falling through since. The Morouns have owned the > building since 2001.

FTA

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory>

</comment><comment><USER24> ..squatters.

</comment><comment><USER25> Who upvotes irrelevant junk like this?</comment>


Paul Volcker: How to Reform Our Financial System - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/opinion/31volcker.html?hp=&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> I think an economic hip-hop video is relevant here:

"Fear the Boom and Bust" - a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk>

</comment><comment><USER3> I scanned the article, found no bullet points and no sentence that grabbed my attention enough to read.

As much as I normally respect Volcker, this paper gets an "F" as a "How To".

<comment><USER4> My take: if it's "too big to fail" they need to create a "living will" to direct how to liquidate the company when it does fail. This avoids a sudden, unexpected shock to the system and any resulting dislocations.

In my mind it's debatable that something like that can be done practically, or that a "living will" would really work in practice. I am reminded of the "duck and cover" drills from my youth. Still, something needs to be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kill the Fed.

<comment><USER5> Fed pushes interest rates far below natural levels --> flood of easy credit into the hands of those who, regardless of work ethic, merit as human beings, etc., just can't afford it --> loans don't get paid back --> banks don't have the money they should --> credit flow halts entirely --> everything goes to shit

<comment><USER5> Whatever. Democratic fallacy realized. Moving on with my life.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker Makes the 5th of November One to Remember - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/hacker-makes-the-fifth-of-november-one-to-remember/28076

<comment><USER2> _Though the investigation is still ongoing, Mr. Watkins said the responsible parties could face "serious charges" for their prank. "Childish pranks just don't have a place anymore," he said. "What may have been seen as cute and clever years ago really doesn't get that kind of reaction today."_

The saddest thing I've read in a very long while. You don't think about it much day to day, but we've lost _so very much_. The terrorists didn't just win, but with our all too zealous aid, they frikkin' rocked the house.</comment>


First Charges Filed in U.S. Special Counsel's Russia Probe: Report - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/10/28/robert-mueller-russia-investigation-charges/?utm_campaign=fortunemagazine&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE <comment><USER2> What is the logic of having the orders sealed? Why don't they just arrest the people in question? Or is this a thing where they don't want to mess up their weekend?

<comment><USER3> Probably more about seeing if anyone starts behaving erratically this weekend.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SQL Weekly – Weekly SQL challenges and resources to up your data skills - <AUTHOR> http://sqlweekly.github.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi. Simple weekly SQL Challenges in your email to help you get better at SQL.

</comment><comment><USER2> There's something familiar about this to me, particularly that GDPR page ;-) (it's fine - good luck!)

Your link to LinkedIn is broken, by the way.</comment>


Ideology trump facts - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080924-does-ideology-trump-facts-studies-say-it-often-does.html

<comment><USER2> Ideology is a communicable mental disease. Don't watch TV. Especially news.</comment>


British Engineer Designs Own Heart Valve Implant, Saves Own Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-01/british-engineer-designs-his-own-heart-valve-implant-saves-own-life <comment><USER2> Perhaps there is a gap here for a website designed to bring these problems out in the open for engineers/programmers to solve :-)</comment>


I Am Unhireable - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/vorahsa/i-am-unhireable-541d <comment><USER2> In my experience (granted; anecdotal, limited, etc.) people who enter a job that is mostly coding (job title notwithstanding) and who come from an academic background often tend to write seriously unmaintanable, borderline illegible code.

I think this is because they are not used to having other people read and work with their code, especially if they have just graduated and never worked in industry. This is potentially justifiable in an academic setting where stream- of-consciousness type programming is acceptable for a barebones proof of concept, but attempting to work with 1000+ LOC functions with non-descriptive variable names etc. is not only not acceptable in modern software, it is ungracious to your coworkers.

Unfortunately this can sometimes be coupled with a good dose of hubris ("I have a PhD and you don't!"), and efforts to provide constructive criticism are often met with anger/apathy/belittling/ignorance. Their pride, which may be well be deserved within the narrow field of their academic work, unfortunately doesn't mean that they automatically know how to write maintainable software and also potentially hinders them learning how to. This is perhaps why there is a trend to dismiss "academic candidates".

That being said, some of the best software engineers I have ever worked with hold doctorates - and people worth working with will usually admit their limitations anyway. This is not limited to those with an academic background in general, as accepting our faults is the first step in adressing them.

<comment><USER3> > Unfortunately this can sometimes be coupled with a good dose of hubris ("I > have a PhD and you don't!")

Is that sentiment actually common? I don't know any other phds who would ever bother pulling that out for coding (maybe writing a research paper, even that is dubious); even in a research lab where phds are more normalized but there are still lots of people without.

I hear this stated online, but it always sounds more like some insecurity on either side going on.

We do get the shaft on hiring because we are often overqualified, meaning we might bail quickly when a better opportunity shows up. I can't really blame smaller companies for worrying about that, especially in this day and age of $300k salaries.

<comment><USER4> I have the same question. In my lab the way you make fun of someone for writing a horrible monstrosity of code is to call it "research quality" or "Ph.D quality" or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have learned to become wary of companies asking for passion. More often than not, it is usually a buzzword exploited by some companies to make you do more work for less pay.

