Mongolia is changing all its addresses to three-word phrases - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/ <comment><USER2> This is absolutely hilarious, at least to my inner six-year-old. They seem to have filtered out words with obvious negative connotations like "ugly", words of under four letters, and maybe longer words. But through the magic of language, even very innocent words are subject to reinterpretation. And a lot of What3Words's words are actually not that innocent.

glorified.bodily.passage is in some farmland in the Netherlands, near Wijk en Aalburg: [https://map.what3words.com/glorified.bodily.passage](https://map.what3words.com/glorified.bodily.passage)

beats.member.daily is in a gated community on Long Island: [https://map.what3words.com/beats.member.daily](https://map.what3words.com/beats.member.daily)

tugging.bunny.organ is a farmhouse or suburban house in Hungary: [https://map.what3words.com/tugging.bunny.organ](https://map.what3words.com/tugging.bunny.organ)

pigs.pigs.pigs is a vacant lot in Loveland, Colorado: [https://map.what3words.com/pigs.pigs.pigs](https://map.what3words.com/pigs.pigs.pigs)

inflamed.flesh.massaged is some farmland near Stoke-on-Trent in England: [https://map.what3words.com/inflamed.flesh.massaged](https://map.what3words.com/inflamed.flesh.massaged)

It's a lot worse in Spanish for some reason.

<comment><USER3> [https://map.what3words.com/credit.card.denied](https://map.what3words.com/credit.card.denied) is in Ontario

[https://map.what3words.com/under.water.loans](https://map.what3words.com/under.water.loans) is south of London

[https://map.what3words.com/shame.without.regret](https://map.what3words.com/shame.without.regret) is in Norway

[https://map.what3words.com/regret.without.shame](https://map.what3words.com/regret.without.shame) is in Alaska

[https://map.what3words.com/winter.winter.winter](https://map.what3words.com/winter.winter.winter) is near Chicago

[https://map.what3words.com/summer.sunshine.happy](https://map.what3words.com/summer.sunshine.happy) is in Beijing

[https://map.what3words.com/forgotten.previous.husband](https://map.what3words.com/forgotten.previous.husband) is in the middle of the south Atlantic ocean

[https://map.what3words.com/imaginary.future.partner](https://map.what3words.com/imaginary.future.partner) is somewhere in Russia

etc.

<comment><USER4> Even a small house has dozens of addresses. I checked and there is a different address in my kitchen than my bathroom, based on what3words website. If you find a certain combination offending, you can choose a different one, but on the other hand, on a single property there could be thousands of addresses, many of which funny or embarrassing.

<comment><USER5> Somewhat off-topic, but this seems to me like it could also be useful for automated drone/self-driving car delivery in The Future (tm):

You could literally direct the packet to your front porch, balcony or whatever else place is best for you to accept it.

<comment><USER6> Or you just use geocoordinates like everyone else. This project is aimed to make addresses more memorable for humans, machines do not have such a problem.

<comment><USER5> Machines do not. However, humans would find it difficult to memorize the GPS coordinates for their front porch - which is why trying an approach like this with pure GPS might not work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really don't think it's a smart move to have a national entity totally depend on a private company that has no plans to make its database freely accessible for its operations; the worst being that said private company is foreign, meaning that Mongolia has 0 leverage on how the database will evolve, it is going to be completely at the mercy of What3Words' changes of policy and access rights.

Unless What3Words' database is going to be fully accessible with no restrictions for everyone, this really looks like a bad idea.

<comment><USER8> They can just appropriate the information.

I guess they might have to break some treaties or something to do that, but a country isn't going to be beholden to a small foreign company for much of anything.

<comment><USER9> TPP could change that

<comment><USER10> Fairly certain neither Mongolia nor Britain are involved in the TPP

<comment><USER11> Britain is party to TTIP, very similar.

Mongolia has expressed limited sentiments towards joining TPP but they try to remain neutral between the various regional and global factions, and being a member of TPP could irritate their Russian and Chinese partners.

<comment><USER10> TTIP is similar, but you might as well just say TTIP if you mean TTIP and not TTP. Also, even if the UK is partner, Mongolia certainly can't be, at least to this particular partnership.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 40,000 words gives 15.29 bits per word, for a 45.86 bit locator. log2(area of earth / 9m^2) is 45.7.

Packing bits into phrases is also useful for passwords ([https://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/](https://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/)), but in my experience the increased difficulty of correctly remembering phrases from a large wordlist outweighs the additional entropy.

4 words chosen from a 2800-word list would convey the same amount of information, and be less prone to confusion.

It looks like they're not attempting to make the triplets have consistent meanings between languages, which makes sense -- 40,000 word correspondences between 10 languages would be exceedingly difficult! logs.broker.remote is sweight.saum.zulässige is lodos.pasado.ninguno, none of which are the same meanings.

Another improvement would be a hierarchical system-- you can specify a more coarse location using more common words -- picking from a wordlist of 500 for a 4km^2 specifier, 2000 for for a 16 acre plot, 10000 for a 500m^2 area.

<comment><USER13> > Packing bits into phrases is also useful for passwords > ([https://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/](https://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/)), but in > my experience the increased difficulty of correctly remembering phrases from > a large wordlist outweighs the additional entropy.

I saw a paper with a nice method for generating passphrases. Unfortunately, I can't find it. (Can anyone help me?)

First, you generate random data with enough entropy for a passphrase. Then, instead of encoding it in a sequence of words that is as short as possible, you encode it in many (say, a million) sequences that are a bit longer. Each sequence thus encode the same data. Now, you feed all these sequences through an algorithm that gives each sequence a score depending on how close it is to being a natural-language phrase. Finally, you present the user with the sequences, ordered by their score, and let the user choose any one of the to use as passphrase.

<comment><USER14> > I saw a paper with a nice method for generating passphrases. Unfortunately, > I can't find it. (Can anyone help me?)

DiceWare[1] doesn't do the filtering you're talking about, but it does provide a method of generating passphrases by converting entropy into words. PGP Word Lists[2] use a packing technique as well, with even/odd words for error detection.

I haven't seen the paper you're talking about, but I'm highly suspicious of using an algorithm to score phrases by how close to natural language they are without a proof of security.

If you score natural-ness using, for example, comparing overlapping 2-word patterns to a database, then that database becomes a Markov chain database we can use to generate passphrase guesses, greatly reducing the entropy. Generating and discarding the patterns database from natural language material for each passphrase generation helps only inasmuch as two source databases from the same language are likely to differ. Maybe that's not the method used to test natural-ness, but I suspect that the better the natural-ness scoring function is, the better the corresponding passphrase generator will be. And remember, the user is going to decrease entropy even further by choosing their passphrase.

You can mitigate this by decreasing the number of passwords generated for the user to choose from, but this means less natural phrases. You can also mitigate it by increasing the passphrase space (that is, more words in your passphrase) but that decreases memorability.

Personally, I use 5-word DiceWare passphrases for most things, and 6-word DiceWare passphrases for the most important stuff. The proof of security for DiceWare is simple enough that you can do it yourself and be confident in it. The intent is not long-term memorability--in the age of leaked passwords stored or transferred in plaintext, password reuse is foolish, and I've yet to come across a scheme that allows me to memorize 30+ passwords. Instead the idea is short-term memorability so I can copy the passwords manually from my password manager. In practice the memorability is completely adequate for this purpose.

And even at 5 DiceWare-generated words, that's 2.8x10^19 possibilities, or a little under a year for an attacker with 1 trillion guesses per second capabilities.

[1] [http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html](http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html)

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

<comment><USER13> > I'm highly suspicious of using an algorithm to score phrases by how close to > natural language they are without a proof of security.

To clarify, all the phrases to be scored represent the same random data. They are just more or less difficult to remember. The natural-language algorithm is just there to help you find one that is easy to remember, and is not security critical. The algorithm is assumed to be known to be known to the attacker in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One problem I see is that one particular address may end up with several 3-word addresses. Since physical distance doesn't affect the similarity of the combinations, how is one to determine the 'correct' combination for a particular location? This seems to compound the inherent problem of all 3-word combinations sharing the same namespace - I have no idea if two addresses are actually the same building, or on opposite sides of the planet.

<comment><USER8> For most things the adjacent addresses would be equivalent. It doesn't matter which part of the house a package is delivered to. In many cases someone picking an address won't really be able to get within 3 meters anyway.

I guess people looking at several addresses won't be looking at the words, they will have to have a resolver and look at them that way.

<comment><USER16> But it might matter if you're delivering five packages, and your system lists five addresses, even though they're all going to the same building.

<comment><USER17> This remains a solved problem. The location phrase specifies the coarse location. Additional addressing information is used to introduce granularity. Look at how addresses are conventionally written already, and in a good chunk of the world, the addresses are written top to bottom, most specific to least specific. The largest remaining problem is that the location mapping depends on a proprietary database, but this is a common problem (in Canada the database of postal codes is also proprietary).

<comment><USER18> that's mostly true, except US/Canada we put the zip/postal code at the end which is more specific than the city/state/province. But your gist remains true.

<comment><USER17> True, but do note that postal codes and ZIP codes are a recent adoption, only deployed in US/UK/Canada since the 1960s

The history of post addresses is quite interesting in it's own right :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> FYI, their patent is probably bogus: [http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/13629/i-had- inven...](http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/13629/i-had-invented-and- published-before-this-patent-application-how-do-i-get-it-in)

</comment><comment><USER20> They should just use [http://what2numbers.org/](http://what2numbers.org/)

<comment><USER16> I genuinely can't tell if that's an honest attempt at competition, or a parody.

