Why are cars killing more pedestrians? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/03/collision-course-pedestrian-deaths-rising-driverless-cars <comment><USER3> Texting while driving, that's why.

From here I sit on the porch, I can see that about 2/3 of drivers text while driving.

I'm convinced that no amount of campaigning, punishment, or scare tactics will suffice to stop it.

It is just how driving is done nowadays, and everyone feels they can do it safely (but they can't).

There's no going back so if you're on a bike, or a pedestrian, watch out!

Driving is sacred in our societies. Whenever a driver kills a pedestrian or a cyclist in my town, there aren't even any charges laid 99% of the time.

Personally I think smartphones have been a net loss to society, for this and many other reasons.

<comment><USER4> According to the article, your theory is simple yet wrong:

> Here is what the frustrated safety experts will tell you: Americans are > _driving more than ever_ , more than residents of any other country. More of > them than ever are living in cities and out in urban sprawl; a growing > number of pedestrian fatalities occur on the _fringes of cities_ , where > high-volume, high-speed roads exist in close proximity to the places where > people live, work, and shop. _Speed limits have increased_ across the > country over the past 20 years, despite robust evidence that even slight > increases in speed dramatically increase the likelihood of killing > pedestrians (car passengers, too – but the increase is not as steep, thanks > to improvements in the design of car frames, airbags and seatbelts). > American road engineers tend to assume people will speed, and so _design > roads to accommodate speeding_ ; this, in turn, facilitates more speeding, > which soon enough makes higher speed limits feel reasonable. And more > Americans than ever are zipping around in _SUVs and pickup trucks_ , which, > thanks to their height, weight and shape are _between two and three times > more likely to kill people they hit_. [emphasis added]

From other statistics I've seen, the massive increase in SUV's is mentioned as the single largest factor.

Indeed, the article directly refutes your theory:

> Ask a room full of safety experts about smartphones and you will get a mix > of resignation, bemusement and contempt. "I tend not to buy the smartphone > distraction stuff," says Garrick, echoing nearly identical comments from > just about everyone I talked to. "To me, it reads as shoving aside actually > dealing with the relevant issues." What particularly bothers him, he says, > is _how poorly thought out the distraction discourse tends to be. In the UK, > Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, for example, > pedestrian deaths occur at a per capita rate roughly half of America's, or > lower. Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% > less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything > else?_ ... "All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? > It's such a distraction," says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for > Sustainable Cities. "It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none > on the environment they operate in." [emphasis added]

<comment><USER5> > From other statistics I've seen, the massive increase in SUV's is mentioned > as the single largest factor.

I've been saying for years that driving a large SUV or truck without a legitimate need for its capabilities is an antisocial act, for precisely this reason and also the fact that, all other things being equal, a vehicle (and its occupants) colliding with another vehicle will fare worse the larger that other vehicle is. Whether my own assumptions were right or wrong, I'm glad we're finally starting to talk about this. For a long time, it seemed to be a huge blind spot in existing analyses of injurious/fatal road accidents.

It makes me absolutely livid when I walk past a shiny new lifted pickup with an empty bed and my head is just about level with the front of the hood. How have we grown to accept these things driving around on public roads with no higher bar to entry than that required to drive a Geo Metro?

<comment><USER6> This seems like a strange reaction. Why would it make a difference if the bed is empty?

<comment><USER5> Well, I don't want to say trucks shouldn't be allowed on public roads at all. That would exclude working vehicles that serve crucial roles in our society.

The condition of a truck's bed, i.e. is it dusty and marked up by loads carried, is it full of gear, etc., serves as a proxy for whether the operator of the vehicle has been or is currently making use of the capabilities it offers beyond e.g. a compact hatchback. If they are _not,_ I see that as a signal that they belong to the category of truck owners who own them for vanity and/or personal expression reasons rather than because they need the carrying capacity. This sort of ownership is, I believe (as I said) an antisocial act.

This signal is not perfect, but as I keep it to myself in every case I don't feel that I'm harming anybody by making these judgments, and if someone could demonstrate to me that e.g. the majority of F-series truck (the most popular "car" in America, last I checked) owners _need_ that capacity, as in they use it on a regular basis to the extent that a smaller vehicle would not suffice, I'd be happy to change my thinking.

<comment><USER7> There definitely are truck owners like that, but I think there are a lot of truck owners who don't use them for their job, but extensively for work on and around their home and for recreation (or for activities which are both productive and recreational, like fishing and hunting), and that many of these folks like to take care of their trucks and try to keep them looking clean.

<comment><USER5> For most people, it's far from a given that those activities require the sort of vehicle I'm talking about.

Regardless, all this fixation on my "empty bed" comment is totally missing the point. We should look at the data, at how many human lives are lost each year because of the proliferation of these vehicles, and on that basis we should decide whether further regulation and/or transit engineering is needed to protect the public. People are, evidently, _dying_ because of said proliferation, and that's just totally unacceptable to me.

Maybe I just don't understand the mindset that I should be able to do whatever I want, for my own vanity/amusement/whatever, at any cost to my fellow humans up to and including the loss of their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cars don't kill pedestrians; drivers kill pedestrians. This is a case of lopsided stakes: pedestrians have everything to lose in case of car-on-ped collision, while drivers will merely have their day's schedule derailed. The fundamental problem here is that drivers simply don't care, and fail to operate their vehicles with due compassion towards vulnerable road users. An attentive driver who accelerates modestly and takes the time to become sure of his surroundings will not collide with anything: pedestrian, cyclist, another vehicle, or street furniture.

I believe strongly in robust mechanisms for keeping drivers responsible. Unfortunately, at least where I live, the justice system is completely impotent and unwilling to punish drivers for causing serious bodily harm or death. A system of heavy fines or imprisonment targeted at drivers would have resolved the inattention issue quicker than a typical driver can make a three- point turn. A year's worth of income, or one year of imprisonment, for any car-on-ped collision would do the trick.

<comment><USER9> In many cases it's the driver's fault due to inattention or recklessness, other-times the ped is taking liberties with their safety (on phone, not looking, running to beat traffic). So, while drivers do have the responsibility to look out for pedestrians there are cases where there is nothing they can do about a particular circumstance.

<comment><USER8> Drivers are the ones subject to licensing and insurance requirements. Drivers are the ones operating heavy machinery. Drivers are thus the responsible party, even when pedestrians are clearly not looking out for their own safety. There's never any downside to being the bigger person and watching out for the well being of fellow humans, even those who should really know better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Almost daily HN covers some aspect of why everybody driving around in their own personal automobile is stupid. Cars kills and main people. Cars release particulate matter that's bad for our lungs. Cars promote sedentarism, that bad for our physical health. Car rubber washed off roads releases microplastics into the ocean. Cars are noisy, they cause congestion, and make our cities stressful, hostile and dysfunctional. Cars promote inequality. Cars and their associated sprawl cost us insane amounts of money. Cars are destroying the planet.

There are reams of research to back this stuff up. There were massive reams of research to back it up 40 years ago. There are demonstrably better ways to do this. Why are we so fucking stupid?

<comment><USER11> Because cars are often the fastest and most convenient, and sometimes only practical, way to get from A to B.

Even in places with excellent public transport, there will be trips where cars are necessary, either because that specific public transit connection is atrocious (e.g. 10 minutes by car turn into 40+ minutes public transit), or you need to transport more than you can carry.

I don't own a car, and I suffer from their effects, but I do recognize their usefulness.

<comment><USER12> Car infrastructure (parking lots, streets) and buffers to make being around car infrastructure less horrible (useless "green space" buffers which can be much wider than the road itself, medians, front lawns so you're set back from the road, et c.) are a big part of why it's so hard to get anywhere without a car.

I was skeptical but I've run the numbers and sure enough, once you also factor in the time I spend working to pay for my car & gas I'd save quite a bit of time commuting by bike if my city could be squished closer together by removing most of the car-only stuff (gotta still have a few arteries for goods and for when you need to travel further, but you could cut out like 90%, easy—parking lots are _so_ big, out in the 'burbs). IOW widespread private car ownership actually makes my life worse than if they were outlawed, effectively, and I'm _not_ in the city core.

[EDIT] and my family buys cheapish cars and we make way over the median household income for our city—the math's _way_ worse for most people here than it is for me.