<comment><USER6> Yup! Passionate, inexperienced programmers are more impressive. They will write 10,000 lines of complicated code using a dozen frameworks and libraries. The experienced old timer will get the same done with 2000-3000 lines and only 1-2 libraries.

A further problem is that the impressive code becomes difficult to debug and extend as the requirements evolve. And of course with 2-3 years at a job, the original developer has long skipped to another job, leaving another junior developer befuddled with the "legacy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMHO it all boils down to "unhireable... where?". Of course you're hireable, there are plenty of places for people in their 40s with plenty of experience. There is a bias of course in Hacker News towards young fast&furious companies in Silicon Valley where it appears that if you're not a ninja bro coder you're out, but it's just a fraction of the cake.

</comment><comment><USER8> All these criteria make sense except for the PhD. That seems like one of those humble brags.

<comment><USER9> I've heard companies express wariness of people with PHD's. It's a stupid reason to reject someone - as are all the points he makes - but yeah, I've heard that.

<comment><USER10> I am personally wary of folks with PhDs. It's certainly not a reason to reject an application, but I don't really consider a positive, either (for a general software engineer - if I need a systems engineer and you've been doing systems engineering research, then different story).

It's just a completely different way of thinking about problems and I have had trouble with folks who weren't able to change their mode of thinking. If I was hiring a researcher, I wouldn't consider 5 years of coding at tiny startups to be an advantage. It's really the same thing - demonstrated skills at a related, but somewhat different enterprise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not a fan of click bait titles. You're very hireable.

<comment><USER12> No one is, but the matter of fact is that you still clicked. We are fickle animals.</comment></comment>


Show HN: An infinitely nested task manager where progress bubbles up to the top - <AUTHOR> https://discotask.com <comment><USER2> Is the great accessibility intentional? If not, you should know you're on the right track. The app is basically usable with a screen reader, and that's something you can't say about most task trackers. If you want to keep it that way, my hn username at gmail.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great to hear! Can't say it was intentional, I haven't honestly even gotten to my routine accessibility-pass I do on most apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The homepage is a white screen with JavaScript disabled.

If requiring JS to render the homepage is a conscious decision made considering the various tradeoffs, please at least add a message saying so in a noscript tag.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do, thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER4> > considering the various tradeoffs

Would love to know the tradeoffs. The main page at least is a static marketing page. Surely a canonical case where the page should render under almost any circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those that want to see it in action

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs)

<comment><USER6> This should be in their home page ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Developers, please stop blocking zooming on mobile Web pages via meta tags.

<comment><USER8> You mean by this tag?

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum- scale=1">

I imagine the only problem here is the maximum-scale parameter. Is that so, or are there other ones?

I haven't touched a frontend for a few years. It was the case that this tag was needed to display anything on mobile (and Google would all but delist you if you omitted it or used it incorrectly). I imagine things have improved. The optimist in me would like to think that the tag isn't even necessary anymore, but I can't trust that guy.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I use this one:

        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

and "initial-scale" is only needed by Chrome Android AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 100% Workflowy copy / clone

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

Let see how this pan out.

* "Good artists copy, great artists steal.", Steve Jobs

<comment><USER11> Wow. That landing page is bad. I learned that some successful people and businesses use Workflowy, but I didn't learn what Workflowy is or why I might need it. Is the desktop page better than the mobile one?

<comment><USER12> Nope, there's nothing on the desktop page either. I have no idea what Workflowy is after visiting the site. There's an email list signup, a login button, and some blurbs about how Twitter and the NYT use the software. But nowhere that explains or shows what the software is.

Edit: Wait! Click on the tiny barely-readable links in the bottom corner of the page (at least on desktop) that say "List Maker" or "Online Notepad" (they both are different URLs, but link to the same page). Then you get an interactive demo.

After looking at that demo, I think Disco is ahead feature- and presentation- wise. I don't see any way to do the status tracking/people pictures/coloring showcased on Disco's landing page in Workflowy.

<comment><USER13> > _Edit: Wait! Click on the tiny barely-readable links in the bottom corner of > the page (...)_

Yeah, this looks like the author is too happy doing SEO shenanigans and multiple landing pages, while forgetting to make the root page useful...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's a good number of dead scrollbars on Linux/Chrome:

[https://i.imgur.com/kyT6xlF.png](https://i.imgur.com/kyT6xlF.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/5LJzJsa.png](https://i.imgur.com/5LJzJsa.png)

If you're developing on OSX, I recommend turning on scrollbars to make this more obvious.

It looks like there's the beginnings of keyboard shortcuts? (like tab and shift tab) I think for this to really appeal to power users, there should be very good keyboard shortcuts. And for an app like this, I'd think most users would be more on the power side.

When clicking on a task to drill into it, I wish it had a focused input ready for my to type right away.

So far this looks pretty cool. I think it's a good idea, and it looks pretty promising.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a vim user myself, keyboard shortcuts are a top priority. Will look into that scroll bar issue. Thanks for the helpful feedback!

<comment><USER15> You should generally use `overflow: auto` rather than `overflow: scroll`

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love Trello so I checked it out.. Seems like a really good idea. I would use it, but I would worry about losing all my shit if it moved to a payed model.. Maybe keep the existing features free always, and only charge for future features?

Also visually, its white with lots of _almost_ white / grey stuff.. Its really hard to see _anything_!