<comment><USER21> Meters from 0N/0S. And with that awesomely similar design...must be a parody!

<comment><USER22> I wonder why not just lat/lon for added ironic effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So people in Mongolia will use English words for addresses? The whole "easy to remember" is completely lost when it's a foreign language.

Imagine if America switched to three Chinese characters for an "easy to remember" address system.

In China numbers are often used inside of roman character email addresses, or domains, because roman characters are only convenient for westerners, much less _English words_.

See 1688.com (alibaba.com), or use of QQ numbers for email addresses.

<comment><USER24> Thankfully now there is the IDN extension to DNS to use punycode to represent other character sets.

I agree with your original point that it is strange that the Mongol Post would want to use English words for addressing.

Edit: they support other languages; I assume they would add Mongolian to the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hmm.

A word with one letter difference from my house (in the English midlands) puts the address in the middle of mountains in western China.

It's annoying enough when a parcel gets delivered to an address near me because the delivery driver can't tell where my road ends and another one starts. But I'm not going to China to pick up my next Amazon order when someone miskeys.

<comment><USER5> I would think (if this is always the case) it's more a feature than a bug: If you're a parcel service and ordered to ship a packet to a location in the US, you'll (hopefully) stop and think if the address appears to be in china. If the address were "just" in the wrong US state, on the other hand, you might have more trouble with it.

Of course that implies that the delivery service knows the supposed country of destination and that it cares. So I guess, should this way of addressing places catch on, we should probably make it a four-word phrase and also include the state with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The idea is quite interesting, but the implementation only makes sense for sparsely-populated regions. An apartment in the city with two side-by-side doors to different units will easily fit within a three-meter square, meaning that you'll still require "Apt. #1, Apt. #2" designations to disambiguate. Similarly, the fact that this system accounts only for geographical surface coordinates means that any building with distinct addresses stacked vertically, like an apartment building, won't be able to be served by this system alone.

<comment><USER27> Apartment units addresses will probably be based on the 3x3 square the most closely matches its outline, so door location will be irrelevant. Vertical stacks can be simply dealt with by assuming a standard 3 or 4 meter story, so unless you live in an industrial loft or something it won't be a problem.

<comment><USER28> Door location is how you can tell if a house is in the Netherlands or in Belgium, for Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog. Move the door and you move countries.

Outline is not time invariant. If I turn a duplex into a single family, or build out, then the shape changes. If I live in Coober Pedy and build out underground, then do I use the surface outline or the underground outline?

If I relocate the house a few meters away, the address definitely changes.

Really, this is best for the billions of people who have _no_ address. Most likely it will boot-strap, so in 100 years the name "X.Y.Z" will refer to the ghost of the place that once was, but everybody local knows what it now means, as will the databases. With a layer of apt. #1, #2, etc. on top of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There was a really cool project using syllables such as consonant+vowel, then using two "words" with 3 syllables each such as:

"tapiku norami"

But the cool thing is that they were basically real gps coordinates just encoded as letters, so returning them to the original was trivial. I think a couple of letters were avoided to avoid confussion.

Unfortunately I cannot remember the name and they did a terrible SEO job...

<comment><USER30> You could also use Lojban's numbering system[1] for example with GPS coordinates in decimal form to the same effect.

[1]: [https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Numbers](https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Numbers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "alien.crash.landing"[0] is a remote farm field in Montana. Just the kind of place you'd expect.

"lower.life.expectancy"[1] is some patch of land in Colorado. I can't help but notice the two man-made pits containing unknown substances a few hundred meters north.

[0] [http://w3w.co/alien.crash.landing](http://w3w.co/alien.crash.landing)

[1] [http://w3w.co/lower.life.expectancy](http://w3w.co/lower.life.expectancy)

</comment><comment><USER32> I looked at the website, and couldn't figure out what makes this a good idea... Especially compared to geohashing.

<comment><USER33> Geohashes are not human friendly. It's easy to screw up a geohash when transferring it.

<comment><USER32> I don't think meaningless combinations of three words are particularly human friendly either...

<comment><USER34> They are. Remembering a three-word phrase is not remotely difficult compared to remembering a long pseudorandom string.

<comment><USER35> Ironically, the article manages to mess this up.

> the Stade de France is at reporter.smoked.received

The phrase they mention goes to some place in Trenton, Missouri[1]. It seems they meant reporter.smoker.received[2].

[1] [https://map.what3words.com/reporter.smoked.received](https://map.what3words.com/reporter.smoked.received)

[2] [https://map.what3words.com/reporter.smoker.received](https://map.what3words.com/reporter.smoker.received)

<comment><USER36> I was actually reasonably impressed with the system; they don't put nearby words near each other, so if you have a typo it becomes pretty obvious to anything but the most braindead delivery system.

So if what you're writing on the envelope is

        Bob Smith
        reporter.smoked.received
        France

it becomes trivial to correct that to reporter.smoker.received, unlike when you write "124 Main Street" instead of "123 Main Street".

<comment><USER35> To what3words' credit, when I typed reporter.smoker.received into the map tool, it did suggest the correct location in its list of similar locations. [https://imgur.com/G2ChrxA.png](https://imgur.com/G2ChrxA.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Great idea, until your address is something like "persistent.ugly.pancake" "white.power.manatee..."

<comment><USER38> Unless your yard is less than 3 square meters, you'll have more than one phrase for your address. Enumerate all the possible phrases, and choose the coolest one...

<comment><USER4> That means everyone has a pretty high probability to have a stupid address in their "bag-of-addresses".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I didn't see any discussion in the article of having different languages but the what three word website talks about it.

One thing that I don't quite understand is two locations very near each other have completely different sets of words. I would have thought there would be some sort of hierarchy of words (sort of like geocoding a lat long where it defines a box and the precision of the geocoding gives you larger or smaller boxes).

I wonder too if there are going to be collisions of words and locations that aren't going to make people too happy. Though they must have thought through that too.

Either way it is an interesting idea.

<comment><USER40> If Wikipedia is to be believed, that's intentional as an error-detecting mechanism:

"The result is that if you enter athree-word combination slightly incorrectly and the result is still a valid w3w reference, the location will be so far away from the user's intended area that it will be immediately obvious to both a user and an intelligent error-checking system."

I'm skeptical of just how well that'll work, personally. Witness the example of the truck driver who drove to Gibraltar, England instead of the one next to Spain.

<comment><USER41> It did say intelligent error checking. People have proven themselves to be idiots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Google developed a similar coding system called Plus Code [https://plus.codes/](https://plus.codes/)

<comment><USER24> This seems way easier to use. Also a postal service wouldn't have to do anything except open the website on the postal carriers' phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I have some doubts.

a) suppose I am in Apt #312 in Bellevue Mansion, Whatever Street 23, San Jose, California.

Apt. #311 is on a wildly different set, so how can I find out we are neighbours? Or how can I explain to someone where Whatever Street #21 is?

b) what if I have the same 3-words square, but you are on floor #7 and I am on floor #11?

<comment><USER44> Address is pretty separate from directions in both the old and new system. The fact that I'm on Maple st. doesn't tell me anything about how close I am to Pine st., except in a small number of cities that have a useful naming system. So I say "Turn left on Maple, then right on Pine, then...". Likewise, here you say "turn right at maple.big.grumpy, then left at green.thick.rat".

This system is an improvement for locations with _no road names_ (so it's not any harder to give directions) or with _ubiquitous GPS_ (where you can directly convert). The number of places with road names but not ubiquitous GPS is on the fast decline.

<comment><USER43> Maybe I am just dumb but I cannot really understand the "Address is pretty separate from directions in both the old and new system". You usually know where you live (i.e. how to get there) so the only reason you need to have some kind of coordinate system (be it "conventional" or the one we are discussing) is to tell someone other, including the postman, how to get to you.

I.e. - I really do not understand why "Hi Ibrahim, I live at Alpha-Unicorn- Honey, just drop here when you are in the area" would beat "The train stops at Nadira, from there you walk 2 miles in the direction of the sunset, when you reach a rock looking like a kneeling woman you turn in the direction of the face and walk anoter mile - and there is my hut".

So far the only place where I believe this system would help is in large Japanese cities (Tokyo) etc. because they don't have "named" streets, most of the time, and at the same time most people can be expected to have access to technology.

(Maybe it's the same in China, but never been there so I don't know how it is)

I sincerely doubt that people living on the outskirts of the Gobi desert will routinely exchange their three-words coordinates over whatsapp and then get Google Maps or whatever to guide them to the desired destination.

<comment><USER44> > I really do not understand why "Hi Ibrahim, I live at Alpha-Unicorn-Honey, > just drop here when you are in the area" would beat "The train stops at > Nadira, from there you walk 2 miles in the direction of the sunset, when you > reach a rock looking like a kneeling woman you turn in the direction of the > face and walk anoter mile - and there is my hut".

You misunderstand. It's not trying to be better at directions, it's trying to be better at unambiguously specifying a location. If you're mailing something to someone where there are no roads, then this gives you a way to address them with more precision than you could do before. You just need a postman with a $40 smart phone with GPS (or a look-up-table).

You should really think about this as "easy to remember and communicate GPS coordinates".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> [https://github.com/google/open-location- code/blob/master/doc...](https://github.com/google/open-location- code/blob/master/docs/comparison.adoc#open-location-code)

</comment><comment><USER46> The article lists Mongolian US embassy address as "constants.stuffy.activism", except the map they link to gives me the address "indoor.sheepish.blues". How can it be an address if it changes with time?