<comment><USER11> I'm not talking about the US suburbs, I'm talking about a highly walkable European city with excellent public transit. Once you get a bit further out, you will still find (combinations of) places where public transit connections just don't work well enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > And more Americans than ever are zipping around in SUVs and pickup trucks, > which, thanks to their height, weight and shape are between two and three > times more likely to kill people they hit.

It's not such a mystery then.

<comment><USER14> An interesting side effect of the new safety regulations for cars is that their weight has increased. A base VW golf weighs 3,000 pounds and has huge blindspots where the roll-over-ready columns are. The safety regulations only maximize safety for drivers in the event of an accident. They do nothing to minimize the chance of accidents or the deadlines of accidents to pedestrians. Science lagged legislation.

<comment><USER15> It's probably both fashion and crash safety, but car design really has gone astray with the heavy-handed "aggressive" styling and tiny windows everywhere. Where's the elegance?

<comment><USER16> Rear windows have shrank to almost nothing with the rise of backup cameras, but backup cameras are probably one of the few inventions that actually increase pedestrian safety over driving safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For good reasons, parents thoroughly indoctrinate small children with the idea that it's their job to keep out of the way of cars; if they step into the road they're being Very Naughty Indeed, and cars are an uncaring force of nature that can't be expected to slow or keep out of the way.

It's a shame there isn't an equally strong indoctrination campaign in the other direction when those same children become old enough to drive, to say that it's their job not to hit people under any circumstances.

<comment><USER18> As a parent of 4 I am shocked to see some kids run into the road without looking out for cars first. More parents should "indoctrinate" their kids about safety. You can't control other people's/driver's actions, but you can teach your kids about basic safety.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely you can.

My worry is that once this idea has been thoroughly instilled in children's heads when they're small, it's still there when they're older and in charge of dangerous machinery, so somewhere deep down they believe that avoiding death- by-car is naturally the pedestrian's job.

I don't suggest this is a reason not to put the idea there in the first place, rather that we should work as hard as possible to get to a situation where once they're driving they behave as if they believe the responsibility is all theirs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Somewhat related, and infuriating, news that this reminded me of:

US Diplomat's wife flees the UK and hides behind diplomatic immunity after killing 19 year old in a head on collision: [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ddm5ia/us_diplom...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ddm5ia/us_diplomats_wife_flees_the_uk_and_hides_behind/)

<comment><USER20> Yep like something out of Succession she was driving on the wrong side of the road, left the kid where he was to die and then fled the country with the US Embassy's help.

[https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/harry-dunn-death-us- di...](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/harry-dunn-death-us-diplomats- wife-urged-to-return-to-uk-by-mother-of-teenager-killed-in- crash-a4255121.html)

Harry Dunn's mother will be flying to the US to try to appeal for justice for him.

<comment><USER19> If the murderer doesn't get some kind of punishment, this is tyranny through and through.

They can literally kill civilians in proverbial broad daylight and just get a free flight home at taxpayer expense?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I agree that texting while driving is a key part of it, no doubt.

But, I'd propose another one, too. New aerodynamic designs locate the A pillars in a place in most cars that eliminates huge swaths of my peripheral vision. Backup cameras also make up for increasingly awful side vision and rear vision.

I drive an 1990s land cruiser a few weeks ago and the visibility was amazing. You didn't need cameras because the hood was low, the windshield was flat and upright and the side windows weren't tinted black. Old land rovers and pickups were the same.

<comment><USER22> Agreed! A-pillars have gotten extremely thick over the last 10 or so years to accommodate airbags and the increased rake angle of the windshield brings the pillar much closer to the eye. In my vehicles (2008 & 2018), the left pillar blocks the destination of a left turn (intersections or twisty mountain roads) and the right pillar at intersections block traffic and pedestrians from the right. I bob and weave to try and compensate, but it's definitely more work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am quiet driver. I have horror stories every single day with pedestrians who cross the street in the wrong spots, giving you 0 secs to react. I cannot tell how many guys could I be killed them because they've crossed the street texting and using headphones. Pedestrians go really in distracted mode, that's why when I approach some areas, I go really paranoid and try to foresee anything.

<comment><USER24> It's even worse when you're on a bike and this happens. The number of times I've yelled at people who open doors or just meander into the bike lane and hit them or nearly hit them because they had headphones in is one too many...

<comment><USER23> I don't use a bike, but I comute on my escooter and it's insane the amount of people who uses the bike lane for whatever reason is. It's so insane. I had 3 accidents in the last 3 months made by pedestrians and 1 motorcycle woman who did it everything wrong.

<comment><USER24> YES! The number of times I was almost hit by gas motor-scooters in the lane during traffic (while commuting with an electric scooter) was insane. I was mostly surprised by how slow most people ride their bikes. A meager 17mph even downhill on a dinky electric scooter is faster than most people ride their bikes, joggers also like to run in the bike lane at times...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There was an interesting comment on this topic by gok two days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153030)

It cites a study [0] claiming almost all of additional pedestrian deaths happen at night, while daytime fatalities haven't increased much.

[0] - [https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2019-02/FINAL_Pedes...](https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2019-02/FINAL_Pedestrians19.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think that vehicle designs have evolved in a couple ways over the last 15 years in negative ways:

1\. More Vertical space on the front of the vehicle - making it harder to see pedestrians right in front of you, this is particularly the case for large trucks and SUV's.

2\. Reduced greenhouses in modern cars (all the windows are smaller, meaning its harder to see anything around you)

3\. Vehicles in general are taller, higher and wider in the front and rear.

There are also other human factors in play, like more distracted driving from smart phones, and more complex infotainment systems in the vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER27> > The post-crash investigation indicated that she had probably been watching > the singing contest The Voice on her phone.

It's not just the drivers that are being distracted by their phones - pedestrians are as well. Every time I drive downtown, I'm having to make allowances for people with a total lack of situational awareness because they're walking around heads-down.

I'm not singling out the pedestrians - the drivers are equally at fault. Like the guy in the GL450 on I-85 last night who couldn't stay in his lane at 70mph because he was checking his phone.

<comment><USER28> >I'm not singling out the pedestrians - the drivers are equally at fault.

Distracted walking isn't a crime, so surely it's not equal.

<comment><USER29> It is if somebody gets killed. Recently a guy wearing headphones and listening (apparently) to his cell phone walked across the street against the light and directly in front of my car. He was completely oblivious that there was a light and didn't even hear me slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Pedestrians are very distracted (texting/phone/music) and drivers are very distracted (texting/phone/music). I'm actually amazed that I see people walk right into the street while looking at their phones _the entire time_ , with either misplaced trust in their surroundings or dangerous obliviousness.

Worse, drivers "seem" a lot angrier in recent years, and much more impatient. They're likely to just go through, crosswalks be damned, missing people by a hair.

</comment><comment><USER31> So, it's an important problem, but the first thing I thought was, "are people walking more or less than they did 20 years ago?" Certainly where I live, there are more cyclists than there were 20 years ago, and while I could believe that pedestrianism does not necessarily go up or down in tandem with cycling, I cannot believe it has stayed exactly the same. Do we walk to places more than 20 years ago (perhaps because more people are unable to afford a car, as wealth inequality grows)? Or do we walk less, such that the increase in pedestrian deaths is even worse than this article suggests, indicating a downward spiral in which people walk less because it seems too dangerous, which makes drivers less aware that there are pedestrians to look out for, which makes people walk even less? This article doesn't say. It seems a pretty fundamental point to be leaving out of a discussion of pedestrian death rates. They don't even mention whether these rates represent an increase in per capita deaths, or just reflect population increases. Without turning pedestrian death rates into per-person-per-mile-walked kind of rates, I don't see how you can draw many conclusions at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe these calculations are not as relevant for policy because practically you care that people keep dying from being hit by cars. Say, 10 people dead are 10 people dead.

They are not less important when they account for 1% vs. 0.0001% of walking people, per mile/km or whatever, are they?

<comment><USER31> Sure, but the rate is what helps to figure out why the change. If the rate of pedestrian death per mile walked is actually going down, but they are walking lots more, then you want to keep doing whatever you're doing, to keep the rate going down. If the rate per mile walked is going up, you need to consider some sort of about face, changing what you have been doing before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Design of cars can be as much a safety issue as design of roads. The Honda Civic I drive will auto-play whatever audio my phone was last playing when it syncs via Bluetooth. It does so inconsistently, and somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes after successfully syncing.