<comment><USER17> 100% this. I'm wary of getting too invested in this with no guarantee that I'll be able to keep my stuff if I choose to not pay on whatever arbitrary date that is pushed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be weary too, that's why I'll be adding import export soon, and I'm leaning towards never charging for single users. No promises though since I don't know what kind of expense that will be for me. This is a bootstrapped product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like the concept and would absolutely try it out, but it requires too much clicking.

There is no keyboard navigation at all, not even closing modals or selecting items in the dropdowns. Being able to navigate through the tasks and expand with the arrow keys would be awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Based on the HN feedback, keyboard navigation is a top priority :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this really doing something complicated enough that I need an account for it? And why would I ever want to make an account with no demo or any idea of what this thing does and is about aside from _two_ vague sentences?

</comment><comment><USER20> Some random nits:

1\. Adding an item - when pressing Enter to create it, the resulting (static) text moves 1px down and left relative to where the edit field was. It's a smaller thing but annoying.

2\. It's possible to add empty items, so holding Enter down will create a long list of nothing.

3\. There's no easy way to delete items, e.g. erroneously created ones.

4\. There's no easy way to edit items either. This appears to require 3 left- clicks at least - 2 too many.

5\. Text size and spacing is too large and non-adjustable. The thing with ToDo lists is that you'll definitely want to cram as much items on the screen as possible.

6\. Adding a brand new label is somewhat confusing, because, apparently, the label first needs to be created and then, separately, assigned. This is not obvious, nor expected.

All in all though (and ghost scrollbars notwithstanding) it looks nice and simple, but the UX needs a bit of polish.

PS. The name is not very memorable. Perhaps consider changing it while you are not too far in with the current choice?

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be interesting to be able to visualize dependency relationships.

It's easy to see what's blocked, but being able to identify blocking tasks that aren't yet in progress is important.

</comment><comment><USER22> Does this look like org mode to anyone else?

<comment><USER13> It does, because it's an outliner with a progress bar and some tagging bolted on top. It does look nice though, in a way non-Emacs users might appreciate. I can entirely imagine myself - from the alternate reality where I didn't know about Org Mode - using this for personal projects.

But enough with the criticism. I like how this looks like a nice, self- contained product. And I love that the author understands that tasks are subdivisible to more than one level. I'm really, really fed up with the usual issue trackers and project management tools we use in this industry - all of them limit your tasks to one, at best two levels.

(I wish someone one day would recognize that tasks don't form trees, but directed graphs; Org Mode, being an outliner, doesn't handle this, but I'm surprised no other tool seems to handle it either.)

<comment><USER23> > (I wish someone one day would recognize that tasks don't form trees, but > directed graphs; Org Mode, being an outliner, doesn't handle this, but I'm > surprised no other tool seems to handle it either.)

Does org-edna help any? Although it doesn't help with viewing them as graphs, it may help with making TODOs act like graphs.

<comment><USER13> Haven't used it yet, but skimming the documentation, it does seem to look like half of the picture. The other half would be a way to get a critical path analysis out of it, and somehow visualize everything together in a way that makes it easy to notice where you have slack or underutilization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have used workflowy off and on. After trying disco I like where it is headed. However it's missing a few ux touches that workflowy does really well,

\- keyboard shortcuts \- subtle animation when navigating nest levels \- ability to add deep nested items while in top level view

Looking forward to see the next version!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is bundled with [https://parceljs.org/](https://parceljs.org/)

It's great to see a nice project using it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Overall pretty great experience with parceljs :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really love this as it might obviate Trello - I have two details that might add to the experience.

Drag and drop functionality to move bullets and lists up and down so that points aren't locked into the order you input them in (exactly how Trello works)

Support for link recognition (any link will auto underline and become a working web link)

<comment><USER26> I also would like to be able to make a single point blocked by multiple points.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too, I will probably add this in the future. In the meantime, you can kind of get around this by creating subtasks of the task that is blocked by more than one thing, and each subtask can be blocked by a different task. The benefit of this is that you end up being more explicit about what is causing a task to be blocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> get-logname Nice privacy policy.

<comment><USER25> I actually like the candide talk, commonly you have two options. 1. Invest a good amount of time researching and making sure to write a privacy policy that match the your goals for the site short term and long term. 2. Copy one and hope for the best.

This third option is nice, is honest, it's not a lie, and makes clear to the end user who is responsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Really nice! I would love to add all my notes here, but I sometimes needs to include images, and this is a blocking feature for me. Any plan to include that?

A really nice to have would be to have inline Latex mathematical formula, but it may be too specific for your app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Definitely will be adding file uploads.

Not planning on adding Latex anytime soon though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I generally like the idea but I'm not sure why you need the full name at sign up? There's no need within the product to have my full name. Also, it requires at least two words which is not necessarily the case for all names worldwide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Full name is just for a better autocomplete experience when writing comments and assigning tasks. Also interesting that some people have one word names, I'll keep that in mind!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One piece of feedback: please don't require unique usernames. You already have a unique email address, and it's a pain to have to remember another unique username for another site when the first thing I try isn't available.

<comment><AUTHOR> you don't really need to remember your username. Log in with email password and you can see your username from the profile screen. I added usernames as the method for team organizers to invite you to their team. Had I gone with email I'd be collecting the email addresses of people who didn't sign up for DiscoTask, which I don't really want to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Another site that shows a completely blank page when first-party cookies are disabled.