<comment><USER47> It doesn't. It's a grid system with 3 meter squares, each one having its own trio of words. Move the point 3 meters in any direction and you'll get a different one. This allows much more precise and close together addresses, down to the entrances of doors or gates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So it's like DNS for GPS coordinates. Neat!

<comment><USER49> Yes, except unlike DNS, it's centralized into a single database and you may have to pay a license fee to read from it.

<comment><USER50> It can't be that hard to reverse engineer the algorithm, can it?

<comment><USER7> It's not hard, but it's unsurprisingly against the ToS ([http://developer.what3words.com/api/licence/](http://developer.what3words.com/api/licence/))

"You shall not use the API for any application that replicates or attempts to replace the essential user experience of the Service or use the API to create a Product which functions substantially the same as the API and offer it for use by third parties. You must not pre-fetch, cache, index, copy, re-utilise, extract or store any what3words Data"

<comment><USER51> That only mentions using their API, not reverse engineering the algorithm.

<comment><USER7> ... which is patented (see the other thread), so you're opening a whole another can of worms that frankly doesn't sound much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Check out the Mongolia episode of the Canadian show "Don't drive here" if you don't get why this is better for them than the status quo.

Spoiler: Every citizen gets a parcel of land in Mongolia where they can put up a yurt. These yurt neighborhoods are nearly impossible to navigate if you don't live there (IIRC)

</comment><comment><USER53> [https://map.what3words.com/pretty.code.running](https://map.what3words.com/pretty.code.running) => right where my office is located (for real). Couldn't be happier about that.

</comment><comment><USER54> This reminds me of the Automated Curse Generator from DailyWtf

[http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Automated-Curse- Generato...](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Automated-Curse-Generator)

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm disappointed that they didn't use Mongolian words for the 3 words.

<comment><USER56> They did.

> Users can look up these three-word locations, which have been translated > into Mongolian, for free on the What3Words website or app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Homonyms? Vertical addressing?

So do you live at peak.pique.peek, or peak.peek.pique? Or is it... What floor? Oh, you're on the top floor? So you leave on the peak of pique.peak.peek?

<comment><USER58> Also they use both plural and singular nouns, and hash them to different locations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Wow. I spent a lot of time thinking about names and how they influence us. This has to be one of the stupidest ideas I have ever seen. They are just throwing out hundreds if not thousands of years of nomenclature etymology and replacing it with three randomly chosen english words.

Even Vonnegut's idea of reassigning everyone new last names in Slapstick made more sense than this.

</comment><comment><USER60> I wonder how units/apartments in multi storey buildings are adressed.

</comment><comment><USER61> Singapore is a tiny island but it's system is Super easy. It uses post codes assigned to physical buildings. From a post code you can get the name of the building, street, and access.

</comment><comment><USER62> [http://openlocationcode.com/](http://openlocationcode.com/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Why english?

<comment><USER49>
        Users can look up these three-word locations,
        which have been translated into Mongolian,
        for free on the What3Words website or app.

See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words#Design_principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words#Design_principles)

<comment><USER33> The words were literally translated? That makes no sense... the meaning of the words is not important.

<comment><USER64> What's easier for you to remember -

        ample.estate.racing

or

        хангалттай.хөрөнгийн.уралдааны

<comment><USER63> The fact that you are even asking that is prove of the level of arrogance that the anglospeaking part of the world has reached.

<comment><USER64> Sorry, you misunderstand me.

If you read eg cyrillic you're going to find it very much easier to read and remember cyrillic words. Thus, presenting cyrillic to those people benefits them. That's why translating from English to local languages is a good thing.

<comment><USER63> Sorry, I indeed misunderstood you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> edgy.puns.lake

<comment><USER65> roughest.tickles.bath

<comment><USER65> Putting aside the potentially bad combinations, i feel as tho a hierarchical schema with the potential for arbitrary accuracy may be more suitable.

<comment><USER66> At the same time it makes the news a bit more entertaining: keychain.limbs.youth

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I like mapcodes better: see mapcode.com

<comment><USER67> I thought the same thing. They have the advantage of being public domain and a lot shorter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Why oh why is it so hard for countries to just apply a sensible addressing scheme? This is simply an attempt to simplify using coordinates with something more memorable. But now it's locked into a proprietary service and doesn't solve sub-unit addressing or routing. But whatever, I guess it's better than the current system which is basically a free form description of what somebody hopes the mail carrier can figure out.

This is a such a stupidly simple problem that it's become a pet peeve of mine whenever I see a place that hasn't been bothered to figure it out.

Here's 2 perfectly workable schemes that are used the world over (this is a free service I put into the public domain for the betterment of all humanity).

Scheme 1

1) Divide your country into postal zones, assign each one a number or an alphanumeric or whatever. Call these "zip codes" or "postal codes" or whatever the hell you want. Bonus, when routing mail, you route them only between these zones at the national level, and then let local offices handle the last mile figuring out of where something is supposed to be sent.

2) Name (or for goodness sake at least number) each road -- or do both. If your language or culture is unable to come up with enough interesting names for all of the roads in your country, it's okay, you can reuse names in different postal zones so long as a road doesn't cross between zones in which case you get to only use it once.

3) Number all of the land plots along a road. Final delivery from the postal system is to the land plot number. This works because every nation on the planet has some kind of system to track land ownership, and it's usually some kind of number.

4) Final delivery of mail is handled by people who subdivide that land plot. Addresses may contain some identifier of subunits on that landplot, but the postal delivery organization doesn't have to care.

Addresses are now of the form:<zip code>:<road id>:<land plot id>:<sub-unit id (optional)>:<Name to deliver to optional>

Some examples:

1543:Genghis Khan Street:16B-321:Unit C AZJ542:5123:1313:Mr. Altangerel District 213:Morinhuur Rd.:2116:Apartment 116:Anun Chinbat

The country can figure out if they want to use numbers, names, alphanumerics, whatever. But this isn't rocket science. This is the typical addressing scheme used most places that haven't completely lost their minds, just the fields are usually ordered the other way round.

Scheme 2

1) Divide the country into zones.

2) Divide those zones into zones.

3) Keep doing this until zones are guaranteed to be small enough to track the smallest allowable land plot. This is where the mail gets delivered by the formal system. Routing works by going up and down the hierarchy.

4) Final delivery of mail is handled by people who subdivide that land plot. Addresses may contain some identifier of subunits on that landplot, but the postal delivery organization doesn't have to care.

Addresses are now of the form:<Major subunit>:<Minor subunit>:<Local subunit>:<sub-unit id (optional)>:<Name to deliver to optional>

This system works well where roads aren't guaranteed and/or the country can't be bothered with naming the roads because of reasons. This is also a surprisingly common system in many places, but often gets eventually replaced with the scheme above.

AB:612:AJR 14-23:District 9:Khorkhog Place:Apartment 612-F:Mr. Tsedenbal Bayar:Damdin:Bogd:Yurt 5

Again, not rocket science. Easier to remember than coordinates and precise enough for mail delivery. Postal areas can be aligned with existing administrative zones, or whatever.

I remember being in Ireland and getting pretty annoyed trying to find anything because all anybody had for addresses outside of the big cities were coordinates. Yet nearly every road had at least a number, and Ireland is already pretty well divided into various administrative districts. So why the hell were we receiving nonsense like coordinates?

Asked the locals and the answer was some sort of tie up between the government and the postal system had delayed it forever. This was in 2013.

That's correct, a developed country, in the 21st century, couldn't be bothered to figure out a proper addressing system. (Apparently this has since been fixed, but seriously, why the fuck did it take that long?)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_addresses_in_the_Republ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_addresses_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland#Introduction_of_a_national_system)

Things not to do:

\- Make your postal codes proprietary or under copyright or some other stupid nonsense.

\- Use a system with such low precision that it ends up going free-form text for local delivery. I'm aware of parts of England with such nonsense.

\- Change the scheme over and over again. Pick one, implement it and be done with it.

\- Use a system that doesn't aid in navigation at the local level. If I'm at local subunit 241, I can expect to find 240, 242, 243 and such nearby, while 893, 1023 and so on should be far away.

\- Use land plot numbers that don't make any sense. In many places odd numbers will be on one side of a road and even will be on another. In some places, it's a different scheme. These schemes make sense and aid in navigation, random numbers don't.

\- Don't use this kind of word-based scheme, it'll end up full of dick jokes and racial slurs without anybody knowing it, and it means entire swaths of the Earth will have to be nonsensically renamed over and over again due to regional slang phrases about people's mothers.

Again, this is free advice for anybody trying to start a national postal system, because apparently, here in the future of the 21st century, some places haven't bothered to sort themselves out yet.

<comment><USER69> Many of your reasons disappear when everyone has a smartphone. The software can convert whatever representation of a location into whatever description helps find it. That I think is better than locking "directions to help the postman" into the address itself. The postman's app can tell him how to find your street.

The idea of what 3 words is that it's easy to remember. Your suggestions are not. That's a massive weakness.

<comment><USER68> For fun, try to get you and your friends to spend a few weeks trying to just use coordinates to get around. At several points, try to do it assuming no data connectivity, like what you'd experience in most of Mongolia. Hell, you can experience it in most of Colorado.

It turns out it's a terribly designed addressing system, replacing the numbers with words doesn't make it less terrible, only more memorable.