Talk about a sudden and needless distraction. What engineer thought this was a good idea?

I've taken to using a 5mm cord to connect my phone to the car speakers so _I can control what plays and when it plays_. Thankfully my phone still has a 5mm jack.

Trying to anticipate what the user wants is obnoxious, but it becomes dangerous when the computer doing so is installed in a heavy metal box with an engine and the ability to move fast.

<comment><USER33> Put the phone in airplane mode.

<comment><USER32> I usually turn the Bluetooth off when I'm done with it. The problem is when I occasionally forget, just like any human eventually will.

If I need to remember to hit a switch on one computer to prevent another computer from unpredictably blasting audio whenever I use the second computer, that's a design and safety failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As a thought experiment, imagine that you could design a city from the ground up and try to invent a transportation network that doesn't have pedestrians and cars next to each other.

\- - - -

I imagine you could have five separate interconnected networks:

        1 Pedestrians
        2 bicycles
        3 personal cars
        4 trucks and buses
        5 light rail and inter-urban trains

Add in e.g. Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language (like "Country City Fingers), and I think you would really have something.

</comment><comment><USER35> Cars aren't killing people though, it's the drivers of those cars. Such an odd headline.

Better title: "Why are drivers killing more pedestrians?"

<comment><USER36> >Better title: "Why are drivers killing more pedestrians?"

I disagree. That title lacks information and might lead to some people to think drivers are beating the pedestrians to death or maybe they're more prone to gun violence against pedestrians.

Maybe, a better title could be: "Why are drivers who are currently driving a car, pedestrians currently walking on the street, by running them over with said car"

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Normally I'm the first to blame suburban sprawl for unsafe roads - <USER2> environment where you have to drive everywhere all the time breeds complacency...

however,

The fact that we're talking about decidedly non-suburban Europe, and that 2010 is identified as the local minimum, pretty strongly implies that the rise of smartphones and other touchscreen-based devices is the culprit.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't drive but I was referred this app by a friend called OnMyWay [0]. The premise is they pay you to drive and put the phone down.

[0] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onmyway-drive-safe-get- paid/id...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/onmyway-drive-safe-get- paid/id1436132657)

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm really disappointed to see all the one word or low effort answers here. It looks like most people didn't bother to read the article and are instead just trying to post their anecdotal responses to the title. Perhaps it's the title as a question which causes such poor responses.

</comment><comment><USER39> Visibility, visibility, visibility.

All new cars, trucks, etc. are tall with very narrow windows for better collision safety. Not to mention American's latest obsession with hideous "cross-overs." As a result, its much harder to see in front of you and the extra clearance means you actually suck someone underneath the car instead of over.

Also, is it just me or are cars just plain ugly these days (yuck)

[https://www.motortrend.com/cars/land-rover/range-rover- evoqu...](https://www.motortrend.com/cars/land-rover/range-rover- evoque/2017/2017-range-rover-evoque-convertible-first-test-review/)

[https://www.diariomotor.com/2010/05/09/el-morris-mini- minor-...](https://www.diariomotor.com/2010/05/09/el-morris-mini-minor- original-frente-al-mini-countryman-david-y-goliat/)

<comment><USER40> > As a result, its much harder to see in front of you and the extra clearance > means you actually suck someone underneath the car instead of over.

I drive a crossover and I'm not sure where you get this idea from - let alone it being the issue. In can see much better out of my crossover than my sedan because I have a higher seating position and a smaller engine bay to look over. Height would really only be an issue in a parking lot if a child was hiding in front of a car.

<comment><USER39> Not in a close radius to the hood. Think about the extreme example of a semitruck which undoubtedly can see far far ahead, but imagine now that you are taking a right turn at a light.

I would disagree that its limited to children as a quick look right and then left might mean that much less of the person is visible and could possibly not catch your eye as you drive forward.

[https://imgur.com/gallery/PUfmP](https://imgur.com/gallery/PUfmP)

disclaimer: I was almost hit on a green walk light on 6th av in NYC by a cross over speeding on a left turn... I had to jump

<comment><USER40> > Not in a close radius to the hood.

How many accident actually stem from this. Even your own disclaimer has nothing to do with hood radius. That car that almost hit you was well out of "hood range" when he started to turn.

Likely, it was either a failure to check the corner or you where in his A-pillar blindspot. Every single car in the world has an A-pillar blindspot. In my experience, the A-pillar blindspot is worse on smaller cars because it's closer to the driver and blocks more of his/her vision.

<comment><USER39> Agreed, its not just crossovers that are difficult to see out of but all new cars - one of the issues is that SUVs have the ground clearance to run someone over much easier.

Also, children are important too and if one gets in front of you pulling up on a driveway using a modern SUV could be a recipe for disaster.

[https://www.wardsauto.com/news-analysis/new-pillars- enhance-...](https://www.wardsauto.com/news-analysis/new-pillars-enhance- safety-impede-visibility)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This must be the fourth or fifth article/discussion against cars that I've seen on HN in the last couple days, and the second on the front page right now. Is someone trying to push something here?

<comment><USER20> Cars are very dangerous things. They are used to kill an awful lot of people every day without much comment at all.

I've read a lot of articles about agressive or dangerously incompetant drivers in the UK, I have never once seen someone given a lifetime driving ban.

Drivers no mater if they were serving a temporary ban, were uninsured, on drugs, on the pavement (sidewalk) or reading their phones they always get the chance to get their licence back once they've paid a small fine or occationally got out of prison.

That goes for repeat offenders too.

Maybe startups using technology to provide alternatives such as electric bikes, scooters, self-driving cars would have some value to society.

<comment><USER41> > _Cars are very dangerous things. They are used to kill an awful lot of > people every day without much comment at all._

I'm not saying it's a topic that should not be talked about. I'm against the proliferation of cars and all else that comes with them as well.

The frequency of a single topic being repeatedly posted, however, should be viewed with healthy skepticism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In US car accidents killed more people than all wars combined

<comment><USER41> Not just accidents, "road rage" (which seems to be a largely US phenomenon) leads to murders or grievous violence too.

<comment><USER43> The other day I discovered a book which discusses the use of motorized vehicles as weapons at length: [https://www.amazon.com/Driven-Kill-Vehicles- as-Weapons/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/Driven-Kill-Vehicles-as- Weapons/dp/0888644876)

As someone who does a lot of cycling, I'm used to road rage directed at me in the form of punishment passes mostly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> And then, of course, there is Google Maps and Waze turning pedestrian lined residential access roads into high speed major arterials...

</comment><comment><USER45> 70 people are killed EVERY DAY in Europe in traffic accidents. I wonder why this extremely unsafe technology is not forbidden.

</comment><comment><USER46> Our current vehicle are great for many things and the improvements to them have increased safety and reduced deaths of occupants, blah blah blah.

Let's regulate these death machines to roads where they can be death machines, like highways, in the city you switch to driving an open air buggy whose seat belt is there to help you not slide out of a slippery plastic seat.

</comment><comment><USER47> Am easy start here in NYC - demand that serial driving offenders lose their licenses and face serious penalties if they violate than ban. If you systematically run red lights in this city you should face consequences. Until that happens a subset of awful people who don't care will be deadly threats.

</comment><comment><USER48> i wonder if it helps that cars make less of a noise in an urban environment these days (especially electric/dual ones)

<comment><USER49> Probably not much impact yet because there are so few EVs relative to ICEs. But, I've almost stepped in front of a few Teslas that "snuck up" on me in parking lots (typical US open parking lot with no pedestrian access - you just walk through a sea of cars and hope they're all paying attention).

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Texting

</comment><comment><USER51> Conjecture: the obsession with "safety" cams has led to a massive decrease in road policing by officers and a corresponding decline in the correction of poor and unsafe driving.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm surprised that hardly anyone mentions pedestrians that cross roads without a care in the world. Pedestrians wearing earphones or just not paying attention. Easy to blame vehicles but there are multiple factors.