It seems like an epidemic lately. So much JS in the wild just stops cold when some cookie or LocalStorage permission isn't available, and that failure prevents some other JS from running that unhides the page or runs a CSS transition. It doesn't seem like long ago when most sites at least showed some content when cookies were disabled, but that's beginning to feel like the exception.

<comment><USER20> Expecting first-party cookies to work is a reasonable assumption on site's developers part. Blocking these is rarely well-justified, so supporting this case is largely pointless.

Session cookies is a perfectly fine option that eliminates the need to pass the session id in each every URL. Sticky cookies are also something that most people will actually _want_ because it helps improving the UX on the site on return visits. If you don't want either, in principle, clear them. This can be trivially automated in a wide variety of ways.

* That said, I agree that the site rendering shouldn't depend on the cookie access. But it's almost certainly an oversight of not testing for a marginal case that vanishingly few people have. So loudly moaning about it looks very odd - you are complaining about something that nobody needs. Just like a website not rendering well in Lynx.

<comment><USER23> Not all browsers, on all devices, make it trivial to set cookie permissions so flexibly. And, as I said, it's not just about cookies, but also about LocalStorage and such APIs--which, historically, if not presently, do not always behave as desired with regard to clearing data. Forgive me for not wanting to grant all sites the permission to use them automatically.

I'm sure that, to many such webmasters (may I use that term?), I am indeed a nobody. Still, the Web is worse for it--a significant regression in usability and compatibility. Feel free to ignore my "loud moaning"\--maybe the OP will appreciate the bug report.

<comment><USER20> A bug report would've said - The site doesn't render if the first-class cookies are disabled.

The way you phrased it was different, both in spirit and in intent. Hence the "moaning" qualifier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is no clickable link in the password reset email.

</comment><comment><USER9> I dont think a hierarchical structure is the best way to handle something like this, as deeply nested items might also be depended on by elements from other branches.

Better would be a relational structure.

<comment><USER31> Cross-branch blocking seems to have been accounted for, as seen in the demo video [someone else linked][0] in the thread: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FEGuElPPIs)

[0]:[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934075)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Open source/core or instant turndown.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it just me or is this JIRA for managers?</comment>


Wolfram Alpha Harvard-Sneak-Peak Video - <AUTHOR> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram/

<comment><AUTHOR> They did a great job with what they've put together so far (and if I would've had reasonable expectations, I'd be happy) but I felt he hasn't addressed some of the toughest problems yet:

handling proprietary data

what if scenarios

training (ie new scientific discoveries require manual intervention)</comment>


The Annoying Thing About Self-Driving Cars: They Obey the Speed Limit - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/07/13/eric_schmidt_on_self_driving_cars_biggest_problem_they_obey_speed_limits.html <comment><USER3> Hopefully within the next 30 years or so, we will gradually phase out driver's licenses. Much like how smoking was ubiquitous in the 50s & 60s, but as we as a society came to realize its grave dangers, it gradually became illegal in many public places.

The idea that we allow almost anyone 16 or older to control several thousand pounds of metal that can travel at high speeds really is quite absurd when you think about it. There are more than 30,000 deaths every year due to car accidents, and hundreds of thousands more injuries.

It's amazing how screwed up our society's priorities are. That's ten 9/11's worth of deaths every year from car accidents. By the time the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have ended, we'll have spent around $4 trillion on them altogether[0]. If even 1/100th of that had been redirected to research on self-driving car technology, we might have already saved tens of thousands of lives.

0: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-usa-war- idUSTRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-usa-war- idUSTRE75S25320110629)

<comment><USER4> Yes and we will have flying cars.

Except we won't. Because flying cars is called "aviation" and aviation brings new dimensions of "hard" in addition to a third spatial dimension. And truly self driving cars that require no dynamic input from humans at any time is something we'll get asymptotically closer to, but will never quite achieve except in relatively specialized cases.

This is what I believe. I can't prove it, but it is what my gut feeling tells me.

And why would you want to? Of course, for typical highways it is obvious that it would probably be both faster and safer to have some sort of mandatory cooperative autonomous mode, but even that will be hard to achieve. I've met some of the people who work on developing and standardizing certain inter-car protocols to solve these types of problems. Most of the people I've met are neither brilliant nor capable. For the most part they illustrate to me a) how hard the problem is at scale (ie. get all manufacturers onboard) b) there will be a lot of idiots involved in this which means it'll take an _awful_ lot of time to even come up with even baseline systems for proper crash-avoidance -- nevermind the real-time dynamic systems for controlling masses of fast-moving vehicles.

<comment><USER5> _Yes and we will have flying cars._

The flying cars argument is silly. Yes it was a fanciful 1950s dream that never made it to reality... however autonomous flight is real.. a good portion of commercial air flight is done under autopilot (including landings).

We never even got close to flying car tech... but saying that _truly self driving cars that require no dynamic input from humans at any time is something we'll get asymptotically closer to, but will never quite achieve_ is silly, we're already very close to this reality. I'd be very surprised if in 10 years we don't have a completely computer controlled car.

<comment><USER4> Why is it silly? Consider this: we've had autopilots for many, may years. But even very limited gadgetry such as automatic parking is a very recent development in cars. And that is an almost trivial scenario.