Assume your magic navigation device goes down, but you can call the destination you are going to and have them give you directions without using street names or designators, only landmarks. Try it from varying distances away. Instead of "turn left at Main st." you'll get "turn left at the second red building, I think, maybe the one with the white window shutters...you don't see one with white window shutters? well they have a restaurant next door with a neon sign...okay after that take the 3rd left, or is it the 4th?"

Or try to figure out not only which building you need to go to in a dense urban core, but which side of the street the building is on? While the coordinates you got put you within 3 meters of the building, the magic map device you're using can't get a lock on more than 2 GPS satellites at once and you're now 30 meters away from your destination.

Okay, so now you make it, and it's a 30 story building with 300 apartments. Which one is it? The coordinates get you near the base of the building, but not to the unit itself?

But that's okay, nobody's bothered to do something sensible like put numbers on their doors, or label the streets so when your app doesn't work you can still locally navigate. You can always wait around for a postman to arrive and ask him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> so they are going to use english words for their postal system?

doesn't sound very Chinese government to me. This has a hefty smell of bollocks to me.

<comment><USER23> Mongolia is separate from China, however I brought up this same point since their language isn't English (it's Mongolian).

<comment><USER70> My mistake, I'd assumed that it had been absorbed into china.

Turns out I was confusing that with Tibet. Embarrassing to say the least...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Not this moronic shit again! Just let it die, fer Gawd's sake!

[https://stiobhart.net/2016-01-15-stupidest-idea- ever](https://stiobhart.net/2016-01-15-stupidest-idea-ever)

<comment><USER72> If you think :that's: dumb, check out the "Eircode" address System that Ireland's government spent an 8 figure sum on: [http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/lost-and- fo...](http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/lost-and-found- addressing-the-myriad-problems-with-eircode-312711.html)

<comment><USER73> Eircodes were created that way so that people wouldn't have to change their address at all. Which could be a politically difficult thing. Politicians choose the thing that made their life easier and stopped complaints.</comment></comment></comment>


Don't make 'readonly' fields less readable - <AUTHOR> http://www.secretgeek.net/readonly_gray.asp <comment><USER2> I disagree. People know that they can't change the contents of a greyed out box. Less savvy people may see a box with black text and think that there is something wrong with their computer, keyboard or the web page if they can't click in/edit the contents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say that, at first, most people do NOT know that greyed-out boxes can't be changed. They only know after attempting to click on it a few times.

The key is to make it not look like an edit box, then people won't think they can interact with it. You can see it in practice here at HN: edit a submission and you can see that the URL is not in a text-box, so the text can appear like any other text on the page.

In general, making things harder to read can't be good, and should never become a standard.

<comment><USER3> > In general, making things harder to read can't be good, and should never > become a standard.

It reminds me of comments here on HN which have very low scores: they get greyed out and effectively "disabled", like a disabled form field.

However, disabled form fields which demand no interaction, not even reading, from the user should not attract interest. It's fine to make fields which are unimportant less prominent.

As you say, real read-only content (such as the text on a web page) should both be easy to read, and not shown inside a user input control in the first place.

<comment><USER4> "disabled form fields which demand no interaction, not even reading, from the user should not attract interest"

This would be an argument to not show them at all. Requires no interaction, conveys no information and doesn't attract interest? Then it is only cluttering your UI, consider removing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also consider that if things need to be read, high contrast is better. I think github, as an example, suffers from low contrast colors on many things, the file list being one; it's relatively hard (I need to put more effort into it than I think should be necessary) to see on every LCD screen I've tried it on. Obviously, I can fix this myself using greasemonkey or user stylesheets or something, but it seems to be a growing trend.

</comment><comment><USER5> Making unusable inputs harder to read is an affordance that makes it easier to scan the page for things that _are_ usable. If your page has a scattershot of usable and unusable controls, the problem is probably more fundamental than how you grey things out.</comment>


The Flat Sink - <AUTHOR> http://sachagreif.com/the-flat-sink/ <comment><USER2> I stayed with a friend in a then-new building designed by Philippe Starck, in New York.

The bathroom sink faucet handles were very cool -- just smooth steel cylinders sticking out, that you rotated.

Until I tried turning them with my now-soapy hands... and discovered that they were impossible to turn, because there was nothing to grab onto! His stylish cylinders turned out to be completely useless. Turns out knobby handles exist for a reason.

<comment><USER3> Still, someone will eventually call this a feature, because it might force you to dry your hands before turning the knob - keeping it cleaner/dry.

Designers will always find a way to justify their crap.

<comment><USER4> The correct comeback to that would be to assert that such a demand is unnecessarily environmentally unfriendly since it encourages a usage that wastes more water. Green is very stylish, arguably more stylish than standard aesthetics.

<comment><USER5> The correct comeback is to dry your hands on the designer's clothing and then use turn the knobs with your now dry hands ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Put everything on the same plane, and you make it harder to focus on a specific section of the page.

Citation needed.

Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted, tell me that <https://svbtle.com/> content isn't on the same plane and still readable? You can have everything on the same plane and with proper use of whitespace and good typography, it can be very readable.

Other examples:

<http://daringfireball.net/>

<https://medium.com/about/9e53ca408c48>

Hacker News

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't say that it was _impossible_ to have good content hierarchy with a flat design, I just said it was harder.

And "citation needed" is the Hacker News equivalent of YouTube comments: snarky, doesn't bring anything to the debate, and totally irrelevant.

<comment><USER6> Is it actually harder though? I don't think so. I think there is some truth to the idea that content over chrome is a good usability principle (obviously to an extent, Win8 takes it a little too far sometimes), and in my opinion, it is easier to learn proper use of whitespace and good typography than how to make textures and less "sterile" designs.

My point is you are stating your opinion as if it is a truth, when it isn't.

Sure, citation needed is a little snarky, but I disagree that it doesn't bring anything to the debate and is irrelevant. Maybe you could have pointed to usability studies, so there would at least be some data to back up your claim.

<comment><USER7> I'm not a designer (or a good one, anyway), so I welcome corrections from good designers, but I'd assume that whether or not flatness in this sense is a good idea would totally depend on context: how much site navigation is there, how many other presentational elements, ads, links to other things, etc.

Svtble works because it takes a minimalist's approach to all of that, throwing it all away into the bin. The content is readable because it's almost the only thing on the page. The font is large and the content is centered.

But would that work in the general case, as an approach for user interfaces and search engines and the modern day portal page and so on? I can't think of any examples there that would be considered "good design".

<comment><USER6> Good points, but a lack of examples does not necessarily mean that it isn't possible. I think Bing has down a good job of having a flat design with high usability.

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=hello+world&go=&qs=n...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=hello+world&go=&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=hello+world&sc=8-7&sp=-1&sk=)

<comment><USER7> Ehh. Personally, I find Bing's example there to be identical to Google's, along with all the same flaws. It's readable, but for instance there's no contrast between the search results and the "related searches" sidebar.

<comment><USER6> And I would say that the use of whitespace and typography is enough to differentiate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Zen and minimalism must vary by the observer...

A curve or spheroidal section is zen and minimal (1 stroke, 1 surface) A box with 5 sides, 4 corners, etc is not. There are zen circles <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D>, few to none zen squares.

<comment><USER9> Only if you're defining minimalism as 'the literal least amount of noticeable features'. The picture in your link is a terrible example of 'minimalism' by that definition - while it describes a circle created in a single stroke, the actual pattern is extremely complex. Then there's also writing and three chops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the Middle East flat kitchen sinks are standard and ubiquitous. I wouldn't be so quick to assume that it's an aesthetic design decision — I bet it's more of a cultural preference.

I don't like flat sinks, but I can see how some people do. In Lebanon they generally build large flat sinks right into the countertop with the same marble. They are much larger than most American sectioned sinks and are good for certain things. They use a small squeegee to clean up after everything is done.

<comment><USER11> Kitchen sinks are a bit different. They are deeper, you don't shave in them, and they are typically sloped a bit so that they don't get small pools of standing water. These new bathroom sinks are pretty bad. They are really trendy in hotels along with the water found style sinks and the ones that look like a bowl sitting on top of the counter top. Every one is a regression in usability solely for the sake of aesthetics.

One day we'll look back on this design trend and laugh. Too bad it will take decades before these poorly designed items are replaced in homes and hotels.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! And those bowl-shaped ones don't even have a ledge to put your toothbrush holder on!

<comment><USER11> God I hate those. The counter is either at your knees or the bowl is in your face. There's no where to put anything and simple tasks just end up being a mess. What a stupid idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not going to comment on the message as a whole, since this whole flat aesthetic thing has been argued up and down on HN over the last few months. But there was one line that stuck out to me as being a little off:

 _> Get rid of all texture, and you might end up with cold, sterile designs that scare users away._

I'm on board with the usability argument, but I don't think that removing gradients and drop shadows necessarily results in designs that "scare users away." If anything, I think that abandoning realism allows you more freedom in making a warm & inviting designs (e.g. some downright unnatural combinations of pastels that would look too busy with those touches of realism).

<comment><USER13> _but I don't think that removing gradients and drop shadows necessarily results in designs that "scare users away."_

Try using Office 2013. It's white and flat (even flatter in Win8 over Win7, you lose refrence to what the 'tools' part and the data part is. It is not inviting at all, unless you dig in to the options and try to put some slightly different colors/textures on it.

<comment><USER14> It fails because it's been designed by idiots, not because it's 'flat'

<comment><USER15> Can't stress this enough. Bad people using a well-thought-out design aesthetic can still make something that looks like garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The analogy doesn't hold water.