<comment><USER53> The article is literally littered with thoughts on that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Good grief. Another tired, lengthy article attacking cars. Sorry but cars provide a lot of benefits, and are well worth the trade-offs in deaths. If you want to avoid deaths entirely, stay in your house. And even that might not keep you fully safe. But vehicle-related deaths are not even in the top 10 causes of unnatural death in the US, and making such a big deal out of it without considering the positives is absurd.

Cars are fast, and in areas that are not ultra high-density, they save time relative to ANY alternative (walking, biking, buses, trains) and therefore drastically improve your quality of life. They don't require you to wait on someone else's schedule, especially given the often inconsistent timing of buses. They don't require you to risk sitting down on dirty seats (6-year-old girl stabbed by uncapped needle on bus: [https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle- hidden...](https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle-hidden-two- bus-seats-9873386/)). They don't require you to expose yourself to violence (40 to 60 teens rob BART train: [https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART- takeover-robbery-5...](https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover- robbery-50-to-60-teens-swarm-11094745.php)). They let you travel all over the land, including away from cities, and therefore give you a greater degree of freedom than the reach of fixed rails or transit systems that are limited to cities.

Yes cars can cause deaths. So do a lot of other things. But the rate of vehicle-caused injuries/deaths has been dropping sharply since the 80s (see CDC data). It will continue to drop as backup cameras, lane departure prevention, collision detection, collision avoidance, and other assistance features become ubiquitous or required. Nothing is ever perfect, and this is the fundamental reason why efforts like Vision Zero are flawed. "Zero deaths" is not the goal, and generally any such absolute goal is unrealistic.

We get massive benefits from fast, private point-to-point transport. Let's not forget that and work to retain those benefits, instead of damaging the benefits of vehicles with low speed limits and other 'road diet' suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER55> Answers to the title question:

* Transition away from physical controls to touchscreen controls in new cars

* American's love affair with the automatic transmission

* Car-unfriendly "progressive" movements and the return of population towards city centers

It seems like people have very little actual interest in making things better but only interest in blaming something they have a built-in bias against or promoting a technology they find interesting.

The article completely failed to mention manual transmissions in America and the rest of the world while wondering loudly why it is so different here and the prevalence of touch-screens not just on phones in cars. Automatics are much more popular in the US and having a manual transmission forces you to pay much more attention to driving and simply occupies both hands more often especially inside cities.

One thing emphasized way too little is the responsibility of the pedestrian for not getting hit – the feeling of entitlement to right of way leading to people just not paying attention to cars or expecting behavior instead of watching for it.

I grew up around farm machinery often with little visibility and it teaches you to pay attention to what is going on around you a lot more. Not just in a way of being ready to react because there are circumstances where reacting is impossible, but in knowing what movements a machine is capable of and what the operator intends to do as well as if the operator knows you are there at all.

This is one of the primary reasons I think robot cars will go absolutely nowhere. It is impossible to come up with a theory of mind for a robotic car. As a pedestrian all you usually need to know the intentions of a driver (or vice versa) are an instant of eye contact. We are evolved to use tiny signals to decide intent and many people are barely aware of this. That kind of information just can't be reliably exchanged with a machine.

And people just aren't expecting the kinds of things which will happen when people start to believe robots with super fast reaction times will do anything not to hit pedestrians. Pedestrians will start running into the street without a care (or as a cheap thrill)

The article missed a lot and spent too much time on the wrong topics.

<comment><USER56> > American's love affair with the automatic transmission

I don't agree with your point here. I switched to auto boxes around 10 years ago, and (if anything) they free me up a bit to be more aware of my surroundings, because I don't have to spend any of my attention on using a clutch and gear stick.

Fully agree about touchscreen controls though - if controls are physical and tactile, I can easily use them without diverting my eyes from the road.</comment></comment>


Is Scheme Faster than C? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jsobel/c455-c511.updated.txt

<comment><USER2> This is a great essay.

The approach of converting scheme code into C (and possibly assembly) via series of correctness preserving transforms is explained in great detail in Friedman and Wand's "Essentials Of Programming Languages".

Get the first edition if you can. It is more comprehensive then the second edition. The third edition should be out in a few weeks so you may want to wait for that, if you plan to buy book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Curiously enough, the article's author's homepage says that Friedman is his academic advisor, so Friedman may well have been teaching the Programming Languages course where the author picked up the technique.</comment></comment>


Make Algorithms Accountable - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/opinion/make-algorithms-accountable.html <comment><USER3> It's tremendously disheartening to see the mainstream media repeating ProPublica's lies. They ran a statistical analysis. Their R-script said that bias was statistically insignificant. So they repeated a bunch of anecdotes in the story and left that part of the analysis out.

Reporting null results won't get you cited by the NYT, I guess.

[https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying....](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.html)

The power of the media to push a socially convenient lie is pretty amazing.

<comment><USER4> I might be misunderstanding the article you linked, but it seems very misleading to me (though I agree with the conclusion that the ProPublica article is misleading). They claim to conclude:

"The predictor is probably not biased against any particular race - <USER2> race_factorAfrican-American:score_factorHigh term is not statistically significant. Or, as ProPublica puts it, it's "almost statistically significant"."

I don't think you can conclude that the predictor is probably not biased against any particular race -- you can only use significance to reject the null hypothesis, not prove the null hypothesis (especially since the significance is still somewhat high). Am I misunderstanding the claim in the article?

<comment><USER3> I wrote the article. It's always tricky to me to figure out how to phrase a statement about a frequentist method (since frequentist methods formally say so little). I may have phrased this incorrectly.

So what I'm attempting to say is that they ran a statistical test, were unable to reject the null hypothesis, and then wrote an article phrased as if they did exactly that. But I think you are right that my phrasing is incorrectly, however.

<comment><USER5> > It's always tricky to me to figure out how to phrase a statement about a > frequentist method

That seems to me to be a fault whose location is not in your stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "In Wisconsin, for instance, the risk-score formula was developed by a private company and has never been publicly disclosed because it is considered proprietary. This secrecy has made it difficult for lawyers to challenge a result."

Shouldn't that on the contrary make it extremely easy for lawyers to argue that the score evidence should be thrown out?

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a moral objection to the government using mechanized algorithms for e.g. sentencing, because the government is (or ought to be) accountable to the public, and must be able to justify all actions. Proprietary algorithms are particularly odious, because it is impossible to "justify" a decision even in the sense of tracing how the algorithm got to that point.

On the other hand, private individuals ought not to be accountable to anyone for their decisions (unless they contractually agreed to be), so I have no issue with e.g. a bank making loan decisions with a computer. After all, if the bank's algorithm is innacurate, this actually hurts their bottom line (because they either deny good customers or accept bad customers), so there is a strong incentive to have good algorithms. On the other hand, no such incentive exists for e.g. sentencing.

<comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining)

<comment><USER7> Yes, this was a viable solution back in the day because there was a 90% chance (made up number, but you get the idea) that denying someone from a redlined district was a good financial choice, and it was too expensive to do a detailed analysis to determine if an applicant was in the other 10%. With the automated credit checking and statistical analysis available these days, this isn't really an issue anymore. Banks can afford to do a more detailed check of each applicant, and they will, because failing to do so would be an economic disadvantage.

<comment><USER8> > Yes, this was a viable solution back in the day because there was a 90% > chance (made up number, but you get the idea) that denying someone from a > redlined district was a good financial choice,

No That wasn't the reason why redlining existed. It existed because it was _explicitly_ racist policy enabled directly from the National Housing Act of 1934[0] -- which was basically just codifying the existing racist attitudes of the day.[1] It stemmed from the racist idea that blacks were inherently bad neighbors in all ways you can imagine. To say this was merely a good enough heuristic, or even the result of government over reach is grossly misunderstand the historical context of these policies. These policies were not any more controversial than saying, we should not zone a preschool next to a oil refinery.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#History)

[1] [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the- case...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for- reparations/361631/)

<comment><USER7> Your first link indicates that, as I said, the purpose of redlining was to direct wise economic decisions. Some researched (linked from wikipedia) suggests that the data may have been biased against black neighborhoods due to bias of the appraisers. It does _not_ suggest that the purpose was to specifically screw over black people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think there are elements to complicated tags in complicated algorithms that people need to see and understand. All the details - nah. I don't know all the details that go into the math of my credit report. I do know I have the right and responsibility to see what debts and savings that are reported.