(The reason the flying car won't be a reality is that all of those (auto- piloted) air planes do in fact have a crew of 1-3 highly qualified professionals -- and the flying cars would be piloted by the sort of people who can't figure out roundabouts. Also, the density of planes is extremely low compared to what would be the situation if flying cars were commonplace).

Also, planes have maintainance regimes that are vastly different from your car. I bet that you did not go through a checklist when you got into your car this morning, nor when you parked it. You probably do not have the faintest idea how the fluids are doing. You probably don't even know if all the external lights work. It is highly unlikely that you even performed the most rudimentary tests of all before getting into your car: walking around it and kicking the tyres. There was no qualified and certified mechanic (for your specific model) to go over your car prior to setting off.

<comment><USER5> All of this is true.. however you categorically stated that we _"will never quite achieve"_ totally autonomous cars. To me that sounds like a silly statement especially when compared to flying cars (a totally different class of problem).

The fact is that we're very quickly edging towards fully computer controlled cars. You have to have a truly limited imagination to think we will _never_ get there.

The argument about airplane maintenance also doesn't hold water. Result of a malfunctioning plane: plunge 30,000ft and hundreds dead. Result of a malfunctioning car: coast to a gentle stop. See any difference?

<comment><USER4> I was being imprecise. Sorry about that. I don't think that we will see totally autonomous cars _in_our_lifetime. "Never" is not a useful timescale.

      You have to have a truly limited imagination to think we
      will never get there.

40 years ago people did the same sorts of extrapolations on air-travel and figured that 15-20 years later all commercial air travel would be supersonic. And why wouldn't they? Orville Wright was still alive when the first supersonic flight took place. We went from not being able to fly heavier-than- air machines to breaking the sound barrier in 43 years. But of course, that didn't happen.

And in just the past few years we've gone backwards. There is currently no supersonic passenger jet in service.

A lot of domains appear to exhibit the same asymptotic behavior. Space travel, medicine, AI etc. Domains where initial speed causes undue optimism and where we later suffer regressions. (No regressions in medicine you say? Well, how about the crazy anti-vaccination people and the re-emergence of diseases that were practically eradicated?)

I build stuff, I program stuff, I occasionally build and race cars. I don't think my skepticism stems from _lack_ of imagination -- I think it has more to do with an abundance of imagination.

      The argument about airplane maintenance also doesn't hold water. Result of a
      malfunctioning plane: plunge 30,000ft and hundreds dead. Result of a
      malfunctioning car: coast to a gentle stop. See any difference?

I'm sorry, but that is pure nonsense and many, many, many people pay the ultimate price to prove you wrong every day.

<comment><USER5> _I don't think that we will see totally autonomous cars _in_our_lifetime_

Now you're moving the goalposts to suit your argument.

Supersonic flight was abandoned because it is expensive and prohibitively noisy. Will some set of obstacles also arise to stymie autonomous vehicles? Maybe, but we wont know till we try.

The regression in medicine is due to pure stupidity. Will the same or similar type of stupidity raise its head to block self-driven cars? Again the answer is maybe. Maybe not. We wont know till we've tried.

 _many, many, many people pay the ultimate price to prove you wrong every day_

You misunderstood what I said. My point was that if a computer controlled car's computer fails it can be made to fail-safe. Shut down and coast to a stop. The same cant be said for planes.

Of course we will have scenarios of computers being mis-programmed and causing death. The point being that once a bug is found and eliminated it wont reoccur. Not to mention that a human will never drive as well or recover from trouble (such as a fishtail) as well as a computer. Our interfaces are simply too slow, clumsy, prone to fatigue, prone to mis judgement due to adrenaline etc. the list goes on.

I get what you're saying about optimistic extrapolation being a trap... but we don't have to extrapolate far from where we are today. The google self driven cars have already driven tens of thousands of miles with the only recorded accident occurring when the vehicle was under human control.

Not only that but Nevada has already licensed the cars for testing on its roads. Now you can argue that the testing is not 100% authentic. From what I understand the routes are pre-programmed and 2 occupants must be in the car at all times. But to say that this tech wont go anywhere for the next 50-60 years (however long you intend to live :) ) ... seems to lack imagination.

This isn't everyone using personal jet-packs or interstellar travel we're talking about here.

<comment><USER4> > You misunderstood what I said. My point was that if a > computer controlled > car's computer fails it can be made to > fail-safe. Shut down and coast to a > stop. The same cant be > said for planes.

Just because you are at ground-level you are not safe if you lose control of the vehicle.

> The point being that once a bug is found and eliminated it > wont reoccur.

We already have a software industry and we know that this doesn't happen: bugs do not occur only once and then get eliminated forever. There are people making a living writing books about mistakes that people repeat over and over in software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't very smart.

Most delays and jams and other various issues drivers deal with are a result of human error. Suppose a driver on a highway slows down because {they see something interesting, their kid acts up, life happens}. This makes the car immediately behind them slow down. And the car behind that slows down. It's been shown that this forms a wave that propagates backwards at 12 mph or so. The fact is, this delay is caused by a human mistake/issue.