A flat sink is a flat sink because it is flat.

A flat design is a flat design because we call it "a flat design."

Skeuomorphism isn't realism - pixels are pixels not leather.

A gradient isn't a shadow.

The flat "add comment" button below does not cause me confusion.

Curving a surface doesn't necessarily make it handle liquid properly.

A poorly designed urinal will splatter if hung too low on the wall.

And speaking of urinals, rounded corners and drop shadows do not make the image of a button art, unless perhaps one hangs it on the wall.

<comment><USER17> _Skeuomorphism isn't realism_

People argue that "skeuomorphism" isn't the right term for slapping photo textures on everything. It might not be, but obviously "realism" is an even worse term. Leather, chrome, or paper background textures resemble nothing "real" about showing weather forecasts, emails, or search results.

(That isn't to say good design can't use photo textures, but even many of the better examples tend toward the overblown "realism" of CD-ROM software from twenty years ago.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The most irony I found on this page is where an image annotation berated Google for their flat design, at the same time as having a distracting background image, unexplained bolding of the first letters of 'Google Reader' and generally distracting and disorienting design.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would like to officially formulate this new law:

"Any blog post criticizing a design will in turn see its own design criticized."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would say the best practical reason to move over to a flat design is performance increases. It has been shown that CSS properties such as background-image gradients and border-radii are among the worst offenders for decreased front-end performance. With websites approaching 2MB in size it is no surprise to me that flatter design makes for smaller files (less CSS prefixes, less JS repainting) and less browser rendering. This was precisely why our company moved over to a flat design as we've increased the number of users rapidly over the past year.

<comment><USER20> You're falling into the trap of thinking everything is HTML. This doesn't apply to native code. There's very little penalty for using rounded rects, drop shadows (which are part of most drawing primitives), and gradients.

</comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree Good points in this article. Another aspect I dislike about many modern bathroom sinks is the position of the tap (faucet).

If the sink has a single mixer tap, it's usually placed in the centre of the basin to give a neat symmetrical look. However, if the bathroom sink is fairly small, the tap protrudes forward and you find you can't lower your head to splash your face without accidentally bumping your head against the tap.

I prefer mixer taps that sit to the side of the basin or even mixer taps where you can swivel the arm left or right.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure about bathroom sinks, but my wife and I hate our non-flat kitchen sink. Sure, I understand that it's curved so that it drains water, but there is such thing as too much curve. In our sink, dishes that should be able to be set down properly often end up tipping over or sliding towards the drain. It's actually a big pain as dishes slide and get in the way. Our next sink will most definitely be a flat (flat-ish, perhaps with a very, very small incline).

</comment><comment><USER22> If you respect form follows function you can apply fashion to form. Now Apples "realism" seem to look old. In few years it's maybe in again. That's how fashion works.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you have a flat sink, you need an aerator on the spigot. This doesn't solve everything, but it's a big improvement with respect to splashing.

</comment><comment><USER24> author seems to be confusing visual styling with hierarchy and information architecture. it's harmless to remove gradients and shadows, but removing context and visual priority is what makes the sink flat.

</comment><comment><USER25> The parabolic sinks that started popping up all over Seattle around a decade ago are great. If I owned my own place, I'd rip out all the existing sinks and put in parabolic sinks.

</comment><comment><USER26> He misses the most obvious problem of all, which is that you can't clean easily in the corners of many sharp-edged flat sinks.

</comment><comment><USER27> The author goes to conclude that Windows RT is an example of 'Flat Design' and doesn't even justify why.

FYI: In my opinion, the author's $5.99 EBook on design is the best example of 'Flat Design' (I bought one). He claims to teach you to design a web app from scratch, but whereas the book is more of a walkthrough for a basic app than a 'how-to' (which is what he claims). Once you purchase his book, you realize it was a 'flat-design' and not a curvy one.

The author is an Apple fanboy himself, bashing out the new Windows Metro UI under the guise of a design article. Two years from now, I'd love to meet the author and see him claim the same thing. The author has a blind-folded belief that 'Apple knows what they're doing' or rather the 'Apple can do no wrong' mindset. I guess that's why you never saw any articles on Apple maps on his blog.

Coming back to the point, if Apple knows what they're doing, I bet Microsoft knows much better, because they are #2 in the OS arena WORLDWIDE (google for stats). So, this ideology that the Metro UI sucks is just time-limited. It's only a matter of time that people get accustomed to it and they will and MS knows that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. It's so interesting to see how our own biases can completely transform the meaning of what we're reading.

Where did I bash Windows RT? How am I an Apple fanboy when this article barely mentions Apple, and only to say designers are getting tired of Apple's aesthetic?

I'm a little bit sad for you. It seems you see all discourse through an "Apple vs XYZ" filter, and that must be extremely restrictive. Just think of all the information you're missing out on by reducing every single piece of information you come across to a binary dichotomy…

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I had an slight-tilt shower floor in Laos. No problems with the way the water hit the surface, but there were some problems with the way that the water was draining to a point two feet away from where the drain was.

</comment><comment><USER29> My wife and I have encountered these at many hotels over the past few years.

The reason is environmental: the sink is supposed to splash if you turn the water too high. It's intended to keep you from wasting water.

<comment><USER30> if the reason is to avoid unnecessary water consumption, wouldn't it be better to limit the rate of the water? Less water is used and nobody gets wet and annoyed.

<comment><USER31> Low flow faucets make you look cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Flat sinks are for putting utensils in and that should be the end of it. Easy to store dishes, pots, and pans. Curved sinks? Not so much. But for the bathroom? An odd choice but to each his own.

</comment><comment><USER33> Doesn't it seem that the move to flat design from skeuomorphism is an exact parallel of the move to modernism from pre-modernism in architecture?

</comment><comment><USER34> Ahh, posts like this are like magnets for front-page HN. Mm, maybe I'm just a bit jealous. I should buy a boat. Or start a blog of my own.

</comment><comment><USER35> The disadvantages of flat sinks don't end there. They're harder to clean, because dirt tends to stick in the corners.

</comment><comment><USER36> A best of both worlds would be a flat sink that's angled/sloped towards the wall

<comment><USER37> I've seen those in restaurant lavatories.

The disadvantage is that when filling a sink e.g. for shaving, the water pools at a line rather than a point. this is obviously not a problem in a restaurant.

See the third illustration "With a flat sink, you need more water to get the same depth" - an angled flat surface would be somewhere between the two in efficiency of water use.

<comment><USER38> I think if I were going to shave this way, I'd use a bowl instead of putting a lot of water into a presumably-not-perfectly-clean sink. You could wash a bowl and put it away after, whereas you'd have to wash the sink immediately before each shave. If the designer of the sink expected using a shaving bowl, the flat bottom would make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER37> I've been thinking about why you see these in restaurants, upmarket nightclubs, corporate boardrooms, etc. IMHO it is that:

1) they look impressive

2) They look like you spent money

3) The only task that they're actually used for is washing hands.

This is a different set of purposes from home use. Making your home bathroom look like a nightclub bathroom at the expense of usefulness is a particular kind of folly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Solution: Lower the water pressure.

</comment><comment><USER40> What font is that, it's great.

<comment><USER41> Proxima Nova Soft.

In the future check out this extension as it allows you to hover over elements to quickly find the font: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgcpjmedljpbcaablpmlmfcogm?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> The issue with flat / minimal design is the lack of contrast. I have had problems when gmail redesigned the interface early this year.</comment>


America's Unwanted Ivy Leaguers Are Flocking to India - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-02/chasing-the-american-dream-in-india

<comment><USER2> "Flocking" = we don't have any real numbers but here are a couple of people who went to the US and then came back, and look! we use that unicorn word that no current startup article is complete without so you can trust us.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a great article, it needs to note the majority are simply going home either because of inability to maintain permission to remain in the US or the inability to find a job they want.

Nothing wrong with that

<comment><USER4> I personally think there _is_ something wrong with having to leave a country because you can't maintain permission to be there, but then again I'm an open borders guy.[0]

[0]: [http://openborders.info/](http://openborders.info/)

<comment><USER5> Theoretical: ROC Taiwan opens its borders to anyone. What would happen?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Three of my friends have done this specifically to found startups. Ironically they still have to come to the valley for funding.</comment>


How much does a Lyft driver earn? - <AUTHOR> http://brent-noorda.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-much-does-lyft-driver-earn.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> Oh give me a break. He's basing his entire analysis on the assumption that it costs $22.80/hr to operate a vehicle. They way he comes up with that is by including the up-front cost of the vehicle.

That's not quite the right logic. Most people do not go out and purchase a vehicle just to become a Lyft drivers. Certainly that's not what you should do.

A better economic analysis is to look at Lyft as a way to make your existing personal car a more productive asset. The car is a sunk cost. What you should analyze is the _incremental_ costs of fuel and wear-and-tear for the additional miles driven vs. the Lyft proceeds.

Econ geek footnote: This is assuming there is little-to-no opportunity cost for being a Lyft driver. But for the unemployed that holds true. Lyft may be a more compelling option for unemployed/underemployed car owners.

<comment><USER3> > Most people do not go out and purchase a vehicle just to become a Lyft > drivers.

But that's a likely direction.

And if you're trying to make much money from Lyft, you're probably driving it much more for Lyft than for yourself already.