I do think the author is right - issues that can affect someone's rights and responsibilities that are being embedded in an algorithms are part of the public trust and should be examined a bit more closely by the public. Do I or anyone else need to see all the details - no. Do I need to understand some basics and understand some of the tagging. Yes.

This is what helps uphold a free society.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would love—assuming Congress had their heads in the right place—to make a small council (council to prevent Luddite or crazy Presidents/Congresses from completely wreaking havoc) that would understand tech stuff like we do. People who just comment "Yea that's not how this works," or "hey techies think this is a good idea." Because I give a lot of governments good credit on tech stuff (and especially local governments) but on the federal level I think we're a little lost and lobbyists get to influence what congress members believe.

<comment><USER11> Technology isn't special. Politicians are also uneducated on every other industry and area of life. It's just that when they misunderstand technology you notice.

<comment><USER10> Well I notice it about a couple areas but in a ton of those areas we have specific branches of the executive to deal with the nitty gritty but not really one for technology. Similar in UK where they have white wall ministries to deal with things that parliamentarians should not be expected to have a deep knowledge of.

<comment><USER12> Presumably you mean "Whitehall", rather than "white wall"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here is a paper [1] discussing the effects of the new European Union legislation mentioned in the article ("right to explanation"). Interesting related read, regardless of the validity of the numbers mentioned in this opinion piece.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.08813v2.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.08813v2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the problem is vastly more subtle and fundamental than the author of this piece (and ProPublica in general, given their previous coverage of the same story) is giving credit.

Software is in a dangerous place right now[1]. Half[2]-way between stupid and smart. Recent advances from fields like Machine Learning have moved the software out of world of the purely deterministic. Stochastic methods have given us software that can live in the gray that is reality; this has made it mighty. Particular subdomains that were once entirely the purview of human workers are rapidly moving towards automation. These algorithms have gotten good enough at what they do, accurate enough at what they do, that they are approaching the semantic-work-outsourcing limit that is 'trustworthiness'; You can treat them more like agents than tools, and trust that they do their job sufficiently well that you, the consumer of their work, need not worry about the details; you get to take the executive role of dealing only with the abstractions they provide. "Just tell me yes or no if we should do this". You implicitly trust that the system will "Do The Right Thing"; of course it will, it's got a fantastic resume with some great recommendations[3].

The problem is, the algs are also still dumb. Very dumb. They cannot model themselves. They cannot introspect. And, perhaps most crucially, they cannot interface with their newly-promoted executives in the lingua franca to explain why they're dumb. When you want to figure out why the intern decided that it would be a good idea to name all their variables some permutation of the words 'herp' and 'derp', you march over to their cube and ask them. A conversation occurs. Different perspectives are exchanged via a common protocol[4]. New knowledge is acquired. A mutual understanding is reached. When you want to figure out why your Facial Recognition Software isn't acknowledging Black People[5]... you go get a Masters in Statistics, Distributed System, Probability Theory, with a minor in Anthropology and Demographics. Then you spend a month reading code and running experiments. The software, briefly perceived as a trustable agent that knows how to do its job, suddenly becomes a tool again, because you can't just ask it why it screwed up so badly. And not just any tool; an incredibly complicated, fragile, and opaque tool, with a million different knobs and dials and a Gordian nest of pipework and conduits that would make even the bravest chaotician sweat a little bit. Even when you've open sourced the data and implementation and the deployment architecture and the napkins you've been scribbling hyperparameters on, the box is still pretty damn black.

And so, while auditability or accountability is important, it's only a small (and very, very, very hard) piece of the societal changes that might be needed. Changes in ethics (who goes to jail when a UAV confuses a hospital for a barracks? What does a smart gun do if its wielder pulls the trigger while pointing at a civilian?). Changes in focus (Is it correct to make such deterministic choices about the world? Maybe Hume was right and the predictability of human behavior is slightly harder than we currently state it to be[6]. Maybe accuracy is bounded lower than we like, and so justification should be the primary target). Changes in education (and a reduction in the magical thinking about computers. I hope some distant ancestors of mine finally see the day that computers are as boring and obvious as hammers).

I worry about focusing so much on accountability because as it stands now, a highly autidable system as defined by the article still needs deep domain knowledge to even begin theorizing about. All of these things above and more will probably need to shift as well, whether deliberately or not, in order to accommodate these smart-dumb tool-agent hybrids we have now, systems that we're building right now, that are just powerful enough to be dangerous.

\---

[1] Every generation has said these exact words about every technological advance across every field for as long as we've been finding ways of rendering human beings obsolete. I'm sure there's some philologically reconstructible PIE for the phrase "those scientists are playing god". We've discovered it before, and I have no doubt we'll discover again solutions for these things, but that doesn't render the conversation in the interim any less meaningful.

[2] 'Half' is probably optimistic. Consider it an upper bound.

[3] Studied at MNIST... Tuned by Hinton and Ng... Deployed on three customer engagements with great KPIs... Very impressive stuff, Mr. Convolutional!

[4] I mean Natural Language here, but I suppose baseball bats and guttural screams may be other possible channels in this particular scenario.

[5] Or why your self-driving smart car crashed into a cement barrier

[6] I was trying to construct some pun about "the son not rising to the mistakes of the father tomorrow". It was pretty bad.

<comment><USER11> So first of all this isn't a new thing. The statistical methods vs human judgement debate goes back decades. Long before computers, people were training simple linear models with pencil and paper. The earliest paper I found is from 1928, on a similar issue as in the article. Where a very crude statistical algorithm was better at predicting recidivism of inmates, than three prison psychologists. This isn't a new thing at all.

Second the models in question aren't as complicated as you imagine. These are just decision trees with a few hundred inputs at most. Even with more complicated models, you can train simpler models to mimic them, and then inspect at those. There are other ways to make algorithms more transparent, but my point is these aren't complicated image recognition deep neural nets. They don't need to be either.

Third I don't think these algorithms are "dumb". By all accounts they significantly outperform humans. Humans, even experts, are terrible at doing even basic statistics in their head. Often our decisions aren't much better than random chance. Even when humans are allowed to see the results of an algorithm, and tweak it's output when they think it's making a mistake, they do worse than just the algorithm alone.

There's now evidence to suggest humans are irrationally biased against algorithms. Search for "algorithm aversion". A study shows that even after watching a statistical algorithm do better, people still prefer worse human judgement.

<comment><USER14> Yep, like I said, it's absolutely an old problem, even when it comes to statistical techniques.

I understand that the particular models in the article are on the simpler side. I was speaking more generally. As to whether the models in question here need to be more complicated, well, that is an interesting question.

Humans are absolutely terrible at doing basic statistics in their head. Algorithm aversion is probably a thing, no doubt motivated by similar anthrocentric biases to luddism. My point was there are other ways of measuring how 'good' a system is. In the space of a well-defined problem with well-defined parameters, sure, maybe accuracy is king. This is strikes me as akin to trying to build a bridge while assuming that the world is a frictionless vacuum. If everyone has agreed that the problem is correctly framed, then yes, a statistical system can be trusted, the mathematics are inevitable. But a statistical model (the current iterations of them, at least) is never going to ask whether or not it -should- only be considering the inputs its given, or whether more is needed. The world that these systems understand consists of the subset of the world provided to them by a set of sample data The patterns they learn can only ever be as good as that.

That's what I mean by 'dumb'. Not that they aren't good at what they do. That they aren't good at knowing about what they can't do.</comment></comment></comment>


Rust in Detail: Writing Scalable Chat Service from Scratch (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://nbaksalyar.github.io/2015/07/10/writing-chat-in-rust.html <comment><USER2> a lot of has changed since 2015. scalable http/1, http2/, websockets libraries and frameworks are available. and with async/await async programming will be even simpler.

<comment><USER3> Was going to say exactly this. It's astonishing how '2015' looks like ancient history

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> must say that regardless of its age, this tutorial is superbly written.</comment>


Blog.swift: a tiny server-side Swift blog app - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/NSNotFound/blog.swift <comment><USER2> I hope you don't try and write a post with a singe quote in it!

(You're directly interpolating the post content into a SQL query, rather than using parameterization. Similarly, you've got an injection vulnerability in your get, someone could infect arbitrary SQL into the post id.)

<comment><USER3> There's not even user authentication and you're talking about SQL injection?