In a world in which every car drives "optimally", or at least without many of the human error mistakes that currently are made, many traffic jams will be a thing of the past. Many issues will cease to exist any any issues that do exist will be ameliorated and fixed by a machine that can do it better than most humans (or at least, the average joe) can. Perhaps one will be able to drive at the speed limit the entire distance from source to sink if the traffic grid is integrated into the network.

The transition to the post-driver road, however, will be difficult.

<comment><USER7> There was a fun blog post several years ago, which has stuck with me ever since, and I think about it every time I'm stuck in a traffic jam. It was a one-man experiment in "fixing" traffic jams, by willfully slowing to the point where he no longer had to stop/start and could maintain a steady speed. He found that traffic behind him would "unkink", making the drive for everyone behind him a bit more pleasant/safe/consistent. He also found that many drivers would become angry at him, because he was going slower than the cars around him...but the cars around him were speeding up only to have to stop soon after to wait for traffic. Many people are, frankly, too stupid to be in control of a couple thousand pounds of rolling death...but, it'll be a challenge to get people to give up that control.

Hopefully, the ability to read, play games, watch TV, etc. while being driven to work will be sufficient to make people willing to let their smart cars take over the roads. As you note, traffic jams will become a thing of the past in most cases; self-driving cars can also factor in traffic data, weather information, etc. in ways that a human driver probably can't easily/effectively do, making them safer and more efficient in a lot of other regards.

<comment><USER8> That's right. What you describe has been automated as an adaptive cruise control.

Almost a decade ago, traffic studies demonstrated that if only 20% of cars used adaptive cruise control, then traffic jams would be greatly diminished at then-peak carrying capacity. Or more cars could be carried on a particular road before traffic jams occurred.

Adaptive Cruise Control is currently a feature on many luxury cars, but will trickle down to mass market cars during the transition to driverless vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While they may obey the speed limit, they will also drive in the right lane so it's OK. What is annoying are people blocking passing lanes which results in aggressive drivers making less than good decisions about maneuvering around the blockage.

</comment><comment><USER10> Its not really important what speed driverless cars actually settle on. What matters is that they are consistent. The most dangerous thing about human drivers is that they are erratic.

I would not be at all surprised in the coming world of robo-cars to find that humans who still wanted to drive themselves will need special licensing and training, much like pilots of today, if nothing more than to learn to be predictable.

<comment><USER11> Actually it is very important from a fuel economy perspective. Air resistance is quadratic in velocity, so a car that gets 35mpg at 65mph will get, say, 20mpg going 85. On the other hand, the possibility of convoy driving (<http://phys.org/news/2011-05-drivers.html>) means you might be able to have your cake and eat it too: rapid travel with little efficiency loss from wind resistance.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I'd feel safe about convoy driving unless there were some kind of way to manage emergencies (like a tire blowout, engine problem, deer) which under normal circumstances isn't very dangerous because you have a second or two to manoeuver. But in a close convoy system, there is little room for error and even an automated system may be unable to compensate for the emergency in a timely fashion thus resulting in a chain reaction crash --the kind we see in foggy conditions with human drivers.

<comment><USER13> One option to reduce convoy risk is have cars attach to one another such that no single car can cause a failure in the overall system (similar to trains).

We shouldn't think of automated cars as independent as we do. They are in fact simply compartments.

With that in mind, imagine cars attaching to each other to form trains and break apart as they begin to reach the desired destination.

This also has impacts on fuel efficiency since drag can be reduced across the entire system.

(Cars don't have to be the same model, they just need a formalized attachment system on the front / rear).

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I think buffers (like in trains) could be an option, maybe magnetic. If it requires physical contact, though, that would mean a whole train of cars (maybe cars would be grouped into sets of ten or so?) would have to speed up and down as cars joined and left the caravan --I know we do this in everyday driving, but it's "softer".

[edit, just thinking, if we knew destination in advance, the first car would be the one going furthest and the last car in the group going the shortest so that the interruption would be inconsequential]

Back to accidents, there will the edge cases. And because it's programmed (and not a human "accident") people might find more fault in the system than they would in a human. So even though accidents and deaths would/could be reduced considerably, those that would occur might be seen as more negligent than accident. Just thinking out loud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I believe Google has publicly said a few things that are slightly contrary to this. Their vehicles are allowed to exceed the speed limit by 5%-10% in order to keep pace with a car in front of them. They do this because currently there are few things as reliable in terms of road information as another car being driven by a human. So the code makes an exception basically saying that its better to break the speed limit in order to be able to do the lazy thing and follow another car.

Having worked on an autonomous car and competed in the Urban Challenge I can attest to the safety of these vehicles. They truly can navigate obstacles that are withing 2-3 inches of the car reliably and confidently. The other interesting thing is that highways are in many ways one of the easiest types of road to drive on. Highway driving while fast, is very structured. There are relatively few rules to follow and they are rarely broken. For this reason I believe highways will be the initial realm of autonomous vehicles and that they will be allowed to drive at higher speeds(perhaps under the guise of human control of the speed in order to shift the blame to a human party.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I for one, welcome law-abiding driverless cars.

Speed limits are set for a public benefit, and its a sort of tragedy of the commons why speeding by humans is the norm.

<comment><USER15> The major danger on highways is difference in speed between cars ("variable traffic"), it's much safer to go with the flow of traffic. Absolute speed has little to do with it.