<comment><USER2> Still counts. As long as you would have bought the vehicle for your own use anyway, it's a sunk cost. Whether or not it's profitable to rent it out via Lyft depends solely on the incremental costs of the extra driving -- not how much extra driving you do. And if it is profitable, then driving more is more profitable, not less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > According to this Consumer Reports article, "the median car costs more than > $9,100 a year to own" over the first five years of ownership driving 12,000 > miles a year. That means the median cars costs about 76 cents per mile > driven ($9100/12000). I'm just guessing that I'll average a speed of 30 > miles/hour while I'm doing my Lyft job. So my expenses will come to about > $22.80 per hour (0.76*30).

Doesn't that $9100 a year median include a bunch of fixed costs (or at least costs that wouldn't grow linearly with the mileage driven)? e.g., the lease/cost of car itself, insurance, etc. I'm not saying this would take the profitability of being a Lyft driver from pretty terrible to great, but it does seem like a pretty significant oversight.

<comment><USER5> But it's not like his car payment magically disappears when he becomes a Lyft driver. Or magically stop having to carry insurance. It's a good estimate to use for cost, especially considering the author did not even own a car and would have to purchase one.

<comment><USER4> > But it's not like his car payment magically disappears when he becomes a > Lyft driver. Or magically stop having to carry insurance.

Right, my point is that those costs are essentially fixed w.r.t miles driven, not that you wouldn't need those things. If you drive 36000 miles a year as a Lyft driver your car payment is still the same as someone who drives 12000 miles a year, whereas the author's model assumes the payment would be 3x as much. And re insurance, I know insurance companies take mileage into account in determining insurance premium, but it's certainly not the only thing in the formula.

<comment><USER6> Drive 36k miles a year and the car will quickly have a resell value of 0 and repair costs become more frequent. Insurance is probably the only true fixed cost that benefits from scale

<comment><USER7> If you were going to approach this in a purely economic-rationalist manner, you'd (probably) discover that buying cars new is wasteful - and that you want to look for late-model full-service-history low-mileage second hand cars in the 2 or 3 year old range. The original owner will have borne the brunt of the capital depreciation, and you can drive higher-than-average-yearly-mileage for a few years while "low mileage" to "slightly high mileage".

(Where I come from, Australia, there are tax breaks that make 3 year old cars fresh off company-car leases pretty commonly available - many people structure their salary package in a way the strongly encourages them to lease a new car every 3 years, and off-load the previous one for often 35% of its original purchase price - and to have those cars get all their required dealer servicing done using pre-tax salary.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I'm just guessing that I'll average a speed of 30 miles/hour while I'm doing > my Lyft job. So my expenses will come to about $22.80 per hour.

You're implying that you will driving 30 miles each hour, on average. That is a ridiculous overestimation for the type of urban driving Lyft will involve. I'd guess closer to 15-20 in off-peak periods, and perhaps something close to 10 miles on average. That brings maintenance expenses down to $7.60/hr from $22/hr.

<comment><USER9> Urban driving incurs a higher cost per mile driven, and unless you're driving a hybrid increases fuel costs.

<comment><USER8> Which is why UberX was originally advertised as being "hybrid uber". As for the higher cost per mile of urban driving, I genuinely would love to see a source.

<comment><USER9> [http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&...](http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=7&year=2013&make=Honda&model=Civic&srchtyp=ymm)

Hey look at that, car use more fuel when driving in the city. Who knew?

Same thing with oil, if you drive on the highway you don't have to change it that often.

Brakes, in the city you stop much more often requiring more frequent brake changes (braking also happens to wear out your tires faster)

Every time you step on the gas you're applying force to metal, this means things more twisting force slowly fatiguing the metal.

Transmission, every time you shift you wear out the clutch a little.

Idling is also hell on your engine, you idle far more in the city than on the highway.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the information, and just so you know, my tone wasn't intended as skeptical. I genuinely wanted sources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Uber just announced that it has struck deals with auto manufacturers to chop $100-200 off monthly payments for those that are approved to drive for them.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/24/uber-driver-car- financing/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/24/uber-driver-car-financing/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I think your missing the point. You are calculating this on the basis that you were buying and using your car exclusively for Lyft. If a driver is already paying for a vehicle, all of these expenses can be shared with personal use. This is the 'sharing economy'.

To buy a car and use it exclusively for Lyft may not make sense.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice feedback on my blog post, y'all. Thanks. Estimating exactly how much a driver receives from Lyft, versus that driver's expenses, is really difficult. So I took some shortcuts with easily searchable published data and ended up with just $3.45/hour. In a G+ discussion it came up that if you could externalize most ownership expenses (e.g. driving your dad's car), it would be reasonable to get up to $17/hour with all my other estimates being the same.

In a best-case scenario you'd be picking up someone whose destination is where you were already headed, in which case your 80% of the payment would be pure profit. If you drove that person for a full hour, to a place where you were already headed, and they paid you $43.75, then you really would get that $35/hour that Lyft advertises for drivers.

In the end, these estimates are hard. Lyft themselves probably have real good data on the matter. Maybe they'll give us some real numbers, and show us how they can be cheaper than cabs while simultaneously (if their advertising for drivers is to be believed) paying their drivers a lot more than typical cabbies.

<comment><USER13> > how they can be cheaper than cabs while simultaneously (if their advertising > for drivers is to be believed) paying their drivers a lot more than typical > cabbies.

The capital cost of buying a taxi medallion?

<comment><USER12> Good point. I hear an SF medalion can go for 300K.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> @Brent Noorda, awesome! You've identified a market opportunity to provider a more consumer friendly and driver friendly alternative! Give back to the community! All you need is some servers and lattes.

<comment><USER12> Given what the drivers and passengers put into it, it does seem that Lyft's 20% cut seems high - but that 20% is also what justifies backing from the investors. If so, then there's room for a service doing the same brokerage deal for, maybe 10% or 5% (if they cut out the lattes), advertising itself as "cheaper than cabs, AND cheaper than Lyft". Maybe Craig will offer a really crappy UI and do it for free?

<comment><USER15> Sounds like a good ole fashioned race to the bottom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Profit = marginal revenue - marginal cost. You've counted all vehicle maintenance as a "cost of Lyft driving". For people who already own (and maintain) a car, this is not the case.

</comment><comment><USER17> For people already with a car, the variable costs of driving (maintenance, fuel, etc.) is usually 25-45 cents (lower end is a economy car getting 30mpg city, higher end is a less fuel-efficient, less reliable car). Using 35c/mile, and an average urban driving speed, that's $5.25/hour.

Even idling half the time, that's 17.50-5.25=$12.25, better than many pizza delivery / the average urban courier rate. Delivery drivers often get far less than $35 while having to pay their own vehicle costs.

The calculus changes a lot just based on that single number, average speed. I'm sure the $35/hr number would be far higher if everyone was going on freeways between trips and racking up the miles like crazy (assuming Lyft incorporates distance into its pricing heavily)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm going to agree with the majority here and say it's probably a bad idea to buy a car just to do Lyft.

However, I wonder if there are any arbitrage opportunities by combining Lyft with something like Flightcar (where you don't own the vehicle).

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. In most places it is illegal to provide transport for a fee without a special state-provided license.

2\. There are also special legal requirements from the driver, e.g. taxi drivers license.

3\. Insurance requirements are different and order of magnitude higher for vehicles that provide such transport.

4\. In case of accidents/fatalities or police stops, who bears responsibility/liability? The car owner, the company, the insurer, all of the above? How much danger of arrest/confiscation/huge fines is the driver in? Does lyft indemnify their business partners against such incidents?

5\. The drivers earnings should be the least concern for folks who sign up for this scheme

</comment><comment><USER20> Even if Brent may have overestimated the cost of operating a vehicle, assuming he makes 2X of his projection, that is still less than L.A minimum wage ($8 today. Increasing to $10 by 2016.)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is poor analysis. The writer takes an artificially high number ($9100), divides it by an artificially low number (12,000) and then multiplies it by an artificially high number (30 mph) resulting in just about the highest number possible.

Take a $15,000 car with a nice warranty and good mileage. $3 or so per hour for gas. $200/month for registration, insurance, etc. Maybe you'd get to $10 and hour in costs, but I doubt it. And the car would last for 10 years at least.

<comment><USER12> At $10/hour expenses (your estimate) and $26/hour income (the original article's estimate) the Lyft driver is now netting $16/hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> According to IRS, $0.58 per mile is fair comp (for driving your own car). [http://www.irs.gov/uac/2013-Standard-Mileage-Rates- Up-1-Cent...](http://www.irs.gov/uac/2013-Standard-Mileage-Rates-Up-1-Cent- per-Mile-for-Business,-Medical-and-Moving). In city, you can hardly drive over 35 miles/hour and you stop frequently. Even if you drive 10-20 miles per hour, that's $6 - $12. per hour.

<comment><USER22> The IRS is definitely lowballing it though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's no conceivable sum of money you could pay me to put an ugly pink mustache on my car. Why do they think this mustache fad is still funny?

</comment><comment><USER24> It is also possible to drive a used car, which can drastically lower the initial and operating expenses. This way, even "luxury" cars are a viable option to drive.

Also, most people tip their drivers, which is basically tax-free income (at least in Germany).

<comment><USER25> Tips are taxable income in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Meanwhile, [http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/24/uber-driver-car- financing/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/24/uber-driver-car-financing/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I know Uber drivers count driving/car costs as business expenses for a tax write off. Something to think about...

<comment><USER12> Lyft drivers could surely benefit from the tax deductions as well. I assume they report their Lyft payments to the IRS? This complicates the "how much they earn" formula further.