>[WIP] DO NOT USE Please checkout the TODO list</comment></comment>


Idea to reduce the occurrence of negative low-value comments on HN threads - <AUTHOR>

When I look back upon my comments, I find some are more constructive than others. Of my less-constructive comments I think "Gee, maybe I just didn't like or agree with the article".
Allow users to downvote articles. Downvotes don't have to have the same weight as upvotes.
If you downvote an article, you are barred from commenting on it. Maybe it even hides it for you. But have a way to undo your downvote. <comment><USER2> Downvotes would add more negativity. The goal is to get rid of it. Solution: only allow positive comments.

If you don't like something, you don't vote.. you don't do anything. Likewise, if don't like it.. don't comment at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> So why did you comment then?

<comment><USER2> I see offering a potential solution to a problem to be a positive comment. Neutral, really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, schemes to manipulate participation are not the best solution. This is a technical community and it loves to propose technical solutions, but negative comments are a people problem first and foremost. If you wish to see this improve, be the change you wish to see. Exercise self discipline. Choose to not comment if it is trivial and negative. If you do say something trivial and negative, you have about an hour in which to change your mind and delete. Exercise that option if you think it does not add value. Set the example.</comment>


The World Is Changing In Front Of Your Eyes - <AUTHOR> http://www.pipmavens.com/the-word-is-changing-in-front-of-your-eyes/

<comment><USER2> The US Government has a simple way to find domestic buyers: Raise the yield.

I currently have to buy crappy BBB- munis to get anything close to a decent fixed income yield. If I could get 6.5% for a long bond, I'd be buying a bunch.

(YTM on 2043's 3.858% per Schwab today)

</comment><comment><USER3> What will happen if China stops buying Treasuries? The dollar will depreciate, and US exports will rise, and imports will fall. Who will this hurt?</comment>


The Importance of Recreational Math - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-importance-of-recreational-math.html <comment><USER2> A few years ago, just for fun, I enrolled in a UCLA extension course on Measure Theory: [https://uclaextension.edu/pages/Course.aspx?reg=Z5529](https://uclaextension.edu/pages/Course.aspx?reg=Z5529)

It stretched my brain in ways that my day job doesn't. I've since continued to take all of the courses in the series, which are always about "interesting" mathematics. The professor (Dr. Michael Miller) has been teaching these graduate-level extension courses for something like 20+ years. If you are in the area of UCLA, I highly recommend attending. Sadly, there's no online option, so you'll have to be a local.

More info on the course from another student (and clear fan): [http://boffosocko.com/2015/09/22/dr-michael-miller-math- clas...](http://boffosocko.com/2015/09/22/dr-michael-miller-math-class-hints- and-tips-ucla-extension/)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, I don't live near UCLA (Does anyone know of a similar program in the Boston area?).

However, I have found that it is not too hard to learn advanced math without the help of an instructor. A couple math-inclined co-workers and I have been reading Topology by Munkres. Since it is such a popular textbook, there are plenty of solutions to exercises online. Working with other people makes it easier to ask questions if you are confused, and also helps me stay motivated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite books by Gardner, and these are great introductions to his lighthearted approach to math, are the pair Aha! Insight [1] and Aha! Gotcha. These are probably the least rigorous works he made, but extremely fun and still tackle interesting subjects (in other words, great for kids). If you want something longer form or less approachable, he was a very prolific author so any of his other dozens of books are great too.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Aha-Insight-Martin- Gardner/dp/07167101...](http://www.amazon.com/Aha-Insight-Martin- Gardner/dp/071671017X)

</comment><comment><USER5> There is no math but recreational math. We should call activities that superficially resemble math but aren't fun for what they are, accounting.

<comment><USER6> This is a little narrow-minded. The process of doing mathematics is mostly diligence and hard work, and the higher up you go the more work you have to put in to reach those moments of insight and clarity that make the struggle worth it.

If your argument is that there is a blurry line between recreation and work when you love your job, then sure. Maybe the average person will believe that in some abstract intellectual sort of way. But I don't think you'll convince any mathematicians that their entire job is recreation. By analogy, I don't think you'd convince any world-class musicians that their entire job is recreation when they're doing music drills and rehearsing for ten hours a day.

<comment><USER7> Neither

puzzles = the most fun part of math

nor

puzzles = the best, most significant part of math.

is always true. Sometimes, sure but the entire math terrain is complex and shouldn't be reduced to pure puzzles, pure progressions of abstraction or any other simplistic view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I picked up a copy of Martin Gardner's collected recreational maths series he compiled from the Scientific American articles. Brilliant!

This is a book that will see much love and use in my family for the next few decades.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hint for the coin puzzle (rot13): As mentioned in the article, gur fbyhgvba trarenyvmrf gb nal cbjre bs guerr, gubhtu gur ahzore bs jrvtuvatf jvyy bs pbhefr inel.

Solution (rot13): Fcyvg gur pbvaf vagb guerr tebhcf bs guerr. Chg gjb tebhcf ba gur gjb fvqrf bs gur fpnyr, yrnivat gur guveq bss. Vs gurl ner rdhny va jrvtug, gur snxr pbva vf va gur guveq tebhc. Bgurejvfr vg vf va gur yvtugre bs gur gjb.

Qvfpneq gur tebhcf gur snxr vfa'g va. Chg gjb bs gur erznvavat pbvaf ba gur gjb fvqrf bs gur fpnyr. Ntnva, vs gurl ner rdhny va jrvtug, gur snxr vf gur guveq; bgurejvfr vg vf gur yvtugre bs gur gjb.

Guvf vf n grkgobbx qvivqr-naq-pbadhre nytbevguz. Gur xrl vafvtug vf gung lbh pna qvivqr ol n snpgbe bs guerr, abg whfg gjb.

<comment><USER10> The insight for size of groups can be shown by constructing the weighing that maximizes entropy.

With lg(9) bits of information needed to identify the odd coin, and a scale with only three possible outcomes (< > =), we can show the best sequence of weighings must reveal lg(3) + lg(3) bits of information by yielding a uniform distribution on the outcomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> thought it said Recreational Meth for a second there

<comment><USER12> I hear that's pretty popular</comment></comment>


Why Plan 9 is not dead yet and what we can learn from it (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.unm.edu/~fastos/05meeting/PLAN9NOTDEADYET.pdf <comment><USER2> I up-voted this in "new" in the hopes of an interesting debate from smarter people than me about why Plan 9 didn't succeed or what would it take for a new OS to break the status quo. But 2 hours in, 0 comments. Is there really nothing to say anymore about this?

Okay. here's a question: how would the world look like today had Android started based on Plan 9 instead of Linux?

<comment><USER3> My understanding of Plan 9 is that the primary benefits it brought are in its ability to make a large collection of computers look like one unified system. So rather than asking what would it look like if Android was based on Plan 9, I'd think of it as: what would it look like if my laptop, TV, and smartphone all ran Plan 9.

I think then you'd have a scenario in which, for example, you can pick up your phone and tell your TV to start streaming some file you have on your laptop. You can probably do this now using some collection of complicated programs that you have to install, but with Plan 9 it would be easy since everything appeared to be just one part of a larger computing system.

Or another example: you're working at your office with a desktop computer running Plan 9. Then you leave the office for the night, but want to finish something at home, so you open up your laptop and have access to all your work files as if they are stored locally on your laptop. You just edit them in place and the copy at work is automatically updated as you go.

So that's how things would be different I think. Not revolutionary, but definitely an improvement on what we have now. (Note: I'm not a Plan 9 expert and have never actually used it, however, I do find the ideas from it interesting and have read a bit about it, so I think the above is fairly accurate).

<comment><USER4> > _Then you leave the office for the night, but want to finish something at > home, so you open up your laptop and have access to all your work files as > if they are stored locally on your laptop. You just edit them in place and > the copy at work is automatically updated as you go._

I do this all the time, Gnome file manager (Nautilus) mounts my work computer over sftp with three mouse clicks (Connect to Server / select server / Connect).

Granted, I can only work on the remote files in Nautilus, and with GUI programs than I launch by right-clicking on the files in Nautilus. If I want a command line, I need to do some other, but also simple, tricks.