Additionally, speed limits are set for the benefit of police (increasing ticket costs) and for the benefit of politicians who can now say they are "making roads safer".

Case in point: the Autobahn <http://autos.aol.com/article/driving-the- autobahn/>

(but I am also still welcoming driverless cars! I'm okay getting places slower if it means I can read or study.)

<comment><USER16> Well, there are a lot of other reasons for the speed limits as well.

Lack of sufficient climbing lanes on most of the original interstate system. Poorly designed junctions, including merges into the high-speed lanes Inadequate road thickness (autobahn is 55-75cm, US is 28cm), initial quality, drainage capability and maintenance. Inadequate driver training. Lack of enforcement for failing to bear right (though the US is doing this more now) and other minor moving violations that disrupt traffic flow.

The US interstate system would need considerable re-engineering, more funding to keep up with the required maintenance, and both tougher licensing requirements and stricter enforcement of minor moving violations that increase risk. It's a huge cost, that doesn't provide proportionate benefit in all parts of the country, and a questionable ROI. Trust me, I'd love higher speed limits, but I realize the giant mountain of money and effort that would be required to make it happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Once (begin assumption here) autonomous cars become the norm I don't think this will be a problem. The reason speed limits exist at all is because we don't want people who are not physically capable of driving at that speed (poor eyesight, bad reflexes, etc....) to try, so we set the limit at a level where we think everyone should be reasonably ok in that situation.

But if all cars are run by computers, we can raise speed limits considerably, since reaction time, sleeplessness, stupidity, etc... are all non-factors anymore. The only problem is whether or not your car can actually go as fast as everyone else, but for that we can set up fast and slow lanes similar to the somewhat unofficial way things go on the highway now (faster the closer to the leftmost lane you are).

<comment><USER18> > The reason speed limits exist at all is because we don't want people who are > not physically capable of driving at that speed to try

Is that the reason we have speed limits?

I've always thought it's more like we don't want to deal with the consequences of something going wrong when there is too much energy involved. i.e. blow a tire, or hit a patch of gravel at 60mph and see what happens. Now try it at 160mph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'll be fine with that as long as lane splitting is legal on my non-autonomous motorcycle. Since lane splitting is legal in CA, I wonder how well google's vehicles deal with other drivers that split lanes?

<comment><USER20> I've seen demonstrations where the autonomous car recognizes bicyclists and adjusts the travel path to avoid the "obstacle". I imagine with a motorcycle the autonomous car should always see it coming up behind it and could be programmed to give it some room as it gets close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This will be an issue as long as we have more human drivers and few self- driving cars. In future when there are more or all of them are self-driving ones, there won't be any need for limits - speed or otherwise. The cars can know the position, speed of each other and figure out how fast they can go to reach their destinations. Perhaps you can pay a subscription so you can always drive at a higher speed than most normal people or buy tickets to drive fast for that day when you need most.

</comment><comment><USER22> Remember that most of the world hasnt even adopted automatic transmission because people like to have full control over their cars and that technology is decades old.

</comment><comment><USER12> Once we get to the point where all cars on highways are automation capable, if not outright enabled, there should be the option to have speed dictated by road conditions so that, under optimal conditions, the system could adjust speed up, and adjust speed down as conditions worsen. That is, allow speed to be variable and dependent on conditions on the road (at that particular section). Or, they could rate different lanes at different speeds, or a combo allowing people to tell the system where to merge into.

There is the complication of less capable cars --so that maybe bunches of cars (those part of a wave of traffic) would have to submit to the safety levels of the least safe vehicle. (Let's say a bunch of high performance sports cars and an economical car which isn't designed for hugging the road nor has grippy tires; or, throw in a cargo truck).

Maybe the rightmost lane could be reserved for non autonomous vehicles like classics and holdouts (people afraid of automation/driverlessness).

Given that speeding tickets would be rare, the state could impose fees based on a combination of emissions and also road wear (tonnage, for example) to offset lost revenue.

</comment><comment><USER23> Part of the problem is that communities keep lowering the speed limits below recommendations and even the guidelines of law. My father, who has a background in urban planning, is fond of, or frustrated enough to point this out.

A street that, per our state's code and regulation, should be 45 mph, gets dropped to 40, then to 35. Nothing significant has changed with its facing development and use. But the community, or of some excess of caution or some orthogonal desire for control, keeps ratcheting it down.

In other spots, they start putting up stop signs at every block. They aren't really warranted, but in a variety of "think of the children" attitude, perhaps combined with a twist on NIMBY (Not In My Back-Yard) attitude, the through-street needs to "be somewhere else". Until there no longer is a through-street.

So fine, have these cars obey the speed limits. But then set reasonable limits, ones that are evidence-based and not politicized.

</comment><comment><USER24> Road speed limits are based on standards that take in to account the environmental circumstances of the road - straightness, visibility, etc - <USER2> well as having a huge amount of safety buffer built in to account for human reaction time.

If self driving cars become ubiquitous, there is no longer a reason to have this buffer built in. Perhaps the whole idea of posted speed limits will become obsolete if the software determines the maximum speed in the moment for a certain risk tolerance.

</comment><comment><USER25> One thing that always worried me about self-driving cars - what about an emergency? For example, hypothetically, if my wife was giving birth and I needed to rush to the hospital, would I have to poke along at 50km/h and hope to get there on time? There are times when it's perfectly justified to break the speed limit (other examples: outrunning natural disasters, going to visit a dying relative, and so on).

<comment><USER26> You call an ambulance, that has an overclocked version of the self-driving chip :).

I don't see the self-driving car as a completely different car than a normal one - maybe more like an expensive option (with all the sensors, data and stuff it will be expensive) for a normal car, that can give you back the control when you want it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a disappointment this writer is covering this topic.

Self-driving cars can be great because of the shear impact on utility for vehicles and safety implications.

I'm quite excited about the advent of self-driving cars and the underling operating systems that will make them amazing for humans.

I do believe there is room for both types of driving. It's possible our freeways will be segmented such that automated cars can go in certain lanes (perhaps even barrier protected) while the remaining traffic stays in other lanes / roads.

Traffic, or more specifically congestion, is primarily caused by excess cars on any edge (road) in which it simply takes N+1 cars to cause. Inconsistent driving patterns cause effective waves of inconsistency down the pipe exacerbating the situation (stop and go traffic actually makes congestion even worse).

Thinking about the overall network at a higher level makes all of this even more exciting. Consider the scenario in which N cars are on an edge with capacity N. If your car was about to enter the road you would basically contribute to traffic. This cost, C, is then felt across N+1 (don't forget to include yourself!) people at a minimum which is C*(N+1) minutes of human time that is lost.

If our cars, and ourselves, were better informed you might take an alternate and sub-optimal route that taxes you an extra T minutes but the overall network of time is optimized. Perhaps you'll even get a reward for it. And perhaps the reward is simply allowing all the people currently on the road a faster commute home so they can be with their loved ones.

Beyond that, as people have mentioned here already, the faster we can go and caravanning (which can be done safely by allowing cars to attach to one another in train format) improves overall throughput (and make traffic less likely).

Finally if we think about traffic, it's really just load and it needs to be distributed better across all possible routes and time. We have commute hours, but one thing to think about is that with a self-driving car I can leave to LA at 12AM and get there at 6AM while sleeping in the back of the car.

Self-driving cars will increase utility on vehicles, but also on time for travel routes ideally. This will spread the load (since humans generally have some biological clock they operate by) to utilize the 24 hours a day we have a little bit better.

And if your car can't speed I guess we should invest in really good alarm clocks and reminders :)

</comment><comment><USER27> But you won't notice the speed because you'll be working in your car, not minding the road.

<comment><USER28> Not when you can't yet afford an autonomous car and are cursing at the guy cruising along at 50 ahead of you, getting work done comfortably while you're gripping the wheel in frustration...

<comment><USER27> But you'll be in a driverless uber :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If self-driving cars keep their much safer track record when they start being actually used by the public, maybe they can adapt the carpool lane to be a self-driving car lane which has a higher speed limit?

</comment><comment><USER30> I think the first usage of self-driving cars is for public transportation. With this technologies, crowed areas could have more self-driving buses. or use it to replace long distance truck drivers.

</comment><comment><USER31> > and honking does no good, because robots do not care if you honk at them.

That sounds like a larger problem and even harder to solve. How do you teach a robot to react to honking, like how humans can?

<comment><USER32> Why should the robot care about the honking? It should already have way more data via sensor input than the human doing the honking has long before the honk ever occurs.

Even ignoring that, I don't think I've ever seen a situation in which I think a horn actually helped in a near-accident situation. It tends to just be the thing someone honks in anger after the immediate danger is already avoided. IME (as someone who has never been in an accident but has seen quite a few near misses and accidents on SoCal freeways) usually once the horn comes into play it is either too late and the accident occurs anyway or the horn is honked after the fact as a "fuck you" to the other person.

<comment><USER33> Actually it should care about signals. Maybe not honking, but there are cases like emergency vehicles that you react to. I'm not sure what's the standard reaction in other parts, but in the UK when you hear / see an ambulance or a police car behind you, you stop on the side of the road. Sometimes partly on the pedestrian area. Would the self driving car do the same to let the emergency vehicle pass it? Unfortunately that's unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This will no longer be a problem if all cars are self-driving. Then, they can just up the limit incrementally. Possibly even to something much faster than a human could do manually.

</comment><comment><USER35> If streets will prove themselves much safer with self-driving cars, speed limits could be safely increased.

</comment><comment><USER36> Stupidest story title of the week.</comment>


Raspberry Pi works with a 30-year-old mini CRT display - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pi-works-with-a-30-year-old-mini-crt-display-20120410/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, the CRT ordinary people are probably thinking of is _not_ going to work with the RasPi. VGA is right out. This old crt works because it was composite, like a TV. RasPis will drive old TV's (and tv like monitors) and new hdmi/dvi monitors, but not the huge amount of middle aged VGA monitors.

Its perfectly understandable why they made this choice. VGA on board would double the price, but there it is. Most old computer monitors won't work with raspi. But don't forget most TV's will.

</comment><comment><USER3> Old camcorder viewfinders are a good source of tiny CRTs too, but they can be tricky sometimes. There were also a lot of old portable TVs around.</comment>


Muse protocol: crypto-enforced data ownership on untrused third-party servers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse <comment><AUTHOR> I'm also the author of the protocol; happy to answer any questions here.</comment>