<comment><USER28> Lyft sends 1099(-K, presumably)s to drivers who make over $20k from 200+ transactions a year. This is the same reporting system used by Stripe and Paypal. (I have lots lying around.)

It would be _exceptionally unwise_ to fail to report income which has been 1099-ed to you, and _very unwise_ to fail to report substantial income merely because one does not have a corresponding 1099 for it, because (particularly in the case where one party has all the information required to reconstruct your income and that one party can simultaneously uncover millions of dollars of under-reporting) audits exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ugh, this post is a minefield of logical fallacies

<comment><USER12> Logical fallacies? No. I take my logical fallacies very seriously. But factual fallacies? Perhaps, since it is based on some assumptions and guesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Lyft. Someone is being taken for a ride! +1!</comment>


Alibaba's Jack Ma says 12-hour work week could be the norm - <AUTHOR> https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/billionaire-jack-ma-says-12-hour-work-week-could-be-the-norm/story-aOqXiezZkv6IgrYnsXIF8J.html <comment><USER2> Previous related posts:

\- Alibaba's Jack Ma Defends China's 996 Schedule (12 April 2019): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19645729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19645729) (scmp.com)

\- Jack Ma defends the 'blessing' of a 12-hour working day(15 April 2019): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19668671) (bbc.co.uk)

\- Alibaba founder Jack Ma says staff should work 12 hours a day, six days a week(16 April 2019): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19691793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19691793) (abc.net.au)

\- China's Grueling Formula for Success: 9-9-6(22 Feb. 2017): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16573978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16573978) (wsj.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't he a proponent of 996?</comment>


Over 275 days since Equifax's data breach settlement and no one has been paid - <AUTHOR> https://www.interest.com/personal-finance/275-days-since-equifax-data-breach-settlement/ <comment><USER2> From the settlement web site:

"The Court gave final approval to the Settlement and overruled all objections on January 13, 2020. However, some of those that objected to the Settlement have now appealed the Court's decision to approve the Settlement. By order of the Court, the Settlement cannot become final until all appeals are resolved and there is currently no timeline for the resolution of these appeals. When the appellate court enters a schedule for the appeal, we will update this website to provide individuals with more guidance as to the timing of a decision. Please check back for further updates."

<comment><USER3> iirc, other than writing the Court a letter, this was the other major way to indicate your displeasure towards the settlement

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Come on now that is not quite true. Some politicians got paid to make this thing go away with a legislation.

</comment><comment><USER5> No idea why but I always feel any company dealing with blackbox credit rules are very fishy...wish there is a way to remove them away from the financial system.

<comment><USER6> EDITED: the below is wrong (as stated by a child comment). There is a diversity of systems in Europe.

OLD COMMENT: Here's the thing, as far as I know, Europe does not have those companies. So it definitely should be possible to do without them...

<comment><USER7> That is not true. It is almost impossible to rent a flat in the larger cities of Germany without showing a positive credit record to the landlords. And requesting even small credits of a few k will have your credit rating checked and recorded that such a check happened.

<comment><USER6> You are correct, I was unaware of the German case! In fact, it seems that many European countries do have a credit score system. Some do have other systems: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_score#Germany)

Here are some countries within Europe who do not have a credit score system:

\- Belgium has no centralised credit score system. However, banks can ask the Belgian counterpart of the FED for all loans held in your name when you request a new loan. The national bank keeps a register of all loans.

\- United Kingdom: There is no such thing as a universal credit score or credit rating in the UK. Each lender will assess potential borrowers on their own criteria, and these algorithms are effectively trade secrets.

<comment><USER8> As a Brit, I feel I should point out we definitely do have credit ratings. The three main ratings agencies are Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

<comment><USER9> The Experian Credit Rating Agency actually results historically _from_ what happened before CRAs existed.

Last century "Mail order" was an exciting new business opportunity. You send people (mostly housewives) a catalogue explaining what's on offer, and then they pick items from the catalogue and you deliver them. You can have a much broader range of products than their local stores, and the catalogue offers a good way for cautious shoppers to compare options and make a decision at their leisure.

There was a problem. The customer has no prior relationship to you, but of course they don't want to pay you for potentially very expensive goods, in advance, unseen. A local store might know exactly who the customer is, if that's a nice house or a tiny cottage, what the husband does for a living. Your mail order catalogue company has no idea.

So you began to just collect observable facts. Mrs Smith still owes you £208 from last year when she bought the dining room set, and hasn't made a payment on it since January. Mrs Jones on the other hand has paid every penny she owed, regular as clockwork. So when Mrs Smith tries to order a new frock, you remind her about the outstanding £208 by return of post - and when Mrs Jones does you send the frock immediately.

Gradually other new businesses wonder if they might take advantage of this knowledge. Mrs Jones wants to buy a car, cars are expensive but she'd make payment every month. The first dealer she visits suggests her husband should buy it. Mrs Jones doesn't have a husband, and she walks out in disgust, no sale. But the second dealer has an idea, that mail order catalogue company might know if Mrs Jones is good for the money. They agree, for a fee, and on condition that the car dealer tell them if Mrs Jones makes each future payment on her credit deal, which seems harmless enough.

And one day the catalogue company realises that 80% of its revenue is from this "Credit Reference" side business of knowing that Mrs Jones is a better risk than Mrs Smith and the catalogue sales are nice but they aren't really the same business and needn't be the same company.

If it hadn't already happened last century, today Amazon would be your Credit Reference Agency, yet another opportunity to enrich Jeff Bezos...

<comment><USER10> Really interesting background. I'd not idea this is where it all came from.

It's pretty clear that nowadays with much safer online payments, there's really no need for these credit checks any more -- you pay online, and if you get scammed there's solid proof of whom you paid and how much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't get my [knowledge-based authentication] data back. I don't want their measly $125 from them (it will cost me far more time and money when this breach is used against me). I want them to pay the cost for the government to replace the SSN as an identifier. And to pay for the government give me a new SSN in the meanwhile... and they don't get to store the new SSN in their database (because they dun messed up). I think that would be a better outcome for everyone.

<comment><USER12> There's no need for SSN at all.

Everyone is identified by their birth date, the name of their mother and their birth place. (Their own name is not that important, for example twins can pull off identity fraud easily, as they can pretend to have the name of their twin, and how would anyone know!?)

Sure, we can go full 1984 and GATTACA and use biomarkers and papers and whatever. But that just makes puts many edge cases out of scope, doesn't solve them at all.

If someone shows up at the bank and claims to be someone, they can produce documents, either via simple forgery or by stealing someone else's "identity".

They can then pass all the checks the bank runs. (Sure, if there is some database that says don't open accounts for these IDs, then the scammer can start with persuading the admins of that DB to unlock the corresponding ID.)

And this will always happen as long as we allow fallbacks for people to get access to (and create) their accounts after losing (or without creating) a strong cryptographic key (password).

<comment><USER13> > birth date, the name of their mother and their birth place

Surely not, there must be a day in which two children were born on the same day in the same hospital in New York City to two women named Jane Smith?

<comment><USER14> I suspect it happens to twins a lot.

<comment><USER15> I'd wager at least 100% of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If only the media cared as much about ppl's super critical data being exposed as it cares about the privacy of my Facebook Likes.

<comment><USER17> But does the media even care about that? Or was that the point you were trying to make?

<comment><USER18> "But _do_ the media..."

Media is a plural noun. To use it incorrectly this way gives credence to conspiratorial thinking about the press.

<comment><USER17> Shades of gr[ea]y my friend. If you think of the media as each broadcaster/publisher it might be plural, but in the conspiratorial sense of things the "media" is just the propaganda arm of "them". That makes it a singular thing. QED

<comment><USER19> Depends where you live really. Some places say "the band is performing" and treat it as a singular, others say "the band are performing" and treat it as a collection of individuals. I think the latter is more of a UK thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The lawyers haven't finished looting the cash. Does anyone even care about the token amount of cash they're likely to receive?

<comment><USER21> It's not about the insignificant amount of money everyone will get out of it; it's about equifax being severely punished and fined, even though that settlement won't really change anything.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. Most people didn't even get picked for payment. I don't want a shitty monitoring service I want to see Equifax bleed

<comment><USER23> > I want to see Equifax bleed

This seems vindictive. Their behaviour should be corrected and other people deterred. We shouldn't be calling for blood!

<comment><USER24> What's wrong with a corporate death sentence in the event of such egregious mistakes? There must be a severe enough punishment in order for a company's risk department to take things seriously.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. There's not right and wrong for companies if there's never any _real_ risk.

If people had to just pay a small fine and go on with their lives for misdeeds, we'd see people hijacking sports cars every day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's really a loss for consumers across the United States.

The reality is that a large part of the fintech sector still depends on the data provided by Equifax. Their data is also used for KYC and other security use cases.

We have started Truework ([https://www.truework.com](https://www.truework.com)) to break that dependency and give consumers control of their data. If you're interested to help us, please contact me by email.

<comment><USER26> The Work Number collects payroll information from employers without informing employees that they turn around and sell that information to third parties. They mislead people by saying they don't release pay information without employee authorization while neglecting to mention they sell everything else without asking permission or giving notification.

It looks like you're doing similar kinds of data collection directly from employers. If an employee doesn't request income verification or any other service from you folks, do you collect any data on that employee?

<comment><USER25> wl, you summarized pretty well how it works indeed :-). A lot of players in the industry hides behind long legal documents.