<comment><USER5> Plan 9 goes far beyond than that. _Everything_ can be shared automatically, because everything is a file. Here are some scenarios that should be possible:

\- You can access files remotely automatically from any application (akin to what sshfs does)

\- You can access non-files remotely automatically: a printer is just a fd you write to

\- A GPU from a distant cluster is just a resource you can use as if it were local (I'm speaking of implementation, not performance).

\- A mail service can be accessed on a mail server, which is itself not connected to the wild internet but goes through a firewall... itself accessible through the same file protocol. Oh and the mail you want to send sits in your outbox on your phone, so you just grab it from your computer.

\- You can play the music that lives on your machine on the speakers anywhere in your house by communicating with the remote fd

\- One of the dream of Rob Pike (co-inventor) is that you wouldn't need a multi-core machine in your pocket for your mobile lives, you'd only need a good connection so you can access all resources on any server that is connected to the network. Your "smartphone" would then just be a terminal to pilot all your resources.

All of this accessible with the same interface, available in the OS. It may be have been a ludicrous dream, especially when we look at how much data would have been shuffling between machines, but the prospect of such networking still sounds awesome.

<comment><USER4> So, could we imagine a startup making Internet of Things, and smart homes, and basing their tech on Plan 9 instead of Linux?

<comment><USER5> At this point I'm not sure it's worth it. We've got far more covered by just using a working Linux and taping specific protocols together than trying to make Plan 9 even work everywhere (If we're talking IoT, we're talking exotic hardware, so there's much much more chance Linux will need less work to be adapted, if not already done)

On top of that, we already have some platforms to use on Linux: the Erlang VM already has a notion of "global cluster of things" where the actual location of a resource doesn't have an impact on how things are executed (other than performance). The plan9 utilities are also partly ported to run on Linux; maybe we could try to run services that speak 9p/9p2000/styx on top of Linux ? That would be more useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, one of my buddies (abdge on HN) ported Plan 9 to Gentoo in 2011.

[http://soc.dev.gentoo.org/~rps/plan9/](http://soc.dev.gentoo.org/~rps/plan9/)

It doesn't really seem "dead" (though close to it), it's interesting to me that even 6 years after this post Plan 9 was still being ported.

To be honest, a fair amount of the good features have been ported from Plan 9 into Linux. I don't bother using Plan 9 personally because it doesn't have a lot of the support I need, and many Linux distros support what I need.

However, if there more general support I would definitely use it, it's pretty slick.

<comment><USER7> You link to _" a Plan 9-inspired userspace on top of a Gentoo base system"_, which was preceded by plan9port.[1][2]

But they're only a (admittedly important, but insufficient) subset of the Plan 9 operating system.

[1] - [http://swtch.com/plan9port/](http://swtch.com/plan9port/)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_User_Space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_User_Space)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I only encountered Plan 9 once, and then only the header inclusion scheme it promotes for it's C code. Which IIRC goes like 'header files must not include other header files hence every source file has to include the headers for all declarations used in that source file and in the headers it includes'. Which means when for any header file you want to include in your source you have to go figure out which headers are needed to pull in all declarations. For every single soure file. I really failed to see how any possible benefits of that would outweigh the cons.

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't be surprised if plan9 builds are an order of magnitude faster per LoC - Deeply nested includes and cyclic includes waste a huge amount of time.

Avoiding cyclic dependencies might also be a good thing in terms of overall software design.

<comment><USER10> plan9 kernel builds take less that 10 seconds.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, this is awesome... If gcc or the linux kernel compiled in 10 seconds, the world would be a better place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From page 18:

      - But it [Unix] lacked an active data model
        - Farber suggested this in 1978 and we all thought it made no sense
        - He was right, as usual

Does anyone know what this refers to?

Any articles on it I could read?

<comment><USER11> Absence of a built-in simple database model, I think. The unix way is to use a flat file, which turned out in the long term to be inadequate. Part of the underlying reason for systemd on Linux is that people want to configure their system with a robust database, not shell scripts or ad-hoc text file formats which must be edited by hand, or by custom database drivers (like Berkeley DB). Proplist might be another partial solution to this requirement on systems which lack an active data model. BeOS had a strong database-like file system which may address the same thing.

See [http://martinfowler.com/articles/languageWorkbench.html#Acti...](http://martinfowler.com/articles/languageWorkbench.html#ActiveDataModels)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess this might be interesting on the matter of why new operating systems didn't succeed:

[http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html](http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/utah2000.html)

Bottom line is unix is good enough and no one is interested in the effort/risk it'd take to develop something significantly better.

</comment><comment><USER13> Architecturally I very much like the look of plan9. From a user interface perspective it's the pits. The UI seems to be anchored to the work-flow of the initial developers.

The last problem is a hurdle that that all good operating systems with fewer than a hundred million installs face. Driver support.

Plan9 with a Wayland style compositor supporting hardware acceleration could be a base for some cool new directions in UI. A Raspberry PI running Plan9 with a spiffy accelerated compositor and plan9ish file-framebuffer-windows would be enough to convince me to dive in and have a play around.

<comment><USER14> I keep a Raspberry Pi on my desktop with plan9front because slow as it is, it's still the fastest way to get a VNC/ssh client going, but I don't think Wayland would be much of an improvement (although anything is better than Rio at this point).

The problem here is that most of the plan9 community is too set in their ways to counter the dogmas around, say, Acme and three-button mouse usage (just to use an example that is UI-related but not strictly about the environment) or has moved on.

Mind you, plan9front is still being maintained (and fixed, including EFI and 64bit stuff), but people doing UX and graphics seem to be in short supply in that neck of the woods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have you ever gotten in-between a bunch of siblings fighting? They're all mad at each other until an outsider comes in and then suddenly there's a unified front against the new guy.

I blame the ultimate demise of commercial unix on infighting between HP, Sun, Cray, Digital, Tandem and everyone else who had a better idea of what UNIX should look like: i.e. how their UNIX was perfect in every way and safe to lock into because it addressed all your needs.

I remember impassioned arguments about whether HP-UX or Solaris was the better server to host Sybase or Oracle because the developers of said products developed on one first and ported to another, or so it was said.

When I tried to show Linux to my peers in the early 90's it was "Meh, proprietary hardware is better than PC hardware, why would we use that?" Eventually as we all know commercial Linux won the day over pretty much everything else.

I also tried to show people Plan 9 and was again shot down by people who lacked vision, but this time they were right. The only thing it seems most UNIX family members agree on is Plan 9's the red-headed cousin every UNIX vendor hates.

For me it had echoes of Apollo's open namespace concept on their OS. But as others have stated a) it didn't have any compelling reasons to adopt it over standard UNIX for an average business, b) it had a bunch of UI quirks that only a mother could love.

I still think we have things to learn from Plan 9 if you take the open namespace concept and wrap it in a container. My company (a Fortune 50) is getting rid of laptops, privileged remote access (no root over VPN) and even desktops (most everyone's hosted on virtual desktops now.)

Why not give me access to a desktop wrapped in an encrypted container? I boot their OS, it establishes contact with a server that verifies my boot-disk is uncorrupted and then downloads whatever I need to work inside the container, but once I'm done it's all destroyed until next time?

I can operate inside my employer's namespace but once the access is gone there are no local traces? _shrug_

Anyway back to Plan 9, it was good. It wasn't great enough to make anyone switch.

</comment><comment><USER16> Plan9's successful implementation of the "everything is a file" abstraction has yet to be seen in popular unices... I wish it weren't so, it's a beautiful and simplified abstraction compared to what we commonly have today.

Also, its namespacing, and a few other opinionated ideas...

</comment><comment><USER17> When I checked out Plan 9 it felt like like walking around a dim and dusty abandoned palace. Eerie thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> We can learn that doing the right thing technically is often not done in business.

QNX is another great example of awesomeness squandered.

<comment><USER19> QnX is doing fine though. Not as good as it could be doing but it's really doing more than ok. Wished that RIM would have the foresight to open source it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Plan9 is not dead because Urbit.

<comment><USER21> I'm still convinced Urbit is some sort of elaborate ruse, I feel like most of the HN crowd feels the same.</comment></comment>


Old-Model TVs Are So Toxic, You Can't Give 'Em Away. Literally. - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091803711.html

<comment><USER2> Random aside (and probably an indicator that I'm an old fogie). It's impressive that newspapers will use drug-originated phrases like "buzz kill" (last sentence). I think it's progress, of sorts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yea old TVs and CRT Monitors...</comment>


Intelligent Designer: Gaia - <AUTHOR> http://www.kmeme.com/2010/05/intelligent-designer-gaia.html

<comment><USER2> I think the silliest part of that argument is the idea that natural selection needs a 'cause' or an explanation. It doesn't. Natural selection is a tautology. That which makes itself more likely to propagate is more likely to propagate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just what we need: a New Age version of Creationism.</comment>


Hillary Has an NSA Problem - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2016/03/hillary-has-an-nsa-problem/ <comment><USER2> This is an obvious hit piece that adds nothing to what has already been reported by more reliable news sources.

</comment><comment><USER3> > "What did she not want put on a government system, where security people > might see it?" the former NSA official asked, adding, "I wonder now, and I > sure wish I'd asked about it back in 2009."

Hold on. She wanted a custom, NSA-built Blackberry so she could check her personal email...and this former NSA official thinks her aversion to checking her personal email on a desktop was for privacy reasons? Give me a break.

My understanding is that when Clinton's tenure began as Secretary of State, the department (and most of the federal government) didn't have developed bring-your-own-device policies, and she specifically requested the NSA provide her a secure device so she could comply with security requirements.

As snowwrestler says, this is a hit piece. It looks more and more to me like Clinton was doing her best to work with ambiguous and incomplete security policies, and the NSA denied her request for hardware that would somewhat ameliorate the problem.

This revelation about the Blackberry request reads as more of a vindication of Clinton than anything else (and adds more support to the idea that what led to the email scandal wasn't really her fault), but this article is somehow twisting it into an attack.

Might be worth adding that I've never heard of this news outlet.

<comment><USER4> > ...aversion to checking her personal email on a desktop...

Your point depends on Clinton having an understand of the way an NSA-berry works, how the traffic is routed, and what the auditing policies are; then, using that the same level of understanding for the office computer to weigh the privacy of one over the other. That seems pretty unlikely, and I can easily imagine that she'd feel more in control of a phone in her pocket than a PC under her desk.

> ...so she could comply with security requirements.

One does not setup a private mail server, containing classified material, if one is interested in complying with security requirements.

> ...ambiguous and incomplete security policies...

There is nothing ambiguous about _class_ ified material, and the rules for handling are extremely simple: whatever contains the material must be rated greater than or equal to the classification level of the material. The policy is so comprehensive that it spans tactical radio key loaders to shielded government facilities.

<comment><USER3> >> ...aversion to checking her personal email on a desktop...

> Your point depends on Clinton having an understand of the way an NSA-berry > works, how the traffic is routed, and what the auditing policies are; then, > using that the same level of understanding for the office computer to weigh > the privacy of one over the other. That seems pretty unlikely, and I can > easily imagine that she'd feel more in control of a phone in her pocket than > a PC under her desk.

I think you're reading into this too much. Any reasonably intelligent person should assume that a government device provided for government work should be under some kind of surveillance, regardless of what type of device it is. I doubt she knew the difference in how the desktop versus the phone would be monitored, but it doesn't matter. The point I was making is that a preference for reading email on a phone, rather than a desktop computer, is all that's really at play here.

>> ...so she could comply with security requirements.

> One does not setup a private mail server, containing classified material, if > one is interested in complying with security requirements.

The security requirements I was referring to were that you couldn't bring your personal phone into secure facilities. But you read my whole comment, so you know that.

>> ...ambiguous and incomplete security policies...

> There is nothing ambiguous about classified material, and the rules for > handling are extremely simple: whatever contains the material must be rated > greater than or equal to the classification level of the material. The > policy is so comprehensive that it spans tactical radio key loaders to > shielded government facilities.

I wasn't referring to information classification, I was referring to bring- your-own-device policies, which were non-existent or underdeveloped at the time. But you read my whole comment, so you know that.

<comment><USER4> > The point I was making is that a preference for reading email on a phone...

I agree with that point - that personal preference over standard operating procedures is the likely motivator, but your pointing to the origin of the phone as some kind of evidence of logical exclusivity doesn't hold up.

> The security requirements I was referring to were that you couldn't bring > your personal phone into secure facilities.

So your method of determining an individual's motives in an environment of uncertainty begins with "Throw out everything we know for a fact about this person..."?

> I wasn't referring to information classification, I was referring to bring- > your-own-device policies, which were non-existent or underdeveloped at the > time.

BYOD policies did exist and were well developed at the time, they were very simple: "Don't." That was made pretty clear in the article, so I'm not sure how you don't know that, unless you are confusing "underdeveloped" with "not what I want".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Ms. Clinton only checked her personal email on her Blackberry: she did not want to sit down at a computer terminal. As a result, the NSA informed Secretary Clinton in early 2009 that they could not help her. When Team Clinton kept pressing the point, "We were politely told to shut up and color" by IAD, explained the state security official._

I wasn't familiar with the phrase "shut up and color". It seems to be a common Air Force phrase used to remind subordinates of their role:

      shut up and color
      References the popular kindergarten past-time involving
      line art and various multicolored crayons, also known as
      "coloring". coloring often results in an all-consuming,
      zombie-like preoccupation of the participant with the
      activity at hand and a subsequent obliviousness to the rest
      of the world as he/she bravely endeavors to stay inside the lines.

      1.) <direct command; imperative> a streamlined and highly
      economical verbal jab that efficiently informs the
      receiving end to—in the following order—(a) step the fuck
      off, (b) shut the hell up and (c) mind their own goddamn
      business without actually having to use any profanity
      oneself.

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shut+up+and+c...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shut+up+and+color)

Surprisingly, it can also be used with positive connotation:

      Maybe by reintroducing "shut up and color" I will catch
      some individuals off guard. But my intent is not to offend,
      but encourage people to reevaluate themselves as leaders
      and followers and as Airmen. Airmen are only human, so each
      of us has had our gripes at one time or another. But, there
      is a time and place to voice your concerns and I believe
      when you are surrounded by great leadership they will
      embrace those concerns.

      However before you make your concerns known, assess what is
      really wrong - that's where every individual can reevaluate
      himself. Is it the system or is it you? Instead of asking
      "why," listen and understand, then do something to fix the
      situation. If you're a leader, listening and following
      through on the situation to make things better for your
      Airmen is key. In my opinion, "shut up and color," is meant
      to help us understand, conform and act the way we should
      when we are at work, representing the world's greatest air
      force.

      Let me be clear, Airmen at all levels need to make sure
      that the message, "shut up and color" is not misinterpreted
      or disrespectful to any Airmen. I convey this message as
      motivation and a challenge: everyone needs to lead by
      example. You don't have to agree with me. However, I hope
      you hear what I said and give yourself a gut check. I
      fulfill my duties and role as an Airman. When the Air Force
      requires some sacrifice, I'm ready to shut up and color!
      Are you?

[http://www.lajes.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123401376](http://www.lajes.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123401376)</comment>


A better laptop stand for bed - <AUTHOR> http://www.instructables.com/id/A-better-laptop-stand-for-bed/ <comment><USER2> google for "laptop laidback" for a commercial version if you're too busy coding to do hardware. i have not bought yet, so don't know how good it is.</comment>


Ask HN: OpenWRT, LEDE or something else? - <AUTHOR> What should I use for my next home router? OpenWRT, lede-project.org, something else?<p>I want some as secure as possible, efficient and with a good UI. I haven't bought the router yet (I'm checking for software compatibility first). <comment><USER2> OpenWrt 15.05.1 ("Chaos Calmer") is stable, and quite secure as shipped. Using the default packages, or a few well-known packages as add-ons will be fine from a stability, security, and UI standpoint.

OpenWrt Trunk ("Designated Driver") development doesn't seem to be going as quickly as it was before LEDE split off. It's still a development trunk version, and not guaranteed to be stable.

LEDE is just getting off the ground. Its nightly builds change (improve) rapidly, but you may not want your family (spouse, kids) to rely on it right now. It will have the same (or better) stability, security & UI characteristics as 15.05.1 when they ship their first stable version. There's no schedule yet, but look for an announcement in the new year.

For your stated requirements, I would recommend (and am personally running) OpenWrt 15.05.1</comment>