In our case we get employee information from your employer but it's never shared to third-parties by default. We always go through the process of notification to the employee before releasing any data and, as an employee, you can refuse to share that data. The requester is in a holding pattern until you consent to data sharing.

Hope that helps

<comment><USER27> Ultimately the purpose of your enterprise to help employers collude to suppress wages. Please shut it down and disappear. Otherwise I hope you die toiling in poverty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If I remember the settlement details, something like 75 million was for legal fees.

I bet _they 've_ been paid.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why is the company that had the breach managing the payments? Surely it should be neutral third party who then just passes on the final bill.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I'm pretty sure that neutral party should be the court.

If I get a fine, I'm sure I can't just wait a few years to pay it with no big deal behind that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Call me cynical, but when I read the news of the breach I went and bought EFX call options for 3 months. Because even though I am not sure whether the "deep state" exists or it's a conspiracy theory, I was somehow confident that I was making a good investment. It has paid off handsomely indeed.

<comment><USER31> When you buy calls but don't have the capital to exercise those calls, do brokerage services lend you the money to collect on the gains assuming your call is in the black?

I have a pretty good stock portfolio, but I haven't dipped my toes into the call/put, futures, derivatives, "iron condors", etc. world yet.

<comment><USER30> In that case you simply sell the call, instead of exercising (assigning) it. I switched to selling puts instead since then.

<comment><USER31> Are your puts covered? How do you mitigate the risk of the stock going up?

I need to learn a lot more before doing this.

<comment><USER30> Yes, puts are covered for now. There are several standardized levels of account access to buying/selling options. I think selling naked puts requires Level 5 while selling covered puts requires Level 3. I recommend practicing buying options first, and selling the options that you have bought, before selling covered or naked options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think I would have preferred the company be removed of their ability to collect credit information than any other penalty.

<comment><USER33> The US credit system is a bunch of bullshit anyway.

> "Good credit is for poor people" \- words of a wealthy friend.

<comment><USER34> I don't get it. It seems like keeping good credit is easy. Why can't you have good credit and be wealthy?

<comment><USER35> I imagine extremely wealthy people buy everything cash.

<comment><USER17> Wealthy people don't leave money on the table. If they can earn "free money" with a credit card point game, then why not?

Some of the cheapest people I know are wealthy. Cheap as in, they negotiate the hardest for the lowest price, even though it is meaningless to them. I have been told out right on more than one occasion that it's not about trying to make something affordable, but more of the shear enjoyment of making someone else take less just because they can.

<comment><USER36> Second this. When my extremely wealthy CEO overheard I was in the market for a new vehicle, he happily volunteered to get on the phone and pit 3 local Ford dealerships against each other in a bidding war for my business. I ended up saving an additional 12% off what I thought was already a discounted price. I think a majority of us regular people don't know how to tap into that ruthless negotiation when buying cars, houses, mattresses, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was hoping that such an egregious case would merit at least an enforced slap on the wrist. I guess even the talk of insider trading did not change that outcome. This, along with other recent events, suggests that justice system is tiered. This does not bode well for the future of the republic.

</comment><comment><USER38> I want to sue the credit agencies for stalking me.

<comment><USER17> Would you need to first file a retraining order, or can you just jump straight into litigation?

<comment><USER39> In America, you can always jump straight to litigation. It doesn't mean you'll win, and Equifax almost certainly has deeper pockets than you do.

<comment><USER40> The deeper pockets wouldn't be the problem. You give permission to financial institutions to share your data with the credit reporting bureaus, so good luck fighting that in court.

<comment><USER17> Do you really give permission/consent, or just accept the fact that you have no choice in the matter. A guy puts a gun in your face and says give me your wallet. You're not giving him permission to take your belongings. You're just doing what you have to do. Yes, I am equating the terms modern financial systems use as a gun in my face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> where can I find a good summary/timeline of events of this whole Equifax breach?

EDIT: googled, reading this[1] now.

1- [https://www.csoonline.com/article/3444488/equifax-data- breac...](https://www.csoonline.com/article/3444488/equifax-data-breach-faq- what-happened-who-was-affected-what-was-the-impact.html)

</comment><comment><USER42> I doubt that headline is really correct: likely the _lawyers_ have some cash to show for their efforts. Who cares about the actual claimants?

</comment><comment><USER43> Have the lawyers been paid?

</comment><comment><USER44> In a surprise to no one...

</comment><comment><USER45> The data has never surfaced. I have to wonder if anybody who claims they had direct identity theft because of the breach automatically loses their claim.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/equifax-mystery-where-is- the...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/equifax-mystery-where-is-the- data.html)

It's interesting that most coverage of the incident ignores that detail. I guess people really dont like to hear it because it doesnt fit their narrative. Whatever this interest.com article is, it has very little value. It reads like seo spam. It doesn't discuss any of the developments in the last three weeks, such as Chicago, Indiana, Massachusetts all working out settlements.

<comment><USER46> To be clear, are you saying that in order for a data breach to be considered legitimate, the plundered data needs to be released publicly?

<comment><USER47> Part of the claims process for this settlement was stating that you suffered losses due to the breach.

If they can prove that the data never leaked, then everyone's claim becomes invalid, because you didn't suffer any losses from the breach.

<comment><USER46> Even if you did not have your identity stolen yet, losses from the breach can be as simple as "I bought an identity monitoring service due to the breach _happening_." It says so on the settlement's website: [https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/](https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/)

"Time Spent during the Extended Claims Period recovering from fraud, identity theft, or other misuse of your personal information caused by the data breach"

In this case, the "misuse of [my] personal information" is the fact that it was leaked by Equifax to an unknown third party.

> If they can prove that the data never leaked,

I don't know how this would be possible, considering they announced that it did leak: "In September of 2017, Equifax announced it experienced a data breach"

Unless you mean, prove that the data has not been used yet. Which doesn't seem like a fair stipulation to the ~150 million impacted people. And it also doesn't seem possible to prove.

<comment><USER45> I want to be clear; I am not trying to downplay the severity of this. On the contrary, it's probably worse. The pretenses under which the settlement were made, was a faulty understanding of reality. Despite that, it doesnt give me the moral authority to lie for a piece of the faulty claim.

What I mean by that, is that we were told there was a breach, and that if we signed up for credit monitoring services we were entitled to money. We were told to use our time to freeze our accounts. That however, did nothing to protect us from what actually happened. A nation states military collected the data. That is arguably worse than it being used by cyber criminals to take out loans and credit cards. We were given the impression that we needed to protect ourselves from people opening accounts in our names or using the data to access accounts. That in no way reflects what risk we are actually exposed to.

Equifax put us in harms way of a MILITARY. Not petty identity theft. How do you even quantify what kind of threat that is? The settlement doesn't reflect that. It doesnt mean that despite the settlement not reflecting reality, that I should go say they owe me $125 dollars for credit monitoring services. Especially when damn near every bank in the country offers it for free. Tons and tons of press were saying "if you already have credit monitoring services, just fill out the form." It doesn't work that way, and because Im not getting compensated for a Military threat, doesnt make it ok to claim what I am not entitled to. It doesnt make up for it. There is no way to quantify what the monetary damage of the threat actually is. There is no way to know how 20 or 30 years down the road it could make travel more dangerous. Just because the settlement is wrong, doesnt make it right to file a false claim.

If people really did go pay for credit monitoring (not free stuff they signed up for or already had), or did spend lots of time freezing credit, they do deserve compensation for time wasted based on equifax giving us the wrong information. But since I was not harmed in the way they told me I was when they made the settlement, I shouldnt be ethically entitled to settlement money dolled out under false pretenses. Two wrongs don't make a right, nor do they make us whole.

>"Time Spent during the Extended Claims Period recovering from fraud, identity theft, or other misuse of your personal information caused by the data breach"

If we agree that the data has never left the government that collected it; we can determine there was no fraud, identity theft, or misuse, then I could not have spent time "recovering from it." How do you even know how to "recover" from a military collecting data on you?

>Which doesn't seem like a fair stipulation to the ~150 million impacted people.

The real victims could be large organizations who are penetrated using the data to answer security questions or verifications. I still find it unlikely this data has yet been used in a direct attack against the impacted people.

This all stemmed from me asking if providing false information to a claim could make you ineligible. I would consider it false information to say "i was directly attacked and spent time performing recovery actions and had money stolen from me" due to this breach (as far as we know, nobody has yet had an incident because of it, and there is no actual way to recover, short of an emp burst), or to claim that the free credit monitoring I already had counts towards some kind of time wasted credit. It is my opinion, that the intent of "Time Spent during the Extended Claims Period recovering from fraud" IMPLIES there was some kind of fraud that occurred to some people, and that isnt the case. And the large claims against this settlement are for MONEY LOST due to direct attacks. Those are the types of settlement claims I am asking if could be made invalid.

This is what the settlement site says right now.

>If you were impacted by the Equifax data breach, you may seek reimbursement for valid Out of Pocket losses or Time Spent ( _excluding losses of money and time associated with freezing or unfreezing credit reports or purchasing credit monitoring or identity theft protection_ ) incurred during the Extended Claims Period if you have not received reimbursement for the claimed loss through other means.

>Out-of-Pocket Losses during the Extended Claims Period resulting from the data breach up to $20,000.

It is an odd magicians distraction, a ruse of sorts. Their settlement covers events that didn't occur to anyone, and imply the wrong future risks. Anybody who applied for this part of the claim gave false information. IF nobody had true out of pocket losses (excluding credit monitoring or time freezing) there is no legitimate claim for this part of the settlement. QED.